Suleyman the Magnificent
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2022
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Lion House is a riveting new book from journalist and historian Christopher De Bellaigue, written like a novel that tells the dramatic story of Suleyman the Magnificent and his power and influence over 16th Century Europe. In this episode recorded at the Chalke Valley History festival earlier this summer, Christopher talks Dan through what was happening at the opposite end of Europe to Henry VIII and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V as this fearsome Sultan set his sights on swathes of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa and reigned over what became known as the 'Golden Age of the Ottoman Empire.'
This episode was produced by Mariana Des Forges, the audio editor was Dougal Patmore.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, folks, Dan Snow here. I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history hit. |
| 0:06.1 | I'd love for you to be there. Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London, in England on the 12th of September to celebrate the 10 years. |
| 0:14.1 | You can find out more about it and get tickets with the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there. |
| 0:23.9 | Hi, everybody. Welcome. show notes. Look forward to seeing you there. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. |
| 0:26.7 | Solomon the Magnificent. He ruled over the mighty Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. |
| 0:32.3 | He was a contemporary with Henry the 8th of England. Emperor Charles and King Francis of France. Four Renaissance |
| 0:41.5 | princes doing their bit. And the reason I feel it's important that we put him in the bracket |
| 0:45.9 | with the other three. Is it all too often we don't because of religion? He was Islamic. He was a caliph. |
| 0:50.7 | He was the custodian of the two holy mosques. But as I've learned recently, in a really fantastic history book written by Christopher de Belagg. |
| 1:00.6 | He was a lot more like his European contemporaries than I think traditional Christian historiography has made him out to be. |
| 1:08.4 | Christopher is a writer, a broadcaster and investigative journalist. He's worked in |
| 1:12.5 | Turkey, Middle East, South Asia for years, various brilliant publications. And he's now written the first |
| 1:18.5 | volume of his history of Suleiman. You'll hear me talking about how much I love the book, because I really |
| 1:23.4 | did. And it's a very interesting history book. It's written in the present tense. |
| 1:31.7 | It does feel like immersive drama, and yet it also feels like it's incredibly scholarly. |
| 1:36.0 | You're going to love this new approach to writing history. It is also one of the most dramatic times in European history when a power from the East threatened to conquer. Much of Eastern |
| 1:41.4 | Central Europe, not least, because he had this extraordinary Admiral, |
| 1:45.4 | Barbarossa, who one of the great naval commanders of all time. And thanks to Barbarossa and other |
| 1:50.0 | subordinates, Suleiman managed to conquer territory in Europe, Africa and Asia, taking the empire |
| 1:56.7 | to its greatest extent, dominating a swath of land, really from the gates of Vienna, right down |
| 2:02.8 | to the Persian Gulf. I recorded this on location at the Trot Valley History Festival, so it's |
| 2:09.1 | noisy and wild, but it's worth it, folks. Stick with it, because Christopher is a brilliant scholar |
... |
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