The Ottoman Empire Under Suleiman I Quiz

Answer: Belgrade

In 1456, Suleiman's predecessor Mehmed II -- who had conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul) just three years earlier and broken the Byzantine Empire -- laid siege to the city of Belgrade. His defeat there was widely regarded as the death knell of Ottoman expansion in the Balkans; to this day, Catholic churches ring their bells every noon in commemoration of the moment.

Sixty-five years later, the Ottoman armies returned to Belgrade with perhaps a quarter million soldiers, and this time the defenders were not so lucky. Suleiman had cut off Hungary's ability to help its border fort, which held out for less than two months. The population of the city was brought to Istanbul; the city and its fort became an important forward base for the Ottoman armies.

Answer: Rhodes

Rhodes, which was Greek in classical times and is Greek today, is in the far eastern Mediterranean -- much closer to the Turkish mainland than to the Greek. It's still famous for the Colossus of Rhodes, a giant statue constructed to celebrate the end of an enemy siege. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Colossus was long gone by the time the Ottomans arrived: it was destroyed in an earthquake in 226 BC.

The Knights Hospitaller had been founded in Jerusalem to care for sick Christian pilgrims; in the violence of the Crusades, this soon expanded to a military mission. In the decades after the Christian Crusader kingdoms fell, the Knights wound up taking over Rhodes, from which they frequently attacked Ottoman shipping in the eastern Mediterranean. In 1480, Mehmed II tried to conquer Rhodes and put a stop to this harassment, but failed -- just as he had at Belgrade in 1456. And, as in Belgrade, Suleiman and his armies succeeded where Mehmed II had failed. Though the Ottomans sustained heavy losses, they extracted a surrender in 1522. The Knights Hospitaller were allowed to leave; they wound up resettling in Malta, where they repelled an Ottoman siege forty-three years later.

Answer: Vienna

Ferdinand I, the Archduke of Austria, had claimed Hungary after its king was killed by the Ottomans at the Battle of Mohács in 1526. Suleiman, however, had already installed a vassal king -- John Zápolya -- and refused to tolerate Ferdinand's competing claim. He assembled an army of more than a hundred thousand and marched to Vienna.

Vienna, the capital of modern Austria, had perhaps a fifth as many soldiers defending it as attacking it. However, they did have some advantages. Bad spring and summer rains had dogged the Ottoman march, sickening the soldiers and camels and bogging down the artillery pieces so badly that many of them had to be abandoned in the mud. The Ottomans' usual siege tactics -- digging under the walls and placing mines there -- were blocked by the defenders. Ottoman supply lines could not support a long siege, however, and early snowfall had a disastrous effect. The Ottomans retreated in mid-October; they would not return to Vienna until 1683, although they did force Ferdinand to renounce most of his Hungarian claims in the 1540s.

Answer: Baghdad

These wars occurred early in the time of the Safavid dynasty, which would rule Persia for more than two hundred years. It was natural that the Ottomans and the Safavids would oppose each other, given their close proximity. Making matters worse, the Safavids were pursuing an alliance with the hated Habsburgs, and assassinated one of their own governors for being friendly toward Suleiman.

Suleiman's Grand Vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, launched the first campaign of the war in 1532. The Safavid shah, Tahmasp I, withdrew his troops ahead of the Pasha, burning fields and villages in a scorched-earth strategy. Nevertheless, the Ottomans took Baghdad (now the capital of Iraq) and would hold it for eighty-nine years. This was a vital link in the sultans' quest for legitimacy as Islamic caliphs; the Abbasid caliphate had been based in Baghdad.

Answer: Barbarossa

"Barbarossa" is Italian for "red beard", the nickname was given to Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I as a sign of respect. Hayreddin Pasha's older brother, Baba Aruj, also had a red beard, and picked up the nickname as a Europeanization of his Turkish name; when he died, the name stuck to his younger brother.

Hayreddin Pasha Barbarossa (c. 1478-1546) was a phenomenally skilled admiral and privateer. His efforts in the Mediterranean were crucial in the Ottoman fight against the Habsburgs, and were a cornerstone of the anti-Habsburg alliance between the Ottomans and the French. Among his efforts, he assisted the flight of tens of thousands of Moors from southern Spain, which had become deeply hostile to them after the Christian conquest.

Answer: Legal reform

"Kanuni Suleiman" is "Suleiman the Lawgiver"; this was, perhaps, his longest and best legacy. He unified the varied pronouncements of his predecessors into a single legal code, covering such varied areas as taxation and criminal law. These kanun‐i Osmani did not and could not contradict the divine law, or shariah, but Suleiman's civil code had a profound effect on the lives of his subjects. Strikingly, the code lightened criminal penalties; regularized taxes and levies; and offered significant protection to Christian and Jewish minorities.

Answer: Roxelana

Roxelana (c. 1500-1558) was probably born in the Ukraine, perhaps to an Orthodox priest. Captured as a teenager and sold as a slave, she wound up in Suleiman's harem and soon became a favorite of his. The story goes that she had a careful strategy for winning a place as his wife. First, she asked him to allow her to study Islam; how could he say no? Then, she requested to be allowed to convert, and a pleased Suleiman again agreed. After converting, however, she explained that -- as a devout Muslim woman -- it was impossible for her to be intimate with a man who was not her husband. They did not remain unmarried for long.

"Roxelana" may not ever have been her actual name; instead, it may be a reference to her Ruthenian nationality. She is known to Ottoman history as Hürrem Sultan, the cheerful queen. There is evidence she advised her husband on various matters of state, and probably helped inspire the "perpetual peace" between Poland and the Ottoman Empire. (In the end, the peace was not really perpetual; it never is. War broke out in 1620.)

Answer: The Hagia Sophia

The Hagia Sophia, one of the most famous sites in Istanbul, far predated Sinan (c. 1490-1588); it was built nearly a thousand years before his birth, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. Dedicated as a Christian basilica in 537, it was turned into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453. Sinan did direct a major reconstruction project during the reign of Suleiman's successor, strengthening the building against earthquakes and adding two minarets.

The other three structures were all conceived and built by Sinan in Istanbul. Suleiman ordered the construction of the Şehzade Mosque, also known as the Prince's Mosque, as a memorial to his son Prince Mehmed. Completed in 1548, the building has an unusual structure, with four symmetrical half-domes surrounding and supporting the central dome.

The Hürrem Sultan Hamami, or Bath of Hürrem, was commissioned by Suleiman's wife, Hürrem Sultan. The magnificent public bath broke new ground by setting the men's and women's sections along a straight line; the sections are mirror images of each other. It served as a public bath for hundreds of years, though in the twentieth century it was also a warehouse, an overflow prison, and a marketplace for carpets. It reopened as a bath in 2011 after an extensive restoration.

The Süleymaniye Mosque, completed in 1558, is the final resting place of both Suleiman and Hürrem Sultan, as well as several other relatives. The supporting buttresses are, cleverly, part of the exterior walls, and are masked by galleries both inside and outside.

Sinan's moment of numismatic fame came between 1982 and 1995, when he and his Selimiye Mosque (in Edirne) were pictured on the 10,000-lira note.

Answer: Portugal

In 1499, explorer Vasco da Gama had returned to Portugal from a long voyage that established a sea route to India. Ottoman sailors, however, did not need to sail around the entire continent of Africa as the Portuguese did; since 1517, they had direct access to the Red Sea and could take a much shorter route. In an effort to protect their trading monopoly, the Portuguese occupied cities on the Arabian Peninsula (such as Aden, now part of Yemen, and Muscat, now part of Oman), and on the Indian coast.

Through their naval campaigns, the Ottomans hoped to break Portuguese dominance in the Indian Ocean. Even in the short run, their success was mixed; the 1548 capture of Aden was only necessary because the Portuguese had retaken it in the decade since the *first* Ottoman capture of Aden. There was no Suez Canal at the time, so the Ottomans could not transfer ships from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea; instead, they had to build a fleet from scratch. (Circumnavigating Africa was not an option given the Portuguese strongholds on the coast.) In the long run, the Ottomans were unable to break the Portuguese lock on the Indian Ocean.

Answer: His son Selim

Selim (1524-1574) was the only son left standing at Suleiman's death, and he thus became Selim II. Of his brothers, Mehmed had died in 1543, probably of illness. Mustafa, the eldest (and the only significant son not born to Hürrem Sultan), was the victim of palace intrigue: accused of plotting a coup, he was summoned to appear before his father to answer the charges. He knew he might be killed if he went; he knew he would be accused of treason if he did not. He went. He was killed. Jihangir, fond of his half-brother and never healthy, died of natural causes some months later.

Beyazit and Selim, the two who remained, were close in age and fiercely competitive. Their aging father decided to separate them, telling them to govern distant parts of the empire in his name. When Beyazit did not obey immediately, Suleiman feared the worst. Civil war followed, with Suleiman backing Selim; eventually, Beyazit fled to Persia, where he and his sons were executed at Suleiman's request in 1561.

Suleiman died while on campaign in 1566. Unfortunately for his empire, Selim proved an unworthy heir. The contrast was stark: Suleiman was known as the Lawgiver, and Selim was known as the Drunkard. Historians today mark Selim II as the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire.