Sultan Suleiman

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Sultan Suleiman

In Europe, they know Sultan Suleiman as a great soldier, but in Turkey he is called ‘The Lawmaker’. He also wrote poetry and made many of the most beautiful mosques we can still see today in Istanbul. Suleiman was head of the Ottoman Empire for more than forty years. And because of him, the empire was a lot bigger in 1566, when he died, than in 1520 when he became sultan at the age of twenty-six.

When Suleiman entered Istanbul after his father, Sultan Selim’s death in 1520, he was already a well-educated prince. He spoke five languages and could write in Arabic and Persian, speak French and Latin, and of course Ottoman Turkish. A foreigner described him as tall with a thin face and big nose. He had a short beard and pale skin. People thought he was clever and hoped he was going to be a good king. They were right.

Suleiman’s great-grandfather, Mehmet, the great king who took Istanbul for the Ottomans, tried to take Belgrade but could not. The first thing the young Suleiman did was to attack Christian Belgrade. At that time, the Hungarian king was the ruler of the city but he did not come to help the people. In August 1521, the 700 soldiers in the city gave up and Suleiman entered. He then continued to Budapest. All Europe was afraid. The Hungarians were the last power between Suleiman and western Europe. If they fell, the great empires of Christian Europe in France and Spain were going to be next. The young King Louis of Hungary died in the fight for Budapest but, a few years later, Emperor Charles I of the Holy Roman Empire took it again. To teach him a lesson, Suleiman in 1529 not only attacked Budapest again but marched to Vienna, the capital of Austria. Here, however, he lost and returned to Istanbul. He was now sultan of south-eastern Europe (today’s Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, Hungary and Romania) as well as many countries in the east.

Suleiman now turned east and attacked the Persian (Iranian) empire. He enlarged Turkey’s eastern land and continued to Baghdad (capital of modern Iraq). Three times, Suleiman attacked the Persians, but, each time, they did not stay to fight. Finally, in 1554, they agreed that the Persians must stop attacking Turkish cities and Suleiman should keep Baghdad. Suleiman also attacked the Middle East and North Africa. He continued as far as the eastern border of modern Morocco. He also attacked Portuguese cities in the west of India and took modern Oman and Yemen.

In 1566, when Suleiman died, the Ottoman Empire was the largest in the world. It never got bigger or stronger than this but it did not die until 1921 (although it was a lot smaller by that time – in fact, “the sick man of Europe”, as a Russian tsar called it).

Suleiman was the greatest general that the Ottoman Empire ever had. So, why do the Turks call him the ‘lawmaker’ and not the ‘general’ or the ‘soldier’? Perhaps, it is because many of the countries Suleiman took as a soldier later got independence from the Ottoman Empire, but the education system and the laws he made continued for centuries. Also, there were other sultans, like Mehmet, who were great soldiers, but they did not change the laws of their empire. Suleiman was both a soldier and a lawmaker.

Although he could not change ‘sharia’ law, because it was from the holy book of the Muslims, the Qu’ran, he carefully studied other areas. He lowered tax for the poor and so made farmers richer. He did not tax foreigners and non-Muslims as much as past sultans and made the Ottoman Empire a safer place for Christians and Jews – in fact, many non-Muslims, especially Jews, chose to live in his lands. He even married a Christian woman (who became a Muslim) who was first his slave. This was the first time a sultan ever did this.

Suleiman had a good education. He paid poets and architects and even artists to work in his empire. He re-built the walls of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock there, renovated the Kaaba in Mecca (now in Saudi Arabia) and made Damascus (now the capital of Syria) more beautiful. And, of course, he built many wonderful mosques in Turkey. He also made poetry that was not just a copy of Persian (although he also wrote in this language), but was clearly Turkish. But he was also interested in education for Turkish children. He built many schools in Istanbul that were better than any in Christian countries.

When Sultan Suleiman died, he left an empire that was the largest and greatest in the world. It was an empire that was safe, that grew enough food, that had schools and beautiful mosques. The Turks did not have a leader as great as Suleiman until Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923.