Another Mirror for Princes

Another Mirror for Princes

Another Mirror for Princes

Analecta Isisiana: Ottoman and Turkish Studies

104

The Public Image of the Ottoman Sultans and Its Reception

Suraiya Faroqhi

Collections of thematic essays focused on specific themes of Ottoman and Turkish studies are brought together in Analecta Isisiana.

These

scholarly

throughout Turkish

volumes

history,

address

offering in

important

issues

a single volume the

accumulated insights of a single author over a career of research on the subject.

The Isis Press 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA

Suraiya Faroqhi has taught English (1971-72) and history at Middle East Technical University, Ankara (1972-87) and served as a professor of Ottoman Studies at the Ludwig Maximilians Universitat in Munich, Federal Republic of Germany (l988-

www.gorgiaspress.com

Copyright © 2009 by The Isis Press

2oo7). After retirement she now teaches at the Department of History, Bilgi University in Istanbul. Pri ncipa l

publications

Der Bektaschi-Orden in Anatolien (vom spiiten fiinfzehnten Jahrhundert his 1826, in Wiener Zeitschrift fiir die Kunde des Morgen/andes, Sonderband II (Wien: Verlag des Institutes fur Orientalistik der Universitat Wien, 1981); Towns and Townsmen of Ottoman Anatolia, Trade, Crafts and Food Production in an Urban Setting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Men of Modest Substance, House

Owners and House Property in Seventeenth-Century Ankara and Kayseri (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Pilgrims and Sultans, The Haj

under the Ottomans (London: LB. Tauris, 1994); Kultur und Alltag im Osmanischen Reich, (Munchen: C. H.Beck, 1995), English translation by Martin Bott Subjects of the Sultans, Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (London: I. B. Tauris,

2000); Approaching Ottoman History, an Introduction to the Sources (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-60724-089-1

1999); Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches

(Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, series Beck-Wissen, 2000); The Ottoman Empire and

the Outside World, 1540s to 1774 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004). Several volumes of collected articles: Peasants, Dervishes and Traders in the

Ottoman Empire (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986); Coping with the State, Political Conflict and Crime in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul: The Isis Press,

1995); Making a Living in the Ottoman Lands, 1480-1820 (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 1995); Stories of Ottoman Men and Women, Establishing Status, Establishing Control (Istanbul: Eren, 2002). She has edited vol. 3 The Later Ottoman Empire of The Cambridge History of

Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). A

note on spelling and style

As the articles in this volume are for the most part reprints, the style of the footnotes in the originals has been retained and so have certain peculiarities of spelling. However in the bibliography all titles follow the same format. With rare exceptions Ottoman words have been spelled according to the rules of modern Turkish. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the publishers that have permitted me to reprint the articles in this volume and to Mrs Elif �im§ek who has prepared the index.

Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1.

"The Ottoman Empire in world history: What the Archives Can tell us" unpublished

.

...... .. . .. ........... ........ ..... .. .. .... .. ... .. ...

35

Legitimizing the sultan and his empire 2.

"Presenting the sultans' power, glory and piety: a comparative perspective," in

Prof Dr. Miibahat Kiitiikoglu'na Armagan, ed.

by Zeynep Tanm Ertug (Istanbul: Istanbul Oniversitesi Edebiyat Faki.iltesi Tarih Bohimi.i, 2006): 169-206.

3.

........................

"Exotic animals at the sultans' court," unpublished

53 87

Relating to the outside world 4.

"Ottoman views on corsairs and piracy in the Adriatic," in

Kapudan Pasha. His Office and his Domain,

The

ed. by Elizabeth

Zachariadou (Rethymnon: University of Crete Press, 2002):

357-371. 5.

. . .....................................................................

before 1600,"

6.

Turcica, 35 (2002): 69-104.

..........................

119

"ibrahim Pa§a and the marquis de Bonnac," in Essays in honour of Ekmeleddin ihsanoglu, Volume I: Societies, cultures, sciences: a collection of articles, compiled by Mustafa Ka9ar and Zeynep Durukal (Istanbul: IRCICA, 2006): 279-294. ........

7.

103

"Ottoman attitudes towards merchants from Latin Christendom

149

"An Ottoman ambassador in Iran: Di.ini Ahmed Efendi and the

Wahrnehmung des Fremden, Di.fferenzerfahrungen von Diplomaten in Europa collapse of the Safavid Empire in 1720-21," in

(1500-1648) ed. by Michael Rohrschneider and Arne Strohmeyer (Munster/Germany: Aschendorff, 2007): 375-398. Revised and translated for this volume by the author

......

.

...................

.

.....

165

ANOTHER

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MIRROR FOR PRINCES

Outsiders on Ottoman territory and Ottomans abroad: prisoners, slaves and merchants 8.

"A prisoner of war reports: The camp and household of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pa�a in an eyewitness account," in Unfreie Arbeits-und Lebensverhiiltnisse von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart, ed. Elisabeth Herrmann-Otto (Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2005): 206-234. Translated for .................................... this volume by the author "Trying to avoid enslavement: the adventures of an Iranian subject in eighteenth-century Anatolia," in Unfreie Arbeit, Okonomische und kulturgeschichtliche Perspektiven ed. by

.

9.

10.

INTRODUCI'ION

M. Erdem Kabaday1 and Tobias Reichardt (Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2007): 133-146. Translated for this volume by the author ............................................ "Bosnian merchants in the Adriatic," in Ottoman Bosnia. A History in Peril has also appeared as The International Journal of Turkish Studies, 10, 1-2, ed. by Markus Koller and Kemal Karpat (Madison/Wise.: Center of Turkish Studies, 2004): 225-239. .. .. . . "The Ottomans and the trade routes of the Adriatic," in a collective volume edited by Oliver Jens Schmidt (to be published in 2009) Translated for this volume by the author ...

Legitimizing discourses and the people to whom they were addressed 189

.

219

.. .

233

-

.................

11.

................

.................

249

Bibliography .......................................................................

..

267

Index

.................... . . . . . . . ..................................................... . .

291

In recent years Ottoman historians have tried to explicate the manner in which sultanic rule was legitimized; and the debate concerning this question has branched out until it has involved many if not most areas of current history-writing. Such an emphasis is not arbitrary: to some extent at least it certainly is connected to the conservative temper of the times and the resultant tendency to stress consensus over social conflict However political concerns do not exclude scholarly considerations: with good reason Ottomanist historians have been at pains to show that the sultans' rule was not a simple military occupation that 'enslaved peoples' were intent on throwing off at the first opportunity. After all it is remarkable that even in seemingly terminal crises such as the war with Russia (1768-74) or the rebellion that brought down Selim III (r. 1789-1807), the continued rule of the Ottoman dynasty, as opposed to that of an individual sultan was not really at issue. Biologically speaking the dynasty enjoyed exceptional good fortune as it never died out, although several times there remained only a single male representative. Even in the 1830s, when the armies of Mehmed Ali �a's son ibrahim �had reached Kiitahya in western Anatolia apparently the two magnates only planned to depose Mahmud II (r. 1808-39) in favour of his young son Abdiilmecid.1 This continuity of dynastic rule is in itself remarkable: if as has sometimes been claimed the Empire had only been a product of war and started to go from crisis to crisis once these wars no longer brought in major booty, then it surely would have collapsed on one of these occasions. Yet no such thing ever happened, even though in certain situations the Ottoman soldiery proved as much a liability as an asset - as happened during the war of 1768-74 when many army corps were not fed and brutally exploited the civilian population, thereby intensifying the food crisis and causing the disaffection of previously loyal subjects.2 Therefore it is worth paying closer attention to the mechanisms of legitimization devised by the sultan's viziers and other administrators. After all it was by means of legitimizing activities, 1 Afaf Lutfi ai-Sayyid Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad University Press, 1984), pp. 224-25.

2 Virginia Aksan, Ottoman pp. 148, 149, 176.

Ali (Cambridge: Cambridge

Wars 1700-1870 (London, New York: Longman Pearson,

2007),

8

A N OT H E R M I R R O R F O R P R I NC E S

images and discourses surrounding the Ottoman ruler that numerous inhabitants of the sultans' realm, both Muslims and non-Muslims were convinced that the continued rule of the dynasty of Osman was to their benefit, and perhaps even fanned part of a divine plan. Studying mechanisms of legitimization involves an analysis of the manner in which the sultan's power was projected, and how these images were received by ordinary subjects, office-holders in the capital and grandees in the provinces, but also by foreign rulers. These different audiences need to be evaluated separately: for it is surely unrealistic to assume that a villager from the province of Crete or Karaman had the same perceptions of what made a sultan a legitimate ruler as a courtier or judge depending on the goodwill of the sovereign for his career.1 Among ordinary subjects Muslims and non-Muslims might express widely divergent views; and the same thing applied to ordinary subjects on the one hand and members of the elite on the other. Thus the seventeenth-century priest Papa Synadinos of Serres, who wrote as a contemporary about the brutal repression undertaken by Murad IV (r. 1623-40) approved of these acts of violence because 'the Turks' in other words the local Muslims with whom the writer's relations presumably were often tense, were terrified by numerous executions 'out of the blue' .2 Evidently Papa Synadinos did not think that his own community might come under threat. On the other hand Evliya Celebi (1611after 1683), a former page of Murad IV whom we might call a politically inactive member of the Ottoman elite, did not deny or criticize the violence of some of the sultan's measures. But Evliya also wrote a lengthy account of the jokes and horseplay in which Murad IV engaged with his intimates - perhaps because he thought that he needed to show that the reign of his hero had not all been blood and gore.3 At the same time, foreign rulers also might be the addressees of messages that legitimized the sultan as a powerful Muslim ruler whose views his neighbours disregarded at their own peril. Such messages were sent out in a variety of ways, depending on the political conjuncture of the times and the views of the sultans and viziers in question. A conquest was celebrated by sending out literary texts describing the sultan's recent achievement: these I

The recent Ph D dissertation of

Annemarike Stremmelaar, Justice and Revenge in the 2�) de�s with the question of how Mustafa II lost

Ottoman Rebellion of 1703 (Leiden: n.p.,

legitimacy in the eyes of his Istanbul and Edtme subJects.

2 [Papa Synadinos of Serres), Conseils et memoires de Synadinos pretre de Serr�s en Odorico, :'ith S. Asdrachas, Macedoine (XVII' si�cle), ed., translated and co!llmented. b� T. Karanastassis, K. Kostis and S. Petm�zas (Paris: Assoctabon Pierre Beton , 1996), p. 95. 3 Evliya �elebi b Oervi§ Mehemmed Ztlli, Evliya �elebi Sey si, opkapt Sarayt Baldat okyay and YUcel Da#h 304 Yazmasmm Transkrips yonu -Dizini, vol. 1, ed. by Orban �ruk G (Ista.nbul: Yap1 Kredi Yaymlan, 199 5), pp. 99-104.

Pa_?? l � !

9

I NT R O D U C T I O N

jetihnames might be literary creations to be appreciated by cognoscenti in

foreign chanceries, and thus stress that the Ottoman court had fully assimilated the classical culture of Iranian-style belles lettres. But on a more down-to­ earth level, thefetihnames stressed the power of the sultan who was projected as a ruler supported by God in his endeavours to expand the realm of Islam.1 Implicitly fetihnames promulgated the message that a ruler who wanted to avoid his own downfall and the destruction of his realm was well advised to yield before it came to a military confrontation. Legitimization and what may be regarded as the opposite, namely intimidation by the threat of force might thus be served by one and the same set of texts. In the realms of European rulers the printing press had a significant role in 'placing the sultan on the map by force of arms': for already in the sixteenth century, a large number of ephemeral newssheets were printed that spread more or less fictionalized accounts of Ottoman conquests, complete with real, semi-real and completely imaginary 'atrocity stories'.2 While a denizen of central Europe would not agree with the view expounded in the fetihnames, namely that the expansion of the realm of Islam was a cause for rejoicing, he might hear in church-and take quite seriously-the argument that the triumphs of the sultans were a punishment for the sins of the Christians. Divine punishment, however unpleasant certainly was part of the manner in which God organized the affairs of humankind; and viewing Ottoman successes in this light was a legitimization of sorts. We are thus confronted with a paradox; while the ephemeral newssheets known as the 'Turcica' were meant to encourage resistance against the sultan, solidarity with his victims and subjection to local princes as the only possible 'defenders' of their subjects, they also spread abroad the notion that the advance of the Ottomans was part of God's mysterious ways. Certainly this form of legitimization had not been foreseen and much less planned by either the sultans or their opponents.

Images of Ottoman rule: sultanic munificence and charity

Increasing contacts between 'straight' historians dealing with the Ottoman world and their colleagues concerned with artistic activities have made for a clearer understanding of the fact that the sultans did not just rule1

Claire Norton is preparing a study of these documents.

2 �I Golloer,

Die europ(iischen Tii_r�endr�.cke des

XVI.

Jahrhunderts, 3 vols. (Bucarest,

Berho, Baden-Baden: Editura Academte• et alu, 1961-71). see for example

vol. I, pp. 138-39.

10

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PRINCES

INTRODUCTION

or in later periods, preside over a governing apparatus dominated by others. In addition it was important to present a certain image, and viziers and heads of chancery took a hand in producing it or else commissioned artists and writers to do so in their stead. In other words in spite of its exponential growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries 'imperial propaganda' through texts and visual means was not.unknown in the early modem period; and the Ottoman sultans engaged in it as did their counterparts in other cultures. If this state of affairs has only been understood quite recently, one reason is surely that few historians of the Ottoman world have attempted to link ethnology to the study of politics. Another reason why public ceremonial has long been neglected is much more trivial: the Istanbul archives of the Prime Minister, always our principal resource, are not very rich in documents

concerning sultanic receptions, festivities and parades. Presumably the relevant sources are still hidden away in the palace archives, which have been catalogued and made accessible only to a very limited extent. As a result Ottomanists have tended to concentrate on questions of imperial management, finances and most recently warfare, as well as the economic activities that underwrite state formation. By contrast they have taken a long time understanding the importance of public imagery. Even so over the last few years some relevant points have been made. Now that scholarly interest in narrative sources - long regarded as secondary in comparison to the archives - has resumed, historians have shown how chronicles, accounts of individual campaigns and also poetry could serve as vehicles for sultanic legitimization. In this enterprise the key feature was patronage. As there was no copyright, authors and poets depended on the munificence of a patron and the most desirable of all protectors was the ruler himself. One author even went so far as to say that it was the worth of the patron that determined the value of the literary work dedicated to him.1 Thus when highly esteemed poetry was recited or collected in special volumes (divans) it was rare to not hear or read at least a couple of texts that praised the current sultan. Even if a vizier was the actual patron the latter owed his position to the sovereign and the Ottoman ruler was thus indirectly glorified. Quite a few sultans moreover wrote respectable verses and had their works inscribed on the monuments they sponsored: a fine example still extant is the fountain of Ahmed III (r. 1703-30) in front of the entrance to the Topkapt

II

Chronicles were another means of legitimizing the Ottoman ruler. It was a convention to begin such works with the praise of God and the Prophet

Muhammad, and to conclude the introductory section with a laudation of the reigning sultan. When campaigns were described the ruler might be accorded

the title of 'warrior for the faith'

(gazi)

although he had not necessarily

participated in person, much less directed the campaign; the histories written in the reign of Murad III (r. 1574-95) may be cited as a case in point. Even if

an incident was discussed that was highly detrimental to the prestige of the

dynasty, such as the murder of Osman II (r. 1618-22) it was possible to focus on the evil advisors of the inexperienced ruler that could be declared responsible for this distressing event. I Both poets and chronicle writers were rewarded, sometimes with sums of money and sometimes with appointment to an office that might- or might not- provide the holder with a respectable livelihood.2 It has bee n suggested that in the mid-sixteenth century, there was a crisis of patronage; for we find a sizeable number of complaints to the effect that literary efforts no longer obtained the accustomed rewards. However that may well have been an illusion; for while the salaries that Murad II (r. 1421-51 with some interruptions) had assigned to literary figures without public office were in fact discontinued by the grand vizier Riistem Pa§a, the ruler's 'privy purse' and surpluses in the budgets of pious foundations (valajs) continued to be used for these purposes.3 However there were probably more literary men awaiting preferment than even the expanding bureaucracy could accommodate and such people might be vocal in expressing their disappointment The story of Mustafa Ali (1541-1600) whose strategic errors prevented him from achieving

his cherished goal of becoming the head of the sultan's chancery (ni§ancl) may serve as a dramatic example: his tales of 'Ottoman decline' reverberate down to the present day.4 In the sixteenth century it was common practice to reward writers by appointing them as scribes to pious foundations, or giving them what amounted to sinecures funded by surpluses in the budgets of such foundations

(zevaid-hor).

A remarkable example of 'creative accounting' in the great

Istanbul foundation of Sultan Siileyman the Magnificent (r. 1520-66) that has recently been brought to light and took place in the late 1500s, may well have

palace.2 G briel Pi terberg, An Ottoman Tragedy, History and Historiography at Play (Berkeley, Los �1 ngeles: University of California Press, 2003) p. 121. a

I Halil lnalctk, Sair ile POlron. Patrimonyal Devlet ve Sanat Ozerinde bir lnceleme (Istanbul: OoJu-Batt, 2003), p. 48. 2 Hatice Aynur and Hakan Karateke eds., Besmeleyle is.- Suyu .!ff!'l E_yle pua. Ill. Ahmed Devri /stMbul �eimeleri (1703-1730) (Istanbul: istanbul Buyilqehu Beled1yes•. 199 5).

Af

A�med 'e

lnalctk, $air ile Patron, p. 47. 3 fnalctk, Sair ile Patron, p. 50. 4

Cornell H. Aeischer Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire, The Historian ) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 202-08.

600

Musta/fi Ali (1541-1

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FOR PRINCES

been intended to cover up a deficit and thereby protect the salaries of people who were receiving grants of this type.1 But when all was said and done, the appointments of zevaid-hor were a marginal function of pious foundations; other aspects were far more significant. Such foundations were supposed not only to facilitate the entry of a dead ruler into paradise but also during his life-time, demonstrate his virtues, especially his piety and charity; on this issue present-day historians concerned with legitimization and many members of the Ottoman elite probably were in agreement. Moreover Stileyman the Magnificent was sufficiently devoted to the spiritual welfare of his wife Hiirrem/Roxelana that he allowed her to establish major charitable foundations in her own name; in return the author

I NTRODUCTION

13

generically as Hatuniye (belonging to 'the Lady') while the charities of those

ro yal women whose sons actually became sultans were called 'of the Valide Sultan' or queen mother. We may therefore regard these pious foundations almost as extensions of those sponsored by the rulers themselves. Princesses by contrast usually had their charitable foundations called after their personal names and not their titles. Yet sometimes their activities in the field of charity may well have been subsumed under the names of their vizier husbands. Thus in one way or the other the charities of royal women extended the scope of the sultan's concern for the well-being of his subjects, particularly the Muslims among them.

of Hiirrem Sultan's foundation document lavished fulsome praise on the ruler for his munificence. 2 Nor did the practice of building mosques, schools, libraries, aqueducts

Images of Ottoman rule: the sultans as upholders ofjustice and Islamic law

and other public utilities cease in the eighteenth century, when the Empire was under pressure and disposable income became smaller. It is worth noting that after 1703, when Ahmed III had been obliged to return to Istanbul after the court mainly had resided in Edirne for about half a century, most sultans who lived long enough each built a sizeable mosque complex, and some of their viziers at least ordered the construction of libraries and theological

schools. When a destructive earthquake brought down the Fatih mosque and

the mausoleum of this ruler, beginning in 1767 the buildings were replaced in the style of the times. 3 The study of Ottoman legitimization by feminist scholars also has focused o n

vakljs.

Ottoman princesses and other royal women had been

responsible for such charities from the inception of the principality in the fourteenth century; but

only

from

the mid- I 500s is there enough

documentation available for comprehensive studies.4 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries apparently royal women could acquire at least symbolic

visibility through pious foundations only after having passed the child-bearing stage. Even then the foundations of the mothers of princes were often known

An important element in the conglomerate of motifs that made up the royal image was that of a just ruler accessible to the complaints of his subjects, even and especially if the damage had been caused by his own

officials. I Numerous office-holders lost their positions after accusations of having oppressed 'the poo r' had been accepted as justified; admittedly other such oppressors remained in position, and there always was a certain distance between claims and reality. Perhaps the most dramatic case of a sultan assuming the role of 'protector of the poor' was that of Murad lll: when

complaints accumulated that local office-holders used their inspection cum tax­ collecting

(devir) tours

to extract large sums of money from hapless villagers

the sultan permitted local peasant militias to chase these officials away and summarily prohibited the devir.2 This measure proved such an impediment to tax collection that it was soon abrogated, although aggrieved villagers continued to invoke it for a while longer. Who knows, perhaps the sultan when issuing his command already was more or less aware of the fact that it would be difficult to enforce; if that was the case we may view his order as part of an image-making campaign, an attempt to reinforce the stay-at-home sultan's shaken legitimacy by showing him to be a just ruler who protected

an�

the Grocer," I Kayhan Orbay, "The Magnificent Siileymaniye Owed a Debt �o th� Butc�er unpublished manuscript. Iam most grateful to the author for shanng h1s findmgs wtth me.

his subjects from the unreasonable demands of his own office-holders.

2 Amy Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (Albany NY: SUNY Press, 2002 ), p. 66. TUiay Artan, "Art and archi.tecture," i� The Ca'!'bridge His�ory of'f!.lrke • vol. 3, The Later 1 Ottoman Empire ed. by Suratya Faroqh1 (Cambndge: Cambndge Untverstty Press, 2006), p.

3

476. 4 OlkU Bates, "Women as Patrons of Architecture in Turke:r• in . Women in the Muslim World, ed. by Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie (Ham�rd: �arvard Unrvers1ty Press, 1978), pp. 245-��;

Les lie Peirce, "Gender and Sexual Propnety tn Ottoman Royal Women's Patronage, • m Women, Patronage and Self-representation in Islamic ed. D. Fairchild Ruggles (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000) , pp. 53-68.

Societies,

1

Mustafa

Akdag, Celdlf isyanlart (1550-/603) (Ankara: Ankara Oniversitesi Oil ve Tarih fo#rafya FakUlt esi, 1963), p. 150ff. . Suraiya Faroqhi, "Political Activity among Ottoman Taxpayers and the Problem of Sultantc Legitimation (1570-1650)" Journal of the Eco mic and Social History of the Orient, XXXIV

0992), 1-39.

no

14

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In a broader perspective a formula that frequently recurs in Ottoman documents fits into the same pattern:

the officials receiving these

communications were warned that delays due to sloth and neglect, but more particularly because of corruption would result in exemplary punishment. In certain cases however office-holders also were given notice that over­ zealousness would be counted against them as well, namely when supposedly executing official commands, they made innocent people suffer. We are thus once again confronted with a legitimizing discourse in which the sultan rhetorically distanced himself from his officials who were not assumed to be virtuous men but at least potentially both corrupt and unjust.

Of course a sceptical contemporary observer might ask why the sultan

did not find himself servitors of a higher moral calibre; and an independent mind such as Mustafa All faulted Sultan Murad III for this reason among others.' But then Mustafa Ali was an exceptional person; and in everyday practice this legitimizing stance seems to have served its purpose quite well. Justice and good government did not depend on the religion of the sovereign; and educated Ottomans knew that the wise kings of ancient Iran or the Mongol rulers of this latter country during the thirteenth century were no adherents of Islam: yet the former had become exemplars of virtue and the latter had managed to defeat the Muslim Seljuks of Anatolia and build an empire that endured for several generations. Authors writing on statecraft were thus prepared to admit that the justice of an infidel ruler might preserve his reign while an unjust Muslim sultan might lose his throne.2 But in practical terms in the Ottoman context just rule meant the

owner of the arable lands in his realm, a view that had not been held by early 1 Islamic jurists.

A similar ambiguity was apparent in the behaviour of eighteenth-

century sultans towards the religious cum legal establishment of their time.

On the one hand sultans convened meetings of learned men and listened to their discussions with respect and perhaps comprehension. A historian that has studied these meetings has described them as a theological school or medrese whose sessions were held in the palace.2 But as the same historian tells us, in

the 1700s the possibilities for members of all but a few families and their hangers-on to make high-level careers as judges and teachers in theological colleges were substantially reduced; and the reason for this scaling-down of career possibilities was the concern of the sultans that jurists cum religious scholars not under direct palace control might make common cause with rebels, as had happened in 1703.3 Furthermore in the eighteenth century the sultans seriously interfered with the revenues of pious foundations, as they had begun to do already in the 1600s, although these institutions were sacrosanct if viewed from the standpoint of Islamic law.4 Thus the establishment of state control over vakifrevenues by Mahmud II was by no means an unprecedented move, but rather part of the hunt for extra revenues begun by the highly �eriat-conscious sultans of the eighteenth century.

Images of Ottoman rule: the life cycle of the dynasty

promotion of Islamic law, which gained ascendancy over sultanic commands and local customs in the long run. This development began in the 1500s but gained momentum in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Admittedly the sultans never abandoned their right to command according to the rules of expediency and the traditions of Ottoman statesmanship. Perhaps the relationship between Siileyman the Magnificent and the head of his religious cum legal establishment �eyhiilislam Ebusuud Efendi was emblematic in this respect: Siileyman ordered his foremost legal expert to ensure that Ottoman land-holding patterns conformed to Islamic religious law

(�eriat)

and

promulgated an edict that enshrined Ebusuud's findings. Yet at the same time this pronouncement was based on notions that the sultan was the ultimate

15

A sultan ruled only - at most - for as long as he lived; and thus the soldiers, especially the janissaries demanded to regularly be assured of the fact that their sovereign was alive and in good health. Until Stileyman the Magnificent managed to more or less abolish this custom in his later years, for a century between 1453 and the 1550s the sultan regularly dined in full view of the soldiery. At the same time by his withdrawal into the harem during his later years, Siileyman continued a tendency that had been noticeable from the times of Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 145 1-81): following a tradition well known from Abbasid but also Byzantine palace life, the ruler emphasized his grandeur by retreating from his servitors and subjects and becoming all but 1

Colin Imber, Ebu's-su'ud, the Islamic Legal Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,

1997), pp. 122-28.

I Fleischer, Bureaucrat

and Intellectual, p. 296. 2 Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, p. 289.

Madeline Zilfi, • A Medrese for the Palace: Ottoman Dynastic Legitimation in the Eighteenth Century," Journal of the American Oriental Society, CXIII. 2 (1993). 184-91. 3 Madeline Zilfi The Politics of Piety, Ottoman Ulema in the Classical Age (Minneapolis: ibliotheca Isl�ca. 1988), p . 212.

:

The

Engin Akarh, "Gedik: Implements, Mastership, Shop Usufruct and Monopoly among Istanbul

Artisans, 1750-1850" Wissenschaftskolleg-Jahrbuch (1985-86), 223-32.

16

A N O THE R M I R R O R F O R P R I N C ES

inaccessible. At official venues he was served in silence to a large extent, and at such occasions, he himself spoke but rarely.1 Evidently this ritualized remoteness from everyday affairs if carried to extremes, might make effective governing difficult, so that we can view this phenomenon as the corollary of late sixteenth-century vicarious rule by palace and state officials and seventeenth-century domination of households. 2

the Ottoman

polity by grandee

Another issue connected with the sultans' image among subjects and foreigners, but also with the actual, practical conduct of government was the fate of Ottoman princes. It has long been known but a recent study has shown in hitherto unsuspected detail that the adoption of the seniority criterion during the 1600s , in other words the succession of the oldest member of the ruling dynasty, really changed the manner in which the Ottoman Empire was govemed.3 But real life was one thing and imagery quite another. Certainly a

I N T R O D U CTI O N

17

ceremonial in this particular instance was connected to the unusual fact that the sultan had died while far away from his capital, on campaign in Hungary; at the same time hi� successor Selim II (r. 1 566-74) wished to have the body

buried in Istanbul. This decision necessitated a long and quite exceptional

funerary procession that crossed the entire Balkans and finally ended in Istanbul, where a mausoleum was constructed in the precinct of Stileyman's great mosque.

Nor were the accessions of Ottoman sultans marked by a great deal of

publicly visible ceremonial. At the time when princes were still being educated in the provinces and the succession at least in principle was open to all surviving sons of the deceased ruler, the heir raced to Istanbul to be enthroned and receive the allegiance of the principal office-holders; this ceremony was held in the palace court and thus not visible to the subjects. 1

sultan who came to the throne by the late 1600s no longer killed his brothers

Furthermore it was considered appropriate to hide the death of the previous

as part of the 'ritual' of succession; yet long afterwards and as late as the

sultan until the new one had ascended the throne, in order to prevent a rampage

I720s , we find a Safavid ruler who entertained an Ottoman ambassador

'needling' his visitor by pointedly asking about the current princes. Thus even at this late date, killing off the brothers of a newly enthroned sultan was still part of the image of Ottoman rule at a major foreign Muslim court.

Contrary to the practice current in Renaissance and Baroque Europe, the

of the janissaries and other disorders. However once he had been recognized as the sultan, Selim II did enter his capital in state, an event that has been described in detail by the Jewish writer Moysen Almosnino who formed part of the new sultan's entourage.2

funerals of Ottoman sultans by the 1600s were rather sober affairs, in keeping

with the view that a dead ruler's situation was the same as that of any deceased

Muslim.4 However practices had been different in the fifteenth century, when

Displaying the sultan's person: portraits, hunts and parades

the interment of Mehmed the Conqueror was accompanied by many dramatic

signs of public grief that Islamic theologians strongly disapprove of.5 Even at

the funeral of Siileyman the Magnificent, who in his later years had been known for his strict Muslim piety, there were still signs of mourning that were to disappear in later periods, including the donning of dark-coloured clothing. As a well-known miniature demonstrates, on this occasion it was for instance considered appropriate to depict the grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pa�a weeping in his tent at the death of his sovereign.6 But much of the

In the absence of the 'real' sultan, an image might fill the gap; but there were some difficulties involved. It has often been remarked that compared to the Safavid and Moghul courts the prohibition to depict people and animals was taken rather seriously in the Ottoman context. As the only major

exception we might point to the arts of the book, meaning both miniatures in

bound volumes and individual sheets that might be included in albums.3 In

these miniatures however showing the sultan and his principal dignitaries was fairly common practice. Even so the interest in individualized depictions of

1 GUiru Necipogl u, Architecture, Ceremonial and Power, The Topkap1 Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge MA: The Architectural History Foundation and MIT Press,

1991), p. 102. 2 Rifa'at A. Abou-EI-Haj, Formation of the Ottoman State, The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1991), pp. 3 5-40. 3 Nicolas Vatin and Gilles Veinstein, Le serai/ ebranle (Paris: Fayard, 2003), pp. 206-07 4 Vatin and Veinstein, Le sera l ebranle, p. 441. 5 Nicolas Vatin and Gilles Veinstein, "La mort de Mehmed II (1481)," in Les ottomans ella mort ed. by Gilles Veinstein (Leiden: E. J. B rill , 1996), pp. 187-206, seep. 201. 6 Serpil Bagct, "Islam Toplumlannda Matemi Simgeleyen R�nkler: Mavi, Mor ve Siyah," in

i

Cimeti�res et traditions funeraires dans le monde islamique, Islam Diinyasmda Mel.tlrltklar ve Defin Gelenekleri, ed. by Jean·Louis Bacque-Grammont and Aksel Tibet, 2 vols. (Ankara: TUrk Tarih Kurumu, 1996), vol. 2, pp. 163-68.

persons and animals was limited if compared for instance to the imagery produced for the contemporary Moghul palaces.

1 Zeynep Tanm

Ertug, XVI. Yiizyll Osman/1 Devletinde Ciilus ve Cenaze Tiirenleri

f Kiil�tir Bakanhgt, 1999), pp. 35-78.

(Ankara: T.

. . Rab1 Moysen Almosnin o, Extremos y grande1;as de Constantmopla, tr by lacob Cansrno written �Madrid: Francisco Martinez, 1638), pp. 117-19. The original, which I cannot read was

l.adioo. 3 .se!min Kangal et alii eds., The Sultan's Portrait, Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: TUrkiye I � Bankast, 2000), passim. •n

18

ANOTHER M I RROR FOR PRINCES

19

I N T R O D U CT I O N

Portraits resembling the sultans that they depicted were prized by certain patrons such as Sokollu Mehmed Pa�a. who obtained a painting of Murad III from a Venetian artist and complimented the painter on having achieved a good likeness. 1 But in Ottoman miniatures the courtiers and military men who attended the sultan at official ceremonies were differentiated only by their clothes and insignia, while in an image showing a similar event at the Moghul court, the facial features of the attendants were markedly

in the mid-l 500s, he had put together for his home town of Como. This collection included images of the sultans among those of other potentates that Giovio knew of, and sometimes knew in person. 1 Some of the works shown in Como, or images inspired by them, had been produced by followers of Titian and Veronese. These artists had never been in Istanbul and thus could only imagine what the people they painted might have looked like; but this situation apparently was not considered a

individual.2 In Ottoman miniatures by contrast even a person clearly of

drawback at the Ottoman court, where anyhow it was known that no

African descent such as the Chief Black Eunuch differed from his fellow

contemporary portraits existed of any sultans preceding Mehmed the

officials merely by the plumpness of his face, a slightly flattened nose and the

Conqueror. But in addition there were the portraits of Stileyman the

dark colour of his skin.3

Magnificent by the Danish artist Melchior Lorichs. Familiar with the work of

Sultans' portraits have recently been studied

and interest

Albrecht Durer Lorich had attended the sultan's court and thus actually seen the

continues. Doubtless a major reason for such a prolonged concern is the

subject whom he depicted. Certain Ottoman miniatures showing Sultan

intercultural character of these works. Due to invitations issued by Sultan

Siileyman and created in the second half of the sixteenth century seem to have

Mehmed II Fatih to Costanzo da Ferrara and more famously, the Venetian

been based on Lorichs' work.

in extenso;

artist Gentile Bellini the first surviving images of a sultan were produced by

Another way of displaying and enhancing the image of the sultan was

foreign artists, who actually had seen the person they depicted. Most of the

the hunt; and a recent study has shown the importance of this activity in

work that these people undertook for the Ottoman ruler has not survived, but

palace ceremonial.2 Of course this particular element of royal iconography was

in spite of multiple restorations that probably have much altered the quality of

not an Ottoman invention. In ancient Iran and throughout the Near East the

the image, Bellini's portrait of Mehmed II is still extant in the National

ruler had often been depicted as the hunter par

Gallery (London). Moreover Bellini seems to have had followers in Istanbul

had been taken over by many Islamic rulers. In the Middle Ages faience and

excellence,

and this tradition

who took their lead from his work although it is also possible that at least

metalwork often bore images of a king on the hunt, and this emphasis was

one of the paintings in question was not produced in Istanbul at all, but in

even more pronounced in the courtly context of the miniatures sponsored by

western Iran.4

While Fatih's son Bayezid II (r. 1 48 1 - 1 5 1 2 ) did not continue to sponsor Italian artists, in the sixteenth century sultans' portraits were again produced, this time by Ottoman painters. They often form series that adorn

rulers and high officials in Iran and India. Hunting was often justified as a preparation for war: the hunters rode for hours on end, went without food for long stretches of time, practiced marksmanship and sometimes confronted dangerous animals. These

courtly verse chronicles celebrating the rulers' conquests and also universal

justifications needed to be developed as certain Islamic men of religion were

histories with a strongly Ottoman slant. These volumes were commissioned

less than enthusiastic about the practice: detractors of the hunt pointed out that

during the reigns of Sultan Siileyman and his successors. In the preparation of

in the excitement, the hours of prayer were easily forgotten, apart from the

the 'portrait' miniatures to be included in these works, Venetian paintings also

fact that it was difficult to ensure that the prey was killed in such a fashion

were employed, especially copies of items from the picture gallery showing

that its consumption was permitted to a Muslim.

notable persons that Paolo Giovio had commissioned for the museum that

There was however yet another aspect that must have recommended hunting parties to certain sultans: the camaraderie of the chase made it

I Julian Roby, "From Europe to Istanbul," in The Sultan's Portrait, pp. 136-63, see p. 151. 2 Compare the Ottoman court scenes in The Sultan's Portrait, pp. 129-30 to a scene at the Moghul court depicted in the same volume p. 55. 3 Esin Aul. Levni and the Surname. The Story of an Eighteenth-century Ottoman Festival stanbul: K�bank, 1999), p . 225. This question was debated between Giilru Necipoglu and John Michael Rogers at a conference held in London in the spring of 2006. See also Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong, Bellini and the East (London, Boston: The National Gallery and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2005).

�

possible to relax the rigidities of palace ritual . While hunting it was not possible to always be silent in the ruler's presence, as was

de rigeur

in the

1 Julian Raby, "From Europe to Istanbul," in The Sultan's Portrait, pp.136-63. �or the beg�nnings . of this unique institution see Price Zimmennann, Paolo Giovio (Princeton: Princeton Uruvers1ty e ss, 1995), pp. 158-62. . . I thank TUJay Artan for showing me her work on the Ottoman sultans as hunters, forthcommg IR the "Festschrift Oleg Grabar."

�

20

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M I R ROR

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P R I NC ES

Topkapt Sarayt; and when the game had been killed, presumably the hunters found ways of feasting and enjoying themselves. Moreover riding in the woods must have been a pleasant experience even if little game was actually killed; and thus we find Sultan Murad Ill, not known to be an enthusiastic hunter, visiting the royal game preserves with his courtiers probably just to enjoy the open air. 1 While pleasure and relaxation could not be so easily accepted as justifications for organizing a hunt as was true of the preparation for war, we may suspect that some sultans, who after all were mostly young people, did appreciate the informal gaiety that these occasions permitted. Within his capital the sultan could present himself prominently by parading on horseback: this was done in a minor way on every Friday, when he attended prayers at one of the great mosques. But as Aya Sofya is located just outside the palace gates and the Sultan Ahmed mosque a short walk away, not many people had the chance of viewing their sovereign on such occasions. More inhabitants of the capital might see him when he visited the sanctuary of Eyup, a few kilometres outside the city walls. However this visit became 'traditional' only in the 1600s, when princes who had been raised in an inaccessible comer of the palace needed to take possession of their city and be

introduced to its inhabitants at the same time.2 Moreover most sultans performed this rite only once, namely after their accession to the throne; and only a particularly 'image-conscious' ruler like Murad IV undertook it on other occasions as well, for instance after a successful campaign. From a greater distance the inhabitants of Istanbul might watch their sultan when he attended

celebrations such as the circumcisions of his sons and the weddings of princesses. But all these events were not really frequent and therefore the rare appearances of the sultan in public must have been carefully orchestrated in advance.

in some detail by foreign ambassadors or members of the staff accompanying the latter. Already in the sixteenth century the Ottoman capital was visited by many Venetian, French, Habsburg, Polish and other envoys, some resident for a number of years and others sent by their sovereigns for a short time and a specific purpose, such as negotiating a peace treaty or presenting congratulations on the accession of a new sultan. Much information on the public presentation of the Ottoman ruler can be derived from Venetian

�

diplomatic accounts to the Signoria, as the la ter's resid nt am assadors � � known as the baili were expected to regularly tnform thetr supenors both while resident and after their return to Venice. 1 In the late sixteenth century certain Habsburg ambassadors as well as their clerks also have provided glimpses of sultanic ceremonial as they observed and interpreted it.2 As for the Ottomans before the late seventeenth century their envoys to foreign courts were relatively low-level officials whose reports, if indeed they ever were presented in writing have not so far been located. But once the sultans began to send higher-level personages as ambassadors and expected them to submit written reports, the question of ceremonial again was dominant: for whether or not the envoy was treated with respect, or else kept waiting and otherwise neglected by the court to which he had been sent, directly reflected on the prestige of the sultan. Thus ZiilfiUr A�a. who between 1688 and 1692 attended the Habsburg ruler in the hope of ending the war that had begun in 1683, and who was at one time even imprisoned in a fortress, had plenty of reasons to complain about the shabby treatment that he had received at the hands of the officials of Leopold l.3 In brief ceremonial and/or its absence thus served as a means of communication between royal courts even if they belonged to different cultural environments· and if the ambassador did not have the necessary background information u

Ottoman diplomacy Sultanic ceremonial could be interpreted by an experienced observer and provide indications of the relative standing of foreign powers in the eyes of the ruler's entourage. As a result, quite a few ceremonies taking place in the sultans' reception room (arz odast) and on the streets of Istanbul were recorded I This scene was observed by Michael Heberer of Bretten, a nephew of Luther's close associate Philip Melanchton and a liberated former galley slave: Johann Michael Heberer von Bretten, Aegyptiaca Servitus, intr. by Karl Teply (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, reprint 1 967), pp. 351-52. 2 Cemal Kafadar, "EyUp'te Kilt� K�nma Torenleri," in TOlay Artan ed., Eyiip: Diin/ Bugiin, 11·12 Araltk / 993 (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfa Yurt Yaymlan, 1994), pp. 50-61; Nicolas Vatin, "Aux origines du �lerinage A EyUp des sultans ottomans," Turcica, XXVIl ( 1 995), pp. 91-100.

21

INTRODUCTION

�n arrival, there were always plenty of officials, translators and

hangers-on who could provide it. In this respect there was no great difference between Ottoman envoys visiting France or Iran and their European or Moroccan counterparts in Istanbul; and as the informational value of court

I Maria Pia Pedani Fabris, In nome del Gran �ignore. lnv_iati otto�i a Venezia �1/a �tuiuta d� Costantinopoli alia guerra di Candia (Venezaa: Deputacaone Edatnce, .1994); Mana .P•� �edana . . veneti a/ Senato, vol. XIV Cost Fabris ed., Relaz;ioni dt wl:lnopoll, Re/az;tom .medt e � (/512-1780) (Padua: Aldo Ausilio-Bottega �i Eras�o, 1996); Enc Dursteler, Venetlans m . Constantinople. Nation, Identity and CoexiStence m the Early Modern Mediterranean

ambasciatori

�Baltimore: The

Joh ns Hoplcins Press, 2006). Stephan Gerlach, Turldye Giinliigii, ed. Kemal Beydilli, tr. Tiirkis Noyan , 2 vols (Istanbul. Kitap Yaymevi, 2006). 3 [Ziilfikir P 8§8J Ziilfik!Jr P�a'nm Viyana Sefdreti ve Estlreti, Cerfde·i Takrirdt-i Ziilfik!Jr Efen.di [1099-1 / 3 1/688- 1692J, ed. by Mustafa GUier (Istanbul: �amhca, 200?)! PP· XXIX­ XXX; idem, Viyana'da Osrnan/1 Diplomasisi (Ziilfik!Jr P�a'mn Miiklileme Takrm 1688-/692) ed. by SongUI �olak (Istanbul: Yeditepe Yayanevi, 2007), p. 30. .

0

22

A N O T HE R M I R R O R F O R P R I N C E S

ceremonial was so well understood by all the parties concerned it often was described in great detail, much to the frustration of modem historians who would prefer to hear about other matters.

The sultan as the 'protector of the world': where merchants and exiles might find refuge In today's understanding, ambassadors have a special claim on the protection of the state to which they are accredited; in case of war or if their actions have gravely displeased the government that hosts them, they merely will be 'issued their passports' in other words sent home. However as apparent from the misfortunes of ZiJifikar Ag�a in late-seventeenth century Vienna, this rule did not necessarily apply in the early modem period. Nor did the Ottoman authorities regard envoys as sacrosanct; thus even around 1800, when Napoleon had occupied Egypt, members of the French embassy were imprisoned in the Yedikule fortress. Closer to Ziilfikar Aga/Pa�a in time, when Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pa�a began his 1683 campaign against Vienna, the Emperor Leopold's Internuntius Caprara along with the 'Kayserliche Resident' Baron Kunitz was arrested and made to accompany the

Ottoman army all the way from Istanbul into Lower Austria. 1

Yet one of the major titles used by the Ottoman ruler was that of 'world-protecting sovereign' (padi§ah-z alempeiUlh), and since the granting of security was indeed a major part of the sultan's super-royal image, it is worth pausing for a moment to determine whether this title had concrete implications and who might benefit from the ruler's protection and support. Literary figures apart, Islamic men of religion were the most notable potential proteges; and this applied to specialists in law and divinity as well as to dervishes. In the sixteenth century, pilgrims to Mecca from Central Asia, who because of the enormous difficulty of reaching the Hijaz in spite of Safavid hostility were often in one way or another permanently committed to the religious life, enjoyed the patronage of the Ottoman sultans. Learned figures of renown even if they came from a fairly remote province could have the good fortune to attract the ruler's attention and make a career in the palace: the §eyhiilislam and writer of memoirs Feyzullah Efendi has left a description of how he came to Istanbul from the town of Van on the Iranian border and

1 rose to become the teacher of a prinee that later ascended the throne. Dervishes also might gain the favour of a sultan; and among the many weaknesses that Mustafa All attributed to Murad III, he mentioned the ruler's 2 penchant for 'holy men' of dubious spirituality. Moreover at least in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ottoman

subjects of whatever religion that traded in Venice and ran into trouble with robbers and pirates could count on the support of their sovereign. Petitions in this sense were submitted to the administration, and the latter routinely sent out relatively low-level envoys who might be simple messengers (favu§) or interpreters serving the sultan's council; occasionally the latter were of Italian

background and might even take the opportunity to revisit the scenes of their youth.3 Letters issued in the sultan's name demanded that the Signoria must make all possible efforts to recuperate the goods that had been stolen. After all with the peace of 1573 the Ottoman authorities had accepted the view, long held by the Venetians that security in the Adriatic was the responsibility of Venice alone. Sometimes these letters indicated that if the attacks on merchants and their properties did not cease, the sultan might have to send his

own ships; and that was an eventuality that the Signoria wanted to avoid at all costs. Not all incidents on the road however needed

Tiirkischen f!off und hernach beim Gro.ft-Vezier in der Wienerischen Belaeger�ng gewestl!n Kayser�. Re�rdent Herr Baron .ftfti h r lrcher Relatron der Wrenerrschen Belagerung Kunitz eigenhtindig beschrieben... nebst au (Vienna: no publisher, no pagination, 1684). am

to

be solved through

diplomatic channels. In certain cases low-level local administrators to say nothing of the merchants themselves, managed to convey the goods of Ottoman traders who had lost their lives on the road to/from Venice to the legal heirs living in the lands of the sultans. In such cases, the central government only issued a command to confirm the arrangements i n question so as to make sure that nobody ran into trouble with the sultan's border guards.4 We thus must regard the enterprise of ensuring the security of Ottoman merchants on the road to Venice as a common venture between the traders themselves, the Venetian authorities and the sultan's government. But without the machinery set up by sultans and viziers, the hundreds of traders from Bosnia, Istanbul and even Anatolia that in the late 1500s and early 1600s visited Venice every year would have found it much more difficult to secure the necessary protection.

1 Fahri Derin, "Seyhtilislam Feyzullah Efendi'nin Nesebi 14 (1959). pp. 97-103 . 2 p. 296, Aeischer, Bureaucrat

l [Georg Christoph] Baron Kunitz, Diarium Welches Der

23

I N T R O D UCT I O N

Haldunda bir Risale". Tarih Dergisi, X,

and Intellectual,

del Gran Signore, p. 82; eadem, "B.etwc:en Diplomacy �d Trade: Ottoman Merchants in Venice," to be published in "Merchants tn the Ott?man Emptre." ed. by Suraiya Faroqhi and Gilles Veinstein (Leuven: Editions Peeters, hopefully 10 2008).

3 Pedani Fabris, In

4 Such

nome

an incident has been discussed in my "Ottoman tutiles in published in a volume edited by Claire Norton.

European markets", to be

24

ANOTHER

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P R I NC ES

INTRODUCTION

In addition there were people who arrived in the Ottoman Empire as fugitives from religious and political conflicts. What happened to such refugees depended on the calculations of sultans and viziers, and thus was difficult to foresee; of course mutatis mutandis this statement applied - and applies - to governments of any description. Cases concerning refugees of greater or lesser prominence thus do not lend themselves to generalization and must be analyzed individually. To mention but a few examples: in the mid­ sixteenth century the Safawid Prince Alqas/Eikas Mirza found that once he had shown himself incapable of assuring Ottoman conquests in Iran, he was given to understand that he should return home - where he soon met his death.1 Others were more fortunate; thus people who had fallen from favour at the Moghul court of Akbar might 'graciously' be granted permission by their sovereign to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca; they were expected to remain in the Hijaz until formally allowed to return. The Ottoman authorities, while probably less than enthusiastic, tolerated the exiles' presence.2

25

The fates of these personages were decided in Istanbul for a variety of

political reasons: presumably the sultan's advisors felt that sending ThOkoly

to his death in Vienna was an additional humiliation after the series of

disasters that had marked the Hungarian campaign. For a while the presence of King Charles XII was probably regarded as an asset because he was such a committed opponent of Tsar Peter I, with who the Ottomans were also at war. But after a while it became clear that the government in Istanbul wanted to end

the conflict with the Russian ruler, while Charles XII by contrast was eager to prolong it. This conflict of interests resulted in a series of moves calculated to induce the Swedish king to finally leave Ottoman territory. Yet beyond all this manoeuvring the protection of refugees could also be viewed on a more general plane as a sign of the sultans' magnanimity: at the court in Istanbul the attribute of 'world protector' so often used when referring to the sultan was not a totally meaningless formula.

Others were permitted to establish themselves closer to the seat of government. Thus the French Huguenot Aubry de

La Motraye generally

had

very positive impressions of the Ottoman Empire where in the late 1600s and early 1700s he spent fourteen years. De La Motraye while in Istanbul

befriended his Hungarian fellow Protestant Imre Thokoly who had tried - and failed - to coordinate his anti-Habsburg uprising with Kara Mustafa P�a's

plans for conquest in Austria and Hungary.3 The sultan refused to hand over

ThOkoly to the Habsburgs in spite of the insistent demands of the latter, but assigned him a residence in the little town of izmit, spatially close to Istanbul yet far away from any place where he might have become politically involved. Aubry de La Motraye visited both Thokoly and his wife and attempted to console the refugees. A more famous exile was the Swedish IGng Charles XII after the battle of Poltava ( 1709), who managed to monumentally overstay his welcome on Ottoman territory and leave sizeable debts besides. De La Motraye had contacts with the soldier-king as well. As for the debts, their repayment was still being negotiated several decades later.4

Here come the articles... Asserting sultanic legitimacy How do the articles in this volume relate to the research on sultanic legitimization whose principal directions we have outlined here? It is often claimed that books have their own fates once they go out into the world. But it is just as true, though less often said that they can take a hand in determining the fates of their authors. After having produced a given book , quite often the writer will be asked to contribute to various collective projects

linked to the topics he/she has previously worked on. Something of the kind happened to me after

The Ottoman Empire and the World around it

had

appeared on the market. When thinking about the shapes that my participation

in these projected enterprises might take, I soon discovered that quite a few of

the sources that I previously had used deserved a much more thorough treatment than was possible in a work of synthesis with a relatively strict 'word count•. 1 I thus began to hunt for documents that might tell us more about the

1 Article "Alqas Mirza" in Encyclopedia lranica, vol l , by Cornell Fleischer. 2 Nairn R. Farooqi, "Moguls. Ottomans and Pilgrims: Protecting the Routes to Mecca in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," The International History Review. X, 2 (1988), 198-220; Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans (London: Tauris Press, 1994), p. 1 3 1 . 3 As the original is hard to find I have used a recent Turkish translation: Aubry de La Motraye, .

La Motraye Seyahatnamesl, tr. by Nedim Demi�. introduction by Erkan Ser�e (Istanbul: lstiklal Kitabevi, 2007), pp. 129 32 and elsewhere.

fates of people like the Austrian prisoner of war Claudio Angelo de Martelli, one of the few outsiders ever to write about the time he had spent in the household of an Ottoman grand vizier, albeit a deceased one. Or else when looking for something quite unrelated in the Istanbul archives I came across a few documents concerning the travels of an Ottoman ambassador to early

-

4 Fatma MOge G�k. FAst Encounters West. France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (New York, Oxford, Washington: Oxford University Press and The Institute of Turkish Studies, 1987), pp. 86-87.

1 Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the Tauris, 2004).

World Around it, 1540s to 1774 (London: I. B.

A N O T H E R M I R R O R F O R P R I NC E S eighteenth-century Iran, who has left a thoughtful account of his visit; definitely the journey of Diirri Ahmed Efendi to Teheran merited a closer look. As I had started out with a project that covered the mid-sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries, the present collection also focuses on this period. I am conscious of the fact that some colleagues feel that a study of relations between the Ottomans and their neighbours should begin at an earlier point in time. But it remains true that people write best - and most - about periods on which they previously have accumulated some information. Be that as it may,

I have greatly enjoyed the experience of hunting down documents. I do hope

that some of my colleagues and students will share the pleasures of the chase and apologize for the overlaps that are hard to avoid in a collection of articles on related topics. To a considerable extent, the present volume is based upon archival research. Thus we will begin with a bird's eye view of work that has been done in the Prime Minister's Archives of Istanbul and also in collections of original Ottoman documents located in other places. I Our focus is on 'world history' and therefore on researchers concerned either with former Ottoman

I N T R O D UC T I O N

27

that mosques, schools and dervish lodges made a considerable impression on people confronted with structures that in terms of sheer scale, often were unlike anything they might ever have seen before. Yet this claim is no more than a hypothesis which needs to be tested. As for the public appearances of the sultans our knowledge of their reception is even more limited as this topic has attracted much less interest among researchers. Now the 'orientalism' debate has made us aware of the mindset with which many European observers approached Ottoman artefacts. Some historians have dwelt on the religious conflicts between Christians and Muslims, and the prejudices that the loss of the Holy Land to Saladin and later to the Mamluks generated in the consciousness of late mediaeval and early modem European travellers. 1 A mindset of this type often induced the writer to dwell not upon buildings but rather upon ruins, an effective way of de­ legitimizing the current Muslim regime. Other historians have shown how humanistic concern with Greek and Roman texts/artefacts often became a way of drawing boundaries between 'us the learned' and 'them the uncivilized', or to

provinces that long since have become independent, or else on historians

cite the title of a recent study, of "creating East and West".2 Thus

domiciled in states whose historiographies consider that this or that neighbour

paradoxically the pious and the learned had more trouble if they tried to be fair­

to the sultans' territory was an early modern 'predecessor' of their own

minded observers of the Ottoman world.

present-day polity. Hungarian historiography has been given pride of place because many of its representatives have developed good connections to neighbouring disciplines especially archaeology. Moreover due to the linguistic versatility of many Hungarian scholars, i t is of comparatively easy access even to historians unable to read Hungarian. On the other hand Greek historiography based on Ottoman documents has been highlighted for very different reasons: it is as yet very new, and its scholars seem to focus on international rather than national traditions of history-writing. Among the 'neighbours' of the sultans we will take a closer look at historical work undertaken in Poland and Venice during the twentieth and twenty-first

In this context i t is interesting to compare descriptions of the same monuments and/or parades written by Ottoman Muslims, non-Muslim subjects of the sultan and outsiders from the Islamic and the Christian worlds.3 Remarkably enough such a comparison at least if limited to texts written before and around the 1650s does not show great differences between the cultures involved; to the contrary the similarities are much more obvious. A Moroccan ambassador and his colleagues from Christian Europe offer comparable comments about the incomparable grandeur of the Aya Sofya; who knows perhaps these people have reproduced comments picked up from

centuries. If this article makes a few readers aware of the possibilities of the

their tour guides, who in their turns participated in the same laudatory

Ottoman archives for international and inter-cultural studies, it will have

discourse regardless of religion. Whatever the situation, when visitors of

served its purpose.

whatever background came to early modem Istanbul, they were likely to be

A tout seigneur tout honneur:

as the Ottomans were known for their

respect for hierarchies we will follow their example and begin with the sultan himself, or to be precise, with the manner in which the sultan's image was presented through processions and public buildings. Historians of art and

impressed by the public buildings and the majestic image of the Ottoman ruler; thus these means of sultanic legitimization had some effect even upon outsiders.

architecture have provided us with rather extensive discussions of the Ottoman rulers' great foundations; they have also studied the conditions under which royal women might establish their charities. However we know much less about the effects of such buildings on the spectators. A priori we can assume

1 "The Ottoman Empire in world history: what the archives can tell us."

1 St6phane Y6rasimos, Les voyageurs dans /'Empire ottoman (XIV!-XV/e siecles), Bibliographie, itineraires et inventaire des lieux habites (Ankara: Tilrk Tarih Kurumu, 991),

1 �P· 4, 20 and elsewhere. Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and '!_Vest. Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks �Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvama Press, 2006). "Presenting the Sultans' power, glory and piety: a comparative perspective."

28

A N O T H E R M I R R O R F O R P R I N C ES Owning wild and exotic animals was yet another manner of confirming

the power of the sultan in the eyes of his subjects - and thereby, of rendering his domination legitimate. By his formidable might the ruler forced wild creatures to do obeisance; but on a different level he was aJso so highly

esteemed by remote Indian or Iranian potentates that they courted his favour by presenting him with costly gifts including elephants. Like many other rulers before and after them Ottoman sultans entertained a menagerie and permitted outsiders to view it; thus by the later 1500s the former Byzantine church where the animals were housed was so often visited by European travellers that it must be regarded as a kind of tourist site. In sixteenth-century Istanbul lions could be paraded in processions, loaded with chains and thereby generate both fear and respect for the power of the ruler who alone could keep them in check. As for the years around 1800 when this game was apparently considered too risky, the presence of securely caged lions still was considered a significant attribute of the Ottoman sultan: money was spent on housing and feeding them even at a time of extreme financiaJ stringency.1

Here come the articles... Relating to the outside world Questions concerning the relations of the Ottomans with their Christian neighbours were for a long time the very stuff of Ottomanist historiography in Europe and the United States. While many European and American scholars today prefer to work on Ottoman 'domestic' issues such as urban history, a certain interest in questions concerning the Empire and its neighbours recently has emerged within the Turkish scholarly community. This development is connected with what is happening in the world outside of Ottoman historiography including globalization in the economic realm, the expansion of tourism not only by foreigners in Turkey but also by Turks in Europe and the US, and on a more scholarly plane, the recent focus on empires among historians of the ancient world, India, China and Britain. Relations with the kingdoms and principaJities of Christendom often involved border zones both on the Ottoman and the 'other' side of the frontier. One of these borderlands that long had remained in the shadow and has now begun to interest researchers is the Adriatic, where Ottoman Bosnia was neighbour to Venetian Dalmatia and Habsburg-ruled Croatia.2 Research on the Adriatic and its denizens has become easier now that the Ottoman documents 1 "Exotic animals at the: sultans' court". 2 Drago Roksandi� ed., Microhistory ofthe Triplex Confinium. lnterootionaJ Project Conference

Papers (Budapest, March 21-22. 1997), (Budapest: Institute: on Southeastern Europe:, Central European University, 1999).

I NT R O D U C T I O N

29

in the Venetian archives have become accessible through an excellent

catalogue.1 In this region Ottoman merchants of whatever religion often were robbed and even killed by the pirates known as the Uskok, loosely subordinated to the commanders of the Habsburg border defences but in actuaJ

fact often acting on their own initiative.2 However for some considerable time, historians were not much interested in the attitude taken by the sultans towards the damages suffered by their subjects, perhaps because of the long outmoded but tenacious idee fixe that the problems of merchants on a remote frontier were not taken very seriously in Istanbul. However in reaJity in the years before and after 1600, sultans and viziers often intervened in such matters. In quite a few cases they put considerable pressure on the Signoria of Venice to ensure that the aggrieved merchants got at least part of their property back; and the present study discusses how solutions to these thorny

problems were worked out 'on the ground'.3

While Ottoman subjects and especially Muslims that did business in Venice have entered the scholarly agenda only during the last twenty years, the situation of foreign traders on Ottoman soil once again is one of the well­ established sub-fields of Ottomanist scholarship. The bibliography is enormous, even that which has appeared since HaJil Inalcik's seminaJ article on "Imtiyazat" ( 1 986) in the

Encyclopedia of Islam;

in European

historiography these grants of privilege were known as the 'capitulations'. During the last few decades, a mass of previously unknown materia] has been brought to light and interpreted by scholars such as Hans Theunissen who has worked on the privileges/capitulations issued to Venice and Dariusz Kolodziejczyk who has dedicated a massive work to comparable documents concerning Poland. More recently the work of Mauritz van den Boogert includes studies on the capitulations and their beneficiaries, with an emphasis on how these privileges were enforced - or sometimes ignored.4 Differently furthermore from much of the older work whose authors focused on French, English or Dutch traders and were not much interested in Ottoman attitudes, these more recent studies have a good deal to say on problems of reciprocity.5 1 Maria Pia Pedan.i Fabris, I "Documenti turchi" deii'Archivio di Stato di Venezia (Roma: Ministc:ro pc:r i bc:ni culturali c: ambientali, Ufficio centrale peri beni archivistici, 994).

1 2 Catherine Wendy Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj. Piracy, Banditry and Holy War in the Sixteenth-Century Adriatic (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1 992). 3 "Ottoman Views on Corsairs and Piracy in the Adriatic". 4 Kate Aeet and Maurits H. van dc:n Boogert eds., The Ottoman Capitulations. Text and context, Naples/Cambridge:: Istituto Nallino and Skilliter Centre, 2003).

�

Hans Thc:unissen, "Ottoman-Venetian Diplomatics: The: ahidnames. The: Historical Background and the: Dc:velopmc:nt of a Category of Political-Diplomatic l!JSltum�nts together with an Annotated Edition of a Corpus of Relevant Documents." Ph D d1ssertatton, Utrecht, 1991. (Only available: on the: lntc:rnc:t); Dariusz Kofodzic:jczyk, Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic

Relations (15th-18th Century). An Annotated Edition of 'Ahdnames and Other Documents (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000).

30

ANOTHER

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P R I N C ES

Once again it seems that the ti me has come to 'pull together' the results of this research, at least where the seventeenth century is concerned: where do we stand and where do we go?I In a way, projecting the image of the sultans as 'world protectors', border warfare and 'international' trade are all forms of interaction between the Ottomans and their neighbours. Any interaction presupposes that some people 'put themselves on the line' to make such contacts possible: they may undertake the attendant risks either for private profit as merchants do, or because they expect career opportunities in the service of their respective sovereigns, as is typical of diplomats. Here we will deal with two such envoys, both active at the beginning of the eighteenth century: one of them, a Frenchman posted in Istanbul and the other, an Ottoman active in Teheran.2 The French ambassador marquis de Bonnac has left a large number of documents, both published and unpublished.3 He was on good terms with the Grand Vizier Damad Ibrahim Pa�a and convinced that the abysmally bad relations that had prevailed under his seventeenth-century predecessors were not a necessary and inevitable outcome of the fact that during the Ottoman­ Habsburg war of the 1660 s and the long drawn-out struggle with the Venetians over Crete, the young Louis XIV had given informal support to the enemies of the sultan. To the contrary in the teeth of official disapproval, the marquis de Bonnac wrote a lengthy memorandum that must be read as an indictment of the un-diplomatic behaviour of his predecessor Monsieur de Ferriol , better known for his patronage of a large album of Ottoman costumes. At one point in his career this unfortunate diplomat apparently

suffered from some form of insanity. De Bonnac gave a lengthy description

not only of the behaviour of his predecessor while in the middle of a nervous

crisis; he also explained why the latter had not even been received at the Ottoman court. This unfortunate state of affairs was due to De Ferriol's cavalier disregard for Ottoman court etiquette.4 Nobody was admitted to the sultan's

I NTRODUCTION

31

presumably such an item could have been officially regarded as an ornament.

But De Ferriol's appearance with an

epee de bretteur,

that is a weapon

suitable for actual fighting, made all compromise impossible. Nor were un­ diplomatic diplomats the only reason for the crises of the past years: De Bonnac was highly critical of the various churchmen patronized by the king of France that in his perspective, tended to ruin relations with the Ottomans by

their misplaced zeal. If in recent years the sultan had given permission for

repairs to be made to the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, this was due to De Bonnac's own efforts, and no thanks to the priests. The marquis de Bonnac thus proposed that 'diplomatic' behaviour and a

degree of understanding of the Empire's difficulties would serve the interests of the French crown better than the blustering insistence on 'honour' characteristic of the recent past. He thus found a common language with the grand vizier, who also apparently believed that the sultans might recuperate some of the losses of bygone years by means of diplomacy. For this purpose Ibrahim Pa�a sent envoys not only to the French but also the Safavid court:

and while the report of Durri Ahmed Efendi has attracted less attention than Yinnisekiz Mehmed Efendi's mission to Paris and Versailles, this is mainly

due to the as yet very limited number of studies on Ottoman-Iranian relations. It was Durri Ahmed Efendi 's job to persuade the Iranian court that even in the face of a visibly disintegrating Safavid Empire the Ottoman rulers had no aggressive intentions. We do not know to what extent the envoy himself believed this official stance. But as his report stressed the continuing wealth of the country, the poor condition of its military and the disaffection of the local Sunnis, we may suspect that he did not, and maybe even advised the grand vizier in favour of intervention as soon as an opportunity presented itself. Be that as it may, Diirri Ahmed with his knowledge of Iranian literature seems to have been impressed by the late Safavid court: decadent though it may have been it was still a centre of high culture.

presence in arms, yet on the other hand, certain French gentlemen felt it to be an affront to their dignity to take off their swords even on such an occasion. In the opinion of the marquis de Bonnac, a compromise could have been patched up if the previous ambassador had appeared with a small decorative weapon; I "Ottoman Attitudes towards Merchants from Latin Christendom before 1600". 2 "(brahim Pqa and the Marquis de Bonnac" and "An Ottoman ambassador in Iran: DUrri Ahmed Efendi and the collapse of the Safavid Empire in 1720-21". 3 Jean-Louis Dusson, marquis de Bonnac, Memoir!! historique sur I'Ambassade de France a

Constantinople, ed. and intr. by Charles Schefer (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1894).

4 For Ferriol's own account compar e Alan Servantie ed., Le voyage a Istanbul, Byzance, Constantinople. Istanbul du Moyen Age au XXC siecle (Brussels: Editions Complexe, 2003), pp. 313-21.

Here come the articles... Outsiders on Ottoman territory and Ottomans abroad: prisoners, slaves and merchants While envoys placed themselves in a mediator's position more or less voluntarily, prisoners of war and other foreign slaves had no choice in the matter. Yet in some instances they might come away with unique observations. An adventure of this kind as we have seen, happened to Claudio

Angelo de Martelli, a military officer in the Habsburg army, who published an account of his captivity while the war was still continuing and that should

32

ANOTHER M I RROR FOR PRI NCES

therefore be regarded as a piece of Habsburg propaganda. But the text also has more to offer. Captured when the Ottomans marched upon Vienna in 1683 De Martelli was assigned as prisoner to Kara Mustafa Pa§a in person. 1 However to his great dismay, the author became a slave of the sultan when the grand vizier was executed in late 1683 and his possessions confiscated: for as De Martelli soon learned, slaves of the ruler were not eligible for ransom or prisoner exchanges. However within short order the young sons of the executed dignitary were given back part of their father's property on condition that they pay back the enormous debts owed by the latter. A scramble thus ensued as the senior members of the household sold off various possessions including De Martelli who because of his physical weakness was not exactly attractive as a future slave. He was then freed by means of a diplomatic negotiation in which the ambassador of the king of England, a neutral ruler, took a hand. So did an English nobleman who was one of the ambassador's associates; and in the end, the Habsburg officer left the Ottoman lands as a tutor to the children of the English envoy. In our present perspective De Martelli's story is valuable particularly for the insider's view of the deceased grand vizier's household in Istanbul, where he spent several months while his ransom was being negotiated. Apparently Kara Mustafa Pa�a. often described as harsh and overbearing by foreign diplomats, had succeeded in gaining the devotion of his household, some of whose members even were prepared to defend him arms in hand when the order for his execution arrived in Belgrade. These men dfd not search for new patrons, but remained to take care of the interests of the �a's sons; and if one of them under the nickname of Maktulzade (son of the executed person) later built a career in the sultan's service it may well have been due to the efforts that his father's household dignitaries had expended on his behalf. At the same time many of Kara Mustafa Pa�a·s household servitors were of European background, and we are left to wonder whether if the conquest of Vienna had succeeded, these people would not have become the new administrators, knowledgeable in local laws and customs and at the same time completely loyal to their patron the grand vizier. Thus although De Martelli was not a very high-ranking officer, his capture, enslavement and sale all were part and parcel of 'high politics'. Our next chapter by contrast is concerned with a man who had very limited access to the higher reaches of Ottoman society, living in the provincial town of Kastamonu in northern Anatolia. He applied to the central government 1 "A prisoner of war reports: The camp and household of grand vizier Kara Mustafa �a in an eyewitness account".

33

I NT R O D U C T I O N

because he was in danger of being sold as a slave along with his adult chi ldren. I Of Iranian background and perhaps at one time an 'illegal immigrant' this man risked becoming victim to a crime about which we have frequent complaints, namely the enslavement of free persons. Unfortunately only a single document survives, and we thus have no way of determining the outcome of this case. Apart from the activities of envoys, prisoners and refugees, there were the 'inter-cultural' - to use the modem word - contacts established through commerce in Izmir, Istanbul or Venice. Important though the attitudes of Ottoman sultans and viziers to the conduct of trade may have been, what counted most were the views of the merchants 'on site'. In addition to business concerns properly speaking there were problems in relating to strangers encountered for instance in Venice. Further complications might arise from the Ottoman context from which these travelling merchants had come and to which they eventually returned. A specialist on the money­ lending pious foundations that flourished in the Turkish-speaking towns of the Ottoman Empire between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries has concluded that at least in Bursa, these institutions mainly provided credit for consumption purposes. Only a few wealthy and privileged businessmen seized the opportunity of borrowing from pious foundations and then lending money at the higher rates of interest that prevailed in the Istanbul capital market.2 However practices were different in Sarajevo where apparently it was common enough for merchants to borrow from pious foundations or else from funds belonging to orphans that were being administered by guardians. These funds were often invested in trade, even foreign trade conducted in Venice and elsewhere. But in such cases lenders and local qadis enforced special safeguards: no matter whether the merchant profited or lost, he had to return the capital i n its entirety. Thus the safeguards of the

mudarabalcommenda

commercial

contract that protected the travelling trader from the dangers he might encounter en route were not applicable when the funds belonging to orphans and pious foundations were at issue. As a result Bosnian merchants who had been robbed on the Adriatic made particular efforts to get the Signoria to help

them retrieve at least part of their goods.3 Moreover just in case a document from the qadi of Sarajevo increased their credibility the merchants might submit an official record that confirmed the amounts they would have to pay back upon returning home. I "Trying to avoid enslavement: the adventures of an Iranian subject in eighteenth-century Anatolia". 2 Murat c;izak�. "Cash Waqfs of Bursa, 1 555-1823," Journal of the &onomic and Social History of the Orient 3813 (1995), 313-54.

3 "Bosnian merchants in the Adriatic"·

34

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Help from the authorities probably was most effective if the Ottoman and Venetian governments were willing to cooperate in the protection of merchants. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, this was often the case. For while the Long War with the Habsburgs dragged on (until 1606), Canbuladoglu Ali Pa�a rebelled in Aleppo and certain groups of mercenaries

THE OTIOMAN EMPIRE I N WORLD HISTORY: WHAT THE ARCHIVES CAN TELL US

known as the Celalis even went over to Shah cAbbas of Iran, sultans and viziers were in fact concerned about maintaining good relations with Venice. In the first quarter of the seventeenth century certain officials of the sultan even put about a story that would have shocked both their predecessors and their successors; for now the Serenissima was considered a faithful ally of the Ottoman rulers from the beginnings of the Ottoman principality. Ottoman and Venetian traders benefited from this temporary entente cordiale; and the last article in our collection shows how even serious acts of piracy by highly placed personages might be smoothed over if considerations of war and peace demanded it.1

The Ottoman Empire forms part of a select but still sizeable group of polities that claimed to govern if not the whole world, then at least that part of it which could claim right belief and/or the advantages of civilization. As such it can be classed with the Roman, Chinese, Moghul, Spanish, Russian and British empires both in their formal and informal versions - quite apart from other varieties still with us today. After a long hiatus, empires are once again a 'hot topic', and the polity established by the sultans now is receiving some attention on the part of historians interested in comparative studies. This inclusion of Ottoman history into a broader world historical context from which traditionally it had been excluded is quite novel, and at least in part due to the large amount of archival documentation that has become accessible in recent years. Very diverse topics including the present-day Middle East, global labour migrations, the world-wide problem of censorship or the history of women and the family all can be studied more successfully if the Ottoman archives are taken into account. Given recent reorganization we must briefly explain what is meant by the term 'Ottoman archives'. The Archives of the Prime Minister (B�bakanltk A�ivi) in Istanbul are a comprehensive organization, the basis being the Grand Vizier's archives that were separated out from the Topkapt palace archive in the late eighteenth century, and further reorganized in the nineteenth.1 The Topkapt archives continue to be located on the grounds of the palace, now a museum. But administratively speaking they have become part of the Ba�bakanltk Ar�ivi. In addition the Administration of Pious Foundations and the General Directorate of the Cadastre, both in Ankara for our purposes will be considered part of the Ottoman archives although administratively speaking they are separate from the Archives of the Prime Minister. For the sake of convenience we will also consider major holdings of Ottoman documents abroad, particularly those in Venice as a special variety of Ottoman archive.

1 "The Ottomans and the trade routes of the Adriatic".

1 Collective work, BQ§bakanltk Osman/1 Ar�ivi Rehberi (Ankara: Bll§bakanhk, Devlet Gene! MUdUrlUgll, 2000), pp. XL-XLI.

A�ivleri

36

A N O T HE R M I R R O R F O R P R I N C E S As for the qadi registers (sicil), a major source for urban and provincial

history, in the past they were kept in the district centres where they once had been compiled. They have thus wound up in l ibraries or archives depending on the practice of the country in question - if indeed they were not lost or destroyed during the wars of the 1 900s, as seems to have happened quite often in Balkan countries and also in Anatolia. A sixteenth-century register of Sofia was published before it disappeared in the maelstrom of World War II and other items perished when the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo was bombed during the wars that accompanied the recent dissolution of Yugoslavia.'

T H E OTTO M A N E M P I R E I N W O R L D H I S T O R Y

37

world. In the first section of this paper we will discuss two examples that show how the Ottoman archives have been used - or can be used in the future - if the country in question or at least a large section of it formed part

of the Ottoman Empire for an appreciable period of time. As examples we will discuss work by historians dealing with Hungary and Greece. To be more precise, we will highlight works produced by people of Hungarian and Greek descent, no matter in which countries they operate or have operated, although it is of course impossible to even dream of completeness. As for the second section, here we will discuss the resources of the Ottoman archives in terms of the information they can provide on states such as Poland or Venice that -

A major resource not only for Turkish history As the Archives of the Prime Minister are the archives of the Turkish Prime Minister, the uninitiated may assume that the content is mainly relevant to Turkey. But that is an over-simplification: after all the specification 'Ottoman archives' added on to the over-arching official title already indicates that much more is at stake. Exactly how many of today's countries can be regarded as 'successor states' to the Ottoman Empire is a matter of definition; for the sultans' rule in some cases lasted for many centuries and in others just for a few decades. In addition sometimes only part of the territory of a present-day state was once a province, sub-province or district of the Ottoman Empire; and in such cases there is room for disagreement as to whether the relevant polity should be considered a 'successor state'. To cite an example: does it make sense to claim that Poland was once 'part of the Ottoman empire' because the region of Kamieniec Podolsk today in Ukraine, was an Ottoman province for about twenty-five years in the late seventeenth century, and the territory in question before the Ottoman conquest had been part of Poland-Lithuania?2 Or to exaggerate even more: do we really want to declare Italy as a successor state to the Ottoman Empire because after 1517, the Signoria of Venice paid tribute to the sultans for its colony of Cyprus, before the island finally was conquered by Ottoman forces in 1570-73? I think we can safely leave such discussions to those that enjoy them. But i n any event we can expect the archives in Istanbul to produce

despite the Ottoman conquest of some of their territories - basically remained outside the sultans' domains. During the last twenty years or so, we have come to understand that the Ottoman sultans were involved in European history often in rather unexpected ways, and a careful search of the archives produced by their bureaucrats confirms these observations. 1 Admittedly the hunt for sources in the Ottoman archives is often arduous in spite of the help that is now given to the historian by the search facilities of the internet as instituted by the Prime Minister's Archives during the last few years. Unfortunately there are difficulties for which no easy remedy has as yet been discovered: often the internet helps

us

to get access to

the summaries of documents that archivists have produced over time, and not to the Ottoman texts themselves. However especially for the period before the nineteenth century most information is found not in individual documents or files but in bound registers, which especially if made during the 1700s often encompass over a thousand documents apiece. No archivist could produce a satisfactory summary of these mammoth collections; the descriptions therefore usually refer to a few documents located near the beginning and end of the register in question. To deal with this kind of source it is still necessary to view the register - or a computerized copy, depending on what the archivists will let us see - and search the documents one by one. Fortunately Ottoman officials normally introduced a sultanic command by a more or less detailed account of the events and correspondences that had preceded it. Thus by reading the first lines, we will often be able to figure out quite soon whether the document is relevant or not.

documentation, more or Jess ample according to the circumstances, that sheds light on the history of some twenty to forty countries of the present-day 1 Herbert Duda, Galab Galabov, Die Protokollbiicher des Kadiamtes Sofia (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1960). 2 Darusz Kotodziejczyk, Ottoman·Polish Diplomatic Relations (15th·l8th Century), An i Annotated Edition of 'Ahdnames and Other Documents (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), pp. 145-57.

1 Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), p. 246 mentions a letter from the sultan to the Habsburg empress Maria Theresa, dated to the 1740s that criticized the expulsion of the Jews from Prague.

38

ANOTHER M I R R O R FOR P R I NCES

T HE O TT O M A N E M P I R E I N W O R L D H I S T O R Y

Historians exploring aforeign archive: the Hungarian example1

Denominational identities were involved as well. Catholics recognized

Why is the Hungarian example a good choice when we try to explicate the world historical relevance of the Ottoman archives? Scholars from some countries have been more alert in using this resource than others, and I would claim that the most assiduous work is due to our colleagues of Budapest. In fact it was the Hungarian scholar Lajos Fekete that introduced into the Ottoman archives the principle of cataloguing documents according to the bureaus that had produced them, known as 'organizing by provenience'. In addition the same personage also wrote a magnificent two-volume introduction to the documents written in

39

siyakat, a highly specialized form of the Arabic

script used in the Ottoman financial administration.2 Hungarian scholars first became interested in the Ottoman archives in the late nineteenth century, at a time when they were still subjects of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Apparently this concern was politicall y motivated and quite intense; there even was a short-lived Hungarian research institute in Istanbul. Many of these scholars were nationalists, as indeed were their colleagues in other European countries. In our present-day perspective therefore, some of these researchers approached the Ottoman archives with rather a peculiar agenda; namely they asked themselves whether an 'Ottoman option' such as had been sought by certain Hungarian noblemen like Imre Thokoly or Ferenc Rakoszi during the 1600s and 1700s, could have been a viable alternative to the Habsburg adherence.3 In other words they asked themselves whether more of Hungarian identity would have been preserved if the country as whole had become a vassal kingdom of the sultans, always assuming that the latter would have been willing to forgo direct administration in spite of the menacing proximity of the Habsburg armies. Thus these nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars were engaged in a project of exploring 'paths that had not been taken' i n Hungarian history. Sultan Abdtilharnid I I (r. 1876-1909) by the way was well aware of these sentiments and gained a good many sympathies among educated Hungarians by returning some books from the library of King Matthias Corvinus that had arrived in Istanbul as booty after the sixteenth-century Ottoman conquest.

that without Habsburg involvement, nineteenth-century Hungary would have been a largely Protestant country; therefore historians who identified with the Catholic cause tended to claim that retaining even a small strip of the country - the so-called Royal Hungary - within Christendom was so important that submission to the Habsburgs should be regarded as the lesser evil. After all in the areas of direct Ottoman domination there was no Catholic hierarchy; on

the other hand Hungarian Calvinist churches were more decentralized and

therefore better adapted to life under the sultans' administration. 1

Especially after the First World War yet another political concern encouraged some Hungarian historians to explore the Ottoman archives. As a former participant in the Great War on the losing side, the Habsburg Empire was dismantled. Territorial losses concerned not only the 'Austrian half'; the 'Hungarian section' governed by the Magyars but inhabited partly by Southern Slavs was also affected, as the government had to cede territory to the newly formed state of Yugoslavia. As a result Hungary as it came into being after World War I was much smaller than the historical kingdom of the same name; and in part this contraction was due to the fact that under Ottoman rule there had been important migrations, with Slav soldiers and peasants settling in the southern sections of the mediaeval kingdom that had largely been abandoned by their previous inhabitants. Thus Hungarian historians now believed that they would better understand what they viewed as a historical calamity by

familiarizing themselves with the Ottoman period.2

For us who are interested in scholarship and but tangentially i n

nationalism, this information is important because i t helps us situate the Hungarian concern with Ottoman archives. But if that had been the whole story, it would not have been worth recounting here. At least in my view what is noteworthy about many Hungarian Ottomanists is their ability to transcend their nationalist concerns. As far as I can see they have made a significant section of the educated public both in Hungary and abroad accept the notion that after the fall of the independent ki ngdom in the battle of Mohacz ( 1 526), there were ti mes and sections of the country where the Ottomans were the dominant power: yet these periods and venues did not therefore 'drop out of history' . This latter point is worth making because in Greece or Bulgaria a similar understanding for a long time was officially

1 G�za [)ivid and Plil Fodor, •Hungarian Studies i Ottoman _Hist?ry" in The C?ttomans aruJ ':' : Southeastern Europe, cd. by F1ltrct Adamr and Sunuya Far oqh 1 (Lc1dcn: E. J. Bnll, 2002), pp. 205-50. As 1 do not read Hungarian, Greek or Polish� I have had to confine mrself �o

publications in English, German, French, Italian and Turk1sh; fortunately they substantial numbers.

arc

ava1lablc 1n

2 Lajos Fekete, Die Siyaqatschrift in der tiirkischen Finanzverwaltung, 2 vols. (Budapest, 1 955). 3 Dl1vid and Fodor, "Hungarian Studies," p. 316.

unacceptable and even today is probably considered somewhat avant-garde. I For a brief summary of church history during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries see lstvlin Bitskcy, "Spiritual Life in the Early Modern Age,• in A Cultural History of Hungary.from the Beginnings to the Eighteenth Century, ed. by Laszl6 K6sa (Budapest: Corvma, 1999), pp.

242-49. 2 Dlivid and Fodor, "Hungarian Studies," PP· 317-18.

40

A N OT H E R M I R R O R F O R P R I NC ES

T H E OTT O M A N E M P I R E I N W O R L D H I S T O R Y

Work in the archives of course is contingent upon physical access; and Hungarian scholars working on the Ottoman period of their national history were fortunate in the sense that when the Prime Minister's Archives became accessible to a wider circle of researchers in the 1960s and 1970s, some of them were able to take advantage of the new situation. In this sense they were better off than for instance Bulgarian researchers who by the vicissitudes of the time were obliged to limit themselves to Ottoman documents available in their own country. Moreover even though the Cold War and the uprising of

Monographs on the basis purely of

tahrirs

41

after a while get to be

limited and limiting. However Hungarian scholars have been adept at finding sources that allow more broadly based work. Sometimes the supplementary sources have been located in the Ottoman archives: thus the registers of appointment to public office, the so-called

ru'us defterleri

have made it

possible to write short but interesting biographies of various governors, particularly those who commanded the capital and fortress of Budin!Buda.

Registers of the tax assignments to military men that are known as

timars and

1956 resulted in a separation between those scholars who migrated to western

zeamets are

countries and their colleagues who remained in Hungary, connections between

they have been mined by Hungarian colleagues for biographical data and

certain individuals forming part of these two groups remained relatively close; and scholarly exchanges among Ottomanists benefited as a result. Once again this is significantly different from what occurred in other countries where 'bureaucratic socialism' was established at the time: scholars of the two Germanies for instance mostly behaved in quite a different fashion. To the Ottomanist community of the 1960s and 1970s, the great tax registers

(tahrir or tapu tahrir)

of the sixteenth century were a favourite

source. At least for the Ottoman Balkans (Rumeli, Rumelia), most of Anatolia and parts of the Fertile Crescent, these registers list provinces

(vilayet),

sub-provinces

(liva, sancak)

and districts

(kaza, nahiye),

enumerating the local taxpayers according to their places of residence. Hungarian scholars set about editing and annotating those registers that were relevant to Hungary, sometimes publishing their work in Turkey. Not only Hungarians domiciled in the US or other western countries but even those living i n Hungary sometimes availed themselves of this opportunity.1 For some scholars dealing with these registers became a life's labour and almost an aim in itself: I remember the late Tibor Halasi-Kun who towards the end of his life once said that before all relevant documents had been edited and discussed, it made no sense to embark on more encompassing projects.2 In focusing on

tahrirs

Hungarian scholars were in line with contemporary

researchers in other countries and especiall y in Turkey; and Geza David's work on the sub-province of Simontornya even was translated into Turkish.3

1 Gyula Kaldy-Nagy e . • Kanuni D evr� B"4in Tahrir Defter/eri (/546-1562) (Ankara: Ankara � . killtes1, 1971). Oniversitesi Oil ve Tanh-Cografya Fa 2 Tibor Halasi-Kun, "Haram County, and the Ottoman Modava Nahiyesi," Archivum Ottomanicum, IX (1984), pp. 27-90. Further articles on Hungarian counties have appeared in other issues of Archivum Ottomanicum. 3 G�za Dllvid Osmanl1 Macaristan'mda Toplum. Ekonomi ve Yonetim. 16. Yiizy1lda �imantornya &mcag1 (Istanbul: Tarih Vakf1, 1999).

probably not the most attractive of archival sources: but even so

promotion patterns. I

But if the truth be told, what makes Hungarian historiography about

the Ottoman period especiaHy interesting is the skill with which materials from the Istanbul archives have been combined with non-Ottoman sources of information including archival documents from the Habsburg realm. Some of the latter items date to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the sultans' administration was firmly in place. Others were compiled in the early 1700s, when after the peace of Karlowitz ( 1 699), the officials of Leopold I held inquests to determine population figures as well as future taxes; much of this information was after all based on what peasants chose to remember and report about conditions in the Ottoman period. In addition the archaeology of the late mediaeval and early modern periods is more developed in Hungary than in any other former Ottoman province.2 Thus admittedly rather scanty records from the sultans' archives concerning the major and minor fortresses dotting the frontier regions have been 'brought to life' by excavation: modest necessities of daily existence including potsherds and remnants of cooking implements have been dated and classified by origin, while elaborate installations that provided water and carried off waste also have been studied in some detaiJ.3 All this moreover occurred at a time when many archaeologists working for instance in Anatolia were not much concerned with Ottoman finds unless they happened to be of artistic interest.

I G�za Dllvid, "Die Bege von Szigetvllr im 16. Jahrhundert," in idem, Studies in the Demographic and Administrative History ofOttoman Hungary (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 1997), 1 19-42.

�P·

G�za D:ivid and Jpolya Gerelyes, "Ottoman Social and Economic Life Unearthed. An Assessment of Ottoman Archaeological Finds in Hungary," in Studies in Ottoman Social and Economic Life, ed. Raoul Motika, Christoph Herzog and Michael Ursinus (Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag, 1999), pp. 43-79. 3 Jpolya Gerelyes ed., Archaeology of the Ottoman Period in Hungary (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 2003); Ipolya �erelyes ed., Turkish Flowers, Studies on Ottoman Art in Hungary (Budapest: Hungarian Nattonal Museum, 2005).

42

ANOTHER MIRROR FOR PRINCES

Another manner of dealing with the limits of Ottoman documents on Hungary was tried only from the 1990s onward, and then only by a few people, namely the study of topics that were relevant to the Empire as a whole, but had only a tenuous connection, or even no connection at all with events in Hungary. Thus Glibor Agoston has built his reputation through his work on warfare and armaments; certainly war-making was ubiquitous in Ottoman Hungary, but his recent book deals with border provinces only in a limited sense. I Similarly Plil Fodor has done a good deal of work on Istanbul politics i n the late sixteenth century including naval matters, so that studies of 'the Hungarian connection' form only part of his oeuvre.2 In my view this development is highly positive, as it means that the history of an Ottoman border province is being opened up to the wider world. To put it in a nutshell: by the late 1970s many historians of the Ottoman Empire all over the world had concluded that social and economic history, or for that matter any kind of history could not be based on tahrirs alone. But the Hungarians had a head start in coping with this problem. Given a historical establishment that considered the early modem - and thereby the Ottoman - period an integral part of national history, and furthermore an impressive inclination to devote time and money to research, Hungarian historians were able to initiate cooperation with neighbouring disciplines in a manner that other sub-fields of Ottoman history only achieved at a much later date - if at all. It was probably difficult to convince university deans and promotion committees that the Istanbul archives should be used to answer questions about Ottoman history as a whole and not just about Hungary when ruled by the sultans - but within limits, even that has been achieved. In Hungary historiography on the basis of Ottoman archival material by now has a venerable tradition stretching over a century; and new approaches are being tested exactly because some of the older ones seem to have reached the end of their useful lives.

T H E O TT O M A N E M P I R E I N W O R L D H I S T O R Y

43

limited. Presumably the conflicts of the twentieth century are mainly to blame: the Turkish War of Independence was fought mainly between Greeks and Turks, the population exchange of 1923 disrupted the lives of many people and in addition the Cyprus conflict, which still has not been solved . after more than fifty years, has left a legacy of lasting bitterness on both stdes. Scholarly exchanges are now more frequent than they used to be, but much more could be done in this field. In consequence the scholars that pioneered the use of Ottoman documents in Greece are for the most part still alive today: Vassilis Dimitriadis, Elizabeth Zachariadou, John Alexander, and of a younger generation, Evangelia Balta. As for the doyenne of Ottoman studies in Greece, Elizabeth Zachariadou has concentrated on the Byzantine-Ottoman 'transition period' of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and this project has made it necessary for the author to study Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman materials side by side. For the period in question however the most relevant Ottoman archival documents are usually not found in Istanbul , but rather in Greek monastic archives. Located on the Athos but also for instance in the monastery of Saint John the Theologian on the island of Patmos, Ottoman archival material of considerable antiquity is thus available to Greek scholars practically 'on their doorstep•.! These Ottoman document hoards in Greece are especially valuable as for the most part the Prime Minister's Archives in Istanbul only become substantial in the sixteenth century. These treasures are due to the early contacts of Byzantine monks with the Ottoman sultans. For during the calamities of the 1300s the former soon came to understand that the emperors in Constantinople were no longer able and willing to protect them. As a result quite a few monastic communities submitted to the sultans and were issued documents that assured them of protection in return for the payment of certain taxes. Many of these monastic archives have now been - or are in the process of being - catalogued and edited: a significant advantage as female scholars are not admitted to the Holy

Greek historians and their use of Ottoman archives For Hungarian scholars using the Ottoman archives has become more or less part of the historian's routine. But the situation is rather different in Greece where the number of people reading Ottoman Turkish is still quite 1 Gcibor Agoston, Gunsfor the Sultan, Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman

�ire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pre.ss, 2005).

2 Pcil Fodor, "Sultan, Imperial Council, Grand Vizier: Changes in the Ottoman Ruling Elite and the Formation of the Grand Vizieral telhJs," Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum

Hungaricae, 47,

1-2 (1994), 67-85.

Mountain. When it came to finding protection, other monasteries were not slow to discover the strategies that had benefited the Athos communities: thus the foundation known by the name of Margarid in the town of Serres/

I Elizabeth Za charia d ou "Historical Memory in an Aegean Monastery: St John of Patrnos and the Emirate of Mentesh '" in The Hospitallers, the Mediterranean and Europe, Festschriftfor Anthony Luttrell. ed. by Karl Borcha.rdt, Nicholas Jaspert and Hel�n J. Nic�ols�n . . (Aidershot!Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007). pp. 13 1-37. While Theohans Stavnd�s �nd Otmt�ns Kastrizis, both young scholars working on th� �fteenth century have so far had: hmtted occaston to deal with the Ottoman archives, their prorrusma work should at lea:'t be me�tlooed: T� Sultan . of Vezirs (Leiden: E. J. Brill �001) and The Son� of Bayezu!. Emp�re Butldmg and ! RepresentaJion in the Ottoman CIVIl War of 1402-J3 (Letden: E. J. Bnll, 2007).

e'

44

A N O T H E R M I R R O R F O R P R I N C ES

T H E O TT O M A N E M P I R E I N W O R L D H I S T O R Y

Serrai was issued a sultanic command already by Murad I (r. 1362-89). 1 John

Salonika and the town of Verroia (Ottoman Karaferye); scattered volumes are

Alexander has concentrated on other Ottoman document holdings in Greek monastery archives including the Meteora but also Jess well-known places such as Voulkanou in Messenia, while Sophia Laiou has studied the archives of a monastery on the island of Lesbos/Midi11i.2 Furthermore while the Manchester dissertation of Eugenia Kermeli on the confiscation of monastic properties by Selim II (r. 1566-74) remains unpublished, she has recently studied the Ottoman archives of Patmos that have also attracted the attention of Elizabeth Zachariadou.3 As we are concerned with the use of Ottoman archives, among Evangelia Balta's many projects it is her work on the

tahrir registers covering

Greece that is most relevant; she is also one of a small number of Greek scholars to have spent long weeks and months working in Istanbul. One of her major studies concerns the island of Euboa, which before the Ottoman

45

available for a few further places in northern Greece as well. In addition a batch of registers from Crete recently have re-emerged in Istanbul and apparently are now

in

the hands of the Administration of Pious

Foundations/Vaktflar idaresi, although there is no telling when they will be made accessible to scholars. 1

A major monograph based on the qadi registers, on the Jines of what

has been done for Bursa, Jerusalem or Ankara has not to my knowledge been written on any town in Greece, at least not in any of the languages that I can

read. Even so there is a good deal to report as the scholars who work on these court registers have published quite a bit of their work in English: Antonis

Anastasopoulos has focused on local elites in northern Greece on the basis of the Verroia registers of the 1700s, while Eleni Gara has studied these same registers i n their seventeenth-century incarnations, with special attention to

conquest was a Venetian possession. In line with the preoccupations of

the debt nexus and the migration of artisans.2 From her work there emerges a

historians working on this material worldwide, she has tried to answer

provincial society dominated by wealthy Muslim elite figures, quite consonant

questions concerning the relationship between population and food supplies.4

with the setup i n Serrai as reflected in the unique town chronicle of Papa

A later publication of hers deals with the Muslim and Christian pious

Synadinos; these members of the Ottoman elite were often moneylenders and

foundations of Serres/Serrai - again as they appear in Ottoman records - and their role in the formation of urban quarters.5

local villages were indebted to them on a permanent, quasi-institutional basis.

As for the younger generation of Greek scholars they have 'moved with the times' and given special attention to the registers compiled by the scribes of Ottoman qadis. After all work on the basis of these records, concerning urban history and including micro-historical studies of social relations have been undertaken from Cairo to Sarajevo, wherever Ottoman qadis once officiated. Due to historical vicissitudes often impossible to reconstruct, qadi registers survive in Greek deposits mainly for the island of Crete, the city of 1 Evangelia Balta, Les vakifs de Serres et de sa region (XVe et XVIe s.) {Athens: Centre de . Recherches N6o-Helleniques, 1995), pp 185-203.

2 The Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, the Greek l..a"4s, St�ies in Hon ur ofl£!hn C. Alexander, �

ed. by Elias Kolovos, Phokion Kotzageorges, Soph1a La10u and Mannos Sanyannes (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2007), pp. 9-10; Sophia Laiou, "Alliances and Disputes in the Ottoman 1h Periphery: The Monastery of Leimon (Mytilene) and .its Social Environment in t�e 1_7 . 2002 Kongreye Sunulan Btldirtler ongresi Ankara: 9-13 Eylul Century," XIV. Tiirk Tarih K (Ankara: Tilrk Tarih Kurumu, 2005), vol. 2, pp. 139 1-1401

3 Eugenia Kermeli, "Vakifs Consisting of Shares in S.hips: hiiccets fC?m the S�int John Thc:logos

Monastery on Patmos," in The Kapudan Pasha. Hts Office and hts Dommn, ed. by �hza�th Zachariadou (Rethymnon: University of Crete Press, 2002), pp. 213-20: The French h1stonans Gilles Veinstein and Nicolas Valin also have worked on the Patmos arch1ve. On the policies of Selim II with respect to church possessions see: John Aluander (Alexandropoulos), "The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away: Athos and the Confiscation Affair of 1568-1569," Athonika Symmeikta, 4 Mount Athos in the 14'"-16'" Centuries (1997),

1 49-200. 4 Evangelia Balta, L'Eubee d Ia fin du X¥ siecle. Economie et population. Les registres de l'annee 1474 (Athens: Society of the Study of Euboa, 1989). 5 Balta, Les vaJcift de Serres.

But Gara also has brought together Ottoman and Greek sources to highlight the capacity for self-organization shown by many villagers, most famously on the islands but on the mainland as well. 3 Marinos Sariyannis on the other hand has tried to find out something about the 'lower depths' of Istanbul society including the underworld and drug-addicts. Focusing on a city outside Greece but that in the past was home to a sizeable Greek populati on, Sariyannis' project has made it necessary to use an ingenious combination of narrative and archival documentation.4

1

NUkhet and Nuri Ad1yeke, "Newly Discovered in Turkish Archives: Kadi Registers and Other Documents on Crete," Turcica 32 (2000), 447-63. While Elena Frangak.is-Syrett does not work on Ottoman documents, her studies of trade and entrepreneurship in lzmir are so important that one of them must at least be mentioned: Elena Frangakis-Syrett, The Commerce ofSmyrna in the Eighteenth Century (1700-1820) (Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992).

2 Antonis Anastasopoulos, "The Mixed Elite of a Balka.n Town: Karaferye in the Second Half

of the Eighteenth Century," in Provincial Elites in the Ouoman Empire, ed. by Antonis Anastasopoulos (Rethymnon: University of Crete Press, 2005), pp. 259-68; Eleni Gara, "f;uha for the Janissaries - Velen�e for the Poor. Competition for Raw Material and Workforce between Salonica and Verria 1600-1650," in Crafts and Craftsmen of the Middle East, Fashioning the Individual in the Muslim Mediterranean, ed. by Suraiya Faroqhi and Randi Deguilhem (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 121-52.

3 Paolo Odorico et alii (eds. and translators), Conseils et memoires de Synadinos pretre de Serres en Macedoine (XVIr siecle) (Paris: Association Pierre Belon, 1996); Eleni Gara, "In Search of Communities in Seventeenth-century Ottoman Sources: The Case of the Kara Ferye District." Turcica, 30 (1998), 135-62. . 4 Marinos Sariyannis, "'Neglected Trades': Glimpses into the 17th Century Istanbul Underworld." Turcica, 38 (2006), pp. 155-79.

46

ANOTHER M I RROR FOR PRINCES In emphasizing social history Greek researchers working on Ottoman

archival documents fit i n very well with the trends of historical research current in other parts of the world. While the localities studied are mostly in Greece, there is limited interest in what might be called 'Greek peculiarities'; and as a group, scholars who work on Ottoman documents seem to distance themselves from nationalist discourse. The records used are Ottoman at least for the most part; but the methodology is international.

T H E 0 T T 0 M A N E M P I R E I N W0 R L D H 1 S T 0 R y

47

because it goes back to the mid-fifteenth century, a time for which few records survive in Istanbul.

I

But at least where studies intended for an international public were concerned, the real breakthrough came with the work of Dariusz KoJodziejczyk.2 This author wrote a detailed monograph on relations between the Ottoman Empire and Poland, which were conflictual for a variety of reasons. First of all until the mid-fifteenth century there was competition with the Ottomans over access to the Black Sea and domination over the

What a few people can achieve: the use of the Onoman archives by Polish scholars We will now discuss some of the 'neighbours' of the Ottoman Empire whose historiography has benefited or could benefit from the study of Ottoman archival documents. Compared to Hungary Ottoman studies in Poland have long been something of a poor relation; and once again political factors provide at least a partial explanation. After all the Nazi occupation was both long and extremely destructive. In addition when everything was said and done, the short-lived Ottoman province of Podolia was probably a minor preoccupation for Polish historians, and Kamieniec Podolsk a town of the second order. As a result Polish scholars perhaps did not feel as pressing a need to include Ottoman documents in their discussions of national history. However there were some people who thought otherwise: i n spite of the extremely difficult conditions of the 1950s, Jan Reychman and Ananiasz Zajaczkowski came up with a comprehensive study of Ottoman diplomatics that once it had been translated into English, until the appearance of Mi.ibahat Kiiti.ikoglu's work in 1994 remained the standard work on the subject. Many students preparing for their encounter with Ottoman archival documents in the 1970s and 1980s must have worked their way through it. Furthermore in recent years as Crimean documents have become accessible in sizeable numbers, this work has taken on a new lease of life, as Crimean archival material happened to be the authors' specialty. I During those same years, Zygmunt Abrahamowicz also published a catalogue of the Ottoman documents surviving in Polish archives; this collection is so impressive

principality of Moldavia, a struggle which the sultans won and the kings of Poland lost. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries moreover, the constant border incidents between Cossacks and Tatars often strained Ottoman-Polish relations to the breaking point. At the same time by the late 1500s the Ottoman sultans were in a position to declare which candidates for the Pol ish throne they would or would not accept. It is widely known that Prince Henri

of Valois, brother to Charles lX of France allowed himself to be elected king of Poland and then fled the country

stante pede

when the news of Charles'

death reached him: he was enthroned as Henri III, famous from the novels of Alexandre Dumas. Yet it is less well known that this election was due to the fact that the Ottoman side previously had declared that a candidate from the Habsburg dynasty or close to the latter would not receive the sultan's recognition} As the Ottoman chancery registers (Mi.ihimme) make abundantly clear, Selim II or more likely his viziers would have preferred a local nobleman. But as they realized that none of the Polish nobles might be able to secure a majority at the Diet, they were willing to settle for a prince from the House of Valois. This is one of the classical examples of the Ottoman archives shedding light on a political conflict in a European country. Dariusz KoJodziejczyk has discussed the difficult history of Polish­ Ottoman relations with a strong emphasis on the structure and genesis of the documents in which they have been recorded; in addition he has done detailed work on the Ottoman tax register of Podolia which was one of the few fully­ fledged records of this type to be produced during the seventeenth century.4 For the most part by this period the decline of military tax assignments

(timar)

and the rise of tax farming had made the preparation of elaborate taxpayer 1 Z gmunt Abrahamowicz. Katalog Dokument6w Tureckich. Dokumenti do Dr.iejow Polski i

. fra;.ro': Osc1ennyc � ': I.Atach 1455-1672 �Warsaw: Polska Akadcmia Nauk, 1959).

1 J n Reychman and Ananiasz Zajaczkowski, Handbook of Ottoman-Turkish Diplomatics, tr., � . rev1sed, m�exed and ed. by Andr,ew S. Ehrcnkreutz, Fanny Davis and Tibor Halasi-Kun (The ns: Mouton, 1968);. M�bahat S.KUtUkoglu, Osmanll Belgelerinin Dili (Diplomatik) Hague, Pa (Istanbul: Kubbealll AkademiSI KilltUr ve Sanat Valcf1, 1994).

Danusz K�?dZICJCZyk, Ottoma.n-PoliSh Diplomatic Relations (15th-18th Century). An Annotated &Jwon of 'AJuinames and Other Documents (Leidcn: E. J. Brill, 2000). 3 Kcmal Beydilli, Die polnischen K onigswahlen und lnterregnen von 1572 und 1576 im Lichte o.rmanischer Archivalien. Ein Beitrag r.ur Oeschichte der osmanischen Machtpolitik (Munich·· Dr Dr Rudolf Trofenik, 1974). -i Eyalet-i Kamanice. The Ottoman survey register u � Kolodziejczyk, Defter-i M s ariu l a ass f 4D a (ca. 1681) Text, translation, and commentary 2 vols, (Cambridge MA: Harvard of ('od o_ll Umvers1ty Press, 2004).

A NOTHER M I R R O R F O R P R I NC E S

48

T H E OTT O M A N E M P I R E I N W O R L D H I S T O R Y

registers in the established provinces of the Empire into an unnecessary expense. But where new conquests were involved, for example in the Ukraine such records still were being compiled, probably to provide a reliable basis for future tax-farming contracts. Ottoman officialdom thus has left us relatively abundant data on the historical

geography of the province: and as

Kolodziejczyk's edition includes a translation, it is not even necessary to know either Polish or Ottoman to make use of his work.

49

Furthermore four recent studies on the conquests of Cyprus ( 1 570-73) and Crete ( 1645-69) both 'crown jewels' of the Venetian colonial empire, have shown that it is a mistake to underestimate the Ottoman archives and neglect the perspectives of sultans and viziers.l Vera Costantini's study of the Cyprus conflict is noteworthy for its attempt to coordinate the sources produced by Ottomans and Venetians. Remarkably enough, although the Venetian archives are otherwise so comprehensive, the conqueror Lata Mustafa P�a and his officials seem to have searched in vain for taxation-relevant documents left by

Rival empires in a common world: the Venetian reflections in Ottoman documents

stato da mar

and its

Scholars working on Venice are normally so fascinated by the richness of the Archivio di Stato that they will rarely search for outside sources in

their predecessors. Maybe such records had never been prepared; for the Venetians in their colonies did not produce general surveys akin for instance to the Aorentine Catasto of the 1400s. Or else the relevant registers had been lost during the sieges of Nicosia and Famagusta, or even carried away by one or the other escapee. However Vera Costantini has analyzed a register of

Istanbul or elsewhere. More profound reasons may be involved as well: for

prisoners in the Ottoman archives relevant to the conquest of Nicosia and

twentieth-century Venetian historians, the loss of Cyprus to Sultan Selim II

listing over ten thousand captives.2 She also has located documents that

demonstrates the unpalatable fact that in the later 1500s, Venice definitely had become a second-rate power. Ottoman historians will sympathize: after all we are also still struggling against the use of 'Ottoman decline' as an explanatory device for whatever a given historian thinks needful of explaining. As for non­ specialists particularly in the Turkish context, one of the first questions they will ask an early modernist inevitably concerns 'the beginnings of decline in the Ottoman Empire'. Ironically as far the historiography is concerned the Ottoman polity and Venice seem to have suffered a common fate. A fascination with the 'decline theme' can be an impediment to research: at least I sometimes wonder whether historians' concern with 'the decline of Venice' has not been the reason why i n spite of the rich documentation on the Ottomans that we find in the Venetian archives,

demonstrate that the Venetians did not totally disappear from the island once the conquest was completed: certainly the governing cadres were either killed in the fighting or else fled if they had a chance. But individual merchants returned once the war was over and the sultan's administration continued to employ some of them as tax farmers and especially administrators of saltpans. Presumably these men were expected to provide some continuity in methods of taxation. Costantini's statements concerning the "vocazione marittima e commerciale" of Cyprus confirm the findings of Molly Greene's work on post-conquest Crete. Both authors have studied their respective topics from an overarching Mediterranean perspective and concluded that in spite of their

thalassocratia and

Ottoman history for a long time has been such a stepchild of historians

conflicts, the Venetian

working out of Italy. At present this situation may be changing, but even

both were part of a shared early modem world. From the late 1600s onward if

now the works by Italian scholars on Ottoman themes are very l imited in number. As we are here concerned with the use of archival sources prepared by

the sultans' officials, some of the pioneer work done by Maria Pia Pedani Fabris unfortunately remains outside our purview: for quite often she has focused on Venetian records that shed light on Ottoman affairs.1 Even so her

work on the Ottoman documents in the Venetian archives has greatly added to

the land-based Ottoman Empire

we follow Greene's account - and beginning in the late 1500s if we adopt Costantini's perspective - this 'ancien regime' lost ground against more 'modem' polities: the French who bought olive oil in the ports of Crete and the English who competed with the Venetians in the late sixteenth-century eastern Mediterranean, deaJing in valuable cloth but also in everyday goods

our understanding of the long and complicated relationship between the two polities.2

1 Molly Greene, A Shared World. Christians a "4 Muslims in the Early Modern Medi�erranean (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2000); Erstn GUisoy, Girit'in Fethi ve Osmanll ldaresinin Kuru/mast (Istanbul: Tarih ve Tab1at a •· 2004). A. Nilkhet Adtyeke, Nifr! Ad1yeke, ltUr YaymcJhgJ, 2006). Vera Costantm1's study of h Kil Fethinden Kaybma Girit (Istanbul: Bab1a the conquest of Cyprus is forthcoming. 2 Vera Costantini, "Destini di guerra. L' inventario ottomano dei prigionieri di Nicosia (settembre 1570)," Studi Vener.iani, N.S. XLV (2003), pp. 22941 . •.

1

Maria Pia Pedani Fabris, In IWTN! del Gran Signore, lnviati otwmani a Vener.ia dalla caduta di Costantinopoli alta guerra di Candia (Venezia: Dcputacione Editrice, 1994). 2 Maria Pia Pedani Fabris, I "Documenti turchi" dell'Archivio di Stato di Vener.ia (Roma: Ministero pe r i beni culturali e ambientali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1994).

_Y!'f

50

ANOTHER

M I RROR

FOR

P R I NCES

such as raisins, of major importance as a sweetener at a time when sugar was sti l l very expensive. I For Ersin Giilsoy by contrast the Ottomans are the major topic: his work is concerned with the events and logistics of the Cretan campaigns and the manner in which the island was governed once the rule of the sultan had been established; the Ad1yekes in addition have paid special attention to the psychological impact of this 'late' conquest upon the self-image of the Ottoman elite. Interestingly 'campaign studies' are not very common in Turkish historiography in spite of the popular interest in the Ottomans as conquerors. In addition both Giilsoy and his Greek colleague Elias Kolovos from the University of Crete have studied the Cretan tahrir of 1 670-71 . This enterprise took the place of an earlier registration dated to the year 1650, which had been much closer to the 'classical' Ottoman practice of estimating the productivity of peasants who held - or often did not hold - a full or half farmstead. 2 By contrast the tahrir of 1670-7 1 was concerned with the productivity of individual pieces of land and no longer with its cultivators; it was moreover based on the assumption that local peasants and other private persons - but not the Ottoman state - were the owners of the island's arable. This novel departure was justified by the argument that the new arrangement conformed more closely to the tenets of Islamic jurists. All these matters are of course 'purely domestic' to the Ottoman Empire and the element of contact with the outside world - Venetian or other - is completely absent here. However Ottoman-Venetian relationships and more particularly, the conditions under which subjects of the Signoria could do business on Ottoman territory are once agai n i n focus when we study the ahidnames (in European parlance: capitulations) issued by Ottoman sultans. In the same way inter­ empire relations are fore-grounded in the ecnebi defterleri; these registers consist of the responses that the sultans' officials made to requests by the Venetian ambassador or balyoz as he was often called in Ottoman documents.3 The ecnebi defterleri survive for the 1600s ; whether earlier examples were ever compiled remains unknown. For the historian concerned with the position of Venice on the 'international' scene the latter registers are particularly precious: for as Costantini has noted Ottoman documents addressed to the Doge or the resident ambassador closely reflected the political I

Maria Fusaro,

Uva passa, una guerra commerciale tra Venezia e l'lnghilterra (1540-1640)

(Venice: II Cardo,

2

1996).

Elias Kolovos, "Beyond 'Classical' Ottoman Defterology: A Preliminary Assessment of the Tahrir Registers of 1670-71 concerning Crete and the Aegean Islands." in The Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, the Greek lAnds, pp. 201-236.

T H E OTTOM A N E M P I R E I N W O R L D H I S TO R Y

51

'climate' of the time. Depending upon circumstances the Venetians might be described as 'perfidious' or alternatively as faithful allies of the sultans.1 If we keep in mind how central the relationship with the Ottoman sultan was for Venetian trade and indeed for the survival of the Republic, it does not make sense to limit ourselves to what the Signoria had to say on the matter. Even if the Ottoman documentation often is silent on issues that most interest the present-day historian, what i t does say is frequently remarkable and must be taken into account.

In conclusion What has this discussion shown us? To begin with a few obvious points: at least where the early modern period is concerned, the Ottoman archives do not reflect relations with China, Japan or Moghul India, to say nothing of the Americas. However they do have a great deal to tell us on Ottoman provinces that later became independent states, and in this paper we have only given a very rough sketch of the studies undertaken in this domain and by implication the possibilities that can be explored in the future. Moreover where Venice, Poland, Portugal and other empires of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries are involved, Ottoman archival records also make a substantive contribution to historical knowledge; most of this material is located in Istanbul, but rich deposits of Ottoman documents in Venetian, Habsburg, French or Polish archives and sometimes libraries also have a good deal to offer. Whether historians have made use of these sources, and if so to what extent certainly always has depended on political conj unctures; even physical access to the archives often was only possible when the relevant states maintained reasonably good relations. But now that nationalism and the national state are regarded with a degree of scepticism at least among intellectuals, and students can learn to read Ottoman documents at major American universities, there is some reason for guarded optimism. In this paper we have argued that researchers whose focus is not Turkey should take cognizance of the Ottoman archives. However this statement does not stand on its own but is part of a broader discourse: Salih Ozbaran the major connoisseur of Portuguese archives in Turkey has recently made a forceful point that Turkish scholars need to get interested in the history of Basra, today in located in Iraq, but also should follow developments in early

3

Hans Theunissen, "Ottoman-Venetian Diplomatics: The ahidnames. The Historical Background and the Development of a Category of Political-Diplomatic Instruments together with an Annotated Edition of a Corpus of Relevant Documents," Ph D dissertation, Utrecht, 1991. (Only available on the Internet); compare also Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

1 Vera Costantini "Contemptible unbelievers" or "loyal friends"? Notes on the many ways the Ottomans named Venetians in the 16th century," in Matthias Kappler ed., "In and around Turkic Literatures," forthcoming.

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modem Yemen and India. Of course in the case of Turkish researchers, such an interest will be sparked by the Ottoman-Portuguese rivalry in the Indian Ocean during the early sixteenth century. Yet it is Ozbaran's main point that this

PRESENTING THE SULTANS' POWER, GLORY AND PIEfY: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

cannot be the whole story. After all, the world is wider than even the Ottoman Empire at the time of its greatest expansion; and this fact should be taken into account by Ottomanist historians as well. I

Historical work always is connected to present concerns and doubtless

current trends in the world, such as the presence of Turkish firms on Russian or German markets form the backdrop against which this re-orientation of historical research on the Ottomans is taking place. As Turkish firms become players in the world market, the horizons of Ottomanist historians have also expanded. But just as religious scholars of the past were warned to keep their distances from sultans and viziers lest they be corrupted by the temptations of power, we also need to tread warily when asked to draw connections of Ottoman situations with present-day problems - although publishers like us to do just that when they try to sell our books. An examination of eighteenth­ century documents in Istanbul archives on Mosul, Baghdad or Basra has a great deal to offer historians, but in most cases it is doubtful whether these records can shed much light on the present-day problems of that ancient and unfortunate country. Ottomanists now are invited to discover the wider world, with special emphasis on non-western countries, while historians dealing with Russia or Greece will be well advised to consult the Ottoman archives. All this needs to be done calmly, deliberately and not in haste, and with respect for the peculiarities of each type of document - yet without falling into the trap of 'document fetichism'.2 Rather a tall order. . .

In the Ottoman context, certain personages, buildings and events may be regarded as emblematic of sultanic power and legitimacy, and the manner in which these were viewed by contemporaries will occupy us in the present paper. We will discuss, in a comparative perspective, a number of accounts that Ottoman Muslims and non-Muslims, but also non-Ottoman authors have given of these people, structures and ceremonies. The period to be covered begins in the mid-sixteenth century, when the mature Sultan Stileyman was on the throne, and ends with the deposition of Ahmed III in 1730. By means of comparison we hope to bring out those features of sultanic self-assertion and legitimization that authors from different political and cultural environments have regarded in divergent ways, but also those personages and manifestations that were viewed by otherwise very different authors in rather a similar light. We will thus be concerned with the divides instituted by religion, and also by the struggles of rival empires and kingdoms. But that is by no means the whole story: we will also try to understand how across these

barriers, the Ottoman ruling elites managed to establish certain lines of

communication. At least indirectly such a comparative approach will permit us to determine whether, and if applicable to what extent, the image that the sultans projected, largely with their own officials and - perhaps - their subjects in mind, managed to cross the Ottoman borders. To what extent was it diffused, in France and elsewhere, and what features were most amenable to 'exportation'? In the long run we will have to ask ourselves to what extent contrary types of discourse, current in the European context or perhaps also among Ottoman non-Muslims, impeded the reception of the 'signals' that the sultans and their entourages sent out to convey to the world at large the message of sultanic power, glory and piety. But the study of these impediments will have to be part of a future project. Our undertaking is beset with quite a few complications. A major difficulty is connected to the fact that we need to pose the question, which frequently remains unanswered, to what extent the writings we wish to analyze

1 Salih Ozbaran, Yemen'den Basra'ya SmmJal