Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman took power at 25 when his father Selim I died in September 1520, and immediately turned west and south with his armies. Belgrade fell in 1521, Rhodes in 1522, and at Mohács in 1526 he shattered Hungary, carving much of it into the empire. Vienna stopped him in 1529; he never broke deeper into Europe. He spent years grinding against the Safavid Empire in the east and took Iraq, while his fleet commanded the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. He overhauled Ottoman law with his chief jurist Ebussuud Efendi, fusing sultanic decree with sharia, and presided over what became the empire's artistic and architectural peak. In 1534 he broke tradition by marrying Hürrem, a woman from his harem who helped open the "Sultanate of Women" era. When he died in September 1566, his son Selim II inherited an empire at its height - and scholars mark his death as the edge before transformation and long crisis began.