Suleiman the Magnificent (part 4): The Friend He Raised and Killed

Ibrahim of Parga was the son of a Christian fisherman on the Greek coast, taken as a boy into the Ottoman system that turned captured children into the servants who ran the empire. He grew up beside the young prince Suleiman, reading and making music with him, and when Suleiman took the throne he raised Ibrahim faster than the court had ever seen a man rise, all the way to grand vizier, the second man in the empire. For thirteen years they ruled side by side. Then, one night during Ramadan in...