Suleiman I “The Magnificent” ruled from 1520-1566 (Islamic dates 926 to 974). During his reign, the Ottoman Empire reached its peak. Suleiman's army took Belgrade in 1521. In 1522 his military forces succeeded in conquering the Knights of St. John, a sovereign military order, on the Island of Rhodes, whom previous Emperors had failed to conquer. Suleiman then conquered most of Hungary, Tunisia, Persia and all of Azerbaijan. His nickname “the Magnificent” was, surprisingly enough, given to him by his enemies. His Islamic nickname was “the Lawgiver”.  Both these nicknames give insight into the character and greatness of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman.

1. Richard Hooker's very good page about Suleiman at the Washington State University World Civilizations site.
2. Sandra Lach Arlinghaus has a very neat timeline for the life of Suleiman hosted at the University of Michigan.
3. A Turkish website about sultans has a fine description of Suleiman (Soliman I) and his reign.

This work by Eric & Chun-Chih Hadley-Ives is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.