Presiding over the apex of the Ottoman Empire's economic, military, and political strength, Suleiman rose to become a prominent monarch of 16th-century Europe, as he personally led Ottoman armies in their conquests of a number of European Christian strongholds before his advances were finally checked at the siege of Vienna in On the front against the Safavids , his efforts enabled the Ottomans to annex much of the Middle East, in addition to large areas of North Africa as far west as modern-day Algeria.
Simultaneously, the Ottoman fleet dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and through the Persian Gulf. At the helm of the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire, Suleiman personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation, and criminal law.
His reforms, carried out in conjunction with the Ottoman chief judicial official Ebussuud Efendi , harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law : sultanic Kanun and Islamic Sharia. Roxelana, so named in Western Europe for her red hair, was a Ruthenian who converted to Sunni Islam from Eastern Orthodox Chrisitianity and thereafter became one of the most influential figures of the " Sultanate of Women " period in the Ottoman Empire.
Upon Suleiman's death in , which ended his year-long reign, he was succeeded by his and Roxelana's son Selim II. Suleiman's other potential heirs, Mehmed and Mustafa , had died; Mehmed had succumbed to smallpox in , while Mustafa had been executed via strangling on Suleiman's orders in His other son Bayezid was also executed on his orders, along with Bayezid's four sons, after a rebellion in Although scholars typically regarded the period after his death to be one of crisis and adaptation rather than of simple decline , [ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] the end of Suleiman's reign was a watershed in Ottoman history.
In the decades after Suleiman, the Ottoman Empire began to experience significant political, institutional, and economic changes—a phenomenon often referred to as the Era of Transformation.
