Astrakhan had cooperated in the 1530s with the Crimean Khanate and the Nogay Horde in a campaign against Russia, and later became involved in conflicts against its erstwhile Tatar allies.

A pro-Muscovite party had taken power in Astrakhan shortly after the Russian capture of Kazan.

Ivan dispatches soldiers to Astrakhan, establishing Darwish Khan as a vassal ruler of the Khanate in 1554.

Pro-muscovite nobles and Nogay tribesmen support the Russian occupation forces.

After the threat of a Crimean raid against the Khanate subsides, Darwish Khan conspires with the Crimean Khanate to drive the Russians out of the region.

Hürrem's influence over the Sultan had soon become legendary; she has borne Süleyman five children Mihrimah (daughter), Selim, Beyazıt, Cihangir) and, in an astonishing break with tradition, had eventually been freed and become his legal wife, making Suleyman the first Ottoman Emperor to have a wed wife since Orhan Gazi.

This had strengthened her position in the palace and will lead eventually to one of her sons, Selim, inheriting the empire.

Hürrem also may have acted as Süleyman's adviser on matters of state, and seems to have had an influence upon foreign affairs and international politics.

The Ottoman Empire generally has peaceful relations with the Polish state within a Polish-Ottoman alliance during her lifetime; two of her letters to the Polish King Sigismund II Augustus have been preserved;

Some historians also believe that she may have intervened with her husband to control Crimean Tatar slave-raiding in her native land.

Suleiman leads a Turkish army to retake Erzurum, then advances into ...

...western Persia.

The third of his attempts against Persia, the campaign of 1554-1555 serves rather as a warning to the Ottomans of the difficulty of subduing the Safavid state.

Supply problems invariably compel Suleiman to retire to Anatolia during the winter months, allowing the Persians to regain Azerbaijan with little difficulty.

Islam Shah dies in 1554; his twelve year old son Firuz Shah Suri succeeds him, but within days is assassinated by Sher Shah's nephew Muhammad Mubariz Khan, who will later rule as Muhammad Shah Adil, embroiling India’s Sur dynasty in a three-way war of succession.

The three rivals for the throne march on Delhi, while in many cities leaders attempt to declare independent rule, providing the opportunity for Humayun’s return to India.

Luís Vaz de Camões, a Portuguese poet imprisoned for debt in Goa, studies local customs, masters the local geography and history, and takes part in military expeditions to the Malabar Coast and the Red Sea.

Theodore Beza, in defense of Calvin and the Genevan magistrates, publishes De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis.

Calvin presents arguments in favor of the execution of Servetus for diverging from orthodox Christian doctrine, in a treatise published in February 1544 entitled Defense of the orthodox faith in the sacred Trinity (Defensio orthodoxae fidei de sacra Trinitate).

Calvin’s actions cause some Italian religious exiles, who are now in Switzerland, to move to the more tolerant Kingdom of Poland.

Antwerp native Frans Floris the Elder, brother of Dutch sculptor, architect and draftsman Cornelis Floris de Vriendt, and pupil of Romanist painter Lambert Lombard, follows Lombard to Rome in 1538.

A delegation of Italian Jews, meeting in Ferrara in 1554 to discuss the banning of the Talmud, adopt a rabbinic ordinance, recognized by the government, which establishes an internal control over the printing of Hebrew books.

(Similar rules will later be adopted in Padua, Poland, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.)

Giambologna, born as Jean Boulogne in Douai, had received his early sculptural training in the workshop of Jacques Dubroeucq, a Flemish sculptor working in the Italian tradition.

He travels in 1554 to Rome, where he studies ancient and contemporary monuments.

Italian architect Andrea Palladio publishes his findings in a 1554 treatise, or guidebook, Le Antichita di Roma, on the antiquities of classical Rome.

Palestrina in this year publishes his first book of masses, dedicated to Pope Julius III.