Great Sultan is one of various informal titles and even plumper descriptions, such as Grand Turk or even "sick old man", used (incorrectly) by westerners, often pejoratively (especially when the Ottomans were one the retreat in the Balkans) referring to the Ottoman Sultan, known in Ottoman Turkish as Padishah, Hünkar or Hakan, the sovereign of the Ottoman dynasty. A title is a prefix or suffix added to a persons name to signify either veneration, an official position or a professional or academic qualification. ... Imperial motto (Ottoman Turkish) دولت ابد مدت Devlet-i Ebed-müddet (The Eternal State) The Ottoman Empire at the height of its power (1683) Official language Ottoman Turkish Capital Söğüt (1299-1326), Bursa (1326-1365), Edirne (1365-1453), Ä°stanbul (1453-1922) Imperial anthem Ottoman imperial anthem Sovereigns Padishah of the Osmanl... A sultan (Arabic: سلطان) is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. ... Ottoman Turkish (Turkish: Osmanlıca, Ottoman Turkish:لسان عثمانی) is the variant of the Turkish language which was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire, containing extensive borrowings from Persian, which in turn had been permeated with Arabic borrowings. ... History of Islamic monarchies Padishah, Badishah, or Badshah is a very prestigious title derived from the Persian word Padshah, which is based on the better-known title Shah, assumed by several Islamic monarchs, notably these rulers, the first three commanding major Muslim empires : the Shahanshah of Iran (Persia), also recognized...

More appropriate would be to use the style Sultan, or rather Sultan of Sultans (Sultan us-Selatin in Turkish or Sultan es-Salatin in Arabic), one of his many official titles. A sultan (Arabic: سلطان) is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. ... The Arabic language (Arabic: ‎ translit: ), or simply Arabic (Arabic: ‎ translit: ), is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ...

Like Great Khan (but there the usage is so frequent since centuries that is can be considered an established convention) instead of Khagan, such western translations fail to translate or properly render the subtle complexities of the originals. KHAGAN, alternatively spelled Chagan, Qaqan etc, is a title of royal or imperial rank in Mongolian and Turkic languages. ... Khagan, alternatively spelled Chagan, Qaqan etc. ...

A curious circumstance is that the Ottoman dynastic tradition was to give the style of sultan (elsewhere a Muslim ruler) to male and female princ(ess)es, merely as close relatives of the ruling Padishah, without an appanage (as the empire was indivisible). So the western fabrication could at least have had some logical merit if those has been rendered as, say, junior sultan, but that is not the case. A sultan (Arabic: سلطان) is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. ...