Customer Reviews

Suleiman the Magnificent, 1520-1566

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For nearly anyone interested in the Ottoman Empire's finest era and Sultan, this book is one of the greatest sources I have read so far. I read this when I was writing my first term paper on Suleiman the Magnificent, and found it to be a great source. Full of unique facts and commentary, Mr. Roger Bigelow Merriman has provided new views about a very overlooked man of history. Mr. Merrimen also gives an overview of Europe at the time of Suleiman; the sixteenth century, in order to fully understand what was going on in the world. It also has helped me to understand what is going on in the world today, and the many seemingly strange reasons for why these events occur. There are many reasons why others should read about this great man. In the ongoing war between the Crescent and the Cross, Suleiman was perhaps the closest man to nearly conquer Christianity and Europe during the Renaissance. The battle of Vienna, although Suleiman and his Ottomans did not triumph, gave Christianity and Western Europe one of the biggest scares of all time. In Merriman's introduction, he writes of Suleiman, "...the ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its glory and strength, a conqueror of many lands, whose fleets dominated the Mediterranean and whose armies laid siege to Vienna, whom Francis I of France addressed as a suppliant, and to whom Charles V's younger brother Ferdinand paid tribute." Not only a great piece of history, this time period is very relevant to current events. (e.g.*; The Balkans and Kosovo).

*'exemple gratia', where the acronym e.g. comes from, is Latin for 'for the sake of an example.'