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.

la plus belle des savants, la plus savante des belles

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.

Tridentine Creed and the Tridentine Mass (from Tridentum, the Latin name for Trent), which remained in use for the next four centuries;

consumption that had accounted for his father, his elder brother and his bastard son, and which was soon to carry off his legitimate son, King Edward VI.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

It was the last time in history that a pope was to crown an emperor; on that day the seven-hundred-year-old tradition, which had begun in ad 800, when Pope Leo III had laid the imperial crown on the head of Charlemagne, was brought to an end.

Francis asked his sister Margaret, Duchess of Alençon, to do the honours in her place, but she flatly refused to meet ‘the King of England’s whore’.

Suleyman the Magnificent and the Ottoman Golden Age Prince Suleyman (also spelled as Suleiman)

Suleiman also had another factor in his advantage.

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

Sunni vs Shia

Suleiman also drew back for the time being from Selim’s dream of crushing Persia,

Cafer Aga, who had commanded the Ottoman navy during Selim’s Egyptian campaign,

One of Suleiman’s first actions was to dismiss him from office; he was executed in 1521.

After the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632 CE,

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

Some parents, though, actually volunteered their sons,

Umayyad dynasty, which was recognized by the Sunni.

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

Ali’s second son, Husayn, claimed the caliphate and rebelled against the Umayyads;

he was killed in the Battle of Karbala and is regarded as a martyr by Shia Muslims.

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.

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

Technically the devshirme converts were slaves,

but many had substantial power and were eventually manumitted

manumitted

eventually Shia theology developed in a different direction from Sunni doctrine, too.

This led to further estrangement between the two sides of Islam.

At the start of Suleiman’s reign, the Byzantine Empire, including Asia Minor and Greece,

The eastern Mediterranean still largely belonged to Venice,

Charles now wore the crown of Spain, the Two Sicilies, and Austria and, as King of Spain

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.

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

Venetian envoy Bartolomeo Contarini saw him enter Istanbul and was impressed

This gave the sultan effective control of the eastern Mediterranean

Shah Ismail came to power with the support of Turkoman tribes in Azerbaijan and Anatolia

While Suleiman’s empire had Charles V on the western side,

on the east it bordered the Persian Empire.

he had a religious motive for his enmity with the Safavids since,

unlike the Sunni Ottomans, they were Shiites, regarded by Suleiman as heretics.

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

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,

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.

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

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

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.

preferring to circumscribe the Safavid dynasty’s power and influence rather than attempt to eliminate

Islam in Suleiman’s time was divided into two major antagonistic sects: the Sunni and the Shia.

To Suleiman (a Sunni Muslim), the Safavids, who were Shia, were heretics;

Suleiman now allowed most of the deportees to go home to Egypt.

Selim had banned the silk trade with Persia

Persian merchants in Istanbul had seen their inventory confiscated.

They were now compensated for their loss.

sultan, he was the defender of orthodoxy, so there was a strong religious element to his campaigns against the Persian Empire.

against the Persian Empire.

community was split between supporters of his companion Abu Bakr

and supporters of Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law.

Abu Bakr became the first caliph, and his followers became the Sunni;

Ali’s supporters became the Shia.

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,

was already in Turkish hands.

The Ottomans ruled Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia, and Serbia.

Suleiman’s father Selim had doubled the size of the empire,

taking Egypt and, with it, the guardianship of Mecca and Medina, as well as greater Syria

what is now Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel.

The Hungarians rushed in; a group of them came very close to Suleiman,

killing several of his bodyguards.

was hit by several arrows, though they could not penetrate his armor.

(It is worth considering how different history would have been had Suleiman been killed at Mohacs.

The Ottoman Empire might well have disintegrated

Suleiman’s two sons were still infants, and both Charles V and Tahmasp I would have taken advantage

the fortunes of the battle changed dramatically. The

Ottoman regulars pressed forward, and a Janissary charge with repeated musket volleys

The marshy terrain hampered the heavy horses ridden by the Hungarians

Louis II fled the battlefield at dusk, but his horse threw him into the river,