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Suleiman I the Magnificent
(1495 - 1556) Turkey

Suleiman

Ottoman sultan

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Also spelled Solyman, or Süleyman. It was under his rule from 1520 that the Ottoman Empire reached its zenith. He captured Belgrade in 1521, Rhodes in 1523, defeated the Hungarians at Mohacs in 1526, and was only halted in his advance into Europe by his failure to take Vienna after a siege September-October 1529. In 1534 he turned more successfully against Persia, and then in campaigns against the Arab world took almost all North Africa and even Aden. Only the Knights of Malta inflicted severe defeat on both his army and fleet when he tried to take Valletta in 1565.

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The story of Suleiman's attachment to his vizier Ibrahim (allegedly his lover) is as follows:

"Suleyman, great as he was, shared his greatness with a second mind, to which his reign owed much of its brilliance. The Grand Vezir Ibrahim was the counterpart of the Grand Monarch Suleyman. He was the son of a sailor at Parga, and had been captured by corsairs, by whom he was sold to be the slave of a widow at Magnesia. Here he passed into the hands of the young prince Suleyman, then Governor of Magnesia, and soon his extraordinary talents and address brought him promotion.... From being Grand Falconer on the accession of Suleyman, he rose to be first minister and almost co-Sultan in 1523.

"He was the object of the Sultan's tender regard: an emperor knows better than most men how solitary is life without friendship and love, and Suleyman loved this man more than a brother. Ibrahim was not only a friend, he was an entertaining and instructive companion. He read Persian, Greek and Italian; he knew how to open unknown worlds to the Sultan's mind, and Sulevman drank in his Vezir's wisdom with assiduity. They lived together: their meals were shared in common; even their beds were in the same room. The Sultan gave his sister in marriage to the sailor's son, and Ibrahim was at the summit of power."

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Source: Stanley Lane-Poole, Turkey, Story of Nations series, p. 174

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