SOLIMAN I.,' the "Magnificent" (1494-1566), sultan of Turkey, succeeded his father Selim I. in 152o. His birth coin cided with the opening year of the loth century of Mussulman chronology (A.H. 900), the most glorious period in the history of Islam. Though in Turkey he is distinguished only as the law giver (kanuni), in European history he is known by such titles as the Magnificent. He was the most fortunate of the sultans. He had no rival worthy of the name. From his father he inherited a well-organized country, a disciplined army and a full treasury. He united in his person the best qualities of his predecessors, and possessed the gift of taking full advantage of the talents of the able generals, admirals and viziers who illustrated his reign. If his campaigns were not always so wisely and prudently planned as those of some of his predecessors, they were in the main eminently fortunate, and resulted in adding to his dominions Belgrade, Budapest, Temesvar, Rhodes, Tabriz, Baghdad, Nak shivan and Rivan, Aden and Algiers, and in his days Turkey attained the culminating point of her glory.
The alliance concluded by him with France reveals him as superior to the narrow prejudices of his race and faith, which rejected with scorn any union with the unbeliever, and as gifted with political insight to appreciate the advantage of combining with Francis I. against Charles V. His Persian campaign was
doubtless an error, but was due in part to a desire to find occu pation, distant if possible, for his janissaries, who were always prone to turbulence while inactive at the capital. He was perhaps wanting in firmness of character, and the undue influence exer cised over him by unscrupulous ministers, or by the seductions of fairer but no less ambitious votaries of statecraft, led him to make fatal concessions. It is from Soliman's time that historians date the rise of that occult influence of the harem which has so often thwarted the best efforts of Turkey's most enlightened statesmen.
Soliman's claims to renown as a legislator rest mainly on his organization of the Ulema, or clerical class, in its hierarchical order from the Sheikh-ul-Islam downwards. He reformed and improved the administration of the country both civil and mili tary, inaugurated a new and improved system for the feudal tenures of limitary fiefs, and his amelioration of the lot of his Christian subjects is not his least title to fame. He wrote verses under the pseudonym of "Muhibbr." (See Hammer-Purgstall, Gesch. d. Osman. Reichs, ii. 331; and further TURKEY : History.) Soliman died on Sept. 5,1566, at the age of 72, while conducting the siege of Szigetvar.