Mehmed V

Mehmed V was born on 2 November 1844 at the Çırağan Palace,[4] Istanbul.[5] His father was Sultan Abdulmejid I, and his mother was Gülcemal Kadın, an ethnic Bosnian.[6] He had two elder sisters, Fatma Sultan,[7] and Refia Sultan.[8] After his mother's death in 1851, he and his sisters were entrusted in the care of his father's senior consort Servetseza Kadın.[9][10] She had asked Abdulmejid to take the motherless children under her wing, and raise as her own, and carried out the duties of a mother who cares for her children with compassion and concern.[11]

In 1856, aged twelve, he was ceremoniously circumcised together with his younger half-brothers, Şehzade Ahmed Kemaleddin, Şehzade Mehmed Burhaneddin, and Şehzade Ahmed Nureddin.[12][13]

Mehmed was educated at the palace. Halid Ziya, the chief clerk of the Chamberlain’s offce between 1909–1912, described this as being a poor one. Thanks to his comparatively high intelligence, however, he made good use of the education he had and used it to go further. He studied Arabic and Persian, and spoke the latter very well. He took piano lessons from an Italian pianist and calligraphy lessons from a famous Ottoman calligrapher, Mustafa İzzet Efendi (1801–1876).[14]

His reign began on 27 April 1909, but he was largely a figurehead with no real political power, as a consequence of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 (which restored the Ottoman Constitution and Parliament) and especially the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, which brought the dictatorial triumvirate of the Three Pashas to power. At the age of 64, Mehmed V was the oldest person to ascend the Ottoman throne.

In 1911 he embarked on an imperial tour of Selânik (today Thessaloniki) and Manastır (today Bitola), stopping by Florina on the way. He also visited Üsküp (Skopje) and Priştine (Pristina), where he attended Friday prayers at the Tomb of Sultan Murad. The visit was recorded on film and photographs by the Manaki brothers. It would soon prove to be the last visit of an Ottoman sultan to the Rumelian provinces before the catastrophe of the Balkan Wars the following year.

Under his rule, the Ottoman Empire lost all its remaining territory in North Africa (Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan) to Italy in the Italo-Turkish War and nearly all its European territories (except for a small strip of land west of Constantinople) in the First Balkan War. The Ottomans made some small gains in the following war, recapturing the peninsula comprising East Thrace up to Edirne, but this was only partial consolation for the Turks: the bulk of Ottoman territories that they had fought to keep had been lost forever.[15]

The sudden loss of these enormous swathes of land, which had been Ottoman territory for centuries and were ceded to its opponents within a span of only two years, was deeply shocking to the Ottoman Turks and resulted in massive popular backlash against the government, culminating in the 1913 Ottoman coup d'etat.

Despite his preference that the country stayed out of further conflict, Mehmed V's most significant political act was to formally declare jihad against the Entente Powers (Allies of World War I) on 14 November 1914, following the Ottoman government's decision to join the First World War on the side of the Central Powers.[16] He was actually said to look with disfavour on the pro-German policy of Enver Pasha,[17] but could do little to prevent war due to the sultanate's diminished influence since the overthrow of Abdülhamit II in 1909.

This was the last genuine proclamation of jihad in history by a Caliph, as the Caliphate lasted until 1924. As a direct result of the declaration of war, the British annexed Cyprus and the Khedivate of Egypt outright; these provinces had at least been under nominal Turkish rule. The proclamation had no noticeable effect on the war, despite the fact that many Muslims lived in Ottoman territories. Some Arabs eventually joined the British forces against the Ottomans with the Arab Revolt in 1916.

Mehmed V hosted Kaiser Wilhelm II, his World War I ally, in Constantinople on 15 October 1917. He was made Generalfeldmarschall of the Kingdom of Prussia on 27 January 1916, and of the German Empire on 1 February 1916.

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  Le Petit Journal 1909, Mehmed V proclaimed Sultan.
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  Wilhelm II, Mehmed V, Franz Joseph: The three emperors of the Central Powers in the First World War.
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  Sultan Mehmed V together with his entourage. Manastır (today Bitola), 1911. Photo from the Manaki Brothers (Damaged plate).
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  Mehmed V and Enver Pasha hosting Wilhelm II in Constantinople during World War I.
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  Sultan Mehmed V in Imperial Ottoman naval uniform.
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  Portrait of Sultan Mehmed V.
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  Mehmed V greeting the public.
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  Minister of War Enver Pasha during the reign of Mehmed V.

Mehmed V died at Yıldız Palace on 3 July 1918 at the age of 73, only four months before the end of World War I.[18] Thus, he did not live to see the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. He spent most of his life at the Dolmabahçe Palace and Yıldız Palace in Istanbul. His grave is in the Eyüp district of modern Istanbul.

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  The türbe of Mehmed V is located near the Eyüp Sultan Mosque in Eyüp, Istanbul.
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  Mehmet V Resat mausoleum
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  Mehmet V Resat mausoleum exterior
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  Mehmet V Resat mausoleum interior

• The Ottomans: Europe's Muslim Emperors

• Uluçay, M. Çağatay (2011). Padişahların kadınları ve kızları. Ötüken. ISBN 978-9-754-37840-5.
• Brookes, Douglas Scott (2010). The Concubine, the Princess, and the Teacher: Voices from the Ottoman Harem. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-78335-5.
• Brookes, Douglas S. (4 February 2020). On the Sultan's Service: Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil's Memoir of the Ottoman Palace, 1909–1912. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-04553-9.
• Monarchies and the Great War. Springer. 2018. ISBN 978-3-319-89515-4.

Media related to Mehmed V at Wikimedia Commons

• Newspaper clippings about Mehmed V in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW