Suleyman’s favorite and principal advisor in government between 1523 and 1536, Ibrahim Pasha was the sultan’s other self in the matters of administration as well as his chief agent for the dispensation of royal patronage. Ibrahim Pasha was especially famous for his unprecedented kindness and liberality to the burgeoning community of poets of the imperial capital Istanbul. The primary objective of this paper is to examine the concentration of courtly patronage in the hands of Ibrahim Pasha in the early years of Suleyman’s reign (1520-1566) and the politics of the pasha’s cultural patronage by taking into account the broader political, social, and institutional developments that the Ottoman Empire underwent in the period following the conquest of Constantinople (1453). For this purpose, I examine the patronage relations that governed Ottoman society in Istanbul before Suleyman’s accession. I show that before Suleyman, royal patronage was exercised in Ottoman society collectively by the urban elites which, through their domination over the city in the post-conquest era, functioned as brokers of favor between the royal court and city population. I argue that the act of turning Ibrahim Pasha into the sole representative of the sultan’s favor was primarily meant to break down the control of these elites in the imperial capital and bring the monarchy into direct contact with the masses in the city. I further argue that this shift in royal policy was closely linked to two other major developments that characterized the first decades of Suleyman’s reign: first, the Ottoman pretensions to world rule that gained a new momentum in the 1520s necessitated the creation of a new royal authority that was to become the ultimate source of power, rank, and status in society; and second, the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century witnessed the emergence of a public sphere in the Ottoman capital that was largely beyond the control of the royal court, which in turn pushed the dynasty to seek legitimation for its universalist claims by turning royal patronage into a political tool to manipulate public opinion in Istanbul.