elite of the empire, and they were the first who, through their writings, consciously tried to create and influence public opinion." The use of the press as a tool of political criticism is also attributed to the innovation of the Young Ottomans. Additionally, by assigning new meanings to liberal terminology, with terms such as vatan ("motherland") and hürriyet ("liberty"), leading Young Ottomans such as Namık Kemal lent the powerful expression of ideologies to later nationalist and liberal groups within the Ottoman Empire. As the first group to address the issue of Western modernity, future revolutionary movements such as the Young Turks drew both methods and ideology from the Young Ottomans, though they tended to focus on patriotic Ottomanism rather than their emphasis on a return to the fundamentals of Islam. Additionally, their efforts that contributed to the promulgation of the first Ottoman constitution set an important precedent for the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1918), which began with the Young Turks finally deposing Abdul Hamid II, the same monarch that the Young Ottomans had clashed with, from the throne in the Young Turk Revolution. See also Young Turks Ottomanism First Constitutional Era (Ottoman Empire) The Ottomans: Europe's Muslim Emperors Notes Bibliography Ágoston, Gábor and Bruce Masters (2008). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, Facts on File. . Akgunduz, Ahmet and Said Ozturk (2011). Ottoman History: Misperceptions and Truths, IUR Press. . Finkel, Caroline (2006). Osman’s Dream: the Story of the Ottoman Empire, Basic Books. . Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü (2008). A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, Princeton University Press. . Lapidus, Ira Marvin (2002). A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge University Press, . Mardin, Şerif (1962). The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, Princeton University Press. . Reprinted in 2000 as The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas, Syracuse University Press, . Somel, Selçuk Akşin (2003). Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire, Scarecrow Press. . Zürcher, Erik J. (2004). Turkey: A Modern History, I.B. Tauris, . Further reading Amin, Camron Michael, Benjamin C. Fortna, and Elizabeth B. Frierson. (2007). The Modern Middle East: A Sourcebook for History, Oxford University Press. . Kuru, Ahmet T. and Alfred Stepan (2012). Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey, Columbia University Press. . Mardin, Şerif, "Young Ottomans," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, vol. 4 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 357. External