Suleiman The Magnificent Quotes

Philippa drew a deep breath, and found relief in expelling it. ‘Do you think,’ she said carefully, ‘that someone is going to be goaded into doing something soon?’ There was a long pause. ‘I think,’ said Jerott at length, equally carefully, ‘that someone is going to the court of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and someone else is going to Flaw Valleys, England, to Mother.’ Which summed it up, Philippa supposed, with regret.

Paolo Giovio, an Italian chronicler of the age of Suleiman, summarized his opinion of the Turkish army as follows: ‘Their discipline is far more just and strict than that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. There are three reasons for their superiority over us in battle: they immediately obey their commanders; they never worry about the possibility of losing their lives; and

As a highly qualified Turkish-trained concubine from the harem of Suleiman the Magnificent, Philippa Somerville settled into English court life as a kite among chickens, and as a kite among kites into the Spanish court of the new King-consort Philip.

For the sultan Wilhelm II had brought the latest German rifle, but when he tried to present it Abdul Hamid at first shrank away in terror thinking he was about to be assassinated. The heir to Suleiman the Magnificent who had made Europe tremble nearly four centuries earlier was a miserable despot so fearful of plots that he kept a eunuch near him whose sole duty was to take the first puff on each of his cigarettes.

At the time, his father was the youngest son of Sultan Bayezid

At the time, his father was the youngest son of Sultan Bayezid II.

When, Bayezid chose his son Ahmet as his successor in 1512, Selim was enraged.

Selim had two older brothers to dispute the succession with him.

He would have learned Arabic and Persian as well as Turkish;

he would have studied mathematics, geography, history, law, and administration

and he would have also undergone military training.

Every Ottoman prince also learned a craft.

Sultan Abdülhamid II was a carpenter and had a carpentry workshop in the Yildiz Palace in Istanbul,

Suleiman became a goldsmith—a craft he shared with his father Selim.

But learning a craft was also intended to give princes humility, teaching them patience

By the time Suleiman was 15, he was considered ready for his first official post.

to become a provincial governor in Bolu

couple of years later, at Kaffa (also known as Kefe or Theodosia),

The remedy was a drastic one: the law of fratricide.

playing for the highest of stakes: become sultan or be killed.

soon as Suleiman heard the news, he made haste for Istanbul, arriving two weeks after Selim’s death.

On September 30, 1520, he ascended the throne, still only 26 years old.

Unlike Selim, he had no troublesome brothers, uncles, or nephews who might have pushed a claim.

Hafsa Sultan, one of Selim’s concubines, gave birth to Suleiman on November 6, 1494.

Suleiman was named after the biblical King Solomon,

Suleiman was born into a huge empire with its capital in Constantinople (Istanbul

He was the son of Şehzade (crown prince) Selim.

And as far as we know, Suleiman was his only son.

Suleiman was one of the great figures of his age—and it was truly an age of great rulers.

(Henry VIII became king of England in 1509, Francois I became king of France in 1515,

Charles V became king of Spain a year later.) Suleiman acceded to the Ottoman throne in 1520.

He went on to rule for forty-six years, longer than any other sultan,

His father, Selim, had arguably conquered more territory,

He rebelled against his father, dethroned him, and sent him into exile in a distant part of the empire.

And so Selim became sultan, and the eighteen-year-old Suleiman became the successor to the throne.

Bayezid died almost immediately after his exile, which may not have been an entire coincidence:

The sixteenth century was a time of massive change in both the East and the West, and Suleiman was born right at the crux of this change.

In 1494, the Ottomans had held Istanbul (Constantinople, the former capital of the Greek or Eastern Empire)

Columbus had discovered America just two years before;

Suleiman would have been educated in the

Enderun School of the Topkapi Palace.

Mehmed managed to defeat all four of them to become Sultan Mehmed I.

The Ottoman tradition was to allow each of the sultan’s concubines to bear only one son.

and if he became sultan, she would become the most powerful woman in the empire.

That was why Selim had reacted to Ahmet’s nomination so dramatically:

if his brother succeeded to the throne, his days were numbered

He had to fight both Ahmet and their brother Korkud to take the throne.

Following his victory, naturally, Selim had both his brothers executed.

He also had Ahmet’s sons and grandsons killed, apart from Ahmet’s son, Murad,

who fled to Persia.)

in Manisa when he heard that his father had died unexpectedly on campaign.

Selim was only 49. (The cause of Selim’s death is still uncertain: a mistreated carbuncle,

poison, plague, or cancer have all been suggested

Next to this, the western armies were poorly motivated, poorly armed, and often unpaid.

Suleiman also had another factor in his advantage.

Although part of Europe had become more unified under the Habsburgs,

there were several factions that moved in the opposite direction.

The Reformation was just beginning at this time,

Suleiman started by attacking Belgrade, which was then held by the Hungarians.

he now had a firm base from which to move further north.

The system of devshirme (“collecting”) involved taking children from (mainly Christian) Balkan subjects,

to create soldiers loyal to the sultan rather than to other interests.

The sultan is only twenty-five years old,” he said. “Tall and slender but tough, with a thin and bony face.

He enjoys reading, is knowledgeable and shows good judgment.

Venetian envoy Bartolomeo Contarini saw him enter Istanbul and was impressed

multicultural slave elite that was loyal only to the sultan (at least in theory,

Technically the devshirme converts were slaves,

taking large parts of Germany and western Europe out of the Catholic Church.

Venice, perhaps the most important maritime state in the Mediterranean,

was negotiating a fresh commercial deal with the Ottomans

whom they had a long relationship—and refused to join forces with the Hungarians.

Louis II of Hungary counted on help from the West.

The pope offered money but no men,

while Henry’s help arrived more than six months late—long after the war had been decided.

Hungary was on its own against the Ottoman Empire.

Some parents, though, actually volunteered their sons,

Belgrade held its ground for two months, falling in August 1521.

wrong about the age, but the rest of his assessment is correct judging by portraits of this hawk-nosed,

all the more precious since both Murad II and Mehmed II had tried to take Belgrade previously

While at first sight the devshirme was a cruel system, it had its humane aspects.

If a boy was the only son of a family, he would never be taken,

as that would deprive the family of its heir and the parents of care in their old age.

they could have a splendid career in the Ottoman Empire instead of remaining peasants.

The boys were forced to convert to Islam; they learned Turkish

some joining the Janissaries and others various offices of state.

The most talented were skimmed off and sent to the Enderun School in the Topkapi Palace,

where they would learn Arabic, Persian, and Turkish

Suleiman’s time, virtually the entire ruling class was from the devshirme.

but many had substantial power and were eventually manumitted

manumitted

bey, the other the scholar, in this world below ... the former with his glove or his fist commands the people, the latter with his knowledge shows the path.

But our only chance of understanding it is to banish from our minds western conceptions and accept as facts what seem like wild imaginings.

The year 1453, therefore, marks the end of the Roman Empire. No one can fail to be amazed by the almost constant successes of the Ottoman armies, which developed in less than two centuries from a small group of fighters who waged war around their gazi in Eastern Anatolia into a force whose power reached the shores of the Bosphorus and the palace of Justinian’s successors. How

Renard was obliged to report ruefully to his master that the laws of England were so unsatisfactory that it was impossible to have people executed unless they had previously been proved guilty.

At Lavenham in Suffolk, ten thousand men planned to converge in active protest; it was said that they failed only because the clappers had been removed from the church bells that were to signal the start of the uprising.

He who has no bread has no authority

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 worldly strife and constant war; Worship of God is the highest throne, the happiest of all estates.

responsible for professionalizing the bureaucracy of the Ottoman state.

was Çelebi who wrote the history of Suleiman’s reign up till 1557,

By 1533, Suleiman decided it was time to act. Central Europe was under control,