Transformation of the Ottoman Empire
Sultan Suleiman I (r. 1520–1566) was the longest-reigning sultan in Ottoman history, but the last years of his reign were characterized by uncertainty over who would be his successor. Suleiman had three sons who could hope to succeed, Mustafa, Bayezid, and Selim. While the latter two were the children of Suleiman's wife Hurrem Sultan, the first was the son of an earlier concubine. Mustafa may have felt that his half-brothers possessed an unfair advantage over him, and thus worked to secure the favor of the military. Perhaps suspecting that Mustafa planned to dethrone him just as his own father had done to his grandfather, Suleiman acted first and in 1553 ordered that Mustafa be executed. The death of Hurrem Sultan in 1558 triggered open conflict between the two remaining candidates, and Selim ultimately emerged victorious. Suleiman further strengthened his son's position by arranging a marriage between Selim's daughter and the influential Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (Grand Vizier 1565–1579). Suleiman died in 1566, while besieging the fortress of Szigetvar in Hungary, bringing Selim to the throne.
Ottoman decline thesis
Other tropes of political decline, such as the notion that the sultans ruling after the time of Suleiman I were less competent rulers, have also been challenged. The reigns of such figures as Ahmed I, Osman II, and Mehmed IV (among others) have been re-examined in the context of the conditions of their own respective eras, rather than by inappropriately comparing them with a mythical Suleimanic ideal. Indeed, the very notion of whether Suleiman's reign constituted a golden age in the first place has come into question. The fact that sultans no longer personally accompanied the army on military campaigns is no longer criticized, but seen as a positive and necessary change resulting from the empire's transformation into a sedentary imperial polity. Leslie Peirce's research on the political role of women in the Ottoman dynasty has demonstrated the inaccuracy of the assumption that the so-called Sultanate of Women, in which female members of the dynasty exercised an unusually high degree of power, was in some way either a cause or a symptom of imperial weakness. On the contrary, Ottoman Valide Sultans, princesses, and concubines were successfully able to fortify dynastic rule during periods of instability, and played an important role in dynastic legitimization. Furthermore, the importance of the rapidly expanding bureaucracy is now particularly emphasized as a source of stability and strength for the empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drawing particularly upon the work of Linda Darling. Based largely on the work of Ariel Salzmann, the empowerment of regional notables in the eighteenth century has been reinterpreted as an effective form of government, rather than a sign of decline.