Overview

Sultan Abdülhamid II's reign (1876–1909) was one of the longest and most influential in all of Ottoman history. He steered the Empire through one of its most tumultuous and transformative periods. Until very recently, most scholars viewed this sultan's reign quite critically, largely in isolation from his predecessors and successors, almost as an aberration in the general pattern of Ottoman reform and modernisation in the last century of the Empire. This is probably due in part to the sultan's autocratic style of ruling and the loss of much territory and international prestige, which marked both the outset of his reign and its aftermath. Other reasons for such harsh treatment include long prevailing perceptions of the late Ottoman Empire as a stagnant environment, its modernisation as a strictly secular egalitarian process and its nationalist movements as progressive incontrovertible forces. Most of these stances have been substantially revised in the past two decades, which has prompted a general re-evaluation of this sultan's legacy too. Recent scholarship has restored some balance to his portrayals, by pointing out some of the positive linkages, through education, correction, philanthropy and other areas of modernisation, between the Abdülhamidian reign, the Young Turk period and, in some ways, even the early Turkish Republican period. Others have improved our understanding of his accomplishments, by focusing solely on his life, reign and ideology. Among them, the most influential research has come from Selim Deringil. This chapter aims to complement the work of these scholars in several ways.

First, it will relate more systematically Abdülhamid II's style of ruling and discourse of power to those of his predecessors, emphasising both continuities and discontinuities. This comparison will be organised around the concept of ruler visibility, vis-à-vis the following binary opposites – target audiences at home and abroad, majority and minority audiences, and the use of notions of past and future in the moulding of the ruler's public persona. Second, this chapter will shed light, in chronological order, on the range and effect of techniques of royal image making, employed by this Sultan in order to support and perpetuate his personal autocratic regime.