Murad IV (Conqueror of Baghdad)

Murad IV was the seventeenth Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, renowned for his colossal physical strength, warrior prowess, and ruthless restoration of imperial discipline. Ascending the throne at age eleven in 1623 during an era of mutinous Janissary rebellions and palace corruption under the regency of his powerful mother, Kösem Sultan, Murad took absolute personal control of the empire in 1632 after rebels murdered his Grand Vizier before his eyes.

Murad established iron law and order in Istanbul, executing corrupt officials, banning alcohol, tobacco, and coffeehouses (which he viewed as nests of sedition), and patrolling the streets of Istanbul at night in civilian disguise with an executioner. An exceptional archer and wrestler who wielded a two-hundred-pound mace, Murad personally led the Ottoman army to the east in 1638 to reclaim Mesopotamia from Safavid Persia. In an epic forty-day siege, he personally stormed the breaches, winning the Siege of Baghdad (1638) and concluding the landmark Treaty of Zuhab (1639), which established the permanent frontier between Turkey and Iran that survives to this day. Dying at only twenty-seven, he was the last Ottoman Sultan to personally command on the battlefield.