7. Years of Terror and Psychological Torture Transformed This Sultan Into a Gibbering Idiot
While in the Kafes, or Cage, Ibrahim’s sibling, the Sultan Murad, executed his other brothers. Finally, Ibrahim was the only one left, in constant fear that the executioners might come for him at any moment. He remained in confinement until he was suddenly dragged out of the Kafes to ascend the throne after his brother’s death in 1640. He refused at first and rushed back into the Cage to barricade himself inside. He suspected it was a cruel trick to entrap him into saying or doing something that his fratricidal brother would take as treasonous.
Only after his brother’s dead body was brought to the door for him to examine, and the intercession of his mother the Sultana Kosem, “who had to coax him out like a kitten with food“, was Ibrahim convinced to accept the throne. By then, however, the years of isolation and the constant terror of execution at any moment had unhinged Ibrahim and left him an idiot. Already mentally unstable, his condition was worsened by depression over the death of his brother the Sultan, whom he apparently loved in a Stockholm Syndrome type of way.
