The Fall Of Szigetvár (1566) | Part 2: Zrinski's Redemption

*transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors*

It's early September 1566.
In the southern plains of Hungary, a 71-year-old Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent watches another
artillery barrage pound at the walls of Szigetvár Fortress.
The ever-present mist and grey sky had reduced visibility, and the drizzling weather had made
draining the mode of the castle difficult, but the siege was progressing.
After battering the castle for almost three weeks, virtually nothing of the outer walls
was still left.
The bastion, the only building still standing, stood like a mausoleum on a hill of sharp,
broken gravestones.
It was teetering, verging on collapse, but no matter what Suleiman tried, the defenders
refused to surrender.
No longer able to even raise their head above the walls, the siege had fallen into a familiar
pattern.
By daylight the castle stood, beaten and broken, silently taking all the abuse the Ottomans
could dish out, but by nightfall it came to life.
Like ants pouring out of an ant hill, soldiers and townsfolk patched up the walls, redug
trenches and delivered ammunition to the outer towers.
Church bells rang in communion and hymns wafted across the swamp to the Ottoman camp,
and by morning it started again.
Suleiman's generals debated on the next steps.
Immediately they'd offered the castle's commander, Count Nikola Zrinski (Zrínyi Miklós) , all manner of riches, lands and titles, but the Sultan knew his generals were wasting their breath.
When a blacksmith refines his alloy, through heat and hammer he casts off the impurities
leaving only the purest metal behind.
Suleiman's conquests in Eastern Europe were the same.
Through bribery, victory or flattery he'd cast aside the weaker rulers.
One that remained, anyone insane enough to oppose him, wasn't there to beat the Sultan,
they were there to bleed him dry, to sell their lives at such a high cost that the Sultan
would be humiliated regardless of the outcome.
Through laboured breath, the old Sultan squinted at the rickety fortress.
He knew it wasn't a matter of time, but when?
When would Zrinski die, and give him Szigetvár?
Welcome back to the Anthology of Heroes podcast, the podcast sharing stories of heroic figures
who altered the course of history.
Anthology of Heroes is part of the Evergreen podcast network.
I'm your host, Elliot Gates, and today I am walking you through part two of the story
of the 1566 Siege of Szigetvár.
Szigetvár was a small but well defended castle in southern Hungary that the Ottoman Sultan
Suleiman Magnificent was hell-bent on conquering.
Though the fortress was fairly important in the long war between the Ottomans and the
Hapsburgs, for the old Sultan it was more than that.
Almost certainly he knew this would be his last campaign.
Kept alive by elixirs and medicines, his bones ached and his mind was beginning to fade.
He was determined for his final campaign to end in victory.
But Count Nicola Zrinski, their commander of the fortress, was equally determined to
hold out.
As Zrinski had already decided, whether a relief army came or not, he would go down
with the ship.
He would not turn the keys over to the Sultan.
But as the structure quivered after barrage after barrage of artillery fire, the question
had turned into who would break first?
The castle or the Sultan?
Our previous episode was almost entirely dedicated to Suleiman's life.
As he and his enormous army made their way to Szigetvár, he had plenty of time to dwell
on his seven decades on earth.
We saw the rise of his closest friend and probably lover, Ibrahim Pasha, a Greek slave
who would become Grand Vizier, the highest position in the Ottoman Empire, apart from
the Sultan himself.
We saw how the Sultan's favoritism to his friend scandalized his court.
We talked a little about the Ottoman attitudes towards homosexuality before seeing the rise
of perhaps the most powerful woman to ever grace the halls of the Takapi palace.
That woman was Roxalana, a redhead slave from Poland who Suleiman fell head over heels for.
Roxalana had caused ripples in court by insisting on a monogamous, almost Western-style relationship
with the Sultan, who, shockingly, agreed.
Suleiman was so smitten by the redhead vixen that court gossip speculated that she had
actually bewitched him with spells from her native land.
We finished the episode with a dejected Suleiman reading over love poetry and letters he'd
written to Roxalana, who in turn complained to him about the influence of Ibrahim, the
Grand Vizier.
The writing was on the wall, and Suleiman would soon have to pick between his best friend
and his wife.
There was quite a bit in episode one.
Through it, we got to learn why Suleiman was the way he was, so I'd recommend checking
that one out.
But if you're the type of person who likes to fast forward through the action movies
to get to the good parts, then, by all means, don't let me stop you.
Let's get into it.
Part two, the final part of the 1566 Siege of Sagetva.
Through a half-collapse window, the 58-year-old Count Nikolas Drinski IV looked out at Suleiman's
grand tent, wondering at the kind of man Suleiman must be.
The castle shook and flakes of plaster rained down on him as another cannonball tore into
the walls.
His council chambers looked like an infirmary now, in fact, every room did.
Each man was coated in plaster, mud, and dried blood.
It was near impossible to find a man without wounds.
Leaning against walls or sprawled out on the floor, with each cannonball impact, everyone
grimaced and braced themselves, as if waiting for the roof to collapse.
But not Drinski.
He knew exactly how much damage his castle could take, and the old sultan hadn't reached
the threshold yet.
Every wall he knew the thickness, every trench it's width, every cannon, its caliber.
Becoming commander of this strategically vital castle was the culmination of Nikolas Drinski's
life work, and he'd spent years building up its defences for Siege just like this one.
A career land baron, Drinski had worked his way up from minor lord to court aristocrat.
But Count Nikolas Drinski had not lived a good life.
Everything he'd done in life he'd done for himself.
In his mind, charity belonged in the church, and had no place in the hard, cruel, real
world.
Every loan, marriage, or donation was a favour he could bank away for a rainy day, more leverage
to hold over another person to advance his standing at the Habsburg court.
While it's true he owned almost every village from Mulhatch to Vienna, you'd be hard pressed
to find another man who'd sit for dinner with him.
Drinski's name was Mud.
A loyal hound for the Habsburg family he did the dirty jobs they didn't want to be associated
with.
On their orders he'd invited another commander to dinner, and under the flag of hospitality
lunged at him, stabbing him to death.
While the name Drinski was black in the courts of Europe, few could deny the man had his
uses.
He'd been there, years ago, when a much younger Solomon and his army bore down on the
golden apple.
Outside the city walls, in the mud and blood, Drinski and his men did their part protecting
the gateway to Europe.
Fearless and cool-headed, his skill in the battlefield and his loyalty to the emperor
soon catapulted him into the upper echelons of power, part of the inner circle of the
Habsburg court.
Not long after, he was formally offered the command of Szigetvár Fortress.
It was a huge promotion, but one that came with equally huge risks.
Szigetvár Castle was a formidable structure, but it was deep behind enemy lines.
A Habsburg castle smack bang in the middle of Ottoman lands.
Zrinski (Zrínyi Miklós) had been given the ultimate prize, the culmination of a life spent scheming and
killing for the Habsburgs.
And if anyone, be they Muslim or Christian, wanted to take it from him, they'd need to
pry the keys from his cold, dead hands.
In a letter written to a friend before this each began, the Count declared, quote,
 We have decided to lock ourselves up in this fortress, our wish being to serve our
sweet, doomed country with our blood, and in the event by risking our lives. 
From the time he took command, Zrinski had begun fortifying his prize.
Cows were thickened, food, ammunition and medicine were stockpiled, and peasants were
forced to labor on the moat.
The castle already had a moat, but Zrinski deliberately burst the banks of it, flooding
the outer plains and turning the surrounding countryside into a thick, soupy swamp.
So now, anyone that wished to attack would have to drag their cannons across a thick
bog to get in range of the castle.
The Count received little help from the Habsburg court, so he raided Ottoman lands and took
what he needed.
He had no qualms about antagonising the Sultan because he probably knew that, regardless
of whether or not he kept a low profile, his castle would be the first in any campaigns
headed into Europe.
And soon, whispers of exactly that reached his ears.
By 1565, there were rumours that the Sultan was planning a campaign, his third and final
attempt to conquer the Golden Apple, Vienna.
The army would have to march right past Sagetva.
Zrinski knew that the Sultan would never leave an actively hostile fortress at the rear of
an army.
Without a doubt, the Ottomans would be coming for his castle first.
And now, as another cannonball pounds into the walls and shook the room, his hunch proved
correct.
Stamping a letter with a wax seal, he directed a messenger to Vienna.
The stamped envelope was another request, a plea for the Emperor to send reinforcements.
The Emperor that Zrinski had lowly served was their only hope.
If a relief army didn't arrive soon, all the willpower in the world would not keep
this structure standing.
Back in Solomon's grand tent, the Sultan tossed and turned, with the rains letting
up as doctors had hoped his pains would dissipate, but they were worse than ever.
As he dreamt, he thought back to the night when everything changed.
It was 1536, 30 years ago.
He was in his dining hall back in Istanbul, sitting soberly with his wife, Roxalana, and
his grand vizier, Ibrahim Pasha.
The dining table overflowed with game birds and fish of all kinds, dressed in spices and
herbs from as far away as Indonesia.
But Solomon wasn't hungry.
Pushing the food around in his plate, he sat stone faced, watching, rather than listening,
as Ibrahim told another story of his victories in Persia.
As his old friend exuberantly explained the strange customs of the Persians, Solomon quietly
looked him up and down.
Everything this man owned, everything he was, everything he'd achieved, was thanks
to him, Solomon.
Did he realize that?
Apart from himself, Ibrahim was the most powerful person in the empire, more powerful than
even his beloved Roxalana.
Solomon took another long sip of water as the grand vizier continued.
Ibrahim always did have a way with words, but Solomon knew him well enough to know when
he was nervous.
After the last five years, the relationship between these two soulmates had soured.
The sultan wasn't an idealistic teenager anymore.
He didn't need long walks in the forest or dreamy boat rides discussing the origins
of the universe.
He was the ruler of the largest empire in the world, and what he needed was stability
and loyalty, and he was no longer sure if Ibrahim gave him either.
Roxalana sat, watching the pasha with an expression that matched her husband's.
Since her arrival at the court as a concubine, she had risen further than any woman in the
Ottoman Empire ever had, or ever would.
Now Solomon had no concubines, favorites or consorts.
She and Solomon were married.
Breaking centuries of tradition, the two were in a monogamous, western-style relationship.
She was, for all intents and purposes, queen of the Ottoman Empire.
Since she'd arrived on the scene, she'd never liked her husband's closeness with
this Greek slave, and recent events had driven the point home.
The sultan was getting old, and succession was on everyone's mind.
By the 1550s, Solomon had four sons, three through Roxalana, and one other son through
an old concubine of his called Mahidevran.
Though Mahidevran was now long gone from the political scene, her son remained and had
grown into a very talented, disciplined, and brave man.
His name was Mustapha.
Without a doubt, Mustapha was the best candidate for the throne.
Foreign dignitaries who met the sultan's sons didn't even consider it a competition.
Mustapha was loved by the soldiers and the people.
He was wise, good-looking, with an even temperament that matched his fathers.
But Roxalana knew well that if Mustapha took the throne, he would follow the Ottoman tradition
of having his brothers strangled.
That was just the way it was.
And once that happened, she'd likely be killed, or at best sent away to some faraway
hermitage to live out her days as a wise and old crone.
For her to survive, she needed to convince her husband that one of their sons was a better
choice of heir.
Unfortunately, all her kids were pretty unremarkable.
Salim was a womanizing drunkard, who palace staff nicknamed the Sot.
Bayezid was impatient and entitled, and Khyangir was cursed to be born as a hunchback.
But Roxalana had tasted power.
She'd come from nothing and refused to return to nothing.
Gently and gradually, she turned Suleiman against Mustapha.
This put her at odds with the government, the army, and most prominently, Ibrahim Pasha.
All of whom pointed out that Mustapha was the obvious choice to succeed the throne.
But one fateful day on campaign, the Sultan summoned Mustapha to his tent.
Once he'd entered his father's quarters, the young man was seized, and after a struggle,
killed.
We don't know exactly what crime Mustapha was said to have committed, but it seems he
was accused of plotting rebellion against his father.
While the specifics of the crime aren't clear, the reaction from his empire was.
Outraged army corps rebelled against the Sultan, horrified that someone like Suleiman
who preached law and order would execute his son for virtually no reason.
Poems were published and dirges were sung, and though the Sultan calmed things down,
this murder was a stain on his career and his conscience.
Since that fateful day, he had fought a civil war against another one of his sons, leaving
just a single contender to follow in his footsteps.
Out of the eight sons he bore over the course of his life, the only option left, the only
one still living, was Saleem, an overweight drunkard who preferred parties and musicians
to learning and bureaucracy.
As Suleiman looked at his plate of untouched food, his anger rose quietly inside.
Ibrahim continued to spew an unending stream of flattery, but it was past listening.
In that moment he saw Ibrahim as everything Roxalana said he was, a Greek slave, a crypto
Christian who desired the throne for himself.
It was Ibrahim to blame for his recent setbacks, Ibrahim to blame for his drunken of an heir,
Ibrahim to blame for everything.
Pulling his chair back, he bit his old friend farewell and retired to his chamber with Roxalana
following in tow.
Once he'd reached his chamber, he summoned the palace mutes.
Ten years ago it was these men that would pass the letters of affection between Suleiman
and Ibrahim when they could never bear to be apart.
Tonight though, they were here for a very different reason.
As the Grand Vizier slept, they crept into his quarters and tried to strangle him.
But the pasha woke up and wearing just his nightgown dough for his weapon, he did his
best to fight them off, tearing the curtains and sheets as he writhed and squirmed, forcing
the mutes to draw their daggers and finish him off.
On the 15th of March, 1536, servants entered the chambers of the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman
Empire.
Inside was a grizzly sight.
Bedsheets in tatters and curtains drenched in blood, Ibrahim Pasha, a Greek slave who
had risen to the highest echelons of power, was laying on his bed with multiple stab wounds
and a noose around his neck.
The painful memories, even in sleep, troubled the Sultan greatly.
Outside the collapsing fortresses to get far, he tossed and turned.
His 72-year-old heart beat rapidly, unable to drive away the dark memories, his breathing
turned ragged and sharp.
As the Sultan gasped for air, inside Sogetva, Zarensky now knew his position was hopeless.
The Emperor, his last hope, had fallen victim to Suleiman's spies.
He'd become convinced that his capital, Vienna, was the true objective for the attack and
that Sogetva was just a diversion to draw his troops away.
That was why he'd ignored Zarensky's calls for help.
Sogetva was a castle on a chessboard, being sacrificed to keep the king safe.
No relief army was coming, Zarensky was on his own.
The Ottomans had now taken both islands that linked Sogetva to the mainland.
Both the Old Town and the New Town had fallen.
Painstakingly, at great human cost, they drained the moat.
The cannons were now in firing range of his bastion.
Looks of mortar and brick fell from the ceiling, with each hit as Zarensky's troops did their
best to return fire.
As he reread the offer of surrender from the Sultan, Zarensky mulled over his options.
Without a doubt, his cause was hopeless.
Looking around at his crumbling castle, he realised this was the culmination of a life
spent climbing the political totem pole.
All manner of wicked deeds he'd performed, anything to progress his career, he'd begun
his life as a minor land baron, and now he'd steward an esteemed member of the imperial
aristocracy, commander of one of the most important castles in the empire.
All this life he'd won in riches, and now he had them.
Wanted command, he'd got it.
Wanted respect, he'd earned it.
But what was the point of any of it?
When this castle fell, it would all be for nothing.
And then what?
Was there any place in God's kingdom for him?
But perhaps even a soul as wicked as his could be redeemed.
He was a croate landlord, holding back Suleiman the Magnificent, the most powerful man in
the world.
Perhaps even then he knew his name would be written in the history books.
Crumbling the letter into a ball he threw it in the fire.
Let the old man come for him, he had a stack of gunpowder left and the out of fortress
could still be held for a day or two.
Since then though, a deafening roar of an explosion ripped through the fortress, the
scrape of iron and the slow rumble of collapsing bricks.
He heard men screaming and felt a wave of heat warm his body, followed by a heavy dark smoke
that spread through the room.
Zerinski rushed to the ramparts to see the Janissary troops surging up the walls.
The attackers had dug a mine under the side of the fortress and detonated a bomb in the
tunnel below.
Going into the drained swamp, the side of the fortress was completely gone.
As flames engulfed the interior and the teetering structure began to quiver, Zerinski knew there
was no way he could defend it any longer.
Through the smoke and ash he gathered up all the men who could still stand and the few
horses that remained.
He may have told them that this was their moment and that their deeds in the next few
minutes would outlive them all.
A poem written by Zerinski's great grandson has him saying quote,
Since because of the fire we cannot stay here, as soon as God allows us to see the
dawning, we will go out of the castle and will there show that those whom we were in
life, we are the same now.
As the Janissary swarmed up the gatehouse closing in for the kill, the drawbridge dropped
and the early morning sunshine flattered into the collapsing castle.
Destiny was calling them.
The Janissary troops surged in through the breach, out of a cloud of smoke and soot roared
the last few defenders of Szigetvár into the moor of the Ottoman troops, spurring their
horses forward into a certain death.
The crack of rifles erupted as the Janissary corps eviscerated the men.
Leading the charge, Nikola Zerinski was hit first and slumped over in his saddle dead.
Those that left with him lasted less than a minute.
It was over.
After one month and two days, Szigetvár had fallen.
Behind them sat nothing but a shell.
Zerinski and his defenders truly had held out until the last possible moment.
The Ottoman siege camp broke into celebrations and everyone was jubilant.
The pious praised Alar, the impious drank and womanized and Suleiman's generals breathed
a sigh of relief.
During the last week a bout of dysentery had spread through the camp and all of them worried
that the sultan's delicate health wouldn't be able to take any further strain.
But they'd made it.
Sultan Suleiman had completed his thirteenth military campaign.
Eager to tell their sultan the good news, they entered his tent and approached the
monarch's bed.
Gently they touched his shoulder, but the sultan didn't stir.
He was cold to touch.
Turning him around they must have gasped, seeing the glassy eyes of Suleiman the Magnificent
staring back at them.
The sultan was dead.
Sealing the tent flaps quickly to keep the news from spreading, the celebrations of the
camp stopped quickly as the distant sounds of a huge explosion rippled through the area.
It seemed like, even in death, Count Zerinski had had the last laugh.
As the Ottoman soldiers rushed in the castle to loot it, an ammunition case caught fire,
causing the teetering castle to explode spectacularly.
Tree and stones flew in all directions and buried thousands of Ottoman soldiers in the
rubble.
Suleiman the Magnificent's death marked the end of an era.
There would never be another Ottoman sultan quite like Suleiman.
His rule was the culmination of centuries of progress and expansion.
He'd inherited a stable rich empire and moulded it to his values.
He never shirked from his responsibilities and he really did seem to care about his subjects.
Though some of his conquests would be rolled back, he undoubtedly changed the geographics
of Europe.
The present day Muslim majority countries of Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
saw large-scale adoption of Islam during his reign.
As a boy he'd set out to emulate his great-grandfather, but in some ways he'd surpassed him.
In Turkey they call Mehmet the Second, Fatir Sultan Mehmet, Mehmet the Conqueror, but they
call Suleiman Kanuni Sultan Suleiman, Suleiman the Lawgiver or the Lawmaker.
But at the end of the day he too was just a man.
He wasn't infallible and the nepotism that he showed towards his favourites, particularly
towards Roxalana, would have consequences that would far outlive him.
Her position in the Ottoman court had no precedent, a woman with real, meaningful power pulling
the strings, and long after she'd passed away, other ambitious women looked at Roxalana
and saw how far they could rise.
Historians refer to the next 100 years of the Ottoman Empire as the Sultanate of Women.
A period of time when women, usually the Sultan's mother or one of his concubines, would increasingly
dominate the patriarchal Ottoman court.
After Suleiman's death was finally announced, his son, Selim, became the new Sultan as planned
and was like putting a toddler in the cockpit of a Boeing 747.
Suleiman had left behind enormous, efficient, but complex bureaucracy.
This huge, infernal machine with pressure valves and hundreds of dials that needed to
be monitored and pressed at specific intervals, Selim was just not up to the task.
Suddenly sober, he met his end just eight years later, slipping on marble tiles when
he was drunk.
His death began the very gradual decline of the Ottoman Empire.
But Europe wasn't out of the woods yet.
The dream of taking Vienna, the golden apple, didn't die with Suleiman.
The most dramatic siege in Europe's history was about 100 years from now.
But the Ottoman outlook on Europe had shifted.
From every Western campaign they planned, there was a gnawing memory of how much the
Habsburgs made them bleed for a single castle at Siketva.
But the Sultan's legendary end dragged another unexpected name along with it into the annals
of history.
Nikolas Rinsky was truly an unlikely hero.
If he was never given command of this fortress, he'd probably just be a footnote in our history
books.
Just a run-of-the-mill, money-hungry land baron he probably wouldn't be remembered.
But instead he became the figure of legends.
His fellow nobles who used to spit at the thought of him, begrudgingly admitted that
his legendary last stand had wiped the slate clean from a life of sin.
A certain Romanian bishop who knew him and despised him was forced to admit that he had
truly wiped his sins clean with such a glorious end.
While one of Suleiman's generals who watched stunned as Rinsky charged fearlessly into
his front lines, wrote to a friend regretting that he never got to meet him.
I still regret his death, and I can prove this because his head is not on a pale, meaning
a pike.
I sent it up to have it cleaned.
I also had his body buried, as it would have been a shame to have the body of such a brave
gentleman eaten by the birds.
Rinsky's garrison of 2,300 men was killed almost to a man, but they'd sold their lives
at a premium price.
By the end of the siege, somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 Ottoman soldiers lay dead.
Some had died taking the old town or draining the moat, others had died of dysentery or
disease in the siege camp, but the majority of deaths were from the final explosion when
the citadel collapsed and buried the soldiers in the rubble.
As his story has been told and retold over the years, myth and folklore has kind of crept
into the narrative.
One I particularly enjoyed said that Zrinsky's final charge batted all the way to the Sultan's
tent, where he killed Suleiman with his bare hands before being overwhelmed by his guards.
But the most famous story, and the one I used in our introduction, goes that Zrinsky rigged
a bomb.
Knowing that the Ottoman soldiers will loot the castle, he leaves it behind before charging
up to meet his fate.
To be fair, there's nothing disapproving this series of events.
I mean, there was an explosion that killed a stack of Ottoman soldiers, but it seems
more plausible that it was caused by an ammunition case catching fire rather than a deliberate
plan by Zrinsky.
Legends aside, Zrinsky's doomed resistance continues to inspire to this day.
A national hero in Croatia and Hungary, his last stand is still represented in painting,
statues, poetry, even operas.
My personal favourite is a piece of art by Johann Peter Kraft, that vividly captures
the drama of the final charge as Zrinsky, covered in red and gold silks, charges from
the smoky fortress, saber-raised into the Ottoman lines.
On September 7, 2017, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived at Friendship Park
in southern Hungary.
There were no Janissaries, no cannons, no Habsburgs, no sultans anymore.
No longer contested territory between two enormous empires, Sighetvar is a peaceful
parkland in a rural part of modern Hungary.
The Turkish President wore a simple black suit with dark shades, carrying a laurel wreath
he walked towards the enormous bust of Suleiman the Magnificent.
Zrinsky Park, which sits beside the ruins of Sighetvar Castle, was constructed in 1994
in an attempt to consolidate relationships between Hungary and Turkey.
Originally, it was just going to be a bust of Suleiman there, but the Hungarians and
Croatians were appalled that their national hero was not represented, so an equally imposing
bust of Nikola Zrinsky was added.
Despite the name of the park, the titanic busts of these men look anything but friendly.
Two block-carved faces raised on a platform in the middle of the park, Suleiman with his
sloping enormous turban looks fierce and domineering, and Zrinsky with his feathered cap and neat
beard looks stoic and unmoved.
If the busts were turned to face each other, it would look like a cage match was about
to start.
But President Erdogan wasn't just there for a stroll in the sunshine.
Well known for his admiration of the Ottoman Empire, he was there to commemorate the anniversary
of Suleiman the Magnificent.
450 years ago to the day, Szigetvár had fallen and Sultan Suleiman with it.
Suleiman could be something of a personal hero for President Erdogan, whose government
policies have often been described as neo-Ottoman.
In the last few decades, Friendship Park and Szigetvár have generated a lot of media attention
in Turkey.
According to legend, after Suleiman died in his tent, his internal organs, specifically
his heart, were removed, placed in a golden box and buried underneath the spot his tent
was pitched.
While his body was transported back to Istanbul for his funeral, a small tomb was constructed
near Szigetvár where his organs were buried.
For a century after, this tomb was a bit of a pilgrim destination for local Muslims,
but when the Habsburgs retook the area, they burned it to the ground.
As the centuries passed, the story of the tomb was thought to be nothing but an old
urban legend.
But, in 2013, Hungarian professor Norbert Papp was trekking through the outskirts of
Szigetvár, poking through the ruins and looking for clues.
It was a sweltering hot day, so when a local winemaker invited the archaeologists to take
a break on his patio, Norbert accepted.
Under the canopy of grapevines, the professor waited patiently for a glass of the local
produce.
As he sat, he noticed the table he was sitting on was propped up by an old red stone, with
unusually precise divots hammered into it.
He asked the winemaker where the stone had come from, and the man explained that in a
cellar there were tons of stones that looked this way.
Descending down the crooked stairs into the ancient cellar, Norbert looked past the dusty
stack of wine bottles and realised he was standing in the badly damaged remains of
Suleiman the Magnificent Tomb.
Preparing it with a sketch in an old monastery, the dimensions seemed to match, and when a
specific prayer niche was pointed directly towards Mecca with less than one degree of
deviation, he believed he'd finally found it.
The rediscovery of this lost tomb created quite a stir.
Though there isn't much to see, many travelled to this poorer region of Hungary, including
two descendants of Sultan Suleiman himself.
Denizi Murad, a French writer, and I guess you could argue an Ottoman princess, travelled
to the cellar and remark, quote,
When they showed us the exact place, I could not resist the emotion, nor suppress my tears.
I raised my hands and prayed for Sultan Suleiman, the legislator, the Magnificent, asking God
to help Turkey in her difficult situation.
Denizi even provided some of her hair as a DNA sample in case any remains were found.
As President Erdogan laid his wreath beneath the bust of Suleiman the Magnificent, he hoped
that others would follow him and this would become a kind of pilgrim route, just like
it was after the death of Suleiman.
Friendship Park still stands today, partly funded by Erdogan's government.
Hungary is one of the numerous countries where Turkey exerts kind of soft power.
In fact, if you overlay a map of Suleiman's empire atop countries where modern Turkey
has an economic interest, you'd see a lot of overlap.
Erdogan has been very clear about his intentions to make Turkey an international power again.
And while Viktor Orban, the President of Hungary, would no doubt welcome Turkish investment
into one of Hungary's poorest regions, he himself is renowned for harsh views on immigration,
particularly Muslim immigration, and his speeches regularly reference the humiliation his country
suffered during Ottoman occupation.
As of 2023, it's been almost 500 years since the Get Var Fell.
And while Suleiman, Zyrinsky, the Janissaries and the Habsburgs are all gone, it's interesting
to think how much has really changed.
This has been Anthology of Heroes, thanks for tuning in.
Before the outro music plays today guys, I wanted to remind you that this is our final
episode for season 5.
This season has had about 20 or so episodes, our longest yet.
Just a heads up for any new listeners, I try and take about a one or two month break between
seasons to get a head start on research and stuff like that, so things will go quiet on
the feed for a bit.
But you can keep up to date with the show, our releases, research and just general information
on the show by following us on Instagram or Facebook where I'm most active.
This is also a final call for any Q&A questions.
At the end of each season I usually like to do a little season summary to show where
we've gone and what we've talked about, and this time I thought it might be fun to
include some audience questions.
So if you've got any questions or suggestions for me, either about me personally, the show,
the sources, you know, whatever, there's a few ways you can get in touch with me and
I'll read them out on the show.
First you can email me, anthologyofheroespodcast or onewordatgmail.com, you can message me on
Instagram, at anthologyofheroes, or you can leave a voicemail on our website, anthologyofheroespodcast.com.
If you do leave your voice heads up I will probably be playing it on the episode so make
sure you're okay with that.
All those links are in the episode description.
Real talk though guys, I really hope you enjoyed this season and if you have maybe you've
got a second to rate this show on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, it just takes a second.
Alternatively, if you really enjoyed the show, maybe you'd like to join our team of generous
patrons.
The patrons of the show give me a few dollars a month which helps me cover the cost of posting
the show.
If you'd like to do that, there's a link in the episode description as well.
A big shout out to our generous patrons as always.
Claudia, Tom, Caleb, Malcolm, Seth, Angus, Phil, Lisa, Jim, Alan and John.
Thanks a lot you guys, big to you on the season 5 wrap up.