Life
Ahmed I (reigned 1603–1617) came to the throne as a youth amid war with Persia and Austria. He is remembered above all for commissioning the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, the "Blue Mosque," a masterpiece of Ottoman architecture, and for a fateful reform: abandoning the customary execution of royal brothers in favor of confinement (the kafes), which altered Ottoman succession for the rest of the empire's history.