In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire hosted successive waves of incoming refugees, primarily Muslims who were displaced from the Crimea, the Caucasus, and the Balkans. To accommodate these newcomers, the Ottoman government established the Refugee Commission (Ott. Tur. Muhacirin Komisyonu) in 1860. This paper examines the making of what I call the late Ottoman refugee regime. I argue that this refugee regime was rooted in the empire’s immigration legislation and the “humanitarian” commitment to resettle those in need, particularly Muslims fleeing foreign occupation. The 1857 Ottoman Immigration Law set up the framework of Ottoman immigration and was readily utilized by the Refugee Commission. In the late Ottoman Empire, where most immigrants happened to be refugees displaced from former Ottoman territories, the immigration and refugee resettlement programs had largely coalesced. The Ottoman refugee regime also drew on the culture infused with early Islamic references, which both promoted immigration in the Ottoman Empire and shaped Ottoman society’s responses to continuous refugee crises. Thus, refugees and immigrants were known as “muhacir,” from the term “hijra,” or emigration of Muslims living under non-Muslim rulet o a Muslim state. The Ottoman Empire further utilized its status as a caliphate to justify and publicize its protection of displaced Muslims. Unlike contemporary refugee regimes, deriving refugee identity from one’s citizenship, the Ottoman refugee regime was predicated on one’s membership in a Muslim community and a perceived religious obligation to emigrate when persecuted. The fusion of immigration and refugee resettlement systems and religious premises of refugee resettlement distinguish the Ottoman refugee regime in comparative perspective. Between 1860 and 1910s, the Ottoman refugee regime underwent changes, including new legislation and new patterns of resettlement by the Refugee Commission, which always remained a governmental agency. The Ottoman defeat in the 1877–78 Russo-Ottoman War served as a catalyst in the transformation of the refugee regime, aligning it much closer with resettlement objectives of the Ottoman government. This paper, based on archival research, rethinks the relationship between immigration and refugee resettlement in the late Ottoman era and contributes to the scholarship on global refugee regimes.