[3] Abdulaziz's reign began with the Ottoman Empire resurgent following the Crimean War and two decades of Tanzimat reform, though reliant on European capital.

He was the first Ottoman sultan who traveled to Western Europe in a diplomatic capacity, visiting a number of important European capitals including Paris, London, and Vienna in the summer of 1867.

Several accounts identify his paternal grandmother with Aimée du Buc de Rivéry, a cousin of Empress Joséphine.

He was the first Ottoman sultan who traveled to Western Europe, visiting a number of important European capitals including Paris, London, and Vienna in the summer of 1867.

[1] Under his reign, Turkey's first postage stamps were issued in 1863, and the Ottoman Empire joined the Universal Postal Union in 1875 as a founding member.

[1] Ostensibly he was to see the Paris exhibition of 1867 at Napoleon III's invitation, however the real goal was to reestablish Ottoman credit and forestall a Franco-Russian intervention in rebellious Crete.

[13] In London, he was made a Knight of the Garter by Queen Victoria[14] and shown a Royal Navy Fleet Review with Ismail Pasha.

In 1868, Abdulaziz received visits from Eugénie de Montijo, Empress consort of Napoleon III of France and other foreign monarchs on their way to the opening of the Suez Canal.

On 17 April 1869, the concession for the Rumelia Railway (i.e. Balkan Railways, Rumeli (Rumelia) meaning the Balkan peninsula in Ottoman Turkish) which connected Istanbul to Vienna was awarded to Baron Maurice de Hirsch (Moritz Freiherr Hirsch auf Gereuth), a Bavaria-born banker from Belgium.

The temporary Sirkeci terminal building was later replaced with the current one which was built between 1888 and 1890 (during the reign of Abdülhamid II) and became the final destination terminus of the Orient Express.

Construction works of the 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge on the Asian side of Istanbul, from Haydarpaşa to Pendik, began in 1871.

In return, the first Khedive, Ismail Pasha, had agreed a year earlier (in 1866) to increase the annual tax revenues which Egypt and Sudan would provide for the Ottoman treasury.

[19] Between 1854 and 1894,[19][20] the revenues from Egypt and Sudan were often declared as a surety by the Ottoman government for borrowing loans from British and French banks.

His passion for the Navy, ships and sea can be observed in the wall paintings and pictures of the Beylerbeyi Palace, which was constructed during his reign.

However, the large budget for modernizing and expanding the Navy, combined with the 1873–1875 Anatolian Famine which reduced the government's tax revenues, contributed to the financial difficulties that caused the Porte to declare a sovereign default with the "Ramazan Kanunnamesi" on 30 October 1875.

The subsequent decision to increase agricultural taxes for paying the Ottoman public debt to foreign creditors (mainly British and French banks) triggered the Great Eastern Crisis in the empire's Balkan provinces.

Egypt and Sudan (together with Cyprus) nominally remained Ottoman territories until 5 November 1914,[21] when the British Empire declared war against the Ottoman Empire during World War I and changed the status of these territories as British protectorates (which was formally recognized by Turkey with Articles 17–21 of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923).

[1] While no single event led to his deposition, the crop failure of 1873 and his lavish expenditures on the Ottoman Navy and on new palaces which he had built, along with mounting public debt, helped to create an atmosphere that conducted to the end of his reign.

Among which "Dr. Marco, Nouri, A. Sotto, Physician attached to the Imperial and Royal Embassy of Austria-Hungary; Dr. Spagnolo, Marc Markel, Jatropoulo, Abdinour, Servet, J. de Castro, A. Marroin, Julius Millingen, C. Caratheodori; E. D. Dickson, Physician of the British Embassy; Dr. O. Vitalis, Physician of the Sanitary Board; Dr. E. Spadare, J. Nouridjian, Miltiadi Bey, Mustafa, Mehmed" certified that the death had been "caused by the loss of blood produced by the wounds of the blood-vessels at the joints of the arms" and that "the direction and nature of the wounds, together with the instrument which is said to have produced them, lead us to conclude that suicide had been committed".

In the book, which turned out to be a fraud,[26][27] the author claims that Sultan Murad V had begun to show signs of paranoia, madness, and continuous fainting and vomiting until the day of his coronation, and he even threw himself into a pool yelling at his guards to protect his life.