[10] Established in 1891 by Sultan Abdul Hamid II and named after him, the regiments were intended to be modeled after the Cossacks and were supposedly tasked with patrollin the Russo-Ottoman frontier.

[11] A major role in the Hamidian massacres of 1894-96 had been often ascribed to the Hamidiye regiments, particularly during the bloody suppression of the revolt of the Armenians of Sasun (1894).

[14] Sultan Abdul Hamid II's reign has the reputation of being "the most despotic and centralized era in modern Ottoman History".

[18] His efforts to promote Pan-Islamism were for the most part unsuccessful because of the large non-Muslim population, and the European influence onto the empire.

The establishment of the Hamidiye was in one part a response to the Russian threat, although some scholars believe that the central reason was to suppress Armenian socialist/nationalist revolutionaries.

[20] After the Russo-Ottoman war in 1877-1878 the six eastern provinces were left under the control of several non-state actors with spheres of interest of Kurdish tribes and Armenian revolutionaries.

They were named after him and under the direct order of him and his brother-in-law Zeki Pasha,[24] the Circassian commander of the 4th Army based in Erzincan.

[26] The plunder, murder, and theft that the Hamidiye carried out went unpunished, but if a non-Hamidiye group did similar actions they were punished.

[30] The Ottoman Empire understood the threat this created and is in large part why they chose the Kurds to make-up the Hamidiye.

[citation needed] The Kurdish population could potentially unite with the Russians, but with the formation of the Hamidiye they would protect the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire.

[citation needed] Some argue that the creation of the Hamidiye "further antagonized the Armenian population" and it worsened the very conflict they were created to prevent.

"[35] The Hamidiye's performance was due to their "lack of professionalism superimposed on an emotionally charged mission requiring highly disciplined troops.

[41] According to Janet Klein, Hamidiye units were involved in the large scale massacres and violence against Armenians in the period 1894-96 and 1915, and they were also "implicated in mass murder, deportation and looting" during the First World War.

[42] According to Richar G. Hovannisian, an Armenian-American, the Ottoman armed forces and Hamidiye units slaughtered Assyrians in the Tur Abdin region in 1915.

It is estimated that ten thousand Assyrians were killed, and according to a document from the same years, "the skulls of small children were smashed with rocks, the bodies of girls and women who resisted rape were chopped into pieces live, men were mostly beheaded, and the clergy skinned or burnt alive".