Suleiman the Magnificent

"Kanuni" redirects here. For the hompa of Kwangali, see Kanuni (hompa). For the Turkish drillship, see Kanuni (drillship). For the Albanian law texts, see Kanun (Albania).

Suleiman I
Portrait of Suleiman by Titian (c. 1530)
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (Padishah)
Reign30 September 1520 – 6 September 1566
PredecessorSelim I
SuccessorSelim II
Ottoman caliph (Amir al-Mu'minin)
PredecessorSelim I
SuccessorSelim II
Born6 November 1494[3]: 541 
Trabzon, Trabzon Eyalet, Ottoman Empire
Died6 September 1566(1566-09-06) (aged 71)[3]: 545 
Szigetvár, Kingdom of Hungary
Burial
Spouses
​
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(m. 1533; died 1558)​
Issue
Names
Süleyman Şah bin Selim Şah Han[4]
DynastyOttoman
FatherSelim I
MotherHafsa Sultan
ReligionSunni Islam
TughraSuleiman I's signature

Suleiman I (Ottoman Turkish: سليمان اول, romanized: Süleyman-ı Evvel; Turkish: I. Süleyman, pronounced [syleiˈman]; 6 November 1494 – 6 September 1566), commonly known as Suleiman the Magnificent in Western Europe and Suleiman the Lawgiver (Ottoman Turkish: قانونى سلطان سليمان, romanized: Ḳānūnī Sulṭān Süleymān) in his Ottoman realm, was the longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 until his death in 1566.[3]: 541–545  Under his administration, the Ottoman Empire ruled over at least 25 million people.

Suleiman succeeded his father, Selim I, as sultan on 30 September 1520 and began his reign with campaigns against the Christian powers in Central Europe and the Mediterranean. Belgrade fell to him in 1521 and the island of Rhodes in 1522–1523. At Mohács, in August 1526, Suleiman broke the military strength of Hungary.

Suleiman became a prominent monarch of 16th-century Europe, presiding over the apex of the Ottoman Empire's economic, military and political power. Suleiman personally led Ottoman armies in conquering the Christian strongholds of Belgrade and Rhodes as well as most of Hungary before his conquests were checked at the siege of Vienna in 1529. He annexed much of the Middle East in his conflict with the Safavids and large areas of North Africa as far west as Algeria. Under his rule, the Ottoman fleet dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and through the Persian Gulf.[5]: 61 

At the helm of an expanding empire, Suleiman personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation and criminal law. His reforms, carried out in conjunction with the empire's chief judicial official Ebussuud Efendi, harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law: sultanic (Kanun) and religious (Sharia).[6] He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he also became a great patron of culture, overseeing the "Golden Age" of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary and architectural development.[7]

Breaking with Ottoman tradition, Suleiman married Hurrem Sultan, a woman from his harem, an Orthodox Christian of Ruthenian origin who converted to Sunni Islam, and who became famous in Western Europe of his time by the name Roxelana, due to her red hair. Their son, Selim II, succeeded Suleiman following his death in 1566 after 46 years of rule. Suleiman's other potential heirs, Mehmed and Mustafa, had died; Mehmed had died in 1543 from smallpox, and Mustafa had been strangled to death in 1553 at the sultan's order. His other son Bayezid was executed in 1561 on Suleiman's orders, along with Bayezid's four sons, after a rebellion. Although scholars typically regarded the period after his death to be one of crisis and adaptation rather than simple decline,[8][9][10] the end of Suleiman's reign was a watershed in Ottoman history. In the decades after Suleiman, the empire began to experience significant political, institutional, and economic changes, a phenomenon often referred to as the Transformation of the Ottoman Empire.[11]: 11 [12]

  1. ^ a b c Dimitri Korobeinikov (2021). "These are the narratives of bygone years: Conquest of a Fortress as a Source of Legitimacy". medieval worlds comparative & interdisciplinary studies (PDF). Vol. 14. Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. p. 180. That the Ottomans might have had a different view was demonstrated by Sultan Sulaymān the Magnificent, who called himself the shah of Baghdad in 'Iraq (Shah-i Bagdād-i 'Irāq), the Caesar of Rome (qayṣar-i Rūm), and the sultan in Egypt (Miṣra (i.e. Mısıra) Sulṭān) in the inscription in the fortress of Bender (Bendery, Tighina) in Moldova, AH 945 (29 May 1538–18 May 1539). The title qayṣar-i Rūm (Caesar of Rome) was a traditional designation of the Byzantine emperor in Persian and Ottoman sources (from the Arabic al-qayṣar al-Rūm).
  2. ^ Oriental Translation Fund. Vol. 33. 1834. p. 19.
  3. ^ a b c Ágoston, Gábor (2009). "Süleyman I". In Ágoston, Gábor; Masters, Bruce (eds.). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire.
  4. ^ Hüseyin Odabaş; Coşkun Odabaş (2015). Manuscript and Ferman Ornamentation Art in the Ottoman Empire. p. 123.
  5. ^ Mansel, Philip (1998). Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453–1924.
  6. ^ Finkel, Caroline (2005). Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1923. Basic Books. p. 145.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference atil24 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Hathaway, Jane (2008). The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1800. Pearson Education Ltd. p. 8. historians of the Ottoman Empire have rejected the narrative of decline in favor of one of crisis and adaptation
  9. ^ Tezcan, Baki (2010). The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern Period. Cambridge University Press. p. 9. the conventional narrative of Ottoman history – that in the late sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire entered a prolonged period of decline marked by steadily increasing military decay and institutional corruption – has been discarded.
  10. ^ Woodhead, Christine (2011). "Introduction". In Woodhead, Christine (ed.). The Ottoman World. p. 5. Ottomanist historians have largely jettisoned the notion of a post-1600 'decline'
  11. ^ Şahin, Kaya (2013). Empire and Power in the Reign of Süleyman: Narrating the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  12. ^ Tezcan, Baki (2010). The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern Period. Cambridge University Press. p. 10.