5. End of the Mad Sultan’s Reign
When Sultan Ibrahim the Mad saw the beautiful daughter of the Grand Mufti, the empire’s highest religious authority, he asked for her hand in marriage. Aware that the Ottoman ruler was depraved, the Grand Mufti urged his daughter to decline. When she did, Ibrahim ordered her kidnapped and carried to his palace, where he ravished her for days, before he sent her back to her father. Eventually, he exiled his mother and assumed personal control of the government, with disastrous results. He executed his most capable ministers, then spent profligately until he emptied the treasury. Simultaneously, he got himself into a series of wars and managed them poorly.
By 1647, between heavy taxes to pay for his extravagant lifestyle and for the bungled wars, and with a Venetian blockade of the Dardanelles that brought the Ottoman capital to the brink of starvation, discontent over the idiot sultan’s rule boiled over. In 1648 the population revolted, urged on by religious scholars, and were joined by the army. An angry mob seized Ibrahim’s Grand Vizier and tore him to pieces, and the Sultan was deposed in favor of his six-year-old son. A fatwa was then issued for Ibrahim’s execution, which was carried out by strangulation on August 18th, 1648.
