Suleiman ........................................
(1494–1566)
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520
until 1566, under whose rule the empire
reached the height of its power and influ-
ence, as well as its peak as a center of sci-
ence, culture, literature, and art. Born in
1494, he was the only son of Sultan Selim
I, who appointed him to serve as the gov-
ernor of the provinces of Bolu and Kaffa.
He became the tenth sultan of the empire
in 1520 on the death of his father.
An ambitious and capable military
leader, Suleiman spent much of his life
campaigning on the frontiers of the Otto-
man Empire. When an Ottoman company
of diplomats was refused tribute by the
king of Hungary, Suleiman ordered his
army into the Balkan Peninsula, and con-
quered Belgrade in 1521. He then ordered
an attack on the Knights Hospitallers, a
Christian military order in control of the
Greek island of Rhodes. In 1522, the is-
land surrendered after a long siege.
In 1526 Suleiman returned to Hun-
gary, defeated the Hungarian army at the
Battle of Mohacs, and captured Buda, the
capital of the Hungarian kingdom. He re-
turned in 1529, drove the occupying Aus-
trian army out of the capital, and installed
a Duke of Transylvania, John Zapolya, as
his vassal. From Hungary Suleiman led an
assault on the Austrian capital of Vienna
in the fall of 1529. The siege of the city
failed as the weather worsened and the
professional soldiers known as Janissaries
abandoned the siege.
After Vienna, Suleiman campaigned in
Persia and Mesopotamia. Under the lead-
ership of his grand vizier, Ibrahim, the Ot-
toman armies captured Baghdad and the
Persian city of Tabriz in 1534. Suleiman
sacked the city of Tabriz in 1536, and in
the same year ordered the murder of Ibra-
him for his ambition to rule Persia.
Suleiman made important reforms in
the administration and laws of his expand-
ing empire. He also made an alliance with
the French king Francis I against the Hab-
sburg emperors. This alliance made the
Turks a forceful influence in the dynastic
rivalries of Europe for the next three cen-
turies.
In the 1540s he fought against Euro-
pean armies in Hungary and Austria. The
Ottoman Empire annexed Hungary in
1541 and by 1547 was earning an annual
tribute from the Habsburg rulers of Aus-
tria. The Ottoman navy captured the
North African port of Tripoli in 1551. Un-
der Khair al-Din Barbarossa, the Ottoman
Empire reigned over North Africa and the
Turkish navy became the most powerful
force in the Mediterranean. Turkish ships
staged frequent raids on European ports
for gold and slaves. Ottoman forces also
raided ports on the Red Sea as far as the
Indian port of Diu, a colony of Portugal,
and annexed the coasts of Arabia to the
empire. After warring for several more
years with the Persian armies of Shah Tah-
masp, Suleiman settled the eastern fron-
tiers of the Ottoman Empire in 1555, in-
cluding Baghdad and the Persian Gulf port
of Basra under their control.
Suleiman was a patron of the arts and
literature, and was himself a distinguished
poet and writer. A distinctly Ottoman style
in the visual arts emerged, and the sultan
commissioned the building of several im-
portant mosques in the Ottoman capital
of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople).
Suleiman’s private life, however, was
marred by constant intrigue and the cor-
ruption of his ministers and diplomats.
He took as his wife a slave girl, Roxelana,
who was given the title of Khurrem Sultan
and who gave birth to Suleiman’s younger
son Selim in 1524. Roxelana intrigued inSuleiman