Abdulmejid I

Abdulmejid I was the thirty first sultan of the Ottoman Empire, succeeding his father Mahmud II in 1839. His greatest achievement was proclaiming the Tanzimat Edict on his accession, prepared by his foreign minister Mustafa Reshid Pasha, beginning the Tanzimat era of reorganization; a mild mannered monarch, he gave the Sublime Porte the autonomy to pursue reform projects meant to encourage a shared Ottoman identity among the empire's peoples, though the effort ultimately failed to stop rising nationalist movements. He allied with Britain and France against Russia in the Crimean War, and the 1856 Congress of Paris formally admitted the Ottoman Empire to the Concert of Europe; he died suddenly of tuberculosis and was succeeded by his half brother Abdulaziz.