Abdul Hamid II
1842 – 1918 · 76 years · Istanbul · Middle East
Reign: 1876 – 1909 (Ottoman Empire)
He granted the 1876 constitution but dissolved parliament in 1878 and ruled autocratically for 30 years through pan-Islamism and a secret police, building the Hejaz Railway. The Armenian massacres of 1894–1896 earned him the name 'Red Sultan'; the Young Turks deposed him in 1909.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 23 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 25 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 32 years younger
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 24 years older
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 33 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 37 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 14 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 8 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 2 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 28 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 36 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 21 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 39 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 19 years younger
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 56 years younger
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 19 years older
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 2 years younger
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 12 years older
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 2 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 29 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 50 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 2 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 9 years younger
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 14 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 27 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 51 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 5 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 10 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 19 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 24 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 5 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 14 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 47 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 33 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 5 years younger
- Mark Twain — writer and humorist, 7 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 29 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 56 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 4 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 5 years younger
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 19 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 27 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 3, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 4, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 4, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 5, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 6, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 6, Europe
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 9, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 11, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 17, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 19, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 19, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 19, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 21, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 22, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 25, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 25, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 26, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 27, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 27, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 27, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 28, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 29, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 29, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 34, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 37, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 41, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 43, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 44, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 47, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 51, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 63, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 66, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 72, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 72, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 73, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 74, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 75, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 75, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 76, Whole world