6. A Kinky Crazy Sultan
Concerns quickly grew about Sultan Ibrahim’s fitness to rule. For one thing, the new Ottoman ruler fed the fish in the palace pool with coins instead of food. As it became clear that Ibrahim was, his mother assumed the rule in his stead. She encouraged him to spend as much time as possible in the Harem with his nearly 300 concubines. She wanted to both keep her idiot son out of her hair and out of trouble and to have him father male heirs since, by then, he was the last surviving male of the Ottoman dynasty. For years, Ibrahim took to the Harem with relish and fathered three future Sultans and a number of daughters. As a contemporary put it:
“In the palace gardens he frequently assembled all the virgins, made them strip themselves naked, and neighing like a stallion ran amongst them and as it were ravished one or the other“. Then he woke up one morning, and in a fit of madness ordered his entire Harem tied in weighted sacks and drowned in the sea. He had a fetish for larger women, and one time he got turned on by a cow’s… nether regions. So he ordered copies made of gold and sent them around the empire, with inquiries to find a woman similarly endowed. A 350-pound woman with matching parts was found in Armenia. She was taken to his Harem, and became one of his favorite concubines. Ibrahim also had a fetish for fur, with which he decorated his clothes, curtains, walls, and furniture, stuffed his pillows, and were intimate atop.
