Word: suleiman
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...Damascus this week a 300-lb., illiterate ex-god named Suleiman Effendi Murshed, 38, eased himself for the first time into his seat in the Chamber of Deputies and prepared to think politically. Cannily aligning himself with the moderates, he set out to show the folks back in the bare, brutal hills behind Latakia in northern Syria that their god had done well to trade in his robes for a Deputy's toga. He and every other Deputy, new & old, had one program: independence from the French...
...Alaouite Mountains and built like a Damascus house, TIME Correspondent Harry Zinder visited him, was treated to a gut-busting luncheon, long complimentary speeches, weird music and the sight of seven of his village lovelies prancing mightily as they sang in a throaty, minor key. Suleiman, despite his 18 wives, his 14 children and the fact that doctors give him only two more years because of fatty degeneration of the heart, beamed contentedly. Cabled Correspondent Zinder of Suleiman's lair: "Grim hills step giantlike across rich, fruitful valleys, their sides scarred and pocked by huge, overhanging boulders and ledges...
...Today all that is changed. Suleiman is trying to get out from under the heavy-hanging title of 'god,' has dropped the plural speech, started speaking of himself in the third person singular. Those of his people rejoice who feared lest his insatiable appetite for wealth and power might have gobbled even larger sections of northern Syria and made him a frightful monster with a sway beyond his capacity of understanding. ... If Allah is kind and gives him strength to ride out his illnesses, he might even worm his way into the presidency of an independent sovereign Syria...
...which was called Ottoman after him. The hoofs of the fast-moving Osmanli cavalry first sounded on the European shores of the Dardanelles in 1354. In 1453, under Mohammed the Conqueror, the Osmanlis took Constantinople and overran the Bal kans. Selim the Grim (1512-20) took Syria and Egypt. Suleiman the Magnifi cent (1520-66) conquered Persia and Hungary, got as far as the gates of Vienna before retiring to consolidate his conquests...
...Suleiman was not unlike Adolf Hitler in some ways. He made his Janizaries (storm troopers) the best infantry in Europe. He liquidated the native aristocracy in countries he conquered. But he granted religious liberty, even to the Jews...