• Books on the Ottoman Empire - Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières
  • Books on the Ottoman Empire - Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950 by Mark Mazower
  • Books on the Ottoman Empire - The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu by Mary Montagu & Robert Halsband (editor)
  • Books on the Ottoman Empire - Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions That Forged Modern Greece and Turkey by Bruce Clark
  • Books on the Ottoman Empire - The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić

Books on the Ottoman Empire, recommended by Alev Scott

The Ottoman Empire rose to prominence towards the end of the medieval period, stunning the world with its rapid expansion and causing the collapse of the Byzantine Empire with its conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It would carry on being a major player in the world until the end of World War I. Here journalist Alev Scott, author of the very wistful travelogue, Ottoman Odyssey, recommends books that help bring alive an empire that was multicultural and multireligious, and whose legacy can still be felt around the Balkans, the Middle East and parts of Africa.

  • The best books on Sultan Süleyman - Suleymanname: The Illustrated History of Suleyman the Magnificent by Esin Atil (editor)
  • The best books on Sultan Süleyman - The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire by Gülru Necipoglu
  • The best books on Sultan Süleyman - Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali by Cornell Fleischer
  • The best books on Sultan Süleyman - Empress of the East: How a Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire by Leslie Peirce
  • The best books on Sultan Süleyman - Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe by John Julius Norwich

The best books on Sultan Süleyman, recommended by Kaya Şahin

The Ottoman ruler Süleyman was one of the most powerful men in early modern Europe and highly adept at building his reputation for posterity. In European languages, he is still often graced with the epithet ‘the Magnificent.’ The reality was much more mixed, as a new biography of Süleyman shows. Historian Kaya Şahin talks us through books to better understand Sultan Süleyman and the world he lived in.