Murad IV was born in Constantinople in 1612 to Sultan Ahmed I and Kösem Sultan, and grew up in the kafes, or cage, the windowless palace apartments where princes lived under guard, never knowing whether the next visitor was a servant or an executioner. He became sultan at 11 in 1623, with his mother as regent, as the Safavids seized Ottoman Iraq, revolts spread in Anatolia, and the 1625 Bayram Pasha plague killed about a thousand people a day in the capital. In 1631 rebellious Janissaries stormed the palace and killed the Grand Vizier before his eyes.

By 1632 Murad took full control, outlawing coffee houses, tobacco, and opium to dismantle the places where rebellion was organized. He legalized alcohol in 1632, then banned it under penalty of death in 1634, and he even executed the Sheikh al-Islam, a religious leader traditionally exempt from capital punishment. Leading his army in person, he took Tabriz and Hamadan and captured Baghdad in 1638 after a 40-day siege, leading to the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab, whose border still roughly divides Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. He died of cirrhosis in 1640, at 27.

• The Cibali fire of September 1633 started from a spark near a ship being caulked and burned a fifth of the city for 30 hours.
• He had a Grand Vizier strangled for beating his own mother-in-law.
• He wrote poetry as Muradi and promoted the palace poet Cihadi Bey for solving his riddle.
• Mughal envoys from Shah Jahan met him during the Baghdad campaign, and he had them escorted to Basra.
• All of his at least 15 sons died in infancy, and a rumored deathbed order to kill his brother Ibrahim was never carried out.