Classical Age of the Ottoman Empire
Expansion continued during the first half of the reign of Suleiman I (r. 1520-1566), who conquered first Belgrade (1521) and Rhodes, before invading Hungary in 1526, defeating and killing King Louis II in the Battle of Mohács and briefly occupying Buda. Lacking a king, Hungary descended into civil war over the succession, and the Ottomans gave support to John Zápolya as a vassal prince. When their rivals the Habsburgs began to achieve the upper hand, Suleiman directly intervened by again conquering Buda and annexing it to the empire in 1541. Elsewhere, Suleiman led major campaigns against Safavid Iran, conquering Baghdad in 1534 and annexing Iraq. Ottoman rule was further extended with the incorporation of much of North Africa, the conquest of coastal Yemen in 1538, and the subsequent annexation of the interior.
List of campaigns of Suleiman the Magnificent
In 1520, Suleiman became the Sultan at the age of 25, succeeding his father Selim I (who had himself more than doubled the size of the Empire through his own campaigns), and began a series of military conquests. In addition to campaigns led by his viziers and admirals, Suleiman personally led 13 campaigns. The total duration of these campaigns was ten years and three months. The details of the first eight campaigns were preserved in Suleiman's diary. His main opponents were Ferdinand I from the House of Habsburg (later the Holy Roman Emperor), and Tahmasp I of Safavid Persia. Most of Suleiman's campaigns were directed to the west. In 1521 the Ottomans captured Belgrade, which had been besieged unsuccessfully by Mehmed the Conqueror, and in 1526 the Battle of Mohács ended with the defeat of Louis II of Hungary. But Suleiman did not annex most of Hungary till 1541. In 1529 Suleiman's conquests were checked at the siege of Vienna. Although from 1529 to 1566 the borders of the Ottoman Empire moved further west, none of the later campaigns achieved the decisive victory that would secure the new Ottoman possessions. He annexed most of the Middle East in his conflict with the Safavids. Under Suleiman's rule, the Ottoman annexed large swathes of North Africa as far west as Algeria, while the Ottoman fleet dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.