The European Powers and the Eastern Question ••• 159(r. 1640-1648), who had his 280 concubines tied up in sacks and drowned in
the Bosporus. Mustafa II (r. 1695-1703) insisted on leading his troops into bat¬
tle and was decisively beaten by Prince Eugen of Savoy, the military genius of
the age, costing the Ottomans the province of Hungary and their military pres¬
tige. Alcohol abuse and harem intrigues afflicted the later sultans far more than
they had the first ten. Some members of the ruling class milked the Ottoman
system to enrich themselves while failing to perform their duties. But one of
the secrets of Ottoman longevity was that the system went on producing capa¬
ble sultans and viziers who saw the corruption and introduced reforms.
Among the reforming sultans were Osman II (r. 1618-1622), whose attempt
to form a new militia led to his being killed by revolting janissaries; Murad IV
(r. 1623-1640), who executed 25,000 rebellious subjects in a single year; Mah-
mud I (r. 1730-1754), the first to bring in Europeans to teach new fighting
techniques; and Selim III (r. 1789-1807), who introduced a comprehensive re¬
form scheme, the nizam-i-jedid, which we describe in the next chapter.
What about the reforming viziers? The Koprulu family produced six
grand viziers who enhanced Ottoman security abroad and imposed politi¬
cal, social, and aesthetic changes at home. The first, Mehmet (d. 1661), was
taken from his Albanian Christian parents by the devshirme and started his
career working in the imperial kitchen. As grand vizier to Sultan Mehmet IV
(r. 1648-1687), he defeated the Venetians and quashed revolts in Transyl¬
vania and Anatolia, executing thousands in the process. His son, Ahmet,
strengthened the vizierate, checked the Habsburgs, and took Crete as well as
parts of Poland. His brother led the Ottoman troops to the gates of Vienna
in 1683 but failed to capture the city. A nephew of Mehmet Koprulu, serving
Mustafa II, reduced taxes on consumer goods, set up factories, and hoped to
restore farm production to its earlier level.
Another vizier was Damad Ibrahim, best known for diverting Sultan
Ahmed III (r. 1703-1730) into building pleasure palaces and tulip gardens;
but he also brought in European artists, commissioned Turkish transla¬
tions of Western scientific works, and introduced the first Ottoman print¬
ing press. Our point is that, even in this dark age of Ottoman history, some
sultans and viziers tried to bring in some light. More westernizing reform¬
ers would arise in the nineteenth century; we discuss them in the next
chapter. However, reforms alone could not save the Ottoman Empire.
THE EUROPEAN POWERS AND THE EASTERN QUESTIONMost historians think that the key to the Ottomans' predicament—but also,
paradoxically, their salvation—lay in Europe. Without the Renaissance, the