Magnificent and Lawgiver
It was the West that named Suleiman "the Magnificent." His own people called him "the Lawgiver" (Qanuni), since he had a large part in codifying the laws of the Ottoman state. He was magnificent not in appearance but in the size of his armies, the breadth of his campaigns, the splendor of his capital and the building of mosques and palaces. The pomp of his court and retinue, and the power and extent of his realm, deserved the title as well. His empire ran from Baghdad to a point 150 kilometers from Vienna and 200 from Venice, then still counted queen of the Adriatic. Except for Iran and Italy, nearly every famous city named in the Bible and the classical writers lay under his rule: Carthage, Memphis, Tyre, Nineveh, Babylon, Palmyra, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Smyrna, Damascus, Ephesus, Nicaea, Athens and both Thebes. Before his age the Ottoman crescent had never enclosed so much land and sea.
Was his skill in governing equal to the size of his realm? Perhaps not, but no other vast state except Achaemenid Iran and Rome under the Antonines could claim that either. In an age without modern roads and communications, Ottoman territory was too large to be properly governed from a single center. Even though laxity and corruption had taken root in the government, Luther said that, as he understood it, "the Turks have the best temporal government in the world."
Tolerance
In religious tolerance Suleiman was braver and more generous than his Christian contemporaries. They counted religious unity a requirement of national strength, while he left Christians and Jews free in their rites and beliefs. Cardinal Pole wrote: "The Turks do not impose their religion on others. If a man does not object to their beliefs, he may preach any other faith among them, and no one troubles him."
In 969 AH (November 1561), when Scotland, England and Lutheran Germany held Catholicism a great crime and Italy and Spain held Protestantism one, Suleiman ordered the release of a Christian prisoner on the ground that he did not wish anyone to be forced back from his own religion. He made his country a safe refuge for the Jews who fled Spain and Portugal from the severity of the Inquisition.
The Man
His faults show more in his family relations than in his statecraft. Despite his repeated campaigns, which he justified as defense through attack, all agree he was a man of fine and delicate feeling, noble, just and kind. His people did not merely admire him; they loved him sincerely. On Fridays, when he rode to the mosque, everyone fell silent, and Suleiman bowed his head in greeting to all, Christian, Jew and Muslim alike, then spent two hours in prayer in the mosque. He was never heard to have weakened his health and strength through addiction to the harem, as some sultans did, yet in some cases we see him so carried away by passion that he cast aside foresight, fairness and even a father's feelings.
Roxelana and the Fate of the Princes
In the early years of his reign his favorite was a Circassian slave named Gulbahar, who had the vivid, finely cut beauty that had been famed for centuries among the women east of the Black Sea. She bore Suleiman a son, Mustafa, who grew into a handsome, capable youth loved by high and low. Suleiman gave him important duties and brought him up to inherit the throne worthily.
But in another love, a woman named Hurrem Sultan, a Russian captive whom Westerners call Roxelana, took the sultan's heart from the Circassian with her beauty, gaiety and cunning, and so enchanted him that disaster became unavoidable. Suleiman broke with the law of his recent ancestors and married her (941 AH, 1534 AD), and took joy in the sons and daughters she gave him. But as the sultan neared old age and the prospect of Mustafa's accession loomed, Roxelana feared for her own sons, who under the prevailing law might be killed by a half-brother who wore the crown. She married her daughter to Rustem Pasha, who became grand vizier in 951 AH (1544 AD), and by whispering to him made him a partner in her fear of Mustafa's accession.
Meanwhile Mustafa had been made governor of Diyarbakir and had distinguished himself in missions by courage, prudence and generosity. Roxelana turned her forces to destroy him and told Suleiman that Mustafa meant to win the hearts of the people and, with their support, seize the crown. Rustem Pasha accused the young prince of secret dealings with the Janissaries.
The fifty-nine-year-old sultan, worn out by the repeated insinuations, wavered, suffered and finally believed them. He went in person to Eregli, summoned Mustafa to his tent and, almost before the prince had shaken off the dust of the road, ordered his death (961 AH, 1553 AD). It was then easy for Roxelana and Rustem to have Mustafa's own son removed too, lest he rise to avenge his father. Roxelana's son Selim was named heir, and she died content (966 AH, 1558 AD).
But Selim's brother Bayezid, seeing death at a brother's hands as his own fate, gathered an army and marched against him. Civil war broke out, Bayezid was defeated and fled to Iran (967 AH, 1559 AD). Shah Tahmasp, in return for 300,000 ducats from Suleiman and another 200,000 coins from Selim, handed his guest over. Bayezid and his sons were put to death (969 AH, 1561 AD) in the name of public security. It is said the ailing sultan gave thanks to God that this troublesome brood had gone and left him in peace.
Malta, 1565
But Suleiman soon found peace tedious. He was occupied by the news that the knights he had driven from Rhodes had regained strength on Malta and were rivaling the corsairs of Algiers with their raids. The seventy-one-year-old sultan thought that if Malta too came into Islam, the whole Mediterranean would be safe for Muslims. In 972 AH (April 1564, as the book gives it) he sent a force of 150 ships and 20,000 troops to take the strategically vital island.
The knights, under a skilled commander, Jean de la Valette, met the attack with their usual courage. The Turks took Fort St Elmo at a cost of 6,000 dead (per the book), but gained nothing more, and the arrival of a Spanish relief army forced them to lift the siege and withdraw.
Szigetvar and the Sultan's Death
The old sultan could not end his life on such a sour note. Maximilian II, who had succeeded his father Ferdinand as emperor, refused to pay tribute to the Ottomans and attacked the garrisons the Turks had stationed in Hungary. Suleiman resolved on a final war and took command himself (given in the book as 964 AH, 1556 AD), crossing Sofia, Nis and Belgrade on horseback with 200,000 troops. On the night of 5 September he died while besieging the fortress of Szigetvar, sitting upright in his tent, for like Vespasian he was too proud to meet death lying sick in bed. On 8 September the fortress fell, but the siege cost the Turks 30,000 fighting men (per the book), and summer was ending. A truce was signed, and the weary Ottoman army returned to Constantinople bearing, instead of victory, the body of its emperor.
A Judgment
Should we now judge Suleiman's character and fix his place? Compared with his Western peers he seems at times more civilized and at times more savage. Among the four great rulers of the first half of the sixteenth century, Francis, for all his boasting and hardness of heart and though judged the most civilized of them, regarded Suleiman as his patron and ally and believed that without him he might have been destroyed by his enemies. Over a lifetime of single combat with the West Suleiman came out victorious. In 1568 Emperor Maximilian II actually became his tributary. And although Charles V stopped the sultan at Vienna, what Christian army had dared approach Constantinople? Suleiman was master of the Mediterranean, and a time came when the fate of Christian Rome seemed to rest in the hands of Suleiman and Barbarossa.
He governed his empire well, an autocrat who ruled with unlimited powers but followed established custom and relied on the consent of his people. We may ask whether the autocracy of Henry VIII in England or of Charles V in Spain rested on such public affection and trust. Charles lacked the power to order his son's death on a mere suspicion of treachery, though the same man in old age is shown crying out for the blood of unbelievers. Henry VIII could send his wives, or Catholic and Protestant leaders, to the executioner without a meal being delayed. Yet when Suleiman, known for religious tolerance, which itself had limits, did such things, they were called savage.
Suleiman waged many wars, killed half of his descendants, and put his able vizier to death without warning or trial. He bore every fault that unlimited power brings. Even so, there is no doubt that he was the greatest and ablest ruler of his age.