Suleyman I (ruled from 1520-1566) is regarded as the greatest Ottoman ruler. Also known as Suleyman the Magnificent, he was the tenth Ottoman sultan and fourth one to rule from Istanbul. He presided over a large empire and ruled longer and more heroically than any other Ottoman sultan. The Ottoman Empire reached its peak under his rule both in terms of political and economic power and development of Turkish art and architecture. [Source: "The World of Suleyman the Magnificent" by Merle Severy, National Geographic, November 1987 (♂)]

Suleyman I was born on 27th April 1495, Monday in Trabzon. His father was Sultan Selim I and his mother was Hafsa Sultan. Suleyman I was a tall man with a round face, hazel eyes broad forehead and a thin beard. Suleyman the Magnificent had reigned for forty six years (1520-1566) and this is the most memorable epoch of the empire, when it reached a pitch of grandeur and prosperity which was never afterwards surpassed, and from which it soon began to decline.

Suleyman Shah (Ottoman Turkish: سلیمان شاه‎; Modern Turkish: Süleyman Şah) was, according to Ottoman tradition, the son of Kaya Alp and the father of Ertuğrul, who was, in turn, the father of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire. However, early Ottoman genealogies did not all agree on this lineage, some failing entirely to mention Suleyman Shah as one of Osman's ancestors. The connection between Osman I and Suleyman Shah may then have been invented at a later date. His other son was Saru Yatı, the father of Bay Hodja. It is said that Suleyman Shah drowned in the river Euphrates in Syria. An Ottoman tomb in or near Qal'at Ja'bar has historically been associated with Suleyman Shah.

Suleiman

Characters:
Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleyman the Magnificent ruled the Ottoman Empire for 46 years between 1520 - 1566 and doubled his territory. This was a rising period for Istanbul, as it was for the whole Empire. Many valuable buildings were constructed during this period which survived until our days with no or little damage thanks to the great architect Sinan. The city was restored with a better plan including new dams, aqueducts and fountains, theological schools (medrese), caravanserai, Turkish baths, botanical gardens and bridges. The port of Golden Horn, of which the surveillance was made from Galata Tower, became one of the busiest ports. Some of the important monuments and mosques built during this period are: Suleymaniye Mosque and annexes, Sehzadebasi Mosque and establishments, Sultan Selim Mosque and establishments, Cihangir Mosque and Haseki establishments and baths built on behalf of the Hurrem Sultan (the only loved wife of the Sultan).

Suleiman I (Ottoman Turkish: سلطان سليمان اول‎; Modern Turkish: I. Süleyman, Kanunî Sultan Süleyman or Muhteşem Süleyman; 6 November 1494 – 6 September 1566), commonly known as Suleiman the Magnificent in the West and "Kanuni" (the Lawgiver) in his realm, was the tenth and longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 to his death in 1566. Under his administration, the Ottoman state ruled over 15 to 25 million people.

As one of the most famous and controversial historical figures in Ottoman history, Hürrem Sultan is usually depicted as an ambitious and power-hungry character that manipulated Sultan Süleyman. But is this really the truth?
Hürrem Sultan was born in Ruthenia in western Ukraine, which was under the rule of the Kingdom of Poland at the time. Thereafter, she was known as "Roxelane," which means "the Girl from Ruthenia." Although her birth name was Aleksandra Lisowska, the nickname "Roxelane" was so prominent that even the authors who wrote about her believed it was her real name.

Lisowska, whose father was an Orthodox priest, was taken prisoner by the Crimean cavalries at the age of 12 and sent to Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. After being educated and trained according to palace etiquette for many years, she was given the name "Hürrem," which means "the cheerful one" in Middle Persian, since she was a good-humored girl with a smiling face.

Life and death of Suleyman the Magnificent’s childhood friend and Grand Vizier, Ibrahim Pasha
Our hotel is named after the neighbouring 16th century Ottoman palace (now the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum) built by Ibrahim Pasha, the most popular Grand Vizier of Ottoman history. Below is a short biography (taken from Wikipedia).

Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha ("Ibrahim Pasha of Parga"; c. 1495 – 15 March 1536), also known as Frenk Ibrahim Pasha ("the Westerner"), Makbul Ibrahim Pasha ("the Favorite"), which later changed to Maktul Ibrahim Pasha ("the Executed") after his execution in the Topkapı Palace, was the first Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire appointed by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.

Ibrahim, born a Christian, was enslaved during his youth. He and Suleiman became close friends in their youth. In 1523, Suleiman appointed Ibrahim as Grand Vizier to replace Piri Mehmed Pasha, who had been appointed in 1518 by Suleiman's father, the preceding sultan Selim I. Ibrahim remained in office for the next 13 years. He attained a level of authority and influence rivaled by only a handful of other grand viziers of the Empire, but in 1536, he was executed on Suleiman's orders and his property was confiscated by the state.

Biography
Origin

The Ottoman state began as one of many small Turkish states that emerged in Asia Minor during the breakdown of the empire of the Seljuk Turks. The Ottoman Turks began to absorb the other states, and during the reign (1451–81) of Muhammad II they ended all other local Turkish dynasties. The early phase of Ottoman expansion took place under Osman I, Orkhan, Murad I, and Beyazid I at the expense of the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria, and Serbia. Bursa fell in 1326 and Adrianople (the modern Edirne) in 1361; each in turn became the capital of the empire. The great Ottoman victories of Kosovo (1389) and Nikopol (1396) placed large parts of the Balkan Peninsula under Ottoman rule and awakened Europe to the Ottoman danger. The Ottoman siege of Constantinople was lifted at the appearance of Timur, who defeated and captured Beyazid in 1402. The Ottomans, however, soon rallied.
The Period of Great Expansion

The Ottoman Empire (/ˈɒtəmən/; Ottoman Turkish: دولت عليه عثمانیه‎,Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿOsmānīye; Modern Turkish: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu orOsmanlı Devleti), also known as the Turkish Empire,[9] Ottoman Turkey,[10][11] was an empire founded at the end of the thirteenth century in northwestern Anatolia by the Turkish tribal leader Osman,[12]according to the Ottoman tradition said to have been descended from the Kayı tribe.[dn 4] After conquests in the Balkans by Murad I between 1362 and 1389, the Ottoman sultanate was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empirewith the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror.[14]

During the Ottoman Empire (1453~1920), the Turks were one of many linguistic and ethnic groups living in Turkey. There were 3 languages used at that time: Arabic which was used as the primary language of religion; Persian which was the language of art, refined literature, and diplomacy; and at the official level, the Ottoman Turkish that was used only for the administration of the empire. Members of the civil, military, and religious elite talked and conducted their business in Ottoman Turkish, which was a mixture of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. Ottoman Turkish not only borrowed vocabulary from Arabic and Persian but also lifted entire expressions and syntactic structures out of these languages and incorporated them into the Ottoman idiom.

The language of the court and government of the Ottoman Empire wasOttoman Turkish,[3] but many other languages were in contemporary use in parts of the empire. Although the minorities of the Ottoman Empire were free to use their language amongst themselves, if they needed to communicate with the government they had to use Ottoman Turkish.[4]

The Ottomans had three influential languages: Turkish, spoken by the majority of the people in Anatolia and by the majority of Muslims of the Balkans except in Albania, Bosnia, and various Aegean Sea islands;Persian, only spoken by the educated;[5] and Arabic, spoken mainly inArabia, North Africa, Iraq, Kuwait and the Levant. Throughout the vast Ottoman bureaucracy Ottoman Turkish language was the official language, a version of Turkish, albeit with a vast mixture of both Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary.

Ottoman Turkish /ˈɒtəmən/, or the Ottoman language (لسان عثمانى‎‎Lisân-ı Osmânî) (also known as تركجه‎ Türkçe or تركی‎ Türkî, "Turkish"), is the variety of the Turkish language that was used in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows, in all aspects, extensively from Arabic and Persian, and it was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. During the peak of Ottoman power, Persian and Arabic vocabulary accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary,[2] while words of Arabic origins heavily outnumbered native Turkish words.[3]
Consequently, Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated lower-class and rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe("raw Turkish"), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern Turkish language.[4] The Tanzimât era saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language (لسان عثمانی‎ lisân-ı Osmânî or عثمانليجه‎ Osmanlıca) and the same distinction is made in Modern Turkish (Osmanlıca and Osmanlı Türkçesi).

Great and famous folk philosopher whose memory has become a legend. His anecdotes which are verbally transmitted at everywhere where Turkish is spoken is popular among all classes and levels of people. They also were transmitted to the everyday language of countries which are neighbors of Turkey; Azerbaijan, Clans of Caucasia, Crimea and Idyll vicinity, Turkistan and the lands of Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan are among them. The fame of Nasreddin Hodja is gradually spreading all over the world and his anecdotes are being translated into several languages.

One of the most famous and greatest poets of Turkish literature. Fuzuli, who had a perfect knowledge of Turkish, Arabic and Persian, the three great Eastern languages of the time, has written his collected poems (Divan) in three different languages. Besides his "kaside", each being a monument, he has given us the best and the most sensitive examples of lyrical Turkish poetry, "Leyla ile Mecnun". This famous love and pain "mesnevi", which is considered to be the most important work of Fuzuli, occupies a special place among the work on the theme of these tragic and legendary lovers by numerous Turkish and Iranian poets. In his work titled "hadikad-üs- Sueda he describes the tragedy of Kerbela which is an extremely sad incident of the Islamic history. This literary piece is one of the best works produced in Turkish. He also has numerous other works of importance.