Ottoman Empire: Suleiman The First

Suleiman the First, was the 10th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, who first came to a leadership position as a prince at the age of 17 as a governor. Suleiman was well known throughout Europe and the Ottoman empire as “Suleiman the Magnificent” as well as “Suleiman the Lawgiver” for all the accomplishments he achieved as sultan.
In Ottoman Empire, all people are considered slaves beneath the sultan, not in a derogative way as one nowadays would think but in a cultural and religious aspect. Lybyer (1913) says this of the slaves of the Ottoman Empire “Moslem masters, in constant personal association with persons whose condition led them to strive to please, were apt to become very friendly toward them. Such friendliness often led to warm affection
60). Now this is just the general attitude towards slaves, with slaves having the chance to become emancipated. The case is a little bit different in Suleiman’s terms as he was of royal decent nor a prisoner of war. The idea behind this though is that although all born into the empire are emancipated, they are still slaves beneath the sultan with Ottoman rights. This is what Suleiman was born into under Sultan Selim the First, born to a slave mother, thus making him a slave until he succeeded to the throne. In time he became governor over Fedosiya and later in Manisa. During this period he was in the transactional leadership position with legitimate power, because he was brought up with great education and special privileges being a member of the royal family and learning what it took to make things succeed. He gets the transactional leadership edge because these were his first
As it is today Muslims of this time took their religion very seriously; Suleiman was no exception. Most of the Ottoman empire consisted of Muslims for a very peculiar reason; the way children were brought up. Besides the sultan and his family, the selection of children to become Janissaries, pages, government, or any other sort of high ranking official was not typically drawn out of the Muslim population. The Ottoman Empire typically drew all of their officials and military leaders from those that were Christian born between the ages of 12 and early 20’s. Lybyer (1913) states “The Ottoman system deliberately took slaves and made them ministers of state; it took boys from the sheep-run and the plow-tail and made them courtiers and the husbands of princesses; it took young men whose ancestors had borne the Christian name for centuries, and made them rulers in the greatest Mohammedan states, and soldiers and generals in invincible armies whose chief joy was to beat down the Cross and elevate the Crescent.” (p. 45). What this did was force these children into the Ottoman belief system making the empire very effective in unifying it further, but if you decided not to accept the Muslim ways then you would simply be stripped of any title you would have had until you gave in, or you would go back to the lowly slave life. Although, Suleiman did allowed