Mehmed IV

Born: 1642 AD Died: 1693 AD Reigned: 1648 - 1687 AD Khanate: Ottoman Empire — Hakan Title: Sultan and Hakan

Overview

Mehmed IV was the nineteenth Ottoman sultan and the longest-reigning sultan of the seventeenth century, holding the throne for nearly four decades despite coming to power as a child of six. His reign contained both the last great Ottoman advance into Europe and one of the most catastrophic Ottoman military defeats, and it ended in his deposition following the failure of the second Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683.

Known as Avcı — the Hunter — for his consuming passion for the chase, Mehmed delegated governance almost entirely to his grand viziers, most notably the Köprülü family, whose consecutive tenure as grand viziers from 1656 onward represented the most effective executive administration the empire had seen in a generation. Under the Köprülüs, the empire recovered from its mid-century chaos, reconquered Crete from Venice, and launched the audacious campaign against Vienna.

The defeat at Vienna in 1683 and the subsequent losses of the Great Turkish War shattered the empire's strategic momentum and led directly to Mehmed's deposition — the first Ottoman sultan removed by his own military since the early seventeenth century.

Rise to Power

Mehmed came to the throne in 1648 at age six, brought to power by a Janissary revolt that deposed and subsequently executed his father Ibrahim I. His minority was dominated by the regency of his grandmother Kösem Sultan and then his mother Turhan Sultan, whose rivalry culminated in Kösem's assassination in 1651. The appointment of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha as grand vizier in 1656 — on terms that gave the vizier near-absolute authority — marked the decisive moment when the institutional machinery of the empire began to function effectively again.

Rule and Achievements

• Oversaw the Köprülü reforms that restored Ottoman administrative and military effectiveness
• Completed the conquest of Crete from Venice in 1669 after a twenty-five-year campaign
• Sponsored the great westward campaign under Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa that reached Vienna in 1683
• Maintained the longest reign of any seventeenth-century Ottoman sultan
• Oversaw Ottoman expansion into Polish Ukraine, gaining Podolia and Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1672
• Preserved the empire's basic institutional functioning through decades of delegation to capable grand viziers
• Despite personal disengagement from governance, provided the dynastic stability that allowed the Köprülü era to function

Legacy

Mehmed IV's reign is defined by the contrast between the Köprülü era's genuine revival and the catastrophic denouement at Vienna. The second siege of Vienna in 1683 — a force of perhaps 150,000 men repulsed by the combined armies of the Holy League under Jan Sobieski — marked a permanent strategic turning point. The subsequent Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 forced the first major Ottoman territorial concessions in Europe, ending a century and a half of sustained westward expansion.

His deposition after Vienna reflected the Ottoman political reality that military failure, especially failure of such magnitude, was ultimately the sultan's responsibility regardless of how little he had personally directed the campaign.

Within the Qaghan tradition, Mehmed IV illustrates the limits of delegated authority: a khan who achieves through his subordinates but ultimately bears the political consequences of their failures, and whose long reign will be remembered more for how it ended than for what it accomplished.

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