Until recently, historians of Ottoman Syria have tended to emphasize the contentious nature of the relationship between the Ottoman regime and its subjects in the Bilad al-Sham. Highlighting Arab criticism of the Ottoman kanun, Arab discontent with Ottoman personnel, and Arab skepticism of the Ottoman commitment to Islam, many historians expressed the view that Syrians were at the best of times lukewarm supporters of the Ottoman regime and at other times a resistant periphery facing an oppressive center. In the past few years however, this rather somber view of Ottoman-Syrian relations has come under scrutiny. Historians of the Bilad al-Sham in the early modern period have increasingly sought a more nuanced understanding of the political attitudes and sensibilities of Syrians and their interactions with the Ottoman regime. My paper examines Damascene attitudes about the Ottoman dynasty by investigating the views of Sultan Kanuni Suleyman that emerge in histories, poems and other texts produced in Damascus from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The paper will demonstrate that the Damascenes largely shared the Ottoman elite’s reverence for Sultan Suleyman. In an interesting twist, Damascenes’ glowing impressions of Suleyman rarely make reference to his actions in and policy towards the Bilad al-Sham; instead they credit Suleyman with enhancing Ottoman institutions that in turn led to extensive success on the battlefield. In other words, they judge him primarily by imperial rather than local criteria. My conclusion is that while Damascenes may have disapproved of particular Ottoman officials or provisions in the kanun, many were enthusiastic supporters of the dynasty. Proud to be part of a polity that had experienced a leader like Suleyman, some even judged the dynasty—taken as a whole—to be the greatest that the world had ever seen. Although the paper will survey views of Suleyman that appear in published chronicles and biographical dictionaries from these centuries, the paper will rely heavily on unpublished sources that have been little consulted in previous scholarship. They include a treatise on Suleyman by Muhammad ibn Sultan, a comprehensive world history by Ahmad bin Muhammad al-Sumadi, and some unpublished works of ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi. Keeping in mind the question of what audience the authors sought to reach with these works, I will show that it would be a mistake to dismiss their encomia as mere attempts at flattery; rather they are key to understanding the complexities of political culture in the Ottoman provinces.