Who Is The Sultan (Sultan of Turkey)?
The ruler who becomes the captive Baron's master
The Sultan, a title for a ruler in the Islamic world, here refers to the monarch of Turkey. He becomes the Baron's master after the Baron is taken prisoner, and the story never gives his personal name.
Captured in the war against the Turks, the Baron is put to work for the Sultan, taking the Sultan's bees out to the fields each day and watching over them. The silver axe the Baron carries marks those who work in the Sultan's gardens and farmland. When he throws this axe at a bear, it sets off his outrageous tale of going to the Moon to get it back. The Sultan himself hardly appears in the axe story.
In a later chapter, he also appears as the opponent in a wager that the Baron and his companions outwit. The 18th-century wars between Russia and Turkey form the backdrop, but the stories themselves are invented, and the humor always centers on the Baron's tall tales.
