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Suleiman the Magnificent - VI: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques - Extra History (Patreon)

Published:
2016-04-15 07:33:11
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Suleiman had outlived both friends and rivals. His choices haunted him. He ached for one last victory...

Files

Previews only

Suleiman the Magnificent - VI: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques - Extra History

Suleiman's decisions came back to haunt him, starting with the Knights of Malta (once Rhodes). He tried to kick them off their island again, but failed. He launched a new campaign to take Vienna and prove the might of his empire. But he was so old... Support us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon --- (Episode details below) Grab your Extra Credits gear at the store! http://bit.ly/ExtraStore Subscribe for new episodes every Saturday! http://bit.ly/SubToEC Watch the Suleiman the Magnificent series! http://bit.ly/1nBF8i9 Play games with us on Extra Play! http://bit.ly/WatchEXP Talk to us on Twitter (@ExtraCreditz): http://bit.ly/ECTweet Follow us on Facebook: http://bit.ly/ECFBPage Get our list of recommended games on Steam: http://bit.ly/ECCurator ____________ A messenger disrupted Suleiman in his reverie. He brought news from Malta... Suleiman had outlived both his friends and his rivals. Charles V had passed, but his throne had passed to a son who proved just as vexing. An ardent Catholic, Philip II set his ships to harass Ottoman fleets in the Mediterranean and emboldened others to dispute Suleiman's mastery of the sea. The Knights of Malta, whom Suleiman had defeated at Rhodes and allowed to leave peacefully, once again gave safe habor to these Christian ships. Suleiman sent a force to take their island, but his commanders argued with each other and Christian Europe united against him in a way that it could not when he'd been a younger man. The Knights Hospitallier withdrew into their forts. His army struggled for three weeks to take just one of them, and although they succeeded, Suleiman's commander died and the Christian reinforcements had time to join the remaining two forts. At last, faced with yet another fleet of reinforcements, Suleiman's commanders decided to withdraw. Back in his garden, Suleiman knew that this defeat would destroy the invincible image of his empire. He resolved to prove that the Turks were still a force to be feared, and organized a campaign to take Vienna. He would lead them himself. They left in 1566 with great fanfare, but they were immediately greeted by torrential rains that slowed their advance and cost them materiel. Suleiman spent the whole trip confined to a carriage, and when they finally arrived to siege Szeged, he had to retreat a sickbed in his tent. He died while the battle still raged outside, never to know his empire's fate. ____________ ♫ Get the intro music here! http://bit.ly/1EQA5N7 *Music by Demetori: http://bit.ly/1AaJG4H ♫ Get the outro music here! http://bit.ly/23isQfx *Music by Sean and Dean Kiner: http://bit.ly/1WdBhnm

Comments

Avery
>>1684041

It's unfortunate that Leslie Peirce has now written a new book about Hürrem which basically repeats all the old romantic tropes with a feminist spin

Nessf

... there is, of course, no way to be certain that was how his life ended. Never the less - that was both beautiful and tragic. I'm weeping as I type this. ...well done.

Dave Levy

Hey guys. This was excellent. This whole series about Suleiman seems to be much more personal and intimate. I'd love to know in the "lies" video I'm sure you'll release, how much of the musings, thoughts and experiences Suleiman is described to have had during this series is based and on what.

RMS Oceanic

Fascinating how we gradually move away from the global struggle for the quiet intimate end of a man dealing with the ghosts of his past. Won't necessarily work for every story, but it works here.

Jim McGeehin

I remarked on this a little before, but Malta is one of the greatest fortress sieges of that era, and it's a fine story. Filled with fascinating characters like the bold corsair Dragut and his Catholic rival Romegas, this siege is inspiring and terrifying, filled with moments of heroism and horror. For example, when the walls of St. Elmo finally fell, every man in the garrison was wounded. The garrison commander himself sat in a chair moved next to the breach because he couldn't stand, his greatsword in his hands to surprise any who would attempt to charge into the breach. Piyale Pasha believed taking St. Elmo would have taken five days, but instead it took three weeks. Upon it's fall, Mustafa said: "By God, if this is what it took for the son to fall, how much more shall the father take?" The native Maltese too, had dizzying moments of heroism, including a night raid where their young and boldest men swam underwater across an inlet to surprise the people on the other side literally with their short blades in their teeth, unarmored and even barely clothed. The Turkish janissaries, their elite force, stood in breaches and fires that other troops of the day would have fled long before. Dragut, eighty years old, refused to sleep in a comfortable officer's tent, and shared bunks with his men, declaring boldly that he shall not lie in comfort while his men were under fire. During the battle, Dragut personally inspected the ditches and ravelins seized by the Turks, exposing himself to shot from snipers and cannon alike. In that battle, everyone was larger than life. Their strengths and weaknesses for on full display for the world to see. And the Maltese victory gave the Christian empires a new idea...an alliance of powers could throw back the mighty Ottomans, giving rise to the Holy League of the 1570's (which would ultimately splinter out due to politics and the death of the Pope), but not before striking a tremendous blow at Lepanto. The ripples of this are felt even today, in the religious and ethnic conflicts that have sadly become a facet of the late-20th century Balkans. When I think of Suleiman, it's impossible to separate the two halves of him. The tireless advancer of his realm, and the poor decisions he made that unintentionally set the stage for no sultan to be as good as he was.

Martin Ockovsky

Absolute art. You are amazing, on steroids. <3

Robbie the Gnome

A beautifully told story. This series has played more like a fairy tale than a chapter of history in the way you guys chose to tell it. All in all very well told. I'm not sure if it's the juxtaposition between Suleiman and Justinian or just the way the story was told but this seemed a much more emotionally charged than factually charged. It was a great ending but I would have liked a little more factual things towards the end. The over all state of the empire. How the people felt about the sultan and his successors. The general state he left things in at the end. I so love the story details but I love the facts more. Not to say that I want you to remove story elements. Not at all! All told a great story with a powerful theme: don't just assassinate everyone you care about because you feel slightly threatened. Although the culture and laws helped dictate such extreme actions. Can't wait for the next one! Is it the Opium Wars next?

Christian Bone

So, why the tone shift in this series? Or will that be covered in "Lies"?

James V Nutley

This was beautifully done! I'm joining the commenters here who ask for an epilogue in the real world, even a long comment would be fine. What happened when Suleiman was buried? What was the next Sultans first public action? What, in very general terms, was next for the Ottoman Empire?

Jim McGeehin

Also, this is a fun thing. Maybe you'll cover it in Lies. That Spanish Prince, Emperor Charles V, was the one who gave them Malta in 1530, after eight years of the Knights begging for help from the great powers of Europe. While it wasn't developed at first, the Knights very quickly fortified the island, turning it into one of the most heavily-defended areas of Europe. There was, however, the matter of payment. Every year, on all Saints Day, the Knights would send a representative to gift the Viceroy of Sicily (the King of Spain's representative, since Malta was a Spanish holding, not an Imperial one) one of the island's fine hunting birds, as their token offering. This ritual is famous even later, and it's even in the zeitgeist of today. You know it as the Maltese Falcon.

ExtraCredits
>>1652811

Yeah, we had a lot of looong talks about whether or not to end a series this way. Ultimately we decided that we needed to push ourselves as creators, to see what works instead of just guessing what might or might not be well received.

ExtraCredits
>>1652897

A lot of it is what I call "lantern on the table" details, similar to the WWI series where we described a room with a lantern on the table where Gavrilo Princip's cohorts met. It sets a tone and a mood for the scene that seems appropriate, but there aren't direct accounts of such a room. In this case, most of Suleiman's moods were inspired by the musings in his poetry, where he frequently expressed regret for the irreversible decisions he'd made about (for example) Ibrahim.

ExtraCredits
>>1652934

Every story is going to need its own wrappings. Finding the tone and structure that works for each of these stories is part of what makes this series so challenging for us - and so fun!

ExtraCredits
>>1655119

There have been a lot of tone shifts in this series so... you might have to be specific. ;) Suffice to say that many elements in this series were new for us, but we feel generally like you have to mix things up and try out new things as a creator so you don't stagnate.

ExtraCredits
>>1655761

We will definitely talk more about the epilogue in Lies, although it's going to be hard to fit in everything! Just to lessen the suspense for you, the Ottomans won the siege, but Suleiman's death was kept a secret until his body could be returned to state in Istanbul and Selim II was safely crowned.

ExtraCredits
>>1652944

Yeah, I felt a little bad chatting with you about this last week since I knew we weren't going to be able to go into all those amazing details. So I'm glad you've done so in the comments so we can all enjoy them here! Personally I'd love to see this siege come back as a one-off... or maybe just see the Knights get their own series!

ExtraCredits
>>1655880

You're kidding. THAT's the Maltese Falcon? I've been trying to find that thing in videos games (without knowing what it was) since I was a wee thing!

ExtraCredits
>>1655531

If I hadn't using Suleiman's honorifics to title these episodes, I'd have named the last one "The Old Man in Europe."

ExtraCredits
>>1654785

James is going to discuss some of the after effects in Lies, which I suppose is sort of an epilogue in effect. We had a couple different versions of this series ending written, but ultimately, considering how charged the rest of the series had been, we felt like the ending which allowed us to spend those final moments with Suleiman worked best. And yes, we have the First Opium War coming up next!

Robbie the Gnome
>>1654785

I understand. As I said it was really well told. I'm glad you'll be covering more of the after effects in lies.

ExtraCredits
>>1654785

Actually, I was wrong about the next series! Early Christian Schism is next. Production is always a bit ahead so I get confused sometimes.

Nick Smit

The moment I started watching this, it started pouring down rain. Fitting.

Mikkel Kaas

A nice ending for a really good series. I've enjoyed this one a lot. Also, it made me look up who won the battle. And now I'm reading about the Battle of Vienna. Damn you Wikipedia...

ExtraCredits
>>1663384

MWAHAHA! By going to look up more information on Wikipedia, you have fallen into our trap! Our history-loving, research-embracing trap!

De

I love the way EH has of providing context for events. I struggle with thinking of events happening concurrently with one another but lines like "Some priest had nailed a piece of paper to a church door.." really help me get my bearings. Also, I've read so many books set in WWI that all these references to the Habsburgs makes me feel like I'm watching a prequel.

ExtraCredits
>>1664388

Yeah, we try to throw in the occasional reference like that specifically to help people get their bearing! Knowing when things happened in relation to other things is so important, and we try to leave clues to help people figure it out1

Dave Levy
>>1652897

Thanks for the reply :) I'll look up some of his poetry then, I'm curious now.

Chamboz

I’ve been truly disappointed by this series. When I first saw Extra Credits branching out into the field of history I was skeptical, but came to see the clear educational benefits of your program. Your episodes average 150-250,000 viewers, which is a truly immense audience. As a PhD student in the field of Ottoman history, it’s striking to note that the audience you gathered for this video series is larger than the number of people who will attend all the classes I’ll teach throughout my lifetime. You have an immense influence, and this is an important note to keep in mind as I go on with this post. I was both excited and apprehensive when I saw you begin a series on Süleyman the Magnificent. His life is a complicated and unfamiliar topic for most people, indeed the whole history of the Ottoman Empire is quite alien to the general public here in America, outside of popular stereotypes and tropes. It would be excellent for people to get a glimpse into this oft-forgotten segment of the past. The series began innocently enough, barring a few minor historical errors which can be reasonably expected from a small team of non-specialists. I’ll state here at the outset that the following comments will not be directed against individual errors made in the series, but rather I will discuss the series’ framing of Süleyman’s and the Ottoman Empire’s role in sixteenth century history as a whole, which is much more important than any individual mistake. Over the next several episodes, the problems with your presentation of Ottoman history became very clear. Rather than discuss Ottoman politics with any nuance, you depicted the Ottoman Empire as a military conquest state, bent on taking over the world. This is an image that modern historians have been trying their hardest to overturn. Yes, the Ottomans were militant and expansionist during the sixteenth century, but they were much more than just that. Their political decisions were not motivated by some unquenchable thirst for conquest, as your series implies. You did not make an attempt to place the Ottoman Empire in its proper sixteenth-century international context, describing the international scene only insofar as it aided your narrative of a warmongering Ottoman Empire invading a weak and divided Europe. This narrative, aside from being hopelessly Eurocentric, has caused you to miss much of the essential context of the Ottoman-Habsburg imperial rivalry, subsumed as it was under the sensationalized narrative of an Ottoman Empire itching to conquer the world. On this point you would do well to examine the works of some modern historians on the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the outside world, for example Gabor Agoston’s essay “Information, ideology, and the limits of imperial policy: Ottoman grand strategy in the context of the Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry,” in Aksan & Goffman eds. The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire (2007). The true problems, however, began with episode five. This episode covered the executions of grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha and of Prince Mustafa. In a rush to cover such an extensive period of time, you depicted these not as logic-oriented decisions taken after painstaking consideration, but as the snap judgements of a paranoid madman. Rather than examining the circumstances which led to these outcomes, you ignored their context entirely. Worse, you did not tell the audience that you ignored this context, giving them the impression that they had heard the whole story and that Süleyman was an arbitrary and despotic ruler. I thought, perhaps, that your sixth episode would explore other aspects of Süleyman’s reign, such as those relating to his legal reforms. He is after all known in Turkish as ‘Kanuni’ (The Lawgiver), and naturally no series on his life would be complete without discussing those reforms which contributed to his fame in the eyes of his contemporaries. However, you did no such thing, simply returning to the image of the Ottomans as relentless conquerors, and Süleyman as obsessively fixated on conquering Vienna. I assume this is related to your earlier mention of law codes (kanunname, mislabeled as 'kanun-i' in the video). Perhaps you thought that the issuing of kanunnames had constituted his legal reforms. However, kanunnames were in fact a totally normal part of Ottoman administration and not unique to Süleyman at all. What was unique to Süleyman was the series of legal reforms he carried out near the end of his reign, alongside the Grand Mufti Ebussuud Efendi, which significantly altered the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law: Kanun (Sultanic law), and Sharia (Religious law). The fact that you did not mention this at all indicates that you did not properly research this most crucial topic. Ultimately, this is a series on the life of Süleyman the Magnificent which has managed to skip over everything which made him great in the eyes of his subjects. No mention of his patronage of literary culture. No mention of architecture. No mention of his legal reforms. No mention of any of the major developments of Ottoman history under Süleyman. Nothing but war and intrigue; just a bloodthirsty and paranoid sultan leading his conquering empire on an invasion of the West. That is the image of Süleyman and the Ottoman Empire which you have given to your audience, an audience of some 200,000 people. You can say that this series is meant to stimulate further research, but both you and I know that the vast majority of your viewers will not do any further research. They will accept what you say as fact. The vast majority of those who do choose to engage in further research will merely look at Wikipedia, which every researcher knows as a notoriously unreliable place from which to learn. Even those who do read more will do so while building upon the preconceived image of Süleyman and the Ottomans which you have placed into their heads. Like it or not, by making this video series you have chosen to take on the role of educators. I know that you believe in the value of history, so I hope you can understand where I’m coming from when I say that you have a responsibility to do better than this. You have a responsibility to try to correct this flawed image of the past that you created. I have tried to contact you numerous times over many mediums over the course of the past month, hoping to contribute my expertise or at least for you to allow me to point you toward reliable and up to date secondary sources. I hope that by posting here my voice will finally be heard. Thank you for your time and for your consideration.

ExtraCredits
>>1668871

Okay, first off, if you donated to us Patreon to leave this message, then please feel free to email me directly at soraya[at]extra-credits[dot]net and go get your donation refunded. We do get hit by a lot of messages on a lot of mediums, and this is the only one I can reliably check - HOWEVER, I do not want anyone to be in the position of feeling like they have to give us money in order to give us feedback. I'll process the refund myself if you would like, but regardless, you have my address now if you want it. That being said, many of your criticisms here are issues I've agreed with and discussed with other patrons. They are issues that we'll address during Lies, although not to the degree of detail that you're asking for here. From a structural standpoint, we did not give this series (and Suleiman's long reign) enough room to grow. We wanted to avoid more mega-series like Justinian, but we learned that for stories as complicated as Suleiman's, six episodes just isn't going to cut it. I would agree with your statement that in general the first few episodes (where we gave ourselves enough room for detail) presented a better picture. I would disagree with your statement that we did not research such things as Suleiman's law reforms and artistic patronage. I know very well that we wanted to include them, but we hamstrung ourselves with a six episode cap. We have already discussed some ways, in addition to Lies, that we can remedy some of this - for example, future one-off episodes that allow us to flesh out these topics. But as that is still an ongoing discussion, for now, this series will have to stand on its own. On a personal note: although I am Arabic, not Turkish, each disparaging comment I've seen about Suleiman has been a little blow to my heart. It isn't all the comments, and no person we've ever dicussed on Extra History has been entirely free of criticism. But I'm acutely aware of the fact that Suleiman is the first Muslim ruler we've featured on the show, and knowing what's ahead in our schedule, he will also be the last for some while. Feeling that we did not do a good enough job by him, especially in the current political atmosphere, is a pretty bad feeling. But when you create in public, you also fail in public. We tried a lot of new things for this series, and took a lot of new lessons to heart. We made mistakes, but we will try to do better. The responsibility you described is one we take very seriously.

Chamboz
>>1668871

There’s no need for a refund. I respect the work you do and have no qualms about supporting you on Patreon, even if the need to get in touch with you was the premise behind starting my subscription. I also do believe that you take your educational responsibility seriously. I wouldn’t have written this commentary if I thought it was ultimately going to fall upon deaf ears. I am glad to hear that you plan to address the aforementioned issues in the Lies video. That being said, I would greatly appreciate it if you could provide me with a list of the books and articles you utilized in the course of your research. A historian is only as good as his or her sources, and no discussion of history can be complete without a bibliography. It would help us both to understand how this series reached its current state.

ExtraCredits
>>1668871

The depiction in the series is a result of our choices and is our responsibility, not the fault of our sources. Source lists are not something I provide generally, and I'd rather be the series be evaluated on its face as a product of our team's efforts.

Chamboz
>>1668871

Sorry but… what? You have to realize how ridiculous that sounds. A discussion of history which doesn’t make its sources clear is essentially one without any value. Even high school students are taught the importance of citing their research, and you are engaging in a pursuit far more important than a high school paper. A proper bibliography is perhaps the single most important element of any historical discussion, no matter the medium. My intention is not to use your team's work to evaluate your sources, but to use your team's sources to evaluate your work. Given my field of study, I’m already familiar with an extremely wide range of sources on Ottoman history. I’m merely interested in which sources you chose, and whether those choices were appropriate or not. If not, I can explain why and perhaps give you a sense of what features to look out for when selecting resources for future research.

Chamboz
>>1668871

Your basic narrative comes from "Suleiman the Magnificent," written by Andre Clot, right?

Alex Kyriacou
>>1668871

You said you were a Ph.D. student of Ottoman History? Could you point me to some good books and other resources about Suleyman and Ottoman history? Something accessible to a lay person but which goes into great depth about the nature of Ottoman society at the time. I'm really fascinated by this period of history.

Chamboz
>>1668871

Sure! What is best for you will naturally depend on what aspects of history you find most interesting. The first thing I would recommend is a book called “Süleymân the Second and his Time” (1993) which is a collection of essays from numerous historians and is edited by Halil İnalcık and Cemal Kafadar. It covers a wide variety of topics pertaining to Süleyman and the Ottoman Empire under his rule, you’re sure to find a lot to like. It’s a bit old now (the papers it contains were written in 1987), but despite this still holds up very well. It should also be quite accessible, and given how it‘s written by two dozen different authors if you find some part of it unappealing you can simply move on to the next. It appears that this work is actually freely available to read online: <a href="https://archive.org/stream/SULEYMAN2/SULEYMAN-THE-SECOND-AND-HIS-TIME" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://archive.org/stream/SULEYMAN2/SULEYMAN-THE-SECOND-AND-HIS-TIME</a>#page/n0/mode/2up I’d be happy to recommend more, simply name a topic which interests you!

ExtraCredits
>>1668871

Source lists are a discussion that we've come back to multiple times within the team, and I personally have been on both sides of it at different times. But the reasoning is this: we don't want to make a pretense of our show being a reliable academic resource when it is not. It's the best-faith effort of a group of amateurs who want to encourage more people to love history and research it on their own. That's why we do Lies, and why we don't provide source lists. That being said, I'm usually down to discuss one or two sources for the purposes of further reading, and can say that you're correct in recognizing Andre Clot's book as one of the sources! I'd also be curious to know what you recommend for Alex. :) EDIT: Answering while I'm typing is no fair!

Chamboz
>>1668871

On Clot: You must be attentive when choosing sources for research. André Clot, like many other people who have written popular books on the Ottomans, wasn’t a professional historian. He didn’t earn a PhD or have a position in a university. In order to avoid errors and distortions you must ensure that the authors of your books are professionals and not pop-historians. This is the first and most important consideration, really. Clot also didn’t speak Turkish. He wrote his book based on European sources. No matter the topic, it is damning for a historian to be unable to read the language of the country they’re researching, for obvious reasons. You should try to check the author’s bibliography to ensure that he makes use of native-language sources. The alternative is being stuck with sources which are Eurocentric, a perspective which certainly comes across in this series. The book was originally published in 1989. That means that his book is almost thirty years old. History is an evolving field, particularly the history of non-European and non-American peoples. Whenever possible you should try to acquire sources which are recent, and favor them over sources which are old. That doesn’t mean that all older sources are inherently bad, but rather that they are much more likely to contain perspectives which historians no longer consider to be appropriate, and such things are hard for amateurs to recognize. Lastly, you should look for (recent!) scholarly reviews of the sources you use. That is perhaps the single best way to know how useful and accurate your materials are, since you can read the opinions of other professionals. Scholarly reviews can often be found for free on www.jstor.com. A quick search there gives me this quote from a review of Clot’s work by the Ottomanist historian Christine Woodhead (British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 21 (1994): 256-257): “Although the author is aware that there may be more to Süleyman’s era than meets his eye, in the end what he produces is yet another description – intentionally ‘broad-brush’ – of the Ottoman empire from the outside, a portrayal of Süleyman’s power and grandeur as seen largely through sixteenth-century Western eyes… Indicative is his use of the romantic ‘Roxelane’ for Hürrem Sultan, a heavy concentration on Süleyman’s wars in the west… The text is provided with minimal notes, littered with unsourced statistics and quotations… and a relatively large bibliography of Western-language material, few items of which are referred to in the notes." And perhaps the most significant quote from the review: “It would be a pity if this were to become ‘the new book on Süleyman’ for non-Ottomanist historians and their students.” I hope you’ll consider these criteria when researching the topics of your future videos, as your sources are going to determine the entire perspective and tone of your work. Lastly, I really don’t think you make the fact that you’re amateurs clear enough in your videos. The “Lies” videos consistently have a lower view count than the remainder of the series, meaning many people never even see them. In your videos themselves, you speak with great authority and I think it gives people the impression that they should trust your views completely. A clear disclaimer at the beginning of each video would go a long way.

Alex Kyriacou
>>1668871

Hmmm, that's hard because there's so much I want to learn! I'm probably most interested Ottoman politics, how the Sultans were able to maintain power over non-Muslim and non-Turkish subjects through the devirmishe and the so-called 'slave aristocracy'. How the court worked (this part really interests me), and to what extent the Sultan actually ruled as opposed to the Janissaries and Eunuchs. And how the Ottoman state evolved as the Empire went into decline after Suleyman's death. How cohesive was the empire, did Serbs, Greeks, Albanians, Circassians, Turks and Arabs have a kind of shared identity?

Alex Kyriacou
>>1668871

Sorry for asking so many things at once, there's no real limit to what I'm curious about, just the time I have to read.

Chamboz
>>1668871

Sure! I posted my suggestions in a separate comment above this thread so as not to extend this one too much.

Chamboz

It’s no problem. I consider my duty first and foremost to be an educator so I’m always happy to help. Halil İnalcık’s “The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600” (1973) is the typical go-to resource on the Ottoman institutions of government, but I just can’t recommend it in good faith myself. It’s too outdated in ways which would mislead non-specialists. So for a general overview covering Ottoman institutions, court, administration, law, etc. you should pick up Colin Imber's “The Ottoman Empire 1300 - 1650: The Structure of Power,” 2nd Edition (2009). By the way, my recommendation to look up scholarly reviews applies also to my own suggestions! Every book has its problems. For example, Colin Imber has also been criticized for depicting the Ottomans as overly militaristic. Reviews are usually only one to two pages long, but they can contain tremendous insight and revolutionize your views on a topic. On the Ottoman military/administrative class, an absolutely essential book is Metin Kunt, “The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550-1650” (1983). In it he describes the logic of the Ottoman administrative system and the elite class which managed it, before delving into its transformation in the era after the death of Süleyman. On the court and the nature of power at the center of the empire, beyond Colin Imber’s work you might be interested in these two books: Gülru Necipoğlu’s “Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries” (1991) on the Ottoman imperial palace, and Leslie Peirce’s “The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire” (1993), an extremely insightful book which smashes countless myths and tropes regarding the Ottoman harem and the role of women in imperial politics (and Islamic society in general). This, in particular, I consider a “must-read” for understanding the Ottoman dynasty. It would have provided Extra Credits with the essential context behind the relationship between Süleyman and Hürrem Sultan, and Mustafa's execution. Identity in the pre-nationalistic age is an extremely complicated topic. People have overlapping layers of identity. So all Ottoman subjects shared the collective identity of being Ottoman subjects, but this was not at all the same as our modern conception of national belonging. However, we can say that all members of the elite had a collective identity, no matter their ethnic origins. They all called themselves Ottomans (Osmanlı). They practically never called themselves Turks. On "Decline": Perhaps the single most important development in Ottoman history over the past thirty years is the abandonment of the so-called “Decline Thesis.” Virtually no historians of the Ottoman Empire still believe that the Ottoman Empire entered a period of decline after the death of Süleyman. But I’ll let them speak for themselves on this topic: Linda Darling in “Revenue Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560-1660” (1993) p. 1-2: "The sick man of Europe" - everyone has heard of him. The Ottoman Empire, once invincible, was no longer able to fend off the armies of Europe. Weak sultans allowed power to pass into the hands of slaves, eunuchs, and women. Corruption rotted the bureaucracy, with devastating effects on administration, tax collection, and military effectiveness... ...The "sick man," however, is a straw man. In view of the fact that Europe long derived its self-definition by contrasting itself with empires to the east, the concept of Ottoman decline reflects the self-image of western Europe more than actual conditions in the Ottoman Empire. It interprets the nineteenth-century west's overwhelming growth in economic power as normal and the Ottomans' continuing to change at the old rate as stagnation and decay. For western historians, the idea of Ottoman decline both describes and justifies the military and political domination of west over east; if the Ottomans lost the ability to innovate and to organize and were unable to keep up with the west militarily, economically, or intellectually, then colonization by an expanding Europe was not only inevitable but beneficial. For historians in the post-Ottoman states of Turkey, the Balkans, and the Arab world, countries whose national identities depend on no longer being Ottoman, a declining Ottoman Empire can safely be blamed for present-day political and socioeconomic difficulties... But decline is an explanation that does not explain; the most prominent writer on Ottoman decline confessed himself unable to "disentangle the web of cause, symptom, and effect." Indeed, decline is less an explanation than a myth, a "story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold the world view of a people," as the dictionary definition has it.” Jane Hathaway in “The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1517-1800” (2008) p. 7-8: “One of the most momentous changes to have occurred in Ottoman studies since the publication of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent (1966) is the deconstruction of the so-called 'Ottoman decline thesis' - that is, the notion that toward the end of the sixteenth century, following the reign of Sultan Suleyman I (1520-66), the empire entered a lengthy decline from which it never truly recovered, despite heroic attempts at westernizing reforms in the nineteenth century. Over the last twenty years or so, as Chapter 4 will point out, historians of the Ottoman Empire have rejected the narrative of decline in favor of one of crisis and adaptation: after weathering a wretched economic and demographic crisis in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Ottoman Empire adjusted its character from that of a military conquest state to that of a territorially more stable, bureaucratic state whose chief concern was no longer conquering new territories but extracting revenue from the territories it already controlled while shoring up its image as the bastion of Sunni Islam.” In other words, historians now talk about a neutral “Transformation” of the Ottoman Empire post-Süleyman, and not about a negative “Decline.” The literature on it is absolutely immense, though the best place to start is Metin Kunt’s book on Ottoman administrative transformation that I mentioned above.

Jon Davis

I was disappointed with this last episode of the Suleiman , not in the way that Chambozer was, but just the direction of it. I've been a huge fan of everything you guys have been doing, and the rest of the Series was fine. I was pleased with the way in which the defenders of Rhodes were portrayed, but this last episode, with the long artsy segment of reflection on what is probably the most important day in Islamic and European relations, was the information rich narrative that I have come to expect from EH. It felt contrived, as if there was a real story to tell, but there was some need to pull on the heartstrings for someone who had done unspeakable acts, not only to his new subjects, but his closest friends, advisers, and even his advisers. It also completely ignored the battle going on outside. Perhaps that will be handled in Lies, but I really just hope that in the next series, we don't try for that sort of non-historic narrative, or at least, not to dedicate several minutes to it. It is just simply not why I have loved you guys enough to donate for this long. That's also not a veiled threat. I'm going to keep donating for a long time and I still encourage others to. I just really hope that the long, artsy, sentimental, non-historic summaries don't find a place in my show moving forward.