In these campaigns Murad showed immense vigour. He marched at the head of his army and shared with the soldiers their hardships. His saddle was his pillow at night. There was no pitched battle with the Persians. The campaigns consisted of sieges and captures of fortresses. On his return to the capital after the second campaign, in 1639, Murad received a great popular ovation. He died soon after, in 1640, from fever, aggravated by intemperance, to which he was addicted. When he was on the point of death he gave orders for the execution of his brother, Ibrahim, the only surviving male of the descendants of Othman. Ibrahim had been immured in ‘the Cage’ during the lifetime of his brother. He was quite unfit to rule the Empire, and Murad must have well known this. It was surmised that Murad preferred to go down in history as the last Sultan of the Othman race rather than hand over the throne to such an incapable successor. Others thought that he intended his last and favourite Grand Vizier to be his successor. His mother, the Sultana Validé, with the object of saving the life of her second son, Ibrahim, feigned to carry out Murad’s order. She sent a message to the dying Sultan that Ibrahim had been put to death in accordance with his instructions. Murad, it is said, when he heard of this “grinned a horrible and ghastly smile and then expired.” It may well have been that those who wished for the destruction of the Ottoman Empire regarded with complaisance the failure of Murad’s intention of putting an end to the Othman dynasty. It was obviously impossible that Sultans of the type of those who had succeeded the great Solyman could for long hold the Empire intact. A new dynasty, founded by an ambitious vizier, or some other bold adventurer, might have invigorated the Empire and have long delayed its dismemberment. But _Dîs aliter visum est_.