Members of the elite Ottoman Janissary corps assassinated Sultan Osman II after they mutinied and overthrew his government. The Janissaries were deeply opposed to planned corps reform.
In 1617, Sultan Ahmed I
Ottoman succession practices in earlier times had been based upon the law of fratricide, the practice whereby a new ruler ordered the execution of his brothers and their male children, and also the execution of pregnant imperial concubines (haseki). With Ahmed’s accession to the throne, this practice ceased because the sultan was only fourteen. The execution of his half brother, Mustafa, would have endangered the Ottoman succession. Eventually, Ahmed had three sons who survived: Osman II
A simmering problem for the new administration was the frontier with Poland. In 1615, landowners in southeastern Poland invaded Moldavia (an Ottoman vassal) to intervene in the succession. In 1617, Iskender Paşa
Sultan Osman II then led his own troops (an increasingly rare phenomenon during the seventeenth century). For weeks, the Ottomans tried to assail the Polish defenses, with a final, unsuccessful assault on September 28, 1621. Irritated by the conduct of the Janissaries, whom he berated publicly, Osman renegotiated the 1617 Treaty of Busza
Osman’s brief experience in the field came at a time when Ottoman reformers were advocating fundamental internal changes. The moment seemed ripe for the sultan to take the initiative, but reform programs inevitably threaten vested interests, and the inexperienced sultan soon faced major opposition. Traditionally, the sheyhülislam made all clerical appointments, but Osman transferred this function to himself. Esat Efendi was left with his juridical authority intact, but he soon became a bitter opponent, along with dismissed officials from Mustafa’s brief reign and the entourage of his stepmother, Kösem.
More serious, however, was his conflict with the army—the Janissaries and the sipahi of the palace (cavalry units stationed in the capital)—recruited from non-Turks, mainly through the devshirme system
It is by no means certain that the ideas for reform originated with the sultan himself, who, in 1621, was still a teenager, although he had learned much in the past three years. More probably, the ideas came from his grand vizier, Dilawar Paşa
Hearing a rumor that Osman planned to leave for Mecca, the Janissaries, along with discontented ulama and bureaucrats, assembled in the Blue Mosque in May, 1622, to demand that he forgo his pilgrimage, but the meeting quickly got out of hand: The sheyhülislam produced a fetva (a religious decree) declaring the sultan’s evil advisers worthy of death. The sultan agreed to abandon his pilgrimage, but the Janissaries demanded the grand vizier’s death, and a mob broke into the palace and lynched him and other high officials (May 19). The sultan was then deposed and taken to Yedikule, the Castle of the Seven Towers, Constantinople’s bastille.
The Janissaries and the city mob were being secretly manipulated by Davud Paşa
Osman clearly could not be left alive, and Davud promptly departed with his accomplices for Yedikule. Osman must have known why he had come, but he was young and put up a tremendous struggle. According to the Ottoman writer, Evliya Çelebi, it took several men to overcome him. One of the late sultan’s ears was sent to the vengeful Kösem, and a finger was lopped off to obtain a valuable ring. As the English ambassador Sir Thomas Roe astutely observed, “this was . . . the first emperour that they ever laid violent hands on; a fatal signe, I think, of their declynation.”
Although fratricide within the palace was an Ottoman tradition, Osman’s execution was, as Roe remarked, the first time that a sultan had been murdered by his subjects. It set a grim precedent, often repeated in the years that followed. Above all else, it illustrated the arrogance of the Janissary corps and its growing appetite for mutiny and mayhem. The devshirme system itself, which Osman and Dilawar had rightly identified as the problem, was abolished by Osman’s half brother, Murad IV
Not long after the wretched Osman had been murdered, the Janissaries, with the waywardness typical of mobs, displayed overwhelming remorse for what they had done. The feeble-minded Mustafa I survived only a few months (1622-1623) and was soon returned to isolation. Davud was dismissed from the grand viziership (1622) and later executed (1623), along with his associates. In the ensuing chaos, widespread protests by the ulama led to the accession of the eleven-year-old Murad IV with his mother, Kösem Sultan, acing as regent on his behalf.
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Goodwin, Godfrey. The Janissaries. London: Saqi Books, 1997. An excellent account of the rise and fall of the Janissary corps. -
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave, 2002. An updated overview of the period. -
Kinross, Lord. The Ottoman Centuries. New York: Morrow Quill, 1977. A popular account of Ottoman history, including Osman II’s misadventures. -
Murphey, Rhoads. Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999. A sophisticated analysis of the Ottoman war machine, in which the Janissaries played a central role. -
Pierce, Leslie P. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1963. A groundbreaking study of the central institution of the Ottoman Empire. Essential reading.
Kösem Sultan; Murad IV; Sigismund III Vasa.