In 1520, a 26-year-old prince ascended the Ottoman throne—and inherited the most powerful Islamic empire the world had seen. His name was Suleiman, and under his rule, the Ottomans would reach their classical peak.

This episode of The Gilded Sword explores the reign of the man Europe would call “the Magnificent” and his own people would remember as “the Lawgiver.” Within years, Suleiman shattered Hungary at Mohács, captured Belgrade and Rhodes, and carried Ottoman armies to the very gates of Vienna. At sea, under the command of Barbarossa, Ottoman fleets dominated the Mediterranean and broke Christian naval power at Preveza.

But Suleiman was not only a conqueror. He was a builder of systems. Working with the great jurist Ebussuud Efendi, he reshaped Ottoman law, fusing imperial decree with Islamic tradition into a unified legal code that would govern the empire for centuries. Under him, the state became more organized, more predictable, and more powerful than ever before.

Inside the palace, power took a different form. By marrying Hürrem Sultan, Suleiman broke tradition and opened the door to a new era of court politics, where royal women and rival factions shaped imperial policy. Love, jealousy, and ambition would leave scars that even conquest could not erase.

And above it all rose stone and marble. Under Mimar Sinan, the empire’s greatest architect, Istanbul was crowned with mosques and monuments that still define its skyline.

From battlefield to courtroom, from harem to cathedral-scale mosques, this is the story of the reign where the Ottoman Empire did not merely expand—it perfected itself.