Abdul Hamid and the Story of his Infection with "Paranoia"
His father, Abdul Majeed:
"My Son is Melancholic."
He lived as a stubborn introvert ... fleeing from people.
Despite his pretense of dictatorship, he was plagued with phobia and fear.
This state of “paranoia” affected the behavior of Sultan Abdul Hamid and his actions from the time he was Prince and Crown Prince until he ascended to the reign of the Sultanate. This situation continued with him throughout his life and during his rule, and affected his administration of government from an administrative and political point of view. Those around him took advantage of this pathology to increase his condition of imagination, delusion, and suspicion in their transmission of internal and external events, and some state men who held high positions in the Empire resorted to intimidating the Sultan, throwing terror into his heart, and fabricating images of rebellion and disobedience in various corners of the state in order to consolidate their jobs and their status with the Sultan. The best example of this is the Grand Vizier Saeed Pasha, who assumed the position of Prime Minister, (Grand Vizier) more than seven times during the reign of the Sultan, due to his benefiting from the state of paranoia that Sultan Abdul Hamid was going through, and he contributed to increasing that state in him and consolidating it more and more. Some of the contemporaries of Abdul Hamid’s period hold Saeed Pasha responsible for many of the internal and external problems that the state went through. In fact, there may be some validity in this, but the one primarily to blame is the Sultan himself, as Tahseen Pasha described him as a tyrannical ruler and absolute by his nature, and that he remained under the influence of Saeed Pasha and his revelation from the day he ascended to the throne.
With his unwell psychological state, Abdul Hamid ruled the vast old empire and tightened in his reign the freedoms of people through the secret police and intelligence services, spying on people and writing confidential reports about them. Even his brother Murad V was not spared from this surveillance, espionage and writing reports on him, even though he was deprived of his will, locked in his palace. He also fought freedom of the press and curbed it by various means and methods, under the pretext of preserving the Ottoman society and its security.
1. Sultan Abdul Hamid II, by Tahseen Pasha, translated by: Kamal Ahmad Khojah (Kuwait: That Al-Salasil, 2017 AD).
2. Sultan Abdul Hamid II, his personality and policy, for his author: Suleiman Jouka Bash, translated by: Abdullah Ahmad (Cairo, National Center for Translation, 2008 AD).
3. Sultan Abdul Hamid II, My Political Notes 1891-1908 A.D. (Beirut: Foundation for the Message, 3rd Edition, 1982 AD).
4. Academy of Psychology https://acofps.com/vb/d/9026