Ahmed III

Ottoman sultan (r. 1703-1730)

• Born: December 30, 1673
• Birthplace: Edirne, Ottoman Empire (now in Turkey)
• Died: July 1, 1736
• Place of death: Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now in Istanbul, Turkey)

Ahmed III reigned during a transitional period in which costly foreign wars were balanced by notable cultural achievements and the first stirrings of Westernization.

Early Life

Ahmed (ahkh-MEHD) III’s father was Mehmed IV Avci (r. 1648-1687). His mother was a Cretan concubine (haseki), Rabia Gülnüsh Emetullah, a native of Rethymnon enslaved at the time of the Ottoman conquest. She had already given birth to another son, the future Mustafa II (r. 1695-1703), in 1664. Although Mehmed would have a number of favorite slave women in his harem, his passion for Gülnüsh seems never to have waned. Long outliving her husband, she was to play an important role during the reigns of both her sons.

Despite the vagaries of his eccentric father, Ahmed IIII6IIII and his older brother enjoyed a more normal childhood than most Ottoman princes. Because Mehmed IV Avci detested Constantinople and Topkapi Sarayi (the imperial palace), the boys grew up in the palaces and gardens around Edirne, where they enjoyed much greater freedom than they would have done in Topkapi Sarayi, and Ahmed seems to have been exposed to influences and impressions denied most sultans’ sons, including some contact with Europeans, the legacy of which would manifest itself during his reign.

Mehmed was deposed in 1687 and taken to the Kafes, the “cage” within Topkapi Sarayi where Ottoman princes were traditionally confined. Because those who deposed him preferred that his brother, Süleyman İbrahim II (r. 1687-1691), and then his second brother, Ahmed II (r. 1691-1695), succeed him, Mehmed’s two sons joined him in the Kafes. Both brothers proved childless, however, so Mustafa succeeded to the throne in 1695. It was thus fortunate for Ahmed that the Ottoman dynastic law of fratricide had fallen into abeyance. Mustafa’s reign ended when a Janissary mutiny led to his deposition. He was returned to the Kafes, and Ahmed replaced him on August 22, 1703.

Life’s Work

During the first seven years of his reign, Ahmed III consolidated his hold over the institutions of government. The memory of the circumstances in which he had come to the throne seemed to produce a paranoia in which he felt safe only when surrounded by a small clique of advisers whom he could trust: his mother, now valide sultan; the kizlar aghasi (the Agha of the Black Eunuchs, responsible for the women’s quarters of the palace); and his favourite, Silahdar Ali Paşa, soon to become his son-in-law.

Back in Constantinople, Ahmed hunted down all those he believed took part in the uprising against his brother. Also, he reduced the Janissary corps and transferred the corps of bostancis (guards responsible for the palaces and gardens) into the Janissary corps en masse. He replaced the guards with the last known devshirme recruits, young Balkan Christian males levied to serve as kapikulus (slaves of the Porte). Deeply suspicious of those around him, Ahmed found it difficult to give his confidence to any grand vizier not drawn from his immediate entourage, and during his early reign, viziers came and went with extraordinary rapidity. At last, in 1706, he appointed a man of real ability, Chorlulu Ali Paşa. Chorlulu had entered the palace service and been rapidly promoted during the reigns of Ahmed II and Mustafa II, reaching the rank of silahdar (custodian of the sultan’s weapons), a post in which he made himself indispensable. Between 1706 and 1710, he initiated major reforms, redressed grievances, and reduced waste in state expenditure, being rewarded in 1708 by marriage to a daughter of Mustafa II.

Chorlulu sought desperately to avoid military adventures, making bitter enemies in the process. Ahmed became alienated by his policy of noninvolvement and dismissed him in June, 1710. After Chorlulu’s fall, the sultan appointed another able man, Kōprūlū Noman Paşa, but he also proved too independent and within two months was sacked. He was replaced in September, 1710, by the time-serving Baltaci Mehmed Paşa (whose wife was said to be the sultan’s mistress).

Meanwhile, Czar Peter the Great had made an ill-judged attack on Moldavia with insufficient troops and inadequate supplies. Ambushed by the grand vizier with an Ottoman army twice the size of the Russian force, Peter capitulated (July 20, 1711), and the Treaty of the Pruth (July 23, 1711) enabled him to extricate himself with considerable humiliation. A final peace was not concluded with Russia until the Treaty of Adrianople (June 5, 1713).

Silahdar Ali Paşa, appointed grand vizier on April 27, 1713, commanded a formidable force that quickly overran the Morea (summer, 1715), but Ottoman aggression in Dalmatia, which threatened Croatia, was too much for Charles VI, who renewed his old alliance with Venice (April 13, 1716). The Holy Roman Emperor’s field commander, Prince Eugene of Savoy, prosecuted the war with great vigor, and when the grand vizier marched against the fortress of Peterwardein, he was defeated, losing his life on the battlefield (August 5, 1716). Belgrade, linchpin of the Ottoman line of defense on the Danube frontier, capitulated on August 20, 1717. Peace was signed at Passarowitz (July 21, 1718), where the sultan’s negotiators were compelled to recognize the loss of Belgrade, much of Serbia, and the Banat of Temesvar and Oltenia (then known as Little Wallachia), as well as granting extensive commercial privileges to the emperor’s subjects. Venice made a separate peace but failed to regain the Morea.

As for the sultan, he had had enough of war in the west, although the collapse of the PersianṢafavid Dynasty in 1722 compelled him to look to his eastern frontiers. In May, 1718, Ahmed appointed as grand vizier a companion from his early years of gilded captivity in Edirne, Nevshehirli İbrahim Paşa, who remained his right hand and close collaborator until the end of his reign. These twelve years saw the sultan and grand vizier presiding over a kind of golden age, which some historians have called an Ottoman renaissance (nicknamed lale devri, the Tulip Age, from the sultan’s passion for tulips). During these years, the court, a hive of literary and artistic patronage, became the center of a luxuriant ceremonial life, which at least one historian has suggested consciously mirrored Louis XIV’s Versailles in its goals of enhancing the sultan’s prestige and leading the elite into lavish consumption. Contemporary European observers waxed exuberant in describing the extravagance and hedonism of a capital that now included a considerable Western presence, as well as increasing contacts with foreign parts. However tenuous the process, Westernization had begun.

Exemplifying the Westernization of Ahmed’s court was the career of İbrahīm Mūteferrika (1674-1745), a statesman, diplomat, and ardent advocate of Ottoman reform. Born in Kolosvár (Transylvania) of Christian parents and raised a Unitarian, he fled Transylvania to avoid Catholic persecution and became an aide to the Ottoman-backed Transylvanian leader, Imre Tököly. İbrahim, now a convert to Islam, joined the Ottoman service, rising high in the bureaucracy. His linguistic skills and knowledge of Europeans made him especially valuable to the Porte for roving diplomatic missions, activities that spanned the reigns of both Ahmed III and Mahmud I (r. 1730-1754). Supported by İbrahim Paşa, the grand vizier, and even, surprisingly, by the ṣheyhülislām, c. 1724 İbrahim Mūteferrika set up the first Ottoman printing press with equipment and workers imported from the West. He was careful, however, not to involve himself with theological material. Although only a few books were printed and the press was closed down in 1742, its very existence indicated that the winds of change were blowing through the heart of the Ottoman Empire.

Ahmed III’s golden age ended abruptly in one of the worst outbursts of the mob violence and civic disorder so endemic to Ottoman history. This was the uprising of September-November, 1730, led by Patrona Halil, a former Albanian Janissary turned clothes seller, which exposed the capital to unparalleled bloodshed, rapine, and mayhem. The affair combined the traditional simmering violence of a great metropolis, impoverished and overtaxed to meet the sultan’s extravagances, with a visceral fury against innovation, Western influences, and the court’s decadent lifestyle, which ran counter to traditional Islamic values. In vain, the sultan, to appease the mob, had İbrahim Paşa, the deputy grand vizier, and the Kapudan Paşa (high admiral) strangled, but the rebels remained implacable: They had wanted the culprits delivered to them alive. On October 1, 1730, Ahmed resigned and was replaced by his nephew, Mahmud I, whose place he took as a captive in the Kafes.

Significance

Ahmed III’s reign was of great significance in the history of the Ottoman Empire. After the disturbed reign of his brother, Mustafa II, Ahmed introduced a semblance of order to the realm before being drawn into conflict with Russia and subsequently the Venetian Republic and Habsburg Austria. In the period of peace after 1718, he inaugurated a remarkable cultural flourishing, a kind of Ottoman renaissance, which also saw significant moves toward Westernization.

Bibliography

Freely, John. Inside the Seraglio. London: Penguin Books, 1999. A highly readable account of the sultan and his times.

Kurat, Akdes Nimat. The Despatches of Sir Robert Sutton: Ambassador in Constantinople, 1710-1714. London: Royal Historical Society, 1953. Penetrating contemporary observations on the war years.

Kurat, A. N., and J. S. Bromley. “The Retreat of the Turks, 1683-1730.” In A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730, edited by V. J. Parry et al. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Excellent narrative of the reign.

Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Sophisticated analysis of a changing empire under stress.

Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Dependable narrative and excellent insights.

Shay, Mary Lucille. The Ottoman Empire from 1720 to 1734 as Revealed in Despatches of the Venetian Bailo. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944. An observer’s vivid account of the last years of the reign.