The Sultan;: The life of Abdul Hamid II

The book achieves a great job in depicting the political situation of Europe starting from the early eighteenth century until the end of WWI.The reader will find in Abdul Hamid's personality the lonely man who is trying to protect his sheep in a dark valley full of brutal and hungry wolves: The European Countries. Britain, Russia, France, Italy, Austria and finally Germany all have something in their best interest related with the Ottoman empire which was at the time being called "The Sick Man of Europe". As we witness, the first four of these countries have the same goal: Driving back the Turks out of Europe and even out of Anatolia while Germany had some intentions over the oil reserves of the region. We see that Emperor Wilhelm of Germany visits Abdulhamid twice in order to convince the sultan to build a railroad that would stretch from Berlin to Baghdad and Hijaz. In fact he becomes successful in this thanks to the support coming from the ministers that were close to the Sultan. However, as we shall see, this would eventually lead to hostililty between Britain and Germany and will be the main cause of the first world war.The Sultan delays the collapse of the empire 33 years, just the amount of time he has remained on throne. But when he was forced to abdicate, the Turkish empire engaged in WWI and collapsed just when the war ended. Sultan Abdulhamid deserves enormous credit for his intelligence and statesmanship. I think the author of this book has been quite successful in transmitting the Sultan's personality to the reader and in being impartial in his judgements.

Received the book in an excellent condition

This book has not aged well. It contains a concentrate of all that was bad about popular history books of the mid twentieth century: a stereotypical view of "the Orient" as a place of exotic debauchery, decadence and sensual excess, where only the presence of western diplomats can provide some much-needed common sense and responsibility.It is an interesting witness on how much the way we approach the history of the region has changed in just a few decades. But not much else.While you certainly can't blame the author from being a woman of her times, if you are looking for a serious, modern and well documented biography on one of the most interesting and influential figures of Middle Eastern history you should look elsewhere. Unfortunately, I am not entirely sure where.

There is not so much to say.. This is a great book. I was looking forward to reading it for a very long time, finally found in second-hand, and the result: loved it!!! I'm very interested in the Ottoman World, and the Sultans; and I've been writing my PhD thesis on Islamism, even this book helped me a lot to understand the situation the Sultan was in!

Very detailed, at times can throw in the occasional western driven lie or two. Otherwise, fantastic.

One of the best books I recently read. It covers a period that is very important in our modern history that most people don't know or forgot about it. This is despite this period has helped in shaping the world as we know it now.