In the spacious courtyard of Istanbul’s Suleymaniye Mosque, public storytellers regale and instruct their miniscule but attentive audiences with the deeds of the mosque’s founder, Suleyman the Magnificent, the 10th Ottoman Sultan, the conqueror of Belgrade, Budapest and Baghdad. Christopher de Bellaigue, who has paid his dues listening to his sources in Kurdistan (Rebel Land, 2011) and Iran (In the Rose Garden of Martyrs, 2004), shows in his new book how deeply he has drunk from the well of oriental storytelling.
The subject of this book is well known; Amazon lists seven recent titles dedicated to the Magnificent. The lion house of the title is Bellaigue’s metaphor for how the grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha may have imagined his role vis-a-vis Sultan Suleyman, as lion keeper to a caged lion. It was a dangerous job, especially for someone like Ibrahim who rose from a mere mignon to being the second most powerful figure in the empire. Against this backdrop we learn about the conflict for global supremacy between Suleyman and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and also about the roles played by Venice, France, the Papacy and Iran in taking various sides in this conflict.
What makes this book different from previous books is the extent to which Bellaigue gets under the skin of his protagonists. In a period of intensely personal politics, it is natural that the individual passions, greed and fear drive events. We are far from the Jupiterian distance of Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. The age of Suleyman and Charles appears especially ripe for this psychological, almost Shakespearean approach, characterized as it was by unprecedented opportunities for acquiring wealth and honors, and unspeakable punishments for failure or betrayal. More than one of Bellaigue’s heroes raise themselves up from obscurity to become bishops, dukes or pashas. Few die in bed.
Bellaigue’s storytelling is an antidote to histories that follow too doggedly a central theme.

Though Charles V, Suleyman and Ibrahim Pasha are in their thirties, many of the memorable characters are already elderly: the Venetian Doge Andrea Gritti, the Imperial admiral Andrea Doria, Austrian general Nicholas von Salm. Their age gives them an enhanced grandeur. What kind of 70-year-old launches himself into the middle of battle? Cameo appearances by François Rabelais and the divine Pietro Aretino add to readers’ instruction and amusement.
Sultan Suleyman remains taciturn and impossibly remote. We can only judge him by his acts, but here he constantly surprises us. He executes his closest counselors at the bat of an eyelash, even his brothers-in-law. He marries his favorite consort Hurrem in violation of Ottoman custom. He is capable of anything.
Around the silent sovereign revolves a constellation of colorful personalities. They are impulsive, talkative, intriguers, rebels. Bellaigue brings them to life by using the archives of the Serenissima, Venice, whose diplomats were as eager to impress their readers as modern journalists publishing clickbait, reporting gory executions and gorgeous receptions.
Transmuted by Bellaigue’s ripped, muscular prose, they sometimes sound like Norman Mailer or Hunter Thompson’s reporting from Vietnam. For replicating the personae of Muslim refugees from Spain, Bellaigue weaves in the rhythms of Charles Dougherty’s Arabia Deserta.
Bellaigue’s storytelling is an antidote to histories that follow too doggedly a central theme. His history does not move forward like a river rushing out of the Alps, but meanders and eddies across a flat plain. Sometimes his waters are muddy indeed, as when he explains the obscure intrigues of Hungarian politics. The current that moves the reader forward is a meditation on power, trust, envy. Suleyman frequently consults the 11th-century statesman Nizam ul-Mulk on how princes should behave to keep their thrones, an art in which he is ultimately successful. Aspiring alpha males and females would do well to keep the Nizam’s or Bellaigue’s books on their bedside tables.
You must be logged in to post a comment.