Townspeople and treasure hunters in Hungary search for a sultan's buried heart

SZIGETVAR, Hungary – In the shade of a wiry cherry tree, 72-year-old Jozsef Kovacs was digging in the dry dirt with a large gardening shovel.

"We haven't found a lot this morning," Kovacs said on a recent summer day. "But in October, we found a marble column."

The column was a part of a 16th-century encampment that was unearthed last fall in Szigetvar, a poor city in southern Hungary, by a team of researchers from the University of Pecs.

The site is believed to be where Suleiman the Magnificent spent his last night before 50,000 of his Ottoman soldiers sacked a nearby fortress defended by 2,500 Christians led by Miklos Zrinyi, a local Croatian-Hungarian nobleman.

According to legend, it was the final triumph attributed to Suleiman, the great Ottoman sultan, who died in his tent on the eve of the battle in 1566.

His grand vizier kept the sultan's death a secret from his soldiers until after their victory, when his body was secreted back to Istanbul. Ottoman legends say Suleiman's heart and other internal organs were buried in a golden coffin beneath the place where his tent stood.

The discovery last year of the camp site, and other Ottoman relics, has led researchers to cut dozens of trenches at the excavation site in Szigetvar, about 20 miles from the Croatian border, and attracted treasure hunters in search of the buried heart of Suleiman the Magnificent.

Szigetvar could use the boost. The city of 10,000 people filed for bankruptcy in 2010, and unemployment is almost 14 percent.

Pap and his team have employed a number of local laborers, like Kovacs, who are desperate for jobs and hope that the discovery of more Ottoman ruins could lead to a new wave of tourism.

Excavation of three plots of land clearly revealed the foundations of Suleiman's lavish, 16th-century memorial site, encompassing a brick mosque, a Dervish cloister and the "turbe," or tomb, where the sultan's entrails and heart are thought to have been interred.

That site stood until 1692 when the Habsburgs, who reconquered the region, removed all precious items they could find and took them to Vienna. The rest of the artifacts were later reburied by local farmers.

Aranka Horvath, who lives with her husband on a farm less than 40 yards from the ruins found in October, moved to Szigetvar about 14 years ago from an even poorer part of southern Hungary with hopes of farming a small plot of land. Now she entertains the idea of playing host to rich Turks eager to visit the remains of one of their national heroes where he met his demise.