September 02, 2025 02:51 PM GMT+03:00
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History has a way of whispering its secrets—if you listen closely.
The night was thick with whispers, slithering through palace corridors and settling in the hearts of those who dared to listen. On June 4, 1876, Sultan Abdulaziz, the former sovereign of the Ottoman Empire, was found in a room in the Feriye Palace on the Bosphorus, his wrists slashed, a pool of blood staining the chaise beneath him. The official story? Suicide. The truth? Perhaps something far more sinister.
Opening statement
The Ottoman Empire in 1876 remained a formidable power. Its dominion stretched over 12 million square kilometres, across what are now 35 countries. Its capital, Istanbul, was the fifth-largest city in the world. The empire had a population of 64 million, commanding the world’s fourth-largest army and the third-largest navy.
Sultan Abdulaziz was a strong ruler, fiercely resistant to foreign encroachment, dismissing ministers he suspected of harboring Western sympathies. Yet while the empire projected strength under his rule, there were those in Europe who saw advantage in curbing Ottoman power—and disaffected men at court who sought the sultan’s removal.
Indictment
Only days before his death, Sultan Abdulaziz was deposed in a coup led by Midhat Pasha, the reformist grand vizier, and Huseyin Avni Pasha, the chief of staff. He was replaced by his nephew, Crown Prince Murad, a liberal prince the conspirators believed they could control. Sultan Abdulaziz, stripped of power, was confined under guard at the Feriye Palace. On the morning of his death, he performed his ablutions, prayed, and afterward requested a pair of scissors to trim his beard.
His mother, Pertevniyal Valide Sultan—the queen mother—sent him her embroidery scissors and a small hand mirror. Hours later, when no one had seen him and his door remained locked, alarm spread through the palace. The valide sultan ordered it broken down. Inside, Abdulaziz lay on his side, clothes drenched in blood. The women of the harem wailed, their cries echoing across the Bosphorus.
Spoliation of Evidence
Huseyin Avni Pasha hurried to the scene. Abdulaziz was still alive, but barely—both wrists deeply slit, one side of his beard torn, his teeth broken, and a dark bruise marked his chest. The pasha did not summon medical help. Instead, he ordered the sultan to be carried to the kitchen of the palace police station—a calculated delay to ensure Abdulaziz bled to death. To conceal the violence, curtains were torn down and wrapped around the body, leaving only the arms exposed. The first doctors summoned refused to declare death by suicide. But others were persuaded.
Eyewitness Testimony
The sultan’s daughter, Princess Nazime, claimed to have witnessed her father’s murder. Pertevniyal Valide Sultan never believed her son had committed suicide. She is said to have hidden his bloodied clothes in a chest, convinced he had been assassinated.
Her suspicions seemed confirmed in a chilling confession attributed to one of the alleged assailants: “Fahri Bey … held back his arms. Haji Mehmet and Algerian Mustafa sat on their knees. And I cut his veins in his left arm as deep as I could with a pocketknife. I pierced his right arm in several places with the knife.” Whether apocryphal or genuine, the words capture the horror of that day.
Judicial Proceedings
Tragedy compounded. Sultan Abdulaziz’s third consort, Nederek Kadinefendi, died seven days later. Some accounts suggest childbirth, while others cite grief. Her brother, Captain Cerkes Hasan, sought vengeance. He stormed a cabinet meeting at Midhat Pasha’s house, killing Huseyin Avni Pasha and the Foreign Minister Mehmed Rashid Pasha, and wounding others, before being captured and executed.
For a time, Midhat Pasha prospered under Sultan Murad V and later Sultan Abdulhamid II. But in 1881, he was arrested for his role in Sultan Abdulaziz’sdeath. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was exiled to Ta’if, Hejaz, where he was strangled in 1883.
Sultan Murad V was deeply traumatized by his uncle’s violent death and grew increasingly suspicious of Midhat Pasha. He suffered a nervous breakdown, and after just 93 days on the throne, his reign ended. Realizing he would never regain Murad’s trust, Midhat Pasha orchestrated another coup, deposing him in favor of his younger brother, Abdulhamid. Though Sultan Abdulhamid promised constitutional reform, within two years, he abolished the constitution and restored autocracy. Murad spent the rest of his life in confinement at the Ciragan Palace.
Evidence and Verdict
For more than a century, the circumstances of Sultan Abdulaziz’s death remained shrouded in mystery. Then in 2007, a discovery in the Topkapi Palace archives revived the debate. A bloodied nightshirt and undergarments, believed to belong to the slain sultan, were found.
Perhaps preserved in secret by the distraught valide sultan, they bore witness to violence. Experts concluded that the official verdict of suicide was improbable. Sultan Abdulaziz had almost certainly been murdered.
Closing Statement
What is your verdict on what happened on that fateful morning in June? Perhaps we will never know, but the truth of the case echoes through the corridors of the Feriye Palace, lingering on the blood-stained clothes kept hidden for so long.
Until we meet again in the next Sultan’s Salon.
