Mustafa III was born in Edirne in 1717. His father was Sultan Ahmed III and his mother was Mihrisah Emine. After his father was forced to leave the throne in 1730, he lived a caged life in the palace for twenty-seven years. Upon the death of Osman III in 1757, he ascended to the Ottoman throne and became the 26th Ottoman sultan. He was a poet, calligrapher and scholar sultan. He studied literature, astrology and medicine. Mustafa III tried to implement governmental and military reforms to halt the empire's decline. Although his military reforms were successful in a way, fiscal reforms weren't. The great Istanbul earthquake occurred during his reign on May 22, 1766.
Mustafa III passed the first ten years of his reign in peace thanks to his grand vizier Ragib Mehmed Pasha. However, he later declared war on Russia in 1768 due to Russian ambitions on Crimea. But the Ottomans suffered a series of defeats on the Danube and on the Crimea, as well as complete destruction of the Ottoman fleet in Cesme in 1770. The difficult situation he fell into during the last years of the war damaged his health and he died of grief in 1774. He was buried in the tomb next to the Laleli Mosque in Istanbul. Abdulhamid I ascended to the throne in his place.