The Islamic World to 1600
Suleyman I, 1520-66
Selim died in 1520, soon after the defeat of the Mamluks, and his son, Suleyman I, succeeded him. Known as "the Magnificent" in Europe and "the Lawgiver" in the Islamic world, Suleyman's reign (1520-66) represented the height of the Ottoman Empire. He was named after Solomon in Hebrew history, who Muslims hold up as an example of a just ruler. They expected - and received - no less of a just ruler in Suleyman. In 1521, one of his first moves as sultan was to invade and capture the Serbian city of Belgrade, which was considered to be the gateway to Central Europe. From Belgrade, Suleyman faced an open road to Hungary and, beyond that, Austria. A 1526 Ottoman victory at the Battle of Mohacs in Hungary further advanced Ottoman interests in the region, and by 1529, Suleyman had led the Ottoman army to the gates of Vienna. His drive into Central Europe was done partly for territorial gain, and partly for political reasons. The Habsburgs, rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, controlled much of Central Europe, and the Ottomans' increasing involvement in European politics in the 1520s led them to enter into an alliance with France against the Habsburgs.
Suleyman I Courtesy of Bilkent University's Department of History www.bilkent.edu.tr/~history/ottoman/ |
The issue began with a war between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Francis I of France, in 1521. Francis sought Ottoman assistance in the war when it became clear that he was losing. He appealed to the Ottomans to help prevent Charles from establishing hegemony over all of Europe, resulting in one dominant power over the continent. The Ottomans agreed to help France prevent the Holy Roman Empire from dominating Europe, and a formal Franco-Ottoman alliance was concluded in 1536. That alliance was the cornerstone of European diplomacy for much of the 16th century, and it countered the alliance the Holy Roman Empire made first with Italy, and later with the Safavid Empire in Persia. Because of the threat of a two-front war based on the Holy Roman Empire-Safavid alliance, the Ottomans ensured peace on one side before waging war against the other.
By 1533, renewed hostilities with the Safavids on the eastern frontier led Suleyman to conclude a peace treaty with Archduke Ferdinand of Hungary in order to focus Ottoman military might on the Safavids. Their eastern campaign that year proved to be enormously successful for the Ottomans, as they took the major cities of Baghdad and Tabriz from the Safavids, and annexed the Safavid provinces of Azerbaijan and Iraq. By 1538 the Ottomans controlled the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, thus giving them control of all trade routes, by land and sea, from western Asia to India. The Ottomans were not able to maintain all of what they took from the Safavids, however, and the Persian city of Tabriz was one which changed hands several times before the Ottomans concluded a peace treaty with the Safavids in 1555. That treaty returned Tabriz to the Safavids and left the border between the two empires peaceful for the next 25 years.
Meanwhile, Suleyman faced a new and unexpected threat from the Russian Empire. The Ottomans had witnessed the expansion of the principality of Muscovy into an empire of its own with little concern, but by the mid-16th century, the Russian Empire began to challenge the Ottoman Empire in the Black Sea and Caucasus regions. Ivan IV, also known as Ivan the Terrible, came to the Russian throne in 1547, and annexed the Muslim Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, which were remnants of the Golden Horde. In 1559, Suleyman successfully kept Ivan from also annexing Azov, in the northern reaches of the Ottoman Empire. The hostilities died down in the 1560s, and Suleyman allowed Ivan to keep Kazan and Astrakhan, in return for Ottoman control of the Khanate of the Crimea. This feud with the Russian Empire demonstrated to Suleyman that his Empire had not two but three fronts to defend, when the new threat posed by the Russian Empire to the northeast was added to those of the Safavids to the southeast and the Europeans to the west.
Despite Suleyman's problems with the Safavids and Russians, he never ceased his involvement in European politics. He maintained his alliance with France, usually against Venice and the Holy Roman Empire, and he also allied the Ottoman Empire with dissident forces within the lands of his enemies. One notable example of such an alliance was Suleyman's outward support of Lutherans fighting the Pope in the Holy Roman Empire. Suleyman considered the Protestant rejection of icons and papal authority to be closer to Muslim belief than either Catholic or Orthodox Christianity, and his support of Protestantism was one of his key policies in Europe. By encouraging the disunity of Christianity, the Ottomans hoped to decrease the chances of Christian Europe uniting in a Crusade against the Muslim Ottomans. It has been suggested that Ottoman pressure played a decisive role in persuading the Habsburgs to grant several concessions to the Protestants. The Ottoman Empire was thus vital to maintaining the European balance of power in the 16th century.
The reign of Suleyman I truly represented the height of the Ottoman Empire, in terms of foreign as well as domestic policy. He was called "the Lawgiver" at home, even though he did not necessarily pass significant laws - only more of them than his predecessors. His new legislation essentially sought to harmonise the Shari'a, or Islamic code of law, with daily reality for his subjects. His laws were therefore mostly concerned with property ownership, taxation, and pricing regulations. Suleyman also distinguished himself from his predecessors by becoming the first Ottoman sultan to get married. His wife, Roxelana, one of the more famous female figures in Islamic history, elevated her status from one of the sultan's concubines to his only wife, and in the process she secured her sons as Suleyman's heirs.
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Roxelana |
After Suleyman's death in 1566, the Ottoman Empire fell into decline. Militarily, the empire's strength began to wane. A loss to the Europeans in Malta in 1565, Suleyman's last campaign, in fact marked the beginning of the decline of Ottoman military power. The conquest of Cyprus in 1570-71 was the last significant Ottoman victory. In 1571, the Ottomans suffered a crushing defeat to an allied European force at the Battle of Lepanto on the Mediterranean. The Ottomans lost 200 of their 230 ships in the battle, and the defeat incited Spain, Venice, and the Papacy to consider launching an invasion of Istanbul in its wake. That never materialised, but it was clear by 1600 that the Ottoman Empire had lost much of its power. Suleyman and Roxelana's son, Selim II, was known as "the Drunkard," and he was the first in a long line of incompetent sultans who assisted in the Empire's decline. It must be remembered, however, that the Ottoman Empire did survive another 350 years after Suleyman's death, and did not collapse completely until the end of the First World War in 1918. The highlight of Ottoman history, however, was its first 300 years, from 1300-1600, when it truly earned its place in history as one of the three Great Islamic Empires.
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