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SULEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT AND HIS AGE. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD. Edited by METIN KUNT and CHRISTINE WOODHEAD. London and New York, Longman. xiii + 218 pp. 3 maps.
The two editors have taken charge of the title and the subtitle. One begins with a fine, swift survey of the enlarging Ottoman domain through several centuries, as an introduction to the age of Suleyman. The other concludes the book with a study of the views of Suleyman as ruler as they were developed by himself, by his contemporaries who were his subjects, and by their successors. In between are placed the papers which for the most part elaborate aspects of the two leading themes. Occasionally students may feel that they are being taken on a somewhat zig-zag course through the material, but at the same time they will undoubtedly become aware that much recent research into the Ottoman past, as far as the seventeenth century, is being put within their reach to enrich and modify what they may have known before. It is one thing to have a general notion of the enormous scale and diversity of Suleyman's empire; here it is valuable to be able to move so speedily from fresh detail about administrative developments in the Buda and Temesvar sancaks after...