We’ve recently presented some historical figures known by their given names and a descriptor, like Louis the Stammerer and Charles the Bald, but not everybody’s descriptor was even vaguely critical. At the top of the heap is a chap born November 6, 1494 in Trabzon, an area that’s now part of Turkey. His given name was Suleiman, and his descriptor was “The Magnificent.” Can’t beat that.
Sulieman was the son of a sultan, Selim I, and when he succeeded his dad (at 25), became a military leader. An extremely successful one — at the time western Europe was a mostly Christian region, and in a constant state of conflict with eastern Europe and western Asia, which was a mostly Muslim region. Sulieman captured Belgrade, the island of Rhodes, and conquered the entire area that’s now Hungary. He consolidated the Ottoman Empire and expanded it to the point that he ruled 25 million people, controlled the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf.
He also reformed the legal system of the Empire, which led to his other name: Sulieman the Lawgiver. That may have come as much as two centuries later; reference to “Sulieman the Lawgiver” hasn’t been found in any document older than the 1700s. In addition to being a military leader and a legal scholar, he was a poet and even a goldsmith. He supported the arts, and the era of his reign is still called the Golden Age of the Ottoman Empire — art, literature, and architecture thrived.
Sulieman the Magnificent ruled the Ottoman Empire for 46 years, but after his death things began to change so much that the period is called the Transformation. The Empire was still both large and strong, but the various heirs of Sulieman waged a contentious (and fatal, for some) struggle for power. The politics of the Empire became much more bureaucratic and inflexible. It wasn’t a decline, exactly, but it was a significant change that ended up lasting about a century and a half. It was never again as large as it was at its peak, under Sulieman, but it remained a significant power until World War I. It was on the losing side and a majority of its territory was “partitioned — that is, handed over to England and France. The Ottoman monarchy was ended when the Republic of Turkey was established in 1923. But if you visit Turkey, you can still visit the buildings and art from the age of Sulieman.
