Archaeology Magazine — March-April 2018

archaeology.org 57

A

red sandstone block props

open the door to Gyula

Kereszturi’s wine cellar in a

small village in southern Hungary.

Kereszturi, who ekes out a living

selling homemade wine and plum

brandy in one of this country’s poorest

regions, found the block more than

two decades ago when he expanded

the cellar. Over the years, it has made

a good doorstop, or sometimes a

makeshift table.

But it used to be much more

than that. This block was once part

of the revered mausoleum complex

of Suleiman the Magnificent, the

Ottoman Empire’s most prolific

builder and accomplished military

leader. Although Kereszturi and

other locals had long referred to the

occasional red bricks they found

buried in their yards as “Turkish

ruins,” they had no idea that anything

significant had ever stood there.

And, until recently, neither did

archaeologists. That all changed when

remote sensing and later excavation

revealed that the ground under

Kereszturi’s house and vineyard

might contain the ruins of Turbek, a

once-flourishing Muslim pilgrimage

destination on the ground where

Suleiman died of natural causes in 1566

during the brutal Battle of Szigetvar, a

crucial contest in the fight to expand

the Ottoman hold on Europe.

“This is the most exciting find from

the Ottoman period in Hungary,”

says Norbert Pap, a geographer at

the University of Pecs, who leads the

ongoing work of the interdisciplinary

team that first identified the ruins,

How archaeologists trying to locate the final resting place of

Suleiman the Magnificent uncovered the remains of a crucial

outpost of the Ottoman Empire

by Sara Toth Stub

LETTER FROM HUNGARY

THE SEARCH FOR

THE SULTANÕS TOMB

Excavations beneath two family-

owned vineyards outside the

Hungarian town of Szigetvar are

beginning to reveal the remains

of Turbek, a 16th-century

complex built to honor the

Ottoman sultan Suleiman I.