One of the saddest pages in the biography of Sultan Suleiman is the execution of his own son Mustafa. What is the reason for this decision of the Sultan? What could Shehzade Mustafa have done to deserve a death sentence from his father?
Shehzade Mustafa was born in 1515 in Manisa in the family of the future Sultan Suleiman I and the Circassian Mahidevran.
Since childhood, Mustafa was adored by the common people and the army. He received an excellent education and military training. In his youth, he took part in several conquest campaigns of his father. Suleiman saw in the eldest son a great warrior who, with his severity and passion for military campaigns, reminded the Sultan of his father Selim the Terrible.
According to the Ottoman tradition, all shehzades had to be trained in governing the country, holding the post of sanjak-bey in one of the provinces; the eldest son and heir to the throne most often became the sanjak-bey of Manisa.
Mustafa, at the age of 18, left for Manisa in 1533 with his mother after a solemn ceremony.
During his reign in Manisa, Mustafa gained a good reputation. To strengthen his position, he even provided material support to the Janissaries. Over time, he began to invite foreign ambassadors to his palace in order to establish international relations.
However, over time, his popularity and love among the people and the Janissaries began to disturb Sultan Suleiman. In 1541, due to negotiations between Shehzade Mustafa and the Austrian ambassador, Suleiman finally alienated his son from himself and transferred him to the post of sanjak-bey of Amasya, planting Hurrem's eldest son, Shehzade Mehmed, in Manisa.
After 3 years, Shehzade Mehmed dies, and Mustafa hoped that he would return to Manisa. However, the Sultan sent there another son of Alexandra Anastasia Lisowska - shehzade Selim. Another son of Alexandra Anastasia Lisowska, Shekhzade Bayazid, was sent to Kutahya.
According to the laws of those times, it was not the eldest son who became the sultan, but the most influential among them.
Amasya was further from the capital than Manisa and Kutahya, and Mustafa's chances of taking the throne in the event of the death of his father were less than those of his brothers. Mustafa would have had, in the event of his father's death, to travel a long distance to Istanbul in order to have time to become the new sultan.
When Sultan Suleiman was already aged, he increasingly had severe attacks of dropsy, he fainted right at military meetings. Because of this, rumors spread among the troops that their ruler could no longer properly perform his duties.
Şehzade Mustafa took a rather dangerous position. With the support of the Janissaries, he began to show independence. So, many ambassadors who visited the Ottoman Empire began to come first to the sanjak to Mustafa, and only after that to the current sultan.
And although some historians still believe that Mustafa was slandered and executed innocently, there are facts confirming that Shehzade Mustafa really showed his claims to the throne in every possible way.
• Being only a prince, he grew a beard, although only a sultan could do it.
• Mustafa also made his own tughra - the personal sign of the padishah.
• Mustafa's letters to Suleiman's enemy, the Safavid Shah, have also been preserved, on which his personal seal is visible.
In 1553, during the war against the Persians, Rustem Pasha invited Mustafa to join his father's army and at the same time warned Suleiman himself that Mustafa was coming to him in order to kill him.
When Mustafa entered his father's tent to meet him, Suleiman's guards surrounded the Sultan's tent so that the disgraced heir to the throne could not escape.
Often the executioners did not know until the last minute exactly whose life they would have to take. So it was in the case of the execution of Mustafa. When they saw that the son of the ruler was entering the tent, they fell into confusion because they would have to execute the heir to the throne. But the highest will of the ruler must be carried out. As a result, during a fight with dumb executioners, Mustafa was killed. Mustafa was 38 at the time of his death.
Seven days later, Mustafa's seven-year-old son Mehmed was executed.
After the execution of Mustafa, a series of unrest and unrest among the people began. Army
Shehzade Mustafa was buried in the Muradiye complex in Bursa, and Mahidevran Sultan was also buried there.
Who knows what kind of ruler Shehzade Mustafa would have been if he had become a sultan?
Perhaps he went on about his advisers and his own ambitions. One thing is clear: Mustafa hurried and made several fatal mistakes that led him to the death penalty. He underestimated his father and, most likely, could not even imagine that his own father would decide to kill him.