Suleiman

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my mom is giving me Advent presents. Today, the clue was
"Suleiman's Empire. Look inside."

I have heard of Suleiman but could not place the name. In my head, he was a Persian emperor in maybe the  1100s or something. But that couldn't be right as a) we don't own a Persian rug (or a Persian anything for that matter) and b) you can't exactly look inside of one anyway if we did. So I had to look online to find the answer.

Suleiman I, also known as Suleiman the Magnificent, was the longest reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, reigning from 1520-1566. Not only was I off regarding where he ruled, but I was way off on the time frame. I also read that he married a girl from his harem, which was not the traditional thing to do, and her name was Roxelana. For some reason I found this funny and kept hearing the song "Roxanne" in my head. I wonder if Sting was inspired by this historical person to write his song..ok, probably not, but it is ironic that this famous prostitute was named Roxelana.

If you haven't realized it yet, the clue meant I had to look in our ottoman for my gift. Clever.

What I learned: Suleiman was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s (during the life of Luther!); I also realized that I don't know that much about the Ottoman Empire and now I want to read more about it. It's odd that I have studied this time period extensively and did not remember learning anything about Suleiman, probably because European history is taught way more often than any other type of world history. Clearly I need to broaden my studies!