Empire: World History - 25. Suleiman the Magnificent

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

Who is Selim the Grim? How does a slave come to be one of the most powerful members of Suleiman’s court? How does Suleiman anger the Christian powers? Listen as William and Anita are joined by Marc Baer to discuss the rule of Suleiman the Magnificent, in particular his love interests and the very Game of Thrones-style intrigue they create. To get your free two week trial for Find my past, go to www.findmypast.co.uk and sign up.   LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/xempire   Twitter: @Empirepoduk   Goalhangerpodcasts.com   Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnden. And me, William Durimpool. Now what are you doing? Are you doing? A complaint?

Well, I have. I do, but it's pointless. Okay. It was really, okay. Anyway, you're in India, I'm here. Maybe let's just say that it's a time lag difference. It isn't. It's him.

Okay, so look, last time we left these wonderful people, our listeners, we had concluded the very, very dramatic fall of Constantinople, which you were fabulous in, may I say. And we are now heading to another turn of epoch, but we should sort of fill in the gap a little bit because we're going to be talking about an extraordinary man with an extraordinary man. Don't give away, don't give away the suspense.

Don't you dare mention our guest yet. You always blow the drama right at the beginning. I thought we talked about Salaiman the Magnificent. Yeah, we can say that. But our special guest, we need commensurate drama. Don't say it. I resisting. I resisting.

But look, okay, so we've gone from Mehmet the 2nd, Mehmet the Conqueror, and it's great time at the siege of Constantinople, the fall of Constantinople. And then we have a succession leading, us to Solomon the magnificent and he's the great great grandfather, Mabit the second of Suleiman the magnificent. But it just made me think, you know, you've got the conqueror, Mabit the conqueror, you've got Sulaiman the Magnificent. You are William the what? And I was thinking what would our Ottoman names be? I mean, I think this is important for the historical record.

Definitely William the Sot. Oh, I think your heart. How about William the technically inept? luckily our listeners didn't hear me tuning up and getting my headphones working but anyway yeah I know it's a lovely I would be anita the perennially frustrated stroke confused not quite with it couldn't possibly comment anyway so look we are here to talk about somebody extraordinary Solomon the Magnificent and we have an extraordinary guest to talk about this who maybe will be able to fit in some of these gaps leading up to a really important epoch in the history of the Ottoman Empire.

And it is Mark David Baer. Well, yes, I wanted to say it. Mark David Baer. Hello. Or you can call me Mark the Grimm. That's taken, isn't it? Wasn't that Sillam's father? Silly Grim.

He was the Grim. You can't have that, Mark. Think of another one. I'll have to think then. Mark the Rockstar. We should point out that Mark is sitting in front of us on this laptop with with dark glasses and it's only 11 in the morning. I know, it's not just dark glasses,

dark glasses, tussled hair, and he's only had black coffee for breakfast. He is properly a rock star historian. You've also got one of the most beautiful mark of the beautiful book cover because you're splendid, magnificent, the Ottomans, Karns, Cesar's and Kalefs has just taken over my life.

And thank you for writing it. And what a beautiful cover it is. It's wonderful. It's like the golden ticket in the Willy Wonka movie, isn't it? Stunning gold. It is. I mean, I just didn't think. Anyone could outdo the Frank Pan Silk Roads, but you've done it.

And he'll be sick with envy now, I'm sure. But, you know, the US edition has an Ottoman miniature of the Ottomans cutting heads off their enemies. So in the US, you always have to have a violent cover. But here in England, we have this beautiful, refined, incredible artistic rendition. Darling, it's Downton Abbey. You're in the land of Downton Abbey. We don't do that kind of thing here. It's just not the thing.

So look, we're going to set the scene. And there are going to, there's many things that we want you to fill in. But just before we set the scene for the rise of Suleiman and this really important, some I say, the most healthy days of the Ottoman Empire, can you fill in the gaps from the fall of Constantinople to the rise of Suleiman in just a few minutes? I mean, what was the era like? Because you had some sultans who reigned for a matter of 23 days or so. And some who reigned for years. I mean, what was that kind of bumpy terrain that led us from one great figure to another great figure? It wasn't so bumpy. Mehmed the Conquer, Mehmed the Second, takes over Constance and Opel, and he repopulates it with Christians, Jews, and Muslims. He builds this new palace on the tip of the peninsula that has Christian, as well as Turkic, as well as Islamic elements to it. He's creating

a new society. He's creating a new kingdom. And he calls himself Caesar. So he sees himself as the inheritor of the Holy Roman Empire. At the same time, he is going to create a system of laws that's going to ensure that this dynasty is going to continue on sound footing. So his law becomes a law of the land, which includes fratricide. So in other words, the sultan, the one who comes to power is going to battle it out and kills all his other brothers or any other male contestant to sit on the throne. So he's going to establish that. He's also going to continue the system whereby the Ottoman administration and the Ottoman military is going to be built upon the greatest human resources they have. So they're going to bring slaves into the palace.

They're going to train them. They're going to convert them from Christianity to Islam. And the ones with the most auspicious signs on their forehead are going to go into the elite service, whether the janissaries, the elite military, or become the ministers of government. He's going to set this foundation of a strong government based on conversion and based on, well, bloodshed to ensure that the strongest one sits on the throne. So this is something that he does after he takes over the city. And just to set this in context, this is not unusual, is it, for Islamic dynasties. There's no concept of pre-mogeniture. The same is true, for example, of the moguls.

It's always the son who is the strongest, the son who is the fittest, who finally gets to the throne. Well, the last man standing in many times, isn't it? Or the last man standing, yeah. And the strongest one, the one who survives is the one who sits on the throne. And the one who makes it to the imperial capital, who makes it to Constantinople, then, is enthroned. And after he's enthroned, he then will have all of his male relatives murdered. So Mehmed II even has a two-year-old killed because that two-year-old could grow up to threaten his rule one day. day. And Mark, this is legal. I mean, in Britain, and we'll remember, we stick princes in towers and then, you know, pretend that we didn't kill them and things like that. You know, there is murder awash wherever there is succession. But this is a legally framed right that the last man standing has to wipe out anyone else. This is the law of the land. And like I said, any male relative who seems to threaten the sultan will be done away with. So they can be strangled. They can be killed on the battlefield. And again, this is whether there are

years old or 70 years old, whether they're grandchildren, whether they're sons of rivals, whether they're uncles. So he sets this out to ensure that there's only one ruler sitting on the throne. And this system for all of its brutality is going to ensure that the Ottomans have one strong ruler for centuries. What happens between Mehmet and Suleiman the Great? What happens in between those years because there is a period of time that passes. So, Mehmed II will have a very long reign after he conquers Constantinople. He reestablish the city as a great world city, a city of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. He rebuilds the city. He builds the grand bazaar. He makes it into really the envy of the world. That's all happening under the long reign of Mampett II. He passes away

in 1481, and he's replaced by Bayezid II. Now, Bayezi II is really a contrast to Mehmet II in that he has a more pious streak, and he is one who is going to turn back to reward Sufis, so those spiritualists, that feel a little bit disgruntled because Mehmet II has placed the administration and especially the military in the hands of Christian converts and has moved away from those frontier dervishes, those wild Muslim forces that had brought the Ottomans to power in earlier centuries. Was that not the case earlier? I mean, in the early Ottomans before the fall, were there no Christians,

convert Christians in imperial administration or not? It was begun in the 14th century, but now it is going to be more or less, This will be the system that's going to carry forward for centuries. So it's consolidated when they take this Byzantine city and Mehmed II becomes more like a Byzantine ruler, more like a Roman ruler and less like a frontier warrior, which was the earlier model of Sultan. This isn't to say he's not launching major campaigns. He launches a campaign against Rome. He goes to the Italian peninsula with his forces. and they occupy Otranta for a small period of time.

But Bayezzi the second is a kind of a conservative reaction. And he's seen as more of a spiritualist, more of a quietist, less militarist. But he's followed by Salim. And Salim is the one who's been given the nickname, the Grimm. Now, Salim was... Which is a great nickname. Come on. You've got to give it to him.

It's a goody. But not cheery. He was never cheery. He ruled too shortly. I mean, his reign was very short. And he died, perhaps it was of plague. Now, in those days, you wouldn't say our ruler died of plague because plague carried with it all kinds of moral baggage.

So they wouldn't say that. But he probably died of plague after a very short reign. But what a rain it was. I mean, you brought me on the show to talk about Suleiman. We haven't got there yet. But we can't think about Suleiman and all of his accomplishments without thinking about his father, Celine. It's a massive conquest.

Massive conquest. Massive conquest, changing. the face and the demography and the legitimacy of the empire. Here's an empire which for centuries has been focused on southeastern Europe. This is a European Christian Muslim empire whose capital cities were in Europe and whose military forces administration were based on Christian converts, focused on the Balkans, and now Salaim turns east and his forces conquer the Arabic-speaking region. So they conquer what is today, Syria and Egypt and Saudi Arabia. And this is a massive swath of territory and very, very rich territory.

Well, Egypt is the breadbasket of the Middle East. So not only that, but Cairo is this enormous, wealthy city. But along with that, they conquer the three holy Muslim cities, Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina. And then the Ottoman Selim is going to pack up the last descendant of the caliph, of the Abbasid caliphs, and he's going to pack him up and ship him to Constantinople, to Istanbul. Along with them, they're going to send all those relics that you see today in Topeka, the beard hair of the prophet, and the footprint of the prophet, and the letters that the illiterate prophet had written on his behalf. So all these, and the prophet's sword and his cloaks and all these, all this incredible, incredible holy relic and material,

even Christian relic, St. John the Baptist's arm and skull and all that. The arm that baptized Jesus according to the God. So all of these, all of these. So the Ottomans are going to capture not just the breadbasket of the Middle East and not just bring the great astronomers and thinkers. And they're not just. going to deport Jewish and Christian scholars from Cairo and from Aleppo and from Damascus, but they're also going to take these holy cities. And so now, along with being Caesar, the inheritor of the Holy Roman Empire, and along with being Sultan, this Turkic, Islamic military ruler, now Suleiman is going to be the first one who's going to actually say,

I am the Caliph. I am the symbolic leader of all world Sunni Muslims. And then Salim dies surprisingly. Of a boil. Right. Probably a plague. The great conqueror. Done by a boil.

That's right. Now, fortunately for Suleiman, Suleiman was the only son. So there's no succession. So Suleiman doesn't have to ice his brothers or go on the battlefield. He is going to be the sultan without any other competition. And how do people feel about that? You know, the Janissaries and those people in the court who have power and have had dominion and territory under his dad? What do they think about this young man coming unchallenged without having to prove his metal?

No, they don't think very highly of him at all because Suleiman had not proven himself on the battlefield. He was young. No one expected Salim to die. Selim was going to turn in and conquer the West. So this was a shock. And so the Janissaries, the viziers, the ministers, the ministers, the ministers, of government, they looked down on this guy, this Suleiman. He's in his mid-20s, and when we say young, he's like just 26 or so, isn't he?

He's young. Now, Mehmet the Conquer was 21 when he conquered Constantinople. And what has Suleiman done? He's 26. He hasn't done anything. He's done nothing. There's a lovely description of him by the Venetian ambassador I'd love to read at this point.

So this is at the 26-year-old Suleiman. He's tall but wiry and of a delicate complexion. His neck is a little too. long, his face thin, his nose, aquiline, a pleasant mien, though his skin turns to pallor. He is said to be a wise lord, fond of study, and all men hope good from his rule. So that's the first report sent to Venice when this guy comes to the throne. Well, aquiline noses, these are Western stereotypes. So they depicted Mehmet the Conquer as his nose almost touching his top lip.

I mean, this is, we don't have to take this too seriously. We don't have to take them too seriously. But so, Suleiman, he's young, he's unproven, he doesn't have the support of the military hierarchy or the ministers. They look down on him. And he also, he makes some questionable decisions as well. So he has a slave with him named Ibrahim, and he and Ibrahim are very close. Now, now, now. Don't wait, skirt over this.

Very close. How close, how close are they? Because there are, I mean, in some of these primary sources, there are suggestions that they are lovers. Is that true? Is it plausible or is it discrediting propaganda? That's not at all implausible in the culture. But also, you've got a system of propaganda going on against these terrible Ottomans as well. So, I mean, Mark, what do you think? True or not true? One of Suleiman's brothers in law, who he had executed for it, claimed that Ibrahim was his whore.

And this is an Ottoman source. They loved each other. They absolutely loved each other. And so Suleiman brings this Ibrahim, this Greek slave with him to the imperial capital and starts giving him all of the highest positions. Over time, he will make him Grand Vizier and he will make him Governor General of Southeastern Europe, stepping over older men who are actually experienced with all these things. So this is how Suleiman starts out. When you go to Istanbul at the moment, his palace, the palace of Ibrahim Pasha, is sitting on the hippodrome, isn't it?

It's the great big thing that sits opposite the Blue Mosque. It's the art museum. It's an Islamic art museum now. Gorgeous museum now, yeah. But when you say, you know, he was a slave, I'm just worth thinking about where he actually came from. And he was kind of harvested. It's Albanian, I think, ethnically, but a Venetian citizen. And he's just kind of taken up. And like many slaves, just gathered up and then sold.

then gets into Suleiman's orbit, who then has very strong feelings for him, strong feelings that wind everybody else up. Shall we, should we flush forward 10 years? So we're talking about a succession that takes place September the 30th, 1520. That's when Suleiman takes over the rain. And Suleiman just let's just talk about one of the other things that is important about Suleiman, because his father relish taking relics, Solomon also relishes tweaking the nose of the Holy Roman Empire by having a crown created,

which is going to wind them up. Tell us a little bit about the crown. That's right. So again, he declares himself to be, and the writers around him declare him to be the rightful ruler of the world. So he is depicted as the one who's going to unite east and west under one crown and under one religion. So Suleiman orally believes that he is the Caesar, the rifle inheritor of Rome, not the Hobbesburgs, not those people sitting in Vienna. He also believes that he is going to unite the world under one religion. That religion has to be Islam, but that religion has to spread east and west. So he is going to conquer Rome and he is going to become the leader of that church.

So what he does is, but obviously the church becomes Islam, so what he does is he has a Venetian make him, well actually, Ibrahim hires a Venetian goldsmith, to make him a crown, which combines the Habsburg crown with the Poplar-Tiarra. So he's both of these men in one. And then he has the gall to wear this crown when he, marches west when he marches, well, let's take a step back. First, he has to conquer some

territories. And once he conquers those territories, he calls the Hobbesburg and other ambassadors to come meet him in his tent where he's wearing this crown. And his crown is so heavy. I mean, we know what Queen Elizabeth said about wearing her crown. Now imagine something even fancier with more jewels, absolutely covered in jewels. It had to have a strap. He could barely move in it. So he has these ambassadors come and see him. And they look at him. They see him in this crown. They draw sketches of. They report to the rest of Europe. We're in trouble. This man with this massive army and this massive, this megalomaniac thinks he's going to replace the Pope and the emperor. So Ibrahim, as well as being his soulmate and his best mate, is also quite ferocious on the

battlefield and make some decisive moves on behalf of his lover-stroke leader. Well, he's also probably his bedmate. And so, again, Topkapa Palace, the main Ottoman palace, is built by Mehmed the Conqueror, as an all-male place. So it's only for the palace, the beautiful young boys who are in training to become the leading administrators and warriors of the empire. It's an all-male palace. All of the concubines and wives and children live in the old palace in the center of Istanbul and Constantinople. So this is the setup. Now, there was a chamber attached to Mehmet II's bed chamber, which was where the concubines would come. And so there was a few women in the palace for that purpose. But then, so it's supposed to be an all-male space.

But then there's one male at the apex of everything, at the apex, is the sultan. And he's the sun around which, you know, all the other planets are supposed to rotate. And there's only one mature male who's supposed to be there, residing there. The rest are younger. But then Ibrahim, apparently, has a bed placed, built, right attached to Suleiman's bed. The two headboards, so they're head-to-head in a way, maybe not headboards, but the beds are right attached to each other. This isn't right. There's not supposed to be two adult males at the center of the solar system. There can only be one son. So we see a lot of writing about that, and that's part of the justification for fratricide.

There are all these phallic images. But one quick thing, we're talking as if this is something unusual in the Islamic world at this point. Having beardless boys, having lovers is not only the norm. It's celebrated in poetry. It's something which has been around for hundreds of years. And we're looking at it with eyes from a different culture. Yeah.

Peruviance, maybe as well, in between. Well, it's part of Renaissance culture. So we have it in this country in England. We have it in Venice and in Florence, the culture of mature men, loving younger men. Well, boys, prepubescent. That's the ideal of the ideal relationship, intellectual as well as poetic, as well as physical. There's a lot of disparaging writing about relations between men and women. Women are referred to as objects for procreation.

Breed is. There's a wonderful book called The Mirror for Princes written on the Persian Step in the 12th century. And it's a book of advice of a father to a son about how to, how basically how to live a moderate and satisfying life. And it's all do this and do that. Don't do too much of one thing. Don't do too much of the other. And as far as the chapter on sex is concerned, he says, I recommend boys for winter and girls for summer. And so that's the sense of which the kind of the morality of the time. Was Abraham beautiful? I mean, what did he look like? Do we have any idea what he looked like? Well, he must have been beautiful because he

was selected for Sutherman and sold to him as his slave. And again, the palace pages, the boys are chosen for the beauty as well as for their other abilities, intellectual and physical abilities. But there's always metaphors used by jurisprudence saying, you know, you can't have two swords and one scabbard and so on. So you can't have two men at the center of power. So there's already from the beginning. There's a lot of talk about Ibrahim. Well, that seems to be a really good point for us to take a break. Welcome back to Empire. So, Mark, Ibrahim's central place in the Ottoman court is starting to cause discomfort among the viziers and other senior figures. So what does Ibrahim do? What does Suleiman do to try and mitigate this?

So what Suleiman and Ibrahim decide to do to gain some legitimacy in the eyes of the military and the viziers is to go out on the battlefield. And they, very quickly, very quickly after Suleiman is installed as in throne, they conquer Belgrade. And this is a huge conquest. Which is a big deal. This had defied his father and grandfather. That's right. And it's a large fortress on an important river, and it's the gateway to the rest of the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman's main rival at the time.

Then he's able to conquer roads. Again, this island, which is sitting there, it's a thorn in the side of the Ottomans. It's blocking pilgrimage traffic and so on. It's a fortress island run by the Knights Hospitler for the last 300 years. So the Knights Hospitler, for those, I mean, for those who don't know, it's sort of well we know Knights Templar I mean are they sort of

you know same meat different gravy are we talking with the Knights Hospital are Well they're they're crusaders they're set up in the Crusades and here in London you could go to the order of St. John's they have a museum today

in their building that goes back to the 15th century and you could find Ottoman cannons and so on so they're there there are Thor on the side and Suleiman is able to dislodge them

he's able to take this island that again his great-grandfather Mammat, the conquer, wasn't able to take. And then magnanimously give the, let the defenders free because they've defended so bravely. He lets them go and they sail off to Malta where the Ottomans are unable to dislodge them. So it was a mistake from the Ottoman perspective. But it frees up the Eastern Mediterranean for trade, but especially for pilgrim, Muslim pilgrim traffic. So they quickly have these incredible military victories which enable the tongues maybe to

stop wagging so much. But there's still tongue wagging. So, Ibrahim is made, again, he's made Grand Vizier, he's made the leader of these military campaigns, he's also made governor general passing over a particular person who then they appoint as governor of Egypt, who then goes on rebellion. So then Ibrahim has to go to Egypt and put that rebellion down. Now, it's after that in 1525 that we begin to see some of the most incredible literature produced about Suleiman as being an almost divine figure, certainly a messianic figure, certainly someone who's going to bring about not only the union of East and West, Muslims, Christians, Jews, but also the end time. The apocalypse is now, and Sulemon is bringing that all together. Wow. Let's go to one particular day. This is the 27th of June 1530. And Suleiman, who is now well and truly magnificent in the eyes of his court, having conquered roads and conquered Belgrade. He is celebrating the circumcision of his three sons. So this is the greatest of the Ottoman empires and this is the climax of his reign. And as the most powerful man, as you say, Mark, in either Europe or Asia, he wants these festivities. to make Constantinople really matter and shine. And he also wants to underline the fact that it's the refuge of the universe,

a place where people can come who are thrown out from other places. So listen, as the Prince's Forskins, this is delightful, isn't this, lovely? Forgive me if you're eating a breakfast. As the Prince's Forskins are dispatched on golden plates to their mothers, the noise of celebrations rings out over the golden horn, there are tightrope walkers, they're walking along cords strung between obelisks at the hippodrome, while below the keepers of the lunatic asylums are leading laughing and weeping madmen in golden change through the crowd. It's just so vivid and crackers.

And later, the rabble are entertained by fireworks of unicorns and Noah's arc. So just to give you an idea of the opulence and the magnificence of all of this. So, Mark, give us a picture then of the city at the heart of all this. We last saw in the last episode, Constantinople in ruins, blackened by flames, the conquest, had just taken place. But now we are in 1530. What does the city look like? This is now the center of much of the world. It's also, it's one of the largest cities in Europe. It's been repopulated again by bringing all of the sultans from Mehmet II through Suleiman, bring people from the Concord regions to settle the city. And those people then set up neighborhoods that may be

called after those groups. And in those neighborhoods, they establish their synagogues. their churches and their mosques. So again, the Ottomans always did what was necessary for the state, even if it was contrary to Islamic law. So here's a Muslim city, but the Ottomans are allowing churches and synagogues to be built. And this is just one of the practices, along with enslaving their own subjects and training and converting them by force and making them into the leading administrators and military. This was also contrary to Islamic law and practice. And give us a picture of the city physically, rebuilt largely now and the Grand Bazaar have just been erected? Well, after Mehmet II, the Grand Bazaar is established.

Also, the city is remade. Every subsequent sultan will endow a mosque in a neighborhood, but it won't just build a splendid mosque, but also will then establish colleges, markets, hospitals, hospitals for the mentally unwell, schools, fountains, loos. So every mosque will become a mini city within a city where a person, not only Muslims, but any resident of the city, couldn't fulfill all of their daily needs and life functions. And there's free food. 30,000 people a day are fed at these mosques, aren't they?

They have food kitchens, not just the mosque, but next to the mosque, there would be a food kitchen that would be distributing probably rice and chickbees or beans cooked in something lovely. Yes, absolutely. I said there's no poverty on the street. Can we just compare that to what's going on in the rest of? Well, indeed, let's compare it to the capital of England. What's going on in London at the same time? Because St. Paul's is doing the same thing.

But Henry VIII's London is grimy and filled with crime and prostitution. And it's, I mean, just do a little bit of picture painting for us about the comparisons here. Well, and Henry VIII looks up to Suleiman, and Henry VIII obtains a portrait of Sutherland. And Henry VIII at different banquets will dress up as Suleiman. And he'll have the other men, his couriers, the other men around him, courtiers. He'll have them wear massive turbans and wear the cloaks and the ladies at court as well. So there's an Ottoman fashion sweeps the Hampton Court Palace. But this is really strange there because you've got pictures of Henry VIII.

Even now, I mean, I go to Hampton Court quite a lot. far from where I live. But you know, you'll have pictures of Henry the 8th and other Tudors. You will have pictures of Hapsburgs, Charles V. There's nothing of Suleiman anywhere. No, they own it in their collection, but they don't display it. They have it. They don't display it because they have the French king and they have the Hobbesburg and they have, because it's how we conceive of history. We don't see the Ottomans as European. And is that a mistake in your view, Mark? It's absolutely a mistake because, again, I'm a historian and I look at what people in the past thought, what they wrote, how they lived their lives, how they envisioned the world. And for someone

like Henry VIII, the Ottomans are very much part of his world. Now, he's far enough away. He's not worried about military invasion. In fact, Henry the 8th and, well, even more important, Queen Elizabeth, they're intrigued by making alliances with Muslim powers, Muslim allies like the Moroccan king so that they can go against their common enemy, which are the Habsburgs in Spain. And the Catholics, yeah. So, okay, so we've got this man who is presiding over a beautiful city. It is opulent. It's got at least seven hills, but if you live in Istanbul, it's like 700, you're always walking uphill in Istanbul. So you've got hills. Hills are crowned with stunning mosques. You have incredibly busy markets.

New markets will be built every half century, massive markets. You also have just such a diversity. I try to think of the diverse people in Constantinople in the 16th century as being an alphabet of diversity. He could come up with a group of people for every letter of the English alphabet, from Armenians to Zaza-speaking Kurds. I'm not sure you were going to make it, but you did it. That's good. Okay. Zazza-speaking Kurds. Maybe I could just drop in there the titles that Salaman the Magnificent uses.

He signs himself the ruler of Thirteen. 37 kingdoms, the Lord of the realm of the Romans and the Persians and the Arabs, hero of all that is, pride of the arena of earth and time, of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, of the glorified karma, Kaaba and the illuminated Medina, the noble Jerusalem and the throne of Egypt, that rarity of the age, of the province of Yemen, of Aden and Sannar, of Baghdad and the abode of rectitude, of Basra and Al-Hazah and the cities of Norshivan. of the land of Algiers and Azerbaijan, the steps of Kipchak and the land of Tartars, of Kurdistan and Louristan, of the countries of Rumelia and Anatolia and Anatolia and Moldavia and Hungary altogether,

and many more kingdoms and countries, Sultan and Padsha. Oh, well done. I'm not sure about the abode of rectitude, but sadly when we're talking about land masses here. I looked it up on a map, couldn't find it, the abode of rectitude. But we're talking on a map, Mark, about what? We're talking about Anatolia, Turkey, the Balkans, Levant, Egypt, Red Sea, Eritrea, Portuguese, Yemen, okay, what else do I mean? Iraq, Western Iran for a bit. North Africa, much of North Africa, Egypt, down to Sudan, the Red Sea.

And also, by this time, the Ottomans are also sending naval expeditions as far as Indonesia. That's the extraordinary thing I'd learned in your book, which I hadn't known before. this fact that we think of them as a Mediterranean power, and as far as we know about them at all, we think of the Panto and the battling with roads and Malta. But you create this picture of the Ottoman spreading down the Red Sea, establishing themselves in Eritrea, and even besieging a bit of what's now India, do you, the Portuguese fortress on the edge of Gujarat? And they even control territory in Western India.

So on the one hand, in the West, the Ottomans in the 16th century under Suleiman, are making naval alliances with France. Now, they don't talk about that in France today. It's kind of hush-hush. They plan to raid Italy together, don't they? Absolutely. They're going to attack Rome together. So the French king and the Ottoman sultan, the navies are battling, they're fighting

Habsburg domains in France. They launch sieges and campaigns against places like Nice together, which is controlled by the Habsburgs. So that's in the West. And then in the East, the Ottomans are battling the Portuguese and are allying with Muslim kingdoms from Western India all the way to Indonesia. At the same time, under Suleiman, the Ottomans are arming rebels in Europe, again, to undermine the Habsburgs. The Mariscos, the last moors up in the mountains of Spain. And they're also making context with Protestants

in the low countries and what is today in the Netherlands. Because again, the Catholics are the enemy. The Habsburgs are the enemies. So the Ottomans are allying with Christians in the West, Muslims in the East, and it's a world war. It's a world struggle for dominion. And Constantinople is the heart of this. This is where it's all been controlled out of. A pasha sitting in his palace on the hippodrome can reach in either direction and send armies, send arms, build bridges. And even north, the Ottomans are going to link the massive rivers that run through Russia and they're going to build a canal from the dawn to the Volga so that they can then go up into Russia and then down into the Caspian Sea.

attack their Safavid-Persian rival. And you said not just the Indonesia, you actually mentioned in your book, I think they're sending arms to Ache, the Sultanate of Ache, which serves to control the Malaccan Straits, what's now kind of Singapore. That's right. So it's a global vision. It's a world vision. Now, we're speaking here now of geo-strategy and military, but there's also a religious vision. Because, again, Suleiman is described by the people at his court. We have a lot of writings in Ottoman that he is the preordained ruler, master of the auspicious conjunction, the one who's born at the right moment with the right star, who's going to bring about the end time. And so they use this messianic language. And that's not talked about today in places like Turkey. They just talk about him as

being strong and powerful. But he was a near divine figure. And that's, I'm not saying he was. I'm saying that's how he was built up by the people around him. So, Samuel, we've talked a lot about the fightin. Can we talk a little bit about the loving? It's a big thing. Okay, so it's all been about Abraham and his joint bedroom and his joint headboards. But now there is another who has caught Suleiman the Magnificent's eyes. And this is in 1532. This is a slave girl called Roxalana. Now tell me about Roxalana. I'm intrigued. Well, again, like Ibrahim, she's beautiful and she's a slave and she's sold to Suleiman. She becomes his slave. Now, in those days, for centuries, actually, Sultans were not marrying.

They didn't have wives. They had multiple concubines. But the law set down in earlier centuries was that once a concubine had a male son, then the sultan would see sexual relations with her, so as not to have any more sons. And then that concubine would then go with her son to a provincial outpost where she would raise the son, along with other ministers, in the arts of life and love and governance. So there would be one mother, there was a one mother, one son policy. And so they'd be out of the provinces. And then when the sultan sitting on the throne passed away, the mother and the son, it was the mother's job to

get it. Come on, get up, let's go, let's go. It's our turn now to be on the throne. So she would get her son, collect an army and try to make it back to the imperial capital to take over. That was that was what was happening. But then Suleiman falls in love. Falls in love with, in Turkish she's known as Hurem, Sultan. So he falls in love with her and then they keep

he keeps sleeping with her, keeps having sex with her, she keeps having sons. Right. And this is breaking, so having Ibrahim, the young boy didn't break any taboos, but having Haram, the girl is staying with her monogamously appalls everyone.

It's awful. What was it What was it about her? What was it about her? What do we know what it was about her? I mean, apart from beauty, there must have been something else. Because if a man has a harem full of stuff of, you know, many women, what made her special to him? Do you have any idea? Well, he wrote, he wrote a very passionate poetry to her. I've got one here. Shall I have a quick, a quick read. This is, this is Suleiman Tuhram, the green of my garden, my sweet sugar, my treasure, My love, who cares for nothing in this world. My master of Egypt, my Joseph, my everything, the queen of my heart's realm.

My Istanbul, my Karaman, my land of the Roman Caesars, my Badakshan, my Kipchak, my Baghdad, my Khorasan. Oh, love of black hair, oh, bow-like eyebrows, with languorous and perfidious eyes. If I die, you are my killer. Oh, mercilessless, infidel woman. It's more than a crush. Infidel woman, because she's Christian. She's Christian. And she's converted to Islam like all the other women in the harem.

So where's she from? Well, she's from, well, I'm not going to get the hate mail from the Russians and the Ukrainians. Was she Ukrainian? Yeah, that's what I thought. She was Ukrainian. So she's from Ukraine. Of course, she's very clever. She's very clever.

She and Sulawan become such lovers that he's willing to break president. And then he marries her. which by Islamic law he had to. But this is crazy. Okay, now I see the trouble ahead, Mark, because now you have Ibrahim and Roxalana set up against each other as rivals, both vying for influence within Suleiman's court. But we've also got so much of the story left.

Listen, you know, we can't possibly fit that into the next 10 minutes. So what we're going to do, we're going to end this episode here, and then we're going to get Mark back next week to tell us how this power dynamic is going to play out. So do join us then. And we're going to take you right to the end of, Dullamand the Magnificent's reign and what many consider the climax of the Ottoman Empire. But for now, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And it's goodbye from me, William Turunple.