Osman II

Osman II (Ottoman Turkish: عثمان ثانى‎ ‘Osmān-i sānī; 3 November 1604 – 20 May 1622), also known as Osman the Young (Turkish: Genç Osman), was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1618 until his regicide on 20 May 1622.

Osman II عثمان ثانى
Kayser-i Rûm Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Ottoman Caliph Amir al-Mu'minin
16th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (Padishah)
Reign	26 February 1618 – 20 May 1622
Predecessor	Mustafa I
Successor	Mustafa I
Born	3 November 1604 Topkapi Palace, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Died	20 May 1622 (aged 17) Yedikule Fortress, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Burial	Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Istanbul
Consorts	Ayşe Sultan Akile Hatun
Issue	Şehzade Ömer
Full name Şah Osman bin Ahmed han[1]
Dynasty	Ottoman
Father	Sultan Ahmed I
Mother	Mahfiruz Hatun
Religion	Sunni Islam
Tughra

Early life

Osman II was born at Topkapı Palace, Constantinople, the son of Sultan Ahmed I (1603–17) and one of his consorts Mahfiruz Hatun. According to later traditions, at a young age, his mother had paid a great deal of attention to Osman's education, as a result of which Osman II became a known poet and would have mastered many languages, including Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, and Italian; this has been refuted since.[2] Osman was born eleven months after his father Ahmed Ahmed's transition to the throne. He was trained in the palace. According to foreign observers, he was one of the most cultured of Ottoman princes. [3]

Osman's failure to capture the throne at the death of his father Ahmed may have been caused by the absence of a mother to lobby in his favor; his own mother was probably already dead or in exile.

Reign

The Ottoman Empire in 1622, the year of the regicide of Osman II

Osman II ascended the throne at the age of 14 as the result of a coup d'état against his uncle Mustafa I "the Intestable" (1617–18, 1622–23). Despite his youth, Osman II soon sought to assert himself as a ruler, and after securing the empire's eastern border by signing a peace treaty (Treaty of Serav) with Safavid Persia, he personally led the Ottoman invasion of Poland during the Moldavian Magnate Wars. Forced to sign a peace treaty with the Poles after the Battle of Chotin (Chocim) (which was, in fact, a siege of Chotin defended by the Lithuanian–Polish hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz) in September–October, 1621, Osman II returned home to Constantinople in shame, blaming the cowardice of the Janissaries and the insufficiency of his statesmen for his humiliation.

The basic and exceptional weakness from which Osman II suffered was the conspicuous absence of a female power basis in the harem. From 1620 until Osman's death, a governess (daye hatun, lit. wet-nurse) was appointed as a stand-in valide, and she could not counterbalance the contriving of Mustafa I's mother in the Old Palace. Although he did have a loyal chief black eunuch at his side, this could not compensate for the absence of what in the politics of that period was a winning combination, valide sultan–chief black eunuch, especially in the case of a young and very ambitious ruler.[4] According to Piterberg, Osman II did not have haseki sultan, opposite with Peirce who claim that Ayşe was Osman's haseki. But it is clear that Ayşe could not take valide's role during her spouse's reign.

In the autumn of 1620, Özi Beylerbeyi İskender Pasha seized the secret letter sent by Transylvanian Prince Bethlen Gabor to Istanbul and sent it to Poland, and Osman also became a veteran of the people around him. He decided to embark on a Polish expedition. [5] Continuing preparations for the Polish campaign, neither cold nor famine nor the British ambassador John Eyre could deter Osman. The ambassador of Sigismund, the King of Poland, was brought into Istanbul despite the severe colds. The janissaries and army were not willing to go on a campaign, regardless of their conditions. [6]

Great winter of 1621

Osman II on horseback

Following the murder of Şehzade Mehmed on 12 January 1621, a severe snow started in Istanbul. The people of Istanbul were drastically affected by the cold, which increased local violence on 24 January 1621, more so than the palace murder. This is the biggest natural disaster that concerns the capital in Osman's four-year short reign. Bostanzade Yahya Efendi, one of those who lived through this cold, tells that the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus were covered with ice in the end of January-beginning of February: "Between Üsküdar and Beşiktaş, the men walk around and go to Üsküdar. [6] They came from Istanbul on foot. And the year became a gala (famine). [6]

It was snowing for 15 days, that the frosts were frozen from the severity of the cold, but that the river was open between Sarayburnu and Üsküdar.[6] For this natural disaster, froze in thirty thousand froze between Üsküdar and Istanbul from the cold," Haşimi Çelebi, "The road became Üsküdar, the Mediterranean froze a thousand thirty". As a result of the inconvenience of the Zahire ships, there was a complete famine in Istanbul, and 75 dirhams of bread jumped to one akche, and the oak of the meat to 15 akches. [6]

Death

Sultan Osman the Young was strangled in Yedikule Zindans in 1622

Yedikule Fortress in 1685

One of the entrances of the Yedikule Fortress in Istanbul, where Osman II was strangled to death by revolting Janissaries

Yedikule Fortress in 1827

Seeking a counterweight to Janissary influence, Osman II closed their coffee shops (the gathering points for conspiracies against the throne) and started planning to create a new and more loyal army consisting of Anatolian sekbans.[7] The result was a palace uprising by the Janissaries, who promptly imprisoned the young sultan in Yedikule Fortress in Istanbul, where Osman II was strangled to death. After Osman's death, his ear was cut off and represented to Halime Sultan and Sultan Mustafa I to confirm his death and Mustafa would no longer need to fear his nephew. It was the first time in the Ottoman history that a Sultan was executed by the Janissaries.[8]

This disaster is one of the most discussed topics in Ottoman history. Hasanbegzade, Karaçelebizade, Solakzade, Peçevi, Müneccimbaşı and Naima dates, in the Fezleke of Katip Çelebi, detailed and some of them were narrated in a story style. [9]

Family

Consorts

Osman had three consorts:

• Ayşe Sultan, his haseki, of unknown background;[10]
• A woman said to be the daughter of an astrologer, and granddaughter of Pertev Mehmed Pasha;[11]
• Akile Hatun (m. March 1622), daughter of Şeyhülislam Hocazade Esad Efendi, and his legal wife[10][11]

Son

Osman had one son:

• Şehzade Ömer (20 October 1621 – 5 February 1622);

In popular culture

In the 2015 Turkish television series Muhteşem Yüzyıl: Kösem, Osman II was portrayed by actor Taner Ölmez.[12]

See also

• Transformation of the Ottoman Empire

Notes

1. Suha Umur, (1980), Osmanlı padişah tuğraları, p. 199
2. Tezcan, Baki (2002). "The 1622 Military Rebellion in Istanbul : A Historiographical Journey". International Journal of Turkish Studies. University of Wisconsin: 40. Stanford Shaw, the author of an Ottoman history that has been widely used as a textbook and reference work, claims, on the basis of information from an eighteenth-century French novel,84 that the sultan was "[t]rained in Latin, Greek, and Italian by his Greek mother, as well as Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian."85
3. Sakaoğlu 2015, p. 210.
4. Piterberg, Gabriel (2003). An Ottoman Tragedy: History and Historiography at Play. California: University of California Press. pp. 18. ISBN 0-520-23836-2.
5. Sakaoğlu 2015, p. 212.
6. Sakaoğlu 2015, p. 213.
7. Ozgen, Korkut. "The Family: The Sultans: Osman II." The Ottomans. 2002. http://www.theottomans.org.
8. Piterberg, Gabriel (2003). An Ottoman Tragedy: History and Historiography at Play. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 28. ISBN 0-520-23836-2.
9. Sakaoğlu 2015, p. 221.
10. Peirce, Leslie P. (1993). The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Oxford University Press. pp. 106. ISBN 978-0-195-08677-5.
11. Tezcan, Baki (2001). Searching For Osman: A Reassessment Of The Deposition Of Ottoman Sultan Osman II (1618-1622). pp. 377 n. 93.
12. "Muhteşem Yüzyıl Kösem sezon finalinde bakın kimler ayrıldı!" (in Turkish). Retrieved 2017-11-06.

Bibliography

• Sakaoğlu, Necdet (2015). Bu Mülkün Sultanları. Alfa Yayıncılık. ISBN 978-6-051-71080-8.

External links

Media related to Osman II at Wikimedia Commons