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.
Sultanate of Women
In addition, Suleiman's reign famously marked the merging of the imperial harem into the palace and political sphere, as he became the first sultan to be officially married, to the woman later known as Hürrem Sultan. Though controversial even at the time, this act, combined with the centralization of the imperial dynasty, brought the women of the harem closer to real power than they had ever been. As the royal princes lost power from the loss of their governance, their wives and mothers gained significantly, using their prince's status and connections to influence court and imperial decisions. In the late 16th century, Murat III even moved his personal residence from the palace, where he had previously been surrounded by exclusively-male servants and courtiers, to the harem itself. Thus, by the turn of the 1600s, the wife and mother of the sultan became two of the most prominent and influential positions in government, in practice if not in law.