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Edwin Lord Weeks (1849 – 1903), American artist and Orientalist, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1849. He was a pupil of Léon Bonnat and of Jean-Léon Gérôme, at Paris. He made many voyages to the East, and was distinguished as a painter of oriental scenes.<br/><br> Weeks' parents were affluent spice and tea merchants from Newton, a suburb of Boston and as such they were able to accept, probably encourage, and certainly finance their son's youthful interest in painting and travelling.<br/><br> As a young man Edwin Lord Weeks visited the Florida Keys to draw and also travelled to Surinam in South America. His earliest known paintings date from 1867 when Edwin Lord Weeks was eighteen years old. In 1895 he wrote and illustrated a book of travels, From the Black Sea through Persia and India.
Abdul Hamid II (Ottoman Turkish: عبد الحميد ثانی, `Abdü’l-Ḥamīd-i sânî; Turkish: İkinci Abdülhamit; 22 September 1842 – 10 February 1918) was the 34th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the last Sultan to exert effective autocratic control over the fracturing state. He oversaw a period of decline in the power and extent of the Empire, including widespread pogroms and government massacres against the minorities of the Empire (named the Hamidian massacres after him) as well as an assassination attempt, ruling from 31 August 1876 until he was deposed shortly after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, on 27 April 1909. He was succeeded by his brother Mehmed V.<br/><br/> Despite his conservatism and belief in absolute monarchy, Abdul Hamid was responsible for some modest modernization of the Ottoman Empire during his long reign, including reform of the bureaucracy, the ambitious Hijaz Railway project, the establishment of a system for population registration and control over the press, and the founding of the first modern law school in 1898.<br/><br/> Often known as the Red Sultan or Abdul the Damned due to the atrocities committed against the Empire's minorities under his rule and use of a secret police to silence dissent, Abdul Hamid became more reclusive toward the end of his reign, his worsening paranoia about perceived threats to his personal power and his life leading him to shun public appearances.