Template:Infobox Ottoman sultan
Murad III
(
Ottoman Turkish
: ???? ????
Mur?d-i
s
?li
s
,
Turkish
:
III.Murat
)
(4 July 1546 ? 15/16 January 1595)
was the
Sultan
of the
Ottoman Empire
from 1574 until his death.
Biography
Born in
Bozda?an
or
Manisa
, ?ehzade Murad son of Sultan
Selim II
and haseki sultan
Nurbanu Sultan
. His grandfather Suleiman died when he was 20 and his father became the new Sultan and ruled till 1574 when he was succeeded by Murad. Murad began his reign by having his five younger brothers strangled.
[1]
His authority was undermined by the
harem
influences, more specifically, those of his mother and later of his favorite wife
Safiye Sultan
. The power had only been maintained under
Selim II
by the genius of the all-powerful
Grand Vizier
Mehmed Sokollu
who remained in office until his assassination in October 1579. During his reign the northern borders with the
Habsburg Monarchy
were defended by the
Bosniak
kapetan
Hasan Predojevi?
. The reign of Murad III was marked by wars with
Safavids
and
Habsburgs
and Ottoman economic decline and institutional decay. The Ottomans also faced defeats during battles such as the
Battle of Sisak
.
Murad took great interest in the arts, particularly
miniatures
and books. He actively supported the court
Society of Miniaturists
, commissioning several volumes including the
Siyer-i Nebi
, the most heavily illustrated biographical work on the life of
Muhammad
, the
Book of Skills
, the
Book of Festivities
and the
Book of Victories
.
[2]
He had two large
alabaster
urns transported from
Pergamon
and placed on two sides of the nave in the
Hagia Sophia
in Constantinople and a large wax candle dressed in tin which was donated by him to the
Rila monastery
in
Bulgaria
is on display in the monastery museum.
From him descend all succeeding Sultans,
[3]
through his marriage to his maternal relative Valide Sultan
Safiye Sultan
, originally named Sofia Baffo, a
Venetian
noblewoman, mother of
Mehmed III
.
Numerous envoys and letters were exchanged between
Elizabeth I
and Sultan Murad III.
[4]
In one correspondence, Murad entertained the notion that Islam and Protestantism had "much more in common than either did with
Roman Catholicism
, as both rejected the worship of idols", and argued for an alliance between England and the Ottoman Empire.
[5]
To the dismay of Catholic Europe, England exported tin and lead (for cannon-casting) and ammunitions to the Ottoman Empire, and Elizabeth seriously discussed joint military operations with Murad III during the outbreak of war with Spain in 1585, as
Francis Walsingham
was lobbying for a direct Ottoman military involvement against the common Spanish enemy.
[6]
This diplomacy would be continued under Murad's successor
Mehmed III
, by both the sultan and
Safiye Sultan
alike.
Murad died in the
Topkapı Palace
of Constantinople
[7]
[8]
in 1595.
The Sedentary Sultan
Murad was the second Ottoman Sultan to never go on campaign during his reign (the first being his father, Selim II). After his enthronement, he never left Istanbul. During the final years of his reign, he did not even leave
Topkapı Palace
, and for two consecutive years he did not attend the Friday procession to the imperial mosque--an unprecedented omission.
[9]
The Ottoman historian
Mustafa Selaniki
wrote that whenever Murad planned to go out to Friday prayer, he changed his mind after hearing of alleged plots by the Janissaries to dethrone him once he left the palace.
[10]
In fiction
Orhan Pamuk
's historical novel
Benim Adım Kırmızı
(
My Name is Red
, 1998) takes place at the court of Murad III, during nine snowy winter days of 1591, which the writer uses in order to convey the tension between East and West.
References
- ^
Marriott, John Arthur.
The Eastern Question
(Clarendon Press, 1917), 96.
- ^
Pamuk, Orhan.
My Name is Red
, Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. ISBN 978-0-307-59392-4
- ^
See A. D. Alderson, The structure of the Ottoman dynasty [Oxford: Clarendon, 1956], Table XXXI et seq., for details.
- ^
Karen Ordahl Kupperman
.
The Jamestown project
. p. 39.
- ^
Kupperman, p.40
- ^
Kupperman, p.41
- ^
The Encyclopædia Britannica
, Vol.7, Edited by Hugh Chisholm, (1911), 3;
Constantinople, the capital of the Turkish Empire...
- ^
Britannica, Istanbul
:
When the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, the capital was moved to Ankara, and Constantinople was officially renamed Istanbul in 1930.
- ^
Karateke, Hakan T. "On the Tranquility and Repose of the Sultan."
The Ottoman World
. Ed. Christine Woodhead. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2011. p. 118.
- ^
Karateke, p. 118.
External links
Media related to
Murad III
at Wikimedia Commons
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First Ottoman caliph ?
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Caliph only
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