Soliman Kahn I, from Portraits of the Emperors of Turkey

The tenth Ottoman sultan, Süleyman “the Magnificent” expanded his empire through Hungary, ruling exceptionally long, from 1520 to 1566. He besieged Vienna in 1529, setting all of Europe on edge, but did not in the end breach the city’s gates. He was a patron of the arts, both Eastern and Western, and his court accommodated several visiting artists, such as Melchior Lorck and Pieter Coecke van Aelst, who brought some of the first true representations of Turkish life back to Europe.