Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Sulayman the Magnificent 835
kindness, and courtesy were a proverb, and his intellectual gifts were the counterpart of his fine moral nature. His reign had not passed without its blots; he had done more than one cruel deed: he had sacrificed his dear friend and peerless minister Ibrahim in a fit of jealousy in 1536, and never cease to regret his fault; and spurred on by a clever and unscrupulous Russian wife, who rejoiced in the name of Khurrem or Joyous, and whom all the nations of Europe have adopted under the name of Roxelana, he had killed the most hopeful of his sons, his firstborn, Mustafa, who showed such promise of rivalling his father that Khurrem deemed the chances of her own son Saleem unsafe while the splendid young prince survived; and other executions had stained his career. But these were the rare exceptions. The rule was justice, prudence, and magnanimity, and Sulayman deserves all the praised that have been lavished upon him by historians of every nationality.
He left his century the better for his generous example. He left the Turkish arms respected by land and sea While the horsetails had waved before Vienna, the Sultan’s galleys had swept the seas to the coasts of Spain. It was the age of great admirals, and Charles V’s splendid Doria found a rival in Kheyr Uddin Barbarossa, the corsair of Tunis, and victor over Pope, Emperor, and Doge at the battle of Prevesa (1538);-in Dragut (Torghud), who finished his daring career at the fatal siege of Malta when, despite the corsai’s valour, the Knights wrought golden deeds of heroism, and dealt as deadly a blow at Turkish prestige as even the Count of Salm had struck from the walls of Vienna; -and in Piali the conqueror of Oran and Worster of Doria himself. Most of the Turkish naval successes were the work of semi-independent adventurers, pirates, or buccaneers, whose venturesome exploits belong rather to the ”Story of the Corsairs” than to the legitimate history of Turkey.
”Sultan Sulayman left to his successors an empire to the extent of which few permanent additions were ever made, except the islands of Cyprus and Candia, and which under no subsequent Sultan maintained or recovered the wealth, power, and prosperity which it enjoyed under the great lawgiver of the house of Usman. The Turkish dominions in his time comprised all the most celebrated cities of biblical and classical history, except Rome, Syracuse, and Persepolis. The sites of Carthage, Memphis, Tyre, Nineveh, Babylon, and Palmyra were Ottoman ground, and the cities of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Smyrna, Damascus, Nice, Brusa, Athens, Philippi, and Adrianople, besides many of later but scarce inferior celebrity, such as Algiers, Cairo, Makkah, Medina, Basra, Baghdad, and Belgrade, obeyed the Sultan of Constantinople.

836
Political and Cultural History of Islam

The Nile, the Jordan, the Orontes, the Euphrates, the Tigris the Tanais, the Borysthenes, the Danube, the Hebrus, and the Ilyssus’ rolled their waters ’within the shadow of the Horsetails.’ The eastern recess of the Mediterranean, the Propontis, the Palus Maeotis, the Euxine, and the Red Sea, were Turkish lakes. The Ottoman crescent touched the Atlas and the Causcasus; it was supreme over Athos, Sinai, Ararat, Mount Carmel, Mount Taurus, Ida, Olympus, Pelion, Haemus, the Carpathian and the Acroceraunian heights. An empire of more than forty thousand square miles, embracing many of the richest and most beautiful regions of the world, had been acquired by the descendants of Ertoghrul, in three centuries from the time when their forefather wandered a homeless adventurer at the head of less than five hundred fighting men.7
Like so many of his predecessors, Sulayman had a strong bent towards literary studies and poetry. His poems have a reputation among his countrymen for dignity. He compiled a daily journal of his campaigns which is of historical value. He was liberal patron of science and art. His reign was the Augustan age of Turkey. He was generous in his expenditure on mosques, colleges, hospitals, aqueducts and bridges, not only in Constantinople but in all the principal cities of his Empire.
As a man, he was warm-hearted and sincere, and honourably pure from the depraved sensuality so common among the royalty. He is noted for his princely courage, his military genius, his high and enterprising spirit, his strict observance of the laws of his religion without any taint of bigoted persecution, the order and economy which he combined with so much grandeur and munificence, his liberal encouragement of art and literature, his zeal for the diffusion fo education, the conquests by which he extended his empire, and the wise and comprehensive legislation with which he provided for the good government of all his subjects. It must be admitted on an impartial review of Sulayman’s reign that he was the greatest ruler of his age in a generation of famous rulers in Europe including Charles V, Francis I, Leo X, Henry VIII Sigmund of Poland and others. He excelled them all in the deeds and qualities which constitute the greatness and fame of a ruler. He is thus entitled to all the three titles viz, the Qanuni (Legislator), Sahib-i-Qiran (Lord of the Age), and above all, the Magnificent bestowed upon him by the historians of the East and West.
1 ane-Poole, P 127.
Or Amir Hassan Siddiqi, P 74
Sulayman the Magnificent 837
Whatever the political economists of the present time may think of the legislation of Sulayman as to wages, manufactures and retail trade, their highest praises are due to the enlightened liberality with which the foreign merchant was welcomed in his empire. The earliesrt of the contracts, called capitulations, which guarantee to the foreigm merchant in Turkey full protection for person and property, the free exercise of his religion and the safeguard of his own laws admini stered by functionaries of his own nation, was granted by Sulayman to France in 1535. An extremely moderate custom duty was the onl’y impost on foreign merchandise; and the costly and vexatious system of prohibitive and protective duties has been utterly unknown among the Ottomans. No stipulation for reciprocity ever clogged the wise lifcerality of Turkey in her treatment of the foreign merchant who became her resident, or in her admission of his ships and his goods.
The finance of the Empire under Sulayman was most careful ly husbanded. He fully recognised the strenght given to his country by a well filled treasury. Taxation was comparatively light. Janissa-ries and Sipahis numbering together about fifty thousand, formedl the standing army and were well paid. The holders of fiefs throughout the Empire were bound to military service in time of war, and to fcring horses and arms. They numbered about eighty thousand, and received no pay. Neither did the hordes of irregular cavalry, Tratars and others who accompanied armies, receive pay. They were given d3ue share in the booty captured during the wars. Under these conditions, the wars of Sulayman were not burdensome to the State.9
Thus ended the reign of the man considered by some to be the greatest of the sultans. Coming to the throne with a base of wealth and power unequaled by any predecessor of successor, he added rto the empire Hungary, Transylvania, Tripoli, Algiers, Iraq, Rhodess, eastern Anatolia from Van to Ardahan, part of Georgia, the mosi ’.mpoiiani AegCS” halnds. Belgrade, and Cerbs. Hs successsfully fought the Habsburgs in the Mediterranean and the Protegees in the eastern seas, making the empire a major naval power. Ottoman institutions reached their peak during his reign, and, as we s hall see, there was considerable cultural accomplishment. But signs o’f trouble were also discernible. His reign saw the triumph of the dev sirme, the retirement of the sultan from active direction of the government the rise to power of the harem, a failure to deal with the GConorraic and social problems that were causing major discontent, and consequent mass uprisings in Rumeli and Anatolia. AH these were Sulayman’s heritage to his successors in the century that followed.10
\mrir Hassan Siddiqi. P 75 md Ford, Pill

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