Best Books on the Great Ottoman Sultans

The Ottoman Empire lasted six hundred years and was ruled by thirty-six sultans, some brilliant, some catastrophic, and most somewhere between. The question "which were the great ones" has a reasonable answer: Mehmed II who took Constantinople in 1453, Selim I who nearly doubled the empire's territory in eight years, and Suleiman I who brought it to its administrative and cultural peak. After that the picture gets more complicated, and the later sultans who managed a century of European pressure and internal reform are often more interesting than the conquerors who get more attention.

Where to Start

The standard problem with Ottoman history in English is that the best scholarship is specialized, and the popular books vary enormously in quality. A handful of titles stand out as both accurate and readable, and those are the ones to begin with.

The Essential Books

Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire by Jason Goodwin

Goodwin is a travel writer and historian, and this book has the texture and vividness that specialist histories often lack. He covers the whole sweep of the empire, from the small Anatolian emirate of the early fourteenth century to the post-World War I collapse, organized thematically rather than chronologically. The chapters on court life, on the devshirme system, and on the relationship between the sultans and their grand viziers are particularly good. It is not an academic book, but it is accurate and it reads as a single sustained narrative rather than a biographical series.

Suleiman the Magnificent by Andre Clot

Clot's biography is the most detailed English-language account of the sultan who gave his name to the empire's golden age. Suleiman ruled from 1520 to 1566, a reign of forty-six years during which the empire reached its greatest territorial extent, its legal code was systematized under Ebusuud Efendi, and Istanbul became one of the great cultural capitals of the world. Clot covers the military campaigns, the court culture, and the private life including the relationship with Hurrem Sultan, who broke the traditional separation between the imperial harem and political power. He is fair about the shadow side: the execution of Ibrahim Pasha, the killing of Suleiman's own son Mustafa on suspicion of treason.

The Conquerors: Mehmed II and Selim I

Mehmed II took Constantinople in 1453 at the age of twenty-one and spent the next thirty years turning a regional power into an empire. He rebuilt the city as an imperial capital, recruited scholars and artists from across the Islamic world and from Italy, and attempted to position himself as the legitimate heir of both the Byzantine and Islamic traditions of rulership. Roger Crowley's Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 covers the fall of the city in detail and is the best narrative account of Mehmed's defining moment.

Selim I is less well served in English. He ruled for only eight years (1512-1520) but conquered Mamluk Egypt and Syria, brought the holy cities of Mecca and Medina under Ottoman control, and roughly doubled the empire's revenue. His successor Suleiman inherited a much larger empire than Selim had inherited, which is why Suleiman could afford to focus on administration and culture alongside conquest. Selim deserves a major English-language biography and does not yet have one.

The Later Sultans and the Reform Era

The conventional story of the Ottoman Empire is rise, peak under Suleiman, and long decline. That story is too simple. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced sultans who attempted serious structural reform: Mahmud II abolished the janissary corps in 1826 and created a modern army, reorganized provincial administration, and built the first Ottoman secular schools. Abdulmecid I issued the Tanzimat reforms that established legal equality regardless of religion. These are not the actions of a declining empire sleepwalking to its end.

Abdulhamid II, who ruled from 1876 to 1909, is the most contested sultan in the historiography. He suspended the constitution, developed an extensive surveillance network, and presided over the Hamidian massacres of Armenians in the 1890s. He also built the Hejaz railway, expanded telegraph networks across the empire, and kept the state together through a period of continuous European pressure. M. Sukru Hanioglu's A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire is the most balanced account of this final century for general readers.

Three Books to Start With

• Lords of the Horizons by Jason Goodwin, the most readable narrative history of the full Ottoman period.
• Suleiman the Magnificent by Andre Clot, the best English-language biography of the sultan who defined the empire's peak.
• A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire by M. Sukru Hanioglu, for the reform period and the empire's final century.

Further Reading

For books on the pashas and viziers who ran the empire day to day, see our companion guide on the best books on Ottoman pashas and viziers. For the wider history of the Islamic world and the Middle East, see the full collection in our history books category.