War with Persia breaks out in 1603 while the Ottoman government struggles to suppress these revolts.

Sultan Mehmed, whose reign has seen no major setbacks for the supposedly declining Ottoman Empire, dies on December 22 at Topkapi Palace, Istanbul.

He is succeeded by the thirteen-year-old Ahmed, his eldest son by Valide Sultan Handan Sultan, an ethnic Greek who was originally named Helena.

Ahmed is Mehmed’s fourth-born son; the late Sultan had previously had three sons by a princess from the Byzantine Comnenus or Komnenus dynasty of Trebizond, a branch of the Imperial Family of the same name from Constantinople.

However, the standard Ottoman practice at this time for determining the succession is not birth order of sons; instead the Ottoman laws of succession to the throne state, "during their father's lifetime, all of the adult sons of the reigning sultan would hold provincial governorships.

Accompanied and mentored by their mothers, they would gather supporters and at the death of their father, the sons would fight among themselves until one emerged triumphant."

Mehmed’s two older sons had predeceased him, leaving Jahja, born in 1585.

When Mehmet had become Sultan in 1595, he had followed the custom of executing all of his brothers as potential rival claimants to the Ottoman throne).

Jahja's mother was concerned that this could also eventually happen to him, so he had been smuggled out, first to Greece, and then to present day Bulgaria.

He supposedly was baptized at an Orthodox Christian monastery, where he lived for the next eight years of his life.

Ahmed breaks with the traditional fratricide, however, and sends his brother Mustafa to live at the old palace at Bayezit along with their grandmother Safiye Sultan, a Venetian noblewoman originally named Sofia Baffo.

Jahya believes that as the next oldest son, he, not Ahmed, is next in line to be Ottoman Sultan and feels cheated out of his rightful destiny, thus for the rest of his life Jahja will dedicate himself to gaining the Ottoman Imperial Throne.

Jahja will from this point on make frequent trips to northern and western Europe to gain support.