The Janissaries moved faster than he ever expected. Osman II had been sultan for only four turbulent years, but he had seen enough. He saw them as corrupt, undisciplined, a cancer at the heart of his empire. So he cut their pay.
He forced discipline upon them. He closed their coffee houses. He planned to replace them with a new, loyal army that would answer only to him. He never got the chance to act.
They revolted before he could strike. They seized him, dragged him away, and threw him into a prison cell. There, in the dark, they beat him until his bones ached. Then they crushed his testicles.
On May 20th, 1622, they strangled him to death. He was seventeen years old. To confirm the deed, they cut off his ear and nose and sent them to his predecessor, Mustafa, so there could be no doubt that the young sultan was truly gone. It was a brutal fate for a boy who had only wanted to reform his own army.
But in the long, bloody history of the Ottoman sultans, his was far from the only violent end. The empire itself began with Osman the First, a man who turned a small Turkmen principality into a growing state. He waged war against the Byzantines and built military and administrative systems that would last for centuries. His greatest victory came at the Battle of Bapheus, a decisive clash that shattered Byzantine resistance.
But in his final years, he was consumed by severe gout. The pain swelled his foot, the inflammation spread, and uric acid buildup destroyed his kidneys. He died in Bursa sometime between 1320 and 1327, not from an enemy blade, but from his own failing body. His successors built on his foundation.
Murad the First seized Adrianople in the 1360s, renamed it Edirne, and made it the Ottoman capital. Under his rule, the empire expanded fivefold, swallowing Thrace, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and most of the Balkans. But his end came in 1389, during the Battle of Kosovo while invading Serbia. The accounts differ.
Some say a Serbian knight named Miloš Obilić pretended to defect, knelt before the sultan, and then stabbed him in the belly. Others claim twelve Serbian nobles fought their way through Ottoman lines, reached his tent, and stabbed him in the throat and belly. Ottoman sources insist he was assassinated while inspecting the battlefield after the fighting ended. His son, Bayezid, took the throne and immediately had his own brother strangled.
Bayezid the First earned the name Thunderbolt for his lightning-fast campaigns. At the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, he crushed a large European coalition, securing Ottoman control over the Balkans. But in 1402, while besieging Constantinople, he was forced to retreat when Tamerlane of the Timurid Empire threatened his eastern borders. At the Battle of Ankara on July 20th, 1402, Bayezid was defeated and captured while trying to flee.
European legends later claimed he was chained, displayed in a cage, and forced to watch his wife serve Tamerlane. Contemporary accounts do not confirm this. Bayezid died in captivity on March 8th, 1403, in Akşehir. Some say he beat his head against the bars of his cell.
Others claim he was poisoned. Most sources simply say he died of asthma worsened by the stress of captivity, or a stroke. After his father’s defeat, Süleyman Çelebi escaped and declared himself sultan, plunging the empire into civil war against his own brothers. He held power for a time with Byzantine support, but his leniency toward Byzantine and Venetian interests cost him.
His commanders defected. His indifference to state affairs and his extravagant living drove away even his most loyal followers. In 1410, his brother Musa invaded. Süleyman defeated him once at the Battle of Kosmidion, but the support kept crumbling.
Musa eventually took his capital. With no one left at his side, Süleyman fled toward Byzantine lands, but he was intercepted on February 17th, 1411, and killed, likely strangled by Musa’s agents or local defectors. Mehmed the Second, known as the Conqueror, took Constantinople at the age of twenty-one. He ruled for thirty years, expanding the empire across Asia Minor and the Balkans, conquering Bosnia, Serbia, and Albania.
He became the first sultan to formalize criminal and constitutional law, while the Christian world regarded him as a bloodthirsty tyrant. But in 1481, while preparing invasions against Rhodes, Southern Italy, and Egypt, he suddenly fell ill near Maltepe, Istanbul, and died on May 3rd at age forty-nine. His death is often linked to gout, but many sources suggest poisoning, possibly by his own son, Bayezid II, or his physician, Yakub Pasha. His sudden death halted the empire’s rapid expansion.
In Europe, it was celebrated. Selim the First, known as the Grim, nearly doubled the empire’s size by conquering Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and the Hejaz, gaining control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. His victory over the Mamluks secured the major spice trade routes. After the Egyptian campaign, he planned further expansion westward, but he fell seriously ill in Çorlu and died on September 22nd, 1520, at age forty-nine.
Some link his death to an untreated anthrax infection that developed into painful boils on his back. Others suggest cancer, plague, or poisoning by his physician. Suleiman the Magnificent is widely seen as the greatest of them all. He ruled for forty-six years during the empire’s peak, conquering Belgrade, Rhodes, and much of Hungary, while his navy dominated the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf.
He took Baghdad and control of Iraq from the Safavids. Known as the Lawgiver, he unified legal systems and supported a cultural golden age, building the Suleymaniye Mosque and restoring the Dome of the Rock. On September 6th, 1566, at age seventy-one, he was on his final campaign against Hungary. While the siege of Szigetvár was still underway, he died in his tent, likely from gout or heart disease.
His death was kept secret for forty-eight days to maintain army morale. His body was returned to Istanbul, but his internal organs were buried near the battlefield. His son, Selim the Second, known as the Drunk, was reportedly very fond of alcohol. He broke with the tradition of warrior rulers, leaving governance to his wife and grand vizier while he focused on personal pleasures with his seven concubines.
He was the first sultan who never personally led his army into battle. He oversaw the conquest of Cyprus, followed by a major naval defeat at Lepanto. But on December 15th, 1574, at age fifty, heavily drunk in the Imperial Bath House at Topkapi Palace, he slipped on the marble floor, slammed his head, and died soon after from the trauma. Murad the Fourth came to power at eleven through a palace conspiracy and turned into a brutal, iron-fisted ruler.
He crushed rebellions, executed corrupt officials, disciplined the Janissaries, and stabilized the treasury. He enforced a strict curfew, banned alcohol and tobacco, and closed coffee houses and taverns. He personally led a forty-day siege to retake Baghdad from the Safavids, but his health nosedived afterward. He died on February 8th, 1640, at age twenty-seven, from cirrhosis linked to heavy drinking.
On his deathbed, he reportedly ordered the execution of his brother Ibrahim, but their mother, Kösem, deceived him by claiming Ibrahim was already dead. Ibrahim the First, called the Mad, was remembered for erratic behavior. His mother kept him distracted with the harem, allowing her to rule in his name. He reportedly had an obsession with voluptuous women, granting each riches and land, and even ordered a palace carpeted in sable furs for one concubine.
When the Knights of Malta seized a ship carrying high-status pilgrims to Mecca, he launched a war for Crete. Combined with Venetian blockades and heavy taxation to fund his excesses, this caused widespread unrest. The Janissaries revolted again and imprisoned him. On August 18th, 1648, when his executioners drew closer, he called for mercy, but none came.
As his mother watched, he was strangled to death inside the palace. Ibrahim’s six-year-old son, Mehmed the Fourth, ruled for thirty-nine years, bringing stability after his father’s chaotic reign. He gave full authority to Grand Vizier Mehmed Pasha, starting a period of reform and recovery. Mehmed largely left rule to his viziers, focusing on hunting.
It worked, since they conquered Crete, captured territory from Poland and Ukraine, and secured victories against Transylvania and Russia, marking the empire’s northern peak in Europe. But after the disastrous failed siege of Vienna in 1683, the empire began its long decline. More defeats against the Holy League followed, and a major loss at the Second Battle of Mohács sealed the deal. Mutinies erupted everywhere.
Mehmed was deposed by disgruntled soldiers and imprisoned in his palace. He later lived in seclusion in Edirne, where he died on January 6th, 1693, aged fifty-one, likely from a stroke worsened by his confinement. Selim the Third was a pioneering reformer who tried to modernize the empire. He created a European-style army, trained and equipped with modern methods to counter the increasingly rebellious Janissaries.
He introduced permanent embassies in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. But his reforms faced strong resistance from the Janissaries and conservative elites. In 1806, he tried to expand his new army into the Balkans but failed, damaging his image further. The Janissaries revolted once again, dethroning and imprisoning him.
On July 28th, 1808, while in the Topkapi Palace harem with two of his consorts, he was attacked by assassins and hacked to death by swords, likely on orders of his cousin and new sultan, Mustafa IV. Mahmud the Second, often called the Peter the Great of Turkey, ruled for thirty-one years and led major modernization efforts. His most defining act was destroying the Janissary corps in 1826 by massacring thousands of them. But his reign saw major territorial losses, including Greece, Algeria to France, and lands to Russia.
In his final year, he drank heavily every evening, suffering from stomach pain, insomnia, exhaustion, and a bad cough. He also had untreated bloody hemorrhoids but denied it. His condition declined further with loss of appetite, confusion, and long periods of staring. He likely suffered from lung cancer and alcohol withdrawal.
He died of pulmonary tuberculosis on July 1st, 1839, aged fifty-three. Abdul Aziz focused on Western-style modernization, expanding the navy into the world’s third largest and developing infrastructure like the Anatolia Railway. He became the first sultan to visit Western Europe, touring London and Paris to strengthen alliances. But heavy spending on the navy and new palaces, combined with an Anatolian famine, caused severe financial strain.
Rising taxes to repay foreign debt fueled unrest and contributed to the Great Eastern Crisis, leading to his deposition in 1876. He was briefly held in the same room at Topkapi where Selim the Third had been murdered, then moved to Feriye Palace. On June 4th, 1876, he asked for scissors to trim his beard and was later found dead with wounds on his arms in a pool of blood, allegedly taking his own life at age forty-six. His family and several sources claimed he was assassinated, possibly in a covert British operation.
Abdul Hamid the Second, called the Red Sultan, was the last ruler to maintain absolute power, holding it for thirty-three years. Despite territorial losses in the Balkans and Cyprus, he pushed modernization, most famously building the Hijaz railway from Damascus to Medina. He balanced European powers against each other, built close ties with Germany, and rejected Theodor Herzl’s proposal for a Jewish state in Palestine. But in 1908, the Young Turk Revolution erupted.
He attempted a counter-coup in 1909, failed, and was deposed. He was jailed in Salonica, later moved back to Constantinople, and spent his final years at Beylerbeyi Palace under house arrest, focused on carpentry and writing. He died on February 10th, 1918, at age seventy-five from lung inflammation while confined. Empires rise on the strength of their rulers.
They fall on the weakness of their bodies.
