Mehmed III Ends Ottoman Fratricide

Under Ottoman law, sultans could legally execute their brothers to prevent succession disputes, a practice that reached a brutal climax in 1595 when Sultan Mehmed III reportedly had 19 of his brothers killed in a single night, the youngest being only 11. The scale of that massacre horrified contemporaries and helped push the dynasty to abandon routine fratricide. Afterward, the Ottomans shifted to confining male relatives in the imperial palace’s harem apartments, effectively imprisoning potential heirs for life instead of executing them.

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