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'Mehmed III' (Ottoman Turkish: محمد ثالث ''Meḥmed-i sālis'', Turkish:''III.Mehmet'') (May 26, 1566 – December 22, 1603) was a son of Murad III,whom he succeeded as sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1595 until his death.
Mehmed III remains notorious even in Ottoman history for having twenty seven of his brothers and half brothers murdered to secure power. He also killed over twenty of his sisters as well. They were all strangled by his deaf-mutes. Mehmed III was an idle ruler, leaving government to his mother Safiye Sultan, the valide sultan. The major event of his reign was the Austro-Ottoman War in Hungary (1596–1605).
Ottoman defeats in the war, caused Mehemed III to take personal command of the army, the first sultan to do so since Suleyman. Mehmed III's armies conquered Erlau (1596) and defeated the Habsburg and Transylvanian forces at the Battle of Mezőkeresztes during which the Sultan had to be dissuaded from fleeing the field halfway through the battle. The next year it was noted, "the doctors declared that the Sultan cannot leave for war on account of his bad health, produced by excesses of eating and drinking".
Mehmed III's reign saw no major setbacks for the supposedly declining Ottoman Empire.