Codified killing of a new sultan's brothers, adopted to prevent the succession wars that contested inheritance produced.
Ottoman succession had no primogeniture, so each accession invited civil war between brothers with equal claims. The practice made the cost explicit and paid it once rather than repeatedly. It was later replaced by confinement of princes, which removed the killing and produced sultans with no experience of government.
In practice
- A partnership with no succession clause spends its founder's death in litigation, and the clause would have been the cheaper cruelty.
- A firm that resolves succession by removing every rival to the new chief executive inherits a leadership team with nobody in it who has been tested.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is succession design: with no primogeniture, every accession invited civil war between brothers with equal claims, so the practice moved the cost forward and paid it once rather than repeatedly.
- In its favour
- It addressed a real and recurring problem, and Ottoman civil wars did become less frequent under it, which is the pattern a succession rule of this kind would produce.
- Against it
- The attribution of the codification to Mehmed II's law book is debated by Ottoman historians, and the practice was itself abandoned in favour of seniority and confinement, which suggests its costs outran its benefits.
- Standing
- The attribution of the codification to Mehmed II's kanunname is debated by Ottoman historians.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works