In his final years as Sultan, Suleiman I (r. 1520-1566) was supported by an exceptionally skilled Grand Vizier from Bosnia, recruited through the devshirme practice—his name was Sokollu Mehmed Pasha. Today, we will focus on his grand strategy, a coherent series of geopolitical plans aimed at imperial expansion. The first front Sokollu chose to address was the Indian Ocean: due to the disruptive presence of the Portuguese and their Estado de Índia, Sokollu coordinated local-scale rebellions with Muslims in the subcontinent, leveraging their shared religious faith. However, his most innovative project came in 1568, when he requested the governor of Egypt (which had been under Ottoman control since 1517) to commission a feasibility study for building a canal across the Suez Isthmus, thus creating a more accessible route for trade and military operations. 

But that wasn't all: Sokollu also planned the construction of a canal to link the Don and Volga rivers. Muslims in Central Asia were facing enormous dangers when undertaking the Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every Muslim must perform at least once in their lifetime), primarily due to pressure from Ivan IV's Russia and the Safavid Persia. Essentially, Sokollu's grand strategy aimed to create maritime connections between the Middle East, Central Asia, and India, facilitating access to the holy cities (Jerusalem and Mecca) for scattered Muslim communities. In this way, Sokollu hoped to realize the 'umma—the community of believers—by establishing a global infrastructure network centered on the Indian Ocean, reaching the farthest corners of the Islamic world.

However, neither of these projects succeeded: the engineers responsible for the Suez construction deemed the project unfeasible, and the 1569 campaign in Astrakhan, intended to acquire the city for the Don-Volga canal, ended in disaster. Nonetheless, it remains intriguing to ponder how the geopolitical landscape of Asia might have shifted had these plans succeeded.