From the mid-nineteenth century, Armenians faced large-scale land usurpation as a consequence of the sedentarization of Kurdish tribes and arrival of Muslim refugees and immigrants (mainly Circassians), who were promised land. In 1876, when Abdul Hamid II came to power, the state began to confiscate Armenian-owned land in the eastern provinces and give it to Muslim immigrants, as part of a systematic policy to reduce the Armenian population of these areas. Armenians in the eastern provinces lived in semi-feudal conditions and commonly encountered forced labor, illegal taxation, and unpunished crimes including robberies, murders, and sexual assaults. Until 1908, non-Muslims in the empire were forbidden to carry arms, leaving them unable to defend themselves. These conditions led to a substantial decline in the Armenian population of the Armenian Highlands; 300,000 Armenians emigrated abroad in the decades leading up to World War I while others moved to towns. A few Armenians joined revolutionary political parties in order to obtain improved conditions, of which the most influential was the Dashnaktsutyun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation), founded in 1890.