Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman I ( '; or '; 6 November 1494 – 6 September 1566), commonly known as Suleiman the Magnificent in the West and Kanunî Sultan Süleyman (; "The Lawgiver Suleiman") in his realm, was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 until his death in 1566. Under his administration, the Ottoman state ruled over 15 to 25 million people.
History of Lebanon under Ottoman rule
The Ottoman sultan, Salim II (1516–20), invaded Syria and Lebanon in 1516. Salim I, moved by the eloquence of the Lebanese ruler Amir Fakhr ad Din I (1516–44), decided to grant the Lebanese amirs a semiautonomous status. The Ottomans, through the Maans, a great Druze feudal family, and the Shihabs, a Sunni Muslim family that had converted to Christianity, ruled Lebanon until the middle of the nineteenth century. It was during Ottoman rule that the term Greater Syria was coined to designate the approximate area included in present-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine.