Suleiman the Magnificent
Key Facts
- Probably born on 6 November 1494 in Trabzon, the son of Sultan Selim I
- Ascended the Ottoman throne on 30 September 1520
- Took Belgrade in 1521 and Rhodes in 1522
- Crushed the Hungarian army at Mohács on 29 August 1526
- Besieged Vienna in vain in 1529
- Had the architect Sinan build the Süleymaniye Mosque, completed in 1557
- Died on 6 September 1566 at the siege of Szigetvár, after a reign of almost forty-six years
Biography
Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566) was the tenth sultan of the Ottoman Empire, which he ruled for almost forty-six years, from 1520 until his death. A conqueror feared by Christian Europe, a lawgiver whom Turkish tradition calls Kanuni, a patron of the arts and a poet, he embodied the zenith of Ottoman power, which then stretched from Hungary to the Persian Gulf.
The son of Sultan Selim I, he was probably born on 6 November 1494 in Trabzon, on the Black Sea, where his father was then governor. While still in his teens he governed provinces in his turn, notably Caffa in Crimea and then Manisa in Anatolia, the customary apprenticeship of Ottoman princes. On the death of Selim I he ascended the throne on 30 September 1520, aged twenty-five, inheriting an empire that his father had just enlarged with Syria and Egypt.
In 1521 he seized Belgrade, and in 1522 he drove the Knights of St John from the island of Rhodes after a five-month siege. On 29 August 1526 at Mohács he crushed the Hungarian army; King Louis II perished in the rout, which opened the way to Ottoman rule over much of Hungary. In 1529 he laid siege to Vienna but was forced to withdraw. An ally of King Francis I of France against the Habsburgs from the 1530s, he took Baghdad from the Safavid Persians and, after the victory at Preveza in 1538, his fleet under Barbarossa dominated the eastern Mediterranean.
Known as Kanuni, “the Lawgiver”, he had the laws of the empire harmonised, while the architect Sinan built for him in Constantinople the Süleymaniye Mosque, completed in 1557. Under the pen name Muhibbi he wrote poems in Turkish and Persian. Breaking with tradition, he married his former slave Hürrem, known in the West as Roxelana, and in 1553 he had his son Mustafa, accused of plotting against him, executed. In 1565 the siege of Malta, defended by the Knights of St John, ended in failure. Suleiman died during the night of 5 to 6 September 1566 beneath the walls of Szigetvár, in Hungary, while besieging the town; his son Selim II succeeded him.
The longest reign in Ottoman history marked both the zenith of the empire and the beginning of a slow loss of momentum in its expansion. His monuments, his laws and his conquests have made Suleiman, in the West as in Turkey, the most famous figure of the Ottoman dynasty.