Hungary: Tomb of Suleyman the Magnificent to be museum

By Serife Cetin

BUDAPEST (AA) - Later this year the site in Hungary which includes the tomb of a revered Ottoman sultan will be turned into an open-air museum, according to a Turkish official.

Seda Dagli, Budapest head for the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), Turkey’s state-run aid agency, told Anadolu Agency that during his 16th-century reign, Suleyman the Magnificent was a leader who left his mark on the whole world.

Dagli said she hopes the current cooperation between TIKA and the Hungarian government as well as Hungarian academia will grow even stronger.

TIKA and the city government in Szigetvar, the town in southern Hungary where Suleyman’s tomb lies, signed an agreement in 2012 on an excavation and research project for the tomb and its surroundings.

The excavations found the lost tomb of the sultan as well as other historical remains, and the area was put under protection in 2017.

The area, the only Ottoman-founded settlement in Hungary, is now being transformed into an open-air museum, and the work is set to be done on the project by the end of this year.

Suleyman the Magnificent, one of the Ottoman Empire’s most powerful sultans, lost his life due to illness while leading the siege of Szigetvar Castle in 1566.

His internal organs were buried in Szigetvar, but his body was taken back to the Ottoman capital Istanbul for burial.

His son, Sultan Selim II, built a tomb for his father in Szigetvar and a complex to surround it.

But the tomb and its complex were lost when Hungary fell to Austria at the end of the 17th century.

* Writing by Fatih Hafiz Mehmet in Ankara