McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923. London and New York: Wesley Longman Limited, 1997.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Zürcher, Erik-Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Mustafa I (1591–1639)
A sultan of the Ottoman Empire who ruled from 1617 to 1618 and again from 1622 to 1623. Mustafa was the son of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed III (r. 1595–1603) and an Abkhazian concubine, whose name remains unknown. He was born in Manisa in western Anatolia in 1591. At the time of Mustafa’s birth, his father, Prince Mehmed, was serving as the governor of Saruhn. When Mehmed ascended the Ottoman throne in 1595, the family moved to Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. In 1603 Mehmed III ordered the execution of his oldest son, Mahmud. The execution of Mahmud left only two sons, Ahmed and Mustafa, in the male line of dynastic succession. After the death of Mehmed III, his oldest son, Ahmed, who was only 13 years old, ascended the throne. The prevalent practice of royal fratricide would have allowed Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617) to order the execution of his brother Mustafa. The new sultan, however, refused to murder his brother. The mentally imbalanced and feeble-minded Mustafa was kept alive, but he remained confined to the palace, where he lived in constant fear of being murdered.
When Ahmed I died in November 1617, Mustafa ascended the throne with support from a faction within the palace that opposed the enthronement of Osman, the oldest son of Ahmed I. This faction was led by Ahmed’s concubine Mahpeyker, also known as Kösem Sultan. Mustafa I had been raised in the royal harem surrounded by women and eunuchs. Mentally imbalanced, weak, incompetent, and wholly dependent on his mother and Kösem Sultan, Mustafa remained a pawn in the internecine harem intrigues. In February 1618 Mustafa I was removed from the throne, and Osman II (r. 1618–1622) was installed as the new sultan. Although he killed his blood brother Mehmed, Osman did not order the execution of his uncle, Mustafa. Osman also kept his half brothers Murad and Ibrahim and their mother, Kösem Sultan, alive. During his short reign from 1618 to 1622, the Ottomans sent a large force to capture the city of Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azerbaijan. Although this army suffered severe losses in September 1618 at Pol-e Shekasteh, it continued to push toward the interior of Iran, forcing the Iranian monarch, Shah Abbas I, to renew the peace treaty of 1612. The Safavids regained all the Iranian territory lost to Selim I (r. 1512–1520) and a reduction in the amount of silk to be sent to the sultan, from 200 loads of silk to 100. Osman also led his army against the Poles, who had allied themselves with the Habsburgs and were intervening in the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. The Ottomans won a victory against the Poles in September 1620 with support from the Crimean Tatars. A year later the Ottoman conquest of the fortress of Khotyn forced Poland to sue for peace, to promise not to intervene in the Romanian-populated principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, and to respect the sultan’s authority over them.
Despite the quick resolution of the conflict with Poland, the sultan’s zeal for reforms triggered a fatal confrontation with the janissary and sipāhi corps stationed in the capital. Critical of their efforts in the war against the Poles, the sultan had hinted at replacing the devșirme-based army with newly trained units from Anatolia. He also tried to centralize power by curbing the influence of the şeyhülislam and forbidding him to appoint the members of the ulema (Shaw: 1:191). The sultan thus created a unified opposition, which included the janissaries, the sipāhis, the ulema, and the faction within the royal harem led by Kösem Sultan, who was anxious to secure the throne for her sons. The pretext for the revolt against Osman II was provided when Osman announced his intention to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Troops opposed to the idea of a new army gathered at the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, where they were joined by the members of the ulema. With the blessing of the şeyhülislam, who issued a legal decree against corrupt officials surrounding the sultan, the rebellious troops rampaged through the streets of the capital, killing any official they encountered. As the sultan vacillated between resisting and giving in to their demands, the rebels stormed the palace and eliminated his immediate advisers. Osman was deposed and murdered a short time later, on May 20, 1622 (Alderson: 64). In place of the reform-minded Osman, the weak and incompetent Mustafa I was restored to the throne with the support of his mother and his brother-in-law, the grand vizier Kara Davud Pasha. The assassination of Osman and the restoration of Mustafa provoked protests and violence in both Istanbul and Anatolia. The wily Kösem Sultan, the mother of Princes Murad and Ibrahim, tried to emerge as the power behind the throne by installing her ally, the Albanian Merre Hüseyin Pasha, as the new grand vizier. The incompetence and corruption of the new grand vizier only added fuel to an already volatile situation. Janissaries and sipāhis who did not have any confidence in the new administration took over the capital, looting and plundering people’s homes. In response to the chaotic situation, the governor of Erzurum, Abaza Mehmed Pasha, mobilized a large army and called for Mustafa I to be replaced by Prince Murad. The situation in the capital continued to deteriorate, with the ulema, the janissaries, and the sipāhis joining the Anatolian rebels and demanding the removal of the grand vizier. Under intense pressure, the palace blamed the anarchy in the capital on the former grand vizier, Kara Davud Pasha, who was executed. With provinces in revolt and most governors refusing to send their taxes to the central treasury, there was no alternative but for a new sultan to ascend the Ottoman throne. On September 10, 1623, Mustafa was deposed, and Prince Murad, who was only 11 years old, was declared the new sultan. Nothing is known about Mustafa’s life after he was removed from the throne. He died in the seclusion of the royal harem in 1639 and was buried in the courtyard of Aya Sofya.
See also: Sultans: Kösem Sultan; Mehmed III; Murad IV; Osman II
Further Reading
Alderson, A. D. The Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Günhan Börekçi. “Mustafa I.” In Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Masters, 409. New York: Facts On File, 2009.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
Peirce, Leslie P. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Sugar, Peter. Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1805. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Sykes, Sir Percy. History of Persia. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1951.
Mustafa II (1664–1703)
A sultan of the Ottoman Empire who ruled from 1695 to 1703. Mustafa II was a son of Mehmed IV, who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1648 to 1687. His mother was Rabia Emetullah Gülnuș (Gulnush) Sultan. Mustafa was born in Edirne on June 5, 1664.
When the Ottoman sultan Süleyman II (r. 1687–1691) died, there was an attempt by factions within the court to install Mustafa II on the throne. These efforts were thwarted by the grand vizier Fazil Mustafa Pasha, who threw his support behind Mustafa’s uncle, Ahmed II (r. 1691–1695). Mustafa ascended the Ottoman throne after Ahmed II died in 1695. The war between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League, which began in 1684 and ended in 1699, was raging at the time Mustafa assumed the reins of power. One of the first acts of the new sultan was appointing his tutor, Feyzullah Effendi, as şeyhülislam. Mustafa II led Ottoman armies in several campaigns against the Habsburgs, who had formed an alliance with Venice,
Poland, the pope, and Muscovy (i.e., Russia). He captured the fortress of Lippa (Lipova) in present-day Romania. The Ottoman forces also defeated the Habsburgs at Lugos (Lugoj) in present-day Romania and forced a Saxon army out of Banat in autumn 1695–spring 1696. Mustafa’s military campaigns, however, ended in a devastating defeat at Zenta in present-day northern Serbia on September 11, 1697, at the hands of Eugene of Savoy. Some 25,000 Ottoman troops, as well as the sultan’s grand vizier, perished on the battlefield.
The Ottoman sultan Mustafa II (r. 1695–1703) enters Istanbul in 1695. (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
The Habsburgs were not the only power gaining territory at the Ottoman Empire’s expense. To the northeast, czarist Russia under the charismatic leadership of Peter I (r. 1689–1725) had embarked on a campaign to establish a foothold on the northern shore of the Black Sea, capturing Azov on August 6, 1696. The Ottomans recognized that it was impossible to fight several European powers simultaneously. In November 1698 an Ottoman delegation began to negotiate a peace treaty with representatives of the Holy League powers—the Habsburg monarchy, Poland, Russia, and Venice—at the Serbian town of Karlowitz (Abou-El-Haj: 89). The Treaty of Karlowitz, signed on January 26, 1699, was negotiated based on the principle of uti possidetis (as you possess), “a phrase used to signify that the parties to a treaty are to retain possession of what they have acquired by force during the war” (Abou-El-Haj: 91; Black: 1546). The Habsburgs remained in control of Hungary and Transylvania, while the Ottomans maintained their rule over the Banat of Temeşvár (Temeshvár). Poland received Podolia (Podole), and Russia established its rule over Azov and the territory north of the Dniester. Venice emerged as the master of Dalmatia, the Morea, and several strategic islands in the Aegean (Sugar: 200). The sultan also was forced to guarantee freedom of religion for his Catholic subjects.
The humiliating Treaty of Karlowitz marked the beginning of a new era (Jelavich: 65). The Ottoman Empire ceased to be the dominant power, courted by all European powers. Indeed, with the signing of this treaty, the Ottoman state emerged as a power in retreat, adopting a defensive posture against the rising influence of the Habsburg and Russian empires. Other European states were quick to recognize the altered balance of power. With the loss of territory also came a significant reduction in revenue generated by collection of taxes, as well as unemployment for those who until recently had served the Ottoman government in areas now lost to the European powers. Long wars against the Habsburgs, Venice, Poland, and Russia had drained the resources of the Ottoman state, which could not even pay the salaries of its officials and troops. Against this disheartening and demoralizing background, the Ottoman elite once again appealed to a member of the Köprülü family to save the empire.
Amcāzāde (Amjāzāde) Hüseyin Pasha became the grand vizier in September 1697 and embarked on another series of reforms, which aimed at reducing the financial burdens of the state without punishing the members of the subject class with heavier taxes. Taxes on basic consumer goods such as oil, soap, tobacco, and coffee were reduced. The new grand vizier also restored discipline within the army, reduced the size of the janissary corps and the sipāhis, and reorganized and modernized the Ottoman naval forces under a new command structure. The grand vizier, however, ran into formidable opposition from the traditional elite. The opposition, led by the powerful şeyhülislam Feyzullah Effendi, forced Amcāzāde Hüseyin Pasha to step down in September 1702. With Mustafa II retiring to Edirne and delegating the daily administrative affairs of the empire to Feyzullah Effendi, the process of decline accelerated. Taxes remained uncollected, and government officials and troops were not paid their wages. The treasury was drained, and corruption spread to all levels of the civil administration.
Because Mustafa II spent much of his time in Edirne, he did not realize the severity of the political and economic crisis in the capital, where the janissaries, who were being sent on a military campaign to the southern Caucasus, refused to obey orders unless they were paid. With the army taking the lead, artisans, shopkeepers, and students from various religious schools joined a rebellion in July 1703. Mustafa II responded by dismissing Feyzullah Effendi, but the rebels, emboldened by the concessions they had received from the sultan, began their march from Istanbul to Edirne. The sultan led his troops against the rebels, but war was avoided when the troops marching with Mustafa II defected and joined the rebels. With the loyalty of the army in question, Mustafa II was forced to flee to Edirne and abdicate in favor of his brother Ahmed (Ahmed III), on August 22, 1703. The rebels exacted their revenge by executing Feyzullah Effendi and his supporters. Mustafa II died five months after he was deposed.
See also: Sultans: Kösem Sultan; Mehmed III; Murad IV; Osman II
Further Reading
Abou-El-Haj, Rifa’at Ali. “Ottoman Diplomacy at Karlowitz.” In Ottoman Diplomacy: Conventional or Unconventional, edited by A. Nuri Yurdusev, 89–113. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Ágoston, Gábor. “Mustafa II.” In Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Masters, 410–411. New York: Facts On File, 2009.
Black, Henry Campbell. Black’s Law Dictionary. 6th ed. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1990.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Sugar, Peter. Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1805. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Mustafa III (1717–1774)
A sultan of the Ottoman dynasty who ruled from 1757 to 1774. He was born on January 28, 1717, to the Ottoman sultan Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730) and a concubine, Mihrișah (Mihrishah) Kadin. During his reign Mustafa III tried to introduce reforms in the Ottoman government and army as a means of preventing the further decline of the empire. Despite these efforts, however, the power and influence of the local notables (āyāns) increased. The Ottomans refused to play a role in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), which involved all the major powers of Europe. As Russian power, influence, and intervention increased in the Caucasus, Poland, and the Balkans, Mustafa began to contemplate a new campaign against the Russians. The sultan’s grand vizier, Muhsinzade Mehmed Pasha, however, advocated peace. In 1768 the grand vizier was forced to resign; Mustafa, who expected a quick and easy victory, took the Ottoman Empire to war with Russia. The Russo-Ottoman War of 1768–1774 proved to be disastrous for the sultan. The Russian armies quickly captured the Crimea. The Russians also invaded the Romanian-populated principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, eventually crossing the Danube and entering the territory of present-day Bulgaria. Mustafa III died before the conclusion of the war in 1774. He was succeeded by his brother, Abdülhamid I (r. 1774–1789), who was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (Kuchuk Kaynarja) in July 1774.
See also: Battles and Treaties: Küçük Kaynarca, Treaty of; Sultans: Abdülhamid I; Osman III
Further Reading
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Fisher, Alan W. Between Russians, Ottomans and Turks: Crimea and Crimean Tatars. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1998.
Shaw, Stanford J. Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1781–1807. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire
. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Zürcher, Erik-Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Mustafa IV (1779–1808)
A sultan of the Ottoman Empire who ruled from 1807 to 1808. Mustafa was the son of Sultan Abdülhamid I (r. 1774–1789) and Ayșe (Ayshe) Sinepervar Valide Sultan. He succeeded the Ottoman sultan Selim III, who ruled from 1789 to 1807.
During his reign Selim III had introduced fundamental reforms in the government and the army. The repeated defeats suffered by the Ottoman state in the 18th century had convinced Selim of the urgent need to introduce reforms that would restore the power of the central government while preserving the territorial integrity of the empire against internal and external threats. Internally, the greatest challenge for the young sultan was to reduce the power of the local notables. Although they accepted the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan, some of the powerful notables acted as quasi-independent rulers, maintaining private armies and conducting their own foreign policy. Externally, Russia and Austria posed grave threats to the territorial integrity of the Ottoman state. Thus, shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Jassy with the Russians, Selim III implemented his ambitious reform agenda, the Nizam-i Cedid/Nizam-i Jedid (New Order). Selim centered his reforms on the creation of a modern army or Nizam-i Cedid Ordusu (Army of the New Order), which was to restore central governmental control over provincial notables. Initially Selim III believed that the existing janissary and sipāhi corps could be modernized by introducing new methods of training and administration. He soon realized, however, that the reform would ignite fierce opposition from within the corps. Therefore he abandoned the plan and opted for the more radical approach of creating a new army altogether. The recruitment for the new army began in 1793–1794. By 1807, when Selim was forced out of power, the new army had nearly 30,000 well-armed and well-equipped men (Zürcher: 22).
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