Biography
Mustafa III was born at the Edirne Palace in 1717, a son of Sultan Ahmed III. After his father was deposed in the Patrona Halil revolt of 1730, he spent more than a quarter of a century confined in the Topkapi Palace with other princes, becoming heir only in 1756.
He succeeded his cousin Osman III on 30 October 1757, the first time the Ottoman throne had passed between cousins. He showed an active interest in justice and the economy, regulating the coinage, building grain stores and maintaining aqueducts, and he often travelled incognito to check that his laws were obeyed. An admirer of Frederick the Great, he concluded a treaty with Prussia in 1761 and the two states exchanged envoys in 1763.
Against the advice of his grand viziers he pressed for war with Russia in 1768. The war went badly: Russian armies overran Crimea, the Danubian principalities and parts of Bulgaria, and the Ottoman fleet was destroyed at Chesma, prompting military reforms such as the naval engineering school founded in 1773. His reign also saw the Fatih Mosque rebuilt, reconstruction after the earthquakes of 1766 and 1767, and the building of the Laleli Mosque, where he is buried. He died in January 1774, before the war ended, and was succeeded by his brother Abdul Hamid I.
