49 Fun Facts About Suleiman the Magnificent

How did Suleiman come to the throne in 1520?

As sole heir: his father had seized power by deposing his own father and killing his brothers, and left Suleiman no rival to fight.

Whom did Suleiman succeed as sultan in 1520?

Selim I had conquered Syria and Egypt in a reign of only eight years, so his son inherited an empire that now held Mecca and Medina, and could turn first to Europe.

Which palace did Suleiman enlarge to house the imperial harem alongside his court?

Topkapı Palace: the sultans' women had lived apart in an older palace before his reign. Once the harem moved in, Topkapı was both seat of government and family home, and stayed so until the 1850s.

Suleiman was the tenth sultan of whose dynasty?

Osman I led a small frontier principality in north-west Anatolia around 1300; by the tenth sultan of his line the state stretched from Hungary to the Persian Gulf.

In which Black Sea city was Suleiman born?

Trabzon: his father governed the province, and Suleiman grew up there until he was sent as a teenager to govern Kaffa in Crimea.

Which city did Suleiman capture in 1521, succeeding where his great-grandfather had failed?

Belgrade: John Hunyadi had beaten Mehmed II back from its walls in 1456. Its fall opened the Danube road into Hungary, whose army Suleiman destroyed five years later.

The 1522 conquest of Rhodes drove out which military order?

Knights Hospitaller: Suleiman let the survivors sail away with their arms, and seven years later Charles V gave the homeless order a new base on Malta.

Which fortress facing Rhodes is Suleiman said to have rebuilt as a base for his 1522 invasion?

Marmaris Castle: the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi says Suleiman ordered it rebuilt before the campaign, and in July 1522 he marched his army to its bay and crossed to the island.

Which Hungarian king died fleeing the Battle of Mohács in 1526?

Louis II, aged 20, is said to have drowned in a stream as he fled the rout. He left no legitimate heir, so his Habsburg brother-in-law claimed the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia.

Which Hungarian nobleman did Suleiman back for the throne after Mohács?

John Zápolya, governor of Transylvania, had missed the battle with his army intact. The lesser nobles crowned him that November, while the great magnates chose Ferdinand of Austria.

Which city withstood a siege by Suleiman in 1529?

Vienna: rain on the march had forced Suleiman to leave much of his heavy artillery stuck in the mud, and after a last assault failed he turned for home.

Little Güns held off Suleiman's army through August 1532, costing him what?

The campaign season: the small fort held out until the end of August, and with summer nearly gone Suleiman turned for home without ever meeting the Habsburg army.

By the 1533 Treaty of Constantinople, Ferdinand I recognised Suleiman as what?

His 'father and suzerain': Ferdinand also agreed to pay a yearly tribute and gave up his claim to all but a western strip of Hungary, which freed Suleiman to march east against Persia.

Suleiman's chancery denied Emperor Charles V his imperial title, styling him only as what?

King of Spain: in Ottoman eyes there could be only one emperor, and Suleiman, ruling from Constantinople, claimed the title of Caesar of Rome for himself.

Which Hungarian castle repelled Suleiman's forces in 1552 under István Dobó?

Eger: some 2,000 defenders beat off an Ottoman army many times their number through five weeks of assaults, and King Ferdinand rewarded Dobó by making him governor of Transylvania.

Which Persian dynasty was Suleiman's main enemy in the east?

Safavids: after a crushing defeat by Suleiman's father, the Shia dynasty refused open battle and scorched the earth instead, so three Ottoman invasions never destroyed it.

Which city surrendered to Suleiman without a fight in 1534, opening Ottoman access to the Persian Gulf?

Baghdad had been abandoned by its Persian garrison. Suleiman wintered there and rebuilt the ruined shrine of Abu Hanifa, founder of the school of Islamic law the Ottomans followed.

Which 1555 treaty, the first between the Ottoman and Persian empires, ended Suleiman's eastern wars?

Peace of Amasya: the Shah's envoy came to the Anatolian town where Suleiman had wintered with his army, and the deal split Armenia and Georgia between the two empires.

Which corsair ruler of Algiers did Suleiman make grand admiral and charge with rebuilding the Ottoman fleet?

Barbarossa, born Khizr on Lesbos, repaid the appointment in 1538 by beating Charles V's fleet at Preveza, which left the Ottomans masters of the eastern Mediterranean for three decades.

Which French king allied with Suleiman against the Habsburgs?

Francis I: after Charles V captured him at Pavia in 1525, his mother appealed to the sultan for help, and by 1543 an Ottoman fleet was wintering in the French port of Toulon.

Which Arabian port did the Ottomans seize in 1538 as a base against the Portuguese?

Aden fell without a siege: the Ottoman admiral lured its ruler, an ally of the Portuguese, aboard his ship and had him killed, then sailed on to attack Portuguese Diu in India and failed.

Which Southeast Asian sultanate sent envoys to Suleiman asking for help against the Portuguese?

Aceh's envoys reached Istanbul while Suleiman was away on his final campaign, so it was his successor who sent gunsmiths and cannon; most of the promised fleet was kept back to fight a revolt in Yemen.

Which corsair helped the Ottoman fleet capture Tripoli from the Knights of Malta in 1551?

Turgut Reis, known in Europe as Dragut, did not get the city he had helped to take: its governorship went first to Murad Agha, and he took over only some years later, making Tripoli a corsair base.

How did the Great Siege of Malta end in 1565?

A Spanish relief force saved the island, landing from Sicily after nearly four months of siege. The knights' grand master, Jean de Valette, then built the fortified capital that still bears his name, Valletta.

Suleiman's legal code brought together sharia and which other body of Ottoman law?

Kanun was the sultan's own law on taxes, land and crime, in theory only a supplement to sharia. Codifying it is why Turks know Suleiman as Kanuni, 'the Lawgiver', not 'the Magnificent'.

Which Grand Mufti helped Suleiman reform Ottoman law?

Ebussuud Efendi held the empire's highest religious office for almost 29 years and squared the sultan's decrees with sharia. Under Suleiman's successor, his ruling gave legal cover for the invasion of Venetian Cyprus.

On whose advice did Suleiman issue a decree denouncing blood libels against Jews?

His physician, Moses Hamon, came from a family of Jewish doctors expelled from Spain. After Jews were falsely accused of murder, he had the sultan order that such charges go to the imperial council, not local judges.

Under what pen name did Suleiman write poetry?

Muhibbi means 'lover'. He signed close to 3,000 poems with it, more than almost any other sultan wrote, and addressed some of the best known to his wife Hürrem.

Besides poetry, in which craft was Suleiman personally skilled?

Goldsmithing: the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi records that the young prince was taught the craft by a Greek master, and historians of his reign still describe him as a goldsmith as well as a poet.

Which flower reached western Europe from Suleiman's empire in the 1550s?

Tulip: the Habsburg ambassador to Suleiman's court, Ogier de Busbecq, is credited with sending the first ones west. Within a century came tulip mania, the Dutch craze for rare bulbs that is still a byword for a speculative bubble.

The four-tiered crown Suleiman had made in 1532 was a riposte to whose three-tiered one?

The Pope's: the jewelled gold helmet, ordered from Venice through his grand vizier, stacked four crowns to outdo the papal tiara's three, and it was put on show before foreign envoys.

Who became Suleiman's chief court architect after years as a military engineer?

Mimar Sinan learned to build on campaign with the Janissaries, raising bridges and fortifications, and was about 50 when he got the post. He then designed hundreds of buildings before his death in 1588.

The Şehzade Mosque was built in memory of which of Suleiman's sons?

Mehmed, his eldest son with Hürrem, died in 1543 at about 21. The memorial mosque was the court architect's first major commission, and he later called it the work of his apprenticeship.

The walls that still ring which city's old quarter were built on Suleiman's orders?

Jerusalem had stood unwalled for three centuries, since a ruler of Damascus razed its defences in 1219 for fear crusaders would use them. Suleiman's ramparts still enclose the Old City.

By what name was Hürrem Sultan known in the West?

Roxelana probably refers to her Ruthenian roots: European envoys named her for her homeland, in what is now western Ukraine. Her court name, Hürrem, means 'the joyful one'.

How did Hürrem come to Constantinople?

Captured by Crimean Tatars and sold as a slave, she entered Suleiman's household around the time he took the throne, and within a year had borne him a son and displaced his earlier favourite.

By doing what did Suleiman break with a long-standing custom of the Ottoman sultans?

Marrying a concubine: sultans fathered their heirs in the harem and did not make the mothers legal wives. He broke a second custom too, keeping Hürrem at court instead of sending her to a province with a grown son.

With which Polish king did Hürrem exchange letters in her own name?

Sigismund II Augustus received two letters from her that still survive, written when he inherited the throne in 1548: she sent sympathy for his father's death and congratulations on his accession.

Ibrahim Pasha, Suleiman's closest friend and grand vizier, was born a Christian near which Venetian-held town?

Parga in Epirus: thought to be a sailor's son, he was carried off as a boy, by raiders in one account and by pirates in another, and became a slave in the household of the young prince Suleiman.

Which court post did Ibrahim Pasha hold before Suleiman raised him to grand vizier?

Royal falconer: Ibrahim went straight from the sultan's private household to the empire's highest office in 1523, and a senior vizier who had expected the job left for Egypt and rebelled.

How did Ibrahim Pasha die in 1536?

Strangled in the palace on Suleiman's orders: he was invited to break the Ramadan fast with the sultan and killed that night. He is remembered by two nicknames, Makbul, 'the favourite', and Maktul, 'the executed'.

Which of Suleiman's sons was killed with a bowstring in his father's tent in 1553?

Mustafa, his eldest surviving son and a favourite of the army, was summoned to the sultan's tent on campaign, where executioners were waiting. Grand vizier Rüstem Pasha, blamed for turning his father against him, was dismissed.

Which of Suleiman's sons fled to Persia after losing a civil war and was put to death there?

Bayezid lost to his brother's army near Konya and took refuge with the Shah, who after long bargaining handed him over to Ottoman executioners in return for a fortune in gold.

Who succeeded Suleiman in 1566?

Selim II inherited without a fight because every rival was dead: one brother had been executed on their father's orders and another killed after losing a civil war against him.

At which siege did Suleiman die in September 1566?

Szigetvár: he died in his tent shortly before the final assault, and the fortress fell within two days, after its commander led the last defenders out in a desperate sortie.

Which grand vizier hid Suleiman's death from the army for weeks?

Sokollu Mehmed Pasha let only the sultan's inner circle know. The death was kept quiet for some seven weeks and announced only when the new sultan reached the army on its march home.

Which of Suleiman's organs are said to lie buried in Hungary rather than Istanbul?

His heart and liver, tradition says, were buried where his tent had stood, and a shrine with a mosque and dervish lodge grew up there. Historians doubt the tale, which appears only in later accounts.

In which Shakespeare play does a prince boast of beating 'Sultan Solyman' three times?

The Merchant of Venice: the Prince of Morocco, wooing Portia, swears by the scimitar that 'won three fields of Sultan Solyman', then picks the gold casket and loses her.

Suleiman's relief portrait appears in the House Chamber of which building?

The United States Capitol: carved in marble in 1950, he is one of 23 lawgivers over the gallery doors, chosen for shaping the principles behind American law. All the profiles turn towards a full-face Moses.