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Show ABD-UL-HAMID, deposed Sultan of Turkey, who reigns 3o years and finally dies in prison. j i -- - i. - . -' "vTN . jV" - a A . - . F v "tzC - ft V' AVv .-ivi. jSv. ' s f1 " ' t f 4-4 I v A !" . I l jr - - 1 W . , T Kl i'Ai H DEATH SUMMONS THE EX-SyLTF TURKEY State Funeral Planned for Abd-ul-Hamid, Who Dies in Prison. AMSTERDAM, Feb. 11. Trie death yesterday yes-terday of Abd-ul-Hamid, former sultan of Turkey, from inflammation of the lung's is announced in a dispatch received here today from Constantinople by way of Vienna. A state funeral -will be held. Abd-ul-Hamid vras for thirty-three years sultan of the Ottoman empire, sprawling upon the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, and at the same time was commander of the faithful array of Moslems. He was paid homage by nearly a hundred million subjects. Shorn of power, he died a prisoner, pitied, if not despised. He lived In constant dread of death. He had often escaped it only by good luck or unusual precautions against plots. Yet in his later years he had sought death by his own hands, so melancholy had bis existence become. He gained ascendency under circum-Ftances circum-Ftances nearly as tragic as those which ended his career. Born September 22, 1S4S, the second son of Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid, he became sovereign when his elder brother. Murad V., was deposed because be-cause of mental incapacity in IS. 6. It was a time when Turkey was in a state of extreme depression, almost succumbing succumb-ing to the tremendous blows of Russia. Out of this slouch the new sultan saved the remnants of Turkish prestige. Many critics give him credit for a successful regime. Others denounce it as infamous. Whatever the true estimate, it is a fact that the Turkish empire increased its power. Schools were reformed, the army built up, commerce extended and Pan-Islamism Pan-Islamism created under Abd-ul-Hamid. Stubbornly though he had fought outside out-side forces' to prevent disintegration of his empire, his fall came within the empire em-pire itself by the rise of the Young Turks, a paitv bent upon constitutional government. govern-ment. Abd-ul-Hamid granted, a constitution, constitu-tion, hut failed to carry out the liberal ideas of the new generation. In the revolution of 1909 he was driven from the imperial palace on the shores of the Boephorus, made a prisoner and confined con-fined in the Villa Latini, a former residence resi-dence of a Greek merchant, in Salonika, the city where the Young Turk movement fiad its birth. Some vears ago Abd-ul-Hamid began writing what was generally supposed to be his memoirs, and part of his alleged production was published, but after a pme his restlessness got the better of him and he tore up his manuscripts. In March, 1911, it was said he tried to escape from his fortress, and upon frustration frus-tration of the olot he sought to kill himself him-self He broke a tumoler and with the jagged glass tried to open a vein. One nf his attendants seized him before he had done himself injury. He thereupon brought down Allah's curse upon the Young Turks, and wildly declared that "this empire will soon disappear from the earth, and be engulfed by the sea." |