Murad III

Murad III was sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1574 until his death in 1595. Born in Manisa in 1546 to the future Selim II and Nurbanu Sultan, he had his five younger brothers strangled on his accession, and his reign saw the growing influence of the imperial harem, above all his mother and his favourite consort Safiye Sultan. He fought the Habsburgs and the Safavids, a war of 1578–1590 that brought temporary gains, and Morocco was for a time a vassal until 1582. Silver from the New World brought inflation and unrest among the Janissaries, while relations with Elizabethan England were cemented and he commissioned illustrated manuscripts such as the Siyer-i-Nebi.