He is the second son of Abdul Medjid, who was Sultan from 1839 to 1861. He was born September 5th, 1842; and his mother having died when he was quite young, he was adopted by his father's second wife, herself childless, who was very wealthy and made him her heir. His early life was quiet and uneventful; his boyhood was a continual scene of merry idleness. His education consisting mostly in amusements and tricks devised for his entertainment by the court slaves: and in an unusually early and complete initiation into the depravities of harem life. Indeed up to manhood all the learning he had acquired, amounted to but little more than the ability to read in the Arabic and Turkish tongues. His mother had died of consumption and his constitution was delicate. He had inherited a taste for drink, but his doctor who was a Greek, assured him it would be his destruction. "Then I will never touch wine or liquor again," said Abdul Hamid, and he kept his word. The turning point in his life came, when in 1867 his Uncle Abdul Aziz, then Sultan, took his own son and his two nephews, Murad and Hamid, to the Paris Exposition, England and Germany. He saw with a quick and appreciative eye. He acquired a taste for political geography, and for European dress, customs and interests. What he then learned was to modify very considerably the subsequent course of his life. From April, 1876, both he and his brother Murad were kept under strict surveillance and not allowed to take any part in the political movements going on in Constantinople. Abdul Aziz, the reigning Sultan, was determined to defy the Turkish law of succession and proclaim his son in June, as heir presumptive to the throne, thus displacing Murad and Hamid, who both were before him in rights of succession. At this crisis, Midhat Pasha, the leading and most progressive statesman and strong adherent of Murad, planned a revolution and Abdul Aziz, was deposed and Murad was proclaimed Sultan, May 31st, and so recognized by the Western powers: but he was never girded with the sword of Othman in the Mosque of Eyout, a ceremony equivalent to a Western Coronation. His ill-health, increased by excessive use of liquor and the mistaken treatment of his physician, rendered him mentally incapable of ruling: though a celebrated Dr. Liedersdorf, sent for from Vienna, is said to have stated, "If I had Sultan Murad under my own care in Vienna, I would have him all right in six weeks."