Ottoman Sultan Mehmed III had his 19 brothers strangled on the day he took the throne

Ottoman succession had no rule of primogeniture. Any son of a sultan could claim the throne. Mehmed II's law code in the 15th century allowed a new sultan to put his brothers to death "for the order of the world"^†. When Murad III died in January 1595, he left at least 20 sons. His eldest, Mehmed III, reached Istanbul first. That day his 19 brothers, some of them children, were strangled with silk cords by palace executioners and buried beside their father^†. Contemporary accounts report public grief in the city at the procession of small coffins^†. Mehmed III was the last sultan to carry out a mass killing on accession. From the early 17th century princes were instead confined in a section of the harem (the kafes), and the throne passed to the eldest living male of the dynasty. The last sultan, Mehmed VI, was deposed in 1922, and the family was exiled from Turkey in 1924.