Abdul Hamid, Former Sultan of Turkey, Dies

Infamous for Cruelty and Bloodshed During His Long Reign

Amsterdam, Feb. 11. – Abdul Hamid, former Sultan of Turkey, died yesterday from inflammation of the lungs. The death is announced in a dispatch today from Constantinople by way of Vienna.
A state funeral will be held.
Abdul Hamid II., Khan, thirty-fourth Sultan of the line of Osman, and the twenty-eight since the capture of Constantinople by the Turks was born September 22, 1842.
He was the second son of Sultan Abdul Mejid, who reigned from 1839 to 1861. His mother, it is commonly believed, was an Armenian. This is said to have been denied in later years by Abdul Hamid, who laid claim to Ottoman descent on both sides.
There can be little doubt he did belong in part to the race upon whom he visited those dreadful persecutions which constitute one of his principal titles to the world’s remembrance. Little is known about his early life.
Those to whom Sultan Abdul Hamid came to stand aas a friend incarnate have found it easy to go back in his career and lay on this dark colors almost from infancy. George Dorys, in his “Private Life of Sultan Abdul
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Hamid,” speaks of him as a boy of sullen, spiteful and treacherous disposition in contrast with his elder brother, Murad, whose open and affectionate nature made him a general favorite.
Abdul Hamid the liberal minded reformer left an older son, Murad, of legitimate birth, and in many ways resembling his father