y his early accession to supreme
power, might have entitled him to a high place among the monarchs of his
line. Unlike most of the imperial family, he was of a spare sinewy form,
and lofty stature; and his features are said by Evliya to have been
remarkably handsome, though his forehead was disfigured by a deep scar
which he had received in his infancy, by being thrown by his father, in
an access of brutal passion, into a cistern in the gardens of the
seraglio; and a contemporary Venetian chronicler says that his dark
complexion and vivid restless eye gave him rather the aspect of a
_Zigano_, or gipsy, than an Osmanli. In the first years of his reign,
his grandmother, the Walidah Kiosem, acted as regent; but the rule of a
woman and a child was little able to curb the turbulent soldiery of the
capital; and the old feuds between the spahis and janissaries, which had
been dormant since the death of Abaza, broke out afresh with redoubled
violence. The war in Crete, which had been commenced under Ibrahim,
languished for want of troops and supplies; while the rival military
factions fought, sword in hand, in front of the imperial palace, and
filled Constantinople with pillage and massacre. The janissaries, who
were supported by Kiosem, for some time maintained the ascendency; but
this ambitious princess was at length cut off by an intrigue, in the
interior of the harem, fomented by the mother of Mohammed, who suspected
her of a design to prolong her own sway by the removal of the sultan, in
favour of a still younger son of Ibrahim. Seized in the midst of the
night of September 3, 1651, by the eunuchs whom her rival had gained,
Kiosem was strangled (according to a report preserved by Evliya) with
the braids of her own long hair; and the sultan was exhibited at
daybreak by the grand-vizir Siawush-Pasha to the people, who thronged
round the palace on the rumour of this domestic tragedy, to assure them
of the personal safety of their youthful sovereign.

The supreme power was now lodged in the hands of the young Sultana
Walidah, and her confidant the Kislar-Aga; but their inexperience was
little qualified to encounter the task which had wellnigh baffled the
energies of Kiosem; and the expedient of frequently changing the
grand-vizir, in obedience to the requisition of which ever party was for
the time in the ascendant, prevented the measures of government from
acquiring even a shadow of consistence or stability. Twelve vizirs,
wi