Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman the Magnificent the tenth and longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire (r. 1520-1566), who led its armies to the gates of Vienna and its fleets across the Mediterranean, and who gave the empire a body of law and an administrative order that earned him the title of lawgiver. Under him Ottoman power and culture reached their zenith.

Accession and Early Reign

Suleiman was born in 1494 at Trabzon on the Black Sea, the son of the sultan Selim I. He received an education in the palace schools and was appointed to govern several provinces, gaining experience of administration before he ascended the throne in 1520 on the death of his father.

His accession was smooth, and he began his reign by restoring order, remitting some taxes and granting his officials a sense of stability. He surrounded himself with capable advisers, including the grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha, and he inherited from his father a strong army, a full treasury and a vast territory in Anatolia, the Balkans and the Arab lands.

From the first he projected an imperial ambition. He claimed the inheritance of Rome and of the Islamic caliphate, and set out to extend Ottoman authority both west into Europe and east against the rival Safavid empire of Persia, presenting himself as the defender of the faith and the champion of orthodox Sunni Islam.

Campaigns in Europe and the Mediterranean

In 1521 Suleiman captured Belgrade, opening the way up the Danube into central Europe. In 1526 he won the battle of Mohacs, where the Hungarian army was destroyed and the king killed, and in 1529 he besieged Vienna itself, though the city held and the Ottoman army withdrew for the winter. Much of Hungary became an Ottoman province, and a rival kingdom under Ottoman protection was set up in Transylvania and the east.

At sea the Ottoman fleet, commanded in turn by capable admirals including the corsair Barbarossa Hayreddin, contested the Mediterranean with the fleets of Spain, Genoa and Venice. Ottoman naval power extended from the coast of North Africa to the eastern Mediterranean, and Suleiman's fleets raided Italy and the Iberian coast, giving the empire control of the sea lanes it depended upon.

He also campaigned against Persia, taking Baghdad in 1534 and reasserting Ottoman authority over Iraq, and he conducted a series of truces and treaties with the powers of Europe. The first formal treaty with France, in 1536, granted French merchants trading privileges within the empire known as the capitulations, which had lasting consequences for Ottoman commerce.

The Lawgiver and the Government

In the Ottoman tradition Suleiman is known not as the Magnificent but as Kanuni, the Lawgiver, for his reform of the legal system. He ordered the compilation of the imperial law, the kanun, harmonising the sultanic decrees with the religious law of the sharia and issuing a single code that governed taxation, landholding, criminal justice and the conduct of officials.

The system of land tenure and military fiefs that supported the army was regularised under his rule, and the central administration was organised around the imperial council, the divan, and the office of the grand vizier. The empire was divided into provinces and districts with an increasingly professional bureaucracy of clerks and judges.

He took a personal interest in the administration of justice and in the protection of subjects against the abuse of officials, and he supported the education of judges and scholars. His legal work gave the Ottoman state a coherence and durability that allowed it to remain a great power for centuries after his death.

Court, Culture and the Age of the Architect Sinan

Suleiman's reign was a golden age of Ottoman culture. His court at Istanbul presided over a flowering of poetry, historiography, calligraphy and miniature painting. The sultan himself wrote poetry under a pen name, and the poets and scholars of his age, including the chancery master and historian Kemalpasazade, gave the empire a distinct literary voice.

The greatest monument of the age was the architecture of Mimar Sinan, who served as chief architect for much of the reign. He built or supervised hundreds of structures, including the great mosques of Sehzade and Suleymaniye in Istanbul, refining the dome and the minaret into a mature Ottoman style that combined grandeur with harmony and engineering skill.

The imperial household itself became a subject of legend, above all the influence of Hurrem Sultan, known in Europe as Roxelana, who rose from the status of a captive to become the sultan's legal wife and a political figure of consequence. Her philanthropy and that of other members of the royal family endowed mosques, hospitals and charitable foundations across the empire.

Death and Legacy

Suleiman died in 1566 at Szigetvar in Hungary, on his last campaign, at the age of seventy-two, having ruled for forty-six years, the longest reign in Ottoman history. His death was concealed from the army until the succession could be secured, and his son Selim II succeeded him, beginning a long decline in the personal calibre of the sultans.

He left an empire that stretched from the gates of Vienna to the Persian Gulf and from the Crimea to North Africa, a treasury and an administration that sustained it, and a capital transformed by his building. Ottoman power remained formidable for generations, though the age of unbroken expansion ended with him.

He is remembered as the greatest of the Ottoman sultans and as the lawgiver whose code long governed the empire. His reign is studied as the classic age of Ottoman institutions, when a multinational state was held together by a legal order and a court culture that set the standard for the Islamic world.

See also

• Suleymaniye Mosque
• Mimar Sinan
• Ottoman Empire
• Battle of Mohacs