Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman Empire, of the Byzantine Empire, of the brief Crusader state known as the Latin Empire, until falling to the Ottoman Empire. It was reinaugurated in 324 from ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, dedicated on 11 May 330; the city was located in what is now the core of modern Istanbul. From the mid-5th century to the early 13th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe; the city was famed for its architectural masterpieces, such as the Greek Orthodox cathedral of Hagia Sophia, which served as the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the sacred Imperial Palace where the Emperors lived, the Galata Tower, the Hippodrome, the Golden Gate of the Land Walls, the opulent aristocratic palaces lining the arcaded avenues and squares. The University of Constantinople was founded in the fifth century and contained numerous artistic and literary treasures before it was sacked in 1204 and 1453, including its vast Imperial Library which contained the remnants of the Library of Alexandria and had over 100,000 volumes of ancient texts.
It was instrumental in the advancement of Christianity during Roman and Byzantine times as the home of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and as the guardian of Christendom's holiest relics such as the Crown of Thorns and the True Cross. Constantinople was famed for its complex defences; the first wall of the city was erected by Constantine I, surrounded the city on both land and sea fronts. In the 5th century, the Praetorian Prefect Anthemius under the child emperor Theodosius II undertook the construction of the Theodosian Walls, which consisted of a double wall lying about 2 kilometres to the west of the first wall and a moat with palisades in front; this formidable complex of defences was one of the most sophisticated of Antiquity. The city was built intentionally to rival Rome, it was claimed that several elevations within its walls matched the'seven hills' of Rome; because it was located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara the land area that needed defensive walls was reduced, this helped it to present an impregnable fortress enclosing magnificent palaces and towers, the result of the prosperity it achieved from being the gateway between two continents and two seas.
Although besieged on numerous occasions by various armies, the defences of Constantinople proved impregnable for nearly nine hundred years. In 1204, the armies of the Fourth Crusade took and devastated the city, its inhabitants lived several decades under Latin misrule. In 1261 the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos liberated the city, after the restoration under the Palaiologos dynasty, enjoyed a partial recovery. With the advent of the Ottoman Empire in 1299, the Byzantine Empire began to lose territories and the city began to lose population. By the early 15th century, the Byzantine Empire was reduced to just Constantinople and its environs, along with Morea in Greece, making it an enclave inside the Ottoman Empire. According to Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, the first known name of a settlement on the site of Constantinople was Lygos, a settlement of Thracian origin founded between the 13th and 11th centuries BC; the site, according to the founding myth of the city, was abandoned by the time Greek settlers from the city-state of Megara founded Byzantium in around 657 BC, across from the town of Chalcedon on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.
The origins of the name of Byzantion, more known by the Latin Byzantium, are not clear, though some suggest it is of Thraco-Illyrian origin. The founding myth of the city has it told that the settlement was named after the leader of the Megarian colonists, Byzas; the Byzantines of Constantinople themselves would maintain that the city was named in honour of two men and Antes, though this was more just a play on the word Byzantion. The city was renamed Augusta Antonina in the early 3rd century AD by the Emperor Septimius Severus, who razed the city to the ground in 196 for supporting a rival contender in the civil war and had it rebuilt in honour of his son Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, popularly known as Caracalla; the name appears to have been forgotten and abandoned, the city reverted to Byzantium/Byzantion after either the assassination of Caracalla in 217 or, at the latest, the fall of the Severan dynasty in 235. Byzantium took on the name of Kōnstantinoupolis after its refoundation under Roman emperor Constantine I, who transferred the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium in 330 and designated his new capital as Nova Roma'New Rome'.
During this time, the city was called'Second Rome','Eastern Rome', Roma Constantinopolitana. As the city became the sole remaining capital of the Roman Empire after the fall of the West, its wealth and influence grew, the city came to have a multitude of nicknames; as the largest and wealthiest city in Europe during the 4th–13th centuries and a centre of culture and education of the Mediterranean basin, Constantinople came to be known by prestigious titles such as Basileuousa and Megalopol
Ottoman dynasty
The Ottoman dynasty was made up of the members of the imperial House of Osman known as the Ottomans. According to Ottoman tradition, the family originated from the Kayı tribe branch of the Oghuz Turks, under Osman I in northwestern Anatolia in the district of Bilecik Söğüt; the Ottoman dynasty, named after Osman I, ruled the Ottoman Empire from c. 1299 to 1922. During much of the Empire's history, the sultan was the absolute regent, head of state, head of government, though much of the power shifted to other officials such as the Grand Vizier. During the First and Second Constitutional Eras of the late Empire, a shift to constitutional monarchy was enacted, with the Grand Vizier taking on a prime ministerial role as head of government and heading an elected General Assembly; the imperial family was deposed from power and the sultanate was abolished on 1 November 1922 during the Turkish War of Independence. The Republic of Turkey was declared the following year; the living members of the dynasty were sent into exile as personae non gratae, though some have been allowed to return and live as private citizens in Turkey.
In its current form, the family is known as the Osmanoğlu family. The Ottoman dynasty operated under several basic premises: that the Sultan governed the empire’s entire territory, that every male member of the dynastic family was hypothetically eligible to become Sultan, that only one person at a time could be the Sultan; such rules were standard for monarchic empires of the time. The certain processes through which men rose to the Sultanate, were specific to the Ottoman Empire. To go into greater detail about these processes, the history of succession between Sultans can be divided into two eras: the period between the reign of Orhan, the first person to inherit the Ottoman sultanate, the reign of Ahmed I; the succession process during the first period was dominated by violence and intra-familial conflict, in which the various sons of the deceased Sultan fought until only one remained alive and, inherited the throne. This tradition was known as fratricide in the Ottoman Empire, but may have evolved from tanistry, a similar succession procedure that existed in many Turco-Mongolian dynasties predating the Ottomans.
Sons of the Sultan were given provincial territories to govern until the Sultan’s death, at which point they would each vie for the throne. Each son had to, according to historian H. Erdem Cipa, “demonstrate that his fortune was superior to the fortunes of his rivals,” a demonstration that took the form of military accomplishment and ruthlessness; this violence was not considered unexpected or unusual. As Cipa has noted, the Ottoman words for “successor” and “conflict” share the same Arabic root, indeed, all but one of the successions in this 200-year period involved a resolution by combat. Over time, the combat became prevalent and recognized after a Jannissary uprising negated Murad II’s attempt to abdicate the throne peacefully to his son, Mehmed II, in 1444. During the eventual reign of Mehmed II, fratricide was legalized as an official practice. During the second period, the tradition of fratricide was replaced by a simpler and less violent procedure. Starting with the succession from Ahmed I to Mustafa I in 1617, the Ottoman throne was inherited by the eldest male family member — not son — of the Sultan, regardless of how many eligible family members were alive.
The change in succession procedure was instigated by numerous factors, including fratricide’s decline in popularity among Ottoman elites and Ahmed I’s decision not to kill Mustafa when inheriting the throne from Mehmed III in 1603. With the door opened for a change in policy, a political debate arose between those who supported unrestricted Sultan privilege and those who supported a stronger, centralized law system that would supersede the Sultan’s power to an extent, historian Baki Tezcan has argued that the latter faction — with the help of influential grand mufti "Sa’deddinzade Es’ad" — was able to prevail in this instance; the blood-free succession from Ahmed I to Mustafa I in 1617 “provided a reference for the eventual stabilization of the rule of Ottoman succession, the regulation of which by an outside force was in effect a constitutional check on the dynastic prerogative,” Tezcan has written. The precedent set in 1617 stuck, as the eldest living family member inherited the throne in each of the following 21 successions, with few instances of a son inheriting the throne.
From the fourteenth through the late sixteenth centuries, the Ottomans practiced open succession – something historian Donald Quataert has described as "survival of the fittest, not eldest, son." During their father's lifetime, all adult sons of the reigning sultan obtained provincial governorships. Accompanied and mentored by their mothers, they would gather supporters while ostensibly following a Ghazi ethos. Upon the death of the reigning sultan, his sons would fight amongst themselves until one emerged triumphant. A prince's proximity to Constantinople improved his chances of succession because he would hear of his father's death and declare himself Sultan first. A sultan could thus hint at his preferred successor by giving a favourite son a closer governorship. Bayezid II, for ins
Padishah
Padishah, sometimes rendered as Padeshah or Padshah is a superlative sovereign title of Persian origin, composed of the Persian pād "master" and the widespread shāh "king". It was adopted by several monarchs claiming the highest rank equivalent to the ancient Persian notion of "The Great" or "Great King", adopted by post-Achaemenid and Christian Emperors; the rulers on the following thrones – the first two commanding major West Asian empires – were styled Padishah: The Shāhanshāh of Iran, from Achaemenid and Sassanid origin. The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire The emperors of the Mughal Empire. Miangul Golshahzada Abdul Wadud of the Pakistani North West Frontier state of Swat called himself badshah from November 1918 to March 1926. Ahmed Shah Durrani founded the Durrani Empire in 1747 with the title Pādshah-i Afghanistan in Persian and Badcha Da Afghanistan in the Pashto language; the Sadduzai were overthrown in 1823 but there was a brief restoration by Shah Shujah in 1839 with the help of Ranjit Singh and the Sikh Empire.
The title went dormant after his assassination in 1842 until 1926 when Amanullah Khan resurrected it and was laid to rest with the abdication of Mohammed Zahir Shah in 1973 following a coup. The last Basha bey of Tunisia, Muhammad VIII al-Amin, adopted the sovereign style padshah 20 March 1956 – 25 July 1957; the paramount prestige of this title, in Islam and beyond, is apparent from the Ottoman Empire's dealings with the European powers. For example, one of the terms of the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774 was that the defeated Ottoman Empire refer to Catherine the Great, all other Russian monarchs after her, as a "Padishah" in all official correspondences; this was a symbolic acknowledgement that their Christian emperors were in all diplomatic and corollary capacities the equal of the Turkish ruler, who by his religious paramount office in Islam had a theoretical claim of universal sovereignty. The compound Pādshah-i-Ghazi is only recorded for two individual rulers: H. H. Rustam-i-Dauran, Aristu-i-Zaman, Asaf Jah IV, Muzaffar ul-Mamaluk, Nizam ul-Mulk, Nizam ud-Daula, Nawab Mir Farkhunda'Ali Khan Bahadur, Sipah Salar, Fath Jang, Ayn waffadar Fidvi-i-Senliena, Iqtidar-i-Kishwarsitan Muhammad Akbar Shah Padshah-i-Ghazi, Nizam of Hyderabad 1829–1857Note that as many titles, the word was often used as a name, either by nobles with other styles, or by commoners.
There is a large family of Turkish origin using the surname Badi in modern-day Libya. They were called "Padishah" due to their Military rank in the Ottoman Army, but the part "shah" was dropped after the Ottoman landing in the North East Libyan town of Misrata, the pronunciation of "Padi" became "Badi" from the Arabic pronunciation, as there is no p in Arabic. In 2008, a professional cricket team, the Lahore Badshahs, was founded. In India, Padishah is a Muslim surname, from the above-mentioned trend of adopting titles as names by both royalty and commoners. In Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, the titular head of human space is styled "Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe". In the Pathfinder role-playing game, the ruler of the Empire of Kelesh is styled "Padishah Emperor". Baig Emir Rana Shah Sultan Nawab RoyalArk — Select present country choose dynasty from its menu WorldStatesmen idem.
Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia is the former Greek Orthodox Christian patriarchal cathedral an Ottoman imperial mosque and now a museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Built in 537 AD at the beginning of the Middle Ages, it was famous in particular for its massive dome, it was an engineering marvel of its time. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture"; the Hagia Sophia construction consists of masonry. The structure is composed of mortar joints that are 1.5 times the width of the bricks. The mortar joints are composed of a combination of sand and minute ceramic pieces displaced evenly throughout the mortar joints; this combination of sand and ceramic pieces could be considered to be the equivalent of modern concrete at the time. From the date of its construction's completion in 537 until 1453, it served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral and the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted by the Fourth Crusaders to a Roman Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire.
The building was converted into an Ottoman mosque from 29 May 1453 until 1931. It was secularized and opened as a museum on 1 February 1935, it remained the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. The current building was constructed as a church between 532 and 537 on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I and was the third Church of the Holy Wisdom to occupy the site, the prior one having been destroyed by rioters in the Nika Revolt, it was designed by the Greek geometers Isidore of Anthemius of Tralles. The church was dedicated to the Wisdom of God, the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, its patronal feast taking place on 25 December, the commemoration of the birth of the incarnation of the Logos in Christ. Although sometimes referred to as Sancta Sophia, sophia being the phonetic spelling in Latin of the Greek word for wisdom, its full name in Greek is Ναός της Αγίας του Θεού Σοφίας, Naos tēs Hagias tou Theou Sophias, "Shrine of the Holy Wisdom of God".
The church contained a large collection of relics and featured, among other things, a 15-metre silver iconostasis. The focal point of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly one thousand years, the building witnessed the excommunication of Patriarch Michael I Cerularius communicated by Humbert of Silva Candida, the papal envoy of Pope Leo IX in 1054, an act, considered the start of the East–West Schism. In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Empire under Mehmed the Conqueror, who ordered this main church of Orthodox Christianity converted into a mosque. Although some parts of the city of Constantinople were falling into disrepair, the cathedral was maintained with an amount of money set aside for this purpose; the Christian cathedral made a strong impression on the new Ottoman rulers and they decided to convert it into a mosque. The bells, altar and other relics were destroyed and the mosaics depicting Jesus, his Mother Mary, Christian saints, angels were destroyed or plastered over.
Islamic features – such as the mihrab and four minarets – were added. It remained a mosque until 1931, it was re-opened in 1935 as a museum by the Republic of Turkey. Hagia Sophia was, as of 2014, the second-most visited museum in Turkey, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually. According to data released by the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry, Hagia Sophia was Turkey's most visited tourist attraction in 2015. From its initial conversion until the construction of the nearby Sultan Ahmed Mosque in 1616, it was the principal mosque of Istanbul; the Byzantine architecture of the Hagia Sophia served as inspiration for many other Ottoman mosques, such as the aforementioned mosque, the Şehzade Mosque, the Süleymaniye Mosque, the Rüstem Pasha Mosque and the Kılıç Ali Pasha Complex. On 24 March 2019, the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that the Hagia Sophia is to be reverted to a mosque; the first church on the site was known as the Μεγάλη Ἐκκλησία, or in Latin Magna Ecclesia, because of its larger dimensions in comparison to the contemporary churches in the City.
Inaugurated on 15 February 360 by the Arian bishop Eudoxius of Antioch, it was built next to the area where the imperial palace was being developed. The nearby Hagia Eirene church was completed earlier and served as cathedral until the Great Church was completed. Both churches acted together as the principal churches of the Byzantine Empire. Writing in 440, Socrates of Constantinople claimed that the church was built by Constantius II, working on it in 346. A tradition, not older than the 7th or 8th century, reports that the edifice was built by Constantine the Great. Zonaras reconciles the two opinions, writing that Constantius had repaired the edifice consecrated by Eusebius of Nicomedia, after it had collapsed. Since Eusebius was bishop of Constantinople from 339 to 341, Constantine died in 337, it seems possible that the first church was erected by the latter; the edifice was built as a traditional Latin colonnaded basilica with a wooden roof. It was preceded by an atrium, it was claimed to be one of the world's most outstanding monuments at the time.
The Patriarch of Constantinople John
Dynasty
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family in the context of a feudal or monarchical system, but sometimes appearing in elective republics. Alternative terms for "dynasty" may include "family" and "clan", among others; the longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, otherwise known as the Yamato dynasty, whose reign is traditionally dated to 660 BC. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a "noble house", which may be styled as "royal", "princely", "ducal", "comital" etc. depending upon the chief or present title borne by its members. Historians periodize the histories of numerous nations and civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties; as such, the term "dynasty" may be used to delimit the era during which a family reigned, to describe events and artifacts of that period. The word "dynasty" itself is dropped from such adjectival references; until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty: that is, to expand the wealth and power of his family members.
Prior to the 20th century, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. In nations where it was permitted, succession through a daughter established a new dynasty in her husband's ruling house; this has changed in some places in Europe, where succession law and convention have maintained dynasties de jure through a female. For instance, the House of Windsor will be maintained through the children of Queen Elizabeth II, as it did with the monarchy of the Netherlands, whose dynasty remained the House of Orange-Nassau through three successive queens regnant; the earliest such example among major European monarchies was in the Russian Empire in the 18th century, where the name of the House of Romanov was maintained through Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna. In Limpopo Province of South Africa, Balobedu determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mother's dynasty when coming into her inheritance.
Less a monarchy has alternated or been rotated, in a multi-dynastic system – that is, the most senior living members of parallel dynasties, at any point in time, constitute the line of succession. Not all feudal states or monarchies were/are ruled by dynasties. Throughout history, there were monarchs. Dynasties ruling subnational monarchies do not possess sovereign rights; the word "dynasty" is sometimes used informally for people who are not rulers but are, for example, members of a family with influence and power in other areas, such as a series of successive owners of a major company. It is extended to unrelated people, such as major poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team; the word "dynasty" derives from Latin dynastia, which comes from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to "power", "dominion", "rule" itself. It was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, "power" or "ability", from dýnamai, "to be able". A ruler from a dynasty is sometimes referred to as a "dynast", but this term is used to describe any member of a reigning family who retains a right to succeed to a throne.
For example, King Edward VIII ceased to be a dynast of the House of Windsor following his abdication. In historical and monarchist references to reigning families, a "dynast" is a family member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchy's rules still in force. For example, after the 1914 assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his morganatic wife Duchess Sophie von Hohenberg, their son Duke Maximilian was bypassed for the Austro-Hungarian throne because he was not a Habsburg dynast. Since the abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Duke Maximilian and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position; the term "dynast" is sometimes used only to refer to agnatic descendants of a realm's monarchs, sometimes to include those who hold succession rights through cognatic royal descent. The term can therefore describe distinct sets of people. For example, David Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon, a nephew of Queen Elizabeth II through her sister Princess Margaret, is in the line of succession to the British crown.
On the other hand, the German aristocrat Prince Ernst August of Hanover, a male-line descendant of King George III of the United Kingdom, possesses no legal British name, titles or styles. He was born in the line of succession to the British throne and was bound by Britain's Royal Marriages Act 1772 until it was repealed when the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 took effect on 26 March 2015. Thus, he requested and obtained formal permission from Queen Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco in 1999. Yet, a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time, stipulating that dynasts who
Köprülüzade Fazıl Mustafa Pasha
Köprülüzade Fazıl Mustafa Pasha ("Köprülü Mustafa Pasha the Wise" known as Gazi Fazıl Mustafa Köprülü served as the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1689 to 1691, when the Empire was engaged in a war against the Holy League countries in the Great Turkish War. He was a member of the Köprülü family of Albanian origin, his father Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, his elder brother Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, as well as his two brothers-in-law were former grand viziers. His epithet Fazıl means "wise" in Ottoman Turkish. Born in the city of Köprülü, Fazıl Mustafa became a member of the Sultan's guards and spent much of his time on military campaigns with his brother Fazıl Ahmed. Thanks to his brother-in-law, grand vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha, Fazıl Mustafa became the seventh vizier in the imperial council, by 1683 he had risen to third vizier. After Kara Mustafa was defeated at Vienna, Fazıl Mustafa was sent away from Istanbul. In 1687 an army rebellion made his brother-in-law Abaza Siyavuş Pasha grand vizier and forced sultan Mehmed IV to abdicate in favor of his brother Süleyman II.
Fazıl Mustafa was involved in Mehmed IV's dethronement and rose to second vizier. Factional politics soon resulted in his exile from the capital, he was only saved from execution by the grace of the şeyhülislam; until 1689, Fazıl Mustafa served as the Cretan cities of Khania and Iráklion. After the Austrian victory at The Second Battle of Mohács, sultan Suleiman II was persuaded to appoint Köprülü Fazıl Mustafa Pasha as his grand vizier on 25 October 1689. Like his relatives, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha was military commander, he followed his father's footsteps by having corrupt government/military officials from the previous sultanate removed and executed. They were replaced with men loyal to Fazıl Mustafa Pasha, who aided the treasury by implementing strict military rolls, thereby preventing soldiers from collecting the salaries of their deceased comrades, he proclaimed a general military mobilization of Muslim subjects and drafted Kurdish and Yörük tribesmen, thus increasing the number of conscripts.
Other reforms eased the burden of the Empire's non-military subjects. Köprülü Fazıl Mustafa Pasha reformed the poll tax, paid by the empire's non-Muslim subjects, by restoring the policy of having taxes collected on individual adults. Fazıl Mustafa Pasha made it easier to issue permits to fix or rebuild Christian churches. Having suffered from factionalism in the court and government, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha attempted to limit the number of viziers in the imperial council. To combat the abuse of power of local and regional authorities, he set up councils of notables in the provinces, modeling these on the imperial government; the far-reaching effects of his administrative reforms would last for decades. The course of the ongoing Great Turkish War worsened when Russia began its involvement and formally joined an alliance of European powers by launching the devastating Crimean campaigns. Under Fazıl Mustafa Pasha's leadership the Ottomans halted an Austrian advance into Serbia and crushed an uprising in Bulgaria.
Fazıl Mustafa Pasha's 1690 campaign brought further success, with the recapture of Niš, Vidin and Golubac. He besieged Belgrade, using 40,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry. On 8 October, after the defenders’ armory was destroyed in an explosion, the Habsburg commander capitulated; the recapture of Belgrade conquered by the Ottomans in 1521 but lost to the Habsburgs in 1688, gave hope to the Ottomans that their military disasters of the 1680s, including the losses of Hungary and Transylvania, could be reversed. The hope proved deceptive. On 19 August 1691, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha was struck in the forehead by a bullet at the Battle of Slankamen; the Ottomans suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden, the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Army in Hungary, nicknamed "Türkenlouis" for his victories. Called "the bloodiest battle of the century" by contemporaries, the defeat at Slankemen cost the lives of 20,000 men and the Ottoman's most capable military commander. Fazıl Mustafa Pasha was the fifth member of the Köprülü family to serve as grand vizier.
After his death, the Ottoman Empire suffered further defeats. By 1695, the Ottomans were left with only one piece of territory in Hungary. Köprülü era of the Ottoman Empire Köprülü family List of Ottoman Grand Viziers "Kuprili". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911
Mustafa II
Mustafa II was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1695 to 1703. He was born at Edirne Palace a son of Sultan Mehmed IV and Gülnuş Sultan named Evmenia, of Greek Cretan descent. Mustafa II abdicated in favor of his brother Ahmed III in 1703. During his reign the Great Turkish War, which had started in 1683, was still going on. After the failure of the second Siege of Vienna the Holy League had captured large parts of the Empire's territory in Europe; the Habsburg armies came as far as Nis, modern-day Serbia, before being pushed back across the Danube by 1690. Sultan Mustafa II was determined to recapture the lost territories in Hungary and therefore he commanded his armies. First, the Ottoman navy recaptured the island of Chios after defeating the Venetian Fleet twice, in the Battle of the Oinousses Islands and in the Battle of Chios, in February 1695. In June 1695, Mustafa II left Edirne for his first military campaign against the Habsburg Empire. By September 1695 the town of Lipova was captured.
On 18 September 1695 the Venetian Navy was again defeated in the naval victory of Zeytinburnu. A few days the Habsburg army was defeated in the Battle of Lugos. Afterwards the Ottoman Army returned to the capital. Meanwhile, the Ottoman fortress in Azov was defended against the besieging Russian forces. In April 1696 Mustafa II left Edirne for his second military campaign against the Habsburg Empire. In August 1696 the Russians captured the fortress. In August 1696 the Ottoman troops defeated the Habsburg army in the Battle of Ulaş and in the Battle of Cenei. After these victories the Ottoman troops captured Timişoara and Koca Cafer Pasha was appointed as the protector of Belgrade. Afterwards the army returned to the Ottoman capital. In June 1697 Mustafa II left the capital on his third military campaign against the Habsburg Empire. However, the Ottoman Army suffered a defeat in the Battle of Zenta and Grand Vizier Elmas Mehmed Pasha died in the battle. Afterwards the Ottomans signed a treaty with the Holy League.
The most traumatic event of his reign was the loss of Hungary by the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. Yet if Ottoman power seemed to wane on one side of the empire, this did not mean that Ottoman efforts at expansion ceased. In 1700, for example, the Grand Vizier Amcazade Hüseyin boasted to a recalcitrant tribe residing in swamps near Baghdad that they ought to abide by the sultan's rule, since his grasp extended to their marshy redoubts; the Grand Vizier added that, after all, Mustafa II was "the Lord of Water and Mud."At the end of his reign, Mustafa II sought to restore power to the Sultanate, an symbolic position since the middle of the 17th century, when Mehmed IV had signed over his executive powers to the Grand Vizier. Mustafa II's strategy was to create an alternative base of power for himself by making the position of timars, the Ottoman cavalrymen and thus loyal to him; the timars, were at this point an obsolete part of the Ottoman military machine. The strategem failed, the disaffected troops bound to a Georgian campaign mutinied in the capital, Mustafa II was deposed on 22 August 1703.
He died at Constantinople. ConsortsAlicenab Kadın. SonsMahmud I, son with Saliha Sultan. Şehzade Hüseyn. A.. "The Narcissism of Mustafa II: A Psychohistorical Study". Studia Islamica: pp. , 115–131. Media related to Mustafa II at Wikimedia Commons
Media related to Ahmed II at Wikimedia Commons
Works written by or about Ahmed II at Wikisource
