Mahmud I

Mahmud ascended in 1730 after the Patrona Halil rebellion was crushed, inheriting an empire at the edge of upheaval. Known as "the Hunchback," he left statecraft to his grand viziers and turned to verse. When Nader Shah's campaigns gutted the Mughal Empire, Mahmud allied with Muhammad Shah to strike Persia — but the alliance collapsed with the latter's death, souring relations with the Afsharids. Wars dragged on across multiple fronts. In 1748 he banned Freemasonry across Ottoman lands. He died in December 1754, twenty-four years into a reign defined by distance from its own machinery.