On this day in year 1623 the coronation of Murad IV took place as only 11 years old. Despite his age, he was appointed to replace his uncle Mustafa I, who was mentally unfit and who suffered conspiracy by his own Valide to leave office..
He was a sultan of the Ottoman Empire for 17 years, being known as “the conqueror of Baghdad” or as Murad “the cruel.”
His reign had many peculiarities and anecdotes begin with, he arrived as just an 11 years old boy. This led to a very important stage in the Ottoman Empire, since for the first time a woman was name Valide Sultana, offically giving powers to Kösem Sultan, the mother of Murad IV, until the sultan came of age..
During his childhood Sultan Murad IV received a good education and learned about state affairs while growing up and then he struggled for strengthening the state and expanding the territories especially between 1632 until his death in 1640. When he took the control of state at the of age 21, he took some extreme precautions in order to eliminate the corruption within the Empire, banned the use of alcohol and tobacco, implemented severe measures for the regular collection of taxes in order to increase the state’s revenues, avoided unnecessary expenditures in the treasury, recovered the military discipline, participated in battles against the enemy to raise the morale of the commanders and soldiers in the trenches, and so on.
Murad IV never tolerate disorder and not obeying his laws and directives. Sometimes he used to go around the city in plain cloths to check any undisciplined actions and irregularities by the locals, and personally punished the offenders. He was tall and strong, had a dense black beard and hazel eyes. He was an excellent horseman and very good at the use of sword and the archery. Besides his skills as a statesmen and in the military grounds, he was a good poet, a skilled calligrapher and he wrote beautiful edicts in handwriting. 📌✍🏻
