Sultan Suleyman (The Magnificent): An Emperor and a Saint The Ottoman aspirations for a universal empire have been recognized as the chief driving force behind many military, political, artistic, and economic projects in the period that began with the reign of Sultan Mehmed II and ended before 1550, during the reign of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. The different facets as well as the multiple fields in which these imperial ambitions were realized have offered many venues of academic investigation and produced studies that enriched our understanding of this period. What has often been forgotten, however, is that even after the 1550s, the Ottoman aspirations for a universal empire continued. In the 1550s and 1560s, the official Shehnameci team headed by the historian 'Arif and later by the crafty artist/writer Eflatun, prepared historical works that presented the Ottoman dynasty as the last of the "divinely willed empires" and its contemporaneous ruler Suleyman as the last saint (veli) king and the viceroy of God's kingdom on earth. Particularly, in the five volumes-long project named "Shahname-yi Al-i 'Osman" and in the first half of the enigmatic scroll referred to as "Tomar- i Humayun," these two writers fashioned their patron and ruler as the last representative of a chain of divinely sanctioned leaders that began with Adam. In fact, it would not be inaccurate to say that the historical vision projected in these works explains the entire human history as an unfolding aimed at the arrival of the Ottoman dynasty and its tenth ruler Suleyman. In my paper, I will discuss how this specific and apocalyptic imperial idea centered around Sultan Suleyman was shaped and narrated in the works of 'Arif and Eflatun in a period often seen as coming after the exhaustion of the Ottoman imperial aspirations when the limitations of their political dominion were finally and unwillingly recognized.