Suleiman the Magnificent
At the time of Suleiman's death, the Ottoman Empire was one of the world's foremost powers. Suleiman's conquests had brought under the control of the Empire major Muslim cities (such as Baghdad), many Balkan provinces (reaching present day Croatia and Hungary), and most of North Africa. His expansion into Europe had given the Ottoman Turks a powerful presence in the European balance of power. Indeed, such was the perceived threat of the Ottoman Empire under the reign of Suleiman that Austria's ambassador Busbecq warned of Europe's imminent conquest: "On [the Turks'] side are the resources of a mighty empire, strength unimpaired, habituation to victory, endurance of toil, unity, discipline, frugality and watchfulness ... Can we doubt what the result will be? ... When the Turks have settled with Persia, they will fly at our throats supported by the might of the whole East; how unprepared we are I dare not say." Suleiman's legacy was not, however, merely in the military field. The French traveler Jean de Thévenot bears witness a century later to the "strong agricultural base of the country, the well being of the peasantry, the abundance of staple foods and the pre-eminence of organization in Suleiman's government".
Yaji I
Ali Yaji Dan Tsamiya was a King and later the first Sultan of Kano, a state in what is now Northern Nigeria. Yaji I ruled from 1359–1385 CE. In 1350, Yaji converted to Islam, relinquished the Hausa Animisnt Cult of Tsumbubura and proclaimed Kano a Sultanate.
He violently crushed a subsequent rebellion by the Animist cult at the Battle of Santolo waging in the processes the first Islamic Jihad in Sudanic Africa. He conquered the "Kwararafa" and the numerous Hausa Kingdoms around Kano laying the seeds for Kanoan dominance in the "Bilad as Sudan". He died in 1385 having laid the seeds for an eventual Kanoan Empire