Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman I ruled the Ottoman Empire for forty-six years, longer than any other sultan, and took it to its greatest extent. Born in 1494, he succeeded his father Selim I in 1520 with a treasury full from the conquest of Egypt and Syria and an army with no rival in Europe or Asia. He took Belgrade in 1521, which his great-grandfather Mehmed II had failed at, and Rhodes in 1522, expelling the Knights of St John who had held it for two centuries. At Mohács in August 1526 he destroyed the Hungarian army in about two hours and killed its king, and the kingdom that had held the Danube frontier for a century ceased to exist. He besieged Vienna in 1529 and failed, which fixed the limit of Ottoman expansion in Europe roughly where it stayed. His fleets under Barbarossa dominated the Mediterranean, and he took Baghdad and Iraq from the Safavids. Turks call him Kanuni, the Lawgiver, which is what he valued. He had the sultanic law codified and reconciled with religious law, regulated taxation and land tenure, and protected the non-Muslim millets and the Jewish refugees Spain had expelled. He wrote some 2,000 poems. He married Hürrem Sultan, a Ruthenian former slave known in Europe as Roxelana, breaking Ottoman practice by taking a legal wife and letting her stay at court — and she reshaped the succession, which cost him two sons. He had Mustafa strangled in his own tent in 1553 on a charge of conspiracy. He died on campaign in Hungary in 1566.
- Lived: 1494 CE – 1566 CE
- Nationality: Turkish
- Roles: sultan, ruler, head_of_state, legislator
