Mesopotamia (theme)

Selim I's son, Suleyman I (r. 1520-66), is called the "lawgiver" (kanuni) by his Muslim subjects because of a new codification of seriat undertaken during his reign.

He is known in Europe, however, as Suleyman the Magnificent, a recognition of his prowess by those who have most to fear from it.

Belgrade falls to Suleyman in 1521, and in 1522 he compels the Knights of Saint John to abandon Rhodes.

The Ottoman victory at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526 leads to the taking of Buda on the Danube.

Vienna is besieged unsuccessfully during the campaign season of 1529.

North Africa up to the Moroccan frontier is brought under Ottoman suzerainty in the 1520s and 1530s, and governors named by the sultan are installed in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.

Kurdistan and Mesopotamia are taken from Persia in 1534.

The latter conquest gives the Ottomans an outlet to the Persian Gulf, where they are soon engaged in a naval war with the Portuguese.

The Ottoman Empire is a world power when Suleyman dies in 1566.

Most of the great cities of Islam—Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, and Baghdad— are under the sultan's crescent flag.

The Porte exercises direct control over Anatolia, the sub-Danubian Balkan provinces, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia.

Egypt, Mecca, and the North African provinces are governed under special regulations, as are satellite domains in Arabia and the Caucasus, and among the Crimean Tartars.

In addition, the native rulers of Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) are vassals of the sultan.