Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman I, known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent and to the Ottomans as Kanuni, the Lawgiver, was the tenth Ottoman sultan, born in 1494, who succeeded his father Selim I in 1520 and reigned for forty-six years, the longest of any Ottoman sultan, bringing the empire to its peak of economic, military and political power over a subject population of roughly 25 million. His European campaigns opened with the capture of Belgrade in 1521, removing Hungarian and Croatian resistance to Ottoman expansion, and the capture of Rhodes in 1522 after a five-month siege. In 1526 he won the Battle of Mohacs, devastating the kingdom of Hungary and setting in motion its eventual partition between Ottoman and Habsburg control, though his siege of Vienna in 1529 failed to take the city. From 1533 to 1555 he fought a series of wars against Safavid Persia that ultimately secured Iraq and Baghdad for the Ottomans under the Peace of Amasya, while under admirals such as Barbarossa his fleets extended Ottoman naval power across the Mediterranean and into the Persian Gulf, challenging Portuguese trade dominance and adding territory in North Africa. He died in 1566, at age seventy-one, during the siege of Szigetvar.