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Distinctive Facts About The Mighty Ottoman Empire

Khalid Elhassan August 13, 2020 35 min

Battle of Ankara - Timurid Empire — Tamerlane gloating over the captured Bayezid I. Wikimedia

20. A Fiendish Solution to Reduce Dynastic Strife

The execution of an Ottoman prince by strangulation. Quora

Throughout history, many kingdoms collapsed into chaos, and many ruling dynasties perished because of infighting by royal siblings competing for the throne. Such dynastic civil wars weakened states, frittered their resources be they blood or treasure on useless strife, and left them vulnerable to foreign rivals.

The Ottoman Turks tackled that problem head-on, with one of the most ruthless solutions possible: as soon as a new Ottoman Sultan ascended the throne, he immediately executed all his brothers. The prospects of deadly rivalries and civil wars were thus eliminated by the simple expedient of eliminating all potential male claimants to the throne. It was cruel, but it worked. At least insofar as reducing the odds of dynastic civil wars. However, as seen below, there were severe downsides to this Ottoman expedient.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.