Abstract: This article studies the legal reflections made about the Ottoman Empire in Spanish sources from the 1520s onwards, a decade in which the Muslim state rose up against the empire of Charles V. From one tyranny to another, political, juridical, and geographic Spanish literature sought to emphasise the arbitrary nature of the sultan’s position to fend off the accusations of tyranny made against Charles V following the sacking of Rome, and thus to defend ‘just war’ against the Infidel.
