Suleiman (1494–1566)

Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 until 1566, under whose rule the empire reached the height of its power and influence, as well as its peak as a center of science, culture, literature, and art. Born in 1494, he was the only son of Sultan Selim I, who appointed him to serve as the governor 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 Ottoman Empire. When an Ottoman company of diplomats was refused tribute by the king of Hungary, Suleiman ordered his army into the Balkan Peninsula, and conquered 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 island surrendered after a long siege.

In 1526 Suleiman returned to Hungary, defeated the Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohacs, and captured Buda, the capital of the Hungarian kingdom. He returned in 1529, drove the occupying Austrian 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 leadership of his grand vizier, Ibrahim, the Ottoman 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 Ibrahim for his ambition to rule Persia.

Suleiman made important reforms in the administration and laws of his expanding empire. He also made an alliance with the French king Francis I against the Habsburg emperors. This alliance made the Turks a forceful influence in the dynastic rivalries of Europe for the next three centuries.

In the 1540s he fought against European 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 Austria. The Ottoman navy captured the North African port of Tripoli in 1551. Under 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 Tahmasp, Suleiman settled the eastern frontiers of the Ottoman Empire in 1555, including 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 important mosques in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople). Suleiman's private life, however, was marred by constant intrigue and the corruption 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 in favor of her sons Selim and Bayezid against their elder half brother Mustapha. In 1553, as Mustapha's own power and influence at the sultan's court reached a dangerous point, Suleiman had him executed. In 1558 Roxelana died, an event followed by a war between her sons Selim and Bayezid. The conflict ended in the defeat and the betrayal of Bayezid by the shah of Persia, who turned him over to Suleiman for execution in exchange for a large payment of gold. While on campaign in Hungary, Suleiman laid siege to the Szigetva, where he died. His son Selim II inherited the Ottoman Empire at the greatest extent of its history.

See Also: Ottoman Empire