DURING THE FIRS thalf of the seventeenth century, the Ottoman dynasty repeatedly faced serious threats of extinction in ways hitherto unseen since the beginning of their monarchical rule in the early 1300s. While the primary factor behind this problem was the coming to the throne of a series of underage and/or childless sultans between 1603 and 1648, it was the incessant military rebellions in the capital city of Istanbul directly targeting the Ottoman ruler that often deepened the political/dynastic crisis prevailing in the same period. Meanwhile frequent outbreaks of epidemic diseases in the densely populated capital—most importantly those of plague—only worsened the precarious situation of the royal family, particularly since all of its male members were by then residing in the Topkapı Palace and thus exposed to the fatal threats of such biological calamities. Hence, under these circumstances, the Ottoman royal family tried to secure not only the well-being of their reigning young sultan and, if any, his male siblings and children, but also the critical problem of dynastic continuity with the introduction of new patrilineal principles of succession, namely that of seniority.

Scholars of early modern Ottoman history typically emphasize that the Ottoman male line came close to extinction only during the last years of Sultan Murad IV's reign (1623–40) and the early years of Sultan İbrahim's (1640–48). the end of his reign, Murad IV ordered the execution of all of his living brothers except Prince İbrahim, who succeeded to the throne in 1640 as the childless sole male member of the dynasty. It was two years before Sultan İbrahim managed to father a child, and during this period, the House of Osman came perilously close to stepping over what I have elsewhere called the “threshold of extinction.” The birth of Prince Mehmed (the future Mehmed IV, r. 1648–87) in early January 1642 finally lifted the pall of uncertainty that surrounded the Ottoman throne in the early 1640s. However, most scholars often overlook the fact that the threat of dynastic end actually emerged decades earlier, immediately after the enthronement of Ahmed I (r. 1603–17) and under the exigencies of communicable diseases.