SULEIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT

by Harold Lamb ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 1951

An outstanding scholar of the East, author of The March of . The City and presents another of his ornate, carefully worked, and blazingly colorful tapestries of a man and his era--. In this case it is Suleiman, wisest and strongest of the Osmanli Sultans of Turkey, who lived during the dying days of the Renaissance. Suleiman was a quiet, thoughtful man of 25 when he came to the throne in 1520-- a contemporary of Francis I of France, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, Henry VIII of England, and Pope Leo X. Here is the story of their shifting alliances and counter-alliances, their wars and truces and the way they effected Suleiman and the strong empire he was building to the East. Drawn at first by temperament and beliefs toward Europe, Suleiman learned that the Christian rulers would never regard him as one of them and, in the end, turned his back upon the West. Suleiman strengthened his empire internally by a wise policy of taxation and agriculture and a generally more humane rule than that of his predecessors. He strengthened it externally by having the great drum of conquest in Constantinople sounded 13 times--for 13 marches, to the East, through the Balkans and Hungary, to the gates of Vienna. At the same time, his great sea wolf, Barbarossa, was turning the Mediterranean into virtually a Turkish lake. Yet he sowed the seeds of future dissolution of the Turkish Empire by adhering to the Osmanli policy of breeding from slave girls, and by giving his Russian-born wife, Roxelana, power which prepared the way for the following century of the ""Reign of the Favored Women"", when the contending and often knife-wielding favorites of the ""Throne Room Within"" ruled the dissipated, thoroughly corrupted, harem- raised heirs of the great sultan. A rich plum pudding of little-known history for the scholar, but it should be taken slowly or it will prove indigestible.

Pub Date: March 15, 1951

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1951

Categories: NONFICTION