Encyclopaedia of Islam

He was born at Trebizond where his father, the future sultan Selīm I, had his residence as a sand̲j̲aḳ beg. Three different dates have been suggested for his birth: 6 November 1494; 27 April 1495; and April or May 1496 (see Meḥmed T̲h̲üreyyā, Sid̲j̲ill-i ʿot̲h̲mānī, i). One tradition, apparently going back to Jovius (see A. Fisher, in Süleymān the Second 9, n. 20), has it that his mother Ḥafṣa, a Tatar, was the daughter of the Crimean k̲h̲ān Mengli Giray, or of a Turkish woman; a document relating to a mosque founded in her name at Manisa showing her to be a convert to Islam denies this legend (Ç. Uluçay, Padişahların kadınları ve kızları (1980) 27).

His childhood was spent at Trebizond, where he was taught by a certain Ḵh̲ayr ul-Dīn Efendi, who remained in his entourage and where, according to Ewliyā Čelebi, he learned how to be a goldsmith from a Greek master-craftsman. He first governed as prince ( s̲h̲ehzāde ) at Kefe [q.v.] (Caffa, Feodosiya) in the east of the Crimea. In 1513 Süleymān became sand̲j̲aḳ beg of Manisa, a post which he occupied until his actual accession in 1520. In the interim, however, there were two separate occasions when Selīm appealed for his help during his absences. In 1514-15, during the campaign in Persia, he ensured that the lieutenancy for his father was maintained in Istanbul; and in 1516-18 he was put in charge of the defence of Adrianople in the campaign against the Mamlūks. He returned to Manisa on the premature death of his father (see Uluçay, in Kanunî armaǧanı, who publishes the registers of the transactions of the s̲h̲ehzāde ).

Eight days later he had arrived in Istanbul, where his accession took place without any problems or unrest, for there were no brothers who were likely to dispute the claims of Süleymān to the throne. His reign began on 17 S̲h̲awwāl 926/15 September 1520 and was the longest in Ottoman history. It coincided with the zenith of empire, when power and prestige were at its height. Observers of Ottoman decline were in retrospect to see this as a golden age and an absolute reference point, which justifies considering it as a unit (cf. e.g. the ʿadālet-nāme of 1595 in Inalcik, Adâletnâmeler, in Belgeler, ii/3-4, 104-5). Nevertheless, there is an opinion that the period of his reign could be subdivided into two which is very old (Ḳoči Beg, for example, thought that the threat of Ottoman decline could be traced from the end of his great reign).

At the beginning, the new sovereign was scarcely known and he was overshadowed by the overwhelming power of his awesome father, but he was seen as a just and peace-loving young man (cf. for example the Venetian forecast in Sanudo, Diarii, 29, Venice 1890, col. 357). His first actions, even though they were always symbolic, clearly pointed in this direction. At the same time, the energy and pugnacity of the new master were glaringly apparent to the world. The beglerbeg of Syria and Palestine, Ḏj̲ānbardī G̲h̲azālī, a former Mamlūk chief, thought that the time had come to start a rebellion, but he was quickly subdued by a punitive force. Above all, there began an impressive series of “imperial campaigns” (seferi-i humāyūn ) from the spring of 1521 onwards, ten in Europe and three in Asia, in which the sovereign participated in person.

Momentarily forsaking the Persian scene in which his father had been involved, he turned to the West to seek his primary objectives, this time not only withan eye to their strategic value but once again also for their symbolic significance. Taking as a pretext the ill treatment inflicted on his emissary Behrām Čawus̲h̲, Süleymān forced the surrender of Belgrade on 29 August 1521 after his armies had taken Sabacz and Semlin and had ravaged the countryside between the Save and the Drave. He was then able to go on and seize the “key to Hungary” and to succeed where his great-grandfather Meḥemmed II “The Conqueror” had failed in 1456.

His next target was the island of Rhodes, which was a fearsome stronghold held by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem and a base for regular piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean [see rodos ]. Süleymān launched a fleet of some 235 vessels against Rhodes and mobilised about 200,000 men. The siege went on into the winter and the fleet took shelter in the Sea of Marmara. The Knights capitulated on 21 December 1522, but only after five months of ordeal. The Conqueror kept his promise which he had made to them, that they could leave the island in freedom, and this contributed to his reputation for reliability. After these two great feats, there followed a period of military inaction on the part of the sultan, and then he decided to embark on a new campaign, against Louis of Hungary, to whom a second emissary had been sent in 1524 but in vain.

Süleymān and his Grand Vizier Ibrāhīm Pas̲h̲a [q.v.] set out on a march in April 1526, but because of the severity of the weather the army was only able to reach Belgrade in July. In the end, the Hungarian heavy cavalry was hewn to pieces by the fire of the Ottoman artillery, and Süleymān pursued them as far as Buda, which he entered on 11 September, without having met any opposition.

He occupied the Hungarian capital only for about ten days and then hastened to return to his own capital, constrained by news learned in the course of his retreat of the serious Turkoman revolts which had broken out in Cilicia and in Ḳaramān; these were not crushed until the summer of 1528. After his dazzling successes of 1526, Süleymān contented himself with annexing the two counties of the region south of the Danube, Szerém and Valko, as well as with the rich booty he had gathered from Buda.

The Voivode of Transylvania, Janós Szapolyai or John Zapolaya (1487-1540), took advantage of the fact the Ottomans had abandoned the centre of the kingdom and had himself elected as king by an assembly of nobles at Székesféhervár (11 November 1526). But the brother of Charles V, Ferdinand of Habsburg, Archduke of Austria, soon to become king of Bohemia in February 1528, was also being enthroned (by a more limited assembly, the Diet in Bratislava, 17 December 1526).

Süleymān was obliged to choose between these two rivals, each of whom sent him ambassadors. On the advice of Ibrāhīm and his favourite Aloïs Gritti, the natural son of the Doge, he quite logically opted for Szapolyai; he made him his vassal in February 1528 after negotiations in Istanbul with Hieronymus Laski, the palatin or Sieradz (December 1527-February 1528). But Ferdinand did not disarm, and his troops took possession of Buda. Therefore, despite the immense difficulties involved in these enterprises because of the distance and the problems of administration, a third Hungarian campaign was forced upon Süleymān.

The sultan left his capital on 10 May but did not reach Belgrade until 17 July. On 18 August, when again passing through Mohács, a place now symbolic to him, he gave an audience to János Szapolyai, whodid homage to him, and Süleymān confirmed him as king of Hungary. He retook Buda without any difficulty and then made for Vienna, which he did not reach until 27 September. Then there began the famous siege, which was to be lifted on 14 October after four vain attempts to attack before the rapid arrival of winter.

The Ottoman failure was obviously linked to problems of climate and insurmountable logistics, but it was deliberately masked by Ottoman propaganda. Süleymān confirmed his support of Szapolyai, to whom he restored the crown of St. Stephen. This allowed him in 1538 to have an inscription engraved in the citadel of Bender: “I am the Sultan who seized the crown and the throne of Hungary and restored them to a humble slave” (M. Guboglu, Paleografia şi diplomatica turco-osmana, Bucharest 1958, 167, facs. no. 7; idem, L'inscription turque de Bender relative à l'expédition de Soliman le Magnifique eh Moldavie (1538/945), in Studia et Acta Orientalia, i [Bucharest 1958], 175-87).

During this period, rivalry with the Habsburgs reached its height, Hungary being only one of the stakes of a profound antagonism which placed the Ottomans against the Habsburgs. Charles V, who had been elected as head of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire from 1519, had himself crowned by Pope Clement VII at Bologna in 1530; Ferdinand, who had been elected King of the Romans by the diet of Cologne in January 1531, subsequently had himself crowned as such at Aachen in January 1532.

Süleymān was master of the world, unique by nature, hence his refusal to acknowledge that the Habsburgs had any imperial title. Charles V was for him only “the king of Spain” (Ispanya ḳi̊rali̊) and Ferdinand only “the king of Vienna” (Beč ḳi̊rali̊) or “king of the Czechs” (Čeḥ ḳi̊rali̊). Charles V, even more than Ferdinand, was to be the principal target of the fourth campaign of Süleymān in Europe, termed the “German campaign against the King of Spain” (Chr. Turetschek, Die Türkenpolitik Ferdinands I. von 1529 bis 1532, [Vienna 1968]). The triumphal arches, the exceptional pomp flaunted by the sovereign, the unusual tiara crafted at that time by a consortium of the Venetian goldsmiths, all served one purpose of clearly intimating to Christendom the claims of the Ottomans (O. Kurz, A gold helmet made in Venice for Sultan Sulayman the Magnificent, in Gazette des beaux-arts, lxxiv [1969] 249-58; for the interpretation of this object, see G. Necipoǧlu-Kafadar, Suleymân the Magnificent and the representation of power in the context of the Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal rivalry in The Art Bulletin, lxxi [1989]).

From a military point of view, the campaign was less brilliant, and was principally outstanding because of the laborious siege of the little town of Güns (Köseg) and the devastating raids into Styria, at the heart of the patrimonial possessions of the Habsburgs, and in Slavonia (Tārīk̲h̲-i sefer-i-ẓāfer-i Alaman, Istanbul, Süleymaniye, Kadi-zade Mehmed küt., no. 557; Feridūn Beg, i, 577 ff.; von Hammer, v, 158-75). However, the threat was sufficiently impressive to drive the Habsburgs to seek a truce. Süleymān granted this to them in July 1533 on the basis of the status quo in the dividing up of Hungary between Ferdinand and Szapolyai, who were both to become tributaries of the Sultan.

Until then, Süleymān had appeared more pragmatic than his father with regard to the Ṣafawids of S̲h̲īʿī Persia, who exerted their religious influence on the Turkoman ḳi̊zi̊lbas̲h̲ of Anatolia. It is true that the death of S̲h̲āh Ismāʿīl in 1524 had brought with it the long-standing minority of his successor S̲h̲āh Ṭahmāsp, thus weakening the Ṣafawid state. Since his accession, Süleymān had put an end to the commercial blockade against Persia and was content to address warnings (tehdīd-nāme) to the young Ṭahmāsp to renounce his S̲h̲īʿism.

However, the schemings of provincial governors on both sides were to give him the excuse to intervene. The first of these was in 1528 and concerned the offer to surrender of a Ṣafawid governor, Ḏh̲u 'l-Fiḳār Beg, who had seized Bag̲h̲dād and had refused to acknowledge the authority of the S̲h̲āh. He was executed shortly afterwards, but he provided a pretext for Ottoman claims to Bag̲h̲dād. Then in 1530-1 it was the turn of the Ṣafawid governor of Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān, Olame Takalu, to come and offer his services to Istanbul, where he began by obtaining the disgrace of his personal enemy, S̲h̲eref Beg, the amīr of Bitlis. The latter left to seek the aid of the S̲h̲āh, who unwisely took his part and thus triggered the Ottoman reprisal. Fatwā s were issued which obliged the sultan to restore the s̲h̲arīʿa and to root out heresy (rafḍ u ilḥād ). At the end of 1533, Ibrāhīm Pas̲h̲a, once again appointed serʿasker , was despatched at the head of a great army to recover Bitlis, which had reverted to the Ottomans before his intervention, and to prepare to take Bag̲h̲dād and Arab ʿIrāḳ.

In the following spring, he embarked on the conquest of Persia and reached Tabrīz in mid-July. S̲h̲āh Ṭahmāsp had abandoned it to him, having resolved never to enter into combat with the Ottoman army. The sultan had left Istanbul with a reinforcement army in June 1554 and rejoined Ibrāhīm in Tabrīz on the 28th of the following September, after a journey through Erzind̲j̲an, Erzurum and the southern fringes of Lake Van. The Ottoman army then headed for ʿIrāḳ.

The sultan entered Bag̲h̲dād on 30 November without meeting any opposition. In the winter which followed, he devoted himself to organising new conquests and marked his conquest of Bag̲h̲dād with several acts of religious significance, including pilgrimages to Nad̲j̲af and Karbalā, the building of a dome over the remains of the great lawyer Abū Ḥanīfa and the restoration of the tomb of the founder of the Ḳādiriyya, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ ʿAbd al-Ḳādir al-Ḏj̲īlānī. But on learning that the Persians were threatening to take Van, Süleymān brought his stay in Bag̲h̲dād to an end to go to Tabrīz in pursuit of the S̲h̲ah. But when, after a laborious journey across the Zagros, the sultan again reached the capital of Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān, Ṭahmāsp, true to his tactics of avoidance, had already abandoned it. In August, Süleymān gave the order to return to Istanbul, which he did not reach until the beginning of 1536. From this campaign, known as that of the “Two ʿIrāḳs”, the empire retrieved Bag̲h̲dād and the regions of Erzurum and Van, which would remain the long-term bastions of the eastern frontier.

Two months after the end of the campaign, in the night of 14-15 March 1536 Ibrāhīm Pas̲h̲a was strangled in a bedroom of the Topkapı palace. This is how that brilliant protagonist, a product of the dew-s̲h̲irme [q.v.], the friend from his youth of a master who had raised him to the position of Grand Vizier and had supported him there for thirteen years as a mark of his continuing favour, left the stage. The elevated position enjoyed by Ibrāhīm was clearly far superior to that of any of the Grand Viziers before or after him, and was marked by his use in foreign correspondence of unprecedented titles such as ḳāʾimaḳām-i salṭanāt, serʿasker-i sāmī mertebet, and above all serʿasker-sulṭān, used during the campaign of the “Two ʿIrāḳs”.

The question arises as to whether he took advantage of the weakness of the sultan or whether they had come to an agreement over the division of roles. The end of Ibrāhīm at least attested the wish of Süleymān to put a stop to that experience, even if the immediate causes of the event must remain conjectural.

It was this turning point in his reign that brought to a close the period of his most spectacular conquests, but it in no way ended the military activity of Süleymān. On the contrary, in the remaining thirty years of his life he was to lead seven more campaigns. During the course of these operations, the fleet which had already been put to the test at Rhodes became increasingly important. However, the sultan understood that it needed to be reinforced in order to be able to withstand the maritime threat of his adversaries, in particular, of the Habsburgs, in the Mediterranean. The latter had had at their disposal since 1528 the assistance of an admiral of the first order, the Genoese Andrea Doria. This was the reason for the eager welcome given by the sultan to offers of service by privateers, the most important of whom was Ḵh̲ayr ul-Dīn Barbarossa [q.v.], the holder of power in Algiers, who was not only a mariner but an organiser on a large scale, and he made him his ḳapudan pas̲h̲a in 1533.

This was also the period when the two parties concerned tried to bring about a diplomatic revolution for the age; the alliance between the Most Christian King Francis I and the Ottoman ruler. After the plea for help from the Frenchman, who was defeated and made captive at Pavia (1525), the Ottoman realised the advantage of holding a pawn on the chessboard of Christian Europe.

This alliance of the two principal enemies of the Habsburgs was given new impetus at sea through Barbarossa, once he had become ḳapudan pas̲h̲a , and this gave an increased opportunity of producing actual military results. The instructions given to the French ambassador Jean de la Forêt did not only include the pursuit of commercial and judicial guarantees but also comprised plans of joint action against Charles V: Francis I was to penetrate into Lombardy, while Süleymān would attack the kingdom of Naples by land and sea from a base in Albania, with the French fleet envisaged as joining up with that of Barbarossa. But things did not proceed as expected. Francis I did not attack Milan. His fleet was very much delayed and did not reach Avlonya until 10 September. Süleymān, for his part, gave up his attack on Naples, and because his relations with Venice had deteriorated, on 26 August he arrived at last at Corfu in order to mount a siege against this possession of the Most Serene Republic. He lifted it when the French fleet eventually arrived, for it was growing late in the season. Though Corfu was saved, Barbarossa went on to seize the greater part of the Aegean islands which were still in the possession of the Venetian patricians.

Apart from this, on 28 September 1538 he achieved the greatest Ottoman naval success at Preveze [q.v.] in the Gulf of Arta, where he put to flight the joint naval forces of Spain and Venice led by Andrea Doria. Venice was driven to making concessions. The ʿahd-nāme in the form of a nis̲h̲ān which was issued by the sultan on 2 October 1540, was to establish peace between the two powers until the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus. The sultan acquired Nauplia and Monemvasia in the Peloponese, Vrana and Nadin on the Bosnian frontier as well as numerous Aegean islands (such as Naxos, Paros, Santorino and Andros). Therewas control of access by Venetian ships to Ottoman ports, and guarantees necessary for the smooth running of commerce between the two states were formulated.

In the same summer of 1538, Süleymān intervened on his own account on the Lower Danube, where he went to quell a vassal, the Voivode of Moldavia, Petru Rareş, who was suspected of intrigues with Vienna and whose designs on Pokucia (the region of Kolomiyya and Snyatyn) risked impairing the alliance between the sultan and Poland. From 15 to 22 September 1538, Süleymān occupied Suceava, nominated a new Voivode and withdrew from Moldavia, but not without annexing the south-east of the country, the region between the Prut and the Dniestr (Bud̲j̲aḳ [q.v.]) along with the fortress of Bender (Rum. Tighina). Thus he completed the Ottoman military system north of the Black Sea and secured land links with another vassal, the k̲h̲ān of the Crimea.

In the years which followed, the attention of Süleymān was redirected to Hungary where the situation remained ambiguous and unstable. His tributary Janós Szapolyai remained under the thumb of Ferdinand of Habsburg, who had in February 1538 imposed on him the secret treaty of Varad (Oradea), by which both protagonists kept their title of King of Hungary and their respective possessions in the country; but Szapolyai was committed to transferring his rights to Ferdinand after his death. Now a late marriage to Isabella, one of the daughters of Sigismund of Poland, produced a son who was born several days after his own death in July 1540.

His chief advisor, Georges Martinuzzi-Utiešenović, the bishop of Varad, had the infant proclaimed king at Buda and asked the sultan to recognise “the son of King John”, the one whom the Ottomans were to call “Istefan”. Meanwhile, Ferdinand rallied to his cause most of the Hungarian lords and laid siege to Buda from May 1541 onwards. Süleymān reoccupied Buda at the end of July. He finally decided on the transformation of the central part of the kingdom into an Ottoman province (the beglerbegilik of Budun) and allocated to Istefan, whose guardian was to be “brother George”, “the land of Transylvania”, which meant in reality not only the actual voivodate of Transylvania but also all the eastern region of the ancient former kingdom of Hungary, with the northern and western parts of the country remaining to Ferdinand.

For the Banat of Temesvár, the sultan recognised more especially the authority of Petro Petrovics, a Serb by birth who was related to Szapolyai, on whom he conferred a sand̲j̲aḳ by investiture. From 1543 onwards, Transylvania paid him a tribute of 10,000 pieces of gold which then increased to 15,000. In the summer of 1543, Süleymān set out again for Hungary, having prepared his campaign particularly carefully and having provided on an unprecedented scale for its provisioning and logistics. Numerous places were conquered (Valpo, Sziklos, Pécs, and especially important, Esztergom and Székesféhervár), but it took more than that to knock Ferdinand out of the game.

The Ottoman policy of attrition continued during the following summer, this time led by the beg of the frontiers. The projected campaign for the summer of 1545 was nevertheless abandoned in view of the progress of negotiations with Ferdinand, on whom it also managed to apply pressure. The successful outcome of these negotiations led to successive truces, and a five-year peace treaty was concluded in June 1547. While this peace treaty confirmed the territorial status quo, it also instituted the payment ofa tribute to the Sublime Porte of thirty thousand ducats per year by the Archduke.

From this time onwards, Süleymān had his hands free for affairs on the Persian frontier where, since 1536, tension had been limited to sporadic border incidents. A pretext for intervention was provided for him by the flight of Elḳas Mirzā, the brother of S̲h̲ah Ṭahmāsp and governor of S̲h̲irwān, who came to Istanbul to seek the sultan's help (cf İA art. Elḳas Mirza; J.R. Walsh, The revolt of Alqas Mirza, in WZKM , lxviii [1976], 61-78). In the spring of 1548 the sultan, who had not been on campaign for five years, once again set off for Persia, and on his way through Anatolia met his sons the s̲h̲ehzāde s in their respective spheres of provincial government. He got as far as Tabrīz without meeting any resistance, as the S̲h̲āh had, according to his usual preference, declined battle and, in the hope of eluding him, had withdrawn into the steppelands and deserts.

Süleymān then left in the direction of Van, which he besieged. Van had been conquered in 1534 but retaken by the Persians the following year. On 25 August, after a brief resistance, Van fell [see wān ]. The sultan fortified the citadel and, leaving a strong garrison there, departed in the direction of Diyārbekir and Aleppo, where he spent the winter.

A campaign against the Georgians of Akhaltzikhé, who had conducted a raid in the frontier zones, led to a reinforcement of Ottoman control of the Tortum region. As for Elḳas Mīrzā, he did not succeed in launching the expected uprising in Persia, but fell into the hands of S̲h̲āh Ṭahmāsp, whose overthrow then ceased to be the priority of the day.

Süleymān set out again for Istanbul, which he reached on 21 December 1549 (for information of this campaign, see J. Chesneau, Le voyage de Monsieur d'Aramon, ambassadeur pour le Roy en Levant, ed. Ch. Schefer, Paris 1887). In the following years, S̲h̲āh Ṭahmāsp emerged again. Ṣafawid horsemen set out to raid and plunder in 1551, and the troops of the beglerbeg of Erzurum, Iskender Pas̲h̲a, suffered reverses. A new Persian campaign was then planned but the Grand Vizier, Rüstem Pas̲h̲a [q.v.], who had received the title of serdār, was put in charge; Süleymān declined to take part. His refusal strengthened the opinion in the army that the age of the sultan meant that he was no longer able to play the role of military commander-in-chief which the soldiers under him expected of him.

A rumour then emerged that his son Muṣṭafā intended to take over from his father. Faced with this danger, Süleymān changed his plans and set out for Anatolia at the end of August 1553, entrusting to his son Bāyezīd the defence of the European frontiers, with the office of muḥāfiẓ of Edirne, which he himself had held in the past. On the way, he was joined by the princes Selīm and Muṣṭafā with their respective troops. On 6 October, near Ereğli in Ḳaramān, after the ceremony of kissing hands, Süleymān had his son Muṣṭafā executed as a presumed rebel (Y.T. Ünal, Şehzade Mustafaʾnın Ereğlide idam edilmesi, in Anıt xxviii [1961], 9-22; Uluçay in İA, art. Mustafa Sultan) and dismissed the Grand Vizier Rüstem Pas̲h̲a. Then he set off again to spend the winter in Aleppo. He did not start travelling again until April 1554, which was the real beginning of what was to become the campaign of Nak̲h̲čevān [q.v.]. He reached Ḳars by way of Diyārbekir and Erzurum, then went into Nak̲h̲čevān on 28 July. Being unable to make contact with the S̲h̲āh, the sultan ravaged the frontier zones of Persia and Ḳarabāg̲h̲ [q.v.]. Once he had reachedthis goal he withdrew, and then contacts with S̲h̲āh Ṭahmāsp ended in a truce concluded in September. The sultan arrived at Amasya on 30 October and spent the winter there, and there he received a delegation from the S̲h̲āh, with whom he concluded the so-called peace of Amasya in May 1555, which formalised the official status quo of the territories of the two empires: the Ottomans kept ʿIrāḳ, a good part of Kurdistān and Eastern Armenia, but gave up Tabrīz, Erivan and Nak̲h̲čevān. This period of participation in person in military operations and a phase in his reign both came to an end in the 1550s.

After the victory at Preveza and the end of the war with Venice, in August-September 1543, Barbarossa, acting within the framework of the Franco-Ottoman alliance, laid siege to Nice, a possession of Savoy; he then went on to spend the following winter with his fleet as the guest of the King of France in the port of Toulon. Later, other corsairs were to play an active role in the naval operations commissioned by the sultan, as for example the capture of Tripoli in 1551 which was carried out by Murād Ag̲h̲a and Ṭorg̲h̲ud Reʾīs [q.v.] (Dragut; see St. Yerasimos in Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, 529-47). In 1560 the sultan had his last great naval success, when Piyāle Pas̲h̲a [q.v.], then ḳapudan pas̲h̲a , put to flight the troops of Philip II, king of Spain, from the island of Djerba. By contrast, the massive siege of Malta in 1565 ended in failure. But in the following year, Piyāle Pas̲h̲a again seized the island of Chios, which was the last Genoese possession in the archipelago (Ş. Turan, in Kanunî armağanı, 79-109). Other naval activities were mounted on the Eastern front in order to counter the attempts of the Portugese to capture the former maritime trade routes of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf for the benefit of their route through the Indian Ocean.

In 1538 the beglerbeg of Egypt, Ḵh̲ādim Süleymān Pas̲h̲a [q.v.], who had previously been commissioned to build a fleet at Suez, launched the so-called campaign against Diu in Gud̲j̲arāt with 72 ships. Firstly he seized Aden and then, in cooperation with the forces of Gud̲j̲arāt, was engaged in the Indian Ocean in 1535-6 in laying siege to the fortress built by the Portugese at Diu. He abandoned his efforts in the following November to return to Egypt; he reorganised on his way the province of Yemen around Aden and Zabid (H. Melzig, Hadım Süleyman Paşanın Hind seferi, Istanbul 1943; S. Özbaran, Osmanlı imparatoluğu ve Hindistan yolu, in Tarih Dergisi, xxxi [1978], 98-104). In 1552, a second offensive led by Pīrī Reʾīs [q.v.] was carried out against the Portugese. He left Suez with 25 galleys and 4 galleons, with 850 soldiers on board, and pillaged Muscat on his way; he then laid siege to Ormuz, which had been occupied by the Portugese since 1515. Pīrī Reʾīs did not succeed in capturing the island, and even failed to bring back his galleys, and this led to his execution (C. Orhonlu, Hint kaptanlığı ve Piri Reʾis, in Belletin, xxxiv, 134 [1970], 235-54).

In 1554 Sīdī ʿAlī Reʾīs left Baṣra and was involved in the only serious confrontation between the Portugese and the Ottomans. He lost several ships there before suffering a terrible storm on the coast of Makrān. He finally gained refuge in Sūrat [q.v.], when the remainder of his fleet dispersed (Seydī ʿAlī Reʾīs, Mirʾāt ul-memālik, Istanbul 1313/1895). It is clear that, in sum, Süleymān succeeded in preventing the complete annihilation of trade in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf but failed to dislodge the Portugese from the Sea of Oman and the north-western shores of India.

This more or less favourable view which has been taken of the war leader should not obscure the aspect of the man and the statesman which has been of more interest to recent historiographers. By general opinion, Süleymān demonstrated the physical majesty commensurate with his rank. Commentators are equally agreed on his private virtues: frugality, temperance, modesty, loyalty, generosity, faithfulness to his word, piety and even a tendency to mysticism which had been encouraged from the time of his youth at Manisa by the influence of the Ḵh̲alwetī (Sünbülī) s̲h̲eyk̲h̲ Merkez Efendi, whom he invited to take part in the Corfu campaign (N. Clayer, Mystiques, État et société. Les Halvetis dans l'aire balkanique de la fin du XV ^e siècle à nos jours, Leiden 1994, 119-20). Then, subsequently deriving confidence from his first victories, he experienced a firmly-rooted faith in his privileged support by God (teʾyīd-i ilāhī ). It has even been shown that, in the first years of his reign, he was the focus of current thought concerning the generalised Messianic hopes of that time, appearing to some people as the ṣāḥib-ḳirān [q.v.]. This Messianic excitement of the first years of his reign co-existed with an extraordinary taste for splendour, and this certainly went hand-in-hand with an acute sensitivity to propaganda. Conversely, he also established an eclectic aestheticism, which probably developed from the booty acquired in the West as well as from the humanist, Renaissance tastes of his vizier Ibrāhīm Pas̲h̲a, tastes far removed from the strict principles of Islam.

However, things changed greatly, later on, once Ibrāhīm Pas̲h̲a was removed from power and the mood of the sultan darkened with age. His religious feelings began to turn to a strict austerity which bordered on puritanism, which naturally ran counter to the passions of his youth. Even the most favourable opinions on the grandeur of the sovereign are not without reserve. Did not the unprecedented influence exerted on him by succeeding relatives show evidence of a certain lack of character? Nevertheless, an ability deliberately to delegate authority may also be observed, the very quality which his father had lacked. This goes equally well for the viziership of Ibrāhīm, and for the two long vizierships of Rüstem Pas̲h̲a in 1544-53 and in 1556-61, who was accused of avarice and corruption (T. Gökbilgin, Rüstem Paşa ve hakkındakı ithamlar, in Tarih Dergisi, viii, 11/12 [1956], 11-50), but who also stimulated remarkable progress in the domain of public finance and commerce.

Other aspects concerning his private life are more difficult to justify. He was deplorably given over to outside influences, particularly those of the harem. A first concubine of Süleymān, Gülbahār, is known. But it was another woman who held the centre position in the affections of the sultan; she was a slave of Ruthenian descent known in the West by the name of Roxelana and figuring in Ottoman sources under the appellation of Ḵh̲ürrem Sulṭān, Ḵh̲ürrem-S̲h̲āh Ḵh̲ātūn or Ḵh̲āsseki Ḵh̲ürrem Sulṭān. She became the legal spouse of Süleymān in 1534 [see k̲h̲urrem ].

There are records of eight sons born to Süleymān: three died at an early age; another, Ḏj̲ihāngīr, the son of Ḵh̲ürrem, was an invalid and though dearly loved, died in 1553. The other four sons held provincial governorships and were eligible to succeed their father: Muṣṭafā was the only one who was not a son of Ḵh̲ürrem. Meḥemmed was removed from the competition by his premature death in October 1543, and he was commemorated by the S̲h̲ehzāde mosque in Istanbul; then there remained Selīm (II) and Bāyezīd.

The style of the sovereign was very different from that of his father Selīm “the Cruel”, or of his great-grandfather Meḥemmed “the Conqueror”. His own style was that of a universal monarch devoted to realising the ideal of the tradition of the “mirrors of princes”. Order and justice were founded on the law which, in the Ottoman state, had two sources, the s̲h̲erīʿa, the canonical law of Islam, and the ḳānūn , the secular law emitted by the sultan. Süleymān was therefore to remain in Ottoman Turkish tradition as the Ḳānūnī, the one who at one and the same time formulated laws and supervised their application. In fact, the creation of a code of general law for the empire was attributed to him. It is preserved in several manuscripts copied during his reign or afterwards. Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that most of the provisions included in it in reality went back to the code of laws of Meḥemmed II (H. İnalcık, Süleyman the lawgiver, 117-36). The legislative works of the Ḳānūnī were therefore marked not so much by their originality but more by the effort exerted in compilation, systematisation, adaptation and diffusion. The kingpin in this enterprise was the nis̲h̲ānd̲j̲i̊ Ḏj̲elālzāde Muṣṭafā, the so-called “great” nis̲h̲ānd̲j̲i̊ , the celebrated chancellor of Süleymān.

Inasmuch as the Ottoman ḳānūn was given a new slant under Süleymān, it moved towards the reinforcement of centralisation. This implied for the sultan an increased hold on the land and on the reʿāyā there which could not be used without his express mandate. The acquisition of land was made possible in a limited way by large-scale, meticulous campaigns for registration on the ground, from which resulted the registration collections ( taḥrīr defteri) which made the reign of Süleymān the Golden Age for Ottoman land registration in pre-modern times. The general land registrations of the sand̲j̲aḳ of Anatolia and of Rūmeli in 1528, or of Eastern Anatolia in 1540, of Hungary in 1545-6, of Syria and Palestine in 1525-6 and 1538, were all launched in this way (for the list of the documents of land-registry, tapu ve tahrir defteri, kept in the archives of the presidency of the council in Istanbul, see Başbakanlık Osmanlı arşivi rehberi, Ankara 1992, 190-221). Such centralisation required the affirmation of the authority of the sultan over all his agents, as opposed to their being involved in the habitual process of forming private clienteles (M.T. Gökbilgin, Kanûnî Sultan Süleymanın timar ve zeamet tevcihi ile ilgili fermanları, in İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Dergisi, xvii [1967], 35-48, and Topkapı Saray Kütübhanesi, KK 888, fols. 338b, 357a, 366b, 393a). Conquests or new registrations gave him the opportunity to draw up codes of the provincial laws of Hungary, Syria and Egypt (the Grand Vizier Ibrāhīm Pas̲h̲a, the defterdār Iskender Čelebi and Ḏj̲elālzāde Muṣṭafā all participated in these), and also of Diyārbakır and of Erzurum. The effort of codification and diffusion of the ḳānūn was coupled with the unprecedented exaltation of the s̲h̲erīʿa, and more generally, of the Sunnī Muslim characteristics of the state, while only according a limited and marginalised position to the title of caliph in Süleymān's rhetoric.

Süleymān clearly played his role of “servant of the two holy sanctuaries” ( k̲h̲ādim al-ḥaramayn al-s̲h̲arīfayn) to the full by his pious bequests to Mecca and Medina and the care which he took to protect the Pilgrimage. On a wider front, by his titles and by his monumental inscriptions he proclaimed his pre-eminence over all the sovereigns in the world, and at the same time his supremacy within the bosom of Islam associated with the evidence of divine predilection whichhad singled him out. In fact, this primacy in the Muslim world also laid on him the obligation of coming to the aid of less important Muslim sovereigns.

Another reason which could equally explain the insistence of Süleymān on Muslim orthodoxy in his empire was the rivalry inherited from his father with the Ṣafawids of Persia and the threat of political and religious subversion inherent in their influence on the ḳi̊zi̊lbas̲h̲ Türkmens of Anatolia. This threat was evident in the great political and religious revolts of the first years of the reign of Süleymān: the revolt of Bābā Ḏh̲u 'l-Nūn in 1526, and the revolt of S̲h̲āh Ḳalender in 1527 (H. Sohrweide, Der Sieg der Safaviden in Persien und seine Rückwirkungen auf die Schiiten Anatoliens im 16. Jahrhundert, in Isl. xli [1965]; A. Allouche, The origins and development of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict 906-962/1500-1555, Berlin 1983).

The right-hand man of the sultan during this trend in increasing the Sunnī nature of the state was Ebū Suʿūd Efendi, the muftī of Istanbul from 1545 to 1574 (see abu 'l-suʿūd, and R.C. Repp, The müfti of Istanbul , Oxford 1986, 272-96). The application of the s̲h̲erīʿa in its Ḥanafī form (notably according to the treatise of Ibrāhīm al-Ḥalabī, the Multaḳā, Istanbul 1309; cf. Ş.S. Has, The use of the Multaqa 'l-Abhur in the Ottoman madrasas and in legal scholarship, in Osmanlı Araştırmaları, vii-viii [1988], 393-418) was stipulated for the ḳāḍī and, as it were, regulated by the writings of the muftī himself, his fetwās and his maʿrūḍāt (M.E. Düzdağ, Şeyhülislam Ebusuud Efendi fetvaları, Istanbul 1972; P. Horster, Zur Anwendung des islamischen Rechts im 16. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart 1935), but the cleavage between the ḳanūn and the s̲h̲erīʿa, on that point perceptible in several areas such as landed property, fiscal and penal matters, was reduced or blurred by the task of justifying and reformulating the ḳānūn according to the s̲h̲erīʿa. The sultan supervised the formation and the orthodoxy of the ʿulamā by the institution of numerous medreses.

Besides this, in a decisive way he reinforced the tendency which had already arisen during the preceding reigns to make the ʿilmiyye into a structural hierarchical body dependent on the state (İ.H. Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı devletinin ilmiye teşkilâtı, Ankara 1994; R.C. Repp, op. cit., 27-72; H. İnalcık, The Ruznamce registers of the Kadiasker of Rumeli as preserved in the Istanbul Müftülük, in Turcica xx [1988] 251-75). But Ebū Suʿūd (and through him the office of the muftī of Istanbul, which in that period was more often referred to by the title of muftī el-enām than by that of s̲h̲eyk̲h̲ ul-islām, which was imposed later) was put at the head of the order of clerics which was being formed (M. Zilfi, Sultan Süleymân and the Ottoman religious establishment, in Suleyman the Second, 112 ff.).

There are still more dimensions to the politics of the increasing of the Sunnī nature of the state. A firmān in 944/1537-8 arranged for the building of a mosque in every village (Maʿrūẓāt, in Milli Tettebüʿler Med̲j̲imūʿasi̊, ii, 338), while a policy of religious persecution was being conducted on a grand scale. But this in no way affected Christians or Jews who were conversely protected by their status as d̲h̲immī s, which was completely respected; rather, it concerned all forms of heresy or dissidence within Islam. Persecution took very different forms; as, for example, a lawsuit where dissidents were examined by the highest ʿulamā, if necessary in the presence of the sultan, like those who brought an action against Mollā Ḳābiḍ [q.v.] (1527), or various s̲h̲eyk̲h̲s of the Melāmī-Bayramī ṭāriḳa or of the güls̲h̲enī branch of the Ḵh̲alwetīs (A.Y. Ocak, Les réactions socio-religieuses contre l'idéologie ottomane et la ques- tion de zendeqa ve ilhâd (hérésie et athéisme) au XVI ^e siècle, in Turcica, xxi-xxiii [1991], 71-82; idem, Idéologie officielle et réaction populaire: un aperçu général sur les mouvements et les courants socio-religieux á l'époque de Soliman le Magnifique, in Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, 185-92).

Contemporary Christian observers who were more aware of the conquests of the Great Turk, of his personality and above all, of the matchless splendour of his court, accorded him the epithet “the Magnificent”. Before the morose austerity of his old age, Süleymān was indeed an incredible patron, by encouraging expert craftsmanship through the group which he supported in his Topkapı palace, or by giving external commissions to craftsmen in the capital, the provincial centres (Bursa, Iznik) or abroad (Venice, Brussels). This expertise encompassed skills concerning books (calligraphy, book-binding, illuminations, miniatures) as well as metal-working, wood carving, textiles, ceramics, sculpture in stone, and skills in setting precious stones. As a collector, he assembled in his palace Chinese porcelain from the Yüan dynasty and the beginning of the Ming dynasty as well as works of art picked up as booty during his conquests. He himself was a poet in the manner of his father Selīm and his great-uncle prince Ḏj̲em [q.v.], and composed a dīwān in Ottoman Turkish with some pieces in Persian under the pseudonym of Muḥibbī “he who loves with affection” (von Hammer, vi, 248). His work was dominated by the figure of his beloved, the k̲h̲āṣṣekī Ḵh̲ürrem, and many of his verses became popular.

However, it was in the realm of architecture where the sultan exercised his greatest, most spectacular and most constant patronage, since, even after he had abandoned the other arts, he continued building, with the closest possible scrutiny of operations, in a way which characterised classical Ottoman architecture. He commissioned in his own name or for his family a great number of buildings for manifold purposes; religious, charitable, utilitarian and military buildings were constructed both in Istanbul and in the rest of his empire. However, it was the capital, the historic cities of Islam and the eastern provinces that were more favoured by his patronage than European places (see the attempt at an inventory, though far from being exhaustive, made of buildings commissioned by the sultan in his own name and in that of his family by A. Kuran in Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, 217-25). Most of these constructions were the work of Miʿmār Sinān [q.v.] (miʿmār bas̲h̲i̊) from 1539 to 1588). The most grandiose of the buildings of Süleymān, the complex of the Süleymāniyye mosque and its subsidiary buildings, were constructed between 1550 and 1558; they cost 897,350 gold florins, which amounted to one-tenth of the budget for the empire in 1527-8.

The old sultan sprang one last surprise on the world in the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. His health had begun seriously to deteriorate from the end of the 1540s onwards, and during this time, periodic announcements were given out that he had died. But he was in no way daunted, and after more than ten years of military activity, he embarked on a new campaign in Hungary, driven, it would seem, by his last Grand Vizier Ṣoḳollu Meḥmed Pas̲h̲a [q.v.], who wanted to obliterate from memory the badly-failed siege of Malta in 1565; also, he wanted to react spectacularly to the encroachments attempted by the new emperor Maximilian II.

Süleymān was in pain, was irritable and in the worst of physical conditions, but nevertheless he per-sonally led the campaign of Szigetvár. On the way, he received his now adult protégé John Sigismund Szapolyai “the son of King John” with great pomp and circumstance. But on the night of the 20-1 Ṣafer 974/6 September 1566, in his tent under the walls of the fortress of Szitgetvár, which was being defended by Miklos Zrinyie, he breathed his last. He had begun the siege of this fortress on 5 August, and on the day after his death it fell. It seems that the remains of the sultan were eviscerated and were provisionally buried in secret under his tent.

There then followed what could be called the posthumous life of the sultan, which was organised with remarkable composure and authority by the Grand Vizier Ṣoḳollu, who was assisted by some very reliable followers (Selānikī, ed. İpşirli, 35-53). After the disagreement which took place in Belgrade between Selīm and the Janissaries, Ṣoḳollu protected the body of Süleymān from any further anger of the mutineers by hastily despatching it to Istanbul, in the custody of the advance guard of the army accompanied by the vizier Aḥmed Pas̲h̲a, by the governor of Egypt, ʿAlī Pas̲h̲a, by the former mīrāk̲h̲ur Ferhād Ag̲h̲a, by Nūr ul-Dīn-zāde and his Ṣūfīs, and by a modest escort of 400 cavalrymen.

Süleymān was buried according to his wishes in the cemetery of the Sülemāniyye, in a mausoleum built by Sinān. Its position, beside that of Ḵh̲ürrem, had been decided in his lifetime, but, in accordance with custom, this was probably not carried out on the orders of his son and successor Selīm II until after the interment (for a discussion on the chronology of this edifice, see N. Vatin and G. Veinstein, Les obsèques des sultans ottomans, in Les Ottomans et la mort: permanences et mutations, Leiden 1996, 233-5). The ceremony involved a reading of seven stanzas of a mert̲h̲iye by Bāḳī [q.v.], and this, according to Selānikī, “caused the entire nation to lament”.