Titans of History

His first target was Belgrade. In the summer of 1521 Suleiman captured the Serbian city from the king of Hungary, striking a heavy blow against Christendom and opening the path for further expansion into Europe. By 1526 Hungary had more or less succumbed to the Ottomans, and though it took another fifteen years for a formal partition of the kingdom to be realized, Suleiman now had a springboard from which to attack Vienna. The high-water mark of Suleiman’s advance on central Europe came in 1529, when he tried unsuccessfully to capture Vienna. This failure contributed to establishing the limits of Ottoman hegemony in the 16th century. The struggle for Vienna was one of the most notable of those battles that saved Christian Europe from invaders—going all the way back to the defeat of Attila’s Huns at Châlons in 451, the Frankish victory over the Moors at Tours in 732, and the repulsion of the Magyars by the Germans at Lechfeld in 955.

In 1526 Suleiman had defeated Louis II of Hungary at the Battle of Mohács, giving rise to a dispute over the Hungarian crown between the archduke of Austria, Ferdinand I, and Suleiman’s own choice, the subservient Transylvanian noble John Zápolya.

Ferdinand was married to Louis II’s sister and heiress, and he was also a member of the powerful Habsburg dynasty, headed by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, ruler of Austria, Germany, the Low Countries and Spain. The battle for Hungary was thus a clash of two empires.

In spring 1529 Suleiman gathered an army of 120,000 men and marched them through Bulgaria. Bad weather caused the loss of numerous camels and bogged down the heavy cannon, but Suleiman managed to meet up with Zápolya and recapture several Hungarian fortresses, including the important city of Buda, before marching on Vienna.

Without support from Charles V, the archduke feared the worst. He left Vienna in the hands of the seventy-year-old Niklas Count Salm and fled to Bohemia. Salm, an experienced veteran, shored up the Viennese defenses around St. Stephen’s Cathedral and waited.

When they arrived, Suleiman’s troops tried to bombard the city’s defenses into submission. But the earthen reinforcements held firm. The Ottomans switched tactics and began digging trenches and mines to weaken the city walls. This, too, failed, and as a wet autumn approached, they attempted one final push.

Despite their superior numbers, the Ottoman besiegers were beaten back by the pikes of the Austrian defenders. Giving up hope, the Ottomans killed their prisoners and set off for home on October 14, having to endure heavy snowfalls and skirmishing all the way.

Suleiman had missed his chance to advance into the heart of Europe. Charles V reinforced Vienna with 80,000 troops, and Suleiman had to be content with consolidating his territory in Hungary.

Meanwhile, in the Islamic world, Suleiman set his sights on the western frontiers of the Persian empire. The shah avoided a pitched battle, and in 1535 Suleiman entered Baghdad. The capture of the city, along with lower Mesopotamia and much territory around the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, meant that by the time a treaty was signed with the shah in 1554, Suleiman was indisputably the dominant force in the Near East.

The final thrust of Ottoman expansion under Suleiman secured Tripolitania (part of modern Libya), Tunisia and Algeria, a vast territorial gain that secured for the Ottomans a brief period of naval dominance in the western Mediterranean. Suleiman was now a key player in the battles between the kings Francis I of France and Charles V, the Habsburg emperor and king of Spain.

But territorial expansion was only one of Suleiman’s ambitions. In the Muslim world his legal reforms earned him the title Suleiman the Lawgiver. In particular, he concentrated on the Sultanic kanun—a system of rules in cases that fall outside Islamic Shari’ah.

As well as being an energetic reformer, Suleiman was also known as a scrupulously fair and even-handed ruler. He promoted his servants on the basis on their abilities, rather than of their personal wealth, their family background or their general popularity. He promoted tolerance of both Jews and Christians. He welcomed the wealthy, entrepreneurial and cultured Jews who had been expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. Meanwhile he continued the policy of promoting Balkan Christian slave-boys, converted to Islam, to high positions.