Al Hamidiyah (or al-Hamidiyya) is a town on the Syrian coast, about 3 km from the Lebanese border. The town was founded in a very short time on the direct orders of the Ottoman Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Hamid II around 1897, to serve as a refuge for the Greek speaking Muslim Cretans. They had been forced to leave Crete during the 1897-98 Greco-Turkish War and were resettled by Sultan 'Abdu'l-Hamid II in Hamidiyah and other coastal areas of the Levant and as far as Libya. The majority still speak Cretan Greek in their daily lives. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, al-Hamidiyah had a population of 7,404 in the 2004 census. Today, Grecophone Hamidiyah residents identify themselves as Cretan Muslims, while some others as Cretan Turks.