Everything about Ibrahim I totally explained
Ibrahim I (in
Arabic ابراهيم الأول) (
November 5,
1615 –
August 12,
1648) was the
Sultan of the
Ottoman Empire from
1640 until 1648. He was unofficially called
Ibrahim the Mad (Turkish:
Deli İbrahim or
İbrahim Deli) due to his mental condition.
One of the most famous Ottoman Sultans, he was released from the
Kafes and succeeded his brother
Murad IV (1623–40) in 1640, though against the wishes of Murad IV, who had ordered him killed upon his own death. (Murad IV had himself succeeded their older brother
Osman II in
1622). Ibrahim brought the empire almost to collapse in a very short space of time — paralleled only perhaps, by the rule of
Phocas (602–610) in the
Byzantine Empire. Probably mentally unstable, he's claimed to have suffered from
neurasthenia, and was also
depressed after the death of his brother. His reign was essentially that of his
Greek (External Link
) mother,
Kösem Sultan, who was no longer hindered in controlling the empire as she willed.
He is known to have had an obsession with
obese women, urging his agents to find the fattest woman possible. A candidate was tracked down in
Georgia or
Armenia and Ibrahim was so pleased with her that he gave her a government pension and (allegedly) a governorship. He was seen feeding coins to fish living in the palace's pool. These feats earned him the nickname
Mad.
Ibrahim at first stayed away from politics, but eventually he took to raising and executing a number of
viziers. A war with
Venice was fought, and in spite of the decline of
La Serenissima,
Venetian ships won victories throughout the
Aegean, capturing
Tenedos (
1646), the gateway to the
Dardanelles. Ibrahim's rule grew ever more unpredictable. Eventually, he was deposed in a
coup led by the
Grand Mufti. There is an apocryphal story to the effect that the Grand Mufti acted in response to Ibrahim's decision to drown all 280 members of his
harem, but there's other evidence to suggest that at least two of Ibrahim's concubines survived him (particularly
Turhan Hatice, who was responsible for the death three years later of Kosem, then serving as regent for Ibrahim's son by Hatice,
Mehmed IV). Chances are this story was circulated after the coup to silence those who for whatever reason preferred a mad sultan.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ibrahim I'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://ibrahim_i.totallyexplained.com">Ibrahim I Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
