Ahmed II: Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1691 to 1695

From 1691 to 1695, Ahmed II was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The Austrians beat Ahmed's army at Slankamen shortly after his succession to the throne. In the battle, the able grand vizier Köprülü Fazl Mustafa Paşa died. In Hungary, the Ottomans suffered significant territorial losses. The Venetians assaulted Crete in 1692 and took Chios in 1694. In his Arab territories of Hejaz, Syria, and Iraq, Ahmed faced insurrection. Ahmed encouraged tribal settlement in Anatolia and Syria to provide land for nomadic Turkmen tribes and end certain abuses in the Ottoman land administration system. Ahmed, who had been imprisoned in the palace before his ascension. He was unable to demonstrate any independence and remained a puppet of his courtiers.

On 1 August 1642, Ahmed II was born. Sultan Ibrahim and Muazzez Sultan were his parents. Ahmed, along with his brothers Mehmed and Suleiman, was circumcised on 21 October 1649. Ahmed was imprisoned in Kafes during the reigns of his older brothers. He was there for over 43 years.

Sultan Ahmed II focused most of his attention during his reign on the wars against the Habsburgs and related foreign policy, political, and economic matters. The most significant of these were tax reforms and the implementation of the lifelong tax farm system. Following his predecessor's conquest of Belgrade, the military boundary on the Danube came to a halt, with the Habsburgs no longer able to march south of it. The Ottomans attempted but failed to reclaim the initiative to the north. Ahmed's reliance on Köprülüzade Fazl Mustafa Pasha was one of the most notable aspects of his reign. Sultan Ahmed II confirmed Köprülüzade Fazl Mustafa Pasha as grand vizier following his succession to the throne. Fazl Mustafa Pasha was a grand vizier from the Köprülü family when he took office. He was a capable administrator and military commander, like most of his Köprülü predecessors in the same job. Fazl Mustafa Pasha, like his father Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, ordered the ouster and execution of scores of corrupt state officials from the previous regime, replacing them with loyalists. He redesigned the tax system by tailoring it to the needs of taxpayers who recent wars had impacted. By drafting tribe members from the Balkans and Anatolia, he restructured troop mobilization and enlarged the army's pool of conscripts. Fazl Mustafa Pasha retook Belgrade, a strategic citadel at the junction of the Danube and Sava rivers. In 1688, the Habsburgs captured the citadel from the Ottomans. The victory at Belgrade by Fazl Mustafa was a great military accomplishment that gave the Ottomans optimism that the military disasters of the 1680s could be avoided. The Ottoman victory was fleeting. Fazl Mustafa Pasha was defeated at the Battle of Slankamen in 1691 by Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden, renowned for his successes over the Ottomans. The sultan lost his most capable military leader and the last member of the Köprülü family, who had been vital in developing the Ottoman military over the past half-century. The Ottomans suffered more defeats under Fazl Mustafa Pasha's successors. The Habsburgs captured Várad in June 1692, which had been the seat of an Ottoman ruler since 1660. They attempted to reclaim Várad in 1694 but were unsuccessful. They abandoned the citadel of Gyula on 12 January 1695, which had been the centre of an Ottoman sanjak or subprovince since 1566. With the fall of Gyula, the only Ottoman territory in Hungary was to the east of the Tisza and the south of the Maros, with Temesvár as its centre. Ahmed II died in Edirne Palace three weeks later, on 6 February 1695.