History's Most Insane Rulers, Part 3: Ibrahim I -- The Sultan Who Loved Fur and Drowned His Harem

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Ottoman Sultan Ibrahim (1616-1648) believed he was the sort of ruler that came out of legend, so he ordered a massive tax to fund the decoration of his palace in sable fur. He also preferred full-figured women and commissioned his advisers to find for him the largest woman in his realm. Such a woman was found; she weighted over three hundred pounds, an enormous size in the seventeenth century. How did somebody like this become sultan? Because he was born a prisoner.

Ibrahim spent the first two decades of his life in “The Cage,” a harem quarter of the palace designed to imprison Ottoman princes and prevent them from scheming to capture the sultanate. Ibrahim never left the palace grounds until he became sultan himself in his twenties. In both periods of his life the fear of political assassination relentlessly haunted him. Paranoia and seclusion damaged his sanity, which broke completely when he ascended the throne. As a narcissistic hedonist who put his own pleasure before the needs of the empire, the harm that Ibrahim caused in his eight-year reign drained state coffers, alienated the military and political classes, led to a disastrous war with the rival Republic of Venice, and nearly brought down the House of Osman, the dynasty that had ruled the Ottoman Empire for over three hundred years.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Scott here with a very short announcement before this episode begins. This episode is part of
0:04.5	a series I'm doing about history's most insane rulers because I have a book that just came out
0:09.3	as available now called History's Nine Most Insane Rulers, looking at the lives and reigns of
0:14.8	people like Emperor Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, Kim Jong Il, and some other lesser-known people,
0:20.1	like Charles VI who thought he was made of glass. Ottoman Sultan Ebrahim I, who shot arrows at his
0:25.0	court subjects and ordered his advisors to find the fatis woman in the empire to join his
0:29.5	and former president of Turkmenistan, Akbar Turkmen Bashi, who had an 80-foot tall golden
0:34.1	statue made of himself that always rotated to face his son. The book looks at what it would be like
0:39.2	to be under the rule of somebody like this who had almost unlimited power, whether power
0:43.6	makes somebody go insane, and if these stories have any warnings for us today. So in each of these
0:48.8	episodes I go over a little of what's in the book, but you can go into way more detail if you check
0:53.2	it out. You can find it anywhere where books are sold, Amazon or elsewhere, or if you go to the website
0:57.7	mostinsayingrullers.com, you'll find a link there, and you'll also find a quiz to determine
1:03.0	which insane ruler you are. And if you like the book, if you could please leave a review on
1:08.0	Amazon that really helped it out. Hope you enjoyed this episode.
1:15.4	History is in just a bunch of names and dates and facts. It's the collection of all the stories
1:28.4	throughout human history that explained how and why we got here. Welcome to the History Unpluged
1:33.5	Podcast where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange, and even counterfactual stories that
1:40.6	made our world what it is. I'm your host, Scott Rank.
1:55.1	Hello everyone, welcome back to our series on History's most insane rulers. In the first
2:00.3	episode we looked at Emperor Caligula, and in the second one we looked at Charles VI of France,
2:05.1	who thought that he was made of glass. In this third episode we're going to be looking at
	...

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