Everything about Ahmed Iii totally explained
Ahmed III (
Ottoman Turkish: احمد ثالث
Aḥmed-i sālis)
(December 30, 1673—July 1, 1736) was
Sultan of the
Ottoman Empire and a son of Sultan
Mehmed IV (1648–87). He succeeded to the throne in 1703 on the abdication of his brother
Mustafa II (1695–1703).
Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha and his daughter,
Princess Hatice (wife of the former) directed the government from 1718 to 1730, a period referred to as the
Tulip Era.
Biography
Ahmed III cultivated good relations with
France, in view doubtless of
Russia's menacing attitude. He awarded refuge in Ottoman territory to
Charles XII of Sweden (1682–1718) after the
Swedish defeat at the hands of
Peter I of Russia (1672–1725) in the
Battle of Poltava of 1709. King
Charles XII of Sweden escaped to the Ottoman Empire after losing the
Battle of Poltava against the
Russians, which was a part of the
Great Northern War. In 1710 he convinced the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III to declare war against Russia, and the Ottoman forces under Baltacı Mehmet Paşa won a major victory at the
Battle of Prut. In the aftermath, Russia returned
Azov back to the Ottomans, agreed to demolish the fortress of
Taganrog and others in the area, and to stop interfering into the affairs of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Forced against his will into
war with Russia, Ahmed III came nearer than any Ottoman
sovereign before or since to breaking the power of his northern rival, whom his
grand vizier Baltacı Mehmet Paşa succeeded in completely surrounding near the
Prut River in 1711. The subsequent Ottoman victories against Russia enabled the Ottoman Empire to advance to
Moscow, had the Sultan wished.
However, this was halted as a report reached
Istanbul that the
Safavids were invading the Ottoman Empire, causing a period of panic, turning the Sultan's attention away from Russia. Sultan Ahmed III had become unpopular by reason of the excessive pomp and costly luxury in which he and his principal officers indulged; on
20 September,
1730, a mutinous riot of seventeen
janissaries, led by the
Albanian Patrona Halil, was aided by the citizens as well as the military until it swelled into an insurrection in front of which the sultan was forced to give up the throne.
Ahmed voluntarily led his nephew
Mahmud I (1730–54) to the seat of sovereignty and paid allegiance to him as Sultan of the Empire. He then retired to the apartments in the palace previously occupied by Mahmud and died after six years of confinement.
Character of Ahmed III's rule
The reign of Ahmed III, which had lasted for twenty-seven years, although marked by the disasters of the
Great Turkish War, wasn't unsuccessful. The recovery of
Azov and the
Morea, and the conquest of part of
Persia, managed to counterbalanced the
Balkan territory ceded to the
Habsburg Monarchy through the
Treaty of Passarowitz, after the Ottoman Empire was defeated in
Austro-Turkish War of 1716-18. In 1716, he sent and army of 33,000 men to capture
Corfu from the
Republic of Venice.
Ahmed III left the finances of the Ottoman Empire in a flourishing condition, which had remarkably been obtained without excessive
taxation or extortion procedures. He was a cultivated
patron of literature and art, and it was in his time that the first
printing press authorized to use the Arabic or Turkish languages was set up in Istanbul, operated by
Ibrahim Muteferrika (while the printing press had been introduced to Istanbul in 1480, all works published before 1729 were in Greek).
It was in this reign that an important change in the government of the
Danubian Principalities was introduced: previously, the
Porte had appointed
Hospodars, usually native
Moldavian and
Wallachian
boyars, to administer those provinces; after the
Russian campaign of
1711, during which
Peter the Great found an ally in Moldavian
Prince Dimitrie Cantemir, the Porte began overtly deputizing
Phanariote Greeks in that region, and extended the system to Wallachia after
Prince Stefan Cantacuzino established links with
Eugene of Savoy. The Phanariotes constituted a kind of
Dhimmi nobility, which supplied the Porte with functionaries in many important departments of the state.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ahmed Iii'.
|
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://ahmed_iii.totallyexplained.com">Ahmed III 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. |
