Kanuni Sultan Süleyman
CKM 2019-20 / Aziz Yardımlı

 

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Kanuni Sultan Süleyman


 

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  Suleiman the Magnificent 1494-1566 1520-1566
Suleiman The Magnificent’s Empire
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Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman the Magnificent 1494-1566 1520-1566 (W)


Suleiman the Magnificent
Born: 6 November 1494 Died: 6 September 1566
Regnal titles
Preceded by
Selim I
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
22 September 1520 – c. 6 September 1566
Succeeded by
Selim II
Sunni Islam titles
Preceded by
Selim I
Caliph of the Ottoman Caliphate
22 September 1520 – c. 6 September 1566
Succeeded by
Selim II

📂 DATA

DATA

10th Ottoman Sultan (Emperor)
Reign 30 September 1520 – 6 September 1566
Sword girding 30 September 1520
Predecessor Selim I
Successor Selim II
 
Born 6 November 1494
Trabzon, Ottoman Empire
Died 6 September 1566 (aged 71)
Szigetvár, Kingdom of Hungary, Habsburg Monarchy
Burial
Spouse
Issue
Full name
Süleyman Şah bin Selim Şah Han
Dynasty Ottoman
Father Selim I
Mother Hafsa Sultan
Religion Sunni

 




Suleiman in a portrait attributed to Titian, c. 1530 (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien). (W)
 
   

Suleiman I (Ottoman Turkish: سلطان سليمان اولSultan Süleyman-ı Evvel; Turkish: Birinci Süleyman, Kanunî Sultan Süleyman or Muhteşem Süleyman; 6 November 1494 – 6 September 1566), commonly known as Suleiman the Magnificent in the West and Kanunî Sultan Süleyman (Ottoman Turkish: قانونى سلطان سليمان‎; “The Lawgiver Suleiman”) in his realm, was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 until his death in 1566. Under his administration, the Ottoman state ruled over at least 25 million people.

Suleiman became a prominent monarch of 16th-century Europe, presiding over the apex of the Ottoman Empire’s economic, military and political power. Suleiman personally led Ottoman armies in conquering the Christian strongholds of Belgrade and Rhodes as well as most of Hungary before his conquests were checked at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He annexed much of the Middle East in his conflict with the Safavids and large areas of North Africa as far west as Algeria. Under his rule, the Ottoman fleet dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and through the Persian Gulf.

At the helm of an expanding empire, Suleiman personally instituted major legislative changes relating to society, education, taxation and criminal law. His reforms, carried out in conjunction with the empire's chief judicial official Ebussuud Efendi, harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law; sultanic (Kanun) and religious (Sharia). He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he also became a great patron of culture, overseeing the “Golden” age of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary and architectural development.

Breaking with Ottoman tradition, Suleiman married Hurrem Sultan, a woman from his harem, a Christian of Ruthenian origin who converted to Islam, and who became famous in the West by the name Roxelana, purportedly due to her red hair. Their son Selim II succeeded Suleiman following his death in 1566 after 46 years of rule. Suleiman's other potential heirs, Mehmed and Mustafa, had died; the former had died from smallpox, and the latter had been strangled to death 13 years earlier at the sultan's order. His other son Bayezid was executed in 1561 on Suleiman's orders, along with his four sons, after a rebellion. Although scholars no longer believe that the empire declined after his death, the end of Suleiman's reign is still frequently characterized as a watershed in Ottoman history. In the decades after Suleiman, the empire began to experience significant political, institutional, and economic changes, a phenomenon often referred to as the Transformation of the Ottoman Empire.

 
Alternative names and titles

Alternative names and titles

Alternative names and titles (W)

Suleiman the Magnificent (محتشم سليمانMuḥteşem Süleymān), as he was known in the West, was also called Suleiman the First (سلطان سليمان أولSulṭān Süleymān-ı Evvel), and Suleiman the Lawgiver (قانونی سلطان سليمانḲānūnī Sulṭān Süleymān) for his reform of the Ottoman legal system.

It is unclear when exactly the term Kanunî (the Lawgiver) first came to be used as an epithet for Suleiman. It is entirely absent from sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ottoman sources, and may date from the early eighteenth century.

 



 
Early life

Early life

Early life (W)

 
   

Suleiman was born in Trabzon along the east coast of the Black Sea to Şehzade Selim (later Selim I), probably on 6 November 1494, although this date is not known with absolute certainty. His mother was Hafsa Sultan, a convert to Islam of unknown origins, who died in 1534. At the age of seven, Suleiman was sent to study science, history, literature, theology and military tactics in the schools of the imperial Topkapı Palace in Constantinople (modern Istanbul). As a young man, he befriended Pargalı Ibrahim, a slave who later became one of his most trusted advisers (but who was later executed on Suleiman's orders). From the age of seventeen, he was appointed as the governor of first Kaffa (Theodosia), then Manisa, with a brief tenure at Edirne.

 



Accession

Accession (W)

Upon the death of his father, Selim I (r. 1512–1520), Suleiman entered Constantinople and ascended to the throne as the tenth Ottoman Sultan. An early description of Suleiman, a few weeks following his accession, was provided by the Venetian envoy Bartolomeo Contarini: "The sultan is only twenty-five years [actually 26] old, tall and slender but tough, with a thin and bony face. Facial hair is evident but only barely. The sultan appears friendly and in good humor. Rumor has it that Suleiman is aptly named, enjoys reading, is knowledgeable and shows good judgment." Some historians claim that in his youth Suleiman had an admiration for Alexander the Great.

 



 
Military campaigns

Conquests in Europe

Conquests in Europe (W)

Upon succeeding his father, Suleiman began a series of military conquests, eventually suppressing a revolt led by the Ottoman-appointed governor of Damascus in 1521. Suleiman soon made preparations for the conquest of Belgrade from the Kingdom of Hungary something his great-grandfather Mehmed II had failed to achieve because of John Hunyadi's strong defense in the region. Its capture was vital in removing the Hungarians and Croats who, following the defeats of the Albanians, Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Byzantines and the Serbs, remained the only formidable force who could block further Ottoman gains in Europe. Suleiman encircled Belgrade and began a series of heavy bombardments from an island in the Danube. Belgrade, with a garrison of only 700 men, and receiving no aid from Hungary, fell in August 1521.

The fall of Christendom's major strongholds spread fear across central Europe. As the ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to Constantinople was to note, "The capture of Belgrade was at the origin of the dramatic events which engulfed Hungary. It led to the death of King Louis, the capture of Buda, the occupation of Transylvania, the ruin of a flourishing kingdom and the fear of neighboring nations that they would suffer the same fate ..."


Suleiman during the Siege of Rhodes in 1522.
 
   

The road to Hungary and Austria lay open, but Suleiman turned his attention instead to the Eastern Mediterranean island of Rhodes, the home base of the Knights Hospitaller. In the summer of 1522, taking advantage of the large navy he inherited from his father, Suleiman dispatched an armada of some 400 ships towards Rhodes, while personally leading an army of 180,000 across Asia Minor to a point opposite the island itself. Here Suleiman built a large fortification, Marmaris Castle, that served as a base for the Ottoman Navy. Following the five-month Siege of Rhodes (1522), Rhodes capitulated and Suleiman allowed the Knights of Rhodes to depart. The conquest of the island cost the Ottomans 50,000 to 60,000 dead from battle and sickness (Christian claims went as high as 64,000 Ottoman battle deaths and 50,000 disease deaths).

 



Ottoman-Safavid War

Ottoman-Safavid War (W)


Miniature depicting Suleiman marching with an army in Nakhchivan, summer 1554.
 
   

As Suleiman stabilized his European frontiers, he now turned his attention to the ever-present threat posed by the Shi’a Safavid dynasty of Persia. Two events in particular were to precipitate a recurrence of tensions. First, Shah Tahmasp had the Baghdad governor loyal to Suleiman killed and replaced with an adherent of the Shah, and second, the governor of Bitlis had defected and sworn allegiance to the Safavids. As a result, in 1533, Suleiman ordered his Grand Vizier Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha to lead an army into eastern Asia Minor where he retook Bitlis and occupied Tabriz without resistance. Having joined Ibrahim in 1534, Suleiman made a push towards Persia, only to find the Shah sacrificing territory instead of facing a pitched battle, resorting to harassment of the Ottoman army as it proceeded along the harsh interior. When in the following year Suleiman made a grand entrance into Baghdad, he greatly enhanced his prestige by restoring the tomb of Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi school of Islamic law to which the Ottomans adhered.

Attempting to defeat the Shah once and for all, Suleiman embarked upon a second campaign in 1548-1549. As in the previous attempt, Tahmasp avoided confrontation with the Ottoman army and instead chose to retreat, using scorched earth tactics in the process and exposing the Ottoman army to the harsh winter of the Caucasus. Suleiman abandoned the campaign with temporary Ottoman gains in Tabriz and the Urmia region, a lasting presence in the province of Van, control of the western half of Azerbaijan and some forts in Georgia.

In 1553 Suleiman began his third and final campaign against the Shah. Having initially lost territories in Erzurum to the Shah's son, Suleiman retaliated by recapturing Erzurum, crossing the Upper Euphrates and laying waste to parts of Persia. The Shah's army continued its strategy of avoiding the Ottomans, leading to a stalemate from which neither army made any significant gain. In 1554, a settlement was signed which was to conclude Suleiman's Asian campaigns. Part of the treaty included and confirmed the return of Tabriz, but secured Baghdad, lower Mesopotamia, the mouths of the river Euphrates and Tigris, as well as part of the Persian Gulf. The Shah also promised to cease all raids into Ottoman territory.

 
 

 



Campaigns in the Indian Ocean

Campaigns in the Indian Ocean (W)


Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean in the 16th century.
 
   

Ottoman ships had been sailing in the Indian Ocean since the year 1518. Ottoman Admirals such as Hadim Suleiman Pasha, Seydi Ali Reis and Kurtoğlu Hızır Reis are known to have voyaged to the Mughal imperial ports of Thatta, Surat and Janjira. The Mughal Emperor Akbar himself is known to have exchanged six documents with Suleiman the Magnificent.

In the Indian Ocean, Suleiman led several naval campaigns against the Portuguese in an attempt to remove them and reestablish trade with India. Aden in Yemen was captured by the Ottomans in 1538, in order to provide an Ottoman base for raids against Portuguese possessions on the western coast of India. Sailing on to India, the Ottomans failed against the Portuguese at the Siege of Diu in September 1538, but then returned to Aden, where they fortified the city with 100 pieces of artillery. From this base, Sulayman Pasha managed to take control of the whole country of Yemen, also taking Sana'a. Aden rose against the Ottomans however and invited the Portuguese instead, so that the Portuguese were in control of the city until its seizure by Piri Reis in the Capture of Aden (1548).

With its strong control of the Red Sea, Suleiman successfully managed to dispute control of the Indian trade routes to the Portuguese and maintained a significant level of trade with the Mughal Empire of South Asia throughout the 16th century. His admiral Piri Reis led an Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean, achieving the Capture of Muscat in 1552.

From 1526 till 1543, Suleiman stationed over 900 Turkish soldiers to fight alongside the Somali Adal Sultanate led by Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi during the Conquest of Abyssinia. After the first Ajuran-Portuguese war, the Ottoman Empire would in 1559 absorb the weakened Adal Sultanate into its domain. This expansion fathered Ottoman rule in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. This also increased its influence in the Indian Ocean to compete with the Portuguese Empire with its close ally the Ajuran Empire.

In 1564, Suleiman received an embassy from Aceh (a sultanate on Sumatra, in modern Indonesia), requesting Ottoman support against the Portuguese. As a result, an Ottoman expedition to Aceh was launched, which was able to provide extensive military support to the Acehnese.

The discovery of new maritime trade routes by Western European states allowed them to avoid the Ottoman trade monopoly. The Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 initiated a series of Ottoman-Portuguese naval wars in the Indian Ocean throughout the 16th century. The Ajuran Sultanate allied with the Ottomans defied the Portuguese economic monopoly in the Indian Ocean by employing a new coinage which followed the Ottoman pattern, thus proclaiming an attitude of economic independence in regard to the Portuguese.

 



Mediterranean and North Africa

Mediterranean and North Africa (W)

Having consolidated his conquests on land, Suleiman was greeted with the news that the fortress of Koroni in Morea (the modern Peloponnese, peninsular Greece) had been lost to Charles V’s admiral, Andrea Doria. The presence of the Spanish in the Eastern Mediterranean concerned Suleiman, who saw it as an early indication of Charles V's intention to rival Ottoman dominance in the region. Recognizing the need to reassert naval preeminence in the Mediterranean, Suleiman appointed an exceptional naval commander in the form of Khair ad Din, known to Europeans as Barbarossa. Once appointed admiral-in-chief, Barbarossa was charged with rebuilding the Ottoman fleet, to such an extent that the Ottoman navy equaled in number those of all other Mediterranean countries put together.


Francis I (left) and Suleiman the Magnificent (right) initiated a Franco-Ottoman alliance from the 1530s.
 
   

In 1535, Charles V led a Holy League of 27,000 soldiers (10,000 Spaniards, 8,000 Italians, 8,000 Germans, and 700 Knights of St. John) to victory against the Ottomans at Tunis, which together with the war against Venice the following year, led Suleiman to accept proposals from Francis I of France to form an alliance against Charles. In 1538, the Spanish fleet was defeated by Barbarossa at the Battle of Preveza, securing the eastern Mediterranean for the Turks for 33 years, until the defeat at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. East of Morocco, huge Muslim territories in North Africa were annexed. The Barbary States of Tripolitania, Tunisia and Algeria became autonomous provinces of the Empire, serving as the leading edge of Suleiman's conflict with Charles V, whose attempt to drive out the Turks failed in 1541. The piracy carried on thereafter by the Barbary pirates of North Africa can be seen in the context of the wars against Spain.

In 1542, facing a common Habsburg enemy, Francis I sought to renew the Franco-Ottoman alliance. As a result, Suleiman dispatched 100 galleys under Barbarossa to assist the French in the western Mediterranean. Barbarossa pillaged the coast of Naples and Sicily before reaching France, where Francis made Toulon the Ottoman admiral's naval headquarters. Barbarossa attacked and captured Nice in 1543. By 1544, a peace between Francis I and Charles V had put a temporary end to the alliance between France and the Ottoman Empire.

Elsewhere in the Mediterranean, when the Knights Hospitallers were re-established as the Knights of Malta in 1530, their actions against Muslim navies quickly drew the ire of the Ottomans, who assembled another massive army in order to dislodge the Knights from Malta. The Ottomans invaded Malta in 1565, undertaking the Great Siege of Malta, which began on 18 May and lasted until 8 September, and is portrayed vividly in the frescoes of Matteo Perez d'Aleccio in the Hall of St. Michael and St. George. At first it seemed that this would be a repeat of the battle on Rhodes, with most of Malta's cities destroyed and half the Knights killed in battle; but a relief force from Spain entered the battle, resulting in the loss of 10,000 Ottoman troops and the victory of the local Maltese citizenry.

 

Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha defeats the Holy League under the command of Andrea Doria at the Battle of Preveza in 1538.

 



 
Legal and political reforms

Legal and political reforms

Legal and political reforms (W)

While Sultan Suleiman was known as "the Magnificent" in the West, he was always Kanuni Suleiman or “The Lawgiver” (قانونی) to his own Ottoman subjects. The overriding law of the empire was the Shari'ah, or Sacred Law, which as the divine law of Islam was outside of the Sultan's powers to change. Yet an area of distinct law known as the Kanuns (قانون, canonical legislation) was dependent on Suleiman’s will alone, covering areas such as criminal law, land tenure and taxation. He collected all the judgments that had been issued by the nine Ottoman Sultans who preceded him. After eliminating duplications and choosing between contradictory statements, he issued a single legal code, all the while being careful not to violate the basic laws of Islam. It was within this framework that Suleiman, supported by his Grand Mufti Ebussuud, sought to reform the legislation to adapt to a rapidly changing empire. When the Kanun laws attained their final form, the code of laws became known as the kanun‐i Osmani (قانون عثمانی), or the “Ottoman laws.” Suleiman's legal code was to last more than three hundred years.

Suleiman gave particular attention to the plight of the rayas, Christian subjects who worked the land of the Sipahis. His Kanune Raya, or "Code of the Rayas", reformed the law governing levies and taxes to be paid by the rayas, raising their status above serfdom to the extent that Christian serfs would migrate to Turkish territories to benefit from the reforms. The Sultan also played a role in protecting the Jewish subjects of his empire for centuries to come. In late 1553 or 1554, on the suggestion of his favorite doctor and dentist, the Spanish Jew Moses Hamon, the Sultan issued a firman (فرمان) formally denouncing blood libels against the Jews. Furthermore, Suleiman enacted new criminal and police legislation, prescribing a set of fines for specific offenses, as well as reducing the instances requiring death or mutilation. In the area of taxation, taxes were levied on various goods and produce, including animals, mines, profits of trade, and import-export duties. In addition to taxes, officials who had fallen into disrepute were likely to have their land and property confiscated by the Sultan.

Education was another important area for the Sultan. Schools attached to mosques and funded by religious foundations provided a largely free education to Muslim boys in advance of the Christian countries of the time. In his capital, Suleiman increased the number of mektebs (مكتب, primary schools) to fourteen, teaching boys to read and write as well as the principles of Islam. Young men wishing further education could proceed to one of eight medreses (مدرسه, colleges), whose studies included grammar, metaphysics, philosophy, astronomy and astrology. Higher medreses provided education of university status, whose graduates became imams (امام) or teachers. Educational centers were often one of many buildings surrounding the courtyards of mosques, others included libraries, baths, soup kitchens, residences and hospitals for the benefit of the public.

 



 
The arts under Suleiman

The arts under Suleiman

The arts under Suleiman (W)

Under Suleiman's patronage, the Ottoman Empire entered the golden age of its cultural development. Hundreds of imperial artistic societies (called the اهل حرف Ehl-i Hiref, "Community of the Craftsmen") were administered at the Imperial seat, the Topkapı Palace. After an apprenticeship, artists and craftsmen could advance in rank within their field and were paid commensurate wages in quarterly annual installments. Payroll registers that survive testify to the breadth of Suleiman's patronage of the arts, the earliest of documents dating from 1526 list 40 societies with over 600 members. The Ehl-i Hiref attracted the empire's most talented artisans to the Sultan's court, both from the Islamic world and from the recently conquered territories in Europe, resulting in a blend of Arabic, Turkish and European cultures. Artisans in service of the court included painters, book binders, furriers, jewellers and goldsmiths. Whereas previous rulers had been influenced by Persian culture (Suleiman's father, Selim I, wrote poetry in Persian), Suleiman's patronage of the arts saw the Ottoman Empire assert its own artistic legacy.


Inside the Suleymaniye Mosque.
 
   

Suleiman himself was an accomplished poet, writing in Persian and Turkish under the takhallus (nom de plume) Muhibbi (محبی, "Lover"). Some of Suleiman's verses have become Turkish proverbs, such as the well-known Everyone aims at the same meaning, but many are the versions of the story. When his young son Mehmed died in 1543, he composed a moving chronogram to commemorate the year: Peerless among princes, my Sultan Mehmed.Muhibbî (Kanunî Sultan Süleyman) ‹See Tfd›(in Turkish) In Turkish the chronogram reads شهزاده‌لر گزیده‌سی سلطان محمدم (Şehzadeler güzidesi Sultan Muhammed'üm), in which the Arabic Abjad numerals total 955, the equivalent in the Islamic calendar of 1543 AD.</ref> In addition to Suleiman's own work, many great talents enlivened the literary world during Suleiman's rule, including Fuzûlî and Bâkî. The literary historian Elias John Wilkinson Gibb observed that "at no time, even in Turkey, was greater encouragement given to poetry than during the reign of this Sultan". Suleiman's most famous verse is:

 

The people think of wealth and power as the greatest fate,
But in this world a spell of health is the best state.
What men call sovereignty is a worldly strife and constant war;
Worship of God is the highest throne, the happiest of all estates.

 

Suleiman also became renowned for sponsoring a series of monumental architectural developments within his empire. The Sultan sought to turn Constantinople into the center of Islamic civilization by a series of projects, including bridges, mosques, palaces and various charitable and social establishments. The greatest of these were built by the Sultan's chief architect, Mimar Sinan, under whom Ottoman architecture reached its zenith. Sinan became responsible for over three hundred monuments throughout the empire, including his two masterpieces, the Süleymaniye and Selimiye mosques—the latter built in Adrianople (now Edirne) in the reign of Suleiman's son Selim II. Suleiman also restored the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Walls of Jerusalem (which are the current walls of the Old City of Jerusalem), renovated the Kaaba in Mecca, and constructed a complex in Damascus.

 

Tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent and Roxolane.
 
   

 



 
Personal life

Personal life

Wives and concubines (W)

Suleiman had two known consorts

 



Issue

Issue (W)

Suleiman had several children with his consorts, including:

Sons
Daughters

Sultanzade Osman Bey (born 1545 and died 1575, Istanbul, buried in Mihrimah Sultan Mosque Üskudar)

  • Raziye Sultan (buried in Yahya Efendi Türbe) She died in childhood.


 



Relationship with Hürrem Sultan

Relationship with Hürrem Sultan (W)

Suleiman was infatuated with Hürrem Sultan, a harem girl from Ruthenia, then part of Poland. Western diplomats, taking notice of the palace gossip about her, called her "Russelazie" or "Roxelana", referring to her Ruthenian origins. The daughter of an Orthodox priest, she was captured by Tatars from Crimea, sold as a slave in Constantinople, and eventually rose through the ranks of the Harem to become Suleiman's favorite. Breaking with two centuries of Ottoman tradition, a former concubine had thus become the legal wife of the Sultan, much to the astonishment of the observers in the palace and the city. He also allowed Hürrem Sultan to remain with him at court for the rest of her life, breaking another tradition—that when imperial heirs came of age, they would be sent along with the imperial concubine who bore them to govern remote provinces of the Empire, never to return unless their progeny succeeded to the throne.

Under his pen name, Muhibbi, Sultan Suleiman composed this poem for Hürrem Sultan:

Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.
My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan, my one and only love.
The most beautiful among the beautiful ...
My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf ...
My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this room ...
My Istanbul, my karaman, the earth of my Anatolia
My Badakhshan, my Baghdad and Khorasan
My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of misery ...
I'll sing your praises always
I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy.

 



Languages

Languages (W)

Suleiman could speak Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Chagatai, Persian and Serbian.[75]

 



Grand Vizier Pargali Ibrahim Pasha

Grand Vizier Pargali Ibrahim Pasha (W)

Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha was a friend of Suleiman from before his accession. Ibrahim was originally a Christian from Parga (in Epirus), who was captured in a raid during the 1499–1503 Ottoman–Venetian War, and was given as a slave to Suleiman most likely in 1514. Ibrahim converted to Islam and Suleiman made him the royal falconer, then promoted him to first officer of the Royal Bedchamber. Ibrahim Pasha rose to Grand Vizier in 1523 and commander-in-chief of all the armies. Suleiman also conferred upon Ibrahim Pasha the honor of beylerbey of Rumelia (first-ranking military governor-general), granting Ibrahim authority over all Ottoman territories in Europe, as well as command of troops residing within them in times of war. According to a 17th-century chronicler, Ibrahim had asked Suleiman not to promote him to such high positions, fearing for his safety; to which Suleiman replied that under his reign, no matter what the circumstance, Ibrahim would never be put to death.

Yet Ibrahim eventually fell from grace with the Sultan. During his thirteen years as Grand Vizier, his rapid rise to power and vast accumulation of wealth had made Ibrahim many enemies at the Sultan's court. Reports had reached the Sultan of Ibrahim's impudence during a campaign against the Persian Safavid empire: in particular his adoption of the title serasker sultan (سرعسكر سلطان) was seen as a grave affront to Suleiman.

Suleiman's suspicion of Ibrahim was worsened by a quarrel between the latter and the finance secretary (defterdar) Iskender Çelebi. The dispute ended in the disgrace of Çelebi on charges of intrigue, with Ibrahim convincing Suleiman to sentence the defterdar to death. Before his death however, Çelebi's last words were to accuse Ibrahim of conspiracy against the Sultan. These dying words convinced Suleiman of Ibrahim's disloyalty, and on 15 March 1536 Ibrahim was executed.

Ibrahim Pasha supported Şehzade Mustafa as the successor of Suleiman. This brought him with disputes with Hürrem Sultan, who wanted her sons to succeed to the throne. For a long time, these disputes went on and since Suleiman's alliance was with Hurrem, she convinced the Sultan that Ibrahim was plotting a rebellion. Taking this into account and the last words of Iskander Çelebi, convinced Suleiman that Ibrahim was soon going to revolt against him. He consulted his Qadi, who suggested that Ibrahim be put to death. Suleiman recruited assassins and ordered to strangle Ibrahim in his sleep, and Ibrahim Pasha was killed by Suleiman, who had promised that he would not kill him.

 



 
Succession

Succession

Succession (W)

Sultan Suleiman's two known consorts (Hürrem and Mahidevran) had borne him six sons, four of whom survived past the 1550s. They were Mustafa, Selim, Bayezid, and Cihangir. Of these, the eldest was not Hürrem's son, but rather Mahidevran's. The Austrian ambassador Busbecq would note "Suleiman has among his children a son called Mustafa, marvelously well educated and prudent and of an age to rule, since he is 24 or 25 years old; may God never allow a Barbary of such strength to come near us", going on to talk of Mustafa's "remarkable natural gifts". Hürrem is usually held at least partly responsible for the intrigues in nominating a successor, though there is no evidence to support this. Although she was Suleiman's wife, she exercised no official public role. This did not, however, prevent Hürrem from wielding powerful political influence. Since the Empire lacked, until the reign of Ahmed I, any formal means of nominating a successor, successions usually involved the death of competing princes in order to avert civil unrest and rebellions.

By 1552, when the campaign against Persia had begun with Rüstem appointed commander-in-chief of the expedition, intrigues against Mustafa began. Rüstem sent one of Suleiman's most trusted men to report that since Suleiman was not at the head of the army, the soldiers thought the time had come to put a younger prince on the throne; at the same time he spread rumors that Mustafa had proved receptive to the idea. Angered by what he came to believe were Mustafa's plans to claim the throne, the following summer upon return from his campaign in Persia, Suleiman summoned him to his tent in the Ereğli valley, stating he would "be able to clear himself of the crimes he was accused of and would have nothing to fear if he came".

Mustafa was confronted with a choice: either he appeared before his father at the risk of being killed; or, if he refused to attend, he would be accused of betrayal. In the end, Mustafa chose to enter his father's tent, confident that the support of the army would protect him. Busbecq, who claims to have received an account from an eyewitness, describes Mustafa's final moments. As Mustafa entered his father's tent, Suleiman's eunuchs attacked Mustafa, with the young prince putting up a brave defence. Suleiman, separated from the struggle only by the linen hangings of the tent, peered through the chamber of his tent and "directed fierce and threatening glances upon the mutes, and by menacing gestures sternly rebuked their hesitation. Thereupon, the mutes in their alarm, redoubling their efforts, hurled Mustafa to the ground and, throwing the bowstring round his neck, strangled him.” (Kinross, Patrick (1979). The Ottoman centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire. New York: Morrow, p. 210 )

Cihangir is said to have died of grief a few months after the news of his half-brother's murder. The two surviving brothers, Selim and Bayezid, were given command in different parts of the empire. Within a few years, however, civil war broke out between the brothers, each supported by his loyal forces. With the aid of his father's army, Selim defeated Bayezid in Konya in 1559, leading the latter to seek refuge with the Safavids along with his four sons. Following diplomatic exchanges, the Sultan demanded from the Safavid Shah that Bayezid be either extradited or executed. In return for large amounts of gold, the Shah allowed a Turkish executioner to strangle Bayezid and his four sons in 1561, clearing the path for Selim's succession to the throne five years later.

 



 
Death

Death

Death (W)

On 6 September 1566, Suleiman, who had set out from Constantinople to command an expedition to Hungary, died before an Ottoman victory at the Battle of Szigetvár in Hungary and the Grand Vizier kept his death secret during the retreat for the enthronement of Selim II. Just the night before the sickly sultan died in his tent, two months before he would have turned 72. The sultan's body was taken back to Istanbul to be buried, while his heart, liver, and some other organs were buried in Turbék, outside Szigetvár. A mausoleum was constructed above the burial site, and came to be regarded as a holy place and pilgrimage site. Within a decade a mosque and Sufi hospice were built near it, and the site was protected by a salaried garrison of several dozen men.

 



 
Legacy

Legacy

Legacy (W)

The formation of Suleiman's legacy began even before his death. Throughout his reign literary works were commissioned praising Suleiman and constructing an image of him as an ideal ruler, most significantly by Celalzade Mustafa, chancellor of the empire from 1534–1557. Later Ottoman writers applied this idealized image of Suleiman to the Near Eastern literary genre of advice literature (naṣīḥatnāme), urging sultans to conform to his model of rulership and to maintain the empire's institutions in their sixteenth-century form. Such writers were pushing back against the political and institutional transformation of the empire after the middle of the sixteenth century, and portrayed deviation from the norm as it had existed under Suleiman as evidence of the decline of the empire. Western historians, failing to recognize that these 'decline writers' were working within an established literary genre and often had deeply personal reasons for criticizing the empire, long took their claims at face value and consequently adopted the idea that the empire entered a period of decline after the death of Suleiman. Since the 1980s this view has been thoroughly reexamined, and modern scholars have come to overwhelmingly reject the idea of decline, labeling it an "untrue myth".

At the time of Suleiman's death, the Ottoman Empire was one of the world's foremost powers. Suleiman's conquests had brought under the control of the Empire major Muslim cities (such as Baghdad), many Balkan provinces (reaching present day Croatia and Hungary), and most of North Africa. His expansion into Europe had given the Ottoman Turks a powerful presence in the European balance of power. Indeed, such was the perceived threat of the Ottoman Empire under the reign of Suleiman that Austria's ambassador Busbecq warned of Europe's imminent conquest: "On [the Turks'] side are the resources of a mighty empire, strength unimpaired, habituation to victory, endurance of toil, unity, discipline, frugality and watchfulness ... Can we doubt what the result will be? ... When the Turks have settled with Persia, they will fly at our throats supported by the might of the whole East; how unprepared we are I dare not say." Suleiman's legacy was not, however, merely in the military field. The French traveler Jean de Thévenot bears witness a century later to the "strong agricultural base of the country, the well being of the peasantry, the abundance of staple foods and the pre-eminence of organization in Suleiman's government".

Even thirty years after his death, "Sultan Solyman" was quoted by the English playwright William Shakespeare as a military prodigy in The Merchant of Venice, where the Prince of Morocco boasts about his prowess by saying that he defeated Suleiman in three battles (Act 2, Scene 1).

Through the distribution of court patronage, Suleiman also presided over a Golden Age in Ottoman arts, witnessing immense achievement in the realms of architecture, literature, art, theology and philosophy. Today the skyline of the Bosphorus and of many cities in modern Turkey and the former Ottoman provinces, are still adorned with the architectural works of Mimar Sinan. One of these, the Süleymaniye Mosque, is the final resting place of Suleiman: he is buried in a domed mausoleum attached to the mosque.

Nevertheless, assessments of Suleiman's reign have frequently fallen into the trap of the Great Man theory of history. The administrative, cultural, and military achievements of the age were a product not of Suleiman alone, but also of the many talented figures who served him, such as grand viziers Ibrahim Pasha and Rüstem Pasha, the Grand Mufti Ebussuud Efendi, who played a major role in legal reform, and chancellor and chronicler Celalzade Mustafa, who played a major role in bureaucratic expansion and in constructing Suleiman's legacy.

 



 




📹 Siege of Rhodes, 1522 — Ottoman Wars (VİDEO)

Siege of Rhodes 1522 — Ottoman Wars (LINK)

By the early XVI century the famous Crusaders from the Order of the Hospitallers controlled Rhodes and became a constant threat to the Ottoman naval dominance and economic interest. New sultan Suleiman I, who would be later known as the Magnificent just took Belgrade and opened the road into Europe, yet he needed to take control of Rhodes to secure his flank and that led to the siege of Rhodes in 1522.

 



📹 Siege of Vienna 1529 — Ottoman Wars (VİDEO)

📹 Siege of Vienna 1529 — Ottoman Wars (LINK)

As the Ottoman sultan Suleiman won the battle of Mohacs in 1529 and managed to take over most of Hungary, but this now he was facing the might of the Holy Roman Empire led by the Habsburg dynasty. The siege of Vienna would be the high point of the campaigns of this period.

 



📹 Battle of Mohacs 1526 — Ottoman Wars (VİDEO)

Battle of Mohacs 1526 — Ottoman Wars (LINK)

Our animated historical documentary series on the Ottoman history continues with the battle of Mohacs of 1526.

As sultan Suleiman conquered Belgrade in 1521 and Rhodes in 1522, he was able to focus all his resources on the European expansion and his next target was the Kingdom of Hungary, which was once one of the strongest in Europe, but was in a decline.

The battle of Mohacs changed the fate of Hungary for the centuries to come and opened the way for the Ottoman invasions into Europe.

 



📹 Preveza 1538 (VİDEO)

📹 Preveza 1538 (LINK)

The naval battle of Preveza was fought in 1538 between the alliance of Spain, Habsburgs, Venice, Genoa, Papal States called the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire. The navies were led by Andrea Doria and Hayreddin Barbarossa. This sea battle set the tone for the centuries of the naval battles fought in the region and became a crucial front for the Ottoman-Habsburg conflicts.

 




📹 📹 📹 Carlos, rey emperador scenes in English

📹 Charles V plans to attack the Ottomans (VİDEO)

📹 Charles V plans to attack the Ottomans (Carlos, rey emperador) (LINK)

Listening to his wife's requests, Emperor Charles V decides to attack Algiers, the place where the Ottoman admiral Barbarossa organizes his attacks on the Spanish coasts from. But in the meanwhile Barbarossa takes Tunis from Charles's subservient, and Pope Paul III asks Charles to reconquer Tunis, in order to prevent an Ottoman attack on Italy. Charles decides to obey the Pope and attack Tunis instead of Algiers.

 



📹 Sultan Suleiman invades Hungary, Queen Mary escapes (VİDEO)

📹 Sultan Suleiman invades Hungary, Queen Mary escapes (Carlos, rey emperador) (LINK)

The Turks, led by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, invade an important Christian kingdom of Europe, Hungary — destroying the Hungarian troops at the Battle of Mohács on 29 August 1526, killing the 20-year-old king Louis II, and even capturing and raiding the capital, Budapest. The news crushes Europe and everyone fears for the Christendom. The late King Louis's once beloved wife and queen, now widow, Mary of Austria, barely escapes and goes west to her family — her aunt Margaret of Austria and her brother Ferdinand. (Ferdinand inherits the title 'King of Hungary' through his wife, the only sister of Louis II, because Louis and Mary had no children.) Mary's and Ferdinand's brother, Emperor Charles V decides to help to defend Europe as much as he can, sending money to his brother to recruit troops against the advancing Turks. In the meanwhile, King Francis I of France is a Christian king happy for the Ottoman victory, for Suleiman is one of his greatest allies.

 



📹 France asks for Sultan Suleiman's help against Charles V (VİDEO)

📹 France asks for Sultan Suleiman’s help against Charles V (Carlos, rey emperador) (LINK)

After his defeat at the battle of Pavia and taken prisoner by the Spanish, King Francis I of France decides to ask the great Ottoman Sultan Suleiman for help against their common enemy, Emperor Charles V.

 



 







 
  Franco-Ottoman alliance 1536

Franco-Ottoman alliance

Franco-Ottoman alliance 1536 (W)

“The most Christian Turk.” (W)


Gallia Supplex, detail from Histoire dv roy Lovis le Grand, par les medailles, emblêmes, deuises, jettons, inscriptions, armoiries, et autres monumens publics, 1690, by Claude-François Ménestrier (1631-1705).

 

Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil, as depicted in a protestant propaganda text. The inscription reads: "A friend to Turks, Algerians, Barbarians but an enemy to Christians." He's kneeling before the Ottoman Sultan and the Lord of Algiers. He was also nicknamed "The most Christian Turk."


The Franco-Ottoman alliance, also Franco-Turkish alliance, was an alliance established in 1536 between the king of France Francis I and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Suleiman the Magnificent. The strategic and sometimes tactical alliance was one of the most important foreign alliances of France, and was particularly influential during the Italian Wars. The Franco-Ottoman military alliance is said to have reached its peak around 1553 during the reign Henry II of France.

The alliance was exceptional, as the first non-ideological alliance between a Christian and Muslim state, and caused a scandal in the Christian world. Carl Jacob Burckhardt (1947) called it "the sacrilegious union of the lily and the crescent.” It lasted intermittently for more than two and a half centuries, until the Napoleonic campaign in Ottoman Egypt, in 1798-1801.


Background


France surrounded.
 
   

Following the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmet II and the unification of swaths of the Middle East under Selim I, Suleiman, the son of Selim, managed to expand Ottoman rule to Serbia in 1522. The Habsburg Empire thus entered in direct conflict with the Ottomans.

Some early contacts seem to have taken place between the Ottomans and the French. Philippe de Commines reports that Bayezid II sent an embassy to Louis XI in 1483, while Cem, his brother and rival pretender to the Ottoman throne was being detained in France at Bourganeuf by Pierre d’Aubusson. Louis XI refused to see the envoys, but a large amount of money and Christian relics were offered by the envoy so that Cem could remain in custody in France. Cem was transferred to the custody of Pope Innocent VIII in 1489.

France had signed a first treaty or Capitulation with the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt in 1500, during the reigns of Louis XII and Sultan Bayezid II, in which the Sultan of Egypt had made concessions to the French and the Catalans, and which would be later extended by Suleiman.

France had already been looking for allies in Central Europe. The ambassador of France Antonio Rincon was employed by Francis I on several missions to Poland and Hungary between 1522 and 1525. At that time, following the 1522 Battle of Bicoque, Francis I was attempting to ally with king Sigismund I the Old of Poland. Finally, in 1524, a Franco-Polish alliance was signed between Francis I and the king of Poland Sigismund I.

A momentous intensification of the search for allies in Central Europe occurred when the French ruler Francis I was defeated at the Battle of Pavia on February 24, 1525, by the troops of Emperor Charles V. After several months in prison, Francis I was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Madrid, through which he had to relinquish the Duchy of Burgundy and the Charolais to the Empire, renounce his Italian ambitions, and return his belongings and honours to the traitor Constable de Bourbon. This situation forced Francis I to find an ally against the powerful Habsburg Emperor, in the person of Suleiman the Magnificent.


Alliance of Francis I and Suleiman

The alliance was an opportunity for both rulers to fight against the hegemony of the House of Habsburg. The objective for Francis I was to find an ally against the Habsburgs, although the policy of courting a Muslim power was in reversal of that of his predecessors. The pretext used by Francis I was the protection of the Christians in Ottoman lands, through agreements called "Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire."

King Francis was imprisoned in Madrid when the first efforts at establishing an alliance were made. A first French mission to Suleiman seems to have been sent right after the Battle of Pavia by the mother of Francis I, Louise de Savoie, but the mission was lost on its way in Bosnia. In December 1525 a second mission was sent, led by John Frangipani, which managed to reach Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, with secret letters asking for the deliverance of king Francis I and an attack on the Habsburg. Frangipani returned with an answer from Suleiman, on 6 February 1526:

 

“I who am the Sultan of Sultans, the sovereign of sovereigns, the dispenser of crowns to the monarchs on the face of the earth, the shadow of the God on Earth, the Sultan and sovereign lord of the Mediterranean Sea and of the Black Sea, of Rumelia and of Anatolia, of Karamania, of the land of Romans, of Dhulkadria, of Diyarbakir, of Kurdistan, of Azerbaijan, of Persia, of Damascus, of Aleppo, of Cairo, of Mecca, of Medina, of Jerusalem, of all Arabia, of Yemen and of many other lands which my noble fore-fathers and my glorious ancestors (may God light up their tombs!) conquered by the force of their arms and which my August Majesty has made subject to my flamboyant sword and my victorious blade, I, Sultan Suleiman Khan, son of Sultan Selim Khan, son of Sultan Bayezid Khan: To thee who art Francesco, king of the province of France ... You have sent to my Porte, refuge of sovereigns, a letter by the hand of your faithful servant Frangipani, and you have furthermore entrusted to him miscellaneous verbal communications. You have informed me that the enemy has overrun your country and that you are at present in prison and a captive, and you have asked aid and succors for your deliverance. All this your saying having been set forth at the foot of my throne, which controls the world. Your situation has gained my imperial understanding in every detail, and I have considered all of it. There is nothing astonishing in emperors being defeated and made captive. Take courage then, and be not dismayed. Our glorious predecessors and our illustrious ancestors (may God light up their tombs!) have never ceased to make war to repel the foe and conquer his lands. We ourselves have followed in their footsteps, and have at all times conquered provinces and citadels of great strength and difficult of approach. Night and day our horse is saddled and our saber is girt. May the God on High promote righteousness! May whatsoever He will be accomplished! For the rest, question your ambassador and be informed. Know that it will be as said.”

— Answer from Suleiman the Magnificent to Francis I of France, February 1526.

   


The plea of the French king nicely corresponded to the ambitions of Suleiman in Europe, and gave him an incentive to attack Hungary in 1526, leading to the Battle of Mohács. The Ottomans were also greatly attracted by the prestige of being in alliance with such a country as France, which would give them better legitimacy in their European dominions.

Meanwhile, Charles V was manoeuvring to form a Habsburg-Persian alliance with Persia, so that the Ottoman Empire would be attacked on its rear. Envoys were sent to Shah Tahmasp I in 1525, and again in 1529, pleading for an attack on the Ottoman Empire.

With the War of the League of Cognac (1526-1530) going on, Francis I continued to look for allies in Central Europe and formed a Franco-Hungarian alliance in 1528 with the Hungarian king Zapolya, who himself had just become a vassal of the Ottoman Empire that same year. In 1528 also, Francis used the pretext of the protection of Christians in the Ottoman Empire to again enter into contact with Suleiman, asking for the return of a mosque to a Christian Church. In his 1528 letter to Francis I Suleiman politely refused, but guaranteed the protection of Christians in his states. He also renewed the privileges of French merchants which had been obtained in 1517 in Egypt.

Francis I lost in his European campaigns, and had to sign the Paix des Dames in August 1529. He was even forced to supply some galleys to Charles V in his fight against the Ottomans. However, the Ottomans would continue their campaigns in Central Europe, and besiege the Habsburg capital in the 1529 Siege of Vienna, and again in 1532.

 

Italian War of 1536-1538 (W)

 

Franco-Ottoman military collaboration took place during the Italian War of 1536–1538 following the 1536 Treaty negotiated by Jean de La Forêt.

 

Campaign of 1536

Francis I invaded Savoy in 1536, starting the war. A Franco-Turkish fleet was stationed in Marseille by the end of 1536, threatening Genoa. While Francis I was attacking Milan and Genoa in April 1536, Barbarossa was raiding the Habsburg possessions in the Mediterranean.

In 1536 the French Admiral Baron de Saint-Blancard combined his twelve French galleys with a small Ottoman fleet belonging to Barbarossa in Algiers (an Ottoman galley and 6 galiotes), to attack the island of Ibiza in the Balearic Islands. After failing to capture the tower of Salé, the fleet raided the Spanish coast from Tortosa to Collioure, finally wintering in Marseilles with 30 galleys from 15 October 1536 (the first time a Turkish fleet laid up for the winter in Marseilles).

 

Joint campaign of 1537

For 1537 important combined operations were agreed upon, in which the Ottomans would attack southern Italy and Naples under Barbarossa, and Francis I would attack northern Italy with 50,000 men. Suleiman led an army of 300,000 from Constantinople to Albania, with the objective of transporting them to Italy with the fleet. The Ottoman fleet gathered in Avlona with 100 galleys, accompanied by the French ambassador Jean de La Forêt. They landed in Castro, Apulia by the end of July 1537, and departed two weeks later with many prisoners. Barbarossa had laid waste to the region around Otranto, carrying about 10,000 people into slavery. Francis however failed to meet his commitment, and instead attacked the Netherlands.

The Ottomans departed from Southern Italy, and instead mounted the Siege of Corfu in August 1537. where they were met by the French Admiral Baron de Saint-Blancard with 12 galleys in early September 1537. Saint-Blancard in vain attempted to convince the Ottomans to again raid the coasts of Apulia, Sicily and the March of Ancona, and Suleiman returned with his fleet to Constantinople by mid-September without having captured Corfu. French ambassador Jean de La Forêt became seriously ill and died around that time. Francis I finally penetrated into Italy, and reached Rivoli on 31 October 1537.

For two years, until 1538, Saint-Blancard would accompany the fleet of Barbarossa, and between 1537–38 Saint-Blancard would winter with his galleys in Constantinople and meet with Suleiman. During that time, Saint-Blancard was funded by Barbarossa. The campaign of Saint-Blancard with the Ottomans was written down in Le Voyage du Baron de Saint Blancard en Turquie, by Jean de la Vega, who had accompanied Saint-Blancard in his mission. Although the French accompanied most of the campaigns of Barbarossa, they sometimes refrained from participating in Turkish assaults, and their accounts express horror at the violence of these encounters, in which Christians were slaughtered or taken as captives.

 

Franco-Habsburg Truce of Nice (1538)

With Charles V unsuccessful in battle and squeezed between the French invasion and the Ottomans, he and Francis I ultimately made peace with the Truce of Nice on 18 June 1538. In the truce, Charles and Francis made an agreement to ally against the Ottomans to expel them from Hungary. Charles V turned his attention to fighting the Ottomans, but could not launch large forces in Hungary due to a raging conflict with the German princes of the Schmalkaldic League. On 28 September 1538 Barbarosa won the major Battle of Preveza against the Imperial fleet. At the end of the conflict, Suleiman set as a condition for peace with Charles V that the latter returns to Francis I the lands that were his by right.

The Franco-Ottoman alliance was crippled for a while however, due to Francis' official change of alliance at Nice in 1538. Open conflict between Charles and Francis would resume in 1542, as well as Franco-Ottoman collaboration, with the 4 July 1541 assassination by Imperial troops of the French Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Antonio Rincon, as he was travelling through Italy near Pavia.

 







 
  📹 Suleiman the Magnificent (Extra History)

📹 Suleiman the Magnificent #1 — Hero of All That Is (VİDEO)

Suleiman the Magnificent #1 — Hero of All That Is (LINK)

A young Suleiman ascends the throne of the Ottoman Empire. He wants to be a benevolent ruler, but he must prove that he is no pushover.

Perhaps it all began when Suleiman's father died...

Suleiman's father, Selim I, had pushed the borders of the Ottoman Empire further than any before him. Suleiman and his childhood friend, a Greek named Ibrahim who'd once been his slave, had to race back to Constantinople to claim the throne before news got out. Suleiman immediately bestowed gifts on the janissaries and court officials whose favor he would need for a successful reign, but he also carried out executions against those he suspected of treachery. He could not afford to be too kind. Indeed, his rule was challenged immediately by a revolt in Syria, which Suleiman crushed with overwhelming force to secure his reputation as a powerful leader. He wanted to stretch the empire even more, to bring it into Europe, which brought his attention to Hungary (his gateway to Europe) and Rhodes (a thorn in his side in the Mediterranean). The young prince of Hungary gave him the excuse he needed by executing an Ottoman envoy who'd come to collect tribute. Suleiman prepared his troops for war.

 



📹 Suleiman the Magnificent #2 — Master of the World (VİDEO)

Suleiman the Magnificent #2 — Master of the World (LINK)

Knowing that most of Europe is preoccupied with internal struggles, Suleiman launches his wars against Hungary and Rhodes while they're cut off from outside reinforcements.

The boy king of Hungary had given Suleiman the perfect pretext for war by killing his envoy, and he'd done it at a time when Hungary was especially isolated from the rest of the continent. The Holy Roman Empire and Papal States were being torn apart by the declarations of Martin Luther. Spain and France were busy fighting each other. Suleiman even ensured that Venice would stay out of the dispute by offering them a lucrative trade treaty with his empire. Though he felt certain of victory, he still studied every route and painstakingly worked out the logistics of moving his army. He would not risk failure through carelessness. Yet the siege from his cannons could not bring down the walls of Belgrade, so he turned to treachery: eventually, the Orthodox Serbian contingent in the city gave him access in order to escape the oppression of the Catholic Hungarians. Suleiman massacred the Hungarians, but honored his agreement with the Serbs and let them leave. Then he turned to Rhodes. He offered them a chance to surrender in advance, but they refused. The Knights of Rhodes were after all a sacred order, equal in discipline to his janissary forces. They fought hard, repulsing several attempts by the Turks to invade through collapsed walls and repeatedly refusing Suleiman's offers to let them surrender. But at last they wore down and agreed to terms of truce. Suleiman allowed them to leave along with any Christian subjects who wished to go with them. It had taken him two years to complete his wars, but he had succeeded.

 



📹 Suleiman the Magnificent — #3 Sultan of Sultans (VİDEO)

Suleiman the Magnificent #3 — Sultan of Sultans (LINK)

The victorious Suleiman begins to consolidate his empire and his home. With Ibrahim and his favorite concubine, Roxelana, by his side, he reorganizes the empire and begins his great work: a book of laws. But Hungary still stands untaken, and he must have it.

Suleiman returned from his campaigns to find that two of his sons had died of illness that year, but also that his favorite concubine had borne him a new son. Her name was Roxelana, and although she was only a Polish slave, he loved her deeply and soon elevated her to become his legal wife, the Hürrem Sultan. He also promoted his best friend, Ibrahim, up the ranks until he finally appointed him grand vizier. With these two ruling at his side, he felt ready to take on the world. But Ahmed Pasha, his second vizier, was jealous of Ibrahim. He'd expected to get the position of grand vizier for himself, and when he didn't, he asked for a governorship of Egypt instead - which he then used to mount a rebellion against Suleiman. His rebellion triggered a wave of uprisings through the empire. Suleiman sent Ibrahim to quell them all, which he did, and then reorganized the provinces to break up the power blocs that had acted against his sultan. At the same time, Suleiman had begun working on a great work of law, reforming the hodgepodge legal heritage of the Ottmans into a unified code that would guide the empire for the rest of its days. While it was still in progress, he saw an opportunity to reach for Hungary again and he took it. His troops marched through a torrential downpour of rain until they encountered the Hungarian troops on the Field of Mohács. Impetuous nobles had pushed the young King Louis II to take the field and go on the offensive, despite being outnumbered and outgunned by the vast Ottoman force. Their brave but foolhardy charge failed, and the Ottomans surrounded and destroyed them. Although Suleiman wept over the corpse of the young king, calling his death a tragedy, he did not shy from claiming his victory and declaring Hungary his own.

 



📹 Suleiman the Magnificent #4 — The Shadow of God (VİDEO)

Suleiman the Magnificent #4 — The Shadow of God (LINK)

When a dispute arose over the control of Hungary, Suleiman saw an opportunity to extend his empire into Europe and gain allies from those who'd asked for his help. Though he took Buda quickly, Vienna had time to fortify against him and pushed his troops back.

Suleiman looked back on those heady days, and wondered how his victories had all turned to ash...

After the Battle of Mohács, Suleiman found himself quickly pulled into the politics of western Europe. The Queen Mother of France asked him to intercede for her in a quarrel with the King of Spain, and the Austrian Hapsburgs had claimed Hungary as their own territory despite his recent victory there. The Hungarians, meanwhile, had elected their own king John Zápolya and refused to acknowledge the Austrians. Suleiman decided to settle the matter by marching with his armies again, and found Zápolya a willing ally. Bad weather slowed his advance and cut his numbers, but he nonetheless took Buda by storm and made an example out of the Austrians they found there. When they got to Vienna, however, they found that the city had been fortified and reinforced by several European nations. Though Suleiman offered a king's ransom to the first man over the walls of Vienna, his troops just couldn't push through. The arrival of winter forced him to withdraw the siege, unsuccessful. He pretend to consider it a victory, but he knew that this defeat meant he'd never be able to acquire the European empire he had dreamed about. Besides, he was growing older, and the question of succession weighed heavy on his mind. By tradition, only one of his sons would be allowed to live and inherit the throne, but he couldn't bear the thought of his beloved Roxelana forced to watch her sons die. Especially considering his most likely heir, Mustafa, wasn't a son of Roxelana's at all. The quandary weighed heavy on him.

 



📹 Suleiman the Magnificent #5 — Slave of God (VİDEO)

Suleiman the Magnificent #5 — Slave of God (LINK)

Suleiman's empire stretches across the Mediterranean, but in the midst of his success, he suspects betrayal in his own house. His best friend, Ibrahim, and his most promising son, Mustafa, both seem to have designs upon the throne.

Suleiman was alone in his garden, unable to escape the doubts and regrets that shadowed him...

Suleiman and Ibrahim marched south upon the Safavid kingdom, where they met no resistance. Faced with an unbeatable Ottoman army, the Safavids simply yielded and scorched the earth behind them so Suleiman would not be able to hold the territory he took. Ibrahim suggested that he take on the role of sultan in this new territory so that he could govern it, but his words enraged Suleiman. Roxelana had been warning him that Ibrahim had grown ambitious and disrespectful, and now he saw it. He had Ibrahim assassinated and appointed a new chief vizier. But now his Western empire was in shambles. He allied with the French against his enemy, Charles of Spain, but they conducted their war in Italy, well beyond his usual sphere of control. The mismanaged war had to be called off after Charles and Ferdinand attacked Hungary in the wake of John Zápolya's death. Suleiman defeated them and annexed it officially. Again war called. This time he sent his troops south without him, only to hear word that they felt Mustafa was a better leader than he was and Mustafa didn't disagree. He joined them in the field and ordered Mustafa to come to him and prove his innocence, but it was a trap. He had Mustafa killed. The consequences rippled out. He killed Mustafa's son, his grandson. One of his own sons died from grief. Roxelana died of old age. His two remaining sons, Selim II and Bayezid, began to quarrel for the throne, and he ordered them both out of the capital. Bayezid hesitated, and Suleiman turned against him. Even after Bayezid fled to the Safavids, Suleiman pressed for his execution and bribed the Safavid sultan to carry it out for him. Now, he had only one son.

 



📹 Suleiman the Magnificent #6 — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques (VİDEO)

Suleiman the Magnificent #6 — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques (LINK)

Suleiman's empire stretches across the Mediterranean, but in the midst of his success, he suspects betrayal in his own house. His best friend, Ibrahim, and his most promising son, Mustafa, both seem to have designs upon the throne.

Suleiman was alone in his garden, unable to escape the doubts and regrets that shadowed him...

Suleiman and Ibrahim marched south upon the Safavid kingdom, where they met no resistance. Faced with an unbeatable Ottoman army, the Safavids simply yielded and scorched the earth behind them so Suleiman would not be able to hold the territory he took. Ibrahim suggested that he take on the role of sultan in this new territory so that he could govern it, but his words enraged Suleiman. Roxelana had been warning him that Ibrahim had grown ambitious and disrespectful, and now he saw it. He had Ibrahim assassinated and appointed a new chief vizier. But now his Western empire was in shambles. He allied with the French against his enemy, Charles of Spain, but they conducted their war in Italy, well beyond his usual sphere of control. The mismanaged war had to be called off after Charles and Ferdinand attacked Hungary in the wake of John Zápolya's death. Suleiman defeated them and annexed it officially. Again war called. This time he sent his troops south without him, only to hear word that they felt Mustafa was a better leader than he was and Mustafa didn't disagree. He joined them in the field and ordered Mustafa to come to him and prove his innocence, but it was a trap. He had Mustafa killed. The consequences rippled out. He killed Mustafa's son, his grandson. One of his own sons died from grief. Roxelana died of old age. His two remaining sons, Selim II and Bayezid, began to quarrel for the throne, and he ordered them both out of the capital. Bayezid hesitated, and Suleiman turned against him. Even after Bayezid fled to the Safavids, Suleiman pressed for his execution and bribed the Safavid sultan to carry it out for him. Now, he had only one son.

 







 
  Siege of Esztergom 1543

Siege of Esztergom (1543)

Siege of Esztergom 1543 (W)

📂 DATA

DATA

Date 25 July – 10 August 1543
Location
Result Ottoman victory
Belligerents
Holy Roman Empire Ottoman Empire
Supported by:
France
Commanders and leaders
Suleiman the Magnificent
Şehzade Mehmed
Hadim Suleiman Pasha
Strength
Artillery unit

 



The Siege of Esztergom occurred between 25 July and 10 August 1543, when the Ottoman army, led by sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, besieged the city of Esztergom in modern Hungary. The city was captured by the Ottomans after two weeks.

 

Siege of Esztergom 1543.
 
   
 
Background

Background

Background (W)

The siege was part of a struggle between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans following the death of the ruler of Hungary, John Zápolya, on 20 July 1540. This is part of the "Age of castle wars" in Hungarian history. Suleiman had captured the cities of Buda and Pest in 1541, giving him a powerful control over central Hungary. The Province (Beylerbeylik) of Buda was created in this occasion.

As part of the Franco-Ottoman alliance, French troops were supplied to this Ottoman campaign in Hungary: a French artillery unit was dispatched in 1543-1544 and attached to the Ottoman Army. Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean Sea, Suleiman had sent his fleet admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa to cooperate with the French, leading to the Siege of Nice.

 

The campaign route of the Ottoman army.
 

 



 
Siege

Siege

Siege (W)

The Siege of Esztergom followed the failed attempt by Ferdinand I of Austria to recapture Buda in 1542. It would be followed in turn by the capture of the Hungarian coronation city of Székesfehérvár in September 1543. Other cities that were captured during this campaign are Siklós and Szeged in order to better protect Buda. However, Suleiman refrained from moving further on to Vienna this time, apparently because he had no news of the campaigns of his French allies in western Europe and in the Mediterranean.

After the successful Ottoman campaign, a first truce of one year was signed with Charles V in 1545, through the intermediary of Francis I of France. Suleiman himself was interested in ending the hostilities, as he had a campaign going on in Persia as well, the Ottoman–Safavid War (1532–1555). Two years later, Ferdinand and Charles V recognized total Ottoman control of Hungary in the 1547 Treaty of Adrianople, and Ferdinand even agreed to pay a yearly tribute of 30,000 gold florins for their Habsburg possessions in northern and western Hungary.

Following these conquests, central Hungary was to remain under Ottoman control until 1686.


Siege of Esztergom in 1543, Hungarian miniature.
 

 



 








  Ottoman-Safavid War 1532-1555

Ottoman-Safavid War (1532-1555)

Ottoman-Safavid War 1532-1555 (W)

📂 DATA

DATA

Date 1532–1555
Location
Result Decisive Ottoman victory;
Peace of Amasya
Territorial
changes

Ottomans gain large parts of Mesopotamia (Iraq), Western Kurdistan, Western Armenia, and Western Georgia
Persians retain Tabriz, Eastern Georgia, Eastern Armenia, Eastern Kurdistan, Dagestan, and Azerbaijan and the rest of their north-western borders as they were prior to the war

Erzurum, Van, and Shahrizor become buffer zones. Kars is declared neutral.
Belligerents
Safavid Empire Ottoman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Tahmasp I
Shahverdi Sultan
Ismail Mirza
Suleiman the Magnificent
Pargali Ibrahim Pasha
İskender Çelebi
Damat Rustem Pasha
Sehzade Selim
Alqas Mirza (POW)
Kara Ahmed Pasha
Strength
60,000 men
10 pieces of artillery
200,000 men
300 pieces of artillery

 



The Ottoman–Safavid War of 1532–1555 was one of the many military conflicts fought between the two arch rivals, the Ottoman Empire led by Suleiman the Magnificent, and the Safavid Empire led by Tahmasp
 
Background

Background

Background (W)

The war was triggered by territorial disputes between the two empires, especially when the Bey of Bitlis decided to put himself under Persian protection. Also, Tahmasp had the governor of Baghdad, a sympathiser of Suleiman, assassinated.

On the diplomatic front, Safavids had been engaged in discussions with the Habsburgs for the formation of a Habsburg-Persian alliance that would attack the Ottoman Empire on two fronts.

 



 
Campaign of the Two Iraqs (First campaign, 1532–1536)

Campaign of the Two Iraqs (First campaign, 1532–1536)

Campaign of the Two Iraqs (First campaign, 1532–1536) (W)

The Ottomans, first under the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha, and later joined by Suleiman himself, successfully attacked Safavid Iraq, recaptured Bitlis, and proceeded to capture Tabriz and then Baghdad in 1534. Tahmasp remained elusive as he kept retreating ahead of the Ottoman troops, adopting a scorched earth strategy.

 



 
Second campaign (1548-1549)

Second campaign (1548–1549)

Second campaign (1548-1549) (W)


French ambassador Gabriel de Luetz d'Aramon participated in the Ottoman campaign.
 
   

Under the Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha, Ottomans attempting to defeat the Shah once and for all, Suleiman embarked upon a second campaign in 1548-1549. Again, Tahmasp adopted a scorched earth policy, laying waste to Armenia. Meanwhile, the French king Francis I, enemy of the Habsburgs, and Suleiman the Magnificent were moving forward with a Franco-Ottoman alliance, formalized in 1536, that would counterbalance the Habsburg threat. In 1547, when Suleiman attacked Persia, France sent its ambassador Gabriel de Luetz, to accompany him in his campaign. Gabriel de Luetz gave military advice to Suleiman, as when he advised on artillery placement during the Siege of Van. Suleiman made gains in Tabriz, Persian ruled Armenia, secured a lasting presence in the province of Van in Eastern Anatolia, and took some forts in Georgia.


The walled city of Van, which Gabriel de Luetz d'Aramon helped conquer.
 

 



 
Third campaign (1553-1555) and aftermath

Third campaign (1553-1555) and aftermath

Third campaign (1553-1555) and aftermath (W)

In 1553 The Ottomans, first under the Grand Vizier Rustem Pasha, and later joined by Suleiman himself, began his third and final campaign against the Shah, in which he first lost and then regained Erzurum. Ottoman territorial gains were secured by the Peace of Amasya in 1555. Suleiman returned Tabriz, but kept Baghdad, lower Mesopotamia, western Armenia, western Georgia, the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris, and part of the Persian Gulf coast. Persia retained the rest of all its northwestern territories in the Caucasus.

Due to his heavy commitment in Persia, Suleiman was only able to send limited naval support to France in the Franco-Ottoman Invasion of Corsica (1553).

 

Miniature with poems in Persian language written at two corners: Suleiman the magnificent marching with army in Nakhichevan, summer 1554.
 

 



 







  Hacı Ahmet

Hacı Ahmet (W)

Hacı Ahmet (W)

Hacı Ahmet was a purported Muslim cartographer linked to a 16th-century map of the world. Ahmet appended a commentary to the map, outlining his own life and an explanation for the creation of the map. But it is not clear whether Ahmet created the map, or whether he simply translated it into Turkish for use in the Ottoman world.
 
The map

The map

The map (W)

Hacı Ahmet appended a lengthy commentary to a 16th-century map of the world annotated in the Turkish language, known as The Ottoman Mappa Mundi of Hacı Ahmet, amongst other titles, which opens with “Whoever wishes to know the true shape of the world, their minds shall be filled with light and their breast with joy.”

The map is heart shaped, otherwise known as a “cordiform projection,” a style that was popular in sixteenth century Europe, and the extant copy was printed from wooden blocks in Venice, Italy,in 1559. It was kept until the late 18th century in the archives of the Venetian Council of Ten. The map is now part of the Heritage Library in the Qatar National Library.

Known as the "Mappamondo Hacı Ahmet", the map outlines legends and place-names in Turkish, and it may be the first map in Turkish ever published for sale to an Ottoman audience. Whether the map is original, or was simply a translation into Turkish, it helps show how the people of the Ottoman Empire perceived themselves in relation to the wider world. Three small spheres appear below the main map at the bottom of the page — the central graphic represents Earth and a number of satellite planets, while the left and right depict constellations.

Within the accompanying text of the map, Hacı Ahmet explains that the map was created to share knowledge of the shape of the world, especially of the New World. Specifically, Ahmet points out that the classical philosophers, such as Plato and Socrates, did not know about the newly discovered continent, which he says shows that the world is round. He says that the New World demonstrates the "extent to which the Ottomans were participants in their own right in the process of physical expansion abroad and intellectual ferment at home that characterized the period of history commonly referred to as the Age of Exploration". Ahmet also assigns the Ottoman Empire's rulers and kingdoms to the celestial bodies represented in the lower quadrant of the map, a maneuver which has been interpreted as an effort to impose a hierarchical geopolitical system that preferences Ottoman rule above all other world powers.

 

Hacı Ahmet's Map of the World: A complete and perfect map describing the whole world (translated from the Turkish Title) — 1559
 

Heart-Shaped World Map by Oronce Fine (1534).

 



 
Authorship

Authorship

Authorship (W)

The map is considered unlikely to be original, and was probably translated into Turkish by Ahmet.

The map has specific European characteristics, in that it includes the use of Western terms, suggesting Ahmet translated an older map into Turkish. In fact, throughout the map’s accompanying text, Ahmet emphasizes translation, stating that he “translated it from the language and alphabet of the Europeans into that of the Muslims.” A further argument made against Ahmet's authorship is that the “heart-shaped form of the map had already been used by earlier European cartographers”.

The map is "heart-shaped" and is constructed by a cordioform projection developed by 16th century cartographers and mathematicians including Johannes Werner (1468-1522), a German mathematician and geographer.

The map has been tentatively linked to several other geographers, including Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1557). It has also been argued that it shares similarities with a map by the French cartographer Orontius (1494-1555), published in 1534.

 



 
The Venetian connection

The Venetian connection

The Venetian connection (W)

Ahmet claimed the map was made for Ottoman princes, and some of the sons of Suleyman the Magnificent were interested in maps of the world and had looked to Venice for their production. This resulted in the development of Ottoman-Venetian relations, which offered "new interpretations of Venetian attitudes to the production of world maps for Ottoman clients".

The map’s printing in Venice helps to highlight aspects of Ottoman-Venetian relations. In the minds of Venetian publishers, it would be “a promising venture to produce a world-map for sale in the Muslim world”, and so the production of world maps was financially rewarding for European publishers. Maps in the Turkish language were in demand by the Ottoman Empire, and maps were translated into Turkish to satisfy that market.

 



 
The life of Hacı Ahmet

The life of Hacı Ahmet

The life of Hacı Ahmet (W)

Nothing is known of Hacı Ahmet himself, other than his own account of his life recorded in the map text.

“I, this poor, wretched and downtrodden Hacı Ahmet of Tunis studied since I was a small child in the Maghrib, in the city of Fez,” says Ahmet in the text, which briefly describes his origins, saying that he was captured from the infidels and described how, in creating the map, he would regain his liberty.

According to the story, Ahmet was educated in Fez, and when a European nobleman purchased him, he was able to continue to practice his Islamic religion.

 



 







  📥 🗺 Mappamundi of Tunuslu Hajji Ahmed / Venice 1559
 


Mappamundi of Tunuslu Hajji Ahmed / Venice 1559. (L)
 

DESCRIPTION

DESCRIPTION

Hajji Ahmed


(Mappamundi of Tunuslu Hajji Ahmed) Kemãl ile Naks Olinmis Cümle-I Cihãn Nemunesi
[Fully Illustrated Exposition of the World in Its Entirety]

Publication Place / Date
Venice / 1559
Image Dimensions
43.5 x 42 inches

 


One of the Most Significant Achievements of Early Modern Cartography — The First Map and Geographical Treatise Created in a Western European Workshop for a Non-Western Audience

Spectacular example of the Hajji Ahmed world map, "Fully Illustrated Exposition of the World in Its Entirety," made in Venice in 1559. The map is a towering landmark of contemporary geographical knowledge, incorporating the most up to date geographical information from 1559, as well as the earliest geographical treatise in the Turkish Ottoman language.

One of the map titles reads:

Whoever wishes to know the true shape of the world, their minds shall be filled with light and their breast with joy.

Created in an unknown Venetian workshop, the Hajji Ahmed (Haci Ahmet in Turkish) cordiform map of the world is the earliest known Turkish language work of any kind to be designed for publication and sale in the Ottoman market. With the exception of two earlier charts by the famous cartographer Piri Re'is (d.1554), which now survive only in fragmentary form, the Hajji Ahmed map also ranks as the oldest stand-alone Turcophone world map (Casale, 80). The copious text surrounding the map, intricately and painstakingly inscribed along the map's outer margins, is among the most extensive original Turkish-language geographical treatises to have survived from the sixteenth century.

As noted by Casale, the map and its surrounding text should be read as an original and remarkably compelling work of geography, presenting a picture of the Ottoman state that is defined both geographically and historically through its relationship to the twin legacies of ancient Rome and Alexander the Great.

 

Cartographic sources

While the earliest scholars of the map assumed that it was compiled independently from any known sources, it was established at a relatively early date that the map was drawn using Johannes Werner's cordiform projection and could best be described as a larger, geographically updated and improved version of Oronce Finé's cordiform map of 1534, which was first printed in 1536 (surviving in two examples).

The Hajji Ahmed map represented a significant cartographic improvement from Finé's cordiform map, including greater cartographic detail and accuracy. The improvements are especially evident in the New World, where the appearance of an advanced depiction of California and the Northwest Coast of America was particularly impressive for 1559, as are the revisions and improvements to the geography and place names in South America.

While several early writers suggested that the Giacomo Franco cordiform map may have been an intermediate source, this conclusion was based upon an erroneous dating of the Franco map to circa 1550, rather than the current dating of 1587. In fact, despite its having been prepared prior to the cordiform maps of Giovanni Cimerlino (1566) and Giacomo Franco (1587), it is by far the most cartographically advanced of all cordiform maps and the only map to provide the updated cartographic information along the west coast of North America derived from Ramusio and Gastaldi.

The map was clearly the subject of a great deal of effort and composition. As noted by V.L. Ménage, the source for the place names in the British Isles was George Lily's map of 1546. Other sources included Hayton's Flower of the Histories of the East and volume two of Ramusio's Navigationi et Viaggi, printed in Venice in 1556, shortly before the creation of the Hajji Ahmed map. Ménage concludes that much of the improved information in the map derives from Ramusio, based upon certain errors in Ramusio's translation of Leo Africanus (from volume one of his Navigationi et Viaggi) which are repeated in the Hajji Ahmed map.

The single cordiform is surrounded by a border of puffing winds, with an ancillary sphere and two star charts below it. Bordering the practically-square (115 x 111 cm) print is an intricate frieze with a flower design. Equally important is the text filling the space between border and map. As noted by Casale:

“Like the map, the text is divided into several discrete sections. Parallel to the map's visual content, the text's longest component is a comprehensive overview of the world, which includes…descriptions of both the eastern hemisphere, well known to the ancients, and the newly discovered territories of the western hemisphere. This overview begins with a segment devoted to each of the world's "four continents" (Africa, Europe, Asia, and the New World), followed by passages dedicated to its seven most powerful rulers and twelve most important kingdoms. These subsections, while consisting of historical, geographic, and economic details about the lands in question, are woven together by an underlying organizational schema based on astrology, each of the seven rulers being associated with a planetary body and each of the twelve kingdoms with one of the twelve signs of the zodiac. In this way, the author neatly draws together his text, the accompanying "cordiform" world map, and the three smaller maps that depict the celestial as opposed to the terrestrial world. At the same time, the resulting set of associations among rulers, lands, and heavenly bodies serves a larger didactic purpose: through the interplay of astrology and geography, and of text and image, Hajji Ahmed uses his map to impose a hierarchical order on world history - one configured in such a way as to place the Ottoman sultan, because of his particular location in space and time, at the celestial apex of world rulership” (81-3).

 

 

Origins of the Hajji Ahmed Map

The origins of the map, while now relatively well known and understood, were once a thing of legend. At the time of the rediscovery of the printing blocks for the map, it was believed that the map had been made in the Islamic World, not Venice. In the 19th century, the legend of the map grew and it was for many years described as having been found aboard a Turkish galley captured by Morosini in 1664-a story which was still being repeated in Baedeker's Northern Italy as late as 1913 (Baedeker, 365).

However, scholars now know that the map was made in Venice and intended for an Ottoman audience. In the 1550s, the sons of Süleyman the Magnificent, leader of the Ottoman Empire, were fiercely competing amongst themselves for the succession. Ultimately, Selim, the future Selim II, would survive while his elder brother, Mustafa, was assassinated in 1553, and a third brother, Bayezid, was executed in 1561. Their jockeying for power involved not only violence, but the possession of knowledge, specifically geographic knowledge in the form of maps. There is evidence to show that each of the three Ottoman princes were interested in attaining printed world maps from Venice, a recognized leader in cartography at the time. Their curiosity built on that of their predecessors who, since at least Mehmed I in the 15th century, had collected charts and maps, the most famous of which is the Piri Re'is world map presented to Selim I in 1517. The Ottoman court of the mid-16th century highly prized geographic knowledge and it is in this context that we can place Hajji Ahmed's "Fully Illustrated Exposition of the World in Its Entirety."

The map is dated in the year of the Hijra 967, suggesting it was created in or after October 1559 (October 1559 to September 1560). According to a brief autobiographical sketch included in the map's text, Hajji Ahmed was a Tunisian Muslim, trained in a Moroccan madrasa, who had the misfortune of being captured by pirates and sold as a slave to a Venetian nobleman, with whom he subsequently collaborated to create the map in exchange for the promise of freedom.

Despite this provocative story, it is unlikely that the map's architect was Hajji Ahmed, or at least that someone with that name was the lone contributor. Based on the numerous grammatical errors in the text, it is clear that the author was not, as he claims, an educated man from Tunis. Close study of the text by Arabic-speaking scholars has revealed that the text was most likely composed by a non-native Turkish or Arabic speaker, someone passably familiar with those languages as well as Latin and Italian. Who, then, is responsible for this extraordinary map?

Clues come from a struggle over publishing rights in the late 1560s, which were recorded in the records of the Venetian Council of Ten (the Doge). In 1568, one Marc Antonio Giustinian was given permission to publish an Arabic world map by a 'Cagi Acmet,' which had been translated by 'Membre et Cambri' (Ménage, 308). Membre refers to Michele Membré, a dragoman stationed in Venice who hailed from Cyprus and who had worked for years as a translator in the Venetian bailo in Constantinople. His assistant was Nicolò Cambi. Ménage argues that it is likely that Membré was the chief architect of the map. Casale has investigated Membré's intellectual circle and found that it is likely he worked in concert with a cohort of European-born, non-native Turkish speaking officials and bureaucrats who were determined to cement their relationships with the strong Ottoman state.

In his recent study of the Hajji Ahmed map, Arbel points out that the great Venetian mapmaker Giacomo Gastaldi was commissioned to create one of the Ottoman prince's maps in the 1550s and it is possible that Gastaldi himself was engaged in the composition of the Hajji Ahmed map as well. Moreover, as noted above, the details within the map reveal a connection to Giovanni Battista Ramusio, who also served for many years as the Secretary or Chancellor of the Council of Ten. The authorship of the map was therefore a group effort prepared for an elite Ottoman market. While all the individuals may never be identified, what is clear is the importance of Venice as a multi-cultural node where those with experiences of Ottoman lands and intellectual trends could gather and where Ottoman elites could order their geographic materials. Venice was the singular cross-roads where a unique object like the Hajji Ahmed map could be created.

 

The worldview of the Hajji Ahmed Map

What makes the Hajji Ahmed map so unique is not its rarity or its status in printing history. Rather, it is the particular worldview articulated in the images and text of the map. As noted above by Siebold, the text describes the four continents, the twelve great countries of the world paired with signs of the zodiac, as well as the seven greatest rulers in the world paired with planets. The Ottoman Sultan is likened to the Sun, i.e. the universal ruler. The Sultan is connected to other rulers, both European and Eastern, but he is central to all of their existences. In the section on the continents, Europe is also compared to the Sun, which implies that Süleyman is a great European ruler, or at least one intimately tied to Europe. This sort of reasoning stems from the intellectual circle of Membré, as described by Casale. Together these relative outsiders of the Ottoman court espoused a historical geography that connected Süleyman to past leaders like Alexander the Great and argued that Süleyman was destined, like Alexander the Great, to rule from Europe a grand empire beyond the borders of continental Europe (Casale, 84).

The Hajji Ahmed map was crafted in the hopes of appealing to other like-minded officials in the Ottoman court. However, by the late 1550s, such ideas, which had flourished under the Vizierate of Ibrahim Pasha (1523-36), were on the wane, as was the power of foreign-born officials in the Ottoman court. Other authors, from Muslim families long-associated with the Ottomans, preferred a less-inclusive worldview based upon Ptolemy. They chose this more limited geographic scope for political reasons, not due to ignorance of the wider world. Thus, the Hajji Ahmed map represents a particular moment of struggle within the intellectual landscape of the Ottoman court, a moment which illuminates just how dynamic and outward-facing the Ottoman Empire was in the mid-16th century.

 

History of the printing blocks and printing

Unfortunately, we will never know precisely what the intended audience thought of the map, as there is no evidence that the Hajji Ahmed map ever circulated in Constantinople in the 16th century. As previously mentioned, Giustinian, who specialized in Hebrew publications, managed to attain permission to publish the Hajji Ahmed map in 1568, after ensuring the return of the wood blocks which the Council of Ten had seized from his publishing house. A ruling by the Council of Ten on February 6, 1568 notes:

“Since our dear nobleman Marc'Antonio Giustinian has done no harm in his world maps (mappamondi), neither to Christianity nor to our State, as has been revealed in the material presented in his defense, the said world maps and other things confiscated from his house should be returned to him, on condition that he would not publish them [non dia fuori] without first obtaining permission and privilege, according to law.”

On May 13, 1568, the Senate further ruled:

“that nobody but [Giustinian], or somebody empowered by him, would be authorized to print, cause to be printed by others or sell in this city and in any other town or place of our dominion the world map in Arabic, with the gradation of provinces and cities according to Sultan Ismael (sic), assembled by Cagi Acmat (sic) and translated by Membre and Cambi, and brought to perfection at last after long delay.

It is unclear how Giustinian first came by the blocks, but it is possible that he either presided over their creation or acquired them in the trading of plates and blocks that was customary between publishers in Venice in this period.”

Giustinian clearly had plans to sell the Hajji Ahmed map to the Ottomans by using his position as the governor of Cephalonia to transport the maps easily to the nearby Ottoman territory of Morea. However, the map printing blocks were never returned to Gustinian, who was again in trouble with the authorities by 1570, when the Inquisition was investigating him for some of his Hebrew publications (Arbel, 25). In any case, political events would soon put a permanent end to the prospects of selling the map.

The Council of Ten had originally seized the wood blocks due to fears that they contained politically and religiously-sensitive information. While they may have worried that an Arabic map would contain content that attacked the Catholic Church, it is also likely the officials were concerned that it held sensitive geographical information that could help the Ottomans. After nearly thirty years of peace, in the late 1560s Venice was worried that the Ottomans were again setting their sights on Cyprus. War broke out between the empires in 1570, the Third Ottoman-Venetian War, which witnessed the Ottoman capture of Cyprus and then their defeat at the Battle of Lepanto.

Although the Council of Ten officially ordered the blocks returned to Giustinian, there is no evidence suggesting the blocks were ever returned and they remained in the Council's archives until, around 1795, when they were rediscovered. Menage notes that at the time of the rediscovery of the printing blocks in the archives of the Council of Ten, the Council ordered Pinelli, the official printer, to have 24 copies of the map printed and thereafter that the printing blocks should be transferred to the Public Library (San Marco). At the time, Simone Assemani, Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Padua was asked to describe the map. His comments were published in a 4 page pamphlet entitled, Dichiarazone d'una mappa turchesa incisa in quattro tavole di pero, ritrovate nell' archivio dell eccelso Consiglio de' Dieci (the pamphlet refers to 4 sheets as the size of the map--the other two sheets contain only text). The Dichiarazone, was presumed by Menage to have been printed in a run of only 24 copies, but later writers have questioned this conclusion, although only 4 surviving examples were known to Menage in 1958.

 

Rarity

The map was printed from six pear wood blocks, which still survive in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. However, they have been split and are damaged beyond repair so that the blocks are no longer useable for printing the map. The damage to the blocks was described as early as 1865 by D'Avezac as being cracked and worm eaten and in no condition for further printing. Stefano Bifolco reports that in 2010 the Marciano Library commissioned the restoration of the pear blocks, which are now framed and on display in the Library as of 2016.

There are no surviving examples of the map printed in the sixteenth century. Of the surviving copies of the 24 printed in 1795, the following at least are known to survive:

  • Library of Congress (sold at Sothebys in 1990 and later sold to the Library of Congress)
  • American Museum in Britain (purchased by Ken Nebenzahl at Sothebys in 1962 and later sold to Dallas Pratt of New York City--identified by Shirley as being in a private New York Collection. Pratt was co-founder of the American Museum. Ken Nebenzahl reports that the Hajji Ahmed map was framed by Pratt and hung on the ceiling above Pratt's four-poster bed in New York City, where he could look at it each night before he went to sleep)
  • John Carter Brown Library
  • Clements Library, University of Michigan
  • Biblioteca Marciana, Venice (San Marco Library)
  • British Library
  • Bibliotheque Nationale de France
  • Austrian National Library (2 copies) Imperial Private Library and one that was formerly "Hofbibliothek"
  • Newberry Library

 



 
 

📥 🗺 🔎 Mappamundi of Tunuslu Hajji Ahmed

 







 


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