Suleiman I (Ottoman: سلطان سليمان اول Sultân Süleymân-ı Evvel; with his pen name in divan literature, Muhibbi; 6 November 1494, Trabzon – 7 September 1566, Szigetvár), the tenth sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the 89th caliph of Islam. He is also known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent, and in the East, in reference to his just rule, as Kanûnî Sultan Süleyman (Suleiman the Lawgiver) (Ottoman: قانونى سلطان سليمان). He ruled the Ottoman Empire for about 46 years, from 1520 until his death in 1566. He went on campaign a total of 13 times and spent 10 years and 1 month of his reign on campaigns. He is the longest-reigning and longest-campaigning sultan in the Ottoman Empire.
Suleiman became sultan on 30 September 1520 in place of his father Selim I, and began his reign by organizing campaigns against the Christian powers in Central Europe and the Mediterranean. In 1521 he conquered Belgrade and in 1522–1523 the island of Rhodes. In August 1526, at the Battle of Mohács, he broke the military power of Hungary and annexed a large part of it. Ruling over the peak of the Ottoman Empire's economic, military, and political power, Suleiman became one of the leading rulers of 16th-century Europe. Suleiman personally led the Ottoman armies in the conquest of the Christian strongholds of Belgrade and Rhodes, as well as most of Hungary, before his conquests were brought under control at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. In his conflict with the Safavids he annexed a large part of the Middle East and vast areas of North Africa as far as Algiers. Under his rule the Ottoman navy dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. He died on 7 September 1566 at the age of 71, one day before the end of the Siege of Szigetvár.
At the head of an expanding empire, Suleiman personally initiated important legal changes concerning society, education, taxation, and criminal law. His reforms, carried out together with the empire's chief judge Ebussuud Efendi, harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law, sultanic and religious law. Suleiman was at the same time a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he became a great patron of culture who presided over the "Golden Age" of the Ottoman Empire's artistic, literary, and architectural development.
Breaking with Ottoman tradition, Suleiman married a woman from his harem, Hürrem Sultan, a Ruthenian-born Orthodox Christian who converted to Sunni Islam and who became famous in Western Europe as Roxelana because of her red hair. After Suleiman's 46-year rule, upon his death in 1566 he was succeeded by his son Selim II. Of Suleiman's other potential heirs, Mehmed and Mustafa died; Mehmed died of smallpox in 1543, and Mustafa was strangled to death in 1553 by the sultan's order. His other son Bayezid was executed in 1561 by Suleiman's order, together with his four sons, after a rebellion. Although scholars regard the period after his death as one of crisis and adaptation rather than a simple decline, the end of Suleiman's reign was a turning point in Ottoman history. In the decades after Suleiman, the empire began to undergo important political, institutional, and economic changes, generally called the Transformation of the Ottoman Empire.
Early years
He was born on 6 November 1494 in Trabzon. His father was Selim I, who was governor of Trabzon when Suleiman was born and ascended the throne as sultan in 1512, and his mother was Ayşe Hafsa Valide Sultan. He spent his childhood years in Trabzon together with his milk-brother Yahya Efendi. At the age of 7 he was sent to Istanbul, to the Enderûn in Topkapı Palace, to receive an education in the fields of science, history, literature, religion, and the military.
In 1508 he was appointed governor (sancakbeyi) of Şarki Karahisar, but after the objection of his father Selim's brother Ahmed, the governor of Amasya, he was appointed to Bolu. Because Ahmed objected to this as well, he went out in July 1509 to the sanjak of Kefe (Caffa), to which he was appointed. After his father Selim I ascended the throne in 1512, he resided in Istanbul and Edirne. In 1513 he was appointed governor of Saruhan. Here he formed a close friendship with Pargalı İbrahim, who would later become one of his chief advisers. After about seven years as governor of Saruhan, upon the death of his father Selim I on the night connecting 21 to 22 September 1520, he set out for Istanbul and, since there was no one else to claim the throne, ascended the throne as the tenth Ottoman sultan on 30 September 1520 without any struggle. A few weeks after his accession, the Venetian envoy Bartolomeo Contarini described Suleiman as follows: "Twenty-six years old, tall but wiry and of gentle appearance. His neck is a little too long, his face thin, his nose curved like an eagle's beak. He has a shadow of a mustache and a small beard. Although his complexion is a little pale, his face is quite pleasant. His skin tends toward pallor. He is said to be an intelligent ruler, and everyone hopes that his reign will be auspicious."
1520–1529
Shortly after Suleiman I ascended the throne, the governor-general (beylerbeyi) of Damascus, Canberdi Gazâlî, refused to recognize Suleiman's sultanate and started a rebellion by proclaiming his own rule. As a result of the activities of the units under the command of Ferhad Pasha sent from the center, the forces in the Dulkadir Province, and the forces in Damascus, at the Battle of Mastaba near Damascus on 27 January 1521, Gazâlî was defeated and killed and the rebellion was suppressed. In place of Gazâlî, Ayas Mehmed Pasha was appointed governor-general of Damascus. At the end of the same year, upon the death of Bıyıklı Mehmed Pasha, the governor-general of Diyarbakır, which was the center of the eastern front, Divane Hüsrev Pasha was appointed in his place.
Suleiman made his first campaign on 18 May 1521 against Belgrade (then called Nándorfehérvár), under the rule of the Kingdom of Hungary. After the surrounding towns of Böğürdelen, Zemun, and Salankamen were taken, the city, besieged on 1 August, surrendered on 29 August 1521. Regarding the conquest of Belgrade, an important center for conquests and campaigns that could be carried out in Europe, the Holy Roman Empire's envoy to Istanbul used the words: "The capture of Belgrade was the beginning of the events that caused the collapse of the Kingdom of Hungary. In the process that continued with the death of Louis II, the capture of Buda, and the occupation of Transylvania, the Hungarian Empire was destroyed, and a fear seized the other countries that they would experience a similar end."
Sources
- Turkish Wikipedia: tr.wikipedia.org
- English Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org