Mahmud II

Mahmud II, often described as the Peter the Great of Turkey, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1808 until his death in 1839, ascending the throne after an 1808 coup that deposed his half brother Mustafa IV. He instituted extensive administrative, military and fiscal reforms, most notably the 1826 Auspicious Incident that forcibly abolished the Janissary Corps, clearing the way for a modern Ottoman army and a campaign of recentralization that brought local strongmen back under central authority. His reign also saw continued military defeat and territorial loss to nationalist uprisings and European intervention, including the loss of Bessarabia to Russia in 1812, the recognition of Greek independence in 1832, further losses to Russia in the war of 1828 to 1829, and the French conquest of Ottoman Algeria beginning in 1830; he died of tuberculosis in 1839 and was succeeded by his son Abdulmejid I, who continued his modernization program.