but of narrow intellect, and was probably not entirely sane during the last years of his life.
Abdul Aziz, Sultan of Morocco, is the son of Sultan Mulax-Hassan. He was born about 1881, and succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, 7th June 1894, being proclaimed sultan in the Sherifian Camp on the 11th of the same month. In the following October he received the British mission, under Sir Ernest Satow, with the utmost cordiality at Fez, and a convention was signed in April 1895. The sultan has proved constant in his friendship to Great Britain, and welcomed Sir Arthur Nicholson, the British minister, in 1896. In the following year he made a vigorous campaign against the Biffians and others of his disaffected subjects, and overthrew them completely at Tadla, in October 1897.
Abdul - Hamid II., Sultan of Turkey, is the second son of Sultan Abdul-Medj id, who reigned from 1839 to 1861. He was born 22nd September 1842, and succeeded on 31st August 1876, on the deposition of his brother Murad on the ground of insanity. His position at the time was very difficult, and he feigned sympathy at first with the policy of reform advocated by progressive officials such as Midhat Pasha. The revolt of the Christian subjects of the Porte in European Turkey, and the barbarous methods adopted to quench Bulgarian disaffection, equally played into the hands of Russia; and though, during the Russo-Turkish war (1877-78), the military virtues of the Turkish soldier and the gallant defence of Plevna restored a large measure of sympathy to Turkey, the treaties of San Stefano and of Berlin marked a further stage in the dismemberment of the Ottoman empire. As soon as the war was over, Abdul Hamid began to apply himself, with equal dexterity and persistency, to two great objects, viz., the substitution of his own personal authority with him. for that of the great bureaucracy which had ruled Turkey under his immediate predecessors from the Sublime Porte, and the extension of his influence as spiritual sovereign or Kalif in compensation for the loss of temporal power inflicted upon the sultanate. To establish his autocracy he did not shrink from sacrificing all the ablest men in his empire. His external policy was scarcely less success- ful and less unscrupulous. His dexterous diplomacy played off one great Power against another, and enabled him even to escape the storm which threatened at one moment to overwhelm him, when public opinion in Europe, .and especially in England, realized the horror of the Armenian massacres in 1896. Russia secretly, and Ger- many openly, discountenanced Lord Salisbury’s efforts to secure the united action of Europe, and the Cretan insur- rection soon diverted the attention of diplomacy to another quarter. The successful war with Greece in 1897 did much to revive Turkish military prestige; and the practical loss of Crete, although evincing the decay into which the Turkish navy had been allowed to fall, rather increased than diminished the strength of the empire. Perhaps the most important feature in Abdul-Hamid’s later policy has been the disposition shown to rely upon Germany, and to grant that Power special privileges in Asia Minor.
For a fuller account of his reign, see Turkey, Armenia, Crete, Bulgaria, &c.
Abdullah Khalifa (Sayed Abdullah Ibu-Sayed Mohammed), (1846-1899), successor of the Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed, was born in 1846 in the south-western portion of Darfur, and belonged to the Taaisha section of the Baggaras or cattle-owning Arabs. His father, Mohammed et Tabis, had determined to emigrate to Mecca with his family; but the unsettled state of the country long prevented him, and he died in Africa after advising his eldest son, Abdullah, to take refuge with some religious sheikh on the Nile, and to proceed to Mecca on a favourable opportunity. Abdullah, who had already had much connexion with slave-hunters, and had fought against the Egyptian conquest of Darfur, departed for the Nile valley with this purpose; but, hearing on the way of the disputes of Mohammed Ahmed, who had not yet claimed a sacred character, with the Egyptian officials, he went to him in spite of great difficulties, and, according to his own statement, at once recognized in him the Mahdi (“Director”) divinely appointed to regenerate Islam in the latter days. His advice to Mohammed to stir up revolt in Darfur and Kordofan being justified by the result, he became his most trusted counsellor, and was soon declared khalifa or vicegerent of the Mahdi, all of whose acts were to be regarded as the Mahdi’s own. The Mahdi on his deathbed (1885) solemnly named him his successor; and for many years Abdullah, though to European ideas a monster of cruelty, injustice, and hypocrisy, ruled successfully over the Sudan, with little opposition from within, and extending his sway over neighbouring districts. Khartum was deserted by his orders, and Omdur man, at first intended as a temporary camp, was made his capital. At length the progress of Sir H. (afterwards Lord) Kitchener’s expedition compelled him to give battle to the Anglo-Egyptian forces near Omdurman, where on 2nd September 1898 his army, fighting with desperate courage, was almost annihilated. He fled to the north, but want of provisions in the following year compelled him to venture too near the army of Sir Francis Wingate, by whom, at the end of November 1899, he was overtaken and slain at the battle of Om Debrihat. He met death with great fortitude, re fusing to fly, and his principal emirs voluntarily perished
Abdurrahman Khan, Amir of Kabul (Afghanistan), {circa 1844-1901), was the son of Afzul Khan, who was the eldest son of Dost Mahommed Khan, the famous Amir, by whose success in war the Barakzaie family established their dynasty in the rulership of Afghanistan. Before his death at Herat, 9th June 1863, Dost Mahommed had nominated as his successor Sher Ali, his third son, passing over the two elder brothers, Afzul Khan and Azim Khan; and at first the new Amir was quietly recognized. But after a few months Afzul Khan raised an insurrection in the northern province, between the Hindu Kush mountains and the Oxus, where he’ had been governing when his father died; and then began a fierce contest for power among the sons of Dost Mahommed, which lasted for nearly five years. In this war, which resembles in character, and in its striking vicissitudes, the English War of the Roses at the end of the 15th century, Abdurrahman soon became distinguished for ability and daring energy. Although his father, Afzul Khan, who had none of these qualities, came to terms with the Amir Sher Ali, the son’s behaviour in the northern province soon excited the Amir’s suspicion, and Abdurrahman, when he was summoned to Kabul, fled across the Oxus into Bokhara. Sher Ali threw Afzul Khan into prison, and a serious revolt followed in South Afghanistan; but the Amir had scarcely suppressed it by winning a desperate battle, when Abdurrahman’s reappearance in the north was a signal for a mutiny of the troops stationed in those parts, and a gathering of armed bands to his standard. After some delay and desultory fighting, he and his uncle, Azim Khan, occupied Kabul (March 1866). The Amir Sher Ali marched up against them from Kandahar; but in the battle that ensued at Shekhabad on 10th May he was
