Queen Isabella Sforza Szapolyai of Transylvania and Sultan Suleyman of the Ottoman Empire: A Case of Sixteenth-century Muslim-Christian Collaboration

Pages: 180
Publisher: The Edwin Mellen Press Ltd
Published: June 2009
Language: English
ISBN: 9780773446533
Category: Biography &amp; Autobiography

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Format: Hardcover

Synopsis of Queen Isabella Sforza Szapolyai of Transylvania and Sultan Suleyman of the...

This book will provide more understanding about the historical relationship between Christians and Muslims in the 16th Century. In addition to Hungarian and Latin texts, many of the documents used are translated from 16th Century Ottoman Turkish. Modern Turkish texts also contribute a significant amount of reference material for this work. Isabella Sforza Zapolya (1520 - 1559) was a remarkable woman, though almost unknown. The eldest child of King Sigismund Stary of Poland and Queen Bona Sforza, Isabella grew up in Wawel Castle in Krakow, Poland. She was given a humanist education and was fluent in Latin, Polish, Italian and Hungarian. Isabella was widowed after a year of marriage to John Zapolya I, King of Hungary, just fifteen days after the birth of his son, who became the King of Transylvania. After she was widowed, Sultan Suleyman promised Isabella that he would protect her and her son. During Isabella's life, he never broke that promise. Exchanges between two cultures and the crossing of boundaries around gender, class, religion, race and geography are constant in the lives of Isabella and Sultan Suleyman. The history that has most frequently been related by western historians regarding the Ottoman Empire has relegated them to the status of the other. This book is Turkish friendly without glossing over harsh truths about all of the players in a treacherous, bloody struggle for power.