Editing Mustafa II (section)

===Habsburg wars===
In April 1696 Mustafa II left [[Edirne]] for his second military campaign against the Habsburg Empire. In August 1696 the Russians besieged Azov for the second time and captured the fortress. In August 1696 the Ottoman troops defeated the Habsburg army in the [[Battle of Ulaş]] and in the [[Battle of Cenei]]. After these victories the Ottoman troops captured [[Timișoara]] and Koca Cafer Pasha was appointed as the protector of [[Belgrade]]. Afterwards the army returned to the Ottoman capital.<ref name="kultur1"/>

In June 1697 Mustafa II left the capital on his third military campaign against the Habsburg Empire. However, the Ottoman Army suffered a defeat in the [[Battle of Zenta]] and [[Grand Vizier]] [[Elmas Mehmed Pasha]] died in the battle. Afterwards the Ottomans signed a treaty with the Holy League.<ref name="kultur1"/>

The most traumatic event of his reign was the loss of [[Hungary]] by the [[Treaty of Karlowitz]] in 1699.

Yet even if Ottoman power seemed to wane on one side of the empire, this did not mean that Ottoman efforts at expansion ceased. In 1700, for example, the Grand Vizier [[Amcazade Köprülü Hüseyin Pasha|Amcazade Hüseyin]] boasted to a recalcitrant tribe residing in swamps near Baghdad that they ought to abide by the sultan's rule, since his grasp extended even to their marshy redoubts. The Grand Vizier added that, after all, Mustafa II was "the Lord of Water and Mud."<ref>{{Cite journal|title = In the Bellies of the Marshes: Water and Power in the Countryside of Ottoman Baghdad|last = Husain|first = Faisal|date = October 2014|journal = Environmental History|volume = 19|issue = 4|pages = 638–664|doi = 10.1093/envhis/emu067}}</ref>

At the end of his reign, Mustafa II sought to restore power to the Sultanate, which had been an increasingly symbolic position since the middle of the 17th century, when Mehmed IV had signed over his executive powers to the Grand Vizier. Mustafa II's strategy was to create an alternative base of power for himself by making the position of [[Timariot|timars]], the Ottoman cavalrymen, hereditary and thus loyal to him. The timars, however, were at this point increasingly an obsolete part of the Ottoman military machine.