What was suleiman the magnificent known for

His father had seen to that by executing his own brothers and their sons, and all 4 of Suleiman's brothers. The Ottoman Empire now included so much of the territory where Islam was practiced, and so many of the Islamic holy places, that Suleiman was widely regarded as the religious leader of Islam, as well as the earthly ruler of most Muslims. When Suleiman ascended to the throne in , two of his first decisions were to free 1, Egyptian and Iranian prisoners captured by his father and compensate merchants for goods his father had confiscated.

These and other similar actions helped him earn the title Suleiman the Lawgiver. Under Sulyeman shariah law was elevated to higher level than in other Muslim states. It became the law of the land for all Muslims and it was practiced with a high degree of uniformity in Shariah courts throughout the empire by quadis legal experts and muftis legal assistants.

Not only did the courts meet out justice they also created a bond between the local people, especially in Arab regions, and the sultan. For the most part, Ottoman subject were happy tolive under shariah law. Suleiman cracked down on corruption, reformed, simplified and codified the legal system. He passed laws that attempted to wipe out discriminatory practices against Christians and eliminated some of crueler punishments given of criminals.

The United States Congress recognizes him as one of the grea lawmakes of history. Suleiman also had his cruel and capricious side. He often ordered the execution of prsioners after a battle and began the customs of not speaking to foreign diplomats when they presented their credentials. Vienna was besieged unsuccessfully during the campaign season of North Africa up to the Moroccan frontier was brought under Ottoman suzerainty in the s and s, and governors named by the sultan were installed in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.

In Kurdistan and Mesopotamia were taken from Persia. The latter conquest gave the Ottomans an outlet to the Persian Gulf, where they were soon engaged in a naval war with the Portuguese.

Egypt, Mecca, and the North African provinces were governed under special regulations, as were satellite domains in Arabia and the Caucasus, and among the Crimean Tartars. In addition, the native rulers of Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Ragusa Dubrovnik were vassals of the sultan. Suleiman was a great patron of the arts. Trained as a goldsmith, he personally oversaw the the work of craftsman in Topkapi and commissioned the great architect Mimar Sinan to build great mosques such as Suleimaniye Mosque in Istanbul and Selimiye Mosque in Edirne and reconstructed the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

Istanbul was the largest city in Europe and the Ottoman Empire was perhaps the most powerful politcial entity in the world. It acted as a protector for France and Poland and received envoys from India and Sumatra who asked for Ottoman help combating the Portuguese in Asia.

Medicine was practiced at a high level. An observatory was built in Communication channels were open with West. News of new discovereies in the New World poured in. Plans were made for a Suez Canal and a canals between the the Don and Volga rivers. He was the son of a sailor at Parga, and had been captured by corsairs, by whom he was sold to be the slave of a widow at Magnesia. Here he passed into the hands of the young prince Suleyman, then Governor of Magnesia, and soon his extraordinary talents and address brought him promotion From being Grand Falconer on the accession of Suleyman, he rose to be first minister and almost co-Sultan in Ibrahim was not only a friend, he was an entertaining and instructive companion.

He read Persian, Greek and Italian; he knew how to open unknown worlds to the Sultan's mind, and Sulevman drank in his Vezir's wisdom with assiduity. They lived together: their meals were shared in common; even their beds were in the same room.

The Sultan gave his sister in marriage to the sailor's son, and Ibrahim was at the summit of power. Through her charm and guile she managed to catch the eye of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, displacing his former favorite and eventually becoming his wife.

Her son Selim, inherited the empire from his father but proved a disastrous ruler and an alcoholic. Briefly, Ottomans achieved naval dominance in the Mediterranean Sea , Red Sea , and Persian Gulf , and the empire continued to expand for a century after his death.

Within the empire, Suleiman was known as a fair ruler and an opponent of corruption. He was a great patron of artists and philosophers , and was noted as one of the greatest Islamic poets, as well as an accomplished goldsmith. Early life Suleiman was born at Trabzon in modern day Turkey. Suleiman's early experience of government was as governor of several provinces, most notably Bolu in northern Anatolia, and his mother's homeland of Caffa in Crimea. International Relations Religion Education Sports.

Search form Search. Connecting History. Hot off the Press. History Talk. Printer Friendly Version. An illustration of the joint Franco-Ottoman Siege of Nice, in A portrait of Hurrem Sultan by Titian, c. RSS Feed. Email alerts. Read Article. Featured Book Review. Belgrade, part of modern Serbia, belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary in Suleiman's time. The city fell to Suleiman's forces on August 29, , removing the last obstacle to an Ottoman advance into Central Europe.

Before he launched his major assault on Europe, Suleiman wanted to take care of an annoying gadfly in the Mediterranean—Christian holdovers from the Crusades , the Knights Hospitallers.

This group, based on the Island of Rhodes, had been capturing Ottoman and other Muslim nations' ships, stealing cargoes of grain and gold, and enslaving the crews. The Knights Hospitallers' piracy even imperiled Muslims who set sail to make the haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Selim I had tried and failed to dislodge the Knights in During the intervening decades, the Knights used the labor of enslaved Muslims to strengthen and reinforce their fortresses on the island in anticipation of another Ottoman siege.

Suleiman sent out that siege in the form of an armada of ships carrying at least , troops to Rhodes. They landed on June 26, , and laid siege to the bastions full of 60, defenders representing various western European countries: England, Spain, Italy, Provence, and Germany.

Meanwhile, Suleiman himself led an army of reinforcements on a march to the coast, reaching Rhodes in late July. It took nearly half a year of artillery bombardment and detonating mines under the triple-layer stone walls, but on December 22, , the Turks finally forced all of the Christian knights and the civilian inhabitants of Rhodes to surrender. Suleiman gave the knights 12 days to gather their belongings, including weapons and religious icons, and leave the island on 50 ships provided by the Ottomans, with most of the knights immigrating to Sicily.

The local people of Rhodes also received generous terms and had three years to decide whether they wanted to remain on Rhodes under the Ottoman rule or move elsewhere. They would pay no taxes for the first five years, and Suleiman promised that none of their churches would be converted into mosques. Most of them decided to stay when the Ottoman Empire took nearly complete control of the eastern Mediterranean.

Suleiman faced several additional crises before he was able to launch his attack into Hungary, but unrest among the Janissaries and a revolt by the Mamluks in Egypt proved to be only temporary distractions. In April , Suleiman began the march to the Danube. The Hapsburgs marched into Hungary and took Buda, placing Ferdinand on the throne and sparking a decades-long feud with Suleiman and the Ottoman Empire.

In , Suleiman marched on Hungary once more, taking Buda from the Hapsburgs and then continuing to besiege the Hapsburg capital at Vienna. Suleiman's army of perhaps , reached Vienna in late September, without most of their heavy artillery and siege machines. On October 11 and 12 of that year, they attempted another siege against 16, Viennese defenders, but Vienna managed to hold them off once more and the Turkish forces withdrew.

The Ottoman sultan did not give up on the idea of taking Vienna, but his second attempt in was similarly hampered by rain and mud and the army never even reached the Hapsburg capital. In , the two empires went to war again when the Hapsburgs laid siege to Buda, trying to remove Suleiman's ally from the Hungarian throne.

The Hungarians and Ottomans defeated the Austrians, and captured additional Hapsburg holdings in and again in Ferdinand was forced to renounce his claim to be king of Hungary and had to pay tribute to Suleiman, but even as all of these events happened to the north and west of Turkey, Suleiman also had to keep an eye on his eastern border with Persia.

The Safavid Persian Empire that ruled much of southwestern Asia was one of the Ottomans' great rivals and a fellow " gunpowder empire. Suleiman, busy in Hungary and Austria, sent his grand vizier with a second army to retake Bitlis in , which also seized Tabriz, in present-day northeastern Iran , from the Persians.

Suleiman himself returned from his second invasion of Austria and marched into Persia in , but the Shah refused to meet the Ottomans in open battle, withdrawing into the Persian desert and using guerrilla hits against the Turks instead.