Şerefe - Studies in Honour of Prof. Géza Dávid on His Seventieth Birthday 9789634161820

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21st -Century Studies in Humanities

ŞEREFE STUDIES IN HONOUR OF PROF. GÉZA DÁVID ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY Edited by

P  ÁL FODOR NÁNDOR E. KOVÁCS BENEDEK PÉRI

ŞEREFE STUDIES IN HONOUR OF PROF. GÉZA DÁVID ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

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21st -Century Studies in Humanities Editor: Pál Fodor

Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Budapest, 2019

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ŞEREFE STUDIES IN HONOUR OF PROF. GÉZA DÁVID ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY Edited by PÁL FODOR, NÁNDOR E. KOVÁCS and BENEDEK PÉRI

Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Budapest, 2019

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© Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2019 © Authors, 2019 ISBN 978-963-416-182-0 ISSN 2630-8827

Published by the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Responsible editor: Pál Fodor Prepress preparation: Institute of History, RCH HAS Research Assistance Team; Leader: Éva Kovács Cover design: Bence Marafkó Page layout: Bence Marafkó Map: Béla Nagy Printed in Hungary by Séd Kft., Szekszárd

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Géza Dávid

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CONTENTS

TO GÉZA DÁVID ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY (Pál Fodor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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L’ANATOLIE PRÉ-OTTOMANE SELON UN CHOIX DE SOURCES DU XIII ÈME SIÈCLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Michel Balivet – Homa Lessan Pezechki DAVID AND THE CHAIN MAIL: A TRADITIONAL TELMÎH (‘ALLUSION’) IN OTTOMAN POETRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Benedek Péri WOLF ON THE BORDER: YAHYAPAŞAOĞLU BALİ BEY (?–1527). EXPANSION AND PROVINCIAL ÉLITE IN THE EUROPEAN CONFINES OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Pál Fodor FIRANGI, ZARBZAN, AND RUM DASTURI: THE OTTOMANS AND THE DIFFUSION OF FIREARMS IN ASIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Gábor Ágoston AFTER MOHÁCS: HOW NEWS FROM HUNGARY REACHED VENICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Colin Imber TOGETHER OR SEPARATELY ‒ FAMILY STRATEGIES AND RESILIENCE IN DIVIDED HUNGARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Ildikó Horn 7

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NEW FINDINGS ON THE EXTENT OF THE EARLY ESTATES OF THE BEYLERBEYİS OF BUDA AND THE BEYS OF MOHAÇ�������������������������������������������������������� 139 Éva Sz. Simon THE LION THAT WAS ONLY A CAT: SOME NOTES ON THE LAST YEARS AND THE DEATH OF ARSLAN PASHA, BEY OF SEMENDİRE AND BEYLERBEYİ OF BUDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Claudia Römer – Nicolas Vatin THE DEMISE OF THE PASHA: SOME REMARKS ON HADIM ALİ PASHA, THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BUDA’S DEATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Feridun M. Emecen SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PROBATE INVENTORIES FROM TOLNA TOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Ibolya Gerelyes SOLDIERS OF THE SULTAN IN OTTOMAN HUNGARY: THE TESTIMONY OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS . . . . . . 211 Gyöngyi Kovács AN OTTOMAN GARDEN – THE PALACE OF BEYLERBEYİS IN BUDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Adrienn Papp REGULATIONS AND PRACTICE: FICTION AND REALITY IN OTTOMAN HUNGARY (THOUGHTS ON SOURCE CRITICISM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Klára Hegyi

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ACCOUNTS OF THE BATTLE OF MEZŐKERESZTES IN THE PINELLI COLLECTION OF THE BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA IN MILAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Zsuzsa Kovács AYN ALİ’S TREATISE ON THE “RANKS” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Douglas A. Howard THE BOSNIAN FRANCISCANS IN OTTOMAN PEST-BUDA . . 307 Antal Molnár THE STORY OF MÜRTEZA PASHA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 Balázs Sudár THE 1635 PETITION OF THE TATARS OF KAZAN RE-EXAMINED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 Mária Ivanics VON DER HEERESFOLGE FREIGESTELLTE TIMAR-INHABER IN DER ZWEITEN HÄLFTE DES 17. JAHRHUNDERTS . . . . . . 381 Hans Georg Majer OTTOMAN TRIBUTES AND CIRCULATION OF MONEY IN THE PRINCIPALITY OF TRANSYLVANIA, 1658–1687 . . . . 399 János Buza JÁNOS FERDINAND AUER AND HIS IMPRISONMENT IN THE SEVEN TOWERS (1663–1674): A PRISONER OF DIPLOMACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419 Özgür Kolçak PETITION BY REBEL HUNGARIAN NOBLES FOR COMPLETE SUBMISSION TO THE OTTOMAN PORTE (1672) . . . . . . . . . . 437 Sándor Papp 9

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ROMA ÇASARIYLA ŞEVKETLÜ PADİŞAHIMUZUN SULH [U] SALAHI OLUB – THE TWO ALİ PASHAS OF TEMEŞVAR ON THE HABSBURG, HUNGARIAN AND OTTOMAN FRONTIER AT THE TIME OF THE RÁKÓCZI WAR OF INDEPENDENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 Hajnalka Tóth ESCHATOLOGY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF OTTOMAN IMPERIAL PROPAGANDA IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: SOME REMARKS ON THE TREATISE OF İBRAHİM MÜTEFERRİKA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 Nándor Erik Kovács FIRES IN ISTANBUL: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY REFLECTIONS ON THE SULTANS’ LEGITIMACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503 Suraiya Faroqhi THE SANCAK OF SEMENDİRE AND ITS GOVERNORS IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . . . . . . . . . . 523 Mehmet İnbaşı HUNGARIAN DIPLOMATIC ENVOYS IN CONSTANTINOPLE DURING THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION AND WAR OF INDEPENDENCE OF 1848–1849 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 György Csorba

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TO GÉZA DÁVID ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

In early September 1974, two young people timidly went into the Department

of Turkish Studies of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest to ask about the conditions for entering the Turkish Studies course. They were met in the room by a tall, improbably thin young man with a great mop of hair, of whom they quickly learned that he was also a beginner, on the teaching staff. That was how Géza Dávid acquired his first two students – in a department where before him, or along with him, such scholars as Ármin Vámbéry, Gyula Németh, Lajos Fekete and Gyula Káldy-Nagy taught and pursued research. The years since then have passed quickly, and the junior lecturer with long brown hair has greyed into a respected professor and head of department, an internationally renowned scholar of the Ottoman Empire. This year, he is celebrating his seventieth birthday. As one of these first people who had the honour of being his student and subsequently his colleague, and who has been a collaborator on many publications, I felt it to be a natural obligation – together with two other, and somewhat younger, of his former students – to pay our respects with a book that befits this special day, and thus to congratulate him on a long, hardworking life that has borne so much fruit. Ever since the initiatives of Lajos Fekete, Hungarian Ottomanists have paid particular attention to the history of Hungary under Ottoman rule. One of the areas they are strongest in is tahrir defteri studies, which in recent decades has also been widely taken up in Turkey. But Dávid went well beyond his great predecessors and startled everyone in the field with a model monograph that he published in Hungarian in 1982 and in Turkish in 1999. That book 11

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FOREWORD

demonstrated, through innovative methods and their application, how a credible history of an Ottoman sancak should be written, covering public administration, demographics, land ownership and economic affairs.1 These studies took him to his second great area of research, the demography of Hungary in the sixteenth century. A great impulse for this work came from his father, the outstanding demographer Zoltán Dávid, who effectively set him the task of extending his own eighteenth-century research into the Ottoman era, so that together they would cover all of the demographic changes in the country during the early modern period. Géza Dávid performed this task brilliantly, and his seminal studies on the subject have been reproduced almost word for word in many monographs.2 It was also the subject he habilitated with (“Demographic history of sixteenth-century Hungary”) in Eötvös Loránd University. His third great research topic is Ottoman government history. He and Klára Hegyi made the most original discoveries on Ottoman administrative strategies, and his comparative survey of Balkan and Hungarian Ottoman administration has been one of the most-cited Hungarian works in recent international literature on the subject.3 Dávid’s next major area of interest was Ottoman prosopography. As a young researcher, he discovered, and became one of the first to demonstrate, the significance of the timar ruznamçe defterleri and the companion documents to these, the rüus defterleri. These have been the main sources for his work of several decades tracing the careers of many beylerbeyis and sancakbeyis, particularly those who were active in Hungary, thereby contributing to our knowledge of the classical Ottoman establishment and to making the abstract concept of “the state” more personal. There can be few more detailed and thorough biographies of Ottoman leaders than his study of Kasım, who started 1  Osmanlı Macaristan’ında Toplum, Ekonomi ve Yönetim. 16. Yüzyılda Şimontornya Sancağı. (Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 81.) Çeviren: Hilmi Ortaç. İstanbul, 2  For some of these writings, see in Studies in Demographic and Administrative History of Ottoman Hungary. (Analecta Isisiana) İstanbul, 1997. 3  ‘Administration in Ottoman Europe’, in Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead (eds.), Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World. London and New York, 1995, 71–90.

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FOREWORD

as a voyvoda and rose to district governor, and then governor-general of Buda and Temeşvar (Temesvár/Timişoara).4 From the outset, his interests have extended to the operation and long-term history of the Ottoman prebendal (timar) system, on which he has published many studies, large and small. Recently, he has been working with Douglas A. Howard on a critical edition of one of the most important seventeenth-century source on the timar system, the treatise by Ayn Ali. This work is expected to make a major alteration to our current knowledge of the subject. Dávid’s constant and sustained archive research has engendered more than journal articles and books. He has been one of the most prolific contributors among Hungarian scholars to various Islamic and Ottomanist reference books. He has written, and continues to write, excellent entries for Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi and The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Some of these entries are more like monographs in length, and convey the latest knowledge on areas and periods that are still unknown territory for the world outside the profession.5 This work is largely responsible for Géza Dávid now being one of the best-known Hungarian Ottomanists abroad. It is not the only factor, however. He has become a favourite partner of international scholars through his exceptional language skills: he has a reading and speaking knowledge at various levels of Turkish, English, German, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish, and has demonstrated this to spectacular effect at countless conferences. Such is his knowledge of his favourite foreign language, Turkish, that for several decades he was the most sought-after interpreter at meetings of Hungarian and Turkish prime ministers and heads of state. (Here I should note that in 1987, he wrote and published a Hungarian–Turkish/Turkish– Hungarian tourist dictionary, the first of its kind in Hungary and Turkey.)6 Among his other merits, this activity contributed to his being awarded, in 4  ‘An Ottoman Military Career on the Hungarian Borders: Kasım Voyvoda, Bey and Pasha’, in Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (eds.), Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest. (The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage. Politics, Society and Economy, 20.) Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2000, 265–297. 5  One example: ‘Macaristan’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 27. Ankara, 2003, 286–295. 6  Turistik Sözlük: Türkçe–Macarca/Útiszótár: Török–magyar. Budapest, 1987.

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FOREWORD

1997, the highest Turkish civilian honour, the Order of Merit of the Republic of Turkey (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Liyakat Nişanı, conferred by the president of the state). The Turkish Historical Society (Türk Tarih Kurumu) elected him a corresponding member in 1989 and an honorary member in 2013. This year, he was also awarded the Officers’ Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit. In addition to his administrative tasks (Head of the Department of Turkish Studies, Faculty of Humanities, ELTE University, 1993–1998, 1999–2014; Director, Institute of Oriental Studies, Faculty of Humanities, ELTE University, 2010–2014) and his intensive research work, Géza Dávid has raised several generations of Ottomanists and helped them to become internationally competitive scholars. It has been under his guidance that most of the young and middle Hungarian generations of today have gained their doctorates and become accepted in the profession. Several of his former students have contributed to this book. These multiple areas of work and other engagements have not prevented him from devoting much time over the decades to editorial work. He has always been happily involved with the journal Keletkutatás (Oriental Studies), of which he was a member of the editorial board between 1986 and 1995, and (together with the writer of these lines) has been co-editor-in-chief since then. A demonstration of his incredible self-discipline and devotion is that he has never broken the resolution he once made to publish an article of some extent in every issue of the journal. He has thus become its most productive contributor. We have also jointly edited several multi-authored books that have received considerable acclaim. This work has borne out Dávid’s unmatched philological and technical thoroughness. No error can escape his eagle eye. Géza Dávid’s 375-item list of publications is a convincing illustration of his productiveness. His works, written in English, Turkish, French, German, and Hungarian, have been published in Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Tunisia, Turkey and the United States. His books, papers and text publications7 are of first-magnitude significance for the understanding of the 7  See, for instance, Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, „Az ország ügye mindenek előtt való”. A szultáni tanács Magyarországra vonatkozó rendeletei (1544–1545, 1552)/“Affairs of State Are Supreme”. The Orders of the Ottoman Imperial Council Pertaining to Hungary (1544–1545, 1552). (História

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FOREWORD

administrative system, demographics and economic history of Hungary under Ottoman dominion. In addition to doing much to raise the international esteem of Hungarian Turkish and Ottoman studies, he has also acquired lasting honours in building and deepening Hungarian–Turkish cultural connections. His efforts in this field go well beyond academia: for more than ten years, as president of the Hungarian–Turkish Friendship Society, he worked productively to increase the awareness of Hungarian culture and to keep alive the memory of Hungarian statesmen (Imre Thököly, Ferenc Rákóczi and the Kossuth-emigration) who once took refuge in the realm of the sultans. His outlook is defined fundamentally by his commitment to his homeland and his nation, and by the Christian values that he consistently but quietly holds. He considers as the greatest gift of his life his chance to be present at the birth of his four children and to see them growing up. Géza Dávid is a “man of learning” (Bildungsbürger/ehl-i kalem) in the highest sense of the term, with highly refined tastes. His love of the arts has been constant throughout his life. His knowledge of music and painting is awe-inspiring, and he can recall from memory the names and years of the most obscure Italian monuments. In classical music, he is an “omnivore”, but he has a special place for Bartók, Beethoven and Wagner. It is thus no surprise that an eminent team of authors has gathered together out of his close and wider friends, colleagues and admirers to present him, on his seventieth birthday, with what hopefully many will find to be a book of real substance. It is intended as more than an expression of our respect, an encouragement for work that remains to be done in the coming years for the benefit of all of us. Géza, God bless you with many more birthdays! Şerefe!  

On behalf of the editors Pál Fodor

könyvtár. Okmánytárak, 1.) Budapest, 2005; Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, „Ez az ügy fölöttébb fontos”. A szultáni tanács Magyarországra vonatkozó rendeletei (1559–1560, 1564–1565). (História könyvtár. Okmánytárak, 6.) Budapest, 2009.

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L’ANATOLIE PRÉ-OTTOMANE SELON UN CHOIX DE SOURCES DU XIII ÈME SIÈCLE Michel Balivet

Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence, France [email protected]

Homa Lessan Pezechki

Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence, France [email protected]

L’ANATOLIE DES SELDJOUKIDES AUX MONGOLS : LE CONTEXTE HISTORIQUE

L’arrivée des Turcs sur le plateau anatolien, au milieu du XI

siècle, change radicalement les données politiques et ethniques de la partie asiatique de l’Empire byzantin comme d’ailleurs de l’Arménie, annexée progressivement par le pouvoir impérial grec au cours du même siècle. Après la victoire turque sur l’armée byzantine à Mantzikert en 1071, se mettent rapidement en place, dans la partie centrale et orientale de la péninsule, des émirats turcs qui s’implantent durablement autour de places-fortes stratégiques comme Konya/Ikonion (les Seldjoukides), Sivas/Sébaste (les Danichmendides), Erzincan/Arzingan (les Mengüdjékides), Erzurum/ Théodosiopolis (les Saltukides), etc. Au XIIe siècle, l’essor de la dynastie seldjoukide de Konya rétablit progressivement l’unité de la partie musulmane de l’Anatolie, par l’annexion successive des émirats turcs rivaux des Seldjoukides comme les Danichmendides, tandis que la partie occidentale et côtière du pays reste entre les mains de la dynastie byzantine e

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MICHEL BALIVET – HOMA LESSAN PEZECHKI

des Comnène qui régna sur l’empire de 1081 à 1185. Il y a donc, au milieu du XIIe siècle, deux pouvoirs unitaires et centralisés, la Romanie byzantine à l’ouest et le sultanat de Rûm au centre et à l’est, sans oublier dans le Taurus cilicien l’établissement d’une Petite Arménie autour de la dynastie Roubénienne.1 Au XIIIe siècle, deux facteurs extérieurs à l’Anatolie vont radicalement changer la configuration du pays : premièrement, l’expulsion des Byzantins de Constantinople sous les coups des Croisés occidentaux en 1204, qui entraînera la constitution de plusieurs États byzantins en exil, dans les parties occidentale et pontique de l’Anatolie (Nicée, Amisos, Trébizonde). Deuxièmement, au milieu du même siècle, l’irruption des Mongols en Anatolie turque affaiblira progressivement puis finalement fera disparaître le sultanat seldjoukide au tout début du XIVe siècle. Dans cette période de morcellement du territoire, qui commence en 1204 avec la prise de Constantinople par les Croisés et qui se continue avec l’écrasement des Seldjoukides par les Mongols à la bataille de Köse Dagh en 1243, nous allons tenter de comprendre le système de représentation que se font les Anatoliens de leur territoire envisagé dans ses divisions et dans ses frontières. Ce système de représentation concerne aussi les habitants de l’Anatolie, dans leur diversité linguistique et culturelle. Ces réalités, nous essaierons de les appréhender à partir de quelques sources premières, musulmanes et chrétiennes, en utilisant principalement l’ouvrage majeur qu’est la chronique persane al-Awâmir al-‘alâ’iyya fî l-umûr al-‘alâ’iyya,2 de l’historien seldjoukide Ibn Bîbî.3 Ce chroniqueur du XIIIe siècle a écrit une histoire des Seldjoukides d’Asie-Mineure de 1192 à 1280 qui nous donne des informations très précieuses sur la vie interne et la politique extérieure du sultanat de Konya.

1  Dynastie arménienne issue de Roubên ou Roupên 1er seigneur de la forteresse de Partzerpert (litt. Haut château) dans le Taurus, qui régna sur la Cilicie de 1080 jusqu’en 1225. 2  ‫االوامر العالئیه فى االمور العالئیه‬ 3  Sur la vie et l’œuvre de ce personnage cf. Michel Balivet, Homa Lessan Pezechki et Renée Mounier, Les Turcs seldjoukides d’Anatolie du XIe au XIVe siècle. Une anthologie des sources premières. Vol. 1. Les sources persanes, Ibn Bîbî. Aix-en-Provence, 2016, 63, sqq.

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L’ANATOLIE PRÉ-OTTOMANE

LA PERCEPTION DE L’ESPACE ANATOLIEN PAR LE CHRONIQUEUR IBN BÎBÎ Les mots utilisés

Si l’on consulte notre chroniqueur, on réalise rapidement qu’il a une vive conscience

de l’éclatement territoriale anatolien à son époque. Il distingue nettement les marches frontières, zones de turbulence dominées par les nomades, en utilisant des termes comme ‫ اوج‬ûdj, « extrémité, lisière, bord », ‫ ثغور‬soqur, « confins, places frontières, défilés non fortifiés », ‫ دربند‬darband, « endroit facile à défendre, défilés, pont, fort, etc. ». Ces zones périphériques sont clairement différenciées des territoires stables et disciplinés sous le contrôle direct des divers pouvoirs politiques centralisés : le dâr al-molk ‫ دارالملک‬seldjoukide, autour de Konya, capitale du sultanat, Armen khette ‫ارمن خطه‬, le pays d’Arménie, Khette-ye Teflis ‫خطه ی تفلیس‬, le pays de Tiflis, velâyat-e Gorj ‫والیت گرج‬, la Géorgie, molk-e Jânit ‫« ملک جانیت‬ territoire de Jânit », velâyat-e Lashkari ‫ والیت لشکری‬ou belâd-e Lashkari ‫« بالد لشکری‬ État byzantin des Lascarides de Nicée », etc.

Une double typologie de l’aire anatolienne : les pays « infidèles » et les territoires nomades

En une période où le sultanat seldjoukide a annexé tous ses concurrents turcs

d’Anatolie (Danichmendides, Saltukides, etc.), les seules spécifications politiques qui se détachent comme des éléments allogènes dans la péninsule, sont les États chrétiens et les groupes nomades ou d’origine nomade. En ce qui concerne les « infidèles », il s’agit de plusieurs groupes de principautés chrétiennes, soit byzantines (Rûm),4 soit arméniennes (Armen), soit caucasiennes (géorgienne, ‫ گرج‬Gorj, et abkhaze, ‫ ابخاز‬Abkhâz). Une mention spéciale doit être réservée aux Francs, terme qui désigne, dans les sources du temps, les chrétiens d’Occident, religieusement dépendant du pape. Ces Francs sont présents en Anatolie où ils opèrent en tant que mercenaires. Leur

4  Où plus rarement yûnân, ‫ ملک یونان‬molk-e yunân (texte persan : 97), « le pays grec » : Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 135.

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MICHEL BALIVET – HOMA LESSAN PEZECHKI

particularité est qu’ils sont signalés aussi bien dans l’armée byzantine que chez les Seldjoukides car les deux États les apprécient pour leurs grandes qualités guerrières. Ibn Bîbî brosse un tableau très précis de ces Francs, omniprésents politiquement et militairement tant à Constantinople qu’à Konya. À Byzance, ils se sentent suffisamment puissants pour venir réclamer leur solde en retard à l’empereur, allant jusqu’à interrompre le cérémonial de la cour et insulter une délégation turque reçue par le souverain byzantin.5 Les contingents Francs de l’armée seldjoukide affrontent avec succès aussi bien des derviches en révolte6 que l’armée mongole. Istankos, le chef des Francs est qualifié par Ibn Bîbî de guerrier « héroïque au combat ».7 Un général seldjoukide affirme avec conviction : « Si l’on me donnait mille cavaliers Francs, j’irais affronter les Mongols – même si Dieu les assistait et Il est puissant ! – et je reviendrais vainqueur. »8 Ibn Bîbî, en dehors de leurs qualités guerrières, les juge très négativement : « La haine et l’envie brûlent le cœur des Francs. »9 Ce sont des blasphémateurs, ayant toujours à la bouche «… des paroles diffamatoires et inconvenantes »;10 sans scrupules, ils rançonnent les marchands.11 Ils sont inaccessibles à la pitié, « plus impitoyables que la colère du ciel et que la mort soudaine »;12 et l’un d’entre eux, en pleine bataille, assassine par traîtrise le sultan Kay-Khosrow : « Soudain, un Franc inconnu s’approcha du sultan qui ne lui prêta pas attention, pensant qu’il faisait partie de la cour victorieuse. Lorsque ce Franc passa près du sultan, il fit volte-face et, d’un coup de lance ouvrit la porte du Paradis à la douce âme du sultan. »13 Quant aux nomades, il y a tout d’abord les Mongols qui sont appelés soit ‫مغول‬ moqol, soit ‫ تاتار‬tâtâr, et leurs institutions et titulatures particulières : ‫ یارلیغ‬yarligh (yârliq : ordre royal, diplôme, chiffre du prince en tête d’un ordre), ‫ پایزه‬païza, (pâyze : diplôme royal, veste d’honneur, présent honorifique, privilège, exemption,

5   Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 86. 6   Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 125. 7   Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 218. 8   Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 220. 9   Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 87. 10  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 97. 11  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 154. 12  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 131. 13  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 99.

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immunité),14  ‫ ایلخان‬Ilkhân (titre des souverains de la dynastie mongole qui gouverna la Perse aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles), et ‫ نویان‬Noyân (titre mongol désignant des chefs de clan héréditaires puis, à partir de Gengis Khan, c’est un grade militaire correspondant à un officier commandant 10.000 hommes).15 Les Khwârizmiens correspondent, quant à eux, à des groupes issus de la dislocation d’un grand Empire d’Asie-Centrale vaincu par les Mongols et qui offrent leur service armé, un peu partout, dans le Proche-Orient quand ils ne se livrent pas à des actes de brigandage que souligne Ibn Bîbî en disant que « … les soldats Khwârizmiens erraient dans ces pays (Arménie, Géorgie, Syrie) et étaient des voleurs de grand chemin ».16 Tout au long du récit de Ibn Bîbî, on voit apparaître, outre les clans kurdes de vieille tradition guerrière et pillarde, des groupes tribaux d’origine géographique et d’ethnies très diverses : les Aghtsheri-s, les Daylamites, les Qazwînîtes et les Germyân-s.17 Les Aghtsheri-s, littéralement « les hommes des arbres », sont décrits ainsi par Ibn Bîbî : « …à cause des Aghtsheri-s, dont le pays d’origine était la steppe et les forêts de Maraş,18 qui étaient des bandits de grands chemins, qui faisaient des razzias, pillaient les caravanes, faisaient des incursions dans les pays de Rûm, en Syrie et en Arménie. Les émirs de l’État furent soucieux et consternés en leur cœur. »19 Ces Aghtsheri-s20 étaient des Turcomans d’Asie-Centrale qui avaient fui les Mongols et s’étaient éparpillés depuis l’Iran jusqu’à la Syrie et à l’Anatolie. De même les Qazwînites et les Daylamites, populations originaires des provinces caspiennes de l’Iran, longtemps rivales, se retrouvent désorganisées par la conquête mongole (massacre de Qazvin, etc.) et, comme le précise Ibn Bîbî, pour certains d’entre eux, ils s’engagent comme mercenaires dans l’armée seldjoukide : « Cinq cents chefs de l’armée, des Qazwînîtes, des Daylamites et des Francs, plus 14  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 222, etc. 15  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 224, etc. 16  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 188. 17  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 229. 18  Aujourd’hui Kahramanmaraş, en Turquie, dans le massif du Taurus. 19  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 232–233. 20  A l’époque contemporaine une partie de ce groupe s’est fixé dans le Khûzistân d’Iran et a donné son nom à la ville de ‫آغاجاری‬, Aghâjâri.

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impitoyables que la colère du ciel et que la mort soudaine, marchaient à côté de l’étrier du seigneur des esclaves. »21 Quant aux Germyân-s, appelés à jouer un rôle prédominant après la disparition des Seldjoukides au XIVe siècle,22 leur identité a donné lieu à diverses hypothèses. Ce sont probablement des Kurdes, mêlés à des éléments turcs, installés dans la région de Kirkûk,23 nommés dans les sources médiévales Garmâkân24 et Bêth Garmaï. Quoi qu’il en soit, notre source seldjoukide, Ibn Bîbî, hésite fortement sur leur identité dans les trois passages où il les cite. Dans le premier passage, les Germyân-s sont nettement distingués des Kurdes lorsque notre auteur évoque des troupes formés d’une foule de Kurdes et de Germyân25 ‫ « کردان و گرمیان‬Kordân va Garmiân ». Ailleurs, il est question d’un général khwârizmien qui rallie « les Turcs de Germyân (‫ ترکان گرمیان‬Torkân-e Garmiân) dont il obtint la docilité par des promesses et de l’argent ».26 Ici, d’après la syntaxe du persan, Germyân semble être une région. Dans le troisième et dernier passage concernant les Germyân-s, il est question de l’armée du Sultan Seldjoukide dont l’ « aile gauche (est) formée de Turcs et de Germyân-s (‫ اتراک و گرمیان‬Atrâk va Garmiân) »,27 Ibn Bîbï distinguant expressément l’entité Germyân et l’entité Turque. Si l’on consulte les sources byzantines, comme Nicétas Choniatès,28 il est question d’autres troupes d’origine nomade qui servent comme mercenaires en Anatolie comme les Petchenègues (Πατζινẚκοι) ou les Coumans (Κούμανοι). 21  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 131. 22  Selon Ibn Battûta les Germyâns « troupe de brigands », à partir de la ville de Kütahya, attaquaient les voyageurs. Comme on le sait, c’est depuis cette ville qu’ils créèrent un émirat turcoman puissant, en Anatolie occidentale qui perdura jusqu’en 1429. C. Defremery et B. R. Sanguinetti, Voyages d’Ibn Battûta. Texte arabe accompagné d’une traduction, préface et notes de Vincent Monteil. Tome II. Paris, 1979, 270–271. 23  J. H. Kramers, Th. Bois, ‘Kirkûk’, Encyclopédie de l’Islam. Vol. V. 2ème éd. Leiden, Paris. 1986, 147; Mustafa Çetin Varlık, Germiyan-ogˇulları Tarihi (1300–1429). Ankara, 1974, 2, sqq. 24  En persan, « lieu chaud », la région continue à s’appeler Garmiân. 25  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 215. 26  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 216. 27  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 217. 28  Harry J. Magoulias (trad.), O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniatès. (Wayne State Byzantine Textes in Translation) Detroit, 1984, 17, 100.

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DE QUELQUES PERSONNALITÉS NON-MUSULMANES MISES EN RELIEF PAR IBN BÎBÎ

On peut présenter ces personnages sous deux catégories : les princes chrétiens

rivaux des seldjoukides, l’empereur de Nicée, le roi d’Arménie, les princes de Trébizonde et les souverains d’Abkhazie et de Géorgie. Le deuxième groupe de personnalités évoqué par Ibn Bîbî est celui des Byzantins, des Francs et des Géorgiens qui se sont intégrés à la société seldjoukide.

Les souverains non-musulmans rivaux des Seldjoukides

Au premier rang des rivaux des Seldjoukides se trouve le souverain de Nicée

Théodore Lascaris dont le nom est curieusement d’origine persane, laškari « militaire ». Selon Ibn Bîbî, Lascaris a des relations mitigées avec le Sultan. Il tarde à payer le tribut qu’il lui doit29 et son arrogance pousse le Sultan à l’attaquer.30 Les deux souverains s’affrontèrent lors de la bataille d’Antioche du Méandre (juin 1211) dans laquelle Kay-Khosrow trouva la mort. Le deuxième souverain byzantin contre qui les Seldjoukides font la guerre est Alexis Comnène, fondateur de l’État byzantin de Trébizonde, celui que Ibn Bîbî appelle Kir Alex. Dans le texte persan, Kir Alex « … avait commis un extraordinaire crime en entrant sur les terres du Sultan qu’il ravagea »;31 le souverain turc contrattaque et s’empare de Kir Alex qu’il fait torturer puis que, finalement, il libère à condition que le Byzantin livre aux Turcs la ville de Sinope et se déclare son vassal. Le prince étranger suivant est l’Arménien Lifon, premier roi de Petite-Arménie, qui accueille avec honneur le Sultan Kay-Khosrow Ier en exil. Plus loin dans le texte de Ibn Bîbî, Lifon reçoit les ambassadeurs du nouveau sultan Kay-Kâus et échange des présents avec eux.32 Par la suite, les relations turco-arméniennes se gâtent, Lifon tardant à payer tribut, ce qui pousse le sultan à envahir la Petite-Arménie.33 Bien que « hésitant

29  30  31  32  33 

Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 88–98. Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 98. Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 109. Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 100–101, 103. Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 113.

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et craintif »,34 Lifon tente de résister. Avec l’aide de ses généraux dont Ibn Bîbî détaille l’état-major : le Connétable (kondestabl), et les barons Fâsîl, Ôshîn, et Nôshîn.35 Un cas particulier est celui de la reine d’Abkhazie, Rusudan qui régna de 1223 à 1245. Devant la progression des armées seldjoukides sur son territoire, elle tenta d’arrêter l’invasion en proposant une alliance matrimoniale turco-abkhaze. Il est à noter, comme nous le verrons plus loin, que les reines de Géorgie semblent souvent avoir pris elles-mêmes l’initiative de trouver des époux dans les pays voisins, musulmans compris. La reine Rusudan s’exprime ainsi à l’intention du Sultan seldjoukide « … il nous vient à l’esprit de faire entrer notre charmante enfant – qui est née des reins de Seldjouk et qui descend de David36 dans la chambre nuptiale du prince de l’islam Ghiyâth al-Dîn Kay-Khosrow ».37 Il s’agit ici de la fille de Rusudan et du fils ainé de Mughîth al-Dîn Tughrilshâh, converti au christianisme pour épouser Rusudan.38

Les chrétiens intégrés dans la société seldjoukide

Si l’on en croit les témoignages de voyageurs comme Guillaume de Rubrouck

39

ou Marco Polo, l’Anatolie sous régime turc, reste largement chrétienne au XIIIe 40

34  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 114. 35  Le texte persan conserve le titre arméno-franc Baron ‫ بارون‬, Ôshin était un nom arménien très courant. Quant à Nôshîn il pourrait être le diminutif de Anushirvân ‫ « انوشیروان‬l’âme immortelle » sachant que les Arméniens portent à l’occasion des noms persans. 36  Il s’agit de David surnommé le Reconstructeur (1072–1125) qui rendit à la Géorgie son indépendance. 37  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 187. 38  Claude Cahen, La Turquie Pré-ottomane. Istanbul, Paris, 1988, 79–80. 39  « De la Turquie, vous saurez qu’il n’y a pas un habitant sur dix qui soit sarrasin. Au contraire, tous sont Arméniens ou Grecs. » Guillaume de Rubrouck, Voyage dans l’Empire mongol : 1253–1255. Traduction et commentaire Claude et René Kappler. Paris, 1985, 244. Sous Mas’ûd Ier (1116–1156), cela est confirmé par une source orientale de la même époque, l’Histoire des patriarches d’Alexandrie : « …La plus grande partie du territoire de ce sultan est occupée par des sujets grecs ; à cause de sa justice et de son bon gouvernement, les Grecs préfèrent vivre sous son administration », cité par Osman Turan, ‘Les souverains seldjoukides et leurs sujets non musulmans’, Studia Islamica 1 (1953) 65–100, surtout 76. 40  En Anatolie, à côté des Turcomans, « …les autres gens sont Ermins et Grex, qui demeurent en villes et en chastiaus et vivent de marchandises et d’arts ». Marco Polo, Le devi-

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siècle. Populations grecques et arméniennes résident en partie dans leur habitat historique d’origine, anciens Thèmes byzantins et territoires arméniens jadis indépendants. Outre le peuple, les élites civiles et militaires locales41 se mettent à l’occasion au service des Seldjoukides, sans oublier les transfuges et autres réfugiés politiques byzantins fuyant leurs rivaux et venant se mettre à l’abri à Konya comme, par exemple, le frère puis le neveu de l’empereur Jean II Comnène42 ou plus tard Michel Paléologue devenu indésirable dans l’État byzantin de Nicée. Michel VIII Paléologue, en effet, avant d’accéder au trône byzantin, s’exila un temps à Konya où il fut général dans l’armée seldjoukide, adoptant pour la circonstance le surnom musulman (laqab) de Sarimeddîn, « le glaive de la religion ».43 Selon le chroniqueur byzantin Georges Pachymèrès, le sultan  «…le reçoit avec joie et l’honore comme il convient. Là-dessus, bien qu’en terre étrangère, Michel fait campagne avec les Turcs sous l’étendard (seldjoukide) et se distingue contre les ennemis du sultan ».44 L’imbrication culturelle et linguistique est accentuée par le phénomène des mariages interethniques, princesse géorgienne épousant un sultan turc, souverain seldjoukide ayant une épouse grecque, dignitaire byzantin donnant sa fille à un souverain turc, prince impérial byzantin converti à l’islam et épousant la fille du sultan, etc. Ces parents et alliés chrétiens des sultans ont souvent une grande influence politique et culturelle comme la mère45 et les deux oncles grecs du sultan Izzeddîn Kay-Kâûs II. sement du monde. Tome I. Départ des voyageurs et traversée de la Perse. Édition critique sous la direction de Philippe Ménard. Genève, 2001, 137. 41  Comme les Gavras de Trébizonde dont plusieurs membres passèrent au service des sultans de Konya. On en connaît cinq qui, entre 1146 et 1236, occupèrent des positions en vue à la cour seldjoukide, tel Ikhtiyâr al-Dîn Hasan bin Gavrâs, conseiller devenu musulman de Kiliç Arslân II (Cahen, La Turquie Pré-ottomane, 57) ou d’autres membres de cette famille restés chrétiens (Michel Balivet, Mélanges Byzantins, Seldjoukides et Ottomans. Istanbul, 2005, 70, 76). 42  Isaac Comnène se réfugie une première fois chez les Turcs en compagnie de son fils Jean, lequel, après être revenu quelques temps avec son père à Byzance, finit par s’installer définitivement à Konya où il devient musulman et épouse la fille du sultan Mas’ûd. Magoulias (trad.), O City of Byzantium, 19, 21, 31. 43 Cahen, La Turquie Pré-ottomane, 242, citant Baybars al-Mansurî. 44  Georges Pachymérès, Relations historiques. Vol. 1. Édition et traduction Albert Failler et Vitalien Laurent. Paris, 1984. 45  Nous voyons ici, un exemple de personnalité féminine chrétienne, femme du Sultan puis de Grand Vizir qui tint un rôle politique important entre 1237 et 1262, comme la sultane géorgienne, disciple de Mowlânâ dont il va être question plus loin dans le texte.

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L’un des exemples les plus dynamiques de dignitaire grec passé au service des Seldjoukides est Manuel Maurozomès, celui que Ibn Bîbî appelle Mavrozom. Ce haut fonctionnaire de Byzance qui, après avoir été César à la cour de Constantinople46 fut promu par le sultan comme « dignitaire de haut rang »47 et gouverneur de plusieurs places-fortes turques.48

Construction ou déconstruction de l’image de l’Autre

D

ans Ibn Bîbî, les Grecs pour lesquels les Seldjoukides ont une certaine estime sont nommés par leur titre ou par leur nom de famille comme Lashkari (Lascaris), Mavrozom (Maurosomès), émir Komninos (l’émir Comnène) ou Sarimeddîn (Michel Paléologue). Par contre les personnages impopulaires et décriés par les élites seldjoukides sont affublés par dérision d’un sobriquet à double sens. Ibn Bîbî joue alors sur l’homophonie entre le grec, Kyr « Seigneur » et le persan kir qui est une manière très vulgaire pour désigner le membre viril, se moquant des ennemis du Sultanat comme Kir Alex ‫( کیرالکس‬le prince Alexis Comnène fondateur de l’État de Trébizonde) ou le gouverneur chrétien d’Alanya, Kir Farid ‫کیر فرید‬. Le cas le plus flagrant d’appellation dépréciative est écrit par Ibn Bîbî à l’adresse des deux oncles de Izzeddîn Kay-Kâûs II, personnages particulièrement détestés à la cour seldjoukide. Le premier est appelé, à la persane, Kir Kadid ‫( کیر کدید‬du grec Kattidios/Candidus). Le cas du second Kir Khâye,49 ‫ کیرخایه‬orthographié ainsi par deux auteurs mamelouks cités par Shukurov50 est probablement encore plus injurieux car il associerait sous un vocable très gossier la verge et les testicules.

46  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 87. 47  Balivet, Lessan Pezechki, Mounier, op. cit., 94. 48  Sur ce personnage et sa famille voir désormais Sophie Metivier, ‘Les Maurozômai, Byzance et le sultanat de Rûm. Note sur le sceau de Jean Comnène Maurozômès’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines 67 (2009) 197–207, et Sara Nur Yıldız, ‘Manuel Komnenos Mavrozomes and his Descendants at the Seljuk Court: The Formation of a Christian Seljuk-Komnenian Elite’, in Stefan Leder (ed.), Crossroads between Latin Europe and the Near East: Corollaries of the Frankish Presence in the Eastern Mediterranean (12th–14th Centuries). Würzburg, 2011, 55–77. 49  Dans le texte persan, chez Ibn Bîbî (p. 297) on lit kar khyâ ‫ کرخیا‬ce qui ne permet pas de décrypter le terme grec d’origine. 50  Rustam Shukorov, The Byzantine Turks 1204–1461. Leiden, Boston, 2016, 110.

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LANGUES ET CULTURES EN MÉLANGE  : MULTICULTURES URBAINES ET INSTITUTIONS COMPOSITES Konya la gréco-turque et Erzincan l’arméno-turque

D

eux villes d’Anatolie peuvent être prises à titre d’illustration de la forte imbrication linguistique et socio-culturelle au XIIIe siècle. À Konya, capitale du sultanat seldjoukide, trois langues, vecteurs de trois cultures dominent : le persan, le turc et le grec. La première est celle des élites politiques, culturelles et religieuses. Quant au turc, c’est la langue maternelle de la plupart des dirigeants seldjoukides, et aussi de la majorité de la population musulmane des villes et des campagnes. Ces dernières sont parcourues par des tribus nomades qui ne seront jamais iranisées et qui finiront par imposer progressivement le turc comme langue dominante dès la fin du XIIIe siècle. Pour ce qui est du grec, il reste la langue d’une grosse partie de la population et il est souvent connu par les intellectuels musulmans comme le célèbre Mowlânâ51 et son fils Sultan Valad qui écrivirent un certain nombre de poème en grec. Sultan Valad réunit dans un même poème (ghazal 582 du Divân) des vers turcs, grecs et persans : ‫ایال ابو بسی کند مو خرسی کرا           کرد لر سن سن که بن دیری الم‬ Kerdler sen sin ki ben dırı alım (turc)     ela apopse konda mu xrisi Kira (grec) Tu es l’acte qui me (donne) la capacité de vie   Viens ce soir près de moi, Dame d’or ‫ایال ذو نیذو کیغو کرذ یا خرا            روز و شب شادی تو از خوبی خود‬ Ruz o šab šâdi-ye to az xubi-ye xod (persan)  ela d.o na id.o ke : go kard.ia xara (grec) Jour et nuit ta joie s’exhale de ta beauté  viens ici que je voie moi aussi le cœur (et) la joie La deuxième métropole que l’on peut prendre comme exemple multiculturelle est la ville d’Erzincan ou se mêlent étroitement la langue de la majorité chrétienne, l’arménien, celle des musulmans locaux, le turc, et la langue de la culture dominante, le persan. Il semblerait que la pluralité linguistique et l’interaction inter-religieuse 51  Dans son Divân-e Kabir, Mowlâna associe sans hésitation, grec et persan. Son ghazal 1207 est un bon exemple de la cohabitation du grec et du persan car il fait rimer les strophes persanes en les terminant par des mots grecques, anemos, anthropos, angelos, vassilios, etc.

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fassent partie intégrante de la vie quotidienne d’Erzincan. A titre d’illustration spectaculaire de ce triculturalisme, R. Goshgarian cite un auteur arménien nommé Toros de Taron qui écrit un poème en turc,52 en caractères arménien tout en utilisant abondamment des termes et des concepts littéraires persans, il s’agit d’un poème composite désigné par le terme de molamma (‫)ملمع‬.53 Goshgarian évoque également le terme de poésie macaronique.54 Le poème décrit le tremblement de terre de 1287 qui a dévasté Erzincan et est composé de 14 strophes dont dix lignes en arméno-turc ou hayatar t’urk’eren. Goshgarian présente le texte turc en caractère arménien dont la traduction est la suivante :

52  Rachel Goshgarian, ‘Futuwwa in Thirteenth-Century Rûm and Armenia: Reform Movements and the Managing of Multiple Allegiances on the Seljuk Periphery’, in C. S. Peacock and Sara Nur Yɩldɩz (eds.), Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East. London, 2013, 244–245. 53  La signification première de ce terme désigne un objet de différentes couleurs, ainsi que la robe polychrome des chevaux ou autres animaux. En persan (‫ دوزبانگی‬do zabânegi) : deux langues. 54  Ce mot fut inventé au XVe siècle en Italie pour décrire des poésies en italien auxquelles on ajoute une syntaxe et des terminaisons latines.

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Bugün vereyim sana haber Degˇil estagˇfurullah ve ekbar Haktan geldi bize zaval Erzincan oldu derbeder Böyle zaval görmemiş idim Hiç görünmez çarşı Pazar Bügün nazik yigˇitler Damlar altında nice var Kalmadı gancin ve arasta Hiç görünmez çarşı Pazar Aujourd’hui, laissez-moi te donner des nouvelles Non pas estagˇfurullah et akbar55 Une calamité nous est venue de Dieu, Erzincan a été anéanti, Une telle destruction, je n’ai jamais vu, Il ne reste rien du marché et du bazar Aujourd’hui, les honnêtes gens Combien sont-ils sous les toits ? Rien ne reste des trésors et des boutiques Il ne reste rien du marché et du bazar.

Des institutions composites

L’enchevêtrement culturel rejaillit aussi sur les institutions et les titulatures : Chez Ibn Bîbî, il est question dans l’administration seldjoukide de « notaires » (nôtârân),

55  Selon nous il ne faut pas traduire comme Goshgarian « Say ‘May the Lord protect us, God is great’ », car degˇil étant une négation ne peut pas être traduit pas « say ». Le sens du vers doit être : il n’est pas lieu dans de telles circonstances, de dire des formules laudatives comme estagˇfurullah et ekbar, ce que confirme le vers d’après qui attribue cette calamité à la volonté divine. Goshgarian, ‘Futuwwa’, 245.

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de « connétables » (kontestabl), termes d’origine occidentale, qui s’entremêlent avec des titres turcs (atabek, ataman), arméniens (tekfur), byzantins (vasiliûs, qaysar) ou, comme on l’a vu plus haut, mongols (noyan, yarligh).

UNE SURIMPOSITION DES TRADITIONS ICONOGRAPHIQUES Icônes byzantines et miniatures persanes

L’étroite fusion de plusieurs cultures nous conduit à nous poser la question de la

position adoptée par une société seldjoukide venant se superposer à un soubassement byzantin que l’on pourrait qualifier d’« hyper-iconodoule »56 soit depuis la fin de la crise iconoclaste au IXe siècle. En effet l’art byzantin connait un développement intense de tout ce qui est images ou fresques représentant le Christ, la Vierge Marie et les saints, peintures couvrant intégralement les murs et les coupoles des églises et des monastères anatoliens. Or, comme on le sait, la figuration de l’être humain est normalement interdite en islam, avec cependant la restriction de taille de la tradition esthétique du monde iranien où la représentation du visage humain a toujours résisté à l’aniconisme ambiant.57 Ainsi, on constate que, dans l’Anatolie du XIIIe siècle, les autorités politiques musulmanes non seulement ne s’opposent pas à l’édification ou à la décoration des églises mais elles les encouragent parfois, en finançant par exemple les fresques de certaines églises de Cappadoce.58

56  Les « iconodoules » sont les partisans des images opposés aux « iconoclastes » à l’époque de la grande crise qui divisa la société byzantine pour savoir s’il était licite de représenter par une image Dieu, le Christ, la Vierge Marie et les Saints. 57  Sur le thème du portrait et ses développements philosophiques en milieu irano-musulman voir Yves Porter et Richard Castinel, ‘Le portrait dans l’Orient musulman pré-moderne : une décantation du modèle en son essence’, in Houari Touati (éd.), De la figuration humaine au portrait dans l’art islamique. Leiden, Boston, 2015. 58  Comme l’église Saint-Georges d’Ihlara (Kırk dam altı kilisesi) « …décorée, comme le dit l’inscription de l’église, avec l’aide de Dame Thamar et de l’Amirouzès Basile Giagoupès sous le règne de Masut (II), Andronic (II) régnant sur les Romains ». Shukorov, The Byzantine Turks, 202.

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Le portrait et l’amour selon Nézâmi

L

es textes historiques et hagiographiques que nous allons présenter ci-dessous semblent se reporter à des prototypes littéraires persans prestigieux faisant intervenir l’art du portrait. Prenons le roman Khosrow et Chirine du grand poète Nézâmi (1140–1202). Ce dernier utilise le thème du portrait, en évoquant dans son ouvrage, les amours entre le roi sassanide, Khosrow et la princesse arménienne, Chirine. Celle-ci tombe amoureuse d’un portrait accroché à un arbre dans un jardin par les soins de l’ami de Khosrow, Shahpour, qui voulait éveiller l’amour de la princesse arménienne :59 « Devant l’aimable femme on plaça le portrait et elle s’abîma devant lui plusieurs heures ; son cœur ne consentait point à s’en détacher ; elle ne pouvait le prendre dans ses bras ; mais à chaque regard elle s’en enivrait ; à chaque coupe bue elle perdait l’esprit ; elle sentait son cœur vaincu par le désir ; quand on le lui cachait, elle le retrouvait. »60 Et quand Chirine demande à voir l’artiste, celui-ci se présente ainsi :61 « Je suis le peintre, qui, traçant au compas, ai créé ce portrait du roi des rois Khosrow. Or, tout portrait exécuté par un artiste est ressemblant mais il n’est pas doué de vie ; que si l’on m’apprit à reproduire les formes, Dieu leur cousit là-haut le manteau de la vie ; étant ainsi devant le portrait de Khosrow, vois comment tu seras lorsque tu le verras ! »62

59  Nézami Ganjavi, Le roman de Chosroès et Chirine. Trad. Henri Massé. Paris, 1970, 28. ‫که کرد است این رقم پنهان مدارید  به خوبان گفت کان صورت بیارید‬ 60  ‫بر آن صورت فرو شد ساعتی چند   دلبند پیش بیاوردند صورت‬ ‫شایستش اندر بر گرفتن نه می  نه دل می‌داد ازو دل بر گرفتن‬ ‫به هر جامی که خورد از دست می‌شد  بهر دیداری ازوی مست می‌شد‬ ‫چو می‌کردند پنهان باز می‌جست   چو می‌دید از هوش می‌شد دلش سست‬ 61 Nézami, Le roman, 34. 62 

‫ز خسرو کردم این صورت نمودار  من آن صورتگرم کز نقش پرگار‬ ‫نشان دارد ولیکن جان ندارد  هر آنصورت که صورتگر نگارد‬ ‫قبای جان دگر جا دوختستند  مرا صورت گری آموختستند‬ ‫ببین تا چون بود کاو را ببینی  چو تو بر صورت خسرو چنینی‬

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Peintres byzantins et soufis : des contacts attestés

Ce qui est très étonnant, c’est que des maîtres spirituels musulmans aussi presti-

gieux que le grand soufi andalou Ibn Arabî (1165–1241) ou le fondateur des derviches tourneurs, Mowlânâ Djallâleddin Rûmi (1207–1273), ne répugnent pas, lors de leur séjour à Konya, à fréquenter des peintres grecs et même à accepter de se faire portraiturer comme le montrent les textes suivants. Dans la vie de Mowlânâ, il est question d’une histoire au scénario amoureux très proche de celui de Nézâmi ; il ne s’agit pas ici d’une Arménienne mais d’une Géorgienne et l’amour qu’elle porte à Mowlânâ est un amour spirituel mais le vecteur de ce sentiment très fort est également un portrait :63 « …L’épouse du sultan, Gurdji-Khâtoûn (Que Dieu l’ait en sa miséricorde !) qui était une des amie sincère et disciple du Maître, et qui brûlait constamment du feu du désir de voir Mowlânâ, par un concours de circonstance, voulut se rendre à Kayseri. Comme le sultan ne pouvait rien lui refuser, parce qu’elle était distinguée et d’une grande fermeté d’opinion, et que, d’un autre côté, elle ne pouvait pas supporter la brûlure que lui causait l’absence de Mowlânâ, le sultan fit appeler un peintre qui était un second Manès pour la peinture et le tracé des figures. On l’appelait ‘Aïn-ed-daula Rûmi. Il lui ordonna de fixer sur un carton le portrait de Mowlânâ, et il fallait qu’il le peignît avec une extrême beauté, afin qu’il fût le compagnon de l’âme dans le voyage de la Dame. Donc ‘Aïn-eddaula se rendit auprès de Mowlânâ avec quelques personnes sûres, afin de l’informer de cette histoire. Avant qu’il prononçât un mot, le Maître lui dit : C’est avantageux si tu le peux. Cependant, ‘Aïn-ed-daula, ayant pris ses pinceaux à la main, s’avança ; Mowlânâ se tenait debout ; le peintre jeta un coup d’œil et s’occupa de tracer la figure ; il dessina sur un carton un portrait extrêmement délicat ; il vit alors que ce n’était pas ce qu’il avait d’abord vu ; il jeta un autre dessin sur un autre carton ; quand le portrait fut terminé, il parut une tout autre figure ; ainsi de suite sur vingt cartons diversement coloriés, il traça des figures ; plus il en peignait, et plus il les considérait, plus il voyait la figure de tout autre façon. L’infortuné peintre resta stupéfait ; il poussa un cri, brisa ses pinceaux, et, reconnaissant son impuissance, se prosterna.  »

63  Ahmad Aflâki, Manâkib al-‘Ârefin. Les Saints des Derviches Tourneurs. 2 vols. Trad. C. Huart. Paris, 1918–1922, réed. 1978, I. 333–334.

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Autre texte, tiré de la vie de Mowlânâ qui se passe également à Konya :64 « Kalo-Yani le peintre et ‘ Aïn-ed-daula étaient deux peintres grecs incomparables dans cet art et dans celui de la représentation des figures ; ils étaient devenus disciple de Mowlânâ. Kalo-Yani dit un jour : –A Constantinople, on a représenté sur un tableau les figures de Marie et de Jésus, sans pareils comme le sont leurs deux modèles. Les peintres du monde entier sont venus et n’ont pas pu reproduire de pareilles figures. ‘Aïn-ed-daula, mu par le désir intense de voir ce tableau, se mit en route, séjourna un an dans ce grand couvent de Constantinople [où le tableau était conservé], et se mit au service des moines qui y habitaient. Une nuit, ayant trouvé l’occasion favorable, il mit ce tableau sous son bras et partit. Arrivé a Konya, il rendit visite a Mowlânâ : –Ou étais tu ?, lui demanda celui-ci. Il raconta l’aventure du tableau. –Voyons ce charmant tableau, dit Mowlânâ ; Il faut qu’il soit bien beau et gracieux. Après l’avoir contemplé longuement, il reprit : –Ces deux belles figures se plaignent amèrement de toi ; Elles disent : –il n’est pas droit dans l’amour qu’il a pour nous ; C’est un faux amoureux ; –Comment cela ?, dit le peintre. –Elles disent : nous ne dormons ni ne mangeons jamais, nous veillons la nuit et nous jeûnons le jour, tandis que ‘Aïn-ed-daula nous a abandonné ; Il dort la nuit et mange le jour, il n’est positivement pas d’accord avec nous. –Il est absolument impossible, dit le peintre, qu’elles dorment et qu’elles mangent ; Elles ne peuvent pas parler, ce sont des figures sans âme. –Toi qui es une figure avec âme, dit Mowlânâ, qui possède tant d’arts, et qui a été fabriqué par un Créateur dont l’œuvre se compose de l’univers, est-il permis que tu le délaisses et que tu tombes amoureux d’une peinture sans âme et sans idée ? » Ibn Arabî, lors de son séjour à Konya à partir de 1205, raconte les contacts qu’il entretint avec un iconographe (musavver):65 « C’est du Nom Divin, le Producteur (alBâri), que naît l’inspiration aux peintres pour apporter la beauté et la juste harmonie à leurs peintures. A cet égard, je fus témoin d’une chose remarquable à Konya en terre grecque. Il y avait un certain peintre que nous avions révélé et aidé dans son art pour la juste faculté représentative (takhayyul) dont il manquait. Un jour, il peignit une perdrix et dissimula un défaut presque imperceptible. Il me l’apporta ensuite pour mettre

64 Aflâki, Manâkib Al-‘Ârefin, II. 69. 65  Ibn Arabi, Les soufis d’Andalousie. Trad. Gérard Leconte, M. Allard. Paris, 1978, 36.

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à l’épreuve mon acuité artistique. Il l’avait peinte sur un grand tableau,66 de façon que son image eût une taille grandeur nature. Il y avait dans la maison un faucon qui, quand il vit le tableau, se précipita dessus, pensant que c’était une vraie perdrix avec son plumage en couleurs. Effectivement, tous ceux qui étaient présents étaient émerveillés de la beauté du tableau. Le peintre, ayant mis les autres dans son secret, me demanda mon opinion sur son travail. Je lui répondis qu’à mon avis son tableau était parfait, mis à part un petit défaut. Lorsqu’il me demanda lequel, je lui dis que les pattes étaient légèrement disproportionnées. Alors il vint vers moi et me baisa le front. »

Byzance et les arts persans

Cette fascination du portrait, et de l’iconographie byzantine semble donc avoir

agi en profondeur sur la société turco-musulmane d’Anatolie. Or, on constate parallèlement la même attirance esthétique de la part des Byzantins envers l’art picturale irano-seldjoukide. Les spécialistes décèlent une influence seldjoukide dans l’ornementation de monuments majeurs du XIIIe siècle comme Sainte-Sophie de Trébizonde : pour R. Janin « …de nombreux motifs décoratifs des porches présentent des analogies très concrètes avec l’ornementation seldjoukide ; des circonstances favorables à la venue d’ouvriers seldjoukides à Trébizonde se présentent à la fin du règne de Manuel 1er (1238–1263) ».67 On a des témoignages contemporains de l’intérêt byzantin pour l’art seldjoukide. Ainsi, comme le raconte le chroniqueur grec Jean Kinnamos un haut dig­ nitaire byzantin, gouverneur d’une province frontalière du sultanat seldjoukide, « …se rendit à dessein à Iconium (Konya) ; il se lia d’amitié avec le sultan et, par la suite, de retour à Byzance, quand il voulut décorer une de ses maisons de banlieue, il ne représenta pas les anciens exploits des Grecs, ni, comme c’est la coutume des dignitaires, les hauts faits de l’empereur à la guerre ou à la chasse. Il laissa de côté

66  Dans le texte arabe (Ibn al-‘Arabî : chap. 198 : § 11) le terme utilisé est tabaq ‫ طبق‬qui selon Dehkhodâ, est l’arabisation du mot persan tabuk ‫تبوک‬. Ce mot désigne toute surface plate comme l’assiette, le plateau et tout objet utilisé comme présentoir. Selon la même Encyclopédie, tabaq correspond également à ce qui couvre une surface, rideau, toile, etc. 67  Raymond Janin, Les églises et les monastères des grands centres byzantins. Paris, 1975, 290.

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ces exploits et fit représenter, en soit qu’il était, les faits d’armes du sultan, et divulgua par la peinture de sa maison ce qu’il aurait fallu laisser dans l’ombre. »68 En cela, ce dignitaire ne faisait que perpétuer la même admiration pour l’art musulman qui avait été celle de Byzance pour l’architecture arabe comme le montre l’anecdote suivante à l’époque de l’empereur Théophile (829–842). Jean le Grammairien, envoyé comme ambassadeur à Bagdad auprès du calife, apprécia fortement la beauté des palais arabes : « Une fois revenue auprès de l’empereur, il lui raconta ce qu’il avait vu là-bas et persuada l’empereur de faire ériger, [vers 831–832], le palais de Bryas sur le modèle des constructions sarrasines, en parfaite conformité avec leur plan et la variété de leur décoration ; lui-même veillerait sur ce palais et serait l’architecte de cette construction. »69 L’influence de l’architecture musulmane sur les Byzantins, se perpétua, puisqu’au début du XIIIe siècle encore, on signale, au cœur de Constantinople, un palais qui ressemble aux constructions seldjoukides et que Nicolas Mésaritès, auteur grec de l’époque, appelle « la Maison Perse » (Περσικὀς Δὁμος). « Édifice merveilleux, selon Mésaritès, c’était un bâtiment à coupole avec pendentifs en stalactites. La richesse des couleurs, l’or qu’on y avait semé, faisait ressembler ces coupoles à des arcs-en-ciel et le spectateur était séduit par la combinaison harmonieuse des lignes et des couleurs ». Ce palais était désigné sous le nom de Μουχρουτᾶς qui doit être une déformation du terme arabo-persan makhrut ‫ مخروط‬qui désigne un cône, ce qui correspond bien à la forme sommitale de certains monuments seldjoukides. Mésaritès évoque également les coupoles du palais Μουχρουτᾶς en utilisant le terme ἡμισφαίρια « demi-coupole ».70

pour conclure

L’

étroite imbrication des divers territoires anatoliens comme l’enchevêtrement intime des peuples, des langues et des cultures de la péninsule, rend compte d’une 68  Jean Kinnamos, Chronique. (Publication de la faculté des Lettres et Sciences humaines de Nice, 10.) Traduite par Jacqueline Rosenblum. Paris, 1972, 171–172. 69  Cf. Jean Skylitzès, Empereurs de Constantinople. Texte traduit par Bernard Flusin et annoté par Jean-Claude Cheynet. Paris, 2003, 54; Raymond Janin, Constantinople Byzantine. Paris, 1964, 146–147. 70 Janin, Les églises et les monastères, 122.

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réalité historique fondamentale : l’identité rûm qui lie fortement les chrétiens et les musulmans d’Anatolie. Cette conscience d’appartenir à une entité « romaine » fait que certaines sources musulmanes médiévales, en utilisant le terme rûm pour désigner le territoire anatolien et les divers peuples qui l’habitent, laissent planer un certain flou quant à la signification ethnique ou religieuse du mot : le Rûm estil Grec ou Turc, chrétien ou musulman et le Bilâd al-Rûm désigne-t-il l’Empire byzantin ou le sultanat turc ? Des auteurs comme Izzeddîn Ibn Shaddâd (1217– 1285) doit, dans un extrait de sa Description de la Syrie de Nord,71 préciser, pour la clarté de son propos, qu’il parle du « pays des Rûms musulmans », c’est-à-dire du sultanat seldjoukide d’Anatolie, tant « l’idée romaine » semble parfois primer l’appartenance confessionnelle musulmane ou chrétienne. Cette primauté de l’identité Rûm sur le rattachement confessionnel ou linguistique gardera toute sa force à l’époque ottomane : à côté de la stricte application du mot à la communauté grecque et slave orthodoxe (Millet-i Rûm), le terme pourra être utilisé, en plein XVIe siècle (et bien au-delà), dans sa signification supra-confessionnelle et supra-ethnique de « sujet et habitant du territoire dominé par la dynastie d’Osmân ».72 « L’idée romaine » continuera à peser fortement, au-delà de l’époque seldjoukide, chez les Turcs ottomans d’autant plus qu’elle véhicule une conception de cosmopolitisme qui correspond à la texture même de la société ottomane comme cela avait été le cas de l’Anatolie du XIIIe siècle. Ce cosmopolitisme rûm, si l’on en croit l’historien turc Ali de Gallipoli, à la fin du XVIe siècle, est ressenti par beaucoup d’Ottomans: « La plupart des habitants de Rûm ont diverses origines et, parmi les notables, il en est peu dont la lignée ne remonte pas à un converti. »73 Par conséquent, si dans la langue officielle, l’État ottoman se définit sur une assise dynastique, Devlet-i Osmaniyye (l’État de la dynastie d’Osmân), l’idée « romaine », cependant, perdure dans la titulature, comme dans l’administration. La Roumélie désigne désormais la partie balkanique de l’Empire jusqu’à la fin de la domination turque en Europe orientale au début du XXe siècle. 71  Ibn Šaddâd ‘Izz al-Dîn, Description de la Syrie du Nord. Trad. Anne-Marie Eddé-Terrasse. Damas, 1984, 72 : note 1. 72  Michel Balivet, Anthologie d’Histoire Ottomane, les deux premiers siècles (XIVe–XVe). Istanbul, 2004, 81. 73 Balivet, op. cit., 81.

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A l’époque classique, XVIe–XVIIIe, on trouve souvent dans les textes officiels pour désigner l’État des sultans des expressions telles que Memleket-i Rûm, Bum-ı Rûm, İklim-i Rûm. Le souverain comme à l’époque seldjoukide peut être appelé, Sultan-ı Rûm, voire Kaysar-ı Rûm, de même que des hauts personnages tel que le grand Mufti, chef de l’islam ottoman est désigné par le titre mufti al-Diyâr al-Rumiyye, etc.74 Tout cela, une nouvelle fois montre la grande continuité étatique entre l’époque seldjoukide et la période ottomane.

74  Cf. Salih Özbaran, ‘In Search of Another Identity: the Rumi Perception in the Ottoman Realm’, Eurasian Studies 1 (2002) 116–127; Koray Durak, ‘Who are the Romans? The Definition of Bilâd al-Rûm in Medieval Islamic Geography, Journal of Intercultural Studies 31 (2010) 3; voir aussi Cemal Kafadar, ‘A Rome of One’s Own: Reflections on Cultural Geography and Identity in the Lands of Rum’, in Sibel Bozdoğan and Gülru Necipoğlu (eds.), History and Ideology: Architectural Heritage of the ‘Lands of Rum’. Special Issue. Muqarnas 24 (2007) 7–25; Pál Fodor, ‘Byzantine Legacies in Ottoman Identity’, in Barbara Kellner-Heinkele et Simone-Christiane Raschmann (eds.), Opuscula György Hazai Dicata. Beiträge zum Deutsch-Ungarischen Workshop aus Anlass des 80. Geburtstages von György Hazai. (Studien zur Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur der Türkvölker, 19.) Berlin, 2015, 93–108.

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DAVID AND THE CHAIN MAIL: A TRADITIONAL TELMÎH (‘ALLUSION’) IN OTTOMAN POETRY Benedek Péri

Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest [email protected]

Tutaldan ʿâlemi Dâvûd Beg lutf ü sehâ ile Cihân halkınuŋ içinde aŋılmaz Hâtemüŋ cûdı1 “Since David beg conquered the world with benevolence and generosity People has stopped speaking about the munificence of the Seal [of Prophets]”

Classical Ottoman literature is a derived literary tradition modelled upon the

classical Persian system. Ottoman authors very consciously imitated Persian models, followed conventional rules governing the Persian literary tradition. The developing Ottoman tradition thus borrowed many elements of the signifying universe (mundus significans) of the classical Persian literary system. Noticing how heavily Ottoman authors relied on Persian models many earlier Western literary critics thought that the Ottoman system is nothing else but a slavish imitation of the Persian tradition.2 Recent comparative studies, however,

1  Halil İbrahim Yakar (ed.), Gelibolulu Sunʿ î Dîvânı. Gaziantep, 2009, 530. For the sake of uniformity all Turkish, Persian and Arabic names, terms, quotes and bibliographical references are transcribed using the same modern Turkish alphabet based system. Persian quotes reflect the classical Persian pronunciation. 2  An early twentieth-century unnamed author worded his opinion of Ottoman poetry in the following way: “The history of poetry is of course full of conscious or unconscious imitation

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showed that though Persian models never ceased to influence Ottoman authors, after an initial phase of experimenting with how to adapt Turkish to a system developed in a quite different linguistic environment Ottoman literature slowly started to live an independent life. One of the most telling signs of this process is indicated by the growing number of differences between these two branches of Persianate classical literature that start appearing in the late fifteenth–early sixteenth century. These differences include a number a new elements and a shift in the focus in the usage of some poetic devices that were applied in both traditions.3 Mapping the differences between the two traditions and identifying the typical Ottoman elements of the mundus significans of classical literature are essential to understanding in what way does the system of classical Ottoman literature differ from the literary tradition it was modelled on. Showcasing poetic devices that are shared by the two traditions but used differently in the Ottoman system and devices invented by Ottoman authors would enable scholars to highlight the creativity of Ottoman authors and dispel prejudices against classical Ottoman literature. The present paper aims at showcasing a traditional figure of speech, a telmîh (‘allusion’) based on a Koranic reference to the prophet David as the first person to produce a chain mail (zırh/zırıh). Through a series of examples it tries to show the differences between the Persian and the Ottoman system and highlight the creative talent of Ottoman authors who opted for including this traditional element of the signifying universe of classical Persianate literary tradition into their works. Prophet David occurs in the mundus significans of classical Persianate poetry mainly in three contexts. He is mentioned as a sweet voiced singer and the author of the Psalms (Zebūr), as a person to whom God made iron as soft as wax and finally as a skilled blacksmith who was able to produce chain mails with his bare hands.4 both of ideas and metres, but we can remember no instance of imitation so complete and servile as the Ottoman replica of the Persian muse.” ‘Ottoman poetry’, The Spectator, 3 November 1900, 4. 3  See, for instance, Benedek Péri, ‘Cannabis (esrār): a Unique Semantic Field in Ottoman Classical Poetry’, Turcica 48 (2017) 9–36. 4  According to the Islamic tradition he was the first person to produce a chain mail. Abû

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David as the first person who created a new type of armour, the chain mail appears in Islamic lore first in two Suras of the Koran, The Prophets (alAnbiyâ, 21:80) and Sheba (al-Sabâ, 34:10–11):5 “We taught to him to make coats of mail for the benefit of you [people], to protect you in your wars...”6 “We graced David with Our favour. We said ‘You mountains echo God’s praises together with him and you birds, too.’ We softened iron for him, saying ‘Make coats of chain mail and measure the links well.’”7 The Koran doesn’t say why God gifted David with such a skill but according to Maybudî, an early twelfth-century Persian author of a commentary on the Koran (tefsîr), whose story reappears almost word by word in a seventeenthcentury Ottoman hagiographical work,8 God didn’t like the situation that David relied on his community’s resources to support himself and his family so he gave him a professional skill that enabled him to make a living on his own. The word Maybudî uses to denote the object David became able to produce is zirih (Ottoman zırh/zırıh). The same noun is used by the author of the first tefsîr in Persian, the translation of Tabarî’s (d. 310/923) commentary (Tarcumayi Tafsîr-i Tabarî) compiled during the reign of the Samanid ruler Mansûr b. Nûh (350–365/961–976) to translate the Arabic term sâbighât9 which shows that the notion of ‘chain mail’ denoted by the word zirih became attached to David’s name in the Islamicate Persian tradition as early as the end of the tenth century. Caʿfar Muhammad bin Carîr al-Tabarî, Tafsîr al-Tabarî. Vol. 19. Tahkîk ʿAbd Allâh ibn ʿAbd al-Muhsin al-Turkî. Cairo, 1422 [2001], 223. 5  For a detailed account on how Prophet David appears in the Koran, see Brannon Wheeler, ‘Dawud/Daʾud’, in Oliver Leaman (ed.), The Qur’an: an Encyclopaedia. London, New York, 2006, 169–170. 6  M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (trans.), The Qur’an. Oxford, 2005, 207. 7  Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an, 273. 8  Abû al-Fazl Raşîd al-Dîn Maybudî, Kaşf al-asrâr vaʿdat al-anvâr. Vol. 8. Tehran, 1382 [2003], 112. For the Turkish version of the story written in 1671, see Mehtap Eldemir, Muhammad bin Yusuf: Kisasu’l-Enbiya I. İnceleme–Metin–Dizin. MA Thesis, Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi, Çanakkale, 2011, 102. 9  Tarcuma-yi Tafsîr-i Tabarî. Tashîh va ihtimâm Habîb Yaghmâ’î. Tehran, 1356 [1977], IV. 1037; V. 1453.

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Compared to his other attributes, his sweet voice or his ability to soften iron, his skill to produce chain mails is rarely referred to in classical literature and when David appears as a chain mail maker, in most cases his name comes forward as part of a figure of speech where the focus is on the outward appearance of the armour he produced. A rare exception occurs in Calâl al-Dîn Rûmî’s (d. 1273) Masnavî-i maʿnavî where the poet describes in one of the stories how Lokman the sage watched David doing his work, producing iron ring after iron ring until he had enough to make a chain mail.10 Another context is found in Farîd al-Dîn ʿAttâr’s (d. 1221) “Conference of the birds” (Mantik al-tayr) where David appears in the list of prophets and he is characterized there by the attribute zirihgar ‘chain mail maker’.11 As far as the tradition of Persian poetry is concerned, there are two basic types of tropes where the prophet David and the notion of “chain mail” expressed with the word zirih occur together and both of them are based on the resemblance of the outward appearance of the mail and the phenomenon or object it is compared to. One of them is a simile or a metaphor that seems to have been used first in the eleventh century.12 The figure of speech compares ripples on the water blown by a gentle breeze with the row of ringlets visible on the mail. A typical example of this figure of speech can be met with in one of ʿUbayd Zâkânî’s (d. ca. 1370) panegyric poems: Âb har lahza çu Dâvud zirih mî-sâzad Bâd hâsiyat-i anfâs-i Masîhâ dârad13 “Water continuously makes chain mails like David Wind has the quality of the breath of the Messiah.”

10  Maulânâ Calâl al-Dîn Rûmî, Masnavî-yi maʿnavî. Mutâbik-i nusha-yi tashîh şuda-yi Riynuld Nikulsun. Tehran, 1370 [1991], 412. 11  Farîd al-Dîn ʿAttâr, Mantik al-tayr. Bi-ihtimâm va tashîh-i Sayyid Sâdik Gauharîn. Tehran, 1365 [1986], 2. 12  Muhammad Dabîrsiyâkî (ed.), Dîvân-i Ustâd Manûçihrî Dâmğânî. Tehran, 1338 [1959], 178. 13  Parvîz Atâbakî (ed.), Kulliyât-i ʿUbayd Zâkânî. Tehran, 1382 [2003], 23.

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The other figure of speech compares the tightly braided plaits of a beauty to David’s chain mail very similarly to the way Muʿizzî (d. ca. 1125) does it in one of his kasides: Ay dirahşanda bunâ-gûş-i tu az zulf-i siyâh Ham-çu az abr dirahşanda buvad şams-i zuhâ Râst gûyî zi miyân-i zirih-i Dâvûdî Har zamânî yad-i bayzâ bi-numâyad Mûsâ14 “Your earlobe shines through your black plait The same way as the noon sun shines through a cloud. You are right: from behind David’s chain mail Moses shows his white hand.” The rare occurrence of the “David and the chain mail” motif in classical Persian poetry can possibly be explained by the fact that similes and metaphors building on the similarities between the appearance of a beauty’s plaits or ripples on water and rows of rings in a chain mail can achieve a poetic effect without the inclusion of David’s character. Though a long list of such examples taken from a wide range of poetic genres could be cited here, let it suffice to quote two couplets that illustrate the two types of tropes. One of them is by a Seljukid poet, Kamâl al-Dîn Ismâʿ îl (d. ca. 1237), the other one was composed by Amîr Husrau Dihlevî (d. 1325): Agar çi har nafas az haybat-i tu bâd-i Sabâ Zirih dar âb hamî-pûşad az pay-i maʾman15 “The breeze of Sheba doesn’t cease to fear you As a protection it makes the water wear a chain mail.” Pûşîda-îm bar dil muşkîn zirih zi zulfat Kaz gûşa-hâ-yi çaşmat turkî-st dar kamînî16 14  Nâsir Hayyirî (ed.), Kulliyât-i Dîvân-i Muʿizzî. Tehran, 1362 [1983], 649. 15  Husayn Bahr al-ʿUlûm, Dîvân-i halâʾik al-maʿânî-yi Abû al-Fazl Kamâl al-Dîn Ismâʿîl Isfahânî. Tehran, 1348 [1969], 174. 16 Saʿ îd Nafîsî (ed.), Dîvān-i kâmil-i Amîr Husrau Dihlavî. Tehran, 1361 [1983], 557.

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“We clad our heart into a black chain mail made of your plait[s] Because there is a [blood-thirsty] Turk lurking in the corner of your eye.” David’s appearance in the trope adds to the rhetoric value of the couplet (beyt) only in that case if his character can be connected to other elements within the beyt. In the couplets composed by ʿUbayd Zâkânî and Muʿizzî respectively two other characters (Messiah and Moses) appear who belong to the same semantic field (‘prophets’) as David. Through the semantic bonding connecting them to David they form a trope called tenâsüb (‘congruency’) that enhances the poetic force of the couplet. Nevertheless these poetic contexts are rare in Persian poetry and in certain poetic genres, for example in lyric gazel poetry, they seldom occur. The situation in Ottoman literature is slightly different. Ottoman poets seem to have recognized the poetic potential inherent in the “David and the chain mail” motif and they included it in their gazels more often. The motif appears first in the late fourteenth, early fifteenth century in two gazels composed by Ahmedî (d. 1412–1413). The couplets are like fraternal twins. Their core features are the same but they are not identical. Both of them contain a type of trope that has already been mentioned, a simile comparing the closely braided plaits of a beauty to a chain mail. Since both of these couplets are preserved in a collection of poems detached from the context where they were perceived and they are included in poems that do not contain any references to the date of their composition, it cannot be told which one of them was composed earlier. One of the beyts appears in a gazel using the redîf (‘refrain’) hergiz ‘never’: Süleymânsun velî Dâvûd dahı Saçuŋ bigi zırıh örmedi hergiz17 “You are Solomon but not even David Had ever prepared a chain mail like your plaited hair.” The couplet is part of an amorous poem that praises the apparent beauty of the poet’s beloved. The previous and succeeding beyts focus on his/her eye17 Ahmedî, Dîvân. Ed. by Yaşar Akdoğan. n.p., n.d., 398. Available online http://ekitap. kulturturizm.gov.tr/ TR,78357/ahmedi-divani.html, accessed 06. 09. 2018.

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brows and the couplet quoted above describes his/her hair. It’s not really clear why the poet chose to include the “David and the chain mail” motif. Though it is true that this way he was able to create a poetic context in which he could add another trope to the beyt, the “Süleymân–Dâvûd” tenâsüb that means an additional figure of speech but the reference to Solomon seems to be out of context here as in classical poetry David’s son is usually mentioned for his sagacity and not for his outward appearance. The other couplet is also part of a gazel. Though it seems to be a slightly different version of the beyt above, in the second case the poet seems to have found a more appropriate context to place the lines that include the “David and the chain mail” motif and the “Süleymân–Dâvûd” tenâsüb because one of the key features of the poem is a series of allusions to Islamic prophets: Eremedi vasl-i devletine Süleymân Öremedi bir zırıh saçı bigi Dâvud18 “Solomon never got as blessed as he/she is David couldn’t make a chain mail that could be compared to his/her plaits.” An anthology from the early fifteenth century contains a couplet that shows a new poetic strategy to place the “David and the chain mail” motif into an appropriate context. The anthology was compiled by ʿÖmer bin Mezîd in 1437 and it contains imitation poems (nazîre) by Ahmedî’s contemporaries and near contemporaries. The poem that includes the couplet in question was composed by a poet named Zeynî and it is part of a relatively small nazîre network consisting of eight love poems praising the poet’s real or imaginary beloved. Almost all of them contain a couplet describing the beloved’s braided plait (zülf) but only Zeynî chose to include the well-known “chain mail” metaphor: Sünbülünden halkalar saldukça gül üzre zırıh Bülbül-i cân nağme-yi Dâvûdî hoş-ter depredür19

18 Ahmedî, Dîvân, 289–290. 19  ʿÖmer bin Mezīd, Mecmūʿatü’n-Neẓāʾir. Ed. by Mustafa Canpolat. Ankara, 1982, 230.

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“When the chain mail casts ringlets resembling his/her braids on a rose [his/her cheek] The nightingale of the soul sings the tunes of David more pleasantly.” The novelty of Zeynî’s approach lies in the central role of David’s character in the couplet. Though the beyt is about the beloved’s braid the main focus falls on David. More than half of the keywords (halka ‘ring’, zırıh ‘chain mail’, nağme ‘tune’, Dâvûd ‘David’) belong to the semantic field ‘David’ and the semantic bonding between them provides the main force that keeps the couplet together. The poetic effect of the beyt is further enhanced by the appearance of a secondary semantic field, the semantic field of ‘nightingale’ that consists of the words bülbül ‘nightingale’, nağme ‘tune’, gül ‘rose’. Necâtî (d. 1509) and his two near contemporaries, Ahmed-i Rıdvān (d. ca. 1528–1538) and Hasbî (d. after 1553) used another possibility to place the “David and the chain mail” motif into a new poetic context and they built their couplets around the opposition between a chain mail worn for protection and a weapon used for attacking an opponent: Saçuŋı çöz ki zırıh adın aŋmaya Dâvûd Gözüŋi süz ki takınmaya Erdevân hançer20 “Unfold your hair [plaits] so that David doesn’t say the word ‘chain mail’ Open your [angry] eyes and don’t make Erdevân wear a dagger.” Ne vardur gamze bigi seyf kâtiʿ Zırıh düzdi ne zülfi bigi Dâvûd21 “No swords can be as hurting as his/her [coquettish] look David made a chain mail but in cannot be compared to his/her plait.” Gamzeler ser-nîzede cânâ silahşör oldular Zülfi Dâvûdî zirihler giydi Şâmîler gibi22 20  Ali Nihat Tarlan (ed.), Necati Beg Divanı. İstanbul, 1997, 37. 21  Halil Çeltik, Ahmed-i Rıdvan Divanı. Ankara, 2017, 228. 22  Kamil Ali Gıynaş, Pervâne Bey Mecmuʿası. Ankara, 2017, 2740.

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“His/her [coquettish] look is armed with lances; my beloved became a skilled warrior He/she donned a Davidic chain mail like the people of Syria.” The three couplets resemble each other very much. All of them are dominated by the opposition (tezâd) between two traditional tropes, one comparing the look of the beloved to a sharp weapon and the other one focusing on the likeness between a braided plait and a chain mail. The structure of the three couplets is very similar as the two sides of the opposition occupy a hemistich each in all three cases. This type of poetic context and structure doesn’t count unusual in late fifteenth-century Ottoman poetry as it is well-illustrated by two couplets one by Tâcizâde Caʿfer Çelebi (d. 1515) and one by Hafî (d. ca. mid-fifteenth c.): Bir lahza ruhuŋ çıkmadı zülfüŋ zırıhından Beŋzer ki ider tîr-i nazardan hazer ey dûst23 “Not even for a minute has your cheek left the chain mail of your plait As if it has been worried about the arrow cast by an [angry] look.” Kirpügi tîr-i kazâdur u kaşı kavs-ı kader Ne zırıh katlanur ol tîre ne cevşen ne siper24 “ His/her eyelashes are arrows of preordination and his/her eyebrows are the bow of might No chain mail, no armour, no shield can withstand those arrows.” The three poets mentioned above used a traditional structure and added an extra element. What they did is a very simple but acknowledged method of artistic creation. They selected traditional elements from the mundus significans of classical Ottoman poetry, combined them in a creative way and this way they created something poetically new.

23  Tâcizâde Caʿfer Çelebi, Dîvân. Ed. by İsmail Erünsal. Ankara, 2018, 324. 24  Sedanur Dinçer, Hafî Hayatı, Sanatı, Şiirleri. MA Thesis, Kırıkkale Üniversitesi, Kırıkkale, 2010, 69.

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This method of composing poetical pieces can be seen in one of Kemâlpaşazâde’s (d. 1534) gazels where all the elements listed above appear together but in his case they are placed into a different poetic context: Niçe ersün gûşına ol mâhuŋ âhumdan haber Zülfi Dâvûdî zırıhdür etmez ok andan güzer25 “How could the news of my sighs reach the ears of that moon [faced beloved] His/her plait is a Davidic chain mail there isn’t an arrow that could pierce it.” The new elements Kemâlpaşazâde added to the poetic mixture of the “David and the chain mail” motif and the two tropes already mentioned, the chain mail metaphor and the chain mail arrow opposition, are two more figures of speech that are both included in the first hemistich. One of them is a metaphor very often used in Persianate classical poetry. The noun mâh (‘moon’) refers to the moon like face of a beautiful person whom the poet is in love with. This metaphor is part of a comprehensive figure of speech occupying the whole line. The question asked in the first hemistich is a trope called hüsn-i taʿlîl (‘fabulous aetiology’) that tries to suggest a poetic explanation to the unasked question why the beloved does not listen to the sad news of the poet’s being full of sorrow and why he/she does not show mercy towards him. Kemâlpaşazâde takes the method of combining traditional elements a step further when he mixes them in a novel way, adds an original idea and thus creates a new and original poetic context. In his couplet quoted above, the twelfth-century Persian poet Muʿizzî firmly established the place of the “David and the chain mail” motif in his poem by connecting both elements of the rhetoric device to a semantically related word. David and Moses belong to the same semantic field and so do the nouns zulf and zirih. A very similar strategy appears in a couplet composed by a fifteenthcentury Ottoman poet Şeyhî (d. 1431?): ʿAcebdür ʿışk yolı kim nigâruŋ zülfi derdinden ʿAsâ Mûsâ düzetmişdür zırıh Dâvûd edinmiştür26 25  İbn-i Kemâl, Dîvan. Tenkidli Metin. Ed. by Mustafa Demirel. İstanbul, 1996, 45. 26  Halit Biltekin, Şeyhî Dîvânı. İnceleme, Tenkitli Metin, Dizin. PhD Dissertation, Ankara Üniversitesi, Ankara, 2003, 146.

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“Strange is love’s way as the pain caused by the [memory] of the beloveds plait Made Moses prepare a staff and David a chain mail.” The novelty of Şeyhî’s approach lies in the mixture of poetic elements he chose to include in the couplet. Besides the ingredients already mentioned he added a hüsn-i taʿlîl explaining why Moses and David produced the objects they are known for plus a metaphor comparing the long plaits of the beloved to the staff of Moses. Karamanlı Nizâmî (d. ca. 1469) broke with the traditional use of the “David and the chain mail” motif when instead of the usual braided plaits he compared the beloved’s curly hair to the ringlets of the mail: Müselsel saçı Dâvûdî zırıhdur Muʿanber zülfi ʿAbbâsî ʿalemdür27 “His/her curly hair is [like] a Davidic chain mail” His/her amber [black] plait is [like] an Abbasid flag.” Nizâmî’s poetic choice seems to be very conscious because a reference to his beloved’s plaits occurs in the second hemistich where they are compared to the black flags of the Abbasids. It’s not clear why the poet worded his couplet this way because loosely flying black hair would resemble a flag more than a closely braided plait. Moreover, both nouns have the same metrical value so saçı could be easily replaced with zülfi. Lâmiʿî (d. 1532), one of the most prolific poets of the first decades of the sixteenth century, has a very similarly structured couplet that contains a radically novel element. Instead of making a comparison between a chain mail and his/her beloved’s plaits he applies the conventional metaphor to describe an unconventional object, his beloved’s curly facial hair. Düzdi Dâvûdî zırıhlar hatt-i ʿanber-sâ-yı yâr Çekdi ʿAbbâsî ʿalemler kâkül-i müşgîn-i dūst28 27  Fuat Turpcu, Karamanlı Nizâmî Divanı’nın Yeni Bir Nüshası. Metin, Nesre Çeviri, Tıpkıbasım. MA Thesis, İstanbul Arel Üniversitesi, İstanbul, 2016, 88. 28 Gıynaş, Pervâne Bey, 427.

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“The amber like peach fuzz of [my] beloved produced Davidic chain mails The musk scented [and black] forelock of my friend hoisted an Abbasid flag.” Lâmiʿî’s couplet might look very original at a first reading. Nevertheless, as it has been shown earlier the couplet’s poetic structure with the two telmîhs occupying one hemistich each, one of them alluding to David’s skills as a maker of chain mails and the other to the black flag of the Abbasids was previously used by a fifteenth-century poet. The chain mail metaphor applied to a beloved’s peach fuzz instead of his/her plaits wasn’t Lâmiʿî’s invention either. It occurs first in the fifteenth century. Hafî, an Ottoman poet whose poetry was preserved scattered in various anthologies compared the appearance of his beloved’s curly facial hair to a chain mail in one of his poems and combined the chain mail metaphor with a hüsn-i taʿlîl explaining why his beloved has curly facial hair: Dâvud zırıh ile bezedi haddini hattı Kim saklaya halkuŋ anı biter nazarından29 “As if it was David, his/her peach fuzz embellished his/her face with a chain mail In order to hide it from people’s harmful gaze.” Coming back to Lâmiʿî’s couplet, the poet’s creativity resides in his ability of skilfully mixing poetic elements that were already part of the signifying universe of Ottoman classical poetry and also in finding an appropriate poetical context for this mixture. His poem is part of a small paraphrase network consisting of poems using the metre remel-i müsemmen-i mahzûf (- . - - | - . - - | - . - - | - . -), the rhyme -er and most importantly the redîf (‘refrain’) kâkül-i müşkîn-i dûst (‘the musk scented [and black] forelock of [my] friend’).30 Theoretically the redîf describing a part of the beloved’s hair would create a favourable poetic context for poets to write about their beloved’s plait (zülf) and include the traditional “David and the chain mail” metaphor or simile in 29  Sedanur Dinçer, Hafi Hayatı, Sanatı, Şiirleri. MA Thesis, Kırıkkale Üniversitesi, Kırıkkale, 2010, 102. 30  Edirneli Nazmî, Mecmaʿuʾn-Nezâʾir. Ed. by M. Fatih Köksal. Ankara, 2012, 386–393.

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one of their couplets. Quite interestingly none of the eleven poets used the opportunity. Zaʿîfî (d. ca. 1557) in a very similar situation, in a gazel using the redîf kâkülüŋ (‘your forelock’) didn’t miss the opportunity to include the traditional motif to write about his beloved’s plait. He placed it into a couplet in which the first hemistich is dominated by a hüsn-i taʿlîl, a figure of speech that provides the reader with a poetic explanation for the curliness of the beloved’s forelock: Tîr-i çeşm-i bed saŋa kâr etmesün diyü geyer Ey saçı müşkîn Dâvûdî zırıhlar kâkülüŋ31 “Saying that the arrows of the wicked eyes shouldn’t cause you harm, Hey you whose hair is musk scented [and black], your forelock dons a Davidic chain mail.” In classical poetry redîfs like kâkülüŋ or kâkül-i müşkîn-i dûst tend to define the contents of a poem. This is certainly the case if a poet chooses to use the word zırh/zırıh as a redîf. Through his choice he creates a poetic context that would quite naturally induce him to include “David and the chain mail” motif as it can be illustrated by two couplets composed by two sixteenth century poets, Hatmî (d. after 1579) and Edirneli Nazmî (d. after 1585?): Halka bir mertebeden geymesi oldı ʿâdet Sanʿat idi nite Dâvûd-ı hoş-elhâna zırıh32 “When people got into the habit to wear a chain mail, [In making] chain mails [they] became as skilful as the sweet voiced David.” Geydi çün Şâh Süleymân zırh-i Dâvûdî Sakladı cân gibi mâ-hasal ol hânı zırıh33 31  Kamil Akarsu, Zaʿifi Divanı. Metin, Tahlil ve Sistematik Endeks. PhD Dissertation, Gazi Üniversitesi, Ankara, 1989, 153. 32 Hicran Yücel–Turan, Hatmî Divanı. İnceleme–Metin. MA Thesis, İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, İstanbul, 2017, 223. 33  Sibel Üst (ed.), Edirneli Nazmî Divanı. Ankara, 2018, 3167.

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“Solomon the king donned his Davidic chain mail, And the chain mail protected him as if he [the king] was its soul.” As the notion of “chain mail” doesn’t have much poetical potential in classical poetry and there are only a limited number of elements in the signifying universe of classical poetry it can be bound to, in poems that use zırıh as a redîf tropes are scarce and these pieces tend to be rhetorically quite flat. Both couplets quoted above illustrate this case rather tellingly. They are quite simple and lack sophisticated rhetorical embellishments. Nevertheless, they aren’t absolutely without figures of speech. Hatmî found a creative way to add two tropes to his couplet. The very first word in his beyt is a tevriye ‘wordplay’ using the double meaning of the word halka that can be interpreted both the dative of the noun halk ‘people, nation’ and the noun halka ‘ring’. In this latter sense the word has a semantic bonding with chain mail, a protecting gear made of iron rings. It should be added here that the words halka ‘for the people’ and halka ‘ring’ are written in a different way in the Arabic script and thus according to the strict rules of classical rhetoric there is not a wordplay at the beginning of the line because and are two different words. Nevertheless, if the couplet is recited in Turkish the difference between the two words disappears and the sound sequence halka would evoke also the image of a ring in a Turkish audience. The other trope is an allusion represented by the qualifying adjective hoş elhân ‘pleasant voiced’, an adjective often used in connection with David as it refers to his ability to sing nicely. According to the Koran, David’s voice had the power to make birds, wild animals and mountains to join him in his vocal devotion praising God.34 Nazmî chose a much easier and more evident way of inserting rhetoric embellishments into his couplet. The name Süleymân has a double meaning in the context of the beyt as it can refer both to the ruling sultan, Süleymân I (1520–1566) and the prophet Solomon, the son of David. Nazmî by using this opportunity kills two birds with one stone. He inserts a wordplay (tevriye) 34  Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an, 291.

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into the couplet and uses the existing semantic bonding between the names Solomon and David to strengthen the poetic force of his lines. It might be clear from what has been said so far that by the first half of the sixteenth century Ottoman poets became confident in their ability to compose good pieces of poetry that complied with the written and unwritten rules of classical poetry and they started to use elements of the traditional signifying universe of classical poetry they inherited from the Persian tradition in novel and creative ways. The following example shows how a gifted Ottoman poet like Muʿîdî in the sixteenth century could place a traditional element of the mundus significans like the simile of the chain mail and the ripples on the water into a novel context and how he could thus create a genuinely original couplet: Devr-i güldür münhezim kılmağa tevbe leşkerin Giydi Dâvûdî zırıhlar âb u hançer çekdi bîd35 “The season of the rose has come. In order to make the army of repentance run The water has donned Davidic chain mails and the willow has drawn its dagger.” The couplet that depicts a spring scene with blossoming roses in the garden, a light breeze that makes ripples on the pond and a willow growing fresh blade-shaped leaves is full of poetic topoi. Winter, the period of renunciation and contemplation is followed by spring, a joyful season that brings nature’s resurrection in Persianate classical poetry. In this time of the year roses are in full bloom, trees grow fresh leaves and a light breeze blows in the air. These commonplace images are worded by Muʿîdî in a very creative way by mixing select traditional elements and placing them into a novel context. The couplet is dominated by a hüsn-i taʿlîl giving a poetic explanation why there are ripples on the surface of the water and why there are freshly grown leaves visible on the branches of willow trees. Though the poet uses conventional elements of

35  Gülçin Tanrıbuyurdu, Muʿîdî: Dîvân. Metin, Çeviri. PhD Dissertation, Kocaeli Üniversitesi, Kocaeli, 2012, 98.

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the mundus significans he is still able to produce an original piece through a conscious process of selecting and rearranging them. Though the signifying universe of classical poetry is a rigid system that is not too open to poetic innovation and invention poets never cease to experiment with finding their personal poetic voice through using unusual and unconven­ tional ways of artistic expression. It seems that the “David and the chain mail” motif was no exception of this process and there were poets who created similes or metaphors through comparing objects or concepts to a chain mail that quite rarely appear in classical poetry and thus they count unconventional. It should be added here though that in some cases the new trope was the result of an awkwardly worded idea rather than the product of conscious thinking. Kabûlî İbrahîm Efendi (d. 1591–1592), a sixteenth-century scholar poet in one of his gazels that can be interpreted as a pledge of loyalty to the ruling sultan compares his series of prayers for blessings to ringlets of a chain mail as both blessings and chain mails provide useful protection: Daʿvât-ı Kabûlî kim Dâvûdî zırıhlardur Cevşen gibi hıfz eyler her yanuŋ sultânum36 “Prayers of Kabûlî are like Davidic chain mails That protect you like armours from every side, my sultan.” It’s not without reason to suppose that Kabûlî Ibrâhîm Efendi’s original idea was to compare prayers to gears worn for protecting its wearer against an enemy’s attack. If so the inclusion of the word cevşen ‘armour’ is an appropriate choice. One feels that the motif of the chain mail appears in the beyt for the same reason. It fits into the couplet because it also protects its wearer and thus the semantic bonding between the words cevşen and zırıh creates a tenâsüb that enhances the couplet’s poetic force. The problem with Kabûlî’s couplet is that the main characteristic attributed to a chain mail in the world of classical poetry is that it’s made of series of ringlets. Its appearance is the basis of comparison 36  Mustafa Erdoğan, Kabûlî İbrahim Efendi Hayatı, Edebî Kişiliği ve Divanı. İnceleme, Tenkitli Metin ve Dizin. PhD Dissertation, Gazi Üniversitesi. Ankara, 2008, 641.

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in all similes and metaphors where the chain mail motif appears and in the beyt above Kabûlî fails to capitalize on this element’s full poetic potential. Another couplet where the “David and the chain mail” motif occurs in an unconventional context was composed by a late eighteenth-, early nineteenthcentury poet Ebubekir Celâlî (d. 1818). The poem is a laudatory gazel describing the new home of Ahmed ʿAzîz b. ʿAlî Pasha: Bu câ-yı bî-muʿâdil cânib-i Dâvutpâşâda Sadâlar içre Dâvûdî sadânuŋ mislidür gûyâ Yahud anda temekkün zırh-ı Dâvûdî telebbüsdür Gam etmez hamle ʿaczından mübârek eylesün Mevlâ37 “There’s no other place like this in the vicinity of Davutpasha It sounds as if it was filled with sounds similar to the [sweet] voice of David. Living there is like wearing a Davidic chain mail Sorrow is too weak to launch an attack there. May Our Lord bless [this place].” As far as the reason is concerned why the “David and the chain mail” motif appears in the poem, Celâlî’s couplet is very similar to the previously quoted Kabûlî beyt. The most important characteristic of a chain mail in classical poetry, which is its appearance, has no role in the couplet. Celâlî might have chosen to include the motif because the name of the location Dâvûtpaşa where Ahmed ʿAzîz Pasha’s new home was situated induced him to include as many poetic topoi centred around the character of David as possible. An allusion to his sweet voice was an evident choice because it could be smoothly fitted into the fabric of the poem. With the chain mail motif he had a much harder task to accomplish as nothing in the couplet resembles the appearance of a chain mail. He thus relied on the same solution as Kabûlî and inserted the motif into his poem by highlighting the notion of “safety” the only point common between the geographical location of the house and a chain mail.

37  Erdem Sarıkaya, Ebubekir Celalî Divanı: Karşelaştromalı Metin–İnceleme. MA Thesis, İstanbul Kültür Üniversitesi, İstanbul, 2008, 342.

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The conclusions of what has been said of the “David and the chain mail” motif can be summarized in the following way. The motif is not an Ottoman invention. It was a traditional element of the classical Persian poetical tradition and it was borrowed by the Ottomans as an integral part of the system. It looks though that the poetical potential inherent in the “David and the chain mail” motif attracted Ottoman poets more than Persian authors and in this respect Ottoman poetry displays a shift from its Persian models. The creativity Ottoman authors displayed in finding new ways to use a traditional element of the mundus significans of classical poetry suggests that by the second half of the fifteenth century they had understood well how the literary system they borrowed worked and that by this time they had become able to fully make use of the opportunities it offered. Last but not least it is interesting to see that the majority of the couplets quoted above are from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century which could mean that Ottoman classical poetry was a living system with constantly changing trends. Poetic devices that were popular in a period could go out of fashion but as the example of Celâlî’s couplet indicates elements that became part of the signifying universe once stayed there for good and kept representing a valid choice for practicing poets.

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WOLF ON THE BORDER: YAHYAPAŞAOĞLU BALİ BEY (?–1527) EXPANSION AND PROVINCIAL ÉLITE IN THE EUROPEAN CONFINES OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY Pál Fodor

Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest [email protected]

It is an established fact that for a lengthy period the motors of Ottoman

expansion into Europe were the so-called “marcher lords” and their extended households, who commanded the so-called akıncı troops and controlled the border areas (referred to as uç kenar yer in a 1520s document). These clans (the Evrenos, Mihal, Turahan and Malkoçoğulları families) were descendants of state-founding ancestors. Their power was passed on from father to son and they had special rights in many respects.1 From the reign of Murad II (1421– 1451) onwards, the central authority systematically curtailed the power of these clans and compelled them to accept the new game rules of the emerging power

This study has been written within the framework of the project entitled “Mohács 1526–2026: Rekonstrukció és emlékezet”. 1  For more on these clans, see Mariya Kiprovska, ‘The Mihaloğlu Family: Gazi Warriors and Patrons of Dervish Hospices’, Osmanlı Araştırmaları 32 (2008) 193–222; Pál Fodor, ‘Akıncı’, in Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three. Leiden, Boston, 2014, 14–16.

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structure, which was based on the kul-devşirme system.2 In this way, the hereditary aristocracy was gradually replaced by a central and provincial ruling élite formed from men of slave origin, who obtained and then monopolized the empire’s key positions. In the first half of the sixteenth century, one can still find – in the western marches3 – several sancakbeyis from the Mihaloğlu and Evrenos clans, but the more strategic districts on the main frontlines were already assigned to men from the new “dynasties” of devşirme origin. These men were often in-laws of the sultans; in other words, they had family ties to the ruling dynasty. It was from such a family that the hero of this study, Yahyapaşaoğlu Bali Bey, also came. His father, Yahya Pasha – probably a man of Albanian origin with ties to Skopje (known as Üsküb in Ottoman Turkish) – had been raised in the palace of Mehmed II (1451–1481), thereafter making a brilliant career under Bayezid II (1481–1512).4 Indeed, during his eventful life, Yahya Pasha served as the governor-general (beylerbeyi) of Rumelia three times and of Anatolia two times as well as the district governor (sancakbeyi) of Bosnia and of Nicopolis two times each. According to contemporary chronicler Kemalpaşazade, he also served as grand vizier for a short time in 1505, though this claim has not yet been substantiated.5 However, it is certain that Yahya Pasha was promoted to the position of second vizier in July 1505 and thus became a member of the imperial council.6 He also participated in important military actions in both 2  Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1995, 141–150; Kiprovska, ‘The Mihaloğlu Family’, 196, 213–222. 3  Kiprovska, ‘The Mihaloğlu Family’, 214–215. 4  Hazim Šabanović, Turski izvori za istoriju Beograda. I. Katarski popisi Beograda i okoline 1476–1566. Beograd, 1964, 647; Hedda Reindl, Männer um Bāyezīd: Eine prosopographische Studie über die Epoche Sultan Bāyezīds II. (1481–1512) (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 75.) Berlin, 1983, 336–345. In early 1525, Bali stated in a letter written to Captain-General Pál Tomori that he had heard from his father that both their families had originated from Bosnia and that they were related. Tomori did not consider this to be impossible. See Vilmos Fraknói, ‘Tomori Pál élete’, Századok 15 (1881) 290: note 1, 388. 5 Reindl, Männer um Bāyezīd, 341–342. 6  İlhan Gök, Atatürk Kitapliği M.C. O.71 Numaralı 909–933/1503–1527 Tarihli İn’âmât Defteri (Transkripsiyon–Değerlendirme). PhD Dissertation, İstanbul, 2014, 383, 392 (on this page the year is given as 907/1501, which seems to be an error). The entries from this defter pertaining to the year 909/1504–1505 were previously published by Ömer Lütfü Barkan, ‘İstanbul Saraylarına Ait Muhasebe Defterleri’, Belgeler 9:13 (1979) 296–380.

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the west and the east, fighting valiantly against the Mamluks during the Battle of Ağaçayırı in 1488, serving as the supreme commander of the large Ottoman army sent against Shah Ismail in 1507 and leading numerous attacks against the Albanians, Hungarians and Croats. At the turn of the century (or a little later), Yahya Pasha married a daughter of Bayezid II, thereby becoming his son-in-law (damad). South Slav scholarly literature generally identifies his bride as Hatice,7 though this notion has been contested.8 Entries from a list of gifts kept for many years (cited above) clearly show that Yahya Pasha married Princess Aynışah.9 Their union took place after Aynışah’s first husband, (Göde) Ahmed Mirza, was killed on 14 December 1497, during an uprising in Azerbaijan, where he had gone earlier that year to reclaim the throne of his grandfather, Akkoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan.10 (Ahmed Mirza was the issue of the marriage between Uğurlu Mehmed, the son of Uzun Hasan who had taken refuge in Istanbul, and Gevherhan, the daughter of Sultan Mehmed II.11 The marriage of Ahmed Mirza and Aynışah took place in 1490 and produced several daughters.) Yahya Pasha died in Edirne sometime after the middle of July 1511.12 Yahya Pasha established the family headquarters in Skopje, where he built a mosque, a soup kitchen/inn (imaret), a teacher training school (muallimhane), fountains (çeşme), a mansion (konak) and a türbe. For their sustainment he used 7  Šabanović, ibid.; Dušanka Bojanić, ‘Požarevac u XVI veku i Bali-beg Jahjapašić’, Istorisjki Časopis 32 (1985) 55. 8  Reindl, Männer um Bāyezīd, 341; M. Çağatay Uluçay, Padişahların Kadınları ve Kızları. (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, VII/63a.) Ankara, 19852, 25; M. Tayyib Gökbilgin, XV. ve XVI. Asırlarda Edirne ve Paşa Livası, Vakıflar – Mülkler – Mukataalar (İşaret Yayınları, 15.) İstanbul, 20072, 475. 9  Gök, İn’âmât Defteri, 1106, 1156, 1218, 1240, 1377. 10  Şerefname. (2. cilt). Osmanlı–İran Tarihi. Translated from the Persian by Osman Aslanoğlu. İstanbul, 2010, 117. For the precise date of death, see Roger M. Savory, ‘The Struggle for Supremacy in Persia after the Death of Timur’, Der Islam 40 (1965) 61. 11 Uluçay, Padişahların Kadınları ve Kızları, 24–25. 12 Gök, İn’âmât Defteri, 1300. The last entry regarding Yahya Pasha was dated 14 July 1511. He was formerly believed to have died in either 1509 or 1510. Reindl, Männer um Bāyezīd, 344. According to Kemalpaşazade, Yahya Pasha died in early 1511. İbn Kemâl, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân. ˘ VIII. Defter (Transkripsiyon). (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, XVIII/10.) Ed. by Ahmet Uğur. Ankara, 1997, 281.

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proceeds from the large religious endowment he founded from his vast array of real estate (houses, shops, baths, watermills, baking houses, soap-making workshops, caravanserais, covered markets, abattoirs, storehouses, etc.) and villages in Skopje, Loveç, Hirsovo, Sofia, Nicopolis, Istanbul, Tatarpazarı and elsewhere.13 Yahya Pasha also founded a teacher training school and a primary school (mektebhane) in Istanbul, which he financed with income from a village around Gallipoli and a few endowments in Galata. He also owned a livestock farm in Plovdiv (known in Ottoman Turkish as Filibe).14 Kemalpaşazade wrote the following revealing description of Yahya Pasha: “This highly esteemed statesman was among the greatest of those dignitaries who served at the heavenly court. He was among the senior attendants who served at the threshold of the House of Osman which is the abode of sovereignty. He long served in the distinguished harem at the time of Sultan Mehmed Khan. He rose to high rank in the shadow of his grace. … He first gave him the beylerbeyilik of Anatolia. However, he soon removed him from this office, because they accused him of oppressing his subjects. After dismissing him, he conducted an inquiry, and finding him innocent, again honored the commander-in-chief: he benevolently gave him the beylerbeyilik of Rumelia. When the sovereign, whose sins are forgiven, died and chaos, rebellion and clamour filled the world’s stage, he became the chief commander of the Rumelian part of the country. He again became the governor-general of Anatolia and Rumelia during the age of the auspicious world conqueror, Sultan Bayezid Khan. The light of the Sun-like [ruler]’s grace filled the candle of his fortune and he glistened as a Sun on the celestial summit of greatness. The multitude of his attendants and goods, the abundance of his servants and household surpassed those of the other great governors and generous viziers. 13  His 1505–1506 endowment deeds were published in Serbian translation and (in the case of the first one) in the original by Gliša Elezović, Turski spomenici. 2 vols. Beograd, 1940–1952, I/1. 384–411, 420–525; I/2. 120–123. Cf. Vera Moutaftchieva, ‘Du role du vakıf dans l’économie urbaine des pays balkaniques sous la domination ottomane (XVe–XVIIe s.)’, in Eadem, Le vakıf–un aspect de la structure socio-économique de l’Empire ottoman (XVe–XVIIe s.). Sofia, 1981, 206–207; Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 56. 14 Gökbilgin, Edirne ve Paşa Livası, 456–458; Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 56; cf. Reindl, Männer um Bāyezīd, 344; Aleksandar Fotić, ‘Yahyapaşa-oğlu Mehmed Pasha’s Evkaf in Belgrade’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 54:4 (2001) 438–439.

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… His illustrious children, who were the lions of the reeds of the fight for faith (gaza), as a spear and drown sword proceeded behind him and before him.”15 All seven of Yahya Pasha’s sons – Bali, Mahmud, Mehmed, Sinan, Ahmed, İskender, and Mustafa – were adults at the time of his marriage into the sultan’s family and therefore had no royal blood.16 Bali Bey was the eldest son and he became the recognized leader of the clan after his father’s death. Although Bali Bey is mentioned in a relatively great number of sources (compared to other major actors of the period), the year of his birth is not known and there are gaps in our knowledge of his career. Some Hungarian sources describe him – and this seems to have been the source of subsequent misunderstandings – using the attribute Küçük (‘little, shorter, lesser’),17 while Ottoman sources occasionally use the attribute Koca (‘great, elder’).18 Perhaps the first word was used to distinguish him from the “Great” Bali, that is, Malkoçoğlu Bali Bey, while the second was used at the Ottoman court as a mark of respect, since by that time Bali had proven himself to be a great warlord. The first mention of Bali Bey dates to 1485, when he is recorded as the holder of a large prebend (ziamet)19 in Bosnia, and he is subsequently identified as the commander (subaşı) of the Yürüks, a peasant military organization in Rumelia.20 In 1498, he obtained an immense amount of plunder during his participation in the great

15  İbn Kemâl, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân. VIII. Defter, 281–282. ˘ 16  Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 55; Gökbilgin, Edirne ve Paşa Livası, 458: note 729, and Reindl, Männer um Bāyezīd, 345. The latter work specifies only five sons. 17  Istvánffy Miklós magyarok dolgairól írt históriája Tállyai Pál XVII. századi fordításában. I/1: 1–12. könyv. (Történelmi források, 1.) Ed. by Péter Benits. Budapest, 2001, 154. According to Istvánffy, the “exceedingly eminent strong man” received this name as a result of “the child-like condition of his body”, though this was obviously not the main reason. 18  See the entries of the 1526 campaign journal on 30 July and 20 September: Török történetírók. Vol. I. Translated and annotated by József Thúry. Budapest, 1893, 310, 319; Feridun Ahmed Bey, Münşeatü’s-Selatin. Vol. I. İstanbul, 1274/18582, 559, 563–564; Anton C. Schaendlinger, Die Feldzugstagebücher des ersten und zweiten ungarischen Feldzugs Suleymans I. (Beihefte zur Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 8.) Vienna, 1978, 73, 88. 19 Šabanović, Turski izvori, 646; Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 56. 20  Ömer Lütfi Barkan, ‘Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Bir İskân ve Kolonizasyon Metodu Ola­ rak İstilâ Devirlerinin Kolonizatör Türk Dervişleri ve Zâviyeler’, Vakıflar Dergisi 2 (1942) 342: No. 183; Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 56.

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incursion into Poland, which was led by Malkoçoğlu Bali Bey.21 It seems that Yahyapaşaoğlu Bali, whom Kemalpaşazade referred to as a “freshly matured adult” (taze yetişmiş),22 held the rank of sancakbeyi at the time (probably commanding one of the districts on the Lower Danube). The evidence for this is that the Rumelian beys had been ordered to participate in the foray into Poland and that Hoca Sadeddin – another, though much later, chronicler who gave an account of the event – also referred to Bali as a bey.23 But in 1504 he was undoubtedly a member of the élite club of provincial governors (ümera): an entry in the above- mentioned defter dated 8 September 1504 states that he had “become the bey of the liva of Küstendil”.24 In 1506, he was appointed to head the sancak of Avlonya in Albania.25 Bali Bey spent the year 1507 at the latter location26 and perhaps most of 1508 as well. On 18 June 1509, he was said to be the district governor of Silistra.27 Bali Bey still filled the latter position on 8 August 1511,28 though by 10 October of this year had become the bey of the sancak of Nicopolis.29 In the latter post, Bali Bey faced a grave challenge: he had to take sides in the struggle for the throne between Sultan Bayezid and Prince Selim.30 Whereas most of the Rumelian beys gave their support to Selim,31 Bali Bey played a duplicitous game for some time. According to several reports stemming from 1511–1512, he repeatedly informed Bayezid about Selim’s 21  Hoca Sadeddin, Tacü’t-Tevarih. Vol. II. Istanbul, 1280/1863, 81–84. On the Polish–Ottoman war and its international correlations, see Alexandru Simon, ‘Habsburg Politics at the Border of Christendom in the Early 1500s’, Banatica 21 (2011) 55–71. 22  İbn Kemâl, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân. VIII. Defter, 167. ˘ 23  Hoca Sadeddin, Tacü’t-Tevarih, II. 84. 24 Gök, İn’âmât Defteri, 261. 25 Šabanović, Turski izvori, 646; Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 56. 26 Gök, İn’âmât Defteri, 619, 678, 705. 27  Ibid., 956. 28  Ibid., 1129, 1284, 1301, 1310–1311. 29  Ibid., 1343. 30  On this recently, see H. Erdem Çıpa, The Making of Selim: Succession, Legitimacy, and Memory in the Early Modern Ottoman World. Bloomington, Indianapolis, 2017, 29–107. Specialists harshly criticized this book; the length of one review of the book is revealing in itself: Fikret Yılmaz, ‘Selim’i Yazmak’, Osmanlı Araştırmaları 51 (2018) 297–390. 31  Çağatay Uluçay, ‘Yavuz Sultan Selim Nasıl Padişah Oldu?’, Tarih Dergisi 7:10 (1954) 124–125 and notes 15 and 17.

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movements (for example, his arrival to Akkerman), but then gave his backing to Selim, initially supporting him in secret and then doing so openly.32 Bali was soon rewarded for his timely switch of allegiance: in late 1513, the new padishah appointed him as the sancakbeyi of Semendire.33 This appointment amounted to a recognition of his merits, for the post was the most significant in the Ottoman border organization. As its holder, Bali could exert – in conjunction with the bey of Bosnia – critical influence over Ottoman plans and actions in relation to Hungary. Apart from a few short intervals (during his redeployment to İskenderiye in 1518–1520, to Bosnia in 1521 and to Vidin in 1523–1524),34 it was in this post that Bali strove unremittingly to destroy the southern defense system of the Kingdom of Hungary and to conquer the Hungarian and Croatian lands by means of uniting the military forces stationed in Bosnia and in the other frontier sub-provinces (İzvornik, Alacahisar, Vidin, etc.). In the period until his death in 1527, hardly any major attacks or coordinated incursions were undertaken without his direct or indirect involvement. A striking success came in late April–early May 1515, when by means of a ruse Bali crushed the army of the Voivode of Transylvania John Szapolyai as the latter lay siege to the Ottoman fortress of Havale (Zsarnó in Hungarian, Avala in Serbian) that was blockading Hungarian Belgrade.35 32  İstanbul, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Arşivi (henceforth TSMA), E 6306, 6329 (?). According to İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı (Osmanlı Tarihi. Vol. II. [Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, XIII/16b1.] Ankara, 19753, 238: note 2), this report was written by Malkoçoğlu Bali Bey, though this is almost certainly inaccurate. Selahattin Tansel, Sultan İkinci Bâyezid’in Siyasî Hayatı. İstanbul, 1966, 274–276. In one of his reports (TSMA E 5082), Bali expressed his veneration as follows: “For this poor servant of yours there is no joy and support beyond the happiness-yielding threshold of the felicitous padishah… Whenever they command and request service from us, we go humbly into this high service and place our souls and bodies at risk. We hope that the merciful glance and high grace of the felicitous padishah will not distance itself from this servant of his…” 33 Šabanović, Turski izvori, 646; Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 56. 34  In addition to the previously cited works, see also Olga Zirojević, Tursko vojno uredjenje u Srbiji (1459–1683). Belgrade, 1974, 261–264. 35  Ludovicus Tubero, Kortörténeti feljegyzések (Magyarország). (Szegedi Középkortörténeti Könyvtár, 4.) Published by László Blazovich and Erzsébet Sz. Galántai. Szeged, 1994, 280– 283; Istvánffy Miklós magyarokról írt históriája, 154–156. There also exists a contemporary Ottoman account of the event: the letter that Prince Süleyman wrote to the pashas of the imperial council based on Bali Bey’s reports (TSMA E 5438). For the English translation of this letter,

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Bali Bey was also closely involved in the great turnabout in Ottoman “grand strategy” in 1520–1521, when the new sultan, Süleyman, abandoned his father’s eastern-oriented policy and launched an offensive against Central and Western Europe.36 During preparations for the campaign, Süleyman requested the opinion of Bali, who had been transferred to Bosnia in early 1521. In accordance with the interests of the military establishment in Rumelia, Bali argued for an attack against Hungary and the occupation of Buda, since – in his view – the Hungarians were no longer capable of resistance.37 After the initial success of the campaign (the occupation of Szabács/Šabac/Böğürdelen on 7 July), Bali received the unprecedented honour of being invited to express his opinion on further military action in a personal meeting with the sultan.38 Bali unexpectedly advised the ruler to capture Belgrade rather than go as far as the original target of Buda. He seems to have concluded that it would be dangerous for the Ottoman forces to penetrate the heart of the country without first acquiring this key fortification. Süleyman accepted Bali’s advice and turned against Belgrade despite his ardent desire ride through the streets of Buda on his horse at the end of his first military campaign.39 see the Appendix (No. 1). On the Ottoman–Hungarian relations and frontier conflicts in the late 1510s, see Tamás Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis to Mohács: A History of Ottoman–Hungarian Warfare, 1389–1526. Leiden, Boston, 2018, 248–268. 36  On this, see Pál Fodor, The Unbearable Weight of Empire: The Ottomans in Central Europe – A Failed Attempt at Universal Monarchy (1390–1566). Budapest, 20162, 56 ff. 37  “It should not remain a secret for the high throne that damned Hungary has no position or strength that would have to be taken into consideration.” Pál Fodor, ‘Ottoman Policy towards Hungary, 1520–1541’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 45:2–3 (1991) 335. In this work, I concluded that this undated report had been written in 1524 or 1525 rather than the likewise considered 1521, though in light of subsequent findings regarding Bali Bey’s tenures of office, it has become clear that it was written in the spring of the latter year. 38  TSMA E 6060: Bali’s report to the sultan in response to the command of the latter received on the date on which Szabács was occupied (7 July). This report reveals that the sultan had ordered Bali take up position on the Syrmian side of the Sava across from Szabács, and if he could not cross the river there, to move on to the imperial encampment. Bali informed the ruler that he would arrive to the Syrmian crossing in three days. According to the campaign journal, he finally arrived on 15 July to the camp of the beylerbeyi of Rumelia, whom the sultan had first sent from Szabács to the Syrmian side of the Sava. 39  17 July entry from the campaign journal: “Yahyapaşaoğlu Bali Bey, appearing before the padishah, held consultations regarding the campaign and they decided to move against Bel-

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Bali Bey caused considerable destruction on Hungarian soil on his way to the camp. The campaign journal describes Bali Bey’s depredations as follows: “Returning from Hungary with six-seven thousand people, he captured three castles along the way; he brought two of them under his dominion through siege and put their inhabitants to the sword, while one [castle] voluntarily surrendered. The infidel named Deli Marko – as he set off to take ‘tongues’ [captives] bragging of his valour – appeared in his pathway; they fought fiercely, though in the end he captured the accursed alive, while he took the heads of sixty unbelievers and brought the accursed to the high court along with his armor.”40 On 24 July, Bali Bey entered the northern part of Syrmium and after capturing Szalánkemén (Stari Slankamen; between 24 and 27 July), which had been abandoned by its defenders, he kept watch over the Danube crossings from here at the command of the sultan and took care not to let the Hungarians take by surprise the besieging Ottoman military corps that were conducting raids in Syrmium.41 Bali Bey’s reports and the campaign journal reveal that he continually sent captured “tongues” (prisoners) to the sultan – sometimes just a few, sometimes several dozen at one time.42 He attempted to draw close to Pétervárad (Petrovaradin), once requesting that the sultan provide him with 15 grade.” Török történetírók, I. 289; Feridun, Münşeat, 510; Schaendlinger, Die Feldzugstagebücher, 36. Bostan (known in previous Hungarian scholarly literature as Ferdi) attributes this change in concept even more resolutely to Bali: “When they conferred in the presence of the sultan, the decision to occupy the fortress of Belgrade was taken, upholding the words of Bali Bey.” Török történetírók. Vol. II (1521–1566). Translated and annotated by József Thúry. Budapest, 1896, 50. Celalzade Mustafa wrote, to the contrary, that Second Vizier Mustafa Pasha convinced the sultan to seize Belgrade. Török történetírók, II. 135–136; Petra Kappert (ed.), Geschichte Sultan Süleymān   K . ānūnīs von 1520 bis 1557 oder T .  abak. āt ül-Memālik ve Derecāt ül-Mesālik von Celālzāde Mu.s.t fā genannt K.   oca Nişāncı (Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, Supplementband, 21.) Wiesbaden, 1981, 56b–57a. The campaign journal does not suggest that Mustafa Pasha, who returned to the camp on the date of Bali’s arrival after an incursion into Syrmium that lasted for several days, met with the sultan. On the Hungarian side, they regarded it as fact that the Turks had seized Belgrade based on the recommendation of Bali: Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis to Mohács, 407. 40  Török történetírók, I. 288; Feridun, Münşeat, 509; Schaendlinger, Die Feldzugstagebücher, 35. 41  Török történetírók, I. 290; Feridun, Münşeat, 510; Schaendlinger, Die Feldzugstagebücher, 37–38. 42  Török történetírók, I. 293, 295; Feridun, Münşeat, 512; Schaendlinger, Die Feldzugs­ tagebücher, 42, 45–46; TSMA E 5717, 6613.

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horse-transport vessels and 15 boats (şaykas) so he could cross the Danube at Titel in search of prisoners, since “the news from ‘tongues’ taken on this side of the Danube is not worth anything; those good, mounted infidel soldiers who possess knowledge have all crossed to the other side.”43 Although Hungarian sources claim that the troops of Palatine Stephen Báthory once crossed the Danube and defeated Bali Bey,44 the latter reported that he managed to disperse the 300-man élite cavalry unit of the palatine and the bans in the vicinity of Pétervárad (capturing 47 of them and sending them to the sultan with another Bali Bey, whom he recommended for an award).45 Following the occupation of Belgrade, he received the mission of repatriating the surviving Hungarians who had received clemency and had been sent by boat to Szalánkemén.46 However, according to certain Hungarian sources, Bali’s men massacred Vice-ban Balázs Oláh and his men as the result of a dispute they had had on the previous day or perhaps due to some old offense.47 On 1 September, in the aftermath of the victorious campaign that culminated in the occupation of Belgrade,48 the sultan rewarded Bali with a robe of honour and 30,000 akçes.49 Then, on 15 September, Süleyman appointed him as the district governor of Semendire and Belgrade, granting him an exceptionally 43  TSMA E 6328. 44  Kiss Lajos, ‘Nándorfehérvár bukása (1521)’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 2 (1889) 569. 45  TSMA 7184. This may have been Küçük Bali Bey, a relative who will reappear later in this study. In another report, Bali recounts an interesting incident that provides a clear illustration of the circumstances that prevailed at this time: “Previously, an infidel named Yovan from among the Syrmian infidels was in the captivity of this servant when he submitted and went away to bring his family across with a safe-conduct. Somehow it became known and he was unable to bring them out in any way. In fact, he was forced to suffer grave harassment on the part of the accursed Hungarians. Now he has finally found the opportunity and has come to this servant. Since he possesses detailed and reliable information about the position, movements and armies of the king and the ban of Transylvania and the other bans, we sent him to the felicitous threshold.” TSMA E 5296. 46  Török történetírók, I. 297; Feridun, Münşeat, 514; Schaendlinger, Die Feldzugstagebücher, 49. 47  Ferenc Szakály, ‘Nándorfehérvár, 1521: The Beginning of the End of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary’, in Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (eds.), Hungarian–Ottoman Military and Diplomatic Relations in the Age of Süleyman the Magnificent. Budapest, 1994, 69–70. 48  For further information about this campaign, see Ferenc Szakály’s excellent article cited in the previous footnote (47–76). 49  Török történetírók, I. 297; Feridun, Münşeat, 514; Schaendlinger, Die Feldzugstagebücher, 49.

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large annual prebend of 900,000 akçes.50 In subsequent years, the troops of Bali Bey and Hüsrev Bey of Bosnia advanced in a coordinated fashion in the Lower Danube region, in Bosnia, Croatia, and Dalmatia.51 In 1522, they seized and destroyed the fortresses of Orsova, Pét and Miháld, occupied Knin and Scardona; then, in 1523, they captured Ostrovica and in 1524 Szörény (Severin) – to which they laid waste only to replace it with the newly built Feth-i İslam (Kladovo) on the other side of the Danube. They sought on several occasions to take Jajce, the last stronghold of the Hungarian defence in Bosnia.52 However, some of the military operations that Bali Bey conducted during this period ended in failure: for instance, in the years 1522–1523 he was unable to prevent the restoration of partial Hungarian dominion in Wallachia;53 and in August 1523 the armies of Bali Bey and Ferhad Pasha suffered an enormous defeat at the hands of the Hungarians in Syrmium near Szávaszentdemeter (Sremska Mitrovica) and Nagyolaszi (Manđelos).54 50  Török történetírók, I. 298; Feridun, Münşeat, 514; Schaendlinger, Die Feldzugstagebücher, 51. Bostan states that 3,000 men were detailed to guard the fortress (Török történetírók, II. 55). According to an official list prepared at the end of the year or the beginning of the following year, the annual prebend of Bali Bey was 622,000 akçes: Ömer Lûtfi Barkan, H. 933–934 (M. 1527–1528) Malî Yılına Ait bir Bütçe Örneği. İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 15:1–4 (1953–1954) 303. This suggests that the sultan soon regretted his generosity, perhaps because he did not want a district governor to earn as much as a governor-general. 51  For Hüsrev Bey and his activity, see Behija Zlatar, Gazi Husrev-beg. (Orijentalni Institut u Sarajevu. Posebna izdanja, 32.) Sarajevo, 2010, 11–65. For an account of the conquests, see Dino Mujadžević, ‘The Other Ottoman Serhat in Europe: Ottoman Territorial Expansion in Bosnia and Croatia in [the] First Half of the 16th Century’, GAMER 1:1 (2012) 99–111; Nenad Moačanin, ‘The Ottoman Conquest and Establishment in Croatia and Slavonia’, in Pál Fodor (ed.), The Battle for Central Europe: The Siege of Szigetvár and the Death of Süleyman the Magnificent and Nicholas Zrínyi (1566). Leiden, Boston, Budapest, 2019, 287–296. 52  Szakály, ‘Nándorfehérvár 1521’, 71–72; Zlatar, Gazi Husrev-Beg, 30–34; Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis to Mohács, 395–415. 53  Norbert C. Tóth,‘Szapolyai János erdélyi vajda 1522. évi havasalföldi hadjáratai. Havas­alföld korlátozott függetlenségének biztosítása’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 125:4 (2012) 987–1014. 54  András Kubinyi, ‘The Battle of Szávaszentdemeter–Nagyolaszi (1523). Ottoman Advance and Hungarian Defence on the Eve of Mohács’, in Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (eds.), Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe. The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest. (The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage. Politics, Society and Economy, 20.) Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2000, 94–115.

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(According to the contemporary chronicler György Szerémi, Bali Bey, who was jealous and furious at the arrogance of Ferhad Pasha, the sultan’s son-inlaw, actually set a trap for Ferhad and greatly contributed to his execution one year later.)55 In spite of the fiascos, by 1526 the frontier beys had effectively deprived the Kingdom of Hungary of its southern advance positions (with the notable exceptions of Jajce and Klissa) in preparation for the decisive Ottoman attack that had been put on hold in 1521. Bali’s military expertise, advice and troop movements then also played a crucial role in the Battle of Mohács, which resulted in the collapse of the medieval Hungarian state that had stubbornly resisted the Ottoman Turks for more than 130 years.56 The death of Bali in the spring of 1527 thus represented the departure from this world of one of the gravediggers and fiercest enemies of Hungary.57 The previously mentioned Kemalpaşazade wrote the following about Bali Bey: “His awesome name is known throughout the accursed Hungary.”58 Kemalpaşazade also described the unrivalled “hero” as follows: “Yahyapaşaoğlu Bali Bey … whose sword is a net cast upon the enemy; whose house is a convent, the lantern of which burns the grease of the enemy gone astray; whose table holds bread kneaded with the blood of the wicked infidel; whose morning and evening food is cooked on the fire of battle; whose occupation both winter and summer is the plundering foray onto the soil of the enemy; and who by virtue of the number of his fighters and abundance of his implements of war is the most commanding and formidable of the frontier beys. The aforenamed was the bey of Belgrade and Semendire and the frontier infidels were so frightened of him that they did not even dare to go out to their gardens and vineyards; if the rebels living on 55  See Dávid Csorba, ‘Orális török néphagyomány egy magyar krónikában’, in Pál Ács and Júlia Székely (eds.), Identitás és kultúra a török hódoltság korában. Budapest, 2012, 327–337. It must be noted that the author of the latter article on several occasions utilizes his sources very loosely in order to support his concepts; see p. 331 in particular. 56  János B. Szabó, Mohács. Régi kérdések – új válaszok. A Magyar Királyság hadserege az 1526. évi mohácsi csatában. Budapest, 2015, 103–108, 113–114. 57  According to a contemporary letter, Bali was dead already on 16 April 1527: Anton von Gévay, Urkunden und Actenstücke zur Geschichte der Verhältnisse zwischen Österreich, Ungern and der Pforte im XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderte. Erster Band. Gesandtschaften König Ferdinands I. an Sultan Suleiman I. 1527–1532. Vienna, 1840, 65: No. 43. 58  İbn Kemâl, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân. VIII. Defter, 282. ˘

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the island of Syrmium even heard his name, in their fright they were unable to grasp with their hands or to stand on their feet.”59 Indeed, Bali and his brothers bled for the House of Osman and the empire. One of the younger brothers, Mahmud, fell at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514,60 while two brothers (Bali and Mehmed) fought in the Battle of Mohács as sancakbeyis and three brothers (Mustafa, Ahmed and Sinan) took part in the battle without official rank as beys.61 One of their close relatives, Küçük Bali Bey, played a particularly important role along with Mehmed during the 1529 siege of Vienna.62 The latter, as Mehmed Bey, gained everlasting esteem through his preservation of the rule of John Szapolyai in Hungary during the 1530s.63 In the course of these years, they made great efforts to establish their own dynasty – in political, financial, and social terms alike. This was the intended goal of Bali’s marriage to a granddaughter of Sultan Bayezid. My investigations have shown that this marriage likely took place in 59  This quote is based on a translation by József Thúry, Török történetírók, I. 210–211. For the original Ottoman Turkish text, see Kemal Paşa-zâde, Tevarih-i Âl-i Osman. X. Defter. (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, XVIII/13.) Ed. by Şefaettin Severcan. Ankara, 1996, 239–240. 60  Selahattin Tansel, Yavuz Sultan Selim. Ankara, 1969, 61; and based on the former source, Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 55, 57. The fate of Mahmud is, however, obscure. Contrary to that stated in Tansel’s narrative sources, the Mohács campaign journal refers to him as the very much living bey of the sub-province of Vidin: Török történetírók, I. 319; Feridun, Münşeat, 564; Schaendlinger, Die Feldzugstagebücher, 88. At the same time, a certain Mehmed is identified as the bey of Vidin on the list of those who participated in the Battle of Mohács: Feridun M. Emecen, ‘Mohaç (1526). Osmanlılara Orta Avrupa’nın Kapılarını Açan Savaş’, in Idem, Osmanlı Klasik Çağında Savaş. İstanbul, 2010, 211. 61  Emecen, ‘Mohaç (1526)’, 210–211. 62  See the campaign-journal entries in Török történetírók, I. 324–346 and Feridun, Münşeat, 566–577. Küçük Bali received the mission of taking the captured Péter Perényi to the sultan’s camp: Török történetírók, I. 332; Feridun, Münşeat, 570. According to Sándor Takáts’s unreferenced account, Küçük Bali treated Perényi so well that “he received [Küçük] Bali Bey as his father”. Sándor Takáts, ‘Barátságajánló török–magyar levelek’, in Idem, A török hódoltság korából. (Rajzok a török világból, IV.) [Budapest, 1927], 44. 63  Török történetírók, II. 102, 189; György Szerémi, Magyarország romlásáról. Translation revised by László Juhász, introduction and explanatory notes written by György Székely. Budapest, 1979, 222–223. Mehmed’s name is also connected to the 1527 occupation of Jajce (along with Hüsrev Bey) and to the 1537 victory over Hans Katzianer at Gara (Gorjani); cf. Fotić, ‘Yahyapaşa-oğlu Mehmed Pasha’s Evkaf ’, 440–441.

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1508, rather than in 1510 as previously thought, and that Bali’s bride was none other than the daughter of (Göde) Ahmed Mirza and Aynışah; that is, Bali married his stepmother’s daughter, or, seen from a different angle, his father’s stepdaughter. This is interesting not only due to its piquancy, but because it provides a clear reflection of the ability of the Yahya family to assert its interests.64 However, the seemingly useful plan ended in failure as Bali and his wife lived in separation and the woman shamelessly cheated on her husband, a fact that was eventually reported to the sultan. Dušanka Bojanić speculates that the couple was forced to divorce, though this is indeed nothing more than conjecture.65 Apparently, Bali died without an heir, albeit one contemporary document mentions a young man who makes a request for a prebend, stating that he is the son of Bali Bey. In view of the information provided (for instance, that he is the paternal uncle of Ali Bey), however, this Bali Bey is not clearly identifiable as our Bali Bey.66 Bali endeavored to maintain and increase the wealth he had inherited from his father. In and around Požarevac, in the vicinity of Belgrade and in the sancak of Nicopolis, the sultan granted him abandoned land, which Bali then tried to reinvigorate by bringing in settlers and by establishing various religious and welfare institutions.67 Then using revenue derived from these estates, including the village of Černova in the sancak of Nicopolis and the village of Jakubci near Filibe (Plovdiv),68 he established a pious endowment that served to finance the maintenance of local buildings and institutions as 64  Bali’s wife is first mentioned on 31 October 1508: Gök, İn’âmât Defteri, 851; for the other information in this regard, see ibid., 1106, 1156, 1218, 1240, 1377. 65  Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 61–62. For a letter describing the profligacy of Bali’s wife, see M. Çağatay Uluçay, Haremden mektuplar. Vol. I. Istanbul, 1956, 64–65. See the English translation of this extraordinary document in the Appendix (No. 2). 66  TSMA E 8757. The young man requests that instead of the assigned stipend at the court he would like to receive a timar and thus serve the sovereign. He emphasizes in a perceptibly conscious manner that nobody among his ancestors had served and received soldier’s pay in the court (thus serving to support the premise that was not a descendent of the Yahyas). 67 Šabanović, Turski izvori, 60; Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 50–53. MAD 506 Numaralı Semendire Livâsı İcmâl Defteri (937/1530). Dizin ve Tıpkıbasım. (T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı, 104; Defter-i Hâkânî Dizisi, 14) Ankara, 2009, 33. 68  Barkan, ‘İstila Devirlerinin’, 342: No. 183; Gökbilgin, Edirne ve Paşa Livası, 457: note 728.

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well as those established near the end of his life in Skopje, Požarevac and Semendire (two masjids, soup kitchen, dervish convent, mosque, two baths, bridge, public fountain).69 According to Bali’s last will, after his death his younger brother, Mehmed Bey, was to manage the endowments; thereafter the tasks of management were to pass to Mehmed’s heirs. A series of documents have survived concerning the family’s livestock farms and stables near Filibe, Edirne and Çirmen. These sources imply that in the 1530s the farms and stables may have been administered by Küçük Bali Bey, who had, furthermore, acquired tax-collection rights for the family in the region. The clan apparently kept its camels and, perhaps, its horses at these farms and stables and possessed granaries and, on the Maritsa River, mills as well.70 “Old” Bali Bey often undertook recultivation work in places that he and his fellow governors had destroyed in earlier years during their brutal incursions and plundering. This form of warfare – complemented by the traditional Ottoman relocation policy – thoroughly altered the ethnic map and settlement structure of Southern Hungary and Croatia.71 In place of the indigenous populations, which had been destroyed or had fled, Balkan Vlachs and other semi-nomadic peoples flooded into the area, as did refugees from Hungary as well.72 With the consent of the sultan, Bali Bey systematically settled such people in Syrmium, which had become depopulated, and in the sancak of Semendire. Bali then integrated them – offering advantageous conditions – into the Ottoman military organization.73 Ragusan historian Ludovicus Tubero 69  Fotić, ‘Yahyapaşa-oğlu Mehmed Pasha’s Evkaf ’, 439. 70  TSMA E 7687, 8176, 9196, 10542, 10543, 12282. 71  Several thousand inhabitants of Kölpény (Kupinovo), Barics (Barič), Zimony (Zemun), and Belgrade who had surrendered both before and after the fall of the latter city were transported to Istanbul and a nearby village as well as to nine villages on the Gallipoli peninsula. Feridun M. Emecen, ‘The History of an Early Sixteenth Century Migration – Sirem Exiles in Gallipoli’, in Dávid and Fodor (eds.), Hungarian–Ottoman Military, 77–91. 72  Ferenc Szakály, ‘Honkeresők (Megjegyzések Cserni Jován hadáról)’, Történelmi Szemle 22:2 (1979) 227–261. 73  The significance of cooperation with the Vlachs with regard to Ottoman Turk conquests and consolidation policies cannot be exaggerated. The seventeenth-century chronicler İbrahim Peçevi draws attention to this as well, illustrating with several examples the good relations that existed between the sultan and Vlach leaders: Tarih-i Peçevi. Vol. 1. İstanbul, 1281/1864, 16. The many surveys and regulations that pertained to the Vlachs, primarily the so-called Vlach law

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wrote with regard to the condition of Bali’s army in 1515 that “much of it was unarmed, since it was composed of Turks mixed with Illyrian herdsmen and to the extent that it surpassed the Hungarian forces in number, it remained below it in terms of the quality and strength of the soldiers…”74 Drawing strength from this new social and power structure, Bali established his own power base, conducting himself as an autocrat. (Incidentally, Italian sources already describe his father as a crude and unrefined figure.)75 He then proceeded to abuse his power, which, in turn, led to the launching of an investigation against him in the years 1515–1516. Bali managed to avoid punishment through a bribe of 50,000 akçes to the kadı who had arrived on the scene from Istanbul and who proceeded to produce false witnesses and to arrange for the execution of those who had lodged the complaint against Bali.76 The kadı also promulgated a “law book” (kanunname) in the form of an imperial order that regulated the obligations of Vlachs who lived in the sancak of Semendire with regard to taxation, military duty and toward the sancakbeyi and his men.77 In a report that has survived from the early 1520s, three serious accusations were brought against Bali (addressed to one of the ağas of the court): first, that he was using money to entice warriors in the border area to leave the other beys codes (Eflak kanunu), provide a reflection of this. For the legal status of the Vlachs, see Nicoară Beldiceanu, ‘Les valaques de Bosnie à la fin du XVe siècle et leurs institutions’, Turcica 7 (1975) 122–134. The Ottomans and the Vlachs moved up the Balkans together, pouring into Semendire and Vidin (the Timok-Morava valley), Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, then into Syrmium and Slavonia and, finally, into the narrowly defined region of Southern Hungary as well. See Nenad Moačanin, Town and Country on the Middle Danube 1526–1690. (The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage. Politics, Society and Economy, 35.) Leiden, Boston, 2006, 15–35; Vjeran Kursar, ‘Being an Ottoman Vlach: On Vlach Identity(ies), Role and Status in Western Parts of the Ottoman Balkans (15th–18th Centuries)’, OTAM 34 (Güz 2013) 115–161. For an instructive series of maps showing the Vlach settlements of Hercegovina during the first three and a half decades of the sixteenth century, see 174 Numaralı Hersek Livâsı İcmâl Eflakân ve Voynugân Tahrir Defteri (939/1533). Dizin ve Tıpkıbasım. (T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı, 103; Defter-i Hâkânî Dizisi, 15.) Ankara, 2009, 70–72. 74 Tubero, Kortörténeti feljegyzések, 281. 75 Reindl, Männer um Bāyezīd, 342. 76  TSMA 6304. See also Tansel, Yavuz Sultan Selim, 21–22 and photograph No. 12. 77  Ahmed Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri ve Hukukî Tahlilleri. Yavuz Sultan Selim Devri Kanunnâmeleri. İstanbul, 1991, 457–464.

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and join him; second, that he was both a cowardly soldier and a conceited man capable of all sorts of wrongdoing; and third, that he was colluding with the infidels, constantly informing them about upcoming raids.78 The author of the report – a certain Ahmed who presumably served as the bey of a sub-province bordering or close to the sancak of Semendire – characterized Bali as follows: “He is the type of person who does not comply with the commands of his majesty, the felicitous padishah. He does not fear Allah in the least. He does anything that he is able to do. In short, his conceit and jealousy are so great that they are unbearable. … If the felicitous padishah were aware of only one of the deeds he has committed, he probably would not entrust the sancak to his charge for even a single day.” The previously cited document regarding the bribery of the kadı presents a similar portrait of Bali: “This country greatly fears Bali. Here, people do not think of the felicitous padishah, but of Bali Bey. They do not fear so much the sultan as Bali Bey. … None of his transgressions are ever investigated. He has no fear of Allah and feels no shame in front of the prophet. He does not fulfill the noble commands of our padishah. … As you also know, the Yahyas have always been famous for their thieving habits and their evildoing. … In this country, people do not obey the noble commands coming from the felicitous padishah. Rather, they heed the commands and words of Bali Bey.”79 How can it be that Bali Bey transgressed all boundaries and yet always managed to survive investigations and other machinations to discredit him and that his gravesite near Semendire became a popular pilgrimage site?80 78  TSMA E 6544. Interestingly, the previously mentioned contemporary chronicler György Szerémi also stated that in 1523 Bali notified Pál Tomori of the impending Turkish attack on Syrmium; see Csorba, ‘Orális török néphagyomány’, 333. As a master of dissimulation (müdara), Bali often provided Hungarian commanders with dubious information. The previously cited letter in which Bali informed Tomori that they may be related was obviously intended to mislead and gain the benevolence of the latter. At the same time, mutual provision of gifts was an established custom along the border. In 1525, for example, Bali sent a Turkish horse to Tomori: Zsolt Simon, ‘A baricsi és kölpényi harmincadok a 16. század elején’, Századok 140 (2006) 861: note 193. 79  For a somewhat different translation that omits the reference to the Yahyas, see Bojanić, ‘Požarevac’, 64. 80  Evliyâ Çelebi wrote the following about this: “In praise of the pilgrimage site of the for-

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Obviously, the sultan balanced the pros and cons (the give-and-take equation) and concluded that the overall balance was favourable to the central authority. The undeniable abuses of Bali Bey were more than offset by the services that his clan provided in the struggle against the archenemy, the Kingdom of Hungary. While their father and Bali Bey had opened the way towards Hungary, the surviving brothers and their children were able to raise the flag of the House of Osman in Southern Hungary and Slavonia and then in the very heart of the kingdom. Küçük Bali, Mehmed and his son, Arslan Pasha, were appointed the Ottoman Turkish governors of Buda, the royal Hungarian capital, while the sons of Küçük Bali, Derviş, Ahmed and Mahmud, were chosen to govern important sancaks in Hungary. Even some of the clan’s adopted sons (such as Kasım Voyvoda, later Bey and Pasha, who organized the first sancak to the north of the Drava–Danube line and who later became beylerbeyi of Buda and of Temeşvar, and Mehmed, the bey of Arad) received crucial roles in the establishment of Ottoman rule in Hungary.81 While the sultan did on one occasion issue a stern reprimand to Bali,82 he was generally lenient with him tress of Semendire. First of all, there is a broad hill extending high over the western side of the city. There [is] the pilgrimage site of the martyrs. In addition to that, lying to the west of the city at a half hour’s distance in the direction of Belgrade along the banks of the Danube, Gazi Bali Bey’s pilgrimage site [can be found] on high hill… He became a martyr in the year 933 (1526/1527) and is buried in this convent. It is presently the convent of the venerable dervishes to which those with feeling hearts make pilgrimages.” Evliyâ Çelebi b. Derviş Mehemmed Zıllî, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi. 5. Kitap. Topkapı Sarayı Bağdat 307 Yazmasının Transkripsiyonu– Dizini. Ed. by Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman and İbrahim Sezgin. İstanbul, 2001, 318. 81  Géza Dávid, ‘A Life on the Marches: the Career of Derviş Bey’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 54:4 (2001) 411–426; Idem, ‘An Ottoman Military Career on the Hungarian Borders: Kasım Voyvoda, Bey, and Pasha’, in Dávid and Fodor (eds.), Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs, 265–297; Idem, ‘Macaristan’da Yönetici Osmanlı Aileleri/Leading Families in Ottoman Hungary’, OTAM 38 (Güz 2015) 17–21. Cf. Markus Köhbach’s abundant collection of data in his Die Eroberung von Fülek durch die Osmanen 1554. Eine histo­ risch-quellenkritische Studie zur osmanischen Expansion im östlichen Mitteleuropa. (Zur Kunde Südosteuropas, II/18.) Wien, Köln, Weimar, 1994, passim. 82  For an examination of the problems surrounding the command/letter of doubtful authenticity that refers to this reprimand, see the Appendix (No. 3). The relevant part of this command/letter: “If, however, on the day of judgement they hold us accountable for these abuses that have taken place through your activity as commander-in-chief and bey on the territory under our control, we are going to take you by the neck and you will not be able to easily dis-

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and with most of his fellows, for the clans and political families headed by these men (the Yahyas, the Aranids, the Memis, etc.)83 were merely doing on a smaller scale roughly the same things that the members of the Ottoman dynasty were doing, or had done, on a larger scale. The clans also constituted a predatory/plundering confederacy (a term coined by Heath Lowry), just as Osman had done upon the foundation of the empire.84 They too accepted into their midst anyone who was willing to serve the interests of the empire and of the clan, just as Osman had allied himself with Catalans and Greeks when establishing his state. They too relied primarily upon their entourages of slave origin, just as the House of Osman had done. They too destroyed their enemies with fire and sword before establishing a new culture on the seized territories, just as Osman and his successors had so often done. And they too employed population exchanges and the settlement of slaves in order to revitalize and consolidate the conquered territories, just as the dynasty had done for more than 200 years.85 Still, while they made every effort to enrich themselves, these clans were supremely loyal to the House of Osman. Thus, Süleyman saw in Bali (and in the other beys of the border zone) a reflection of himself and of his predecessors and a successful amalgam of imperial and private interests. engage your neck from my grasp.” Yusuf Kılıç, ‘Kanûnî Sultan Süleyman’ın Semendire Beyi Bâlî Paşa’ya Gönderdiği Emr-i Şerif. Takdim’, in Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, İlber Ortaylı and Emeri van Donzel (eds.), CIÉPO Osmanlı Öncesi ve Osmanlı Araştırmaları Uluslararası Komitesi VII. Sempozyumu Bildirileri. Peç: 7–11 Eylül 1986. (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, XXVI/2.) Ankara, 1994, 171. 83  For further detail regarding these clans as political families, see Dávid, ‘Macaristan’da’, 21– 23; Balázs Sudár, ‘Ki volt Jakováli Haszan pasa?’, Pécsi Szemle 9 (2006) 27–34. For the Istanbul connections of the Yahya political family during the middle of the sixteenth century, see Pál Fodor ‘Who Should Obtain the Castle of Pankota? Interest Groups and Self-Promotion in the Mid-Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Political Establishment’, Turcica 31 (1999) 67–86. 84  See Heath Lowry, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State. Albany, 2003, 46, 54. 85  Géza Dávid’s research shows that the previously mentioned Derviş, the first bey of Szeged, settled Hungarian captives at his family base established in the town of Jagodina in the sancak of Semendire and that he even “abducted” a priest for them. See Dávid, ‘A Life on the Marches’, 418-419. For the practice of forced settlement/deportation (sürgün) in general, see Ömer Lütfi Barkan, ‘Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Bir İskân ve Kolonizasyon Metodu Olarak Sürgünler’, İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 11:1–4 (1949–1950) 524–561; 13:1–4 (1951– 1952) 56–78; 15:1–4 (1953–1954) 209–237.

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For this reason, he took action against them only when the prestige of the dynasty lay at stake. (This explains why in the spring of 1528 he ordered – to the delight of the local population – the public execution of another Bali [plus nine of his men], who, as the district governor of İskenderiye [in Albania], had cruelly oppressed his subjects.)86 This also explains why he let the various clans vie for influence and power, because he knew that in this way they would test each other’s strengths and hold each other in check. And when he saw that one of the political families was on the wane and that another more promising family was striving to take its place, he would even help to foster this process. On 3 August 1566, during his thirteenth and final campaign in Hungary, on the way to Szigetvár, where just over a month later he too would lose his life, Süleyman had Arslan, the governor-general of Buda, executed. With this act, the success story of the Yahyas in Hungary met its end.87 Their place was taken by the Sokollus, who in turn were removed from their privileged position just several decades later. It was in this way that dynastic will and the struggle of the élites turned the wheel of fortune in the European border areas of the Ottoman Empire.

86  The most serious accusation lodged against this Bali was that he had seized peasant children and either sold them or given them away as gifts. The objective of the public execution was “to serve as a deterrent for the other beys and ensure a tranquil life for the population”; see Kappert, Geschichte Sultan Süleymān K.ānūnīs, 176b–177a. 87  [Feridun Ahmed Bey], Nüzhet-i Esrârü’l-Ahyâr der Ahbâr-i Sefer-i Sigetvar. Sultan Süleyman’ın Son Seferi. Edited by H. Ahmet Arslantürk and Günhan Börekçi, proofread by Abdülkadir Özcan. İstanbul, 2012, 19v–20r. Political downfall did not, however, necessarily entail financial failure as well: until the beginning of the twentieth century, the Yahya family earned substantial revenue from its endowments located throughout Rumelia (which the family lost in 1913). See Moutaftchieva, ‘Du role du vakıf ’, 206; cf. Balázs Sudár, Dzsámik és mecsetek a hódolt Magyarországon. (Magyar Történelmi Emlékek. Adattárak) Budapest, 2014, 50.

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appendix 1. Report of Prince Süleyman to the Pashas of the Divan Regarding the Battle of Zsarnó Edİrne, between 15–24 May 1515 88

Your highnesses of the great pashas! – may Allah, whose name be exalted,

enhance your renown until the day of resurrection! After having presented – together with the zephyr-caravan of conquest and power and the clever camel of victory and triumph as gift and donation – the zephyr-like offerings of pure and continuous salutation and the abundant and amiable pages of greeting that blow from the rose garden of fortune and the fragrant orchard of respect and which bring with them the scent of a light eastern breeze, we submit the undermentioned before the noble presence of the notables of felicity and the pillars of the sultanate. The pride of the generous emirs, the servant of your eminences, Bali Bey of Semendire, has previously sent letters on several occasions and reported that on the 7th of the month of Rebiülevvel89 the abject infidels built a landing dock on the bank of the Danube and crossed over to this side. This is why we sent the letter of the aforenamed Bali to the gate of prosperity with a servant of your eminences, Mehmed çavuş. At the same time, we sent the çavuşes serving at our felicitous threshold, Beni and Hasan, your servants, to the vicinity of Semendire, to Bali Bey, in order to take a look at the position and movements of the infidels, to become precisely acquainted with them, and to give an account of this. We forwarded the commands from the exalted court to the sancakbeyis of Rumelia via courier and appended to them our own confirmative orders. The sancakbeyis were just about to have the sipahi and akıncı troops march to Semendire when the depraved infidels marched against 88  TSMA E 5438. For a summary of the content of this letter, see Sándor Papp, “A török béke kérdése a Dózsa-féle parasztháború idején,” in Emese Egyed and László Pakó (eds.), Előadások a Magyar Tudomány Napján az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület I. Szakosztályában. (Certamen, III.) Kolozsvár, 2016, 239–240. 89  21 April 1515.

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the fortress called Havale90 and surrounded it. They shot it with their cannons from several places and opened gaps [in the wall]. Before the other sancakbeyis could join Bali Bey, the servants of your eminences, sancakbeyis Mesih of Vidin, Ahmed of Alacahisar, Kasım of Prizren and Hacı of İzvornik arrived there and held a council. They planned to await the other beys and together they would take up the fight against the infidels. However, the defenders of Havale then sent a messenger down from the aforenamed fortress and informed the beys that if they did not arrive there by the next day, then – since they had no more men and they had no strength to fight – an assault would be launched against the fortress. The sancakbeyis, the servants of your eminences, disregarding the dearth of people of Islam and the multitude of infidels and asking incessantly for divine mercy and for the help of the holy spirit of his holiness the prophet – may his name be glorified! – and knowing that the exalted support and superior power of the padishah, the refuge of the world, were with them, placed alongside the close relatives of the aforenamed Bali Bey, the servants of your eminences, the ziamet-holder Bali91 and Rüstem, the azab ağası and beşlü ağası and in addition the most valiant and brave soldiers of Semendire, who as infantrymen attacked the foot soldiers standing alongside the cannons of the infidels positioned below the fortress and dispersed them. The sancakbeyis arrived in their tracks and assailed the camp of the infidels. As they began to fight, around 20,000 armored cavalry rushed out from the camp of the infidels and an enormous battle took place from morning until afternoon. The infidel cavalry could not hold out, again withdrew to the camp and for a while fought from there. Finally, the multitude of flags bearing the sign of divine assistance and the deterrent spectacle of the heroes who enjoyed the abundant and miraculous support of the saints threw fear into the cavalry and the infantry of the infidels and unable to resist the effort of the fighters for the faith, they surrendered their camp. Then through the mercy and support 90  As mentioned above, Zsarnó in Hungarian and Avala in Serbian. The other Ottoman Turkish name for this fortress was Güzelcehisar. The Ottomans built it on the ruins of the medieval fort of Zsarnó in 1442. This is the place from which Ottoman military actions against Belgrade and nearby locations were launched. 91  The later Küçük Bali Bey, Pasha and the second beylerbeyi of Buda (1542–1543). To my knowledge, this document is the first that refers to him as a close relative of the Yahyas.

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of God in the prosperous days of his majesty the sovereign, the army of the infidels scattered and much of it became the food of the steely, shining sword, while those infidels who escaped the saber were placed in shackles and locked in the fortress. The infidels left behind 600–700 camp wagons, all of their shields, cannons, flags, and tents as well as their other military equipment and instruments and, defeated and hopeless, took to their heels. Our fighters for the faith raised the flag of victorious Islam and assailed the infidels all the way until Belgrade, taking the heads of the ban of Belgrade Mihály Paksi and the ban of Szabács.92 The accursed known as the ban of Transylvania93 managed to escape with a few thousand infidels and gathering all his strength fled to the fortress of Belgrade. During the prosperous time of his majesty the padishah – the shadow of Allah on earth – the infidels suffered a defeat of such magnitude that it cannot even be described. In order to impart the good news of the victory reaped in the fight for the faith, Bali Bey, the sincere follower of your eminences, made a report via letter that he sent here with his relative, Rüstem Bey, and with our çavuşes dispatched to Semendire, the servants of your eminences, Beni and Hasan, along with two armoured infidels whom were captured alive. For these reason we sent the servants of your eminences, the çavuşes Beni and Hasan whom were dispatched to Semendire and took part in the battle, with the friendly letter to your noble persons in order to recount the aforementioned adventure before your jubilant presence as it happened and as they saw it. What else might be said? Let new conquests and endless victories multiply and proliferate with the lord of humanity. Written in the first ten days of the month of Rebiülahir in year 921 at the headquarters of Edirne. Süleyman94

92  Gáspár Paksi. 93  John Szapolyai (later king of Hungary, 1526–1540). 94  The so-called pence-form signature is located at a right angle in the right-hand margin.

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2. Report of a High-Ranking Official to Sultan Selİm on the Profligacy of Balİ Bey’s Wife Around the Year 1516 95

Let it be known to his majesty my sultan that a shameful thing has occurred

with the wife of his servant, Bali Bey of Semendire: they caught her with a man in Skopje. I had the arrested boy brought in to me, we interrogated him in the presence of several kadıs and he made a confession. However, unable to tolerate this, I killed him. In addition, we had six of the gatekeepers and procuresses executed. And after this affair had taken place, the woman went to Istanbul without my permission. There several of her sins became public. She made love with a Kuran reciter, a boy known by the name of Dellakoğlu. She became with child from him and brought a girl into the world. She placed the girl in the home of Hasan, the Kuran reciter at the Sultan Mehmed Mosque, and committed her to the care of a nanny. Five or six months later the girl died. She gave the nanny to Hasan as a gift and she gave many other things to him as well. The kadı of Istanbul learned of this matter, brought the boy in and beat him. After they beat him, the boy in his shame could not bear to stay and came to Edirne. When he arrived here, he came down with a serious case of malaria. Upon hearing that he had become ill, [the woman] sent one of her people for him. They were already on their way from Istanbul when [the lover] died in Babaeski,96 where he was buried. When the woman learned of his death, she went out to Yenihisar97 under the pretext that there was a plague epidemic in Istanbul. Then she went to the boy’s grave dressed in a disguise. She exhumed him, took a look at him and reburied him. Around eleven days later she again went to Istanbul. Now she is with the younger brother of the deceased boy, the Kuran reciter named Dellakoğlu Bak. When the daughter 95 Uluçay, Haremden mektuplar, I. 64–65. The “high-ranking official” was most likely Prince Süleyman, who – as the previous document showed – kept his court in Edirne during these years. There were few others besides Süleyman who could have written to the sultan in such a manner. 96  Babaeski: the second stop along the main route from Edirne to Istanbul. 97  Fortress known today as Rumelihisarı standing above Istanbul on the European shore of the Bosporus.

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of Sultan Mahmud98 saw that she was pregnant, she spat in her face and said to her: “Do you want to bring the girls of the House of Osman to ruin? What kind of things are you doing? Do you think that this padishah is just like the others? If he finds out about just one of the things that you have done, he will break everybody to pieces; and you as well!” She has a slave woman named Kamerveş and a Circassian slave named Ferayet. These are the procuresses. If you desire to know the story of this affair, then have this slave woman brought to you, interrogate her, and you will become acquainted with it. Among the eunuchs sent in from the various households of Sultan Ahmet,99 there is one who knows all the secrets. There is a slave by the name of Saru Djerzük (?) İshak, he was also an accomplice in this affair. The now deceased çavuş who lived under the Kuruçeşme aqueduct has a wife, she also knows all the secrets. She [the wife of Bali Bey] does all of these things with the help of her riches. Her fortune is boundless and unparalleled. For the salvation of the souls of Gazi Sultan Bayezid and Gazi Sultan Mehmed, examine this situation and rectify it! If the common people disapprove of these affairs, how could the padishah tolerate them! What more might be said? Otherwise, the decision is my sultan’s prerogative. 3. The Alleged Command or Letter of Sultan Süleyman to Balİ Bey of Semendİre

T

his peculiar document document has been known for decades among Ottomanists and has appeared on several occasions in scholarly literature.100 K. E. Kürkçüoğlu, who first published the document, noticed after the appearance of his article that another version of it had appeared in the collection of documents that Feridun Bey presented to Murad III in 1574. The latter version of the document differed from that which Kürkçüoğlu had published in several regards, notably in that its issuer was Murad I (1362–1389) and its recipient was Evrenos Bey, the conqueror of 98   The son of Bayezid II who died in 1507. 99   The son of Bayezid II, whom his brother and main adversary, Sultan Selim, had killed in April 1513 after winning their struggle for the throne. 100  Kemâl Edîb Kürkçüoğlu, ‘Kanuni’nin Bali Beğ’e Gönderdiği Hat. t. -i Humāyūn’, Ankara ˘ Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 8:1–2 (1950) 225–231; Kılıç, ‘Kanûnî Sultan Süleyman’ın’, 168–172 (he was unfamiliar with the previous publication); Kânûnî Sultan Süleyman Han’ın Semendire Sancakbeyi Gâzî Bâlî Bey’e Mektubu. İstanbul, 2007.

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Rumelia.101 Those who subsequently published and cited the document generally overlooked this disconcerting fact and expressed no doubt regarding its authenticity, deeming it to be an order addressed to Bali Bey and an important manifestation of Sultan Süleyman concerning royal authority. Serving to further complicate the situation, an anonymous publisher102 identified this Bali not as Yahyapaşaoğlu Bali, but as Malkoçoğlu Bali, which is strange because the latter died around the year 1510 and thus could not have been sancakbeyi of Semendire at the time of Süleyman. Kürkçüoğlu, citing the falsifications of Feridun Bey to which several researchers had drawn attention, adhered to his viewpoint that that the document originated with Süleyman and was intended for Bali Bey. According to Kürkçüoğlu, it could not have been written during the time of Murad I, because at that time the language of documents was much simpler. Moreover, in Kürkçüoğlu’s opinion, the fact that the Yahya family possessed a copy of the document in the middle of the twentieth century also represented significant evidence regarding its origin. The obvious problems with regard to chronology and genre did not bother those who subsequently published and used it. Whereas Feridun Bey characterized the document as a berat (appointment diploma, in this case granting a sancak to Evrenos), one modern publisher qualified it as a hatt-i hümayun (order that the sultan wrote with his own hand), another as an emr-i şerif (noble order) and yet another as a mektub (letter) even though the word tevki – the term used to designate decrees that the divan issued in the sultan’s name – appears in the text. However, the document can immediately be recognized not as an ordinary command, but as a “work of art” that resembled the nashihatname (“advice literature”) known as “mirror for princes” in Europe. The text evokes the paternalistic tone of nashihatname in which the sovereign explains the principles of good governance to the gallant though unscrupulous Evrenos Bey or Bali Bey. The numbers specified in the various versions of the document are unrealistic and fanciful and become increasingly extravagant with time. Feridun Bey’s compilation of texts are dated between 26 October and 4 November 1386, while the alleged date of the earliest version connected to Bali Bey is 9 March–7 April 1532 (Kürkçüoğlu). The second is dated 26 March–23 April 1629 (though this may be an error; Kânûnî Sultan Süleyman) and the third is undated and was copied into a compendium of documents prepared at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Kılıç). None of these dates coincides with the lifetime of Bali Bey, who, as previously mentioned, died in the spring of 1527. The text was obviously popular and was read and copied for generations. Although the text changed little in terms of content over time, it did undergo a somewhat greater transformation in terms of form. The language used in Feridun Bey’s compilation closely resembled the style used in the Ottoman chancellery during the sixteenth 101  Kemâl Edib Kürkçüoğlu, ‘Münşe’âtu’s-Salâtîn’e Dâir Kısa Bir Not’, Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 8:3 (1950) 328; cf. Feridun, Münşeat, I. 87–89. 102  Kânûnî Sultan Süleyman Han’ın.

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century. The first two versions connected to Bali are linguistically simpler and sometimes almost clumsy, though subsequent authors visibly made the text more coherent and elegant. The author of the present study, based on the data with which he is familiar, would have difficulty taking a position with regard to question of when the “original/first” version of the document was actually written and to whom it was addressed. However, one should consider the fact that one of the most important titles of the designated recipient of the document (in the versions addressed to Bali as well!) corresponds to the 1417 inscription that appears on the sarcophagus of Evrenos Bey, son of İsa, in Yenice-i Vardar (today Giannitsa, Greece): “King of the gazis and fighters of the jihad, slayer of the infidels and the pagans” (melikü’l-guzzat ve’l-mücahidin, katilü’l-kefere ve’lmüşrikin).103 Yet before drawing far-reaching conclusions from this circumstance, one should also recall that similar attributives can be found in Bali Bey’s charter confirmed by Ebussuud Efendi on 15 March 1545 (“paragon of the gazis and fighters of the jihad, annihilator of the infidels and the pagans” [kıdvetü’l-guzzat ve’l-mücahidin, kamıü’l-keferet ve’l-müşrikin]; see Elezović, Turski spomenici, I/1, 479). The title “commander/prince of the faithful” (emirü’l-müminin) that is used emphatically in the document is nevertheless much more compatible with the words “martyr” (şehid) and “pilgrim” (hacı) used on inscriptions pertaining to Evrenos, who along with his father of Catalonian origin was the cofounder of the Ottoman state and who – just as the leader of the contemporary Mihaloğlu clan – indeed bore titles similar to those of the sultan. Based on these considerations, it is not inconceivable that an exchange of letters between Murad I and Evrenos served as the foundation for later revisions that transformed very simple texts into a moralizing document on statesmanship that was subsequently (after Bali’s death) regarded as a suitable general representation of relations between Süleyman and Bali and in a broader sense between the sultan and the frontier beys. (In any case, the text should be compared to the early, fifteenthcentury, mirrors for princes, most of which are the translations of “classical” works, in order to find its origins). One thing is certain: whoever put together the first version of the document connected to Bali was not merely articulating the interests of sultanic power, but – using the example of Bali – rendering tribute to the achievements of the frontier beys as well and consciously emphasizing the interdependence of the two poles. At the same time, the text refers in succession to problems that were a source of continual aggravation for central authorities: the accumulation of wealth among leading officials in the frontier regions, the placement of this wealth into foundations, corrupt practices related to plunder, disregard for law and order, abuse of power, etc. As mentioned above, the possibility cannot be excluded that an exchange of correspondence (perhaps containing a 103  Heath W. Lowry and İsmail E. Erünsal, The Evrenos Dynasty of Yenice-i Vardar: Notes and Documents. İstanbul, 2010, 89. The fact that a member of the court used the term melik (king) to describe the beylerbeyi of Anatolia and the sancakbeyis of Rumelia in a 1511 letter to Selim may provide a foundation for an assessment of the usage and content of this word. See Uluçay, ‘Yavuz Sultan Selim’, 122: note 11.

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threat from the sultan) between Süleyman and Bali served as the impetus for the revision of the basic text (the fact that the previously cited portion of the letter implying this motive [footnote no. 82] does not appear in the variation of the text addressed to Evrenos alludes to this possibility). The translation below is based on the latest version of the text, which is phrased more clearly than the previous versions, though does not differ significantly from them in terms of content.104

The copy of the noble command of his majesty the deceased Sultan Süleyman Khan who is the recipient of forgiveness – the mercy and pardon of God be upon him! – to Bali Bey of Semendire kept at the Buda treasury. Pride of the generous emirs, pillar among illustrious great, possessor of might and respect, king of the gazis and fighters of the jihad, slayer of the infidels and the pagans, my familiar friend, my distinguished veteran, Gazi Bali Bey! Upon the arrival of this noble imperial command, let it be known that they read the letter sent by you and we became familiar with its content. With the help of Allah – may he be exalted! – you seized 18 castles and sent 30,000 beams to my imperial naval arsenal. You also sent the heads of 60,000 infidels. May God bless you, let your face be white in this world and in the world beyond and let my bread be to your health! However, you also asked for a horse-tail standard (tuğ).105 Gazi Bali Bey, this is not the time [to ask] for a tuğ. Although you have placed us under a debt of gratitude with this service and good deed, we have previously done three good things for you. The first was this: we addressed you as “commander of the faithful”; the second: we sent you a very precious robe of honour; the third: we gave you the victorious tuğ of his holiness, the most generous apostle – may Allah commend and salute him!106 We honoured you and expressed 104  Kılıç, ‘Kanûnî Sultan Süleyman’ın’, 170–172 (transcription), photographs 1–3. The note that the original version of this variant of the text was once kept at the Buda treasury is interesting and, if true, very significant. 105  The horse-tail standard was an old Turkish symbol of power. In the Ottoman Empire, the sovereign had six such standards, while the viziers had three, the beylerbeyis had two and the sancakbeyis had one. 106  Bali Bey could obviously not have been presented with such a standard. The holy banner of Muhammad (liva-i şerif) was not a tuğ, but a black flag that the Ottomans likely acquired during their conquest of Egypt and the holy cities and took on their military campaigns beginning with the Long Turkish War (1593–1606). In the version of the text published in Feridun, Münşeat, I. 87, the term tabl ve alem (“military band”) figures instead of tuğ.

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our esteem with these three things. There is no greater gift than this. Now you should give thanks for these good deeds and show your gratitude. Be well aware that power resembles a two-panned scale. One of the pans is heaven, the other is hell. In this corruptible world, one hour of righteousness is worth more than seventy years of prayer. Let God – may he be praised and exalted! – place all of us in the company of the righteous on the day of judgement! Never forget about this final day. On the day when fire consumes the book of our deeds like dry wood, let you be filled with worry and be on the watch! If, however, on the day of judgement they hold us accountable for these abuses that have taken place through your activity as commander-in-chief and bey on the territory under our control, we are going to take you by the neck and you will not be able to easily disengage your neck from my grasp. Be very cautious not to let conceit fill your heart and do not say that you have conquered countries through your own strength and with your sword. The country belongs in the first order to the Creator, then to the caliph of the surface of the earth. Be aware that everything is from the Creator – may he be exalted! It came to my royal attention that in fortresses that you occupied you reserved the goods and foodstuffs for the treasury. I do not give my royal consent for this act. Reserve a fifth of the booty for the treasury and distribute the rest among the army of Islam. Because these spoils belong to the Muslim soldiers. Look upon the veteran warriors as if they were your father, the middleaged ones as if they were your brothers, the young ones as if they were your sons. Show honour and reverence toward your father, honour and esteem toward your brothers and compassion and mercy toward your sons. Take care that the army of Islam suffers no scarcity of any kind, do not begrudge them the benefactions and wealth you have in your possession, but dispense these to them abundantly. If there is not sufficient money in the treasury of the army and you suffer need, let me know. I am not so poor that with the help of Allah – may he be exalted! – I could not send one or two thousand purses [of money].107 107  The first of the previous two versions mentions 300–400 purses (kese) of reimbursement (harclık), while the second refers to 500 purses of akçes.

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Do not pester the tax-paying subjects (reaya) with unbearable tax burdens. Take extreme care in this regard, because if our reaya live in calm, then the infidel reaya will become inclined toward us and will come over to our side. Pay attention to the poor of the Muslim communities living there in small and big cities and if there be among them some who are in need of alms, provide them with foodstuffs from the treasury. Because the poor are the kind servants of God – may he be praised and exalted! The Muslim public treasury is for the servants of God. If the apostolic offspring settle in those parts, command a daily allowance of one gold piece108 for every one of them from the tax-farms and treasuries and make sure that the apostolic offspring suffer no need of any kind. I have appointed our lord Mustafa, the paragon of the kadıs and the magistrates, the mine of virtue and erudition – may his virtues increase! – to serve as the judge of my imperial camp.109 When he arrives, submit and render homage to the sacred law in all regards and do not neglect to show respect toward him. Act according to the sacred hadith110 “the jurists are the heirs of the prophets”, commit no error in the paying of respect. If you want to use somebody for some service, by no means pass judgment according to his previous situation. There are many people who appear to be followers of asceticism as long as they find no opportunity; though when this opportunity comes to them, they become Nimrod111 and pharaoh. Do not employ such people in your service until you have from time to time and repeatedly tried them out in the administration of affairs. If their subsequent and previous situations show agreement, then employ them. There are also some who fast during the day and pray at night.112 Those are the kind who are 108  This did not appear in the previous versions of the text. The stipulation of a daily allowance of one gold piece is obviously an intentional exaggeration. 109  A “judge of the camp” (ordu kadısı) was appointed for each military campaign to arbitrate legal disputes that emerged within the army. 110  The sayings and actions of the prophet; one of the major sources of Islamic law. 111  According to Islamic legend, Nimrod was a cruel and godless ruler who cast Abraham into the fire, but the latter was able to escape with the help of Allah. 112  Here the sentence “But in fact they are idolaters” is omitted, while it appears in the other two versions of the text (Kürkçüoğlu, ‘Kanuni’nin’, 229; Kânûnî Sultan Süleyman Han’ın, 13; and similarly Feridun, Münşeat, I. 88). The omitted sentence makes the previous one intel-

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drawn toward the secular, they like such things. Be very careful to avoid people like this. Do not give yourself over to fleeting things either. You wanted to make a few villages and places into religious foundations. I swear to Allah the most high that you can establish foundations in all of the territories that you have conquered, it has my royal blessing. If the padishahs who follow me do not show respect to your children and their families and offend them, let the curse of Allah, the angels and all men fall upon them and on the day of judgment I myself shall be their accuser and enemy.113 Now, therefore, Gazi Bali Bey, spur your horse into a swift run, let your sword be sharp and keep watch over your valiant warriors and your useful men. No matter where you go, let your horse be fleet, your sword be sharp and luck accompany you! Let God – may he be glorified and exalted! – help you in your affairs that are the most useful to the religion of Islam, let Him stand next to you and extend toward you a helping hand. Amen for the sake of the lord of the prophets. The end.

ligible, since there would obviously have been no problem with those who “fast during the day and pray at night” unless they were in this way attempting to conceal something. 113  In one version (Kânûnî Sultan Süleyman Han’ın, 11–12), there appears at the beginning of this part of the text a sentence stating that Bali asked the sovereign to issue a sultanic order guaranteeing the future inviolability of his family (this sentence is also present in the Feridun version of the text: Münşeat, I. 88).

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FIRANGI, ZARBZAN, AND RUM DASTURI: THE OTTOMANS AND THE DIFFUSION OF FIREARMS IN ASIA Gábor Ágoston

Georgetown University [email protected]

The appearance and mass employment of firearms in warfare was one of the most significant developments of the late Middle Ages. First manufactured in China in the 1280s, gunpowder weapons had reached both the Muslim World and Christian Europe within decades, and by the early fourteenth century firearms were being used in European battlefields and sieges. By mid-century, firearms had reached the Balkan Peninsula, and by the 1380s the Ottomans were also acquainted with the new weapon, as they faced enemies already in the possession of firearms: Byzantines, Venetians and Hungarians. Ottoman soldiers used cannons in their sieges of Byzantine Constantinople (between 1394 and 1402, 1422 and 1453), Thessaloniki (1422 and 1430), Antalya (1424), Novo Brdo (1427 and 1441), Smederevo (1439), and Belgrade (1440). In addition to siege warfare, by 1444 the Ottomans had started to use cannons and matchlock arquebuses aboard their river flotillas, and in field battles.1 Blacksmith and cannon founders from Europe helped in the transmission of European gunpowder technology to the Ottomans. Some of these men are known by name, such as Master Orban, who cast one of the largest Ottoman cannons for Sultan Mehmed II (1444–1446, 1451–1481) before the siege of Constantinople 1  Gábor Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge, 2005, 16–21.

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in 1453, and Jörg of Nuremberg, who served the sultan between 1460 and 1480. But there were hundreds more, unknown to us by name, who forged wrought iron guns, cast bronze cannons, manufactured gunpowder for the sultans, and operated cannons and guns in Ottoman fortresses. Yet, the majority of founders in the Ottoman foundries were Muslim Turks, as were the artillerymen (topçu) and gunners (tüfekçi/tüfenkçi, tüfenk-endaz) in Ottoman fortresses and armies.2 Most of the artillerymen were members of the artillery corps (topçu ocağı), which the Ottomans established as part of the sultan’s standing army in the early fifteenth century, well before their opponents in Europe and Asia. By the beginning in the second half of the fifteenth century, the Ottomans had organized the corps of gun carriage drivers (top arabacı), who manufactured, repaired and operated the war wagons in campaigns, and set up the wagon laager or tabur. Firearms and gunpowder used by the Ottomans were largely manufactured domestically. The empire possessed the necessary raw materials, and the government established weapons and ammunition industries, which until the mid-eighteenth century were capable of meeting the need of the armies, navies and fortresses. The resulting Ottoman firepower superiority in turn forced the sultans’ adversaries to employ firearms in ever-larger numbers and to reform their militaries accordingly. The following essay offers new evidence and consideration regarding the Ottomans’ impact on the diffusion of gunpowder technology in Safavid Iran and the Indian subcontinent in the sixteenth century.3

CHALDIRAN AND SAFAVID RESPONSES

One stunning example of the efficacy of Ottoman firepower was the Battle of Chaldiran. In the battle, fought on 23 August 1514, at a site northeast of Lake

2  Gábor Ágoston, ‘Firearms and Military Adaptation: The Ottomans and the European Military Revolution, 1450–1800’, Journal of World History 25:1 (2014) 88–90, 94, Table 2; Salim Aydüz, Tophâne-i Âmire ve Top Döküm Teknolojisi. Ankara, 2006, 136–148. 3  For earlier studies see Halil İnalcık, ‘The Socio-Political Effects of the Diffusion of Firearms in the Middle East’, in V. J. Parry and M. E. Yapp (eds.), War, Technology and Society in the Middle East. London, 1975, 195–217; Salih Özbaran, ‘The Ottomans’ Role in the Diffusion of Fire-arms and Military Technology in Asia and Africa in the Sixteenth Century’, in Idem, The Ottoman Response to European Expansion. Istanbul, 1994, 61–66 (originally published in 1986).

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Van in present-day northwest Iran, the Sunni Ottoman Sultan Selim (1512– 1520) defeated his Shia Safavid rival, Shah Ismail (1501–1524). While Ottoman numerical superiority and Safavid tactical errors also contributed to Ottoman victory, Ottoman firepower and the use of the wagon laager proved decisive factors against an enemy which did not deploy firearms in the battle. At Chaldiran, Sultan Selim, “as was the Anatolian manner, surrounded his encampment with shields and caissons, linking the caissons together with chains. The twelve thousand matchlockmen he always had with him were stationed in front of the lines.”4 When the Safavid cavalry pushed the Ottomans back, they retired to their wagon laager, which the Ottomans had learnt from the Hungarians in the 1440s, calling it tabur after the Hungarian name of the wagon laager (szekértábor). From behind their defensive wagon laager, which Safavid chroniclers described as an impenetrable “strong fortress”, janissary gunners drove back multiple charges of the Kizilbash cavalry, the backbone of the Safavid army.5 The lack of firearms in the Safavid army at the battle is puzzling, as the Safavids had been familiar with the weapon well before the battle. Scholars have long discredited the Sherley myth, which claimed that two English soldiers of fortune, Anthony and Robert Sherley, introduced firearms into Iran in the late 1590s. Contemporary sources demonstrate that the Ak Koyunlu Turkmens – the Safavids’ predecessors in Azerbaijan and Iran – had used firearms in the 1470s, under their most capable ruler, Uzun Hasan (1453– 1478). In 1501, Ismail, the grandson of Uzun Hasan and the leader of the militant Safaviyya Sufi movement, entered Tabriz, the seat of his grandfather Uzun Hasan, and declared himself shah of Persia and Twelver Shiism the official religion of his realm. In successive battles, Shah Ismail eliminated the See also Salih Özbaran, Ottoman Expansion Towards the Indian Ocean in the 16th Century. Istanbul, 2009, 273–282. 4 Ghiyās̲ al-Dīn ibn Humām al-Dīn Khvānd Mīr, Habibu’s-Siyar. Translated and edited by Wheeler M. Thackston. Cambridge, Mass., 1994, 546–605, 606. Although several contemporary narrative sources put the numbers of the elite infantry janissaries with handguns at 12,000 or more, archival sources show that only 10,065 janissaries were paid before the battle, and only about half of them were armed with guns. 5  Gábor Ágoston, ‘War-Winning Weapons? On the Decisiveness of Ottoman Firearms from the Siege of Constantinople (1453) to the Battle of Mohács (1526)’, Journal of Turkish Studies 39 (2013) 129–143, particularly 134–137.

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remnants of the Ak Koyunlus, and conquered Diyarbekir (1503), Baghdad (1508), Shirvan and Khorasan (1510). Just as the Ak Koyunlu Turkmens before them, the Safavids were also familiar with firearms, which they used occasionally to besiege towns. According to a later source, the Safavids owed their victory against the Uzbeks in 1510 partly to their use of guns. However, before Chaldiran the Safavids had not faced adversaries who employed firearms in large numbers, and therefore had not integrated gunpowder weapons into their army, which relied on the manoeuvrability and speed of the Kizilbash horsemen.6 The Battle of Chaldiran was one of the most consequential battles in world history. As a result of their victory, the Ottomans extended their control over Eastern Asia Minor, parts of Azerbaijan and Northern Iraq, thus shaping the spheres of influence between Sunni and Shia Islam for centuries to come. The battle had immediate consequences for the development of the Safavid army, too. Ottoman firepower impressed the Safavids, and served as stimulus for the widespread adoption of gunpowder weapons in Safavid Persia. According to an anonymous Ottoman intelligence report, by 1516 under the supervision of the chief gunner (tufangchi bashi) the Safavids had manufactured 2,000 handguns, though Shah Ismail’s troops did not know how to use the weapon, except for twenty defected Ottoman janissaries. The Safavids also manufactured fifty cannons (top) and caissons (araba), modelled after an Ottoman cannon and its caisson, which the Safavids recovered from the Aras river after Chaldiran.7 In 1516 the Safavids captured another 70 pieces of artillery, and by the next year the shah reportedly had some 100 artillery pieces mounted on caissons. The number of tufangchis fluctuated in the years to come, but the high numbers of 8,000 tufangchis in 1517 and 15,000 to 20,000 in 1521, mentioned in Venetian sources, are likely to be inflated. Ottoman deserters helped to train

6  Roger Savory, ‘The Sherley Myth’, Iran 5 (1967) 73–81; Willem Floor, Safavid Government Institutions. Costa Mesa, Ca., 2001, 177, 188–189. 7  Published in Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Les Ottomans, les Safavides et leurs voisins. Contribution à l’histoire des relations internationales dans l’Orient islamique de 1514 à 1524. Istanbul, 1987, 158–161, see also 165.

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the shah’s gunners. In 1518 and 1519, 700 and 1,500 Ottoman janissaries are said to have defected to Safavid Iran.8 Shah Ismail’s eldest son and successor, Shah Tahmasb I (1524–1576), continued to use firearms both in fortresses and battles. In 1528 the shah successfully deployed his cannons, matchlockmen, and the Ottoman-style wagon laager against the Shaybanid (Shibanid) Uzbeks. Responding to Ubayd Khan’s aggression against Khorasan, Shah Tahmasb confronted the Uzbeks at the Battle of Jam on 24 September 1528. Although outnumbered and defeated on the wings at the early stage of the battle, the Safavids ended the battle as victors, due to their firepower and wagon laager. An eyewitness account noted that the Safavids had 700 carts (araba), with four zarbzans mounted on each of the carts. Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur (1526–1530), the founder of the neighbouring Timurid/Mughal Empire in northern India, closely followed the Safavid-Uzbek wars. Based on intelligence he received shortly after the battle, he reported that the Safavids deployed 2,000 araba and 6,000 infantry gunners (tufangchi). He also noted that the Safavids arranged the cannon and carts in the Ottoman fashion (Rum dasturi tufak u araba tartib qılıp). Babur also added that the fifteenyear-old Shah Tahmasb remained in the wagon laager, while his cavalry on the flanks fled the battle. Later, those inside the wagon laager opened the chains that bound the carts together, and attacked the Uzbeks. This surprised the enemy, and sealed their fate. These references demonstrate how quickly the Safavids adopted the Ottoman wagon laager tactics, which had been one of the reasons of their own defeat in 1514. One should, however, add that at the time of the Safavid attack, the Khan was receiving his generals’ premature congratulations on his victory, while a good part of his army had already left the battlefield. The Uzbeks were in pursuit of the fleeing Kizilbash cavalry, plundering the Safavid army camp, while others were heading back to Transoxania.9 8 Floor, Safavid Government Institutions, 178–179, 189; Rudi Matthee, ‘Firearms in Persia’, Encyclopaedia Iranica. Vol. 9. New York, 1999, 619–620. 9  Zahiru’ddin Muhammad Babur, Babur-Nama (Memoirs of Babur). 2 vols. Translated from the original Turki Text by Annette Susannah Beveridge. New Delhi, 1922 (henceforth BNB), and Zahirüddin Muhammed Babur Mirza, Bâburnâme. Part Three. Chaghatay Turkish Text with Abdul-Rahim Khankhaanan’s Persian Translation. Turkish Transcription, Persian Edition and English Translation by Wheeler M. Thackston. Cambridge, Mass., 1993 (henceforth BNT) 347rv, 354rv, where the page numbers refer to the manuscript folios used by both Bever-

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While the decisive role of firearms at the battle was clear for the Uzbeks, too, they were unable to integrate the weapons into their armies. They had access neither to up-to-date imported weapons, nor were they able to manufacture the weapons in large enough numbers. The most obvious direct source was Muscovy, but the Muscovite government did not want to arm the Uzbeks. The weapons that reached the Uzbeks via smuggling were not sufficient. Moreover, the Uzbeks lacked troops expert in using firearms. Around 1550, the Uzbeks recruited some Ottoman janissaries, but these were mainly used in domestic wars. Although Ubayd Khan launched further invasions against Khorasan, he avoided open battle with Shah Tahmasb, learning from his defeat at Jam.10 Despite the usefulness of firearms in 1528, Shah Tahmasb’s army, too, remained largely cavalry, based on the Kizilbash horsemen, and firearms were more fully integrated into the Safavid military only under Shah Abbas I (1587– 1629). By setting up a standing army, paid by the ruler, Shah Abbas intended to establish more reliable forces, who could counter the Ottoman janissary infantry and artillery corps, and also curb the influence of the Kizilbash Turkmens.11 Like the Ottoman janissaries, Shah Abbas’s new troops were based on military slaves or ghulams, recruited from captured Circassians, Armenians, and Georgians. Ghulams had existed under Shahs Ismail I and Tahmasb I, but Abbas created a corps of royal household slaves, and gradually increased their numbers up to 10,000 to 15,000. The shah called his ghulams “mounted janissaries”, as they were cavalry, unlike the infantry janissaries. The ghulams did not foster an esprit de corps, and did not develop into a “socio-political corporation”, as did the janissaries barracked in Istanbul in the seventeenth century. Although the ghulams too participated in the power struggles in the Safavid court, they did it not as a

idge and Thackston, and indicated in the various English translations. The battle is examined in detail in Martin B. Dickson, Shah Tahmasb and the Uzbeks: The Duel for Khurasan with `Ubayd Khan: 930–946/1524–1540. PhD Dissertation, Princeton University, 1958, 128, 130–134. 10 Dickson, Shah Tahmasb and the Uzbeks. 11  For Abbas’s military reforms see Lockhart, ‘The Persian Army in the Safavid Period’, Der Islam 34 (1959) 89–98; Roger Savory, Iran under the Safavids. Cambridge, 1980, 78–79; Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire. London, 2009, 52–55. Newman, however, emphasizes the continued military and political power of tribal forces.

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separate political interest group, but by joining forces with Tajiks and Turks/ Kizilbash “and thus forming ethnically and socially mixed factions”.12 Shah Abbas was keen to arm his troops with firearms, and created a corps of artillerymen of 12,000 strong with 500 cannons. In addition to the artillery, “several thousand men were drafted into regiments of musketeers from the Chaghatay tribe, and from various Arab and Persian tribes in Khorasan, Azerbaijan, and Tabarestan… Without question, they were an essential element in Abbas’s conquests, and their employment had many advantages.”13 Established as a separate corps under the shah, the musketeers (tufangchi) were recruited mainly from Iranian peasants, and said to have numbered some 12,000 men. Although the corps was created on the model of the Ottoman janissaries and with the aim to counterbalance the latter, unlike the infantry janissaries, the tufangchis were mounted infantry, who moved on horse but fought on foot. They represented “a good (perhaps the best) instance of a hybrid and ad hoc Safavid answer to the new military challenges of the time”.14 Abbas’s loyal chronicler and chancery secretary (munshi), Iskandar Beg Turkman, claimed that in the spring of 1602, when Abbas marched against Balkh, the last major Uzbek foothold in Khorasan, the shah mobilized 300 cannons and mortars, with carriages and chains, and 10,000 infantry gunners and artillerymen, who comprised about one fifth of the 50,000-strong army.15 It is noteworthy that the Persian text calls these cannons top-i zarbzan, a term that usually designated smaller field pieces in Turkish, Persian and Arabic sources.

12  On the ghulams, see Giorgio Rota, ‘Fighting with the Kizilbash: Preliminary Remarks on Safavid Warfare’, in Kurt Franz and Wolfgang Holzwarth (eds.), Nomad Military Power in Iran and Adjacent Areas in the Islamic Period. Wiesbaden, 2015, 239. On the janissaries, see Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World. Cambridge, 2010, especially chapter 6. 13  Eskandar Beg Monshi, History of Shah ‘Abbas the Great. 2 vols. Transl. by Roger M. Savory. Boulder, Colorado, 1978, I. 527. 14  Rota, ‘Fighting with the Qizilbash’, 239. 15  Eskandar Beg Monshi, History, II. 809–810, 812; see also Floor, Safavid Government Institutions, 181.

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INDIA

Firearms had reached peninsular India by the 1460s,

but the weapon spread only from the early sixteenth century onwards, and soldiers from the Ottoman lands played an important role in the process. Threatened by the Portuguese, the Sultanate of Gujarat (1407–1573) – a regional Muslim power that seceded from the Sultanate of Delhi and developed strong naval capabilities with ports such as Surat and Diu – sought help from the Mamluk Sultan Kansuh al-Gauri (1501–1516), whose revenues from the spice trade the Portuguese endangered. The Mamluk sultan in turn asked naval and military aid from the Ottomans. In 1507, the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II (1481–1512) sent to Egypt his commander, Kemal Reis, with a fleet that carried fifty cannons, and copper to cast more ordnance in Suez. In 1508, a Mamluk fleet commanded by Amir Husain the Kurd (al-Kurdi), the governor of Jeddah, joined the Gujarati fleet under Malik Ayaz, governor of Diu and a rich merchant. The allied fleet defeated the Portuguese at the Battle of Chaul, south of present-day Bombay, and took the captured firearms to Goa of the Sultanate of Bijapur. However, at another battle near Diu the next year, the Portuguese destroyed the allied navy.17 Writing about the 1508 Mamluk-Gujarati victory three generations later, the chronicler Muhammad Kasim Firishta (d. 1623), who completed his Persian-language history at the request of Ibrahim Adil Shah II (1580–1627) of Bijapur, recorded that the “Sultān of Rūm, who was the enemy of the European unbelievers (Kāffār-i Firang), sent many ships to the coast of Hind for a holy war (ghaza) and protection, and many ships arrived near Gujarāt… Ten large ships of the Rūmīs, who were come from the Khūnkār of Rūm for purposes of holy war, accompanied Ayyāz, and Ayyāz, having gone to Chēwal (Chāul), fought with the Christians... and Ayyāz was victorious and slew very 16

16  Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India. New Delhi, 2004, 42–46. 17  Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery. New York, 1994, 35, 114–115; Longworth Dames, ‘The Portuguese and Turks in the Indian Ocean in the 16th century,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1921) 1–28, particularly 8–11; E. Dennison Ross, ‘The Portuguese in India and Arabia,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1921) 545–562, particularly 547–551.

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many.”18 Abd al-Rahman Ibn Ali Ibn ad-Dayba (1461–1537), a contemporary Arab chronicler of the western Yemeni town Zabid, claimed that Amir Husain was accompanied by Selman Reis, whom the Ottoman Sultan Selim (sic!) sent.19 This is an interesting piece of information, because historians have generally thought that Selman Reis arrived in Mamluk Alexandria in November 1511 with a shipment of Ottoman military aid, and that he entered Mamluk service only after this date (at the latest in 1514).20 While Selman Reis’s possible participation in the 1508 naval battle at Chaul needs further research, Portuguese sources make it clear that among the soldiers of the allied Mamluk-Gujarati navy there were many Rumes, that is, Ottoman subjects from Rum (the lands of the former Eastern Roman Empire, now Ottoman Asia Minor). Malik Ayaz himself is referred to in the Portuguese sources as Rume who knew Turkish.21 The Bijapuri authorities welcomed the 18  Dames, ‘The Portuguese and Turks’, 9. 19  Ross, ‘The Portuguese’, 549. 20  The exception is Brummett, Ottoman Seapower, 115, who, following Ross, claimed that the Mamluk fleet of 1507–1508 was jointly commanded by Husain al-Kurdi and Selman Reis. However, the standard works on Selman Reis maintain that it was only from 1514 onward that he was in Mamluk service. In 1514 he helped to build a naval arsenal in Suez for the Mamluk Red Sea fleet. The fleet, under the joint command of Selman Reis and Husain al-Kurdi launched a campaign in late 1515 against the Portuguese, partly to help Muzaffar Shah II of Gujarat. However, this campaign never reached the Gujarati coast. The fleet built a stronghold at the entrance to the Red Sea near Bab al-Mandab against an expected Portuguese attack, and unsuccessfully besieged Aden. Selman Reis returned with the fleet, and in 1517 repulsed the Portuguese attack against Jeddah, the port of and gateway to Mecca. See Svat Soucek, ‘Selman Re’is’, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition. Vol. 9. Leiden, 1997, 135–136; İdris Bostan, ‘Selman Reis’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 36. İstanbul, 2009, 444; Albrecht Fuess, Verbranntes Ufer. Auswirkungen mamlukischer Seepolitik auf Beirut und die syro-palästinensische Küste (1250–1517). Leiden, 2001, 60–63. Ad-Dayba and Fihrishta might have conflated the 1508 Chaul campaign with the 1515 expedition. 21  Malik Ayaz’s (d. 1523) activities in Gujarat are discussed in detail in Kuzhippalli S. Mathew, Portuguese and the Sultanate of Gujarat, 1500–1573. Delhi, 1986, 24–40, and Jean Aubin, ‘Albuquerque et les negotiations de Cambaye.’ Mare Luso–Indicum 1 (1971) 3–63, particularly 5–17. Regarding Ayaz’s origin, Mathew repeats Dames, who quotes the contemporary Portuguese historian João de Barros. The latter claimed that Malik Ayaz was a captured Russian, sold at the Istanbul slave market, and brought to Gujarat by his master. Other sources suggested that he was a Turk, a Tatar or a Persian, or hailed from Southern Europe, Asia Minor, Armenia, Java or Sumatra. See The Book of Duarte Barbosa. 2 vols. Transl. by  Mansel Long-

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Rumi soldiers and experts and resettled them in Goa with the help of Muslim merchants, who also financed the construction of shipyards and military plants. Conquering Goa in 1510, the Portuguese governor Afonso de Albuquerque captured from the defenders a hundred large bombards and a “large quantity” of small artillery. He also found cannons, mortars and gunpowder in the armoury, which the Rumes stockpiled there. Impressed by these weapons, Albuquerque sent to King Manuel I of Portugal (1495–1521) “guns, which fire heavy cross-bow type bolts”, two heavy bombards, and a sample of a cannon of the Goa Rumes, together with its mould.22 Three years later, in December 1513 Albuquerque praised the high quality of the matchlocks made by local gunsmiths in Goa, who “make guns as good as the Bohemians”. In another letter Albuquerque informed his king that the Goan gunsmiths “returned, becoming our masters in artillery and the making of cannons and guns (bombardas e espimgardas), which they make of iron here in Goa and are better than the German ones”.23 Military experts from the Ottoman and Safavid lands also played an important role in the diffusion of firearms, the Ottoman-style wagon laager and the associated fighting methods in the Timurid/Mughal Empire in northern India. At the first Battle of Panipat (1526), Babur defeated the larger army of Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, due in part to his combined use of field cannon, matchlockmen, and the Ottoman-style wagon laager. Babur’s victory marked the end of the Delhi Sultanate of the Lodi dynasty and the beginning of the Timurid/Mughal Empire in northern India. Before the battle, Master Aliworth Dames. London, 1918–1921, I. 130–131, footnotes. See also Aubin, ‘Albuquerque,’ 5, and Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration. Oxford, 2010, 26–27. Sixteenth-century Portuguese sources used the terms Rume/Rumes, that is, Rumi (Anatolian/Ottoman) and Turco/Turcos, that is “Turk”, for the Ottomans. See Salih Özbaran, Umman’da Kapışan İmparatorluklar. Osmanlı ve Portekiz. İstanbul, 2013, 59–89. 22  Özbaran, ‘The Ottomans’ Role’, 62; Rainer Daehnhardt, Espingarda Feiticeira/The Bewitched Gun. [Lisbon], 1994, 38; Richard M. Eaton, ‘“Kiss My Foot” Said the King: Firearms, Diplomacy and the Battle of Raichur, 1520’, Modern Asian Studies 43:1 (2009) 289–313, especially 297–298. 23  Cited in Daehnhardt, Espingarda Feiticeira, 39. See also Richard M. Eaton and Philip B. Wagoner, ‘Warfare on the Deccan Plateau, 1450–1600: A Military Revolution in Early Modern India?’, Journal of World History 25:1 (2014) 9–17.

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Quli (Ustād ‘Alī-Quli) “was ordered to tie the carts together with ox-harness ropes instead of chains, after the Anatolian manner (Rūm dastūri bilä)”.24 In addition to arranging the wagon laager according to the Rumi/Ottoman manner, Ali-Quli was master in firing matchlocks (tufak) and firangi guns, while the Ottoman artilleryman (topçı) Mustafa Rumi was a specialist in firing small field pieces, called zarbzan, mounted on carts.25 Mustafa Rumi was also an expert in setting up the Ottoman-style wagon laager. In the spring of 1527, at the Battle of Khanua against the Rajput-Afghan alliance commanded by Rana Sanga, it was Mustafa Rumi who “had made the caissons (araba) in the Anatolian fashion, and they were very sleek and fast caissons”. This time, “the caissons were secured in front and tied together by chains. The caissons were seven or eight yards apart, across which the chains were drawn”.26 The use of the Ottoman-style wagon laager enabled Babur to protect his soldiers in the camp against cavalry attacks of a much larger army, which outnumbered that of Babur by a factor of three to one. Small field pieces, matchlockmen and archers placed behind the wagons, targeted the attacking enemy with sustained fire, making traditional frontal cavalry assaults against the wagon laager an ineffective and deadly enterprise. At the same time, Babur’s own horsemen and infantry could charge at the enemy through the gaps of the wagon laager, while his mounted archers on the flanks encircled the enemy. The two types of weapon, firangi and zarbzan, are ubiquitous in the sources. The firangi/farangi/firengi/firingi was a small anti-personnel cannon, which translators usually render as Frankish, that is, European (Frenk/Efrenj from the Arabic Ifranj) cannon, which reached the Indian Ocean via the Portuguese. Historians posited that the term referred to the Portuguese breech-loader swivel berços or ‘cradles’, “so called because of the open space behind their barrels to accommodate a removable powder chamber”.27 However, it is possible that 24  BNT 264r. See also İnalcık, ‘The Socio-Political Effects’, 204; Naimur Rahman Farooqi, Mughal–Ottoman Relations. Delhi, 2009, 13. While some historians consider Ali-Quli Ottoman, others posit that he was from Safavid Persia, who, however, used Rumi/Ottoman methods of warfare. 25  BNT 266v. Ali-Quli: nečä qatla yaxšı fırangīlär attı, whereas Mustafa Rumi: arāba üstidäki darbzanlar bilä yaxšı darbzanlar attı. See also BNT 217rv. 26  BNT 310v–311v. 27  Eaton and Wagoner, ‘Warfare on the Deccan Plateau’, 26.

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the term is corruption from prangı, the name of a small Ottoman gun, firing shots of 150 grams (50 dirhems or 0.33 pounds). The Ottomans used the prangı guns from the mid-fifteenth century onwards in field battles, aboard their ships, and in their forts, where prangıs often comprised the majority of the ordnance. Also written in Ottoman sources as prankı, pirankı, parangi, parangı, pranga, pranku, prangu, and parangu, the Ottoman term goes back to the Italian/Spanish braga, short for ‘petriero a barga’ and ‘pedrero de braga,’ a small breech-loading swivel gun. Most of the Ottoman prangı guns were cast of bronze, but the Ottomans also used iron ones.28 By rendering the Ottoman prangı guns as firangi/farangi, contemporary Persian-language chronicles conflated the term firang, meaning ‘Frank/ European’, with the name of the prangı gun. A similar merging of terms exist in Chinese, where the word folangji is used for both ‘European’ and the name of a gun, although the two have different etymologies. However, the Ottomans used two distinct terms for ‘European’ (Frenk/Frengi) and the small gun (prangı), as did Tamil and Telugu speakers, living in southern India and Sri Lanka. Both have similar but different words for ‘European’ (paranki and parangi) and ‘cannon’ (pīranki and pīrangi).29 Therefore, it is possible that Ottoman prangıs reached southern India and the Indian Ocean through Rumi artillerymen before the Portuguese and their guns. Called darbzen, zarbzen, and zarbuzan in Ottoman sources, these cannons were among the most popular types of ordnance in the Ottoman, Mamluk, Safavid and Timurid/Mughal Empires. Although the term means ‘battering gun’, and the majority of Ottoman cannons deployed at sieges were indeed darbzen/zarbzen, there were also lighter field pieces called by this name. The Ottomans distinguished between small, medium and large darbzen/ zarbzen cannons. The small ones fired projectiles between 50 and 300 dirhems 28  Henry Kahane, Reneé Kahane, and Andreas Tietze, The Lingua Franca in the Levant: Turkish Nautical Terms of Italian and Greek Origin. Urbana, 1958, 122–123; İdris Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Teşkilatı: XVII. Yüzyılda Tersâne-i Âmire. Ankara, 1992, 88; Gábor Ágoston, ‘Ottoman Artillery and European Military Technology in the Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 47 (1994) 44; Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 87, 180; Aydüz, Tophâne-i Âmire, 392–399. 29  Kenneth Warren Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700. Cambridge, 2003, 242–243.

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(150–920 grams) in weight, the medium ones used shots of one okka (1.23 kilogram) in weight, while the big ones fired two-okka (2.5 kilogram) balls. The smallest Ottoman darbzen/zarbzens weighed 54 kilograms, the heaviest 540 kilograms.30 The zarbzans used in the Timurid/Mughal Empire are depicted in the Baburname as small field pieces with funnel-shaped mouths, mounted on two-wheeled carts with spoke-less wheels, drawn by four pairs of oxen. These weapons were very similar to the Ottoman darbzens/zarbzens, described and shown in contemporary Ottoman chronicles and miniatures.31 Zarbzans seem to have been among the most popular guns in India. By the 1540s Humayun (1530–1540, 1555–1556), Babur’s son and successor, had several hundreds of these field pieces. Muhammad Haydar Dughlat (1499– 1551) – first cousin of Babur, ruler of Kashmir, and the author of the contemporary chronicle Tarikh-i Rashidi – noted that in 1540, at the Battle of the Ganges (Kanauj) Humayun’s army had “seven hundred caissons, each drawn by four pairs of oxen. On every caisson was a small Anatolian cannon that shot a ball weighing five hundred mithqals”. Called zarbzan-i Rūmī in the Persian text, that is, Anatolian/Ottoman zarbzan, these small field pieces fired shots weighing about 2.2–2.4 kilograms or about 5 pounds. In terms of calibre, these Mughal zarbzans were similar to the Ottoman big darbzens/zarbzens, which fired shots weighing two okkas (2.5 kilograms or 5.5 pounds).32 30 Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 83–85; Aydüz, Tophâne-i Âmire, 373–386. 31  Gayatri N. Pant, Mughal Weapons in the Bābur-Nāmā. Delhi, 1989, 150: figure 260, and Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, 71–72, and 67: figure 10. Compare these with Ottoman cannons at the siege of Vienna in 1529, depicted by a miniature of Nakkaş Osman: Seyyid Lokman and Nakkaş Osman, Hünername, 1589. Vol. 2. TSMK Hazine 1524 fol. 257v. 32  Mirza Haydar Dughlat, Tārīkh-i Rashīdī: A History of the Khans of Moghulistan. Ed. by W. M. Thackston. Cambridge, Mass., 1996, 400 [184] and Mirza Haydar Dughlat, Tārīkh-i Rashīdī: A History of the Khans of Moghulistan. English Translation and Annotation by Wheeler M. Thackston. Cambridge, Mass., 1996, 286 [184], where the numbers in square brackets refer to the folio numbers of the manuscripts used by Thackston. In the sixteenth century, one mithqāl (miskal) was 4.81 g in Anatolia, 4.6 g in Persia, and 5.41 g in Calicut. See Walter Hinz, Islami­ sche Masse und Gewichte. Leiden, 1955, 5–7. Khan (Gunpowder and Firearms, 78) converted 500 mithqāl as 1.263 kgs, but he did not give any source as to why he calculated one mithqāl with 2.526 g. Using Khan’s conversion, Humayun’s zarbzans would correspond to the medium Ottoman darbzens. In addition to the 700 zarbzans, Humayun also had eight mortars (deg), “each drawn by seven pairs of oxen”, which used metal projectiles weighing 5,000 mithqāls, therefore roughly cor-

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Zarbzans quickly spread in India and Afghanistan. Humayun’s rival, the Afghan Pashtun leader and founder of the Suri Empire in Northern India, Sher Shah (1540–1545), used zarbzans that weighed approximately 60 or 74 kilograms (four männs). These must have been similar to the brass zarbzans, which Sher Shah commissioned in 1541–1543 from another Ottoman gun founder, Khwaja Ahmad Rumi. One of Ahmad Rumi’s brass pieces weighed 59.79 kilograms, was 1.35 meters long, and had a muzzle bore diameter of 3.81 centimetres. It fired iron shots weighing about 170 grams. These Indian zarbzans bore striking similarities to the lightest Ottoman bronze darbzens/zarbzens from the 1560s. These Ottoman pieces weighed 54–56 kilograms, their length varied between 1.32 and 1.54 meters, and fired 150-gram cast iron projectiles. In Mughal India, such small bronze zarbzans were a new design, different from the bigger zarbzans used during Humayun’s reign.33 The 35 calibre to bore ratio suggests that they were designed for greater range, accuracy and were used as anti-personnel weapons. The narrower bore not only economized on copper – a metal in short supply in India – but also improved casting techniques and quality, as the smaller pieces required fewer furnaces to pour the metal into the mould. These lighter pieces also initiated a shift from stone projectiles of Humayun’s time to smaller iron shots, the common projectile of the Ottoman darbzens. Ottoman gun founders played some role in introducing new techniques of forging and cannon casting into India. Ahmad Rumi helped to bring the skill of forging iron cannons to India’s interior.34 Ahmad Rumi and his colleagues were also responsible for introducing cast bronze cannon in the Deccan. An analysis of the metal found that the bronze cannon that (Sayyid) Ahmad Rumi cast for Sher Shah in 1542–1543 contained 84.72 per cent copper, 13.32 per cent zinc and iron, and 1.83 per cent tin.35 The ideal bronze cannon in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries contained about 90 per cent copper and 10 responding to the 18-okka (50-pounder) Ottoman mortars. See Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700. London, 2002, 148. 33  See Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, 74, 87–88: endnotes 65 and 69, and Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 83. 34 Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, 79. 35  H. E. Stapleton, ‘Note on Seven Sixteenth Century Cannons Recently Discovered in the Dacca District’, Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, New series 5 (1909) 367– 375, particularly 369: note 2.

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per cent tin. Chemical analysis found that the alloy of an Ottoman cannon, cast for Mehmed II in 1464, had very similar composition: it contained 89.58 per cent of copper and 10.15 per cent of tin. Archival sources regarding Ottoman cannon casting suggest that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Ottoman cannon founders used the typical tin bronze, which contained 89.5–91.4 per cent copper and 8.6–11.3 per cent tin.36 However, tin was in short supply in Mughal India, which might explain the high percentage of zinc and iron. Rumi cannon founders also introduced to the Deccan the techniques of casting large bronze cannons and mortars, such as the famous Malik-i Maidan (King of the Battlefield) at Bijapur fort, one of the largest cannons ever made, which was cast by Muhammad bin Husain Rumi for the Nizam Shahi ruler of Ahmadnagar in 1548–1549.37 Twenty-two years earlier, when Ali-Quli made his huge mortar for Babur, he used the same casting method, which, in turn, had been familiar to Ottoman gun founders from the mid-fifteenth century onwards: he cast the barrel and the powder chamber separately. But the Rumi cannon founders faced limitations as the blast furnaces in India were not capable of heating enough metal to cast large bronze cannons in one pour. Therefore they had to use several furnaces with separate channels to pour the melted metal into the mould. This method however could lead to complications, as is apparent from Babur’s description of Ali-Quli’s casting one large mortar (qazan) for him in October 1526: “On Monday the fifteenth of Muharram [22 October] we went to watch Master ‘Alī-Quli cast the mortar. Around the place where it was to be cast he had constructed eight smelting furnaces and had already melted the metal. From the bottom of each furnace he had made a channel straight to the mortar mould. Just as we got there he was opening the holes in the furnaces. The molten metal coming from the furnaces stopped. There was some flow either in the furnace or in the metal. Master ‘Alī-Quli went into a strange depression and was about to throw himself into the mould of molten bronze, but I soothed him, gave him a robe of honour, and got him out of his black mood. A day or two later, when the mould had cooled, they opened it, and Master ‘Alī-Quli sent someone to announce with glee that the shaft was flawless. It was then 36 Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 186–187. 37 Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, 78, and figures 13–14.

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easy to attach the powder chamber. He took out the shaft and assigned some men to fix it, and got to work connecting the chamber.”38

conclusions

Faced

with superior Ottoman firepower, the enemies of the Ottomans introduced important changes in their militaries. Of these, the Habsburg responses are well known for historians.39 This essay has revisited the gradual incorporation of firearms into the Safavid army following their humiliating defeat at the Battle of Chaldiran, where Ottoman firepower and the wagon laager proved decisive. The essay also re-examined the role of Rumi (Ottoman) gun founders, gunners and matchlockmen in the Indian subcontinent. It demonstrated that Rumi adventurers and mercenaries played an important role in the spread of firearms technology in sixteenth-century India. Just as in the contemporaneous Ottoman Empire, Rumi gun founders and their local colleagues cast mainly bronze/brass pieces, following casting methods known in the Ottoman Empire. Likewise, just as in the Ottoman Empire, the majority of the ordnance used in India consisted of small and medium firangi and zarbzan guns – the local versions of the Ottoman prangi and zarbzen light field pieces – which refutes the old orientalist and Eurocentric view that “oriental powers” were obsessed with and preferred giant cannons. Equally important was the Rumi specialists’ role in introducing the Ottoman-style (Rūm dastūri) wagon laager and the Rumi methods of “camp battle”. The fortified Ottomanstyle wagon laager solved one of the main problems that armies in Asia faced: how to defend one’s army against the swift attacks of the mounted archers of larger armies. It was firearms and the Ottoman-style wagon laager that helped the Safavids rout the invading Uzbeks in 1528 at the Battle of Jam, and that helped Babur crush the much larger armies of Ibrahim Lodi at the first Battle of Panipat in 1526 and the allied Rajput-Afghan forces at Khanua in 1527. 38  BNT 302rv. 39  See, for instance, Gábor Ágoston, ‘The Impact of the Habsburg-Ottoman Wars: A Reassessment’, in Karin Sperl, Martin Scheutz, and Arno Strohmeyer (eds.), Die Schlacht von Mogersdorf/St. Gotthard und der Friede von Eisenburg/Vasvár. Rahmenbedingungen, Akteure, Auswirkungen und Rezeption eines europäischen Ereignisses. Mogersdorf, 2015, 87–98.

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AFTER MOHÁCS: HOW NEWS FROM HUNGARY REACHED VENICE Colin Imber University of Manchester [email protected]

In the interval between the death of King Louis at Mohács in 1526 and the

Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529, Hungary became a focus of international politics. In 1526, the Ottoman sultan Süleyman left Hungary without establishing a government. He perhaps intended to return in 1527 to settle the kingdom’s affairs but, in October, 1526, he had news of disturbances in Anatolia that were to last until 1528, and divert his attention from Central Europe, leaving a power vacuum in Hungary. For Venice, this presented a mortal danger. The Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was a claimant to the Hungarian throne, while his brother, the Emperor Charles V, was the dominant power in Italy. If Ferdinand made good his claim, Venice would be squeezed between the Habsburg forces in Hungary and the armies of Charles V in Italy. In these dangerous circumstances, news of events in Hungary became a precious political commodity. The problem was that Hungary was in ruins, making it difficult to obtain any reliable information. On 23 September 1526, the locotenente of Udine, Zuan Moro, sent an agent to Vienna to report on the situation, but he could go no more than 30 miles beyond Ptuj as the roads were unsafe: “Many people who had been driven from their homes, especially Hungarians, had taken to killing people on the road.” Such information as he gleaned came from a group of horsemen going to Vienna and from “prisoners who had escaped the Turkish camp”. These wrongly informed him that the sultan was in Buda, which he 105

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intended to fortify:1 in fact, the Ottoman army had left Buda on 24 September2 without fortifying the city. A more accurate report came from a “young Venetian nobleman” who arrived in Udine on 9 November after a ten-day journey from Vienna. There, he reported, “it was rumoured” that the Turks had retreated to Belgrade. The sultan, he said, had returned to Turkey “because the Sophy has gone to war”. “This”, the report concludes, “is all the young man has heard.”3 His news, however, was mostly accurate: the Ottoman army had left Hungary, garrisoning only Belgrade and the fortresses between the Sava and the Drava and, although “the Sophy” – meaning the Safavid shah – had not attacked, there can be no doubt of Safavid involvement in the rebellions in Anatolia. The most serious concern for Venice was the struggle for the Hungarian throne. King Louis’s widow Mary was the sister of Charles V and Ferdinand, while Ferdinand’s wife Anna was the late king’s sister and, accompanying the marriages of Louis with Mary and of Ferdinand with Anna, there had been an agreement that Ferdinand should inherit the crown of Hungary on Louis’s death. In Hungary, however, kingship was elective and, by October, two rivals to Ferdinand had emerged. The first was the Croatian magnate Krstić Frankopan who, perhaps in an effort to gain Venetian support, contacted the Signoria. In a letter of 22 October, his agent gave an account of the Battle of Mohács and, after stressing Frankopan’s heroism in rallying the kingdom after the defeat, describes how the “gentlemen of Slavonia” had invited him to be their ruler: “We want your lordship to be our governor and general protector. We will all submit and be obedient to you because, at the time of the relief of Jajce, you liberated it from the Turks and now, at the loss of this kingdom, we are abandoned by all our lords except your lordship. We want only your lordship for our salvation and our defence.” To bolster Frankopan’s claim, he added: “The people of Hungary are blaming the nobles for the loss of the kingdom. Only the count [Frankopan] is rallying the people. The people from the twelve counties on this side of the Danube have sent to him, begging him to be their lord and protector as the people of Slavonia had done… This is most of the Kingdom of Hungary.” However, what the agent’s letter also made 1  Marino Sanuto, I Diarii. Vol. XLIII. Venezia, 1895, 78–79. 2  Ahmed Feridûn, Mecmu‘a-i Münşe’atü’s-Selatin. Vol. 1. İstanbul, 1857, 564. 3 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLIII. 222.

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clear was that John Szapolyai, voevode of Transylvania and brother-in-law of Sigismund, the king of Poland was also a candidate for the throne. The agent’s tactic was to acknowledge Szapolyai’s claim, but to dismiss his chances of election: “While the count was winning over all these people, the voevode sent 200 horsemen to the castle of Buda. He probably wishes to acquire the kingdom, but the nobles do not want him, because they think of him as the cause of the ruin of the kingdom...”4 The agent’s letter was too obviously partisan to be convincing and, by the time it arrived in Venice, the Signoria had already received a detailed report of events in Hungary which made no reference at all to his candidacy for the throne. On 8 October, a certain Antonio the Bohemian had travelled to Vienna carrying letters for the ambassador Carlo Contarini and returned via Pozsony (today Bratislava) and Buda. His despatch also gave an account of the Battle of Mohács, based in part on the testimony of the Hungarian Chancellor, István Brodarics. It also describes the sack of Buda, and confirms Queen Mary’s presence in Pozsony, with the castle still in the possession of the Hungarian János Bornemisza who, as was already known from the report of the factor of a German merchant passing through Udine5 and the report of Zorzi the Croat sent from Udine to Vienna to gather news, was refusing to surrender the fortress until he knew who was to be king of Hungary.6 Most importantly, Antonio reported that, as he was leaving Buda on 27 October, a captain arrived in the city with 200 horsemen – exactly as Frankopan’s agent had stated – to announce that Szapolyai himself was expected later in the day. He was to hold a diet at the coronation city of Székesfehérvár on 5 November, to which he had summoned all the barons of Hungary. To this, Antonio added: “He had with him the crown of the kingdom and wished to be crowned king of Hungary. He had a great following of subjects.”7 News of Szapolyai’s coronation did not reach Venice immediately. At the end of November, a certain Andrea Paribon arrived in Udine. He had left Vienna on 15 November, but had clearly not heard of Szapolyai’s enthronement 4  5  6  7 

Ibid., 274–281. Ibid., 116. Ibid., 195. Ibid., 225–228.

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five days previously, reporting only that he “claims to be king of Hungary”. Paribon noted, however, that: “The voevode is greatly favoured by the Hungarians for the crown,” adding: “It is held for certain that he is in contact with the sultan. The Hungarians want nothing to do with Germans.” It was possibly not until mid-December, that news of Szapolyai’s coronation reached Venice. On 14 December “the orator of the new king of Hungary, the voevode of Transylvania, called János [ John]”, together with Zuan Antonio Dandolo, in the name of Krstić Frankopan, received an audience in the Collegio where the orator reported: “The prelates and nobles went to Alba Regal [Székesfehérvár] to elect a king. They elected the voevode of Transylvania and, on St Martin’s Day, 11 November, he was crowned by seven bishops according to custom.” The envoy also reported – correctly – that the sultan had fortified Petrovaradin on the Danube, but kept nothing to the north of the Drava, adding to this a startling piece of misinformation: “The Turkish army,” he reported, “had departed, leaving carts, camels and other valuable items. From this it is certain that the sultan is dead.”8 This would have been a significant piece of news, but it is unlikely that his audience in the Collegio would have believed it. It was not the first time they had received false reports of the sultan’s death9 and, if it were true, they would certainly have heard of it from the bailo in Istanbul. This report of Szapolyai’s election came at a time when winter weather hindered communications, and there were few arrivals to report on events in Hungary. On 10 December,“a Venetian citizen who had spoken to a Hungarian merchant” arrived in Udine, to report that Szapolyai had the allegiance of “Hungary beyond the Danube, but not on this side of the Danube”, adding that “it was put about secretly” that there were negotiations concerning a marriage between him and Queen Mary. These rumours were true: Szapolyai had offered to marry Mary and abandon his claim to Moravia and Silesia, provided Ferdinand recognise him as king of Hungary.10 Ten days after Moro had forwarded his report from the “Venetian citizen” a more reliable informant arrived in Udine and confirmed 8  Ibid., 438–439. 9   For example, see Marino Sanuto, I Diarii. Vol. XXIX. Venezia, 1890, 587–589. 10  Paula Sutter Fichtner, Ferdinand I of Austria: The Politics of Dynasticism in the Age of the Reformation. Boulder, Col., 1982, 60.

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the news. With no certain information arriving from the north during the winter months, the locotenente had despatched his own agent, Piero the Croat, who arrived in Udine on 20 December, after a ten-day journey from Vienna. Of the proposed marriage, he reported: “As for the marriage that was said to be contracted between the queen of Hungary and the voevode, it is said that the Hungarian barons will not on any account give their consent, nor will Ferdinand give her away.” While reporting on Szapolyai’s failure to negotiate a marriage, Piero’s11 statement also pointed to what was to be the crucial factor in Szapolyai’s struggle against Ferdinand. “There is,” he stated, “an ambassador from the sultan at his court with about fifty horsemen.” Further evidence of Szapolyai’s alliance with the sultan reached Venice on 11 January 1527, three weeks after Piero’s arrival in Udine. Given the paucity of wholly trustworthy news, the Signoria had sent another agent, Nicolò the Hungarian “…to Hungary to find out what has happened since the king, voevode János of Transylvania, came to Hungary.” Nicolò had evidently left Venice in October and witnessed Szapolyai’s coronation, which he reported in greater detail than Szapolyai’s ambassador had done in the Collegio in December. Nicolò described how, after Székesfehérvár had surrendered to Szapolyai’s vanguard of 200 horsemen, the voevode himself had entered the city with 600. This much the Venetian government already knew. Nicolò added however: “The archduke had sent two solemn orators to tell the Hungarians that he was expecting to receive the kingdom and that he wished to be crowned. The orators were not admitted until after the voevode’s coronation. István Werbőczy, a noble with a great following who was also palatine stepped forward and spoke to the assembly: ‘[My] lords, you know that you do not have a head, and the most serene archduke wishes to be our king. Give your opinion on whether you want him or not.’ They replied with one voice that they did not want the archduke as their king. Then the lord István said: ‘Then whom do you wish to be your king?’ and they replied with no dissenting voice, that they wanted the voevode, all of them crying: ‘Fiat! Fiat!’” The funeral of King Louis followed on 10 November, and the coronation on the next day. “He then summoned the archduke’s envoys and asked them what 11 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLIII. 483.

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they wanted. They said: ‘Because we were not listened to before, we have nothing else to say.’” Beyond his account of the coronation itself, Nicolò reported on Szapolyai’s appointments to bishoprics and the appointment of Krstić Frankopan, who had abandoned hopes of becoming king himself and had resisted Ferdinand’s blandishments, as ban of Croatia and Slavonia. So far, Nicolò’s report added detail to what the Venetian government already knew. More important was the news, apparently reaching Venice for the first time that, at the end of November, Queen Mary had assembled a group of nobles who opposed Szapolyai, and that, on 17 December 1527, these had elected Ferdinand as king.“These electors,” Nicolò reported,“ are István Báthory, the palatine, Ferenc Batthyány, ban of Croatia, Sándor Thurzó, the former treasurer, and Tamás, bishop of Veszprém. The election took place in Pozsony, where the queen is.” Nicolò concluded with a prediction: “Ferdinand now wishes to go to Bohemia to be crowned king of Bohemia” – he had been elected to the crown of St Václav on 23 October12 – “and then he wishes to come to Hungary with an army to make himself king of Hungary.” However, in Nicolò’s estimation, Szapolyai was confident that the sultan would guarantee his throne against Ferdinand’s claims. Nicolò had in fact recorded the arrival after his coronation of an Ottoman envoy, who asked for a fifteen-year truce. This the new king immediately granted, with the condition that “each should be a friend to his friend and an enemy to his enemy” and to help each other whenever the need arose.13 Nicolò was reporting on events of international significance. Ferdinand’s election as king of Bohemia had already added to the Habsburg realms in Central Europe. Victory against Szapolyai in Hungary would secure Habsburg hegemony in the entire region, and this was something that the enemies of the Habsburgs – Francis I, Venice, Pope Clement VII and the Ottoman sultan – sought to prevent. In these circumstances, Szapolyai saw a chance to create an alliance against Ferdinand. He was brother-in-law of the king of Poland, whose assistance, or whose neutrality, all the interested parties wished to secure. Negotiations with Sigismund did not involve Venice, but news from Poland 12 Fichtner, Ferdinand I, 55. 13 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLIII. 627–629.

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did arrive on 8 February 1527 when two priests from Kraków passed through Venzone – like Udine a centre for news-gathering – and reported that ambassadors from Ferdinand, Szapolyai and Süleyman were at the Polish court. The priests did not say what was discussed, but nonetheless claimed that Sigismund did not wish his brother-in-law to be king of Hungary.14 In the event, the Polish king did not intervene in the conflict. Nor did another monarch whom Ferdinand approached. The Venetian government learned of this through a despatch from their envoy in London, dated March 1527, reporting that Ferdinand’s ambassador had asked Henry VIII for help against the sultan, which meant, in effect, to ask his help in securing the throne of Hungary. The request received a polite refusal: the king would provide cash only on condition that the Christian princes unite and attack the sultan together.15 The Signoria, in fact, knew more about the international repercussions of the crisis than it did about what was happening in Hungary itself. International news reached Venice via an established diplomatic network, while the turmoil within Hungary disrupted normal channels of communication. As a result, only a trickle of news arrived in Venice during 1527. What did arrive, however, was enough to make it clear that war between Ferdinand and Szapolyai was imminent. This is what some merchants from Poland reported as they passed through Venzone on 28 March and, on 1 April, the locotenente of Udine forwarded a letter from Gemona summarising a statement by a “merchant from Austria”. He reported that Ferdinand was at a diet in Regensburg and “guessed” that he was there to seek help from the empire and the Free Towns in support of his efforts to acquire the crown of Hungary, adding that “it is said” that the Free Towns do not wish to assist him in any way.16 Szapolyai, meanwhile, prepared to resist. His strategy, as a Florentine merchant who had left Buda on 18 May reported as he passed through Udine, was to elicit the support of his allies. The merchant claimed to have heard, “with his own ears”, Szapolyai saying: “If I am able, I wish to remain as king of Hungary with my own and my friends’ powers; otherwise I wish to remain king with the power 14  Marino Sanuto, I Diarii. Vol. XLIV. Venezia, 1895, 80. 15  Ibid., 506. 16  Ibid., 442.

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of the sultan.” One of his “friends” was evidently the king of Poland. While avoiding any open involvement in the conflict, Sigismund nonetheless rejected Ferdinand’s demand that he prevent Polish troops fighting in Szapolyai’s army.17 The Florentine reported, probably with much exaggeration, that a Polish lord had arrived in Buda and offered Szapolyai 10,000 men against his enemies “and especially against the Germans”.18 In June, more detailed news began to arrive in Udine. On 9 June, the locotenente forwarded a letter from Austria, reporting on military preparations in Austria, Styria and Carinthia and the levy of extraordinary taxes. Ferdinand’s commander, Niklas von Salm was asking for 10,000 experienced infantrymen, while Mark Sittich in Konstanz was levying troops originally intended for Italy, but now diverted to Hungary.19 At the same time, a persona fide digna arrived, bringing news from Hungary. He had left Ptuj eight days previously and had heard from Hungarian merchants that Szapolyai was raising an army, and that in May, he had received an ambassador from the sultan and spoken to him in private. “From this,” the locotenente reported, “it is assumed that the king has reached an accord with the sultan.”20 There was more news on 26 June, when a Milanese merchant coming from Salzburg confirmed that both Ferdinand and Szapolyai were preparing for war. He claimed that Casimir of Brandenburg had arrived in Wiener Neustadt on 17 June with “500 well-armed cavalry” and that this was in addition to cavalry and infantry coming from Austria and Bohemia; taxes were being raised; and oats and other provisions amassed in Pozsony. “All this,” he said, “is for the Hungarian campaign.” Of Szapolyai, he said only that he had a good number of cavalry, that he had summoned Frankopan from his castle near Zagreb, and that “it was assumed” he had good relations with the sultan.21 These reports from merchants passing through Udine in June left no doubt that war was imminent. They were, however, short on detail, and it was to discover more precisely what was happening that the locotenente sent Sebastian, 17 Fichtner, Ferdinand I, 80. 18  Marino Sanuto, I Diarii. Vol. XLV. Venezia, 1896, 223. 19  Ibid., 303–304. 20  Ibid., 360. 21  Ibid., 398.

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a citizen of Udine, to Vienna. Sebastian spent a fortnight there, leaving the city on 21 July. On his return, he reported on the troops that he had seen passing through the city on their way Buda: “Here in Vienna, it is said that the … king would have 45,000 men, horsemen and footmen.” He had also seen ships carrying 60 pieces of bronze artillery, and others carrying victuals.22 The Venetians were clearly desperate for news as, even before Sebastian’s return, the Signoria had sent another agent, “Mathio Sablà of Split … despatched to Vienna to learn the progress of the king of Vienna”. He left Vienna on 30 July, and reached Udine on 7 August. His report, however, added confusion rather than clarity to the news that Sebastian and others had already brought. Ferdinand’s army, he said, was in Pozsony with about 12,000 infantry and cavalry; Ferdinand himself was still in Vienna, expecting help from the Bohemians, but would soon leave for Hungary. The Bohemians, it was rumoured, were reluctant to fight, fearing that the Tatars would come and devastate the country. The only information that Sablà had been able to glean about Hungary came from some Croats from Zagreb, who told him that Szapolyai was in Buda with few men. He did, however, have a force of 10,000 Tatars and was hoping for assistance from the sultan.23 This last point was confirmed when a despatch concluding with the comment: “ambassadors are expected from the new king of Hungary”, reached Venice from the bailo Piero Zen in Istanbul.24 Nonetheless, news reaching Venice did not produce a coherent picture of what was happening in either Hungary or Austria. When war finally erupted, news evaporated altogether. On 19 August 1527, Ferdinand entered Buda, but news of his victory did not reach Venice for almost three weeks. In Udine, Zuan Moro tried but failed to find reliable informants. On 3 September, he reported that people coming to Udine from Gorizia and Gradisca reported that “in those places, some people say that the king of Bohemia has entered Buda, while others affirm that his men have been routed. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know what is true.”25 The truth became evident on 7 September, 22  23  24  25 

Ibid., 580–581. Ibid., 620. Ibid., 619–620. Marino Sanuto, I Diarii. Vol. XLVI. Venezia, 1897, 23.

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when the locotenente reported: “Antonio of Bergamo, on intimate terms with the captain of Ljubljana, who left there on 4 [September], arrived [in Udine] at 20 hours.” When interrogated, Antonio said that according to letters from “the borders of Hungary” which he had learned of through the captain, Ferdinand had gone on campaign in Hungary with an army of 16,000, encountering no obstacles except at Esztergom and Visegrád, and had entered Buda on 19 August with no resistance. He added that “the king of Hungary had retired to Transylvania to some of his castles, and has no army”.26 The news that Ferdinand had entered Buda was confirmed on 15 September with the return to Udine of an agent whom the locotenente had sent to gather information on the Turks who were making raids across the border from Bosnia. He too reported that Ferdinand had entered Buda, and that Szapolyai had retreated to Transylvania, adding that the Hungarian barons were trying to persuade Ferdinand to re-instate him as voevode of Transylvania.27 This may or may not have been true: information about Szapolyai was hard to obtain and difficult to evaluate. A different story emerged on 21 September, when a certain Hieronimo returned to Udine from Modrusa, and reported that Szapolyai was between Buda and Vienna with a large number of cavalry, including Tatars and Poles, and had captured many men and guns. He was, Hieronimo concluded, hoping for victory against Ferdinand who had entered Buda without opposition.28 The reality, however, was different: Hieronimo’s account of Szapolyai’s situation, if not a piece of deliberate misinformation, was wildly optimistic. In fact, after Ferdinand had entered Buda, Niklas von Salm had defeated Szapolyai at Tokaj.29 News of his defeat never reached Venice, although it could perhaps be inferred from a letter which Zuan Moro sent on 27 September. He wrote that a friend of his, who had just arrived from Gradisca, had heard that Niklas von Thurn had written from Buda on 7 September, to say that Szapolyai had retreated with 4,000 horsemen to a castle which had belonged to his father, and that Ferdinand was sending Niklas von Salm in pursuit. 26  Ibid., 38–39. 27  Ibid., 76–77. 28  Ibid., 96. 29 Fichtner, Ferdinand I, 64.

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Niklas von Thurn evidently sent his letter before he received the news of von Salm’s victory. However, he also included the information which events were to prove correct, that Ferdinand was to hold a diet on 16 October to which he had summoned all the barons of Hungary in order to determine which of them would offer allegiance and which would not. The diet would also determine the day on which he was to be crowned king of Hungary.30 What Moro’s friend reported about Ferdinand’s intentions was accurate. Nonetheless, news from Hungary remained difficult to come by and difficult to evaluate. On 28 October, the locotenente forwarded letters from the captain of Venzone, which served primarily to highlight the turmoil in the country. The captain had received his information from a Florentine who had come from Hungary eight days previously to report – incorrectly – that the Turks were at Pécs, and – perhaps correctly – that Szapolyai was on the Tisza awaiting men from Poland, Moldavia and Wallachia. The Hungarians, he said, wanted to assassinate Szapolyai, and that of the four bishops he had sent to collect revenue, only one of them, the bishop of Zagreb (Simon Erdődy) remained loyal, while the “baron” Ferenc Batthyány had deserted him for Ferdinand.31 Events were to confirm Erdődy’s hostility to Habsburg rule, and Batthyány, it seems, did, having deserted him once, return to Ferdinand’s camp. It was only in December that the Signoria received a more complete picture of events in Hungary. On 10 December, a friend of Zuan Moro, arrived in Udine after a five-day journey from Ljubljana, to confirm that Ferdinand had been crowned king of Hungary and to report that the Hungarian barons “were said” to have promised him a certain sum of money and a certain number of cavalrymen. By now, Moro’s friend believed, all of Hungary and most of Transylvania were subject to Ferdinand’s rule. “They say,” he reported, “that Szapolyai and a very few of his men have retired to certain castles.”32 Confirmation of Ferdinand’s coronation reached Venice immediately after Moro’s letter, in the form of Ferdinand’s proclamation, given in Vienna on 8 November: “he had defeated the rebel Szapolyai at Tokaj on the river Tisza”; on 16 October, he was proclaimed king of Hungary by “unanimous agreement”; on 3 November, he 30 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLVI. 146–147. 31  Ibid., 273–274. 32  Ibid., 370–371.

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was crowned with the crown of St Stephen at Székesfehérvár, according to the ancient rite. Now, he proclaimed, he would defend Christendom against its ancient enemy, the Turk.33 Shortly after his coronation, he had news of his army’s victory over Szapolyai at Keresztes,34 although no report of the event reached Venice. News that did reach Venice in the coming months made it clear that Ferdinand’s victory was incomplete. Szapolyai, had not given up the fight and it was well known that he had the sultan’s support. Moro’s friend had added to his report of Ferdinand’s coronation: “They say that the sultan will soon come to attack Hungary and Austria. People are very afraid of this,” and a report from later in the month confirmed what he had said. On 23 December, the locotenente forwarded a letter from Venzone. A group of Jews,“said to be Polish”, had passed through the town and, when questioned, stated that Szapolyai was in Moldavia and, “as far as is said”, was powerful and in good order. They had also heard rumours about the sultan: “It is spread about that the sultan is making great preparations in the direction of Belgrade, and is threatening to ruin this miserable and wounded Hungary.”35 However unreliable these reports were, by the beginning of 1528, the Venetians knew how precarious Ferdinand’s hold on Hungary was. After his coronation, he could declare himself to be the rightful king, but he knew that most of the Hungarian nobles had given their votes under duress and that their loyalty was not secure. Later in the year, a Hungarian Dominican, “a discreet and circumspect person”, who had left Buda on 8 May, arrived in Venzone on his way to Venice and described their predicament. Asked for news of Hungarian affairs, he stated: “The barons and nobles of Hungary are in great distress, not knowing which way to go. They say they wish to give their loyalty to King John, the first king of Hungary to be crowned but, worrying they may not be accepted by him, are loyal to Prince Ferdinand.”36 Furthermore, Ferdinand suffered from a lack of money and so was unable to pay for a reliable army. On 2 February, the new locotenente in Udine, Zuan Basadona, sent a 33  Ibid., 383–385. 34  Christine Turetschek, Die Türkenpolitik Ferdinands I. von 1529 bis 1532. Wien, 1968, 3. 35 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLVI. 422–423. 36  Marino Sanuto, I Diarii. Vol. XLVIII. Venezia, 1897, 25.

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certain Juri Brenato to Hungary. The report Juri delivered on 3 March presents a picture of chaos. On 14 February, he said, he reached a place two days from Buda, where he met some merchants accompanied by ten armed men. These warned him that the roads were unsafe and he went no further, instead accompanying the merchants to Rechnitz, on the border of Hungary and Austria. What he learned about Szapolyai came from these men, who said that he was in Buda with a good army of 15,000 men, consisting, of Turks, Tatars, Muscovites and Hungarians. When the fresh grass grew, they would assemble to attack the Germans. Ferdinand, the merchants said, was two days above Buda. The merchants’ optimistic description of Szapolyai’s army contrasts with what Juri claims to have seen in the Habsburg camp between the Danube and the Mur. He stayed in the camp for a day, estimating that: “It consisted of about 10,000 persons – worthless men, in disorder, badly paid and mostly ill.” The illness, he said came from grapes which the Hungarians had poisoned at harvest-time, killing 6,000. From the camp, he went to Graz as he had heard that Ferdinand was there to hold a diet but found that he had already left, having levied 3,000 men whom he had detained for a fortnight without pay, before sending them at half-pay to the camp. Juri also commented on the state of Ferdinand’s finances: “He also reported that various people told him that the prince had asked for money from the barons of the land to wage war. They replied that they did not wish to give any more money for war. Everyone is complaining about the prince, saying that he will never achieve victory on account of having stripped the churches of silver … and, to pay soldiers, he has pawned almost all his castles.” He ended his report by saying he had heard that all the Hungarians had rebelled and returned to Szapolyai.37 Juri delivered his report in Udine on 3 March 1528. Whether the locotenente who had sent him knew it or not, another Venetian agent “sent by our Signoria” had left Venice for Hungary a few days earlier. This was Francesco the Painter (Depentor) who – unlike Juri – had succeeded in reaching Buda, arriving there on 5 February. His report gives a better estimate of Ferdinand’s military capacity, but is similar to Juri’s in emphasising the weakness of his position. He began by confirming what the Florentine had reported in the previous October: 37  Marino Sanuto, I Diarii. Vol. XLVII. Venezia, 1897, 42.

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Ferenc Batthyány had re-affirmed his allegiance to Ferdinand who had appointed him ban of Croatia. He also hinted that Ferdinand had gained control of the east of the country, by naming a ban of Temesvár (Timişoara), “the county of which is under King John, erstwhile voevode”. He continued by enumerating the troops at Ferdinand’s disposal: 2,500 infantry in Buda, Pest and Vác, and 2,000 Bohemians and landesknechts, paid through taxes levied in Hungary and Germany. So far, Francesco presents a positive view of Ferdinand’s resources, but he continued by stressing his chronic shortage of money. “The prince”, he stated, “does not have a ducat. With the church silver he took last year, they paid the landesknechts who came to Italy on the emperor’s behalf a year ago.” He continued on the theme of money. Ferdinand, he said, had left Buda to go to the Free Towns where he was holding a diet to raise money against the Turks. “The towns”, he said, “replied that they did not wish to give money to wage war against Hungarians. He is going to Bohemia to hold another diet.” On his way to Vienna, he had left 100 infantry in the fortress at Esztergom, but “not 60 of these remain, as they have not been paid”. By contrast, Francesco gave a positive picture of Szapolyai’s position, claiming that he paid his men well, while many of Ferdinand’s troops were dying “because of the great cold in those parts”. He also enumerated Szapolyai’s victories. He had captured Nyitra (Nitra) on a pass into Moravia and had taken Kalocsa and “cut everyone to pieces, except two whom he has left alive to carry the news to the prince”. When Francesco was in Hungary, he was besieging Kassa (Košice) with 14,000–15,000 men and 60 pieces of artillery. “With him”, Francesco reported, “are Serbs, Poles and Vlachs. These Serbs live in Hungary and adhere to the Greek faith, and are loyal to King John.”38 Francesco presented his relazione in Venice on 20 March, where it reinforced the impression of Szapolyai’s progress gained not only from Juri’s report received earlier in March, but also from the arrival of an envoy bringing a request from Szapolyai himself. “Now that his king was prospering” the envoy proposed, “it would be good if this state [Venice] could send an orator to increase his renown, all the more so as he now has an accord with the Turkish sultan.”39

38  Ibid., 121–123. 39  Ibid., 77.

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The impression that Szapolyai was prospering was false. Francesco had already reported that 4,500 of Ferdinand’s men were preparing to attack him, and that a Habsburg cavalry force had captured his commander Ferenc Bodó.40 Shortly afterwards, he was defeated at Trencsén (Trenčin) and fled to Tarnow in Poland.41 In the coming months almost no news reached Venice concerning his whereabouts, or the strength of his following. On 10 March, Zuan Basadona sent a certain Nicolò of Venzone to Hungary to report on what was happening there. He returned on 20 April having learned very little. He had travelled to Vienna and then along the Danube to Pozsony, where he had stayed for three days before returning to Vienna. After reporting on Ferdinand’s movements, he outlined the disposition of Habsburg troops in Hungary: there were, he said, four companies of landesknechts in Buda, 500 Hungarian cavalrymen in Buda, Esztergom, Pozsony and other places in Hungary, and 700 Bohemians in Esztergom. Of Szapolyai, he said only that he was in Transylvania with a few men who, every other day, raided the countryside near Buda.42 After this, there was no news from Hungary until the arrival of the Hungarian friar in Venzone on 31 May, whose statement Basadona forwarded from Udine. After commenting on the dilemma facing the Hungarian nobility as to which king they should follow, the friar said: “…Or else they are awaiting the said King John, who is said to be in Poland, and undoubtedly wishes to return to Hungary.”43 Almost three weeks later, another traveller passed through Venzone. Stefano was a Milanese merchant, who had arrived from Buda via Vienna, carrying a letter from his son in Buda to a Venetian citizen. He reported, with more certainty than the friar, that Szapolyai was in Poland and confirmed what Nicolò of Venzone had said about his followers’ raids: “The countryside five miles from Buda is all upside down with travellers and peasants escaping from the confines and coming to Buda with their families and animals. There are 5,000 cowmen going about Hungary, some for the voevode, some for the prince, and some for the sultan.”44 It was not, however, 40  Ibid., 122. 41 Turetschek, Die Türkenpolitik, 3. 42 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLVII. 291. 43 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLVIII. 25–27. 44  Ibid., 169–170.

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until 12 July, when a letter from him to the doge, dated 22 May and “given in Tarnow, on the confines of the Kingdom of Poland” arrived in Venice,45 that it became certain that Szapolyai had fled to his brother-in-law’s kingdom. By July 1528, therefore, the Signoria knew that Szapolyai was in Poland and that Ferdinand had won control of Hungary. However, the few reports that reached Venice during the first half of the year suggested that his hold on the kingdom was tenuous and the loyalties of the Hungarians divided. They also suggested that Szapolyai retained a following large enough to harry the countryside, even if he lacked the means to attack the fortified towns. Reports from the late summer confirmed this impression. While a certain Nicolò the Hatter (Capellero) of Venzone, whom the locotenente in Udine had sent as a spy to Vienna, reported on 20 August that “the prince [Ferdinand] is in possession of Hungary, in general peacefully”,46 a letter from Venzone to the locotenente painted a different picture. On 9 September, a man from Bergamo had arrived there with his Hungarian wife and said that a battle between Ferdinand’s troops and forces loyal to Szapolyai was imminent, and that Szapolyai’s men would be victorious as the opposing force consisted of peasant levies.47 By this time, events in Hungary itself had become less important for the future of the kingdom than the diplomatic efforts of the combatants. After the loss of Buda, Szapolyai exploited what the Florentine merchant had heard him call “the power of his friends”, one of whom was the king of France. By March 1528, the Signoria had learned that the two were in contact when Francesco the Painter, reporting on Szapolyai’s progress, made the statement: “With him is the orator of the Most Christian King.”48 This was the first stage in the relationship between Francis I and Szapolyai. Later that year, after he had fled to Tarnow, Szapolyai sent the bishop of Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia) as his ambassador to Paris. News of the embassy reached Venice in early November 1528, when a despatch arrived from the Venetian ambassador in Paris reporting that “the voevode’s orator is at the court of the king, asking for a subsidy of 45  46  47  48 

Ibid., 238–240. Ibid., 404. Ibid., 474–475. Ibid., 122.

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30,000 écus”.49 The bishop succeeded in securing a treaty which included a subsidy to Szapolyai of 20,000 écus against an obligation to wage war with Ferdinand so long as Francis’s sons remained prisoners of Charles V; after Ferdinand’s defeat, to provide soldiers for the French armies in Italy; and to accept Henry of Orléans as his successor if he died without heirs.50 Almost a year later, on 1 September 1529, the French ambassador, Antoine de Rinçon swore to the treaty in the presence of Szapolyai and the sultan.51 Szapolyai also maintained an ambassador in Venice, and it was through him that, on 11 February 1529, the Signoria learned that he had raised a subvention from Henry VIII of England: “A letter was read which the orator of Hungary’s secretary brought to show to the Serenissima. On 2 January, from London, he wrote how the king of England will give help in money to King John of Hungary.”52 The help even materialised. In May 1529, the Archduchess Margaret in the Netherlands informed Ferdinand that French and English envoys were on their way to Hungary with money to Szapolyai from Francis and Henry.53 While pursuing alliances with France and England, Szapolyai hoped also for the participation of Venice. On 18 July, on the day his letter to the doge reached Venice, a second letter also arrived, addressed to his ambassador, but clearly intended for public consumption: “See how cunningly Ferdinand acts,” he wrote. “On the one hand he seeks peace from the sultan, humbly offering tribute for the Kingdom of Hungary. On the other, since the death of … King Louis until this hour, he has never stopped scattering letters and envoys throughout Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, Poland, Hungary and Transylvania to prepare themselves for war against him…”54 Both Szapolyai and the Venetians knew that Ferdinand was trying to raise money and men from within his own realms and from without. On 13 March 1529, a despatch dated 26 February from the Venetian ambassador in London 49  Marino Sanuto, I Diarii. Vol. XLIX. Venezia, 1898, 132. 50  For the text of treaty, see Ernest Charrière, Négociations de la France dans le Levant. Vol. 1. Paris, 1848, 162–165. 51 Charrière, Négociations, 169; Turetschek, Die Türkenpolitik, 83–84. 52 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLIX. 442. 53 Turetschek, Die Türkenpolitik, 83. 54 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLVIII. 240–243.

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reached Venice, reporting on “the arrival of an orator from King Ferdinand who, together with the emperor’s orator, who is here, had an audience with the cardinal [Wolsey] and requested a subsidy against the sultan, who is coming to attack him. The cardinal told him that the best help he could give would be if the emperor were to make peace with the Most Christian King, who wants nothing except his sons, and then one could expect to unite Christendom against the Turks.”55 This was a polite refusal. Five days later, on the morning of 18 March 1529, an envoy from Ferrara landed in Venice with the information that Ferdinand’s orator had had an audience with the duke and requested his help against an Ottoman invasion of Germany. The duke had replied that his forces were insufficient against his own enemies and that he would give them to no one else. He had sent his envoy, he said, to pass on this message to the doge.56 By early 1529, therefore, Szapolyai had succeeded in winning some financial aid from France and England, and the tacit, but never overt, support of Venice. All sides, however, knew that the crucial member of any anti-Habsburg alliance was the sultan, and that it was his intervention that would determine the outcome of the struggle in Hungary. Accordingly, in December 1527, Szapolyai sent Hieronymus Łaski as ambassador to Istanbul. Łaski had his first interview with the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha on 22 December and finally left on 29 February 1528, after securing an agreement from the sultan to recognise Szapolyai as king and to campaign in person against his enemies, meaning, in practice, against Ferdinand.57 The Signoria heard of Łaski’s mission on 7 March 1528, when Piero Zen’s despatch from Istanbul, dated 28 January, arrived in Venice. Łaski, Piero said, was the fourth envoy that Szapolyai had sent: two had been robbed and turned back, while the third had died. He did not comment on the negotiations, remarking only that Szapolyai wished to remain king and sought the sultan’s help against the archduke, and adding that the sultan had allocated Szapolyai 12,000 cavalrymen from the frontier forces, and sent the beylerbeyi of Rumelia to assist him with 30,000 cavalry. This last piece of information was, it seems, wrong and suggests that Zen did not have 55  Marino Sanuto, I Diarii. Vol. L. Venezia, 1898, 68. 56  Ibid., XLIX. 369. 57  For the report of Hieronymus Łaski, see Joseph von Hammer, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches. Vol. II. Pest, 1839, 62–65.

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access to the negotiations, despite his friendship with Ibrahim Pasha.58 A week later, Zen sent another letter, reporting that Łaski had been “honoured, presented to the sultan and promised help against Prince Ferdinand,” but without any details about the terms agreed.59 News of Łaski’s mission had also reached Ferdinand. His reaction, in April 1528, was to send Johannes Habordanecz and Sigmund Weixelberger to Istanbul to negotiate an agreement with the sultan to recognise him as king of Hungary. By 2 May, if not earlier, the Venetians had learned of their departure from Vienna. Habordanecz and Weixelberger’s mission coincided with the Signoria’s decision to send Thomà Contarini on an embassy to the sultan, and it was while waiting at Šibenik that Contarini encountered the two envoys with a suite of 120 horsemen. Both embassies were delayed, Contarini because of lack of horses, and the Habsburg ambassadors because the sancakbeyi [of Bosnia] refused them permission to proceed without an order from Istanbul. On 5/6 May, Contarini finally left Šibenik when horses came from the sancakbeyi.60 Despite their delayed departure, Habordanecz and Weixelberger arrived in Istanbul on 29 May, a month before Contarini.61 On 2 July, news of their first audience with the viziers arrived in Venice via letters from Zen, dated 4 and 6 June. In contrast to the secrecy which had surrounded Łaski’s negotiations, Zen had access to some of the details of the discussions, probably through Ibrahim Pasha. Ferdinand’s ambassadors, he reported, had asked for peace, but was told that this would be possible only if Ferdinand left the Kingdom of Hungary to Szapolyai and did not trouble the king of Poland, and if his brother the emperor made peace with the king of France and the Signoria of Venice. The ambassadors then asked for a six-month peace, and when this was refused, lowered their demand to three months, again with no success.62 No further news of Ferdinand’s embassy reached Venice until 18 October, when Hironimo Querini received a letter from Contarini, written on 15 September. In it, 58 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLVII. 46. 59  Ibid., 100. 60  Ibid., 335, 471. 61 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLVIII. 377–380. 62  Ibid., 200.

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Contarini reported that Habordanecz and Weixelberger were still in Istanbul, stating that they had been dismissed, but prevented from leaving.63 The reason for their detention Contarini explained in his next letter, read in the Pregadi on 23 November. The ambassadors, he said, asked the sultan for the restitution of the castles which he held in Hungary, and that the sultan had taken this so badly that he determined to go to war and to take all Hungary.64 Zen’s and Contarini’s reports of the Habsburg embassy reflect what Habordanecz himself was to write in his own account of his mission, with the difference that Habordanecz blamed the Venetians for his and Weixelberger’s detention,65 rather than blaming the sultan’s lack of interest in peace and his own inept negotiations over the return of the Hungarian fortresses. The ambassadors’ detention in fact amounted to a declaration of war, something which Ibrahim Pasha did not try to hide. In a letter dated 15 September, Contarini said: “Here it is held for certain – and the pasha said the same from his own mouth – that they are preparing a very strong army to go to Hungary. They would have gone last year, so it is said, but lack of victuals frustrated their wishes.”66 In his last letter before his departure on 5 October, Contarini made the imminence of a campaign even clearer. Ibrahim Pasha, he wrote, had told him: “…Next spring the sultan wishes to go with a great army on the Hungarian campaign, to seize this kingdom and to penetrate as far as Germany. He did not mind that this should be known, as previous sultans used to, who kept secret the campaign that they wished to undertake. This sultan wishes everyone to know, because he does not fear them.”67 Ibrahim was correct in contrasting the sultan’s openness about the forthcoming campaign with the usual secrecy that surrounded the direction of Ottoman military undertakings68 and this perhaps explains why he allowed Contarini and Zen to obtain some details of the negotiations. Since he knew that the sultan had determined on war, and 63 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLIX. 71. 64  Ibid., 181–182. 65  For the report of Habordanecz, see Turetschek, Die Türkenpolitik , 10–14. 66 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLIX. 71. 67  Ibid., 181–182. 68  In 1522, for example, it was not until a week or two before its departure in June that observers realised that Rhodes was the destination of the fleet that they had observed under construction in Istanbul. Sanuto, I Diarii. Vol. XXXIII. Venezia, 1890, 348.

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that the Habsburg embassy would change nothing, he did not mind the Venetians having this information, especially since Venice, like the sultan, was in the anti-Habsburg camp. Before leaving Istanbul, Contarini also noted the arrival of an ambassador from Poland but, beyond remarking that “he is well regarded by the sultan and the pashas”, he does not, in his letter, speculate on the purpose of the embassy.69 Contarini arrived back in Venice on 15 December 1528, carrying two letters, one to the doge and one to the king of France, which the Signoria evidently forwarded to the king unopened. The sultan’s letter to the doge merely expresses his friendship and his satisfaction with Contarini: “You Andrea Gritti, who are doge of Venice: you have sent Thomà Contarini, a man worthy of your faith, to my Porte, the refuge of the world, in order to express your sincerity and good intentions. He has satisfied everything necessary for his office and mission… Written on 1 Muharram 935 [15 September 1528].”70 Contarini presumably gave an oral account of his mission, perhaps also explaining what he knew of the sultan’s relationship with the king of France. Certainly, the fact that Ibrahim entrusted the letter to Contarini for forwarding to France suggests a close friendship between Süleyman, Francis and Venice based on their shared hostility to the Habsburgs, and specifically on their wish to prevent Ferdinand occupying the throne of Hungary.

conclusion

In the three years after Mohács, Hungary became a focus of concern for all

states interested in curbing Habsburg power, a concern that led to an informal

69 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLIX. 182. Habordanecz also noted the ambassador’s arrival, and assumed that he was there to press the sultan to invade Hungary on behalf of King Sigismund’s brother-in-law Szapolyai. See Turetschek, Die Türkenpolitik, 15. His purpose was, in fact, to renew the five-year peace negotiated with the sultan in 1525, before the Mohács campaign. By guaranteeing Polish neutrality, the treaty protected the Ottoman northern border during the campaign of 1529. For Italian translation of the treaty, see Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic Relations (15th–18th century): An Annotated Edition of ‘Ahdnames and Other Documents. (The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage. Politics, Society and Economy, 18.) Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2000, doc. 12. 70 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLIX. 244–245.

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understanding between Szapolyai, Venice, the Ottoman sultan, France and England. As one of the powers threatened by the Habsburgs, it was essential to the Signoria to keep informed of the crisis in Hungary and its international repercussions. During these years, however, while news on international negotiations flowed freely through diplomatic channels, reports from Hungary itself were spasmodic, relying on the reports of spies and news from travellers. The process of news gathering was not, however, random. Rather, there were nodal points for collecting and relaying information, and for news from Hungary these were Udine and nearby Venzone. The authorities in these towns, and the locotenente of Udine in particular, questioned every traveller from outside Venetian territory who passed through the town, recording what they said and how they had acquired their information. The locotenente often began his reports with a comment on the trustworthiness of his source, allowing the recipients in Venice to evaluate their reliability. For international news, Venice itself was the nodal point. On 8 March 1528, the day after Pietro Zen’s report on Łaski’s negotiations arrived in Venice, the papal legate came, “asking for news received from Constantinople, saying he would like to have the clauses (capitoli) [agreed between] the king voevode and the sultan, to send to the pope.” Although Pope Clement shared the Venetian interest in curbing the growth of Habsburg power in Italy, the legate received a disappointing reply: “The doge said that the clauses were not known, and that if we had them, we would not give them.”71

71 Sanuto, I Diarii, XLVII. 46.

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TOGETHER OR SEPARATELY ‒ FAMILY STRATEGIES AND RESILIENCE IN DIVIDED HUNGARY Ildikó Horn Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest [email protected]

The death of John Szapolyai (1526–1540) and the occupation of Buda by

Sultan Süleyman (1520–1566) brought further radical changes to Hungary’s situation. The Treaty of Várad (Grosswardein/Oradea) of 1538 had provided for the unification of the country under the rule of Ferdinand I (1526–1564), but Szapolyai and most of his supporters refused to abide by its terms. Sultan Süleyman ended all chances to fulfil the treaty. He considered Szapolyai’s son, the one-year-old John Sigismund, to be the ruler, but he reduced the amount of territory held by the infant monarch. John Sigismund was left with the eastern part of the country, with the River Tisza as its border.1 Süleyman’s aim was to expand his own territory between and along the two major rivers (the Danube and the Tisza). In doing so, he accentuated the mutual isolation of Hungary’s two parts. Most of John Sigismund’s (1541 [1559]–1571) territory neighboured the Ottoman Empire and its vassals. The only common border with Ferdinand I’s kingdom was a narrow strip near Kassa (Kaschau/Košice) in Northern Hungary. In the decade and a half after 1541, people realized two things. Firstly, there was to be no rapid and effective response to the Ottoman advance, which meant that the previously strong and

1  Gábor Barta, ‘The First Period of the Principality of Transylvania (1526–1606)’, in László Makkai, András Mócsy and Zoltán Szász (eds.), History of Transylvania. Vol. 1: From the Beginning to 1606. Boulder, Col., 2002, 601–605.

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unified kingdom now faced a long period of division. Secondly, none of the parties – even Süleyman himself – considered their borders to be inviolable. Both Ferdinand and the young John Sigismund gradually lost territory, despite the latter being a Süleyman’s vassal. Transylvania also sustained losses to Ferdinand – six border counties by 1568. The loss of territory did not happen at once, and not irreversibly; rather, it was an intermittent process. Over the course of a decade or more, various areas passed to and fro among rulers.2 The nobles had to adapt quickly, repositioning themselves in accordance with the changing circumstances. The new boundary broke many families in two, placing them on opposing sides. Other families found themselves in an area where the ruler was of the opposite political persuasion to their own. Those who lost all or part of their landed properties were in the gravest situation. They first had to choose between the two rulers. Many of them automatically gave their support to Ferdinand I. Hopeful of winning back their lands, they fought with determination against the Ottoman forces. Over time, however, it became evident that the Turks would not be repulsed and that military service in the border fortresses might bestow a reputation as a knight, but would not increase one’s wealth. By contrast, in Transylvania – where a war against the sultan was not even a possibility as Transylvania was an Ottoman vassal – a man could rise quickly in wealth and social rank. Transylvania had been the poorer and less developed part of Hungary, and suffered from a lack of experienced and hardened soldiers and of intellectuals after it became a state. Accordingly, John Sigismund permitted – even positively encouraged – nobles to settle in the country: They were given land, employment and career opportunities. The new arrivals faced little competition from Transylvanian nobles, who were politically and financially weaker than those in other parts of Hungary. For this reason, nobles in distress were not the only ones to move from the Kingdom of Hungary to Transylvania. Indeed, some of the new arrivals were sons – typically not firstborn sons – of families whose circumstances were secure. This process added to the political and territorial fragmentation of noble families.3 2  Imre Lukinich, Erdély területi változásai a török hódítás korában 1541–1711. Budapest, 1918, 26–36. 3  Ildikó Horn, A hatalom pillérei. A politikai elit az Erdélyi Fejedelemség megszilárdulásának

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It is worth examining the strategies by which the nobles who moved to Transylvania acquired land and founded families. The Eastern Hungarian Kingdom comprised several constituent parts. One part was Transylvania in the narrow sense, comprising the Hungarian noble counties and the Saxon and Székely (Szekler) territorial entities. Another was the Partium – counties that had once belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary but were now under John Sigismund’s rule. The Partium was the richest and most significant part of the new Transylvanian state, but was under constant threat from both Ottoman and Habsburg forces.4 Even so, most of the new arrivals sought to obtain land in the Partium. There were several reasons for this. First, the region’s past political vicissitudes meant that there was more land to be awarded there than elsewhere. Second, having a base in this region facilitated the maintenance of contacts with the Hungarian territories under Ferdinand’s rule. Moreover, John Sigismund had good military reasons for wanting his new supporters to put down roots in a region that was particularly liable to attack. After a while, however, the “bestquality” nobles also sought to gain a footing in Transylvania proper. Such “expansion” within Transylvania did not constitute a new escape route. Rather, the motive was to get close to Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia), for, given the peculiarities of John Sigismund’s domestic policy, a presence at the court of the ruler equated with an active role in the exercise of power. Interestingly, in this eastern part of the country, land could be obtained by means of service and fidelity to the ruler, whereas elsewhere in Hungary, land was acquired through marriage or sometimes through purchase. In Transylvania, the marriage route was a difficult one, because the old elite families were reluctant to integrate newcomers, whom they regarded as rivals, and members of the established families tended to marry among themselves. The only outsiders considered acceptable marriage partners were members of Hungary’s baronial families, such as the Forgách family. Otherwise, in order to become fully integrated and

korszakában (1556–1588). DSc Dissertation, Budapest, 2012, 85–98, accessed 28 February 2019: http://real-d.mtak.hu/581/7/dc_105_10_doktori_mu.pdf. 4 Lukinich, Erdély területi változásai, 132–163.

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accepted by the elite, one first had to spend many years in Transylvania and rise steadily up the ranks.5 Nobles with landed properties in the northern counties of the Partium faced greater difficulties than any others in the eastern part of the country. By the 1560s, this region had become a permanent war zone liable to attack from both Royal Hungary and Transylvania, and neither could an Ottoman intervention be ruled out. Landowners in the area had few options. The simplest option – to move from the area and acquire land elsewhere – was barred by Hungarian inheritance laws, which prohibited the sale of ancestral land. In other words, the nobles could not sell their landholdings and use the proceeds to purchase land elsewhere. The only real option was to swap land with the ruler. Around 1565, in a moment of distress, one of the most distinguished landowners offered his estates – Ecsed and the surrounding area – to John Sigismund, but in the end, no deal was done. The prince was unwilling to exchange the royal estates, which lay in a secure area and generated income, for land near the border and constantly subject to attacks.6 But even if the land swap had gone ahead, few nobles were likely to have followed György Báthory’s (d. 1570) example. As in any situation or place of risk, the region offered a number of exciting opportunities. It was a wineproducing area and was crossed by many trade routes. The counties in the north bordered Poland, which, on account of its climate, was completely dependent on wine imports. Thus, landowners in the area could make a good income, especially if they exploited the chaos of the border zone to smuggle goods out of the country. In fact, they took out ten times the amount for which they had an export permit. Being so close to the border had further advantages. Unlike landowners in the interior of Transylvania, the nobles of the Partium were able to choose between two rulers. This meant their loyalty had a higher value, and in exchange for their support, they were offered political roles or additional land. Most of them took up these opportunities, and some, of course, abused the situation.7 5 Horn, A hatalom pillérei, 99–116. 6  Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [hereafter MNL OL], F 15 Libri Regii, 4. fols. 124–125., F 3 Centuriae B nr. 8. 7 Lukinich, Erdély területi változásai, 132–163.

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A small part of the upper nobility in Northeastern Hungary and the Partium acquired so much political and financial power that their influence extended over a far greater area than their actual estates. A switch of allegiance by such an upper nobleman was of particular benefit to the ruler he pledged himself to – Ferdinand or John Sigismund – because the other local nobles typically followed suit. The rejected ruler could only impose a theoretical punishment, condemning them for their disloyalty and announcing the loss of people and livestock. Although the nobles who switched allegiances forfeited any land they owned in the area, this was no great deterrent, for they received compensation from their new master. In fact, for a long period, neither ruler dared take a stand against those changing sides, because neither wished to alienate the noble in question or other nobles in the area. Instead, they tried to entice them back. This was quite understandable from the political viewpoint, but sent the unhelpful message that “bad behavior” was being rewarded rather than punished.8 Several large landowners exploited this situation to the full, switching allegiances seven or even eight times. The phenomenon existed even before 1541 and continued in the 1550s and 1560s: the Perényi, Bebek and Balassa families stand out in this regard. In the long term, however, the tactic did not pay off. Indeed, whether it succeeded even in the short term is questionable, and on occasion it resulted in mighty failures. Of course, the noble in question would soon recover his position. Yet one could not survive this extreme rollercoaster intact. Without exception, those who played this duplicitous game of repeatedly switching allegiances lost either their lives, their families or their wealth. Péter Perényi (d. 1548) died as a prisoner of Ferdinand, and one of his sons was imprisoned by the Ottomans. Ferenc Bebek (d. 1558) was murdered, and his son spent a long time in Ottoman captivity. Menyhért Balassa (d. 1568) was also captured and lost his wife and some of his children; he died in poverty.9 Those swapping sides for personal gain or interest were despised by the public, and contemporary historians listed them as negative examples. Menyhért 8  MNL OL F1 Libri Regii, 1. fols. 71, 95–96, 145, 191–192. 9  Nándor Virovecz, ‘Egy hírhedt főúri imázs és ami mögötte van. A Komédia Balassi Menyhárt árultatásáról… a történeti források fényében’, Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 120:3 (2016) 373–401.

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Balassa even became the subject of a satirical comedy. We might consider such criticism to be natural – if the opinion-makers had been untainted themselves, but one of these historians, for example, Ferenc Forgách (d. 1577), also swapped sides, and members of such important families as the Báthorys and the Csákys changed sides four or five times. Their cases, however, did not receive the attention of contemporaries or even of later Hungarian historians, because their decisions were motivated by coercion and fear of retribution and they made no great political or financial capital out of them.10 Most nobles chose to be flexible and blow with the wind. Where they could decide freely, they generally chose the rule of John Sigismund. They loyally served the chosen ruler until circumstances prevented them from doing so. Some, for instance, were captured by Habsburg forces during the “siege wars” (várháborúk) or when a hostile and superior military force appeared on their estates or at the castle gate. At such times, they had to switch allegiances in order to survive and retain their property. When the situation changed and the danger receded, however, they once again became loyal to John Sigismund. This practice was not welcomed by either ruler because of the resulting unpredictability of allegiance and property relations in the area concerned. Moreover, the landowners always lost something, because they never had time to prepare for the switch of allegiance with sufficient thoroughness, and, since the switch was made under pressure rather than voluntarily, there were no rewards on offer. At most, they were able to retain their possessions and wealth, but the rejected ruler would certainly punish them by confiscating their lands. If they were fortunate, their estates would be returned to them when they switched back, but if the land had been granted to others in the meantime, all they could hope for was some modest compensation.11 Hence the nobles of the Partium, regardless of which side they supported, sought always to be in close contact with the other side. And since the long10  Wien, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Ungarische Akten, Allge­meine Akten Fasc. 82. fols. 1–4, 12–15, 18–24, 33–38, 157–164; Fasc. 83. fols. 1–4, 42–82; fols. 39–40, 54–55, 104–105, 143–146, 168–176; Gábor Almási, The Uses of Humanism. Johannes Sambucus (1531–1584), Andreas Dudith (1533–1589), and the Republic of Letters in East Central Europe. (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 185.) Leiden, 2009, 99–111. 11  MNL OL F1 Libri Regii, 1. fols. 67–69, 71, 95–96, 102, 105, 191–192.

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term existence of the Transylvanian state was rather uncertain, they made efforts to acquire landed properties in the Kingdom of Hungary. Families divided in two by the Ottoman advance could often do so with ease. The most extensive and cohesive chain was formed by the Petrovich-Draskovich-Melith family and their relatives, who had partly broken away from the Croatian nobility. Members of the family held top political functions in Croatia, Hungary and Transylvania. Despite the distances, they were in constant contact with each other. In addition to cooperating politically, they coordinated marriages, land acquisitions, and many other questions affecting the family as a whole. The residence of the Melith family in Northern Hungary functioned as a point of intersection. It was the usual meeting place for members of the extended family, who also often sent their children to study in Sárospatak under the supervision of the Meliths.12 In the absence of such family divisions, it seems that some of the upper nobles loyal to John Sigismund sought to establish connections with families in the Kingdom of Hungary by way of marriage. The primary goal of such marriages was to secure an escape route rather than to increase wealth. Establishing a financial base in the Kingdom of Hungary was also an important aim, but it could be achieved subsequently, step by step, with the help of the new relatives. In the choice of spouse, therefore, the decisive factor was the other family’s political standing and influence rather than its wealth. An excellent example of changing allegiances in the Partium is the story of Pál Csáky. Csáky was born into a rich family of the upper nobility, but his landed property lay in the border zone. At first, he supported Szapolyai, but he was won over by Ferdinand in 1553. At the time, John Sigismund was in Poland, and the Habsburgs had temporary control of Transylvania. Three years later, however, in order to protect his estates, Csáky switched allegiance to John Sigismund, who had returned to Transylvania. The next major development came in 1562, when he was taken captive by Habsburg forces at the Battle of Hadad. He was held at the house of Ferenc Zay (1498–1570), captain-general of Kassa, in conditions that were probably not those of real 12  MNL OL Zichy család Missiles, Melith Ferenc levelei, 3412 cs. XXXII. 81 NB nr. 2034–2115.

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imprisonment, given Csáky’s status and his history of siding with the Habsburgs. Indeed, he used his time in captivity to marry the captain-general’s daughter. The price of his marriage and liberation was that he had to change sides. Shortly after the wedding, however, he returned his allegiance to John Sigismund. On this occasion, he made the following excuses to his father-inlaw, who had remained faithful to the Habsburgs: “In us too, there is a godly soul. We would rather belong to the Christians than to the heathens. But God’s great whip is on us who live in this land, because we receive protection from neither side, rather destruction. In view of so much oppression and harm, we cannot cultivate anything; rather, we just moan, because no-one will protect us. What should such a person, living between fire and water, do? He [should] serve both of them.”13 This is a clear expression of the tactic for survival: to submit to the stronger side. Also, concurrently, to build family and political connections in the other direction – connections that could save a family and its landed property from destruction and ruin. Necessity and survival were, therefore, the key words. Another way out for the nobles of the Partium was to forge connections with Poland. Some were able to acquire land on Polish territory through marriage or purchase. The Polish connection received an impulse in the mid1550s, when it was announced that John Sigismund would inherit the Polish throne if his uncle were to die without children. This actually happened in 1572, but only some months after John Sigismund’s own, premature death. After 1576 and the election of Stephen Báthory (1576–1586) as Polish king, the acquisition of land on Polish and Lithuanian territory became far easier. This coincided with Báthory’s attempts to mix up the Hungarian, Polish and Lithuanian nobility by dynastic means.14 13  Letter of Pál Csáky to Ferenc Zay, in Lajos Thallóczi, Csömöri Báró Zay Ferencz 1505–1570. Budapest, 1885, 155. 14  Gábor Kármán, ‘The Polish–Ottoman–Transylvanian Triangle: A Complex Relationship in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Hacer Topaktaş and Natalia Królikowska (eds.), Türkiye–Polonya İlişkilerinde “Temas Alanları” 1414–2014 Uluslararası Konferansı Bildi­ riler Kitabı. Ankara, 2017, 295–301; Teréz Oborni, ‘The Artful Diplomacy of István Báthory and the Survival of the Principality of Transylvania (1571)’, in Arno Strohmeyer and Norbert Spannenberger (eds.), Frieden und Konfliktmanagement in interkulturellen Räumen. Stuttgart, 2013, 85–93.

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In their attempts to secure their families and the future of their children, upper nobles subject to John Sigismund were not confined to the means of land acquisition and marriage. Many sons of the Transylvanian elite studied in the Kingdom of Hungary and gained experience at the court or as soldiers. Some of them went on to be princes of Transylvania: Christopher Báthory (1530–1581) went to serve in Charles V’s court at the age of ten, and Stephen Báthory and Stephen Bocskai served for several years as pages to Ferdinand I and Emperor Maximilian II respectively. Sons from the Haller, Kendy, Bornemisza and other families spent several years at the Viennese court. This was not without risk, for these boys and young men were in close proximity to the Habsburg rulers at a very impressionable age. In fact, however, they usually became the most ardent opponents of the Habsburg court. Sons of less prestigious families had the chance of serving in the Viennese residences of the Hungarian upper nobility. Many youngsters were raised under the watchful eye of Palatine Tamás Nádasdy (d. 1562) and Captains-General Miklós Pálffy (1552–1600) and Simon Forgách (d. 1598).15 Nobles in the Kingdom of Hungary were under less pressure, because they had no fear of their country being turned into a sancak at the whim of the sultan. Of course, the Ottoman advance represented an ongoing danger and risk. But they did not need to establish a network of connections in Transylvania. Prior events had shown that, as long as they had the right professional experience, they could settle under John Sigismund’s rule without further ado. Indeed, there was even hope of obtaining a position there. Thus the elite in the Kingdom of Hungary, although they were open to making connections, were more passive than those on the other side. This passivity, however, lasted only until they had an interest in taking action. Existing or new kinship ties became important in cases of potential inheritance, and could be revitalized for several 15  Gábor Almási, ‘Variációk az értelmiségi útkeresés témájára a 16. században: Forgách Ferenc és társai’, Századok 140:6 (2006) 1405–1440; Idem, ‘Miért Cicero? A cicerói értelmi­ ségi modell és értékek reneszánsz adaptációjáról’, Korall 23 (2006) 60–85; István Fazekas, ‘Adalékok az ifjú Bocskai István bécsi udvarban eltöltött éveihez’, Studia Caroliensia 7:1 (2006) 73–85; Ildikó Horn, ‘Changing Attitudes Towards Study Tours among the Transylvanian Elite’, in Gábor Almási et al. (eds.), A Divided Hungary in Europe: Exchanges, Networks and Representations, 1541–1699. Vol. 1. Cambridge, 2015, 39–43.

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other reasons. For instance, upper nobles from the Kingdom of Hungary tried to exploit the connections of their relatives in Transylvania to establish trade connections in Poland, Moldavia and Wallachia. The death of Ferdinand I (1564) brought changes to Hungarian domestic politics. In the period after Emperor Maximilian’s accession to the throne, many of Hungary’s nobles felt excluded from political power. Some politicians – those who had been close to Maximilian while he was a grand duke and who had hoped to be awarded specific posts – felt they had been brushed aside. They began to search actively for connections with the political elite in Transylvania. This process had multiple threads, but it culminated – between 1567 and 1569 – in the political movement associated with István Dobó (d. 1572) and János Balassa (1518–1577), and resulted in many outstanding and high-ranking nobles and soldiers moving to Transylvania.16 After the election of Stephen Báthory as king of Poland, many Hungarian nobles decided to have their sons educated at the court in Krakow rather than in Vienna and Prague. Indeed, they encouraged their children to remain with Báthory even after their term as pages ended. This was more of a sober calculation than a reflection of national feeling. Owing to his successes in Russia and his alliances with the Vatican and England, the king of Poland was an increasingly respected figure on the European stage. He was widely regarded among those with political influence as a potential candidate for the Hungarian throne in the election that would follow the death of Emperor Rudolf, who had been suffering from syphilis for a long time. In the first half of the 1580s, Báthory’s court was the meeting place for the cream of young nobles from Hungary and Transylvania. This, in turn, exerted a strong effect on subsequent relationships and marriage choices.17 The conclusion is, therefore, that the division of the country into several parts did not result in deep or hostile divisions among the Hungarian elite. 16  Géza Dávid, ‘János Balassi’nin Osmanlılarla İlişkisi. Devlet Haini Mi?’, in Taşkın Takış and Sunay Aksoy (ed.), Halil İnalcık Armağanı. Vol. 1: Tarih Araştırmaları. Ankara, 2009, 281–290; István Kenyeres, ‘Dobó István (1502?–1572). Életrajzi vázlat’, Az egri vár híradója 38 (2006) 160–194. 17  Ildikó Horn, ‘Báthory István apródjai’, in Katalin Mária Kincses (ed.), Hadi és más nevezetes történetek. Tanulmányok Veszprémy László tiszteletére. Budapest, 2018, 203–209.

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For nobles in both Hungary and Transylvania, the aim was to survive and preserve their power and landed property in the harsh conditions. By renewing political and family connections across the borders that separated them and by assisting each other, they sought to secure and maintain prospects for the entire Hungarian nobility.

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NEW FINDINGS ON THE EXTENT OF THE EARLY ESTATES OF THE BEYLERBEYİS OF BUDA AND THE BEYS OF MOHAÇ Éva Sz. Simon Hungarian National Archives, Budapest [email protected]

DISCOVERY OF TWO FRAGMENTARY SOURCES

In

the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (Turkish Prime Minister’s Ottoman Archives, henceforth BOA), the volumes of the defterhane of the Sublime Porte are arranged in two series. The first, Tapu Tahrir Defteri (henceforth TT. d.), with about 1100 defters, contains the sancak surveys and related timar registers produced between 1431 and 1882. This is the larger and better-known series. The second, Bab‐i Asafî Defterhane‐i Amire Defterleri (henceforth A. DFE. d.), has another 851 surveys, produced in almost exactly the same period as the first. They are dated between 1453 and 1852 and are mostly fragments of defters, many of which are difficult to identify.1 Some of them concern Hungary. Here, we discuss two defter fragments which at first sight seem valueless but have turned out to contain valuable new information on the early period of Ottoman-occupied South Transdanubia.2 This paper has been written with the support of grant number OTKA K 108919. The map sketches were prepared by: Éva Sz. Simon, László Kollányi, Péter Kollányi. 1  Yusuf Sarınay (ed.), Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi Rehberi. İstanbul, 2010, 99. 2  BOA A. DFE. d. 33, 626.

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What makes their discovery particularly welcome is that the formation and early history of Ottoman Hungary are among the most difficult subjects for Hungarian Ottomanists. From Géza Dávid’s graphic and imaginative comparison of 1991, it is now well-known that “The first Buda beylerbeyis sat in Buda like spiders, ensconcing themselves in the castle with only a tiny filament connecting them to the body of the empire”.3 Apart from the central sancak or liva of Buda, most of their vilayet consisted of sancaks in Balkan territory: those of Ösek (Eszék/Osijek), Semendire (Szendrő/Smederevo), İzvornik (Zvornik), Alacahisar (Kruševac) and Vulçıtrın (Vučitrn). Initially, the only transport route that connected these lands to the centre was the River Danube. When Gyula Káldy-Nagy produced his account of the subject in 1977, research findings were only beginning to appear, and he had to rely on the descriptions of Ottoman historians that were not backed up by evidence from primary sources.4 This shows the paucity of sources on the Ottoman rule of Hungary before 1552. There are hardly any coherent, researchable archival documents on this period except for the work of the historians and some haphazard Hungarian correspondence. There are almost no defters with abundant data of the kind that came later, such as the series of mühimme defteris containing the copies of decrees issued by the imperial council (divan) and the ruznamçe defteris recording grants of estates. In the above case, the deciding evidence to support the link between the Balkan lands and Buda described in the early chronicles came from an undated list found by Géza Dávid some twenty years later.5 Although more and more surviving archival documents have been studied and made accessible, the situation has hardly changed. We still have hardly any knowledge of the territorial changes directly following the capture of Buda or the distribution and location of the first Ottoman revenue estates. At present, we have information from only one ruznamçe defteri written in 3  Géza Dávid, A ‘ budai beglerbégek jövedelmei és birtokai a 16. században’, Keletkutatás 1991 tavasz, 51. 4  Gyula Káldy-Nagy, A budai szandzsák 1559. évi összeírása. Budapest, 1977, 7. 5  Dávid, A ‘ budai beglerbégek’, 49. Cf. Feridun M. Emecen and İlhan Şahin, ‘Osmanlı Taşra Teşkilâtının Kaynaklarından 957–958 (1550–1551) Tarihli Sancak Tevcîh Defteri’, Belgeler 19:23 (1998) 53–121, + facs.

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1541–1542, some of it concerning the history of possession of the dignitaries and military officials of the sancaks that belonged to the vilayet of Buda.6 The picture comes into much sharper focus after 1546. Most of the earliest sancak surveys of the Buda vilayet compiled by Çandarlızade Halil Bey have survived. Of the nine sancaks set up between 1541–1542 and 1546, there are surviving registers from Buda, Ösek, Estergon (Esztergom), Novigrad (Nógrád), Hatvan, Mohaç (Mohács) and Şimontorna (Simontornya) in the BOA collection and those from Segedin (Szeged) are held in the Paris National Library, but those from İstolni Belgrad (Székesfehérvár) are lost.7 These allow the area of the sancaks to be clearly determined. Nonetheless, the series of records of the granting of revenue estates produced on the basis of these surveys are severely incomplete. Consequently, our knowledge of the Ottoman estate history of each region in Hungary even in the period after 1546 is somewhat haphazard. South Transdanubia is one of the regions most poorly served by the sources.8 Research by Géza Dávid and Ferenc Szakály has provided the main basis for our knowledge of its early history.9 Their thorough investigations have established with certainty that the sancak of Mohaç was created before 11 March 1542. We can only guess the territorial extent of the district before 1546, however. We know almost nothing of the early Ottoman possessions that built up in the area. Sancak survey data for 1546, however, allow the borders of the liva to be drawn accurately (Map 1). In the absence of records of timar grants and the first timar registers produced on the basis of the 1546 sancak survey, however, we 6  BOA Maliyeden Müdevver Defteri (MAD. d.) 34. For the Hungarian-related data of the register, see Géza Dávid, ‘A budai szandzsák első tímár-birtokosai’, Keletkutatás 1995. ősz, 111–114. 7  BOA TT. d. 388, 437, 410, 981, 441, 400; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Turc. Suppl. No. 76. 8  From the early period, only the sancak survey of 1546 has survived, ordered by a command sent to the district governor of Mohács in March 1545: “…the condition of the places and relations with the reaya must, as for the other provinces, be determined.” Káldy-Nagy, A budai szandzsák, 10. (TSMA D. 12321, p.142.) 9  Ferenc Szakály, A ‘ z első dunántúli szandzsák és megszervezője, Kászim bég’, Keletkutatás 1995. tavasz, 23–45; Géza Dávid, ‘Kászim vojvoda, bég és pasa. I–II. rész’, Keletkutatás 1995. ősz, 53–66; 1996. tavasz, 41–56; Géza Dávid, ‘Mohács–Pécs 16. századi bégjei’, in Ferenc Szakály and József Vonyó (eds.), Pécs a törökkorban. (Tanulmányok Pécs történetéből, 7.) Pécs, 1999, 51–87.

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Map 1 The extent of the sancak of Mohaç in 1546

cannot even guess who possessed these estates, in what proportions, or how the land was distributed. That explains the special significance of the two fragments that have now come to light in the BOA for the estate history of the region, even if they give only a patchy version of the overall picture. One of the recently-discovered source fragments (I) is not complete at its beginning and end, and its exact date is not known. The title given in the catalogue of the BOA is “Some towns and villages belonging to Şikloş (Siklós) and Kopan (Koppány) classified among the has estates of the district governor of Mohaç.”10 The document is part of a timar defteri, and what survives of it covers 298 towns and villages, providing data on three estates, rather than the two mentioned in the Turkish catalogue: 10  BOA A.DFE. d. 626: Şikloş ve Kopan’a bağlı bazı varoş ve köylerde, Budin Vilayeti mir-i miran ve Mohaç mirliva haslarına ait tahrir defteri parçası.

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I/1. The beginning is missing, which prevents identification of the holder unless a more detailed analysis is made. The total revenue of the estate was 474,088 akçes (pp. 1–3). I/2. The has of the beylerbeyi of Buda, with a revenue of 496,017 akçes (pp. 4–17). Since the usual revenue of the beylerbeyi of Buda was almost a million akçes, and often more than that, the amount of revenue suggests a survey of a partial has estate. The author of the defter did not, unfortunately, record the name of the governor-general. I/3. Fragment of the has of the sancakbeyi of Mohaç (pp. 18–20). The end of this estate register is missing, and so we do not know the total amount of its revenue. Neither does it give the name of the estate holder. The name and date of the second defter fragment (II) causes even greater confusion. The catalogue of the BOA describes it merely as “a section of a tahrir defteri of villages connected to Szigetvár”. Szigetvár came into Ottoman control only in 1566, but the defter includes an instruction written in different hand, and with a date. This is the first half of the month of Şevval in the 954th year of Hijra, the period 14–23 November 1547.11 The surviving fragment of the record includes the names of only 59 towns and villages, all on a single estate: II/1. Estate of an unknown owner with a total revenue of 435,000 akçes (pp. 1–4). To render the details of the two surveys meaningful, we must first determine the time when their figures were produced. The Ottoman Database being built up in the Hungarian National Archives provides a means of interpreting and analysing the data contained in the newly-discovered defter fragments.12 A search of data on each of the towns and villages in the documents reveals that the content of both fragments corresponds to that of the timar defteri associated with the sancak of Mohaç survey of 1546. The amounts of tax paid by these towns and villages given in the two defter fragments agree exactly with 11  BOA A.DFE. d. 33. Sigetvar (Zigetvar)’a bağlı köylerin tahrir defteri parçası. 12  The database is being produced with the support of grant number OTKA K 108919 by Klára Hegyi, Gábor Demeter, Éva Sz. Simon and Balázs Sudár.

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Area of the sancak of Mohaç Fragment I Fragment II

Map 2 Sources of the 1547 tİmar defterİ of the sancak of Mohaç

those given in the sancak survey used as a control material. The two newlydiscovered fragments were thus certainly made between the date of writing of the 1546 sancak survey and the date given in Fragment II, mid-November 1547.13 Consequently, the mention of Szigetvár in the latterly-applied title seems unwarranted, since that town came under Ottoman control in 1566. The towns and villages in the defter fragments belong to the area of the sancak of Mohaç, and when plotted on the map, may be seen to have been bounded to 13  Data on the carrying out of the census is contained in a command of 16 January 1545 sent to Kasım, district governor of Mohács: Budun beğlerbeğisinden senün sancağına mal-i miri cemine adam geldükde senün dahi vukufun ve marifetün olmak…” Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, „Az ország ügye mindenek előtt való.” A szultáni tanács Magyarországra vonatkozó rendeletei (1544–1545, 1552). Budapest, 2005, 45: No. 25.

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the north by Lake Balaton and the sancaks of Buda and Şimontorna, to the east by the Danube, to the south by the Dráva and to the west by the line of Hungarian forts Bélavár–Babócsa–Segesd–Marcali–Kéthely.

ESTATE HOLDERS AND THEIR LANDS

More thorough scrutiny of the defter clearly reveals the owner of each estate.

The first villages covered in Fragment I (Danóc, 29,640 akçes; Vörösmart, 81,831 akçes; and Laskó, 42,240 akçes) had become sultan’s revenue estates in 1544, before the first sancak survey, having previously belonged to the District Governor Kasım of Mohaç. At that time, they formed part of the kaza of Baranavar (Baranyavár).14 Laskó was continuously included in the sultan’s has, even in 1570,15 and for this reason, and with reference to the regular content and structure of the timar defteris,16 we may reasonably conclude that it was already an imperial has estate in 1547.17 The first domain of Fragment I thus contains the villages of the sancak of Mohaç which had remained in the sultan’s possession, with total revenue of 474,088 akçes. The governor-general of Buda had has estates in the sancak of Mohaç of approximately similar extent in 1547. In his 1991 work, Géza Dávid examined 14  On 13 January 1545: Budin defterdarına [bir hüküm ki:] Tolna kazasına tabi Eten ve Batasek nam varoşlar, Fat ve Şak nam kariyeler ve Baranavar kazasına tabi Nana ve Laşkova ve Danofça ve Fereşmarta nam varoşlar ve Mohaç kazasına tabi Bata ve nefs-i Mohaç ve Şarviz ködeprüsi [recte: köprüsi] mahsuli ve dalyanlar bundan akdem sene dokuzyüz elli rebiü’l-ahirinün yiğirmi dokuzuncı güninde vaki olan ağustos evvelinden kıdvetü’l-ümerai’l-kiram Mohaç sancağı beği Kasım dame izzuhu tahvilinden hassa-i hümayunuma ilhak olunub…” Dávid and Fodor, „Az ország ügye”, 33, 35: Nos. 16, 17. 15  BOA TT d. 550 p.182. 16 The timar defteris were arranged by value of the estate types in the sancak, in descending order. They started with the old and new lands of the sultanic has, followed by the lands of the beylerbeyi, the hases and part-hases of the mirlivas of the district and of other sancaks, the ziamet lands of high-ranking persons in military service, the sipahis’ timar lands and the collective (salary) timars of the garrison troops. 17  In 1545, Ahmed Bey of İstolni Belgrad asserted his right to the estates and seized their revenue. According to the sultan’s command, however, they remained treasury estates. Dávid and Fodor, „Az ország ügye”, 36–37.

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Area of the sancak of Mohaç Has of the sultan Has of the beylerbeyi of Buda Has of the sancakbeyi of Mohaç

Map 3 The has estates of the sultan, beylerbeyİ and sancakbeyİ in the sancak of Mohaç (1547)

the size the estates possessed by the beylerbeyis of Buda.18 He established that the Buda officials did not hold estates north of the Danube–Dráva line before May 1543. By 1547, the beylerbeyi had an income from the sancak of Buda of 199,156 akçes. Without the timar defteris, however, we cannot know exactly how much income he had from the other sancaks. The recently-discovered register tells us that in 1547, the beylerbeyi of Buda had the income from 233 towns and villages lying in a broad band of the area between the River Dráva and the southern border of the sancak of Buda, from the north-south course of the Danube to the east end of Lake Balaton. After 1547, we can therefore be sure that the third beylerbeyi of Buda, Yahyapaşazade Mehmed (1543–1548), held lands in South Transdanubia, providing him with 496,017 akçes, nearly 18  Dávid, A ‘ budai beglerbégek’, 49–64.

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fifty per cent of his total income. This new data also proves that after the first sancak survey, the income of the Buda dignitaries no longer, or only to a very small extent, came from Balkan lands. To extend the metaphor: The spider started to weave his cross-fibres, and could close in on his prey. The third part of Fragment I contains a partial record of the domain belonging to the sancakbeyi of Mohaç. After the liva was set up, its first bey was Kasım (1542?–1547).19 From the rigid rules governing the granting of Ottoman estates, we may safely infer that the places mentioned in the fragment belonged to his domain. Until now, we have only known of Kasım’s vakıfs, and we had no knowledge of his official pay as a sancakbeyi. The (fractional) income of 115,509 akçes stated here and the geographical position of the towns and villages representing the income are very useful pieces of information. The income of the beys of Mohaç at this time, however, must have been about four times that amount. This implies that the majority of the domain is missing from the record. The Fragment II defter comes to our aid in reconstructing the missing parts. Although Fragment II has exactly the same structure as the Mohaç timar defteri identified in Fragment I, we cannot state with complete certainty that Fragment II is the continuation of the timar defteri, because we cannot conclusively demonstrate that it was written by the same hand. It may be a copy, made for some reason on the basis of the timar defteri. Simultaneity is proved only by the identity of the data of the settlements with that in the 1546 register of the sancak of Mohaç. The proposition that the document is not a detached section of the original timar defteri would imply the need to seek an explanation for it being rewritten. Fragment II comprises only the final part of the register of a domain. The towns and villages listed in the fragment still belonged to the sancak of Mohaç in 1546, but formed part of the sancak of Kopan after the 1552 surveys. Eleven towns entered at the end of the record are given only with estimated tax figures. Taken together, the places registered in the surviving fragment contributed 103,429 akçes of the 435,000-akçe total income from the domain, which means that about three quarters of the surveyed domain is missing from the register. 19  For his biography, see Szakály, ‘Az első dunántúli szandzsák’, 23–45; Dávid, ‘Kászim vojvoda’, 53–66.

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Judging from contemporary incomes, this total amount must have been the income of a major sancak leader. Consequently, the owner of the domain registered in the fragment may reasonably be identified as a bey of Mohaç who was in position between 1546 and 1552, because the income of the Şimontorna beys in the area was much lower at this time, and the sancak of Kopan had not yet been established.20 Possession by the sancakbeyi seems to be borne out by an entry made in another hand at the top of the last page of the manuscript, claiming that the estates for which estimated tax was entered (ber vech-i tahmin) were assigned to the has of the sancakbeyi. Now that there was peace with the “giaours”, it had been commanded that these should not be given to anyone, but entered into the defter.21 An aid to identifying the mirliva who held the domain is a reference in the text to the making of peace. Although the entry was made between 14 and 23 November 1547, the peace was ratified the same year, by the Hungarian side on 16 August and by the Ottoman side on 14 October.22 The survey of the domain must have been taken at least before the Ottoman ratification. The last reference to Kasım’s holding his position in Mohaç dates from 23 July 1547.23 Subsequently, sometime before his appointment as beylerbeyi of Buda on 25 December 1547,24 he was relocated to İstolni Belgrad. His successor was Derviş, who had been promoted from Danube kapudan to be the founder of the sancak of Segedin and at that time was relocated from being bey of the sancak of İstolni Belgrad. As persons important enough to be assigned to found sancaks, both Kasım and Derviş had remuneration approaching half a million akçes, and so we cannot determine with certainty whose income this sum of 435,000 constituted. The fact that there could 20  Dávid Géza, A simontornyai szandzsák a 16. században. Budapest, 1982, 27. 21  İşbu elli bin akçe … timarlar ber vech-i tahmin mirlivaya has kayd olunmuş imiş. Haliya küffar-i haksar ile barışıklık olmağın kimesneye verilmesin diye emr olunub deftere kayd olunmak buyurulmağın… (“These 50,000-akçe timars, by estimate, were entered into the mirliva’s has. Now that there is peace with the giaours, a command has been given not to give them to anyone. Their entry into the defter is commanded.”) 22  Papp Sándor, ‘Kárrendezési kísérletek a hódoltságban az 1547. évi békekötés után’, Keletkutatás 1996. ősz–2002. tavasz, 144. 23  BOA Kamil Kepeci tasnifi (KK d.) 208, p. 172, quoted by Dávid, ‘Kászim vojvoda’, 61. 24  BOA A RSK d. 1452, p. 28, quoted by Géza Dávid, ‘Az első szegedi bég, Dervis élet­ pályája’, Aetas 14:4 (1999) 8.

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hardly have been any difference between their incomes, however, permits the inference that the domain may have been owned by both of them, almost unchanged. The dates make it most probable that the reason for the new survey was the change of places at the head of the sancaks of Mohaç and İstolni Belgrad, when the areas whose tax was estimated were detached from the new bey’s domain. No evidence to substantiate this hypothesis, however, has yet come to light. All we can say with certainty is that after 1546, the income of the bey of Mohaç in his own sancak was 435,000 akçes.

ESTATES AND STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES

The leaders of the Ottoman Empire used two methods in parallel as they

advanced into the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary. The first, military conquest, involving the capture of Hungarian fortresses, was mainly conducted in campaigns. The second was mainly applied in the intervals between campaigns and during periods of peace. It was largely an administrative method. In these cases, unconquered territories were included in the tahrir defteris and assigned as revenue-bearing estates, thus motivating the leading persons and military officers of the sancak to tax the area and ultimately to widen the strategic operating area of the Ottoman Empire. The second method can mainly be traced through the abundant sources from the period following 1552.25 The two source fragments described above prove that the tactic was being applied right from the start. The fragments allow us to determine the location of three of the domains established on the land of the sancak of Mohaç, which was re-surveyed in 1546: the extension of the has estates of the sultan, the beylerbeyi and the sancakbeyi of Mohaç (Map 3). No data has survived on the income of the sipahis, the garrisons or the other officials. The domains in question lay in bands of varying width and density and were entered into the register in geographical order, from east to west, from the Danube to the border of the Kingdom of Hungary.

25  Éva Sz. Simon, ‘Névlegesen birtokolt szandzsákbégi hászok a 16. századi oszmán terjeszkedés szolgálatában’, Századok 141:6 (2007) 1351–1406.

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Map 4 Sultanic hases in the sancak of Mohaç in 154726

The towns that lay closest to the principal military, supply and trade route, the Danube, remained in the possession of the sultan. The towns and villages that can be identified for the domain in the fragment include Mohács, Danóc, Vörösmart and Laskó, which lay along the Danube; Beremen and Nagyharsány, which lay on the approach route of the Dráva crossings; and six villages and a farm assigned to Siklós, Harsány and Koppány.27 Since the defter is incomplete, we know nothing about the villages that provided twenty per cent of the estate 26  The map does not include the villages in the north that were to be part of the sancak of Kopan: Aszaló, Déshida and Zics. 27  Nagyfalu, later Siklósnagyfalu, lay at the crossroads of two major routes. It was on the road from Siklós to Beremend, and the road from Harsány that led through Szentmárton and the Dráva crossing Szomorréve. Márta Font, Siklós középkori története. Accessed 3 October 2018: http://tancsics.skisiklos.hu/doc/hh/forras2.pdf.

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revenue. The census of the known villages covers gate tax, market duties and tolls, bearing out the thesis that the internal, easily-accessible, economically valuable areas of occupied Hungary remained in possession of the treasury.28 In this initial period, however, the proportion of income of villages in the sancak of Mohaç reserved for the treasury was still relatively modest. The tax from the places remaining in the sultan’s possession accounted for only 16.5 per cent of the total revenue of the sancak of Mohaç. This figure was lower by a factor of three or more than the corresponding figures (from later dates) in the sancak of Buda (66.4% in 1559 and 77.8% in 1580), but was greater than the figure for the frontier sancak of Sigetvar, established in the 1570s (4.4% in 1570).29 Although the collectable revenue of 474,088 akçes was always lower than the revenues that could be collected for the sultan in the sancak of Buda (1,116,270 akçes in 1546), it greatly exceeded the revenue of places that remained in the sultan’s possession in the northern and eastern sancaks of the vilayet, Novigrad (13,518 akçes) and Hatvan (130,845 akçes). Mohaç was thus the second most remunerative Hungarian liva in the 1540s.

28  Klára Hegyi, Török berendezkedés Magyarországon. Budapest, 1995, 63. 29  The total revenue of the sancak was 2,864,034 akçes, of which 474,088 akçes was the portion of the sultan’s hases. The revenue from the places included in the fragment was 382,497 akçes. BOA TT. d. 441; BOA A. DFE 33, 626.

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Map 5 Has estates of the beylerbeyİ of Buda in the sancak of Mohaç in 1547

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Map 6 Estates of the sancakbeyİ of Mohaç around Szigetvár (1)

The registers show that the governor-general of Buda was due 496,017 akçe from the area of the sancak of Mohaç.30 That means that his share of the total revenue of the sancak was only slightly greater than that of the sultan. To obtain the same sum as was due to the treasury, however, Yahyapaşazade Mehmed had to extract tax from about ten times as many towns and villages. The average tax from the villages retained by the sultan was nearly 30,000 akçes, compared with only 2,100 akçes from those assigned to the beylerbeyi. The treasury thus skimmed the cream here as it did in the sancak of Buda. Surviving registers show that the beylerbeyi of Buda was denied almost anything from his own sancak, where he had an income of merely 199,156 akçes. Income from the remote sancak of Semendire made up only part of the deficiency. Lands were sought for him in Mohaç, and although they were not wealthy, they were at least apparently dependable. He never had to put up

30  The total sum in tax from all towns and villages was 503,974 akçes.

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with the trouble of border areas.31 His lands stretched continuously up to Şimontorna and probably even further, but there are no sources to prove this conjecture. The defter fragments give us information of about fifty per cent of the estates of the sancak of Mohaç. The revenues came from three distinct blocks. The first is that of defter section I/3. The places listed there lay in the area of the nahiyes of Peçuy (Pécs) and Senlörinç (Szentlőrinc), to the west of the beylerbeyi ’s has estates, and included three towns: Pécs, captured in 1543 and serving from then on as the residence of the bey, and Pellérd and Szentlőrinc, which lay on the road from Pécs to Szigetvár. There were also forty-five villages and a deserted village (Kisárpád, possessed as a vakıf).32 Their average tax was 2,357 akçes, somewhat more than the average revenue from the estates of the beylerbeyi of Buda. The revenue from these towns and villages clearly served as the bey ’s income, but in addition to this economic purpose, subsequent events show that they also had a strategic role. The places belonging to this administrative unit, as can be immediately seen from the map of the sancak, already surrounded the Hungarian-held town of Szigetvár in 1547. By the time of the new survey in 1552, Szigetvár had been completely sealed off. The Hungarian-held town and castle was caught in the pincers of the sancak of Mohaç and the newly-created sancak of Göröşgal (Görösgal). The district governor’s estates lying along the road from the sancak capital of Peçuy to the most important objective of expansion, Szigetvár, remained in this new defter, serving preparations for attack and defence, their residents securing the marching route and monitoring any Hungarian movements towards Ottomanheld areas. The other domain of the beys of Mohaç is the subject of the survey register that partially survives in Fragment II. Its towns and villages clearly presage the area and structure of the later sancak of Kopan, leaving the later nahiye centres 31  For other methods devised to make up for the deficiencies in the revenue of the beylerbeyis of Buda, see Dávid, A ‘ budai beglerbégek’, 50: note 7; Sz. Simon, ‘Névlegesen birtokolt’, 1355–1356. 32  We know that “Kasım Bey of the above mentioned liva” acquired the deserted village of Kisárpád “for payment of its tithe”, which amounted to 100 akçes, after paying its tapu tax. Dávid, ‘Kászim vojvoda’, 65.

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Map 7 Estates of the sancakbeyİ of Mohaç in the area of the later sancak of Kopan (2)

and their immediate surroundings in the bey ’s possession. It was essential to extract tax from these places in order to set up the new administrative unit. The average tax of the three towns (Nagykarád, Köröshegy and Szakcs) and fortysix villages was hardly more than 1000 akçes. This modest sum – a kind of gesture to the inhabitants – served to stabilize Ottoman rule. The task of the sancakbeyi in this area was clearly to spread Ottoman administration into a new area, which culminated in the establishment of the sancak of Kopan in 1552. The third block comprised Hungarian fortresses and towns bordering on the kingdom (Babócsa, Bélavár, Segesd, Marcali and Kéthely) and six villages around them. Their revenue was estimated at 50,000 akçes. They had not yet been assessed or recorded in the sancak survey and were appended to the bey’s estates as off-defter items. Although the likelihood of taxing Hungarian fortress towns was somewhat small, the average revenue per settlement in the block was 4,545 akçes, well in excess of the average for the places assigned to the sancakbeyi and the beylerbeyi. This unrealistically high sum could only have meant that the objective here, too, was strategic. The task, however, was different from that observed in the previous block. It was not to organise a new 155

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Map 8 Estates of the sancakbeyİ of Mohaç on the Hungarian defensive line (3)

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administrative unit but merely to make preparations for one. The arrangement put financial pressure on the bey: He would lose out on great sums if he did not have the area plundered, intimidating and subordinating its Hungarian inhabitants, or at least extracting intelligence from them. We thus see in the case of the third block the marking out of lands claimed by the Ottomans and marked out for extraction of tax. The strategy was successful, although some time was to pass before it bore fruit. After 1552, some of the places belonging to the third block came into the possession of Derya Bey of Şimontorna (1553?–1554), who directed the raids south of Lake Balaton to enclose Szigetvár. Babócsa, in the southwest corner of the liva of Mohaç, was first detached as the new sancak centre in 1555, after a combined attack on the area that prepared for the following year’s siege of Szigetvár. A nahiye centre was established in the northern town of Marcali in 1565, and after the capture of Szigetvár, when the surrounding small castles surrendered to the Ottoman army and the area was made into the sancak of Sigetvar, two others were established, in Babócsa and Segesd. The estates of the beys of Mohaç started to extend in the western direction in 1552, taking no trouble with the Hungarian fortresses left behind, and the next targets were the crossing points at Kanizsa Castle, some 80 km away, and places along the River Mura, identifying new territorial claims to serve the strategic objectives of the Ottoman military command.

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THE LION THAT WAS ONLY A CAT: SOME NOTES ON THE LAST YEARS AND THE DEATH OF ARSLAN PASHA, BEY OF SEMENDİRE AND BEYLERBEYİ OF BUDA Claudia Römer Vienna University [email protected]

Nicolas Vatin CETOBAC (CNRS–EHESS–Collège de France), EPHE, PSL [email protected]

Arslan Pasha is a well-known figure, on whom four studies have been published so far.1 Why did historians show such an interest in him? Actually, he probably owes his fame not so much to his brilliant career, but more so to its end: he was executed by order of Süleyman the Magnificent at the beginning of the Szigetvár campaign on 3 August 1566 after the first failures he had been responsible for. The event, that is, his siyaseten execution, caused some repercussions (which proves the fact that executions were carried 1  Hans Jensen, ‘Ungarische Urkunden aus der Türkenzeit.1. Über Arslan Pascha, Bejlerbej von Ofen’, Der Islam 10 (1920) 147–150; Claudia Römer, ‘Zu widersprüchlichen Beurteilungen eines Rechtsstreits durch die Kanzlei des Beglerbegi von Buda, Arslan Paša, im Jahr 1565’, Mitteilungen der Grazer Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 8 (1999) 29–41; Claudia Römer, ‿ ās. s-Estates Illegally Claimed by Arslan Paša, Beglerbegi of Buda. 1565–1566’, ‘On Some H . in Colin Heywood and Colin Imber (eds.), Studies in Ottoman History in Honour of Professor V. L. Ménage, Istanbul, 1994, 297–317; Yasemin Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi Arslan Paşa (1565–1566)’, OTAM 19 (2006) 33–51.

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out relatively rarely) and distinguished him from the ordinary provincial governors. It seems that this affair needs to be reconsidered, especially after re-reading two famous contemporary chronicles. On the other hand, we may ask ourselves which of his ways and actions as governor during the years previous to his end may explain his being disgraced. We possess abundant Ottoman documentation for the last three years of his life.2 This is why we decided to concentrate on the years 1563–1566, that is, the periods of his sancakbeyilik in Semendire and his subsequent beylerbeyilik in Buda, as well as his condemnation. We have tried to determine the role of his personality in this matter, but also Süleyman’s practice of justice and how this latter was experienced by his high-ranking kul.

A BEAUTIFUL AND PROMISING CAREER

Arslan’s career has been summarized in the four articles mentioned above.

3

The most important thing is to note that Arslan belonged to a prominent family:4 he was the grandson of Yahyalı Yahya Pasha (who had been vizier, governor-general (beylerbeyi) of Anatolia and Rumelia, son-in-law of Bayezid II [1481–1512]), nephew of Bali Pasha and Ahmed Pasha, and finally son of 2  We have made use of mühimme defteri (henceforth MD) from the years 1563–1565. One is an unpublished manuscript kept in the National Library in Vienna (ÖNB Mxt. 270), quoted here as Vienna MD; two others are kept in the Başbakanlık Archives in Istanbul and have been published, namely MD 6: 6 Numaralı Mühimme Defteri 972 (1564–65): Özet, Transkripsiyon ve İndeks. Ankara 1995, and MD 5: 5 Numaralı Mühimme Defteri (973/1565). Özet ve İndeks. Ankara 1994. Numerous other Ottoman documents kept in the National Library in Vienna have also been published. See Anton C. Schaendlinger, Die Schreiben Süleymāns des Prächtigen an Karl V., Ferdinand I. und Maximilian II. aus dem Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv zu Wien. Wien, 1983; Anton C. Schaendlinger, Die Schreiben Süleymāns des Prächtigen an Vasallen, Mi­ li­tärbeamte, Beamte und Richter aus dem Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv zu Wien. Wien, 1986; Gisela Procházka-Eisl and Claudia Römer, Osmanische Beamtenschreiben und Privatbriefe der Zeit Süleymāns des Prächtigen aus dem Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv zu Wien. (Denkschriften der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist.Kl., 357.) Wien, 2007. 3  Cf. note 1. 4  For what follows, see Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 34–35, and Pál Fodor’s study in the present volume.

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Mehmed Pasha. All the three of them had distinguished themselves in the Balkan wars. Bali had been beylerbeyi of Buda from February 1542 to May 1543, Mehmed from May 1543 to January 1548. Arslan was trained by his father before he was entrusted with his first governorships. Two remarks seem necessary here: 1. We are confronted with an officer who belonged more to aristocracy than to meritocracy (which does not mean that he did not have any merits). His future was evident, as he had been trained to attain the highest ranks – a profile that had become rarer at the end of the sixteenth century but still existed; 2. He made his whole career in the Balkans and Central Europe, at the border – this fact, too, cannot be regarded as an explicitly rare phenomenon, especially in the frontier regions where special competences and a sound knowledge of the terrain were required.5 Thus, Arslan may have known Hungarian (as he suggested to Maximilian to write letters to him rather in this language than in Latin) and there were Hungarian renegades among those around him.6 One may think – we will come back to this issue below – that a combination of these two factors enabled him to be nominated for his post in Buda. As far as his first posts are concerned, a certain confusion is prevailing, as various more or less complete nominations and chronologies have been proposed by the authors on the basis of their sources. We are not sure it will help if we, in our turn, attempt a detailed analysis in order to suggest yet another chronology, which is bound to cause controversy. What is most important is to underline, as we have done, the Hungarian character of our hero’s cursus. 5  On the careers of the governors of the sancaks and vilayets at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, see Metin Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants: the Transformation of the Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650, New York, 1983, 57–76 ff and (concerning the second point) Nicolas Vatin, ‘Un territoire “bien gardé” du sultan? Les Ottomans dans leur vilâyet de Basra, 1565–1568’, in Eyal Ginio and Elie Podeh (eds.), The Ottoman Middle East. Studies in Honour of Amnon Cohen. Leiden, 2014, 87–89. Sokollu Mustafa, who was Arslan’s successor as beylerbeyi of Buda, owed this probably to his uncle the grand vizier. But it has to be mentioned that he, too, had made a careeer in this zone, namely in Temeşvar (Temesvár/ Timişoara), Filek (Fülek/Fil’akovo), Segedin (Szeged), and in Bosnia; cf. Gyula Káldy-Nagy, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi Mustafa Paşa (1566–1578)’, Belleten 54:210 (1990) 655. 6  Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 40.

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Claudia Römer7 had suggested the following career in 1990: Pojega (Požega, 1537), Vulçıtrın (Vučitrn, 1543), Kalaça (Kalocsa) and Hatvan (1549), İstolni Belgrad (Székesfehérvár, 1552), Silistre (1556), Lipova (Lippa, 1557), Mohaç (Mohács, 1557–1559),8 Pojega (1560), eventually Semendire. But according to Hungarian and Austrian sources he was in Peçuy (Pécs) in 1558–1559.9 This confusion may be due to the fact that originally Peçuy belonged to the sancak of Mohaç and Peçuy only became a sancak in the 1560s.10 In any case, the first mention so far of Arslan as sancakbeyi of Semendire comes from an order handed to the kethüda Mustafa on 23 July 1563.11 According to Altaylı, Arslan’s qualities were publicly known to a degree that made people think his career was only beginning: Apparently, as early as 1559, he had been mentioned as a serious candidate for the succession of Toygun Pasha of Buda.12 No matter whether this rumour may have been true or not, Arslan was certainly thought to be eligible for this post. For during his time at Semendire, he was entrusted with the temporary position of acting governor of the beylerbeyilik of Buda.13 It is generally accepted that he held this position from July to November 1564,14 after beylerbeyi Zal Mahmud Pasha’s urgent departure for Istanbul in the aftermath of a military uprising at the end of June 7   Römer, ‘One Some H ‿ ās. s-Estates’ , 297. . 8   Cf. Géza Dávid, ‘The Sancaq of Veszprém’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 47 (1994) 57–65; repr. in Idem, Studies in Demographic and Administrative History of Ottoman Hungary. İstanbul, 1997, 163–171, particularly 168: note 23. 9   Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 36–37. 10  See Sándor Papp ‘Peçuy’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 34. İstanbul, 2007, 215, and Géza Dávid, ‘Mohaç’, in ibid., Vol. 30. İstanbul, 2005, 231. 11  Vienna MD, No. 618. This is somewhat earlier than the year 1564 suggested by C. Römer, quoting Olga Zirojević, Tursko vojno uređenje u Srbiji, 1459–1683. Beograd, 1973, 262. 12  Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 37. However, she does not indicate her source. ‿ ās. s-Estates’ , 297; Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 38 presents this fact as 13  Römer, ‘One Some H . a hypothesis, but in the letter of 23 August 1564 cited by her, Arslan unambiguously appears as sancakbeyi of Semendire and placeholder in Buda: praefectus sandsacati nandorbensis et seudrőiensis [sic] necnon Budae locumtenens; her source is Sándor Takáts, A török hódoltság korából (Rajzok a török világból, 4). Budapest, 1928, 70. One could read either seudrőiensis or sendrőiensis, but as the Hungarian name of Semendire/Smederevo is Szendrő, sendrőiensis is correct. ‿ ās. s-Estates’ , 297, according to Anton von Gévay, ‘Versuch eines 14  Römer, ‘One Some H . chronologischen Verzeichnisses der türkischen Statthalter von Ofen’, in Joseph Chmel (ed.), Der österreichische Geschichtsforscher. Vol. 2. Wien, 1841, 61–62.

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1564.15 The decipherment of the Vienna mühimme defteri casts some doubt on this certitude. There is, indeed, an order which is unfortunately difficult to read, but quite clear as far as the facts we want to glean from it are concerned. The document was registered on 18 Şevval 971/30 May 1564. Arslan is ordered to go to Buda in order to ensure the defence of the vilayet until the arrival of the new beylerbeyi İskender Pasha, who until then served in Van.16 Considering the travelling distance and the time necessary for decision-making, replacing Zal Mahmud Pasha cannot have been decided upon before mid-May and one may also ask oneself whether this was really connected to the mutiny of the troops. In any case, it was not a measure against Zal Mahmud, who was soon to be promoted to the beylerbeyilik of Anatolia, then to the vizierate.17 Whichever way this may be, in the official Ottoman documentation, Arslan is called “bey of Semendire responsible for guarding Buda” between 17 August and 26 October 1564.18 From 8 December onward,19 the orders addressed to the bey of Semendire, that is, Arslan, do not mention his interim. However, on 24 December, he writes a letter to the “king of Austria”, which implies that at this time he still played his role as a frontier diplomat of the governor of Buda.20 15  Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 38. 16  Vienna MD, No. 345. İskender Pasha’s biography given by Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmanî, İstanbul, 1996, 809. He ignores the fact that İskender Pasha came via Van. Before, he had been bostancıbaşı, ağa of the janissaries, and beylerbeyi of Egypt. During the Szigetvár campaign he was kaymakam at the capital, then fourth vizier. He died in 1571 during the Cyprus campaign. 17  We do not know much about this person. He was a kul of Bosnian origin, kapucıbaşı, beylerbeyi of Buda, Aleppo and Anatolia (in this latter function, he took part in the Szigetvár campaign), vizier and son-in-law of Selim II. Gelibolulu Mustafa Âli devotes a page to him in his Künhü’l-Ahbâr (Gelibolulu Mustafa Ali, Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî ve Künhü’l-Ahbâr’ında II. Selim, III. Murat ve III. Mehmet Devirleri. Ed. by Çerçi Faris. Kayseri, 2000, 93–94). Based on Gévay, ‘Versuch eines chronologischen Verzeichnisses’, 9: note 12, Géza Dávid, who thinks of him as a rather insignificant person, says that Zal Mahmud arrived in Buda, coming from Avlonya. Cf. Géza Dávid, ‘Incomes and Possessions of the Beylerbeyis of Buda in the Sixteenth Century’, in Gilles Veinstein (ed.), Soliman le Magnifique et son temps. Paris, 1992, 389. 18  MD 6, Nos. 33, 127, 147, 286. 19  MD 6, No. 474. 20  Procházka–Eisl and Römer, Beamtenschreiben, No. 64, 134–135 (Ernst D. Petritsch, Regesten der osmanischen Dokumente im Österreichischen Staatsarchiv. (MÖStA Ergänzungsband, 10/1: 1480–1574) Wien, 1991, No. 435). Do we have to take into account a chronological difference between the capital and Buda? Or should we suppose that he continued to ensure

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The chronology of Arslan’s nomination for the beylerbeyilik of Buda is somewhat blurred as well, especially as a certain amount of confusion seems to have prevailed at the chancery. Some letters of İskender Pasha addressed to the Habsburg side prove that he fulfilled this function until the end of April.21 A firman from the decade between 12 and 21 May 1565 is addressed to İskender in his function of governor-general of Buda;22 another one, of 18 May, which is addressed to a whole series of sancakbeyis, among whom Arslan as governor of the sancak of Semendire, orders them to join İskender Pasha, beylerbeyi of Buda.23 In reality, however, İskender was no longer in this function, as Arslan probably was to replace him directly at his arrival. Indeed, an earlier order to the “former beylerbeyi” İskender, dated 10 May, asks him to continue exercising his duties until the arrival of the new beylerbeyi Arslan. Nevertheless, he obviously was to stay, for the firman further ordered him to ensure the continuation of the office when Arslan would be away on a campaign.24 This is precisely what he had to do by order in July 1565.25 Under these circumstances, one may suppose that a certain Mustafa writing to Hidayet, the Ottoman ambassador to Vienna, was more or less right in estimating that Arslan was to arrive at Buda on 14 June 1565.26 In a nutshell, we may suppose that Arslan was appointed for Semendire in July 1563; that during the two months’ period he was in this position he was the interim, without this fact being repeated? We do not find a document from before 18 May mentioning İskender Pasha as beylerbeyi of Buda (MD 6, No. 1156). However, this does not necessarily mean that he had not yet come back to his post several months before. Let us also mention a firman to the alaybeyi of Semendire of 10 March 1565, which orders him to prepare his men while waiting for Arslan to return (MD 6, No. 827). But the sancakbeyi’s absence is not necessarily connected to his presence in Buda. 21  Procházka-Eisl and Römer, Beamtenschreiben, No. 65, 135–136 (Petritsch, Regesten, No. 438), No. 68, 140–141 (Petritsch, Regesten, No. 446), No. 69, 141–142 (Petritsch, Regesten, No. 449), No. 71, 143–144 (Petritsch, Regesten, No. 450). The last one is dated in the decade of 22 April to 1 May 1565. 22 Schaendlinger, Die Schreiben Süleymāns an Vasallen, No. 40. 23  MD 6, No. 1156. 24  MD 6, No. 1164. 25  MD 6, Nos. 1367, 1368. 26  Procházka-Eisl and Römer, Beamtenschreiben, No. 83, 161–163 (Petritsch, Regesten, No. 467). In any case, Arslan receives firmans as beylerbeyi of Buda from the decade of 22–30 May 1565. Cf. Schaendlinger, Die Schreiben Süleymāns an Vasallen, Nos. 41, 42.

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entrusted with the interim government of Buda from the beginning of June 1564 to the end of December 1564 or some time beyond this date; and that he was eventually appointed beylerbeyi of Buda in the first half of May 1565, arriving there around mid-June.

A GOVERNOR LIKE ALL THE OTHERS?

The (posterior) Hungarian chronicler Nicolaus Istvánffy, before mentioning

the events that were to initiate Arslan’s downfall, attributes the first cause of his misfortunes to the pasha’s personality: “He had an agitated mind and every day was drunk by opium and wine spirit.”27 To our knowledge, no contemporary Ottoman author ever repeated these grave accusations, which could just as well be enemy gossip without any real background. One may think that, if such accusations would really have been spread within the Ottoman camp, they would have been mentioned at the time of Arslan’s condemnation. Peçevi, however, also blames the person, whom he presents as a hothead: “He was of a reckless nature, doing things even a fool would not have ventured to do.”28 What should we think of this picture taken over by twentieth-century historians?29 Let us bear in mind that Peçevi, who equally is writing after the events, was sometimes sensitive to the Hungarian tradition. According to Selaniki, first-hand witness, Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha’s opinion about the Pasha was quite different: “He has been a soldier well-known for his competence, a person who has fulfilled numerous tasks and numerous services for the lofty [padishah]. This was not to be expected [of him].”30In order better to understand, we have tried to evaluate his actions on the basis of the documentation to be found in the mühimme defteris. What was he doing according to what we learn from the orders sent by the Porte? 27  Nicolaus Isthvanfius, Historiarum de rebus ungaricis libri XXXIV. (henceforth Istvánffy) Colonia Agrippina, 1622, 286. This is the portrait given by Miklós Zrínyi, the 1566 defender of Szigetvár’s grandson; cf. Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 39. 28  Tarih-i Peçevî. İstanbul, 1283/1866; repr. İstanbul, 1980, I. 36. ‿ ās. s-Estates’; Jensen, ‘Ungarische Urkunden’. 29  Römer, ‘One Some H . 30  Selânikî Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Selânikî. Ed. by Mehmed İpşirli. İstanbul, 1989, I. 25.

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Both in his function as sancakbeyi of Semendire – whether temporarily acting as beylerbeyi of Buda or not –, and as governor-general of Buda, he had first of all to deal with administrative affairs and (especially) with maintaining public order: fiscal questions and problems related to the granting of timars;31 controlling and reprimanding officials who were guilty of having abused their office concerning the reaya;32 the organisation of watching prisoners;33 suppressing various crimes (counterfeiting,34 illegal slavery,35 beatings and injuries,36 theft37); arresting criminals or evaded slaves;38 taking charge of deported persons;39 suppressing illegal exports (this was a question which, for obvious geographical reasons, was relevant in Buda but not in Semendire).40 The sancakbeyi of Semendire naturally had military obligations: He had to be ready for any demands on behalf of the beylerbeyi of Buda concerning the situation at the frontier41 and he had to organise the defence of his circumscription.42 Arslan’s obligations in Buda during his interim period as well as after he had been nominated for this post covered a larger area: It was no longer a matter of obeying 31  Vienna MD, Nos. 285, 281, 618 (fiscal consequences of the current survey); MD 5, Nos. 530 (forged berat), 842 (Arslan is allowed to take drastic measures against non-payment of taxes within his has); Schaendlinger, Die Schreiben Süleymāns an Vasallen, Nos. 41, 42, 45. Differences concerning the usufruct of mezraas are dealt with in two letters Arslan Pasha sent to the kadı of Segedin (Szeged) in July and August 1565. Here, a Christian timariot and an emin of a mültezim appear as rivals: For reasons difficult to determine – favoritism, corruption, administrative laissez-faire? – the pasha, having consulted the registers, comes to two opposing conclusions; cf. Römer, ‘Zu widersprüchlichen Beurteilungen’. 32  Vienna MD, Nos. 270, 315; MD 6, Nos. 127, 875, 1148; MD 5, No. 382. 33  Vienna MD, Nos. 69, 257. 34  Vienna MD, No. 757. 35  MD 6, No. 1196. 36  MD 6, No. 527; MD 5, No. 283. 37  MD 6, No. 1129. 38  Vienna MD, No. 379; MD 6, Nos. 607, 851, 849. 39  Taking charge of an exiled person from Karaman and transferring him to Buda (Vienna MD, No. 1012); arrival in Buda (MD 5, No. 156). 40  MD 5, Nos. 688, 842. 41  Vienna MD, Nos. 860, 863. 42  The document Vienna MD, No. 256 on constructing a fortification (parkan) and organising its guarding (karakolluk) dates from Arslan’s interim period in Buda, but concerns the sancak of Semendire.

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a superior’s orders, but he had to administrate the defence of the empire, mostly in collaboration with the beylerbeyi of Temeşvar (Temesvár/Timişoara). He was especially expected to find a satisfactory solution for the Transylvanian question, Transylvania being a vassal state involved in a half-concealed and half-overt conflict with the Habsburg forces.43 The problem had arisen at the end of the summer and in the autumn of 156444 and saw a considerable amplification from the summer of 1565 onward, when the frequency of the orders increases. Arslan is asked to assist his colleague in Temeşvar to intervene,45 to look for the best solutions without neglecting the defence of the Buda province,46 to be ready to fight at any moment without, however, disturbing the efforts for peace whenever the imperial forces would evacuate the territory of Transylvania as they had promised.47 He is equally ordered to prepare trans-border raids (akın) whenever necessary:48 This was meant to be a moderate measure of flexible retaliation, which was not to form a casus belli. For this was a period when the Porte was in favour of peace and displayed an attitude more defensive than aggressive along the Hungarian border.49 At the same time, Arslan was to take the steps necessary for gathering useful information about the enemy.50 43 Cf. Istvánffy, 272 ff (for a detailed account); Pál Fodor, ‘Who Should Obtain the Castle of Pankota (1565)? Interest Groups and Self-promotion in the Mid-Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Political Establishment’, Turcica 31 (1999) 72–73 (clear summary); Nicolas Vatin, Ferîdûn Bey. Les plaisants secrets de la campagne de Szigetvár. Édition, traduction et commentaire des folios 1 à 147 du Nüzhetü-l-esrâri-l-ah‿ bâr der sefer-i Sigetvâr (ms. H 1339 de la Bibliothèque du Musée de Topkapı Sarayı). Wien, Münster, 2010, 15 ff. 44  MD 6, Nos. 31, 263. 45  MD 6, Nos. 1358, 1367, 1381. 46  MD 6, Nos. 1367, 1389. 47  MD 5, Nos. 54, 99. 48  MD 6, No. 1367; MD 5, No. 493. 49  On this, see Claudia Römer and Nicolas Vatin, ‘The Hungarian Frontier and Süleyman’s Way to Szigetvár according to Ottoman Sources’, in Pál Fodor (ed.), The Battle for Central Europe: The Siege of Szigetvár and the Death of Süleyman the Magnificent and Nicholas Zrínyi (1566). Budapest, Leiden, Boston, 2019, 341–358. – Besides, the documentation of the mühimme defteris, however precious it may be, can only give a partial idea of his agents’ activities, as not everything was reported to the Porte. Thus, we are not in a position to interpret the mysterious and even secret military dispositions initiated by Arslan, which are described by a spy in a letter of 6 September 1565, cf. Procházka-Eisl and Römer, Beamtenschreiben, No. 97. 50  MD 6, Nos. 147, 151, 158. The Vienna mühimme defteri contains a unique document

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The situation takes a different turn when winter approaches: From an order of 19 November 1565, Arslan learns that a campaign has been decided – the Szigetvár campaign.51 He still has to be ready to assist the beylerbeyi of Temeşvar, the “king of Transylvania” (in Ottoman usage) or at the end of May 1566, the troops besieging Gyula.52 Arslan is also ordered to organise raids into enemy territory whenever necessary.53 But especially, and more than ever, the Porte expects him to gather intelligence on the enemy, ideally by taking prisoners who are able to provide information.54 Lastly, he has to prepare for the future conflict by taking measures of defence, by fortifying or abandoning certain places55 and by dealing with the stocks of gunpowder and saltpetre and with munition for the artillery.56 Finally, one of the most important missions of the governor of Buda is of a diplomatic kind. Concerning the relations with the neighbouring powers, the Porte attributed a special place to its representatives in the frontier provinces.57 This was most important during this ambiguous period of 1564–1566, which was characterised by the frontier incidents connected to the status of Transylvania, by the question of the renewal of the treaty after Ferdinand’s death and Maximilian’s accession to the throne, and by the payment of the tribute/present to the sultan by the Habsburg side. Thus, it was Arslan on from the end of September 1563 asking Arslan, still at his post in Semendire, to get information on the movements along the border, which were reported by the beylerbeyi of Buda (Vienna MD, No. 860). But this document is cancelled. So it is quite logical that Ottoman intelligence was organised in Buda. 51  MD 5, No. 493. 52  MD 5, Nos. 949, 1470, 1713. 53  MD 5, Nos. 898, 1008, 1178, 1206. 54  MD 5, Nos. 898, 1125, 1178, 1206, 1420, 1874, 1875. 55  MD 5, Nos. 1410, 1584, 1643, 1684. 56  MD 5, Nos. 666, 687, 1205, 1658, 1665, 1874. 57  On diplomacy at the borders of the Porte, see Güneş Işıksel, La diplomatie ottomane sous le règne de Selîm II: paramètres et périmètres de l’Empire ottoman dans le troisième quart du XVIe siècle. Paris, Louvain, Bristol, 2016, 7–14; Nicolas Vatin, ‘Les instruments de la diplomatie de Bayezid II (1481–1512)’, in Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. Comptes rendus des séances de l’année 2013. II (avril–juin). Paris, 2013, 723–724; Nicolas Vatin, ‘Un exemple de relations frontalières: l’Empire ottoman et l’Ordre de Saint-Jean-de-Jérusalem à Rhodes entre 1480 et 1522’, Archiv Orientální 69:2 (2001) 357–359.

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whom it was incumbent to inform the Porte of Ferdinand’s death.58 Later, when he was beylerbeyi of Buda, he was entrusted with warning the Austrians that if they were not going to withdraw from the Transylvanian territories the Ottomans would attack.59 This menace was attenuated by the fact that it did not emanate from the central government, but it was nevertheless an official one to be taken seriously. A problem that was obviously important for the relations between the Ottomans and the imperial side concerned prisoners and their exchange.60 Numerous is the correspondence showing his activities when dealing with Habsburg envoys and ambassadors who went to or came back from Istanbul and on his treatment of men entrusted to him and his care.61 Finally, letters are extant that he sent as a diplomat to the court in Vienna.62 Of special interest in this correspondence is the tone adopted by Arslan, presenting himself as a man of peace. In a letter to Maximilian of 25 June 1565, he reminds Maximilian that their fathers – Ferdinand and Mehmed Pasha respectively – had worked for peace and that now it was their, that is, the sons’ task to continue along these lines. Süleyman had nominated him precisely in order to preserve the peace in the region and to this end, he tried to control his men.63 Later, on 24 July, he repeated the same thing to Maximilian: He refused to take any responsibility for hostile acts performed before his nomination in Buda; if his predecessor had been successful in administrating his vilayet, he himself would not have been nominated.64 Finally, in the letter to Hidayet, where he was concerned about the delays of the Habsburgs in sending an ambassador, he again insisted on this issue: Everybody knew about the efforts for peace he had been making for a year.65 58  MD 5, No. 20; Schaendlinger, Die Schreiben Süleymāns an Karl V, No. 30. 59  MD 5, No. 332. 60  MD 5, Nos. 476, 1104, 1697. 61  MD 5, No. 102; Vienna MD, No. 1396 (and Schaendlinger, Die Schreiben Süleymāns an Vasallen, No. 38); MD 6, Nos. 158, 286; MD 5, Nos. 64, 1294, 1559; Procházka-Eisl and Römer, Beamtenschreiben, Nos. 64, 85, 93, 94, 98. 62  Procházka-Eisl and Römer, Beamtenschreiben, Nos. 64, 85, 93, 94, 98. Let us add a letter sent to the Ottoman ambassador at Maximilian’s court, Hidayet: ibid., No. 99. 63  Procházka-Eisl and Römer, Beamtenschreiben, No. 85. 64  Ibid., No. 93. 65  Ibid., No. 99.

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How should we interpret these assertions? It would surely be erroneous to understand that he followed a personal policy. As he said himself, he had been appointed in order to follow precisely this policy, on the background of what we said about the Porte wishing tranquillity at the Hungarian border. But had İskender Pasha really proved unworthy to the point he makes us believe? One may have one’s doubts about this. On the one hand, İskender was asked to stay in order to function as an interim when his successor would be absent. On the other hand, far from being badly treated by the sultan, he was appointed to guard the capital the following year during the Szigetvár campaign. True, a famous anecdote about the way he met Selim II arriving unexpectedly a few days after his father’s passing away might suggest that the pasha lacked subtlety, and even imagination.66 These were perhaps exactly the qualities expected of the new holder of the post in Buda. Judging from the rapid summary that we have given of his activities, he was expected to be able enthusiastically to show his good will and a certain empathy with his Habsburg partners (this must have been underlined by his reference to the family traditions), but also a certain ability to be firm. As far as this latter point is concerned, Arslan’s past glorious military activities in the region must have been enough proof. According to Busbecq, he was regarded as a most accomplished brave man: “In the country of Hungary, which is neighbouring ours, there was a sancakbeyi named Arslan Bey, who was very famous for his strength. Nobody could tension the bow better than he; nobody could make his sword penetrate deeper, nor was anyone feared more by the enemy.”67 But his braveness was not his only advantage. We have mentioned before that he was a man of the region, he knew the places and the people and had gathered around himself a circle of converted Hungarians.68 He could have spoken or at least understood Hungarian. Arslan’s two predecessors, be it Zal Mahmud Pasha or İskender Pasha, had already had a beautiful career when they arrived in Buda, and they 66  Cf. Nicolas Vatin and Gilles Veinstein, Le Sérail ébranlé. Essai sur les morts, dépositions et avènements des sultans ottomans, XIVe–XIXe siècle. Paris, 2003, 131. 67  Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Omnia quae extant opera. Basel, 1740, repr. Graz, 1968, 186. Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 39, refers to this passage, but subsequently does not mention the outcome of this anecdote, which we will deal with below. 68  Incidentally, they may have betrayed him; cf. Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 40 ff.

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had held prestigious posts outside the Balkans and Central Europe, Arslan’s promotion may thus seem extraordinary. But the situation was delicate for all the reasons mentioned above, and Arslan must have seemed to be the right man in the right place.

ARSLAN PASHA’S CRIME

Was his performance satisfactory? We have already cited what Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha said in this respect; for the grand vizier, Arslan had always behaved in a completely satisfactory manner, until the mistake that eventually turned out to be fatal for him. It seems clear that in any case he was believed to possess all the competences required due to his exceptional knowledge of the region. Thus, on 8 July 1565, the sultan wrote him about the best measures to take in view of the menace of the enemy: “You are my capable kul, who perfectly knows the best way to act concerning the enemy. My lofty trust is in your abundant bravery and worthiness, as well as in your perfect sagacity and perspicacity.”69 Some months later, a slight annoyance can be felt coming up: Why, the sultan asks on 18 December 1565, has he not done anything in view of the Austrian movements, nor provided the reinforcements that had been ordered for the akıns of the bey of Solnok?70 And why, he asks him on 9 January 1566, and again so on 12 June, does he not provide any information?71 These reproaches, however, do not seem to have been very grave and their tone does not appear to have been such that it would have worried Arslan. Perhaps he wanted nonetheless to restore his reputation by erasing this image of inactivity. It was no longer a time for negotiation, but for war. Was he expected to engage in any initiatives? This was what he did in any case, by deciding to start besieging an enemy fortress without having received an order to do so. This is at least the official version given by Feridun Bey, right hand of the grand vizier: 69  MD 6, No. 1358. The same story in an order of the following day: her vech ile yarar kulumsın (MD 6, No. 1367). 70  MD 5, No. 668. 71  MD 5, Nos. 766, 1875.

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“While this Arslan Pasha was mobilised with the troops of his beylerbeyilik, he had the unfortunate idea and the absurd thought of marching against the fort named Palota, one of the forts and fortresses along this border that belonged to the cursed king, wishing to show his bravery and to make known his capacity. He had had canons installed, and as he wanted to besiege the fort and fight the unbelievers, the evil king had immediately been informed of this event. He chose a certain number from the soldiers of the troops bearing the sign of perdition, who were in his camp, and sent them [to Palota]. When they had started fighting and Arslan Pasha ought to have shown the bravery connected with his name,72 he had done quite the opposite: He had shown less courage and brightness than a weak cat and his way of resistance – that is, his way of fighting – had not carried out this intention. In short, he had been unable to fight the despicable unbelievers who had marched against him and he had chosen to flee like a fox. When this shameful news reached the sacred ears of his excellency the padishah of the seven climates, who had decided to go to the fort of Eger, he abandons this idea and issues another firman stipulating to go to the fort of Szigetvár.”73 Feridun makes us feel it, Selaniki openly says that Arslan had behaved “illegally and without order”.74 He probably was to blame: When our same Arslan had informed the Porte of the bey of Bosnia’s apparent intention of attacking the Austrian trenches next to the castle of Győr (Yanık), the sultan answered by an order of 24 May 1566 that the bey should only ensure the

72  Arslan, that is, ‘lion’. 73 Feridun, Nüzhetü-l-esrâr, fol. 18r, in Vatin, Ferîdûn Bey, 164–165. Selaniki’s report, which is more complete, is confirmed by the diplomatic correspondence of the Venetian representative Contarini (from 20 June to 3 July): As Arslan had started to fire his cannons, Maximilian II had sent quite massive troops as a reinforcement and the pasha had preferred to raise the siege and to retreat, not without having seriously damaged the fort (G. Turba, Venetianische Depeschen von Kaiserhof. Bd. III. Wien, 1895, 324). On the way back, Count Salm took some Ottoman prisoners. He learned from them that Veszprém was defended by only 250 men: thus he easily seized Veszprém (ibid., 326), then Tata, the defenders of which were massacred (Tarih-i Selânikî, I. 25; Istvánffy, 286–287). On how the Ottoman operations were carried out (marching against Eger, then abruptly turning towards Szigetvár), see Vatin, Ferîdûn Bey, 38–41. 74  Tarih-i Selânikî, I. 25.

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defence of his sancak and join the army.75 Arslan does not seem to have applied this order to himself. However, if we have indeed not found in the documentation an order urging Arslan to engage in the siege of Palota, the sultan was wellinformed about his action and apparently was not excessively moved by it. Far from demanding a withdrawal, on 21 June 1566 he ordered the beylerbeyi of Rumeli to take measures upon his arrival in Sirem (Szerémség/Srem) to send Arslan some support.76 Therefore, it was not a grave crime in itself to take initiatives, provided they were successful. But, as Feridun reports in the passage cited above, this was not the case. Moreover, the accusations of carelessness and unreasonable recklessness brought forth by our two chroniclers are maybe unjust. The measures taken by Arslan in the field seem to have been reasonable,77 but rightly or not, our Ottoman authors attribute the responsibility for the changes Süleyman had to make in the course of his campaign to him.78 Another reproach is made against him, which is perhaps more important, but judging from what Selaniki tells us, it was only an aggravating detail, for the decision to eliminate him had already been taken when his military failure and its consequences became known: in order to plead for his cause, Arslan abandoned the troops that he commanded. Was this enough to justify capital punishment? Historians have asked themselves this question. Although they have not concluded with any certainty that some cabala had been the only cause of Arslan’s end, they have noted that he had enemies. In his correspondence with the imperial side, he presented himself as being exposed to the animosity of the “king of Transylvania”, of the beylerbeyi of Temeşvar and of the bey of Solnok because of his pacifist policy.79 75  MD 5, No. 1715. Similarly, the answer to the bey of Szolnok, who planned to attack Habsburg places to the north of Eger was: “The important thing is that one should start by seizing Gyula” (MD 5, No. 1644, 19 May 1566). 76  MD 5, No. 1980. 77  Contarini’s account tells us that, contrary to Feridun who writes that Arslan was defeated, he wisely preferred to withdraw when confronted with forces that were said to outnumber his own troops. 78  On this point, it seems that one can agree with them; cf. Vatin, Ferîdûn Bey, 40–41. 79  Jensen, ‘Ungarische Urkunden’, 148 (who, in addition to the consequences of the failure of Palota, also mentions the sultan’s anger because of the delay in building a bridge over the ‿ ās. s-Estates’ , 298. Drava); Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 45–49; Römer, ‘One Some H .

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But it is not certain that one should take these complaints literally. They could just have been an argument used in negotiation with one’s interlocutors in order to present oneself as a “good” Ottoman pacifist as opposed to a bellicose party: Thus a role play which should not make us forget that Arslan applied the policy of the Porte, which was indeed pacifist at that moment. The fact remains that the relations between higher officers stationed in Hungary surely were far from excellent, with personal and party interests strongly opposing them to one another, especially concerning the bestowal of timars. The case of attributing the fort of Pankota studied in detail by Pál Fodor is enlightening. There, Arslan Pasha appears to belong to a clan around of the bey of Arad, Mehmed (Kunović).80 Nevertheless, a letter sent on 30 May 1565 to the bey of Arad by his kethüda at the Porte, Veli Kethüda, indicates that the hatred Arslan felt for Mehmed of Arad was made known to the pasha (probably Grand Vizier Semiz Ali Pasha).81 Equally, we will see that, according to Selaniki, the sultan passed on to Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Arslan Pasha’s letters blaming him in an offensive way. Let us add that, in these outposts of the empire where everything was allowed, such network intrigues with everybody trying to gain importance by slandering others in the capital, were apparently intensified by more violent hostile acts. Indeed, we know from a Hungarian source that in May 1558 the sancakbeyi of Besperim (Veszprém) Mehmed Bey and Veli Bey (who probably then was sancakbeyi of İstolni Belgrad) attacked Arslan’s camp with their men who were disguised as Hungarians. They killed four persons and wounded Arslan himself. Mehmed was dismissed and joined Prince Bayezid’s entourage.82 Veli’s fate, on the other hand, has been made known to us by Busbecq, who then was Ferdinand of Habsburg’s ambassador in Istanbul: When interrogated at the divan, Veli held forth his enmity with Arslan and its causes. He then explained that he had been wounded when 80  Fodor, ‘Who Should Obtain’, 74–75. 81  Procházka-Eisl and Römer, Beamtenschreiben, No. 72 (Petritsch, Regesten, 439), 145. Although the addressee of this copy is anonymous, the devletlü ve saadetlü sultanum hazretleri Veli Kethüda addresses can only be his master. 82  On this affair, see Géza Dávid, ‘Ottoman Administrative Strategies in Western Hungary’, in Colin Heywood and Colin Imber (eds.), Studies in Ottoman History in Honour of Professor V. L. Ménage. Istanbul, 1994, 36; Idem,‘The Sancaq of Veszprém’, 168–169.

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being caught in an ambush by Arslan Bey – we must not forget that in reality he seems to have been the author of the ambush. This, he said, would not have happened if Arslan had accepted the duel he had suggested to him several times. If we believe Busbecq83 – who tells the anecdote in order to explain the prohibition of duelling in the Ottoman Empire – it was this last remark that caused Veli’s downfall. He was imprisoned by order of the viziers who had cried: “So you have dared to start a duel with your fellow soldier? Was there a lack of Christians you could have fought with? Both of you are living off our emperor’s bread. Therefore, you even less ought to plan deciding about your lives. On the basis of which right? According to which model?” What is intriguing with this reaction is that to say the least, the idea of engaging in duel seems to be a guilt much more serious than the attack itself. As for Arslan, he was not bothered by this affair. If, as Peçevi has it (and contrary to the impression given by the archival documentation), he was a hothead, this apparently was the case with everyone in these outposts of the empire where the order of the central provinces was not established, but circumstances were semianarchic, a typical feature of the frontier zones. Thus, one may ask oneself if the government in the capital attached any real importance to the dissent occurring between their men along the frontier and to the gossip they spread about one another. In any case, the sultan maintained until the last day his trust in Arslan Pasha, his loyal and competent beylerbeyi of Buda.84

THE SULTAN AND HIS PASHAS

Perhaps it is suitable, therefore, to look at Arslan’s downfall from a different

perspective, by attributing less importance to his personality. Feridun, who in 83 Busbecq, Omnia quae extant, 186–187. 84  Römer, ‘Zu widersprüchlichen Beurteilungen’, 34, cautiously suggests that the original documents concerning Arslan in the manuscript ÖNB A.F. 30, which she has published in her two articles, may have formed part of a file against Arslan. But as she says herself, there is no proof for this. In any case, on the basis of the documents from the mühimme defteris and, as will become clear below, Selaniki’s report, the governor apparently was rather esteemed at the court until the unfortunate affair of the siege of Palota.

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his chronicle tries to give an official version of the events, offers a brief account of the last moments of the unfortunate Arslan.85 This account underlines the sultan’s and his grand vizier’s high moral level as they acted like statesmen who are not troubled by personal sentiments. Upon learning about Arslan’s failure and flight, Süleyman gives the following order to Sokollu Mehmed: “When Arslan Pasha has arrived and is in your presence, you shall offer him neither salvation nor escape and you shall punish him by having him executed.” Indeed, without allowing him to express himself, the grand vizier, “conqueror of lions”, says to him, “Why have you committed this treason and why have you come, thereby abandoning the troops? His excellency the padishah has given order that you should be executed.” The miserable man is immediately turned over to the çavuşes who make him kneel down in front of the tent and he is executed on the spot by the executioner. What follows is an elucidating comment: “Practising this execution and the rumour of this awe-inspiring majesty served as an example and a lesson for the victorious soldiers and instigated their enthusiasm and zeal, so that this was a sufficient order and sign for everyone to make an effort and accomplish praiseworthy actions.” Here we witness the tone of raison d’état, which requires an exemplary punishment in the proper sense: The success of the campaign and the sultan’s glory, which depend on the bravery and fidelity of people, count more than one individual life. In other words, the execution of the beylerbeyi of Buda is an act of justice (adalet) which is the first characteristic of a good sovereign. “Beau ou laid, le massacre des prisonniers est un acte de puissance souveraine”, writes Benjamin Lellouch about Selim I’s extermination of the Kizilbash and of Mamluk prisoners. Therefore, “le massacre est aussi un acte de justice, exactement au même titre que son contraire, la clémence envers la population des villes”.86 Similarly, Süleyman’s exemplary death penalty (ibret) for his kul is an act of justice. According to Mehmet Şakır Yılmaz, this is at least the sovereign’s concept of justice proposed by Celalzade.87 One may suppose that it corresponds to Süleyman’s vision of himself, 85 Feridun, Nüzhetü-l-ah‿ bâr, fols. 19v–20r, in Vatin, Ferîdûn Bey, 170–173. 86  Benjamin Lellouche, ‘Puissance et justice retenue du sultan ottoman. Les massacres sur les fronts iranien et égyptien (1514–1517)’, in David El Kenz (ed.), Le massacre, objet d’histoire. Paris, 2005, 171–182, particularly 180. 87  Mehmet Şakır Yılmaz, ‘Crime and Punishment in the Imperial Historiography of Süleyman

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whose close collaborator Celalzade was: His exceptional essence bestows ex officio onto the sultan alone the right and the duty to administer the death penalty on the basis of a law that must not be against the sharia, but must emanate from him (siyaset). Thus, he will be able to ensure the order of the world, and therefore the protection of the reaya. This is done by punishing abuse committed by the representatives of authority, but also by taking preventive measures, even punishing culprits who have not yet committed a crime. If we take this concept literally, it is not important whether Arslan’s condemnation was fair or not; it was just. One might try to see things a bit more clearly by looking at the principal affairs characterised by Süleyman’s siyaset on the basis of Hammer’s account of his reign.88 First, it appears that a failure or inadequacy vis-à-vis the enemy did not in itself constitute a sufficient reason justifying capital punishment. In 1522, Ayas Pasha was pardoned at Rhodes (it was actually recognised that he was not guilty); in 1528, the beys of Anatolia who had fled from Tokat and for whom the executioner had already been called were nevertheless pardoned.89 The case of Piri Reis is also mentioned by Hammer.90 However, more than accusing him for being responsible for the defeat, one could have accused him of having abandoned his navy at Suez in order to go and justify himself in Cairo. This attitude very well reminds us of Arslan’s own attitude and could have been judged more severely. On the contrary, as Hammer notes, Seydi Ali Reis, who had equally lost his fleet in the Indian Ocean, was not troubled. Hayreddin Barbarossa Pasha himself was not received badly upon his return to Istanbul after the disaster witnessed at Tunis, which he had captured on his own91 and which then by his fault was conquered by Charles V. Treason,92 the Magnificent: An Evaluation of Nişancı Celâlzâde’s View’, Acta Orientalia Acadamiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 60:4 (2007) 427–445. 88  Incidentally, one can see that, for the period covered by Celalzade’s chronicle, he has largely based himself on it. 89  Joseph de Hammer, Histoire de l’Empire ottoman. Trad. J. J. Hellert. Paris, 1836, repr. Istanbul, 1996, V. 17, 48. 90 Hammer, Histoire, Paris, 1836, repr. Istanbul, 1999, VI. 97. 91  On this subject, see Nicolas Vatin, ‘Sur les objectifs de la première campagne navale menée par Hayreddîn Barberousse pour le compte de Soliman le Magnifique (1534)’, Archivum Ottomanicum (2018) 173–191. 92 Hammer, Histoire, VI. 67.

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however, and especially unjustified actions of oppression and plundering were pitilessly punished.93 We know that this sovereign vision of justice legitimized even the execution of a son who was suspected of aspiring to the throne. This was an unpardonable lese-majesty that was even worse as it would have toppled the order of the world. Was this supra-human concept of justice universally accepted by the sultans’ servants and subjects? It is not absolutely certain. Ought it to be applied to Arslan? One must not doubt this according to Feridun. But admitting that siyaset was a right and a duty inherent to the sovereign’s exceptional nature implied admitting all his judgements naturally to be marked by the seal of justice, whatever they were. He who doubted them was like Moses protesting against Hızır’s apparent injustice.94 However, the Arslan affair itself illustrates a certain malaise felt by Süleyman’s servants. Feridun indeed presents himself as a spokesman of cold justice. On the other hand, Selaniki gives us a different feeling. This does not mean that his account contradicts Feridun’s as far as the order of events is concerned. But he gives it quite a different atmosphere and adds some more information that attracts our attention. Actually, there is ample reason to take his version seriously. Not only does he belong to the circle around Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, but he presents himself in this case as an eyewitness, who was present during the scene he describes. First, we learn that Süleyman’s anger at the beginning was directed against his grand vizier, whom he held responsible and perhaps thought to be an accomplice of Arslan’s errors. This corroborates the idea that his downfall was not prepared beforehand by his enemies at the court: “How” he asks, “were the actions you have engaged in with the beylerbeyi of Buda decided upon and prepared?”95 The answer attributed to Sokollu Mehmed seems even truer as it corresponds to what we have learned from the documents of the mühimme defteris: “My fortunate padishah, several times I sent letters and trustworthy men with lofty orders to Arslan Pasha. And as I told him, ‘his excellency the fortunate padishah, the refuge of the world has arrived at the borders of the empires, but until now you have not given any 93 Hammer, Histoire, V. 5, 31, 32, 50; VI. 116. 94  Quran 18: 65–82. 95  Tarih-i Selânikî, I. 25.

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news nor shown any action’, no news [from him] came as an answer. He is a soldier well-reputed for a long time for his competences, a person who has accomplished numerous tasks and numerous services on behalf of the high [padishah]. One would not have expected this [of him]. The firman belongs to my padishah.”96 This firman is irrevocable: “Fifteen suitable kapucı and the chief çavuş Burunsuz together with fifteen çavuşes shall go and cut off his head and bring [it] to me.” Then, when Arslan’s kapu kethüdası brings the news that the latter is arriving at full speed, the sultan confirms the condemnation, bringing forth a new grave fault of Arslan’s – abandoning the troops: “When he presents himself in front of your tent, immediately call the executioner and make him cut his head off.” However, far from obeying silently, the grand vizier discusses the order he had received:97 “With your lofty ferman, let us advance and stop somewhere tomorrow and then deign to convene a divan. He is a beylerbeyi; let your lofty order be carried out in the divan.” Actually, by the way of this hint, he utters here a frontal contradiction to what his master said. Condemning Arslan in the divan, in the presence of the kadıaskers, means condemning him in the name of the sharia, not of the siyaset. Thus, its being well-founded is implicitly contested. Another argument is brought forth: Arslan Pasha is not just anybody, but a beylerbeyi whom it seems delicate to have executed summarily. It is a question of prestige: Here, it is a high-ranking kul talking with solidarity towards his peers. As such, he was probably reluctant to use siyaset in too systematic, even too excessive a way. In any case, he would probably have preferred not to be its instrument and thus be in an uncomfortable position vis-à-vis his comrades. The sultan insists however, not without communicating to his vizier documents able to dissociate him from the convict. The die is cast. Upon arrival, Arslan suffers a violent outburst from the grand 96  Ibid. 97  Tarih-i Selânikî, I. 26. Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 47–49 is suggesting quite a different interpretation of the grand vizier’s attitude. According to her, he comes in between Arslan and the sultan, probably because he fears what the pasha would say against him and in order to be able to install his nephew Mustafa. However, it seems difficult to us to conclude this from Selaniki’s report, which she bases herself on and which probably is also Danışman’s source which she refers to as well.

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vizier, without being able to express himself. The grand vizier reminds him of his faults and announces him his condemnation: “What news? Why have you come? To whom have you entrusted the troops? What do you have to say? His excellency the fortunate padishah, the refuge of the world has gracefully entrusted you with a beylerbeyilik. Woe on your name, oh you are not even a fox! His excellency the padishah has ordered your execution. By your failure in judgement you have drawn the unbelievers’ attention to the forts of the Muslims, oh you wretch!”98 We find here, in a different literary style, Feridun’s version, but elucidated by what precedes it. It shows the tensions Feridun, on the contrary, endeavours to hide. The subsequent story of Selaniki confirms this impression.99 It is the apprentice Tur Ali who beheads the convict, because the executioner Kasım cannot be found. One is tempted to ask oneself if the latter has not on purpose avoided carrying out an execution that made him feel uncomfortable.100 The men that are present, far from expressing their reproach against the guilty commander, show compassion with the convict. While the grand vizier is more violently than sincerely aggressive, shouting, “Just finish off this unsavoury person”, one of the men present directs appeasing words to the Muslim who is going to die: “Your excellency pasha, this world is not constant. There is nothing you have not seen. Turn towards the hereafter, repenting and proclaiming God’s unity.” As for Selaniki himself, he thinks about earthly sufferance, saying to the executioner: “Master, for the sake of the sword you have brought, liberate him quickly and hold fast [your] little finger!” Surely, no one among the soldiers and officers of the Ottoman camp denies Arslan’s mistakes, but the impression one gets from Selaniki’s story is that all ask themselves secretly whether such a severe condemnation was well-founded.101 However, the question does not only arise in connection with Arslan. During the 98   Tarih-i Selânikî, I. 26. 99  Ibid., 26–27. 100  One may think of the executioner’s reaction when he was supposed to execute Sultan İbrahim; cf. Vatin and Veinstein, Le Sérail ébranlé, 247. True, the execution of a sultan could horrify people, even if he had been deposed. Death penalty, however, was admittedly a risk of the profession of a pasha. 101  Sokollu Mustafa Pasha, his own successor, wrote in 1567 that Arslan had been executed “for nothing”. Cf. Altaylı, ‘Budin Beylerbeyi’, 49.

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same Szigetvár campaign, the kapucıbaşı Ali Ağa was condemned to the death penalty just as quickly by the sultan who was furious because Ali had moved the imperial tent one day in advance. The order comprised two words, “Bring his head!” The unfortunate man owed his life to the grand vizier, who defended him against the sultan, humbly acknowledging, however, that he had merited the siyaset. The sultan deigned to change his mind.102 Although their outcome is different, these affairs are very similar to one another. Feridun’s silence about the case of Ali Ağa is easily explained: This time, the siyaset had been efficiently contested. But this was not compatible with a report on the glory of the sultan, the grand vizier, and the Ottoman state. However this may be, one has to state that Arslan’s execution had its cause perhaps less in Arslan himself than in Süleyman. The latter in spite of being sick, had headed the Szigetvár campaign precisely to show his subjects and the world that he still strongly held the reins of the empire.103 He not only forced himself in spite of his suffering to show himself on horseback during the stops: Although the conduct of operations was largely delegated to his able grand vizier, he strove to control the situation.104 The way he condemned the officers whom he thought to be incapable or criminal in a spectacular way, thus manifesting his supreme justice of the Shadow of God on earth, certainly contributed to spread this message, at least in his mind. Did he still possess the necessary lucidity? It seems that Sokollu Mehmed Pasha had secretly doubted it. Hammer,105 from the historian’s distance, but also with the prejudices of a man of a different time, thought that Süleyman had been heavy-handed during all his reign, even if “most of the numerous executions that 102  Tarih-i Selânikî, I. 22. Two remarks can be made concerning this affair: 1. the unfortunate Ali Ağa’s mistake seems rather venial and the sick sultan’s anger excessive; 2. the defense presented by Sokollu Mehmed is based on the idea that eventually the culprit’s actions are beneficial, even if he did not know it. In other words, good luck is a virtue. But Arslan had been abandoned by good luck. 103  Cf. Vatin, Feridun Bey, 19–20. 104 Cf. Ibid., 178: note 413. Incidentally, Feridun reports (fol. 36v) that Süleyman, although staying at a certain distance from the besieged fortress of Szigetvár, had his agents there who informed him secretly about the operations and the conduct of the grand vizier: Vatin, Feridun Bey, 222. 105 Hammer, Histoire, VI. 147.

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took place during his reign can be considered as measures of severity necessary to maintain public order”. Concerning his last weeks, he is more severe, describing him as being “in the grip of irritations of sickly old age”.106 This is rather probable, but it is no contradiction to our previous considerations about the political calculations in 1566 and the immanent justice of the sultan.

conclusions

Considering everything together, Arslan probably owes his notoriety to bad

luck only. Neither lion, nor cat, nor fox, he was a brilliant officer. He had lived the life and had had the career, the customs, and the ambitions of his peers the beys and pashas along the northern frontier of the empire of Süleyman the Magnificent. His brutal end was provoked by his excessive self-confidence and by a failure the consequences of which could have been serious. But it is probably explicable more by the context than by faults that were surely worthy of reproach, but did perhaps not justify such severity. His destiny is interesting not only because of the concrete image it gives us about a mid-sixteenth-century sancakbeyi or beylerbeyi at the frontier. It is also interesting because it reveals the tensions which the official discourse of someone like Celalzade or Feridun tries to hide. Surely the sovereign’s justice is a dogma essential for the order of the world and for the balance of the empire. However, it is silently criticised by those whom it is directed at and who discretely and subtly counter the master’s decision with a sentiment of solidarity, which was probably not less essential for the functioning of the empire.

106  Ibid., 116.

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THE DEMISE OF THE PASHA: SOME REMARKS ON THE DEATH OF HADIM ALİ PASHA, GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BUDA Feridun M. Emecen İstanbul 29 Mayıs University [email protected]

Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (1522–1592) could hardly have guessed that his

travelogue entry on Ali Pasha’s death, claiming that the pasha of Buda (Budin) had passed away in a twist of grief shortly after being severely defeated at Szigetvár in 1556, would so greatly influence modern studies of the subject. The majority of modern researchers have copied Busbecq’s expressions regarding Ali Pasha’s final days into their work without reservation. This view was eventually contested by Markus Köhbach in a footnote referring to Hazim Šabanović,1 by the author of the present study,2 and by Géza Dávid in a short yet substantial encyclopaedia article.3 Ottoman historiography, however, has hitherto lacked a detailed description of Hadım Ali’s activities in Hungary and of his later tasks in the empire. The present study, stirred partly by the fact that 1  Hazim Šabanović, ‘Bosanski namjesnik Ferhad-beg Vuković-Desisalić’, Zbornik Filozofskog Fakulteta u Beogradu 4 (1957) 124, quoted by Markus Köhbach, Die Eroberung von Fülek durch die Osmanen 1554. Eine historisch-quellenkritische Studie zur osmanischen Expansion im östlichen Mitteleuropa. Wien, 1994, 46–47: note 45. 2  Feridun Emecen, ‘Hadım Ali Paşa’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 15. İstanbul, 1997, 4–5. 3  Géza Dávid, ‘Khādım cAlī Pasha’, in The Encylopaedia of Islam. Three. Leiden, 2010, II. 51–52.

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this pasha of Buda is an important character of a widely-read and muchappreciated Hungarian novel,4 seeks to shed new light on his ventures while in office in Buda and during his last years.

CAREER

A brief look at Hadım Ali’s early career would be helpful. Later historical

sources claim that he was raised in the imperial harem at the white eunuchs’ koğuş, indicating that he was of Albanian ethnic origin.5 His recruitment into the imperial palace is not recounted by any historical testimony. Similarly, there is nothing about the tasks Hadım Ali assumed during his years in the harem. Neither do we know the rank and office with which he left the palace. Gelibolulu Mustafa Âli merely writes that he became a provincial governor after he had served as the Rumeli kethüdası, and provides no further details regarding his change of office.6 Until his appointment as pasha of Buda in 1551, Hadım Ali only appears sporadically in historical sources, holding various governorgeneralships in the empire. There is no record of whether he served as a district governor before he was elevated to the rank of pasha.7 Despite the lack of 4  Géza Gárdonyi’s historical novel on the military clashes along the Hungarian frontier in 1552 has been translated into Turkish: Géza Gárdonyi, Egri csillagok: Eğri Yıldızları. Trans. by Erdal Şalikoğlu. İstanbul, 2013. 5  Tayyip Gökbilgin identifies him as an Albanian from Ioannina: Tayyip Gökbilgin, ‘Ali Paşa, Hadım’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 1. İstanbul, 1988, 332. Busbecq, on the other hand, refers to Hadım Ali as being from Epirus. See Ogiler Ghislain de Busbecq, Türk Mek­ tupları. Transl. by H. Cahit Yalçın. İstanbul, 1939, 156. Nicolae Iorga merely calls him an Albanian, see Nicolae Iorga, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu Tarihi. Trans. by N. Epçeli. Ed. by K. Beydilli. İstanbul, 2005, III. 45. The pious foundations Hadım Ali left in Berat (Arnavutluk Belgradı) strongly attest to his country of origin. Cf. Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Arşivi (henceforth TSMA), E. 7740. 6  Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, Künhü’l-Ahbâr. Vol. 1. Dördüncü Rükn. Osmanlı Tarihi. Tıpkıbasım. Ankara, 2009, 366r. Gelibolulu Âli’s statements are reproduced by İbrahim Peçevi, Tarih-i Peçevi. İstanbul, 1283/1866, I. 36. 7  According to the 1994 status report of the CİEPO Himayesi Altında Yürütülen Osmanlı Prozopografisi Üzerine Araştırma Programı under the coordination of Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Hadım Ali first held the district of Bitlis and was then promoted to the governor-generalship of Dulkadır. There is no evidence, however, to link this piece of information with Hadım Ali himself.

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knowledge about his early career, we can propose with some confidence that Hadım Ali first became governor-general of Diyarbekir. The circumstances under which he obtained the office are unclear. We only know that during his tenure he went to Erzurum in order to provide military assistance to Musa Pasha, governor-general of Erzurum, who was engaged in a struggle along the frontier. There, he launched a number of raids into the Georgian Atabeyler territory.8 The assertion that after his governorship in Diyarbekir, Hadım Ali briefly assumed the office at Erzurum and was restored to his former administrative position in Diyarbekir cannot be confirmed.9 There is firm evidence, however, that Hadım Ali moved from Diyarbekir to the governorgeneralship of Anatolia precisely on 20 December 1544.10 In the same years another Ali held the office in Erzurum.11 His promotion to the governor-generalship of Anatolia coincided with Süleyman the Magnificent’s growing concern with the eastern frontiers of the empire, causing the sultan to halt military operations in the west in 1548. Ottoman chronicles relate that at this time, Hadım Ali was held responsible for the lack of discipline displayed by his troops when they pillaged the countryside in Muş in the initial phase of the campaign and for the failure to repel the Safavid incursions into the Erzincan–Bayburt region. He was therefore dismissed from office and transferred to Bosnia (February 1549).12 8  Celalzade Mustafa only briefly mentions these political and military events around 1542–1543: Petra Kappert (Hrsg.), Geschichte Sultan Süleymān K. ānūnīs von 1520 bis 1557 oder T. abak. āt ül-Memālik ve Derecāt ül-Mesālik von Celālzāde Mus. t. afā genannt K. oca Nişāncı. Wiesbaden, 1981, 402r. Gelibolulu Mustafa Âli openly cites Ali Pasha by name, see Künhü’l-Ahbar, 320r. 9  Dündar Aydın claims that Hadım Ali held the office in Erzurum in 1541, before Musa Pasha, and adds that in the historical records of 1545–1548, he came across a certain Ali Pasha serving as a governor-general. Dündar Aydın, Erzurum Beylerbeyliği ve Teşkilatı. Kuruluş ve Genişleme Devri (1535–1566). Ankara, 1998, 93–95. This governor-general in Erzurum is not Hadım Ali Pasha, however; see note 11 below. 10  Halil Sahillioğlu, Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi H. 951–952 Tarihli ve E-12321 Numaralı Mühimme Defteri. İstanbul, 2002, 33: No. 41; see also 372–373. 11  Ibid., 157, 195. 12  ...Vilâyet-i Anadolu beylerbeyisi Ali Paşa’ya dahi beylerbeyilik etmeğe acizsin deyü livâ-i Bosna verilüp…; Anonymous, Tevârih-i Âl-i Osman [Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Kütüphanesi (henceforth TSMK), Revan, 1099]. Ed by Mustafa Karazeybek. MA Thesis, İstanbul University,

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In fact, he was appointed to the sancak of Hersek (Herzegovina) rather than to Bosnia, but moved to Bosnia around May 1550.13 In making this appointment, the Ottoman central administration may have aimed to place the BosnianHerzegovinian frontier under the guard of a governor with military capabilities. Bosnia was still a sancak at the time of Hadım Ali’s arrival, but its status was effectively elevated by his appointment, since he was a former beylerbeyi. Historical sources are silent about his days in Bosnia. On 17 May 1551, after a period of nearly two years in Herzegovina and Bosnia, he was appointed the beylerbeyi of Buda in place of Kasım Pasha.14

THE PASHA OF BUDA

We have seen that Hadım Ali’s early career in the Ottoman political system

included the holding of several governor-generalships during the 1540s. It is not an overstatement to say that his appointment to Buda in 1551 marked a watershed in his career. In contrast with the scanty information on his initiatives before 1551, there are quite comprehensive descriptions of Hadım Ali’s political and military enterprises following his inauguration in Buda. During his first term of office there (May 1551 to February 1553), he was evidently involved in a fierce political and military confrontation along the Hungarian border. Soon after Hadım Ali took over the government of Buda, he developed a strategy of occupying the military outposts enveloping the Ottoman province. He seems to have taken the leading role in planning a bellicose policy towards

1994, 434 (in original text fol. 194r). Matrakçı Nasuh justifies Hadım Ali’s change of offices as: Ali Paşa-yı dindâr sinn-i kümûletden mütecâviz olup beylerbeylik hizmetinden âciz olmağın mezkûra Bosna sancağı…; see Ahmet Tokluca, Matrakçı Nasuh’un Süleymannamesi (Beşinci Bölüm/ Arkeoloji Müzeleri Ktp. Nr. 379, fols. 96r–185v). MA Thesis, Marmara University, İstanbul, 2010, 10–11, 25. 13  …Mora geri Bosna beyi Osmanşah’a, Bosna sancağı Hersek sancağı beyi emirü’l-ümerai’lkiram Ali Paşa-yı şir intikama…; Tokluca, Matrakçı Nasuh’un, 85. 14  Hadım Ali was appointed to Buda with an annual revenue of 800,000 akçes. İstanbul, Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (henceforth BOA), Bâb-ı Âsâfî, Ruus Kalemi (henceforth A.RSK) 1452, 28. The sancak of Bosnia was granted to Mehmed Pasha on 23 Rebiülahir 958/30 April 1551 upon his return from the pilgrimage: Tokluca, Matrakçı Nasuh’un, 96.

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Hungarian territory. This was aimed at extending the borders of the province so as to secure the town of Buda. At the time, the Ottoman central government was deeply entangled in the military problems in the east. An Ottoman frontier commander, by drawing upon his individual fund of experience, was generally able to make critical decisions regarding small-scale armed conflicts along the border, unless they escalated to open war. He doubtlessly corresponded with the imperial capital during such operations, but by manipulating the flow of intelligence from periphery to the centre, he was in a good position to influence the decision-makers in Constantinople. Hadım Ali’s activity during his two terms of office in Buda (1551–1553 and 1556–1557) serves as a typical example of this phenomenon. The many letters he dispatched to both the imperial capital and the local commanders in the Hungarian fortresses during this time display a vigorous engagement in policy-making along the Ottoman– Habsburg frontier. Hadım Ali’s career as the pasha of Buda undoubtedly demands a detailed monograph.15 Here, I will only outline his political and military activities in Buda in respect of their relevance to the issue of his death. In February 1552, Ali Pasha made a spectacular entry into the Central European theatre when he relieved the Ottoman fortress of Segedin (Szeged) by 15  I aimed to write such a monograph quite a long time ago. From the 1990s onwards, I collected the Ottoman documents and examined Hungarian historical sources and Habsburg archival documents regarding Hadım Ali thanks to the benevolent assistance of my Hungarian colleagues János Hóvári, Pál Fodor, and Sándor Papp. These colleagues also undertook the burden of translating several articles in Hungarian for me. I truly owe a belated debt of gratitude to each of them. The documents held in the mühimme registers pertaining to the first term of Hadım Ali’s office in Buda was later published, see Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, „Az ország ügye mindenek előtt való”. A szultáni tanács Magyarországra vonatkozó rendeletei (1544–1545, 1552). / „Affairs of State Are Supreme”. The Orders of the Ottoman Imperial Council Pertaining to Hungary (1544–1545, 1552). (História könyvtár. Okmánytárak, 1.) Budapest, 2005. Previous literature on Hadım Ali’s administrative activities in Buda places a special emphasis on the events of 1552 and includes a number of scholarly works in Hungarian. However, these works largely neglect the Ottoman archival and narrative sources. For an example, see Imre Szántó, ‘Ali budai pasa hadjárata 1552 nyarán a Hont-Nógrád megyei várak ellen’, Történelmi Szemle 1 (1977) 31–52; Idem, Küzdelem a török terjeszkedés ellen Magyarországon. Az 1551–52. évi várháborúk. Budapest, 1985. For a compilation regarding Hadım Ali’s siege of Szigetvár, see also Péter Kasza (compil.), Remembering a Forgotten Siege: Szigetvár, 1556 / Egy elfeledett ostrom emlékezete: Szigetvár, 1556. Ed. by Pál Fodor. Budapest, 2016. The articles in the book have little to say about the role of Hadım Ali in the military operations.

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repelling the besieging German and Hungarian forces commanded by Mihály Tóth. In his report on his encounter with the enemy forces, Hadım Ali related that upon the receiving the warning, he moved promptly at the head of a 2000-strong force and was later reinforced by the contingents of the beys of Estergon (Esztergom), Novigrad (Nógrád), Hatvan, and Şimontorna (Simontornya). The Ottoman army under his command, he continued, gained a great victory over the enemy forces.16 Despite the decisive Ottoman success, Ali Pasha most probably complained about the lack of military support he received from the other Ottoman frontier beys. In return, the Ottoman imperial council issued a somewhat harshly-worded decree placing the beys of İzvornik (Zvornik), Semendire (Smederevo), Sirem (Szerém/Srem), Vidin, Alacahisar (Kruševac) and Vulçıtrın (Vučitrn) under Ali Pasha’s supreme authority. Hadım Ali seems to have been intent on increasing the administrative influence and military capacity of Buda, the second-ranking Ottoman province in Europe at the time. He aimed to bring the beys in the vicinity under his command and even to draw into his sphere of influence several sancaks supposedly assigned to the pasha of Rumelia. Hadım Ali seems eventually to have successfully remodelled the province of Buda so that its military capabilities became comparable to those of the province of Erzurum, which served as a military base for operations against the Safavids on the empire’s eastern frontier. Ali Pasha was now visibly comparable in rank with the governor-general of Rumelia. He even received an imperial decree informing him that the pasha of Rumelia was instructed to offer him help and support as soon as possible.17 Following his military achievement at Szeged, Hadım Ali, now in the command of a strengthened province, advanced on Veszprém and took the fortress in April 1552. In an effort to relieve the Ottoman forces besieging the fortress of Temesvár under the command of the second vizier Ahmed Pasha, he captured the strategically important Drégely and occupied – in cooperation with 16  TSMA E. 1098. The imperial council, upon receiving Hadım Ali’s report, seems to have issued orders in line with his requests: TSMK K. 888, fols. 108v, 115v; for these orders see Dávid and Fodor, „Az ország ügye mindenek előtt való”, 307–309. 17  …Rumeli beylerbeyisine dahi hükm-i hümayunum irsal olunub, şöyle ki senün tarafından bir maslahat düşüb varmak lazım gelse muaccelen varub erişmek emrüm olmışdur…; TSMK K. 888, fols. 110v–111r; Dávid and Fodor, „Az ország ügye mindenek előtt való”, 311–313.

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Yahyapaşazade Arslan Bey – the castles of Ság, Gyarmat, Szécsény, Salgó, Hollókő and Buják. These latest invasions incorporated some territories of Upper Hungary (present-day Slovakia) into the Ottoman Empire. Hadım Ali’s most striking accomplishment at the time, however, was in crushing the Hungarian and German/Italian forces commanded by Erasmus Teuffel of Gundersdorf and Sforza Pallavicini at Palást on 9 August 1552. Pallavicini and Teuffel fell prisoner to Hadım Ali and were dispatched to Constantinople along with 4,000 other captives.18 The Habsburg decision-makers had attempted to hinder the armies under the command of Ali Pasha and Ahmed Pasha from uniting, but the campaign ended in complete disaster and in serious distress at the Habsburg court.19 After his victory at Palást, Hadım Ali did indeed join forces with the second vizier Ahmed Pasha for the siege of Szolnok. From there, to the great fear of the Habsburgs, the Ottoman army marched on Eger (Eğri).20 The wellfortified castle of Eger proved to be a pesky obstacle for the impatient Ottoman troops, who had reckoned on a quick surrender by the defending garrison. After forty days, Ahmed Pasha lifted the siege and held Hadım Ali responsible for the Ottoman failure. Ahmed Pasha was of the opinion that Hadım Ali had manipulated the entire military operation for his personal interests.21 In the 18  TSMK K. 888, fol. 415rv; Dávid and Fodor, „Az ország ügye mindenek előtt való”, 613–617. 19  Some Ottoman chroniclers compare this victory with the Battle of Mohács, but leave it to Hungarian sources to make a detailed description of the battle. For the description of the battle in a Hungarian chronicle, see Ferenc Forgách, Emlékirat Magyarország állapotáról Ferdinánd, János, Miksa királysága és II. János erdélyi fejedelemsége alatt. Transl. by István Borzsák, in Péter Kulcsár and Margit Kulcsár (eds.), Humanista történetírók. Budapest, 1977, 608–620; see also Szántó, Küzdelem a török terjeszkedés ellen, 143–152. 20  For the causes of the attack on Eger, see Pál Fodor, The Unbearable Weight of Empire: The Ottomans in Central Europe – A Failed Attempt at Universal Monarchy (1390–1566). Budapest, 20162, 115–119. 21  Hocazade Mehmed Efendi offers a perspective on Hadım Ali’s ambitions during the siege of Eger. According to him, Hadım Ali urged Ahmed Pasha to continue the military operations, saying that a withdrawal of forces that are ready to fight and equipped with ample war materials would not befit the dignity of the state and the sultan, especially when the Ottoman army was so close to capturing a fortress such as Eger. The beylerbeyi of Rumelia, Sokullu Mehmed Pasha, however, maintained that the fortress of Eger was a formidable target and it was already too late in the season to keep the army in enemy territory. Hadım Ali, in Hocazade Mehmed’s account, because he was persistent in his affairs, affirmed with a menacing tone that he would launch the siege on his own and thus expose those who failed to accomplish their responsibilities, and

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shifting state of affairs, Hadım Ali could no longer stay in office at Buda and was replaced by Toygun Pasha in February 1553. His removal from the post was probably received with gladness by smaller Ottoman governors in the region who sought to be freed of Hadım Ali’s stern authority over them. Ali Pasha also produced a large amount of diplomatic correspondence during his first tenure of office in Buda.22 After his dismissal, Hadım Ali held offices in Anatolia until 1556. He was appointed governor-general of Karaman and joined Sultan Süleyman’s campaign against the Safavids.23 On 22 February 1556, he took over the province of Buda from Toygun Pasha, starting his second term with an income of a million akçes.24 The decision to return Hadım Ali to Buda most probably motivated by growing concerns in the imperial centre about the need to reorganize the political and military affairs of the western frontier. The third major campaign against the Safavids was now over, and the Ottoman central government expected a new turn of events in the west. This could only be achieved by a eventually report everything to the sultan. Ahmed Pasha was then forced to lay siege to Eger, but after a bombardment of forty days, news arrived that the “Viennese King” was planning an assault on Buda and Hadım Ali moved to assist the city. Thereafter, upon receiving the news that the Ottoman government planned a campaign against the Safavids, Ahmed Pasha lifted the siege (Ahmet Akgün, Hocazade Mehmed Efendi’nin İbtihâcü’t-Tevârihi. PhD Dissertation, İstanbul University, 1995, 240–241, in original text fols. 94r–95v). 22  Ernst D. Petritsch, Regesten der osmanischen Dokumente im Österreichischen Staatsarchiv. Vol. 1. (1480–1574). Wien, 1991, 85–93. 23 Akgün, Hocazade, 254 (fol. 111r). Here, Hocazade Mehmed praises the proficiency and skill Hadım Ali displayed in his former offices and briefly conveys his achievements when he governed Diyarbekir, Bosnia, and Buda. We may clearly infer from this sequence of historical events that Hadım Ali was appointed to Karaman after his dismissal from Buda. The conclusion that he became the beylerbeyi of Erzurum after he left Buda (Dávid, ‘Khadım Ali Pasha’, 52) must derive from a misunderstanding. We know that Ayas Pasha held the office of governor-general in Erzurum between 1551–1559; cf. Aydın, Erzurum Beylerbeyliği, 134. While in Karaman, Hadım Ali petitioned for the revenue of timar estate renounced by his nephew Osman ibn Hasan to be allocated to a certain Cafer, one of his protégés, who had demonstrated his prowess in the battle against the forces of Erasmus Teuffel in 1552 (BOA Kepeci, Ruus 212, 71; for Hadım Ali’s other petitions, see 79: 16 Şaban 961/17 July 1554; BOA Kepeci, Ruus 213, 85, 100, 106, 121). The documents above also testify to the existence of a brother of Hadım Ali with the name of Hasan. 24  BOA Mühimme Defteri 2, 25/216.

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governor with a good sense of the power balance in the region. His earlier military achievements along the frontier and his possible promoters within the court made Hadım Ali a perfect candidate. By re-installing him in Buda, the “hawkish faction” within the Ottoman political system discarded Toygun Pasha and his policy of maintaining peace with Royal Hungary.25 In his second stay in Buda, Ali Pasha sought to enhance the administrative and military capabilities of his province. In an effort to establish efficient government, he demanded the coordinated commitment, under his leadership, of all the beys in the province. In a letter to the imperial council in Constantinople, Hadım Ali uttered his disapproval of district governors who acted independently without reporting to him. He warned the decision-makers in the capital that such self-directed persons would harm the security of the frontier. He strove to set up a ruling apparatus that befitted his own desires, as he had shown himself capable of during his first term as governor of Buda. His drastic efforts to this end, however, seem to have backfired and doomed his subsequent military enterprises to failure. Szigetvár appeared to be a wellchosen target, with an undeniable strategic importance. In this respect, Hadım Ali led the way for the famous 1566 campaign of Sultan Süleyman. However, the Habsburg counter-attack eventually wrecked his plans. Hadım Ali rushed to relieve the fort of Babócsa when it was threatened by Tamás Nádasdy, but was defeated along the river of Rinya and forced to draw back his troops on 25 July 1556. Less than a week later, he also had to give up on the siege of Szigetvár (31 July).26 During the entire period, Hadım Ali also took diplomatic initiatives and corresponded with the Hungarian magnates.27 25 Forgách, Emlékirat, 670. 26  Ferenc Forgách describes Hadım Ali’s struggle outside the fortress of Szigetvár (beginning with page 670 in the published edition of his chronicle). According to him, the rival commanders fought with equal numbers of troops (15,000 each). Forgách’s description of the battle hints at a withdrawal of Ottoman forces rather than a defeat by the enemy. In his narrative, 400 or slightly more of Ottomans were killed in the combat, whereas the defenders lost 241 soldiers. For the battle, see also János B. Szabó, ‘An Example for Some – A Lesson for Others. The First Ottoman Siege of Szigetvár and the Military Campaigns of 1555–1556’, in Péter Kasza (compil.), Remembering a Forgotten Siege, 121–147. 27  The diplomatic correspondence concerning the siege of Szigetvár is worth mentioning here. Less than a month after he was appointed to Buda, for example, Hadım Ali claimed in a

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The defeat of Hadım Ali presumably caused great confusion within the Ottoman ruling elite. According to Forgách, Hadım Ali was by no means on good terms with the beys of the districts in his province. During his campaign against the fortress of Szigetvár, he pushed the beys in the army to their limits and insulted them for avoiding an all-out confrontation with the enemy.28 It was most probably because of his bitter relationship with the other Ottoman notables in the province that Hadım Ali was dismissed from office and granted the sub-province of Bosnia, with an annual income of 600,000 akçes (13 February 1556).29 Hadım Ali’s efforts while in Buda were notably concentrated on capturing the fortresses of Eger and Szigetvár, two admittedly strategic locations on Hungarian soil. The same strategic considerations were at play in the Ottoman conquest of Szigetvár in 1566 and Eger in 1596. A closer examination of Hadım Ali’s military operations along the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier will show that he had elaborate plans for restructuring the province of Buda. Hadım Ali clearly had a long term project in mind and a determined will to carry it through.30

letter that bandit groups coming from Szigetvár seized fifteen Ottoman vessels and took away thirty-two Turkish women. They also blockaded the Danube waterway upstream, causing a rise in the barley prices. Hadım Ali was in favour of taking military steps to sweep out the island of Sziget, and threatened the Habsburg government that the sultan would soon arrive in Buda to devastate the Austrian territory as far as Vienna unless his anger was assuaged by acceptance of a submissive peace (Sándor Takáts, Ferenc Eckhart and Gyula Szekfű, A budai basák magyar nyelvű levelezése. Vol. 1: 1553–1589. Budapest, 1915, 5–9). There are eleven documents related to the siege (Lajos Szádeczky, ‘Szigetvár első ostromához’, Történelmi Tár (1881) 268–282; for these documents, see also Petritsch, Regesten, 124–127). 28 Forgách, Emlékirat, 684. 29  BOA A.RSK 1457, 1. The date Šabanović offers for Hadım Ali’s appointment to Bosnia, 7 May 1557, and for his arrival in Sarajevo, 1 June 1557, cannot be confirmed from Ottoman archival documents (Šabanović, ‘Bosanski namjesnik Ferhad-beg Vuković-Desisalić’, 124. 30  For his conception regarding further conquests in Hungary, see Fodor, The Unbearable Weight, 115 ff. Compare the phenomenon with Ottoman strategic plans concerning Transylvania in the sixteenth century: Feridun M. Emecen, Osmanlı Klasik Çağında Siyaset. İstanbul, 2016, 243–259.

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THE DEATH OF HADIM ALİ

Historical sources do not provide us with exact information on how long Hadım Ali spent in his new office in Bosnia after his removal from Buda, whether he received any further official titles, or when he died. Furthermore, remarks on Hadım Ali’s last days by Busbecq, who met him while serving in the imperial embassy in Constantinople, only deepen the uncertainty surrounding the circumstances of his death. We are now in a position, however, to offer a new narrative regarding the last offices undertaken by Hadım Ali and the actual place and time of his death. Busbecq, in a letter of June 1560 regarding his encounter with Ali Pasha in Constantinople, gave a brief description of Hadım Ali’s undertakings in his first term of office in Buda, and claimed to have personally advised Ali to keep peace between the two empires. Busbecq was also keen to present a physical description of Ali Pasha: He was a eunuch, a handicap that amassed all his strength in his torso; he had a disproportionate body with broad and upright shoulders reducing his head as if it were lying in a valley; two of his front teeth stuck out; he drew words out with a husky, croaking voice; and he was a very crabbed person. Busbecq resumes his narrative with Hadım Ali’s ill-fated campaign on Szigetvár. He states that Hadım Ali suffered a failure against the Habsburg forces, pulled back the troops under his command, and lifted the siege on Szigetvár. According to Busbecq, it was a bey who eventually convinced Hadım Ali to withdraw the Ottoman forces. As Ali Pasha made his way back to Buda, a Hungarian surprise attack destroyed the bulk of his army, and when he arrived, he was publicly disgraced and died there out of grief and desolation. Busbecq finally adds an anecdote on how Ali Pasha reacted to the news of German troops ravaging Esztergom in 1556.31

31 Busbecq, Türk Mektupları, 156–159. Busbecq’s anecdote about Ali Pasha being a eunuch is merely a fiction. Hadım Ali supposedly mocked the courier who brought the saddening news that the enemy occupied and sacked the fortress of Esztergom by saying that being castrated was a much worse deprivation.

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Busbecq’s statement that Ali Pasha died of sorrow after the defeat he suffered in Hungary32 deeply affected later generations of historians. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, an unquestionable authority in Ottoman historiography, for instance, helped to bring Busbecq’s account to a wider audience.33 Tayyip Gökbilgin copied this information into his entry of Hadım Ali Pasha in the Turkish edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam without supplying any date for his death.34 From this standpoint, both works underline the common assertion that Hadım Ali died of his grief while still pasha of Buda. In one of the comprehensive works of Ottoman history, Hammer’s wording is followed almost word for word, however, adding February 1557 as the date of his demise.35 By contrast, Géza Dávid states in his encyclopaedia article that Hadım Ali was dismissed from the governorship of Buda on 13 Rebiülahir 964/13 February 1557 and died on 17 Safer 965/9 December 1557. He probably took this from a footnote by Markus Köhbach.36 Köhbach proposed this date on the basis of Šabanović’s findings on Ottoman rule in Bosnia in the sixteenth century.37 Šabanović, relying on the second sicil of 32  Busbecq seemingly confused Mehmed Pasha, the governor-general of Buda, who died in late April 1558 (BOA Kepeci, Ruus 216/A, 134) with Hadım Ali. 33 Hammer, Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmaniyye Tarihi. VI. Trans. by Ata Bey. İstanbul, 1332, 74– 75. Hammer also writes that following Hadım Ali’s death in Buda, he was replaced in his post by Kasım Pasha and Toygun Pasha. 34  Tayyip Gökbilgin, ‘Ali Paşa’, in İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 1. İstanbul, 1943, 332–333. 35  Mustafa Cezar and Mithat Sertoğlu, Mufassal Osmanlı Tarihi. Vol. 2. İstanbul, 1958, 1057. 36  Dávid, ‘Khādım cAlī Pasha’, 52. 37 Köhbach, Die Eroberung, 47. Šabanović (Bosanski pašaluk. Sarajevo, 1959, 72) does not give a date for the death of Hadım Ali. Thus, Köchbach’s note is ambiguous concerning the source from which he established the date of Hadım Ali’s death. Šabanović, however, openly writes the day of Hadım Ali’s death: Šabanović, ‘Bosanski namjesnik’, 124. According to Šabanović, Hadım Ali compiled a deed for his pious foundations on 27 October, expressing his will to build a mosque and a tomb for himself and to bequeath two thirds of his wealth to his foundations (I am grateful to my former student Nihad Dostović for translating a selected part of the article). The inscription of Hadım Ali’s mosque in Bosnia reads 968/1560 for the completion of the construction; see Mehmed Mujezinović, Islamska epigrafika u Bosni i Hercegovini. Vol. 1. Sarajevo, 1974, 401. Assuming that Hadım Ali died in December 1557, the mosque was erected after his death. The inscription does not refer to him as being deceased, but calls him Gazi Ali Pasha, thus posing another problem for fixing a precise date of his demise. Ekrem

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Bosnia, maintained that Ali Pasha fell sick in the autumn of 1557 and took his last breath on 9 December 1557. He added that Hadım Ali’s office was temporarily filled by the bey of Hersek and later by Malkoç Bey, before a formal appointment was made.38 In an encyclopaedia article where I published several new findings on Ali Pasha’s political pursuits, I argued that he must have died in Bosnia not later than May 1558.39 A number of documents I studied thereafter, however, have encouraged me to alter my former conclusion and to assert decidedly that Hadım Ali died in Bosnia in December 1557. I had already established from an archival document that Hadım Ali’s failed military attempts in Hungary led to him being demoted from Buda to Bosnia with an annual revenue of 600,000 akçes on 13 Rebiülahir 964/13 February 1557.40 I then needed to ascertain how long Hadım Ali held the office in the sancak of Bosnia. In the Ottoman archives, I came across three references regarding his administrative transactions in the last months of his tenure in Bosnia. He filed a petition to the central administration recommending that the commander of Banyaluka (Banjaluka) should be assigned to Gradişka (Gradiška), where the military leadership remained vacant after the commander of the fort fell captive. The Ottoman government transacted Hadım Ali’s petition with a buyuruldu of 4 Şevval 964/31 July 1557.41 On 29 Muharrem 965/21 November 1557, the Ottoman government sanctioned Ali Pasha’s request for land held in Karaman by his protégé, Kasım Voyvoda, to be exchanged for land revenue in Buda.42 Ottoman central bureaucracy also produced a document dated 10 Receb 965/28 April 1558 regarding Hadım Ali’s petition for the renewal of the certificate of Dulkadırlı Hamza Çavuş, Hakkı Ayverdi, in his pages on the tomb of Hadım Ali, proposes the idea that Ali Pasha was most probably not buried there and that the tomb served as a sanctuary rather than a sepulchre. Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, Avrupa’da Osmanlı Mimarî Eserleri, Yugoslavya. Vol. 2. Part 3. İstanbul, 1981, 314–315. 38  Šabanović, ‘Bosanski namjesnik’, 124. 39  Emecen, ‘Hadım Ali Paşa’, 4–5. 40  BOA A.RSK 1457, 1. 41  BOA Kepeci, Ruus 216/A, 21. 42  BOA Kepeci, Ruus 216/A, 80.

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who held a land revenue in İstolni Belgrad (Székesfehérvár).43 In this ruus entry, interestingly enough, Hadım Ali appears as the former governor-general of Buda rather than the bey of Bosnia, and his name is slightly crossed out. On the other hand, an entry in the same ruus register stating that the fief lands of Malkoç Bey, the former district governor of Kilis, fell untended after his departure for Bosnia carries the date of 30 Rebiülevvel 965/20 January 1558.44 This strongly suggests that Malkoç Bey took over the government of Bosnia in early January 1558.45 We can subsequently draw the conclusion that Hadım Ali was no longer holding the office in Bosnia by this time. After reconstructing the final phase of Hadım Ali’s administrative career and thus the last months of his life as above, I noticed in the sicil register used by Šabanović (of which I only recently obtained a copy) that a number of entries recorded in the register clearly provide a date for Hadım Ali’s death. The sicil of Hijri 965 includes a statement that “Ali Pasha, the present governor of Bosnia, died on 17 Safer 965/9 December 1557”,46 resolving all ambiguity (and corroborating Šabanović’s, Köhbach’s and Dávid’s standpoint) with regard to his time of death. We also have a document confirming that news of his demise arrived in Constantinople not later than 23 Cemaziülevvel 965/13 March 1558. A letter by Arslan Bey,47 who would later become governorgeneral of Buda, states that by the time he wrote his petition to the imperial capital, Ali Pasha was dead: Arslan bey mektub gönderüb Mohaç sancağında 43  BOA Kepeci, Ruus 216/A, 153. 44  BOA Kepeci, Ruus 216/A, 103. For other entries regarding the has revenues in Bosnia, see in the same register: 134 (27 Receb 965/15 May 1558), and 164. 45  Šabanović (Bosanski pašaluk, 72) regards this transaction as a proxy appointment. The first entry in the ruus register identifying Malkoç Bey as the bey of Bosnia is dated 27 Receb 965/15 May 1558: BOA Kepeci, Ruus 216/A, 164. 46  Saraybosna Şeriyye Sicili, No. 1a/88, 390. In his work, Šabanović refers to this sicil as the second register of Bosnia and does not provide a page number for the entry he uses. Interestingly enough, an entry in the same register of 15 Safer 965/7 December 1557 records Hadım Ali as being deceased (379). This date, however, is two days earlier than his actual date of death. This contradiction is probably related to the placing of the entry in the register. I would like to thank Nenad Filipović for his help in procuring the relevant pages of the sicil register. ‿ ās. s–Estates Illegally Claimed by Arslan Paša, Beglerbegi of 47  Claudia Römer, ‘On Some H . Buda, 1565–1566’, in Colin Heywood and Colin Imber (eds.), Studies in Ottoman History in Honour of Professor V. L. Ménage. Istanbul, 1994, 297–318.

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30,640 akçelik ziamete mutasarrıf iken fevt olan Bali ağanın tahvilinden Budin beylerbeyi Mehmed paşaya verilüb Mehmed paşa tahvilinden Ahmed ağaya verilmişken Bosnada fevt olan Ali paşa Kasım kethüdaya verilmek içün hilaf-i vaki arz edüb Bali ağa tahvilinden mahluldür deyü Kasım kethüdaya verilüb mezkur Kasım kethüdaya verilelüden berü ila yevmina haza serhad hizmetine gitmeyüb ve bir hizmetde bulunmayup mezkur Ahmed ağa yarar ve serhadlerde eskidür deyü arz etmeğin ziameti mukarrer olmak buyuruldu.48 Taking all available documents into consideration, we can now propose with confidence that Hadım Ali was appointed to Bosnia in February 1557 and died there in December of the same year. The archival document bearing the date 21 November 1557 records his last official demand from the Ottoman central administration. It is admittedly perplexing that, as mentioned above, the archives in Istanbul hold another entry relating to a petition of Hadım Ali dated 28 April 1558. This petition was probably sent by Ali Pasha before his death, and for some reason, its discussion in the imperial council was delayed. He was, after all, recorded in the related entry as the former governor-general of Buda and, as already noted, his name was only partially written by the scribe. The conclusion that Hadım Ali died on 9 December 1557 as adduced by the sicil of Sarajevo is thus not contradicted by the documents in the archives in Istanbul. Here, I would like to correct another misunderstanding in the biography of Hadım Ali. In passages under the heading “Hadım Ali Pasha”, Gelibolulu Mustafa Âli claims that Hadım Ali assumed government of both Temeşvar (Temesvár/Timişoara) and Egypt and died during his stay in the latter. A number of biographical works have included this erroneous information in their chronology of Hadım Ali’s political career.49 Çerkezler Katibi Yusuf, who converted the Selimname of Şükri-i Bitlisi into prose and extended the work 48  BOA Kepeci, Ruus 216/A, 131. Kasım Voyvoda seems to have perplexed the Ottoman bureaucracy for some more time. He appears as the majordomo of “the deceased” Ali Pasha in an imperial order issued on 5 Şevval 967/29 June 1560 (BOA Mühimme Defteri 3, No. 1293). Kasım had a land tenure producing a revenue of 31,500 akçes in the district of Mohács and was re­commended by the bey of Mohács for promotion to the captainship along the Danube to protect the riverside. This proposal clearly demonstrates the ongoing influence of Kasım, the former kethüda/voyvoda of Hadım Ali. 49  For an example, see Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmani. Vol. 3. İstanbul, 1308, 498.

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using other sources, wrote in the appendix of his work about the Ottoman governors of Egypt that Hadım Ali Pasha arrived in Egypt on 1 Şaban 966/9 May 1559 after he had served as the governor-general of Temeşvar. He also added that Hadım Ali died there on duty on 3 Zilhicce 967/25 August 1560 and was buried in the renowned Karafe cemetery in Cairo.50 This portrait, however, belongs to another Ali Pasha. According to the documents at our disposal, this Ali was the district governor of Niğbolu (Nikopol) before being appointed to Temeşvar, where he received the rank of pasha;51 he was subsequently moved to Egypt. Following his death in Egypt, his inheritance was returned to the palace, incontrovertible proof that he had been raised in the court as a harem eunuch.52 We are thus now in a position to entirely remove the shadow of doubt that once posed a baffling challenge for authors trying to pen a couple of closing sentences for Hadım Ali Pasha’s biography. His enterprises during the days he held the governing post in Buda, however, still await a thorough investigation that makes extensive use of Austrian, Hungarian and Ottoman chronicles and archival documents.

50  TSMK Hazine 1422, fol. 57v. 51  BOA Kepeci, Ruus 216, 18: 23 Muharrem 966/5 November 1558. 52  For the registers listing the fortune and estates of Ali Pasha, governor-general of Egypt, see TSMA D. 8522, D. 10059, D.10163: 23 Zilkade 968/5 August 1561.

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SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PROBATE INVENTORIES FROM TOLNA TOWN Ibolya Gerelyes Hungarian National Museum, Budapest [email protected]

This study aims to give a glimpse into the lives of the inhabitants of Tolna, a

market town in Hungary, during the earlier phase of Ottoman rule in the settlement and its environs. Many excellent works have already addressed the history of this place,1 which lay on the main road linking Buda with Istanbul. This analysis will draw attention to a particular group of Ottoman sources available, to officially compiled inventories of personal property (movable and immovable) owned by Hungarians residents who at the time of their deaths had no heirs. The lists, featuring modest items in the majority of cases, contain data relating primarily to the everyday lives of such persons: to clothing; to household items; and, in the case of craftsmen, to tools and to stocks of finished products. However, as we shall see, they yield information on other issues also. In this case, they assist a better understanding of the life circumstances of Hungarian civilians living in an area afflicted by war. 1  Gyula Káldy-Nagy, ‘Tolna mezőváros mezőgazdasági termelése a XVI. század derekán a török adójegyzékekben’, Agrártörténeti Szemle 4 (1962) 579–601; Idem, Harácsszedők és ráják. Török világ a XVI. századi Magyarországon. Budapest, 1970; Ferenc Szakály, ‘Tolna megye negyven esztendeje a mohácsi csata után (1526–1566)’, in Attila Puskás (ed.), Tanulmányok Tolna megye történetéből. Vol. 2. Szekszárd, 1969, 5–85; Ferenc Szakály, ‘A mohácsi csatától a szatmári békekötésig’, in József Glósz and Mária V. Kápolnás (eds.), Tolna mezőváros monográfiája. Tolna, 1992, 91–175.

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The inventories analysed are to be found among Ottoman treasury documents.2 Documents of this type were compiled because in the Hungarian territories they controlled the Ottoman authorities employed a procedure whereby so-called beytülmal income deriving from the property of those who died without heirs, and from property lacking an owner or owners, passed to the state. Under this process, property in question was auctioned off and the proceeds transferred to the treasury minus deductions to cover costs, dues, and sums required for the settlement of debts.3 The regulations applied to Muslim and non-Muslim subjects alike.4

TOLNA TOWN DURING THE FIRST DECADES OF OTTOMAN RULE

The market town of Tolna was, along with the Danube port that belonged to

it, an imperial has estate. The first time income from the port was paid into the Buda treasury was in November 1542.5 Nevertheless, Ottoman power in the area was consolidated only after the 1543 campaign in Hungary led by

2  Extracts from inventories of Ottoman and Hungarian Tolna estates that were auctioned off in 1553, 1566, and 1574 were published by Antal Velics and Ernő Kammerer, Magyarországi török kincstári defterek. 2 vols. Budapest, 1886 and 1890, 137–139, 357–358, 493–494, 506– 507. The inventories from 1553 are published in their entirety by the present author: Ibolya Gerelyes, ‘Inventories of Turkish Estates in Hungary in the Second Half of the 16th century’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 39:2–3 (1985) 332–338. The last-mentioned study and a full examination of the inventories from 1576 form the basis for the analysis which follows. For the inventories, see Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Wien, Türkische Handschriften Mxt. 575. 3  Lajos Fekete and Gyula Káldy-Nagy, Budai török számadáskönyvek 1550–1580. Budapest, 1962, 607. 4  For example, the Ottoman Buda treasury records contain numerous data relating to this; see Fekete and Káldy-Nagy, Budai török, 327, 386, 400. This is likewise indicated by the accounts kept by the Pécs fiscal district during the period 1555–1572. In these accounts, estates of Christians and Muslims alike feature among the beytülmal revenues. Among the Muslims, members of the military, too, are to be found: Klára Hegyi, Források Pécs 16. századi történetéhez. (Források Pécs történetéből, 3.) Pécs, 2010, 61–67, 149–158, 245–250. 5  Velics and Kammerer, Magyarországi török, 9; Gyula Káldy-Nagy, A budai szandzsák 1559. évi összeírása. Budapest, 1977, 8.

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Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–1566). A fictitious depiction of Tolna, one based on imagination only, is to be found in Matrakçı Nasuh’s chronicle Tarih-i Feth-i Şikloș, Estergon ve İstolni Belgrad: the route taken by the army led through the town.6 In 1552, after the establishment of the sancak of Seksar (Szekszárd), Tolna was under the authority of the sancakbeyi of Seksar.7 As regards Tolna in the second half of the 16th century up until the 1570s, the written sources and the archaeological finds suggest a well-to-do, flourishing town where a Muslim population lived alongside a Christian one. The register of tax-payers in 1557 records the names of 941 Hungarian heads of family.8 One source of the town’s wealth was the growing of grapes. The inhabitants’ vineyards were, however, not in Tolna itself, but outside villages nearby. The significance of wine production is shown by tithe (tenth) records from 1565 specifying production by Tolna’s inhabitants in that year of wine amounting to the equivalent of 6,810 hectolitres. This was twice the figure for the Hegyalja (Tokaj) district, one of Hungary’s most productive winegrowing regions. Some of the residents engaged not in viticulture, but in the growing of cereals and the raising of animals, likewise with success. Significant commercial activity is indicated by the goods traffic through the town’s port; this brought the treasury considerable income.9 From the early 1570s onwards, a slow decline can be observed in the numbers of Tolna residents. As a result, wine production fell, as did cereals output, albeit to a lesser degree. Even so, until the late sixteenth century Tolna continued to 6  Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Kütüphanesi, H. 1608. The picture has been published: Géza Fehér, Török miniatúrák a magyarországi hódoltság korából. Budapest, 1975, plate 23. 7 Szakály, A mohácsi csatától, 95. 8  Káldy-Nagy, ‘Tolna mezőváros’, 585. For purposes of comparison, it may be mentioned that in Kecskemét, a Hungarian market town on the Great Plain which, like Tolna, belonged to the sultanic domains, family heads numbered 407 in 1559: Káldy-Nagy, Harácsszedők, 143. 9  In the first half of the 1550s, customs income from the port of Tolna may have been 250,000–300,000 akçe per year, substantially below the approximately 1 million akçe in customs dues yielded annually by Buda or Vác but more than that generated by smaller places such as Fülek, Hatvan, or Nagymaros in a year. See Szakály, A mohácsi csatától, 122–123. The significant textile traffic through the customs at Tolna is pointed out by Zsigmond Pál Pach, ‘Aba, kebe, igriz. Posztófajták a hódoltsági török vámnaplókban a 16. század derekán’, Történelmi Szemle 29:1 (1997) 6–8.

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count as one of the most prosperous towns in Ottoman Hungary. This changed at the time of the so-called Long War (1593–1606), when the settlement experienced a loss of population. In the summer of 1599, at Tolna precisely, hajdú (heyduck) troops attacked and defeated ships delivering supplies for the Ottoman army. By the following year, many of the settlement’s Hungarian inhabitants had left; a good number of them, along with persons fleeing Baranya County, which was adjacent, found refuge in Kecskemét, a market town on the Great Hungarian Plain.10 We know from archaeological finds that residents escaping the settlement, which lay on a road used by armies, buried money and possessions of greater value (those made of precious metals). Three such hoards from Tolna town have been found. All three were buried at the time of the above-mentioned war, namely at around the turn of the seventeenth century; all attest to the relative prosperity of the previous decades as evinced by the historical sources.11

10 Káldy-Nagy, Harácsszedők, 143–150. 11  The Mátyás Kádas who around 1599 buried valuables consisting of tableware (four beakers, four spoons) and jewellery (two pairs of belt fasteners, seven silver-gilt belt buckles, two silver belt buckles, part of a silver Renaissance-style chain, a pomegranate-shaped silver pendant, seven pairs of silver clothing fasteners, three silver hairpins) was in all likelihood a well-to-do citizen of the town. The artefacts may have been his own property, collected together over a longer period of time, or they may have been items belonging to others that he was holding as pledges. See Zsuzsa S. Lovag and Annamária T. Németh, ‘A tolnai XVI. századi kincslelet’, Folia Archaeologica 25 (1974) 219–244. Containing 68 gold coins, among them 44 Ottoman gold ducats, the coin find was probably the property of a wealthy individual, maybe a Turk. The presence of a Sultan Mehmed III (1595–1603) coin meant that the hoard could not have been buried before 1595. See Márton Gyöngyössy, Altin, Akcse, Mangir... Oszmán pénzek forgalma a kora újkori Magyarországon. Budapest, 2004, 78–79. The fleeing owner who buried 990 European coins (including four gold ones) in a beaker-shaped stove inset around 1604 was likewise a resident of the market town of Tolna. Inv. no: 79.1.

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LESSONS OF THE INVENTORIES

12

The Wealth of the Deceased

Knowledge of the amount of poll-tax levied by the Ottoman state serves as a good basis for assessing the real property wealth of the inhabitants: “According to the law, any man who apart from his house, land, and vineyard has in his animals and other moveable property assets worth 300 akçes, is, if living independently, obliged to pay a 50 akçes poll-tax whether he is married or unmarried.”13 In what follows, the wealth of deceased persons will be examined. The purchasing power of the akçes at this time is well conveyed by the circumstance that the price of a pig was 75 akçes and the price of a lamb 12 akçes.14 From the point of view of incomes, investigation of another group of sources, payrolls of Ottoman soldiers serving at border fortresses on Hungarian territory, is not without interest. In the fortress at Seksar in 1543, the daily pay of the commander of the foot soldiers was 30 akçes and that of the rank and file 6–7 akçes each; the carpenter and the smith were paid 5 akçes per day. The total annual pay of the commander of the foot soldiers at the fortress in Seksar in 1570 was 5,000 akçes; for each member of the rank and file it was 1,700 akçes.15 Of the thirty-nine probate inventories from Tolna examined in the present study, fourteen listed assets amounting to more than 300 akçes in value. Seven of the deceased had houses varying greatly in value. They ranged from the house of a certain Gergely Nagy valued at 800 akçes to the hut of Ágota Gucsora valued at 60 akçes.16 The most significant of the estates investigated is that of a certain János Szabó – the surname means tailor in Hungarian – who died in 1553 leaving 12  The data in the lists grosso modo can be accepted as accurate. Nevertheless, it is difficult to exclude the possibility that artefacts belonging to those who died without heirs were sometimes taken away by neighbours or acquaintances before the official auction took place. 13 Káldy-Nagy, A budai szandzsák, 13–14. 14 Káldy-Nagy, Harácsszedők, 143. 15  Klára Hegyi, A török hódoltság várai és várkatonasága. Vol. 2: A budai vilájet várainak adattára. Budapest, 2007, 1132, 1136. 16  Gerelyes, ‘Inventories’, 336–337.

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property valued at 5,250 akçes. The inventory in question is probably incomplete, since it merely features twenty-two very costly short overcoats (kebe), a few other garments, and cash amounting to 200 akçes.17 Likewise deficient is the inventory for Máté Kocsis – the surname means carter in Hungarian – who left 1,500 akçes in cash along with a few garments of no great value, making him worth a total of 1,610 akçes. It emerges that these two persons may not have been Tolna residents at all, but traders who died while passing through. This would explain the absence of household items in the inventories for them.18 The above-mentioned grain producer Gergely Nagy, who died with property worth 3,703 akçes, would certainly have been a Tolna resident. Among the goods of his that were auctioned were not only 30 fertálys (approximately three-quarters of a metric ton) of wheat, but also livestock (six oxen, two calves, two pigs) and even agricultural implements (a scythe, a ploughshare).19 The estate of one Mistress Zsófia was worth 1,207 akçes, substantially less. The picture given by her inventory is of a well-to-do woman who owned a coat made of marten fur (zerdave kürk; 150 akçes), another costly coat (95 akçes), silver artefacts, and a significant sum in ready cash (225 akçes). Below these persons in the rankings are representatives of different crafts who possessed wealth running into hundreds of akçe. Examples are Boldizsár the Barber (564 akçes),20 Tamás Varga, who dealt with shoes and other footwear (673 akçes), and the somewhat poorer Lőrinc Szűcs, who, judging by his surname, which means furrier in Hungarian, made and repaired fur coats and other items made of fur (355 akçes).21 Some of the Tolna inhabitants who died without heirs in 1553 or in 1576 may have belonged to a group consisting of those who paid only five akçes in cizye. That is to say, they were on the level of those mentioned as “poor” in the 17  Ibid., 338. 18  Velics and Kammerer, Magyarországi török, 138; Gerelyes, ‘Inventories’, 338. Attention has been drawn to the estates of itinerant traders who died while away from home: Suraiya Faroqhi, Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources. Cambridge, 1999, 57. 19  Gerelyes, ‘Inventories’, 337–338. 20  Ibid., 335. 21  The last-mentioned two masters could be identified on the basis of their family names and the composition of their inventories.

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poll-tax register of 1557.22 According to the lists examined, none had a house, land, or vineyard; and the value of their movable property at auction was 100 akçes at most, less than 50 akçes in some cases. One could almost say that they possessed no property apart from a shabby storage chest, a few vessels, and the clothes they stood up in. A certain Ferenc Nagy, who passed away in 1553, must have lived in penury such as this. The total value of his estate was 30 akçes. It consisted of a pair of street shoes valued at two akçes and a few garments.23 Among the very poorest encountered were a family by the name of Gucsora. Three of its members died in a single year, 1553. Of the three deceased, only Orsolya Gucsora had a house (hut), but this was worth no more than 60 akçes. Apart from a “Borgoman”,24 that is, Bergamo, broadcloth (çuha) coat valued at 56 akçes, Ágota Gucsora had, according to the inventory, no wealth other than another item of clothing (likewise of broadcloth), valued at 7 akçes. The third member of the family was among the very poorest. Featuring simply as Gucsora (that is, with no given name), this person left property valued at 34 akçes in all (garments valued at 29 akçes and a storage chest valued at 5 akçes). A certain Péter Patkó who died in 1576 was more indigent still. After deduction of costs, just 10½ akçes went to the treasury following the auctioning of his five items of movable property. Dorkó Tolmács, whose property was listed at the same time, was only a little richer. Strangely, the inventory of her possessions features no garments of any kind, only a few artefacts of other types (for example, wooden plates), to the value of 25 akçes. Even more strangely, her inventory, unlike the others, makes no mention of funeral costs. Perhaps hers was a case not of death but of disappearance; this would explain the absence of garments from the inventory.

22  A peculiarity of the cizye register of 1557 is that it also lists those who paid only 5–25 akçe. These persons are described – in Hungarian – as szegin ( ‘poor’). In 1557, 35 per cent of tax-payers in Tolna fell into this category. Those who paid only 5 akçe in tax were not producers of wine or of wheat; nor were they artisans. They were probably day labourers; cf. Káldy-Nagy, Tolna mezőváros, 585–586; Idem, Harácsszedők, 145. 23  Gerelyes, ‘Inventories’, 334. 24  See Pach, ‘Aba, kebe, igriz’, 15. Another reading is ‘Turcoman’; see Gerelyes, ‘Inventories’, 336.

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Money in Circulation in Ottoman Hungary

It is striking that in many instances the otherwise beggarly inventories for

Tolna feature a sum of cash (nakdine) approximating in value to all the other items included on the list in question. This sum was always given among the items auctioned, almost invariably at the very beginning of the list, at its end, or in front of the final total calculated. Doubts emerge over the general view, according to which the term nakdine in accounting conducted in Hungarian territories under Ottoman sway denoted always akçes.25 In other words, the currency or currencies which are called nakdine cannot be determined unequivocally. Insofar as it meant akçe, then in the case of the estates of Hungarians, this would indicate that Hungarian inhabitants kept their savings in akçe. The testimony of the archaeological finds contradicts the above hypothesis.26 In coin hoards and in treasure trove, as well as among archaeological finds recovered on the sites formerly in Ottoman hands, the proportion of akçe, of Ottoman coins of any kind in fact, is very low. In connection with this, an analysis of coin finds from the sixteenth century was performed by György Székely. He pointed out that a significant proportion of the small change recovered in the company of finds dating from the 1540s until the end of the sixteenth century consisted of Hungarian denarii. In the case of foreign coinage in the finds from these decades, the proportion of Polish coins was greater than the proportion of akçe ones. In the course of the sixteenth century, a phenomenon general in Europe, including those Hungarian territories under Ottoman rule, was growth in the significance of the thaler, a large silver coin. According to György Székely, “Ottoman coinage, and coinage reaching

25  Lajos Fekete, Die Siyāqat-Schrift in der türkischen Finanzverwaltung. Vol. 1. Budapest, 1955, 238. 26  Géza Dávid and the writer of these lines have, in an earlier study, drawn attention to this contradiction: Géza Dávid and Ibolya Gerelyes, ‘Ottoman Social and Economic Life Unearthed. An Assessment of Ottoman Archaeological Finds in Hungary’, in Raoul Motika, Christoph Herzog and Michael Ursinus (eds.), Studies in Ottoman Social and Economic Life. Heidelberg, 1999, 55–59.

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Hungary through Ottoman mediation, did not play a significant role.”27 All this, the lack of Ottoman coins, akçe especially, and the presence of Hungarian denarii in large quantity may indicate that the Hungarian population did not hold akçe coins in significant amounts. This raises the possibility that in Ottoman Hungary the term nakdine did not necessarily mean akçe. As a result, in some cases cash mentioned in the inventories may have been denarii (or other coins) the value of which was, after calculation, recorded in akçe.28 An assertion by Andre Raymond in connection with Egypt is probably valid for the Ottoman-occupied territories of Hungary, too. According to this, “all areas of the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries had a double monetary system in which Western and local Ottoman currencies circulated simultaneously”.29 The Composition of the Inventories

Based on the entries found in the lists, those counting as better-off farmers

had homes describable as only modestly equipped. Taking in his house, his garden, and his livestock, Gergely Nagy’s inventory (3,703 akçes) features twenty-seven entries; listing her house, too, Mistress Zsófia’s (1,207 akçes) contains twenty-three. Those inventories that itemise property worth a few hundred akçes contain ten to fifteen entries on average. The furnishing of homes was simple. It consisted of artefacts which in most cases were worth just a few akçes. Little furniture was encountered, in general a bench or a seat (iskemlü) and – in almost every case – one or more chests (sanduk). No entry for a bed is to be found, nor any for a table. Only in one 27  György V. Székely, ‘Differentation or Homogenisation? Structural Changes in the Composition of Coin Finds in Sixteenth-Century Hungary’, in Ibolya Gerelyes and Gyöngyi Kovács (eds.), Archaeology of the Ottoman Period of Hungary. Budapest, 2003, 340–341. 28  Dávid and Gerelyes, ‘Ottoman Social and Economic Life’, 58–59. This is confirmed by references found in some of the inventories of Pécs estates published by Klára Hegyi. Namely, in some cases the scribe found it important to remark after the word nakdine that he meant akçe by this; cf. Hegyi, Források, 233, 236. 29  Quoted by Colette Establet and Jean-Paul Pascual, ‘Damascene Probate Inventories: Some Preliminary Approaches and Results’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 21:3 (1992) 377.

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inventory – for the relatively well-off Gergely Nagy – is there mention of a matrass (döșek).30 On the other hand, entries for pillows (yastık) and sheets (çarșeb) are common. Among the textiles belonging to the households, handkerchiefs or small cloths (makrama) and table linen items (peșkir) feature the most. Vessels used for eating were often of wood: a wooden mug, wooden beakers, wooden footed dishes, and wooden plates. The deceased, poorer and the better off alike, kept foodstuffs at home in various quantities: wheat, flour, walnuts, and vinegar. Of the artefacts left behind by the deceased, items of clothing were the most numerous. Long fur cloaks (kapaniçe) and fur coats, especially white ones (beyaz kürk), are found in high number.31 The garments show large differences in terms of value. A short overcoat belonging to Gyenes Varga was among the most costly of the garments mentioned. Even the poorest lists contain a valuable (or thought-to-be-valuable) item of clothing, for instance a short fur overcoat worth 110 akçes. Textile items originating outside Hungary were rare: a Bergamo broadcloth coat (çuha-i borgoman, köhne) and a quantity of silk. Coats and the majority of garments generally were made from broadcloth (aba, çuha) and were coloured using red (surh), blue (mavi), and green (sebz). Skirts and headdresses, items characteristic of Hungarian women’s attire, are recorded using the Hungarian words for them (sokna, parta). Ready money kept at home is a striking feature, as is the relative frequency of silver artefacts. In the thirty-nine inventories analysed, cash – in amounts ranging from 45 akçes to 1,500 akçes – is mentioned in eleven cases and a silver object, or objects, in five. Well-known from treasure trove,32 silver beakers feature in two inventories. The most valuable item in Lőrinc Szűcs’s modest wealth (amounting to 335 akçes) was a silver beaker worth 150 akçes.

30  Probably a sack filled with straw. 31  The last mentioned may well have been made from sheepskin. 32  As well as the above-mentioned Tolna finds, from among those uncovered in the vicinity of Tolna one from Ozora deserves mention; cf. Pál Ritoók (ed), Csodálatos castello. Az ozorai vár története. Budapest, 2015, 40.

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conclusion

On the basis of the value and composition of the estates investigated, the picture that emerges is of a village-like environment, despite the fact that only a few of the deceased had gardens and livestock. The inventories attest to the significant social polarisation among the Hungarian inhabitants already pointed out by researchers.33 The inventories show material situations ranging from modest wealth (property worth several thousand akçes) to almost total destitution (possessions that yielded just ten and a half akçes).34 Probably drawn up following the deaths of itinerant traders, two inventories each featuring valuable goods, a large amount of cash, and little else may be indicators of the significant volume of trade passing through the town. For its part, the large quantities of wine produced are vouched for by two inventories from 1574.35 On the basis of the contradiction between the simplicity of the households and movable property of a more valuable kind (cash in the form of coins, silver objects, and in some cases very costly items of clothing), a picture emerges of a population ready to move out or even flee, in response to developments in the wider world beyond the town.

33 Szakály, A mohácsi csatától, 127–132. 34  Exactly the same is shown by lists from 1566 and 1575 not analysed in the present study but published in part earlier on. The poorest was Bálint Varga who died in 1566 with property worth 22½ akçe; the wealthiest was Ferenc Sánta Szabó who passed away leaving an estate worth 8,232½ akçe. Velics and Kammerer, Magyarországi török, 358, 493. 35  The above-mentioned Ferenc Sánta Szabó left wine worth 7,500 akçe, while Miklós Kovács left wine worth 1,750 akçe. Velics and Kammerer, Magyarországi török, 493.

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Figure 1 A page from the probate inventory in Österreichische Nationalbiblitohek, Wien, Türkische Handschriften Mxt. 575

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SOLDIERS OF THE SULTAN IN OTTOMAN HUNGARY: THE TESTIMONY OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS Gyöngyi Kovács Institute of Archaeology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest [email protected]

Sources of several kinds provide us with information on the ordinary soldiers,

and particularly individual soldiers, who served in the minor Ottoman forts in Hungary. These include reports on local military action and skirmishes, pay lists, surveys, registers, probate inventories, account lists and cash books. These are complemented by visual sources and, not least, by archaeological finds. Excavations throw light on phenomena and objects that may be of significance on a historical scale but do not appear in surviving documents and were perhaps never recorded in writing. Different sources show up different aspects of the life, origins, surroundings, activities, equipment, clothing and possessions of Ottoman soldiers serving in the border region. The data sets are mutually complementary and enrich our knowledge from different angles. Here, with a focus on archaeological material, we present the everyday life of soldiers in a minor Southwest Transdanubian Ottoman military base, the palisade fort of Barcs (Ottoman Barça; in this study I will use the Hungarian names of the various places and forts) on the River Dráva.1

1  The Barcs research project was supported by Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA, K 72231). This paper was written as part of the project of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH), number K 116270.

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HISTORICAL DATA

Following the capture of Szigetvár (Sigetvar) in 1566, its bey built a new fort on the bank of the Dráva at Barcs, thirty kilometres to the southwest of Szigetvár in 1567.2 It was a minor river base and, after 1600, also defended the hinterland of Ottoman Kanizsa (Kanija). Intended to serve an important function, the stronghold was – in the year it was built – given control of the Dráva flotilla previously stationed at Eszék (Ösek/Osijek). This posed a threat to Kanizsa and its surroundings, to the Muraköz (Međimurje) and indirectly even to Styria. It is significant that at the Habsburg–Ottoman peace talks of 1567–1568, which led up to the Treaty of Adrianople, Barcs was one of the forts whose demolition was demanded by the Habsburg leaders.3 Because this did not take place, the new defensive strategy drawn up by the Aulic War Council in Vienna, ten years later (in 1578) provided for the construction – with support from the Styrian estates – of Bajcsavár (Weitschawar), a fort intended to defend the Mura country and Styria.4 Two key military events shaped the future of the Barcs fort. The first took place at the outbreak of the Long War in 1595, when the approach of Count 2  Franz Otto Roth, ‘Wihitsch und Weitschawar. Zum Verantwortungsbewußtsein der adeligen Landstände Innerösterreichs in Gesinnung und Tat im türkischen “Friedensjahr” 1578 II. Erbauung und Einrichtung des Kastells Bajcsavár (1578)’, Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereines für Steiermark 61 (1970) 158; Ferenc Szakály, ‘A babócsai váruradalom 1561-es urbáriuma és a babócsai vár 1563-as leltára’, Somogy Megye Múltjából. Levéltári Évkönyv 2 (1971) 52. A decree issued by the Ottoman imperial council on 23 September 1567 mentions Barcs as a completed fort. Cf. Klára Hegyi, A török hódoltság várai és várkatonasága. 3 vols. Budapest, 2007, II. 1327. 3  László Szalai (ed.), Verancsics Antal összes munkái. Vol. 5: Második portai követség 1567– 1568. (Monumenta Hungariae Historica, VI; Scriptores, VI.) Pest, 1860, 152–156. 4  Roth, ‘Wihitsch und Weitschawar’; Géza Pálffy, ‘The Origins and Development of the Border Defence System Against the Ottoman Empire in Hungary (Up to the Early Eighteenth Century)’, in Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (eds.), Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe. The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest. (The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage. Politics, Society and Economy, 20.) Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2000, 49–54; Gyöngyi Kovács (ed.), Weitschawar/Bajcsa-Vár. Egy stájer erődítmény Magyarországon a 16. század második felében. Zalaegerszeg, 2002; Géza Pálffy, A ‘ Bajcsavárig vezető út: a stájer rendek részvétele a DélDunántúl törökellenes határvédelmében a XVI. században’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 116:2 (2003) 463–504.

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György Zrínyi and his troops prompted the garrison to burn down the fort and flee to Szigetvár. The Ottomans retook possession of the site in 1600 and rebuilt the fort. Then in 1664, during the winter campaign of the poet-soldier Miklós Zrínyi, the Ottoman garrison fled again, leaving behind a large supply of victuals and several guns. That was when a schematic sketch, the only known pictorial representation of the fort, was made.5 It was burnt down again, and not rebuilt. After 1664, it gradually decayed. Research by Klára Hegyi has established that in 1568–1569, soldiers were transferred to Barcs (and Szigetvár) from three forts around Verőce (Virovitica): Brezovica, Moslavina and Sopje;6 they were registered in Barcs in 1569. According to the Ottoman military pay registers, the garrison initially consisted of azabs and martoloses, probably also with müstahfızes and artillerymen.7 The average strength was 150–200 soldiers, but the garrison was strengthened in the final third of the sixteenth century, partly owing to the building of Bajcsavár fort, and cavalry was also stationed there after 1579. The lists do not include the commanders of the flotilla stationed under Barcs, who may be identified as kapudans referred to by the name “de Mura”, expressing the desired direction of Ottoman expansion, and who appear in the timar grant records of the sancak of Szigetvár between 1567 and 1594.8

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS

On the site of the fort, archaeological test excavations were carried out between

1989 and 1994, and an area of 1500 m2 was excavated in 2002 and 2003, prior

5  Count Pál Esterházy (later palatine and prince of the Holy Roman Empire) gives an account of the stages of the campaign. His book Mars Hungaricus preserves the ground plans of the recaptured forts, including the Barcs palisade fort. Although the drawings are said to be the work of Pál Esterházy himself, they were probably made by an artist who copied the originals, which would explain their uniform style, and the mistakes. (I am grateful to Erika Kiss and Péter Király for pointing out this possibility.) 6 Hegyi, A török hódoltság várai, II. 1293. 7  Ibid., II. 1327–1329, III. 1590–1594. 8  Ibid., I. 102.

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to a construction project.9 This covered about a quarter of the estimated 0.6– 0.7 hectare (90 × 70 m) area of the fort. The excavation yielded information on the direction and extent of the stronghold, the structure of the castle wall, the internal buildings, the life of the garrison and ordinary soldiers, the traditions observed and activities pursued there, and questions of supplies and trade.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FORT, BUILDING WORKS, AND THE SURROUNDINGS

The conquerors usually ordered the people of nearby villages and settlements

to build forts and repair walls. There are many such cases on record.10 The involvement of the local population (particularly people assigned from the village of Barcs, a few kilometres from the fort) in the building of the Ottoman palisade fort of Barcs seems quite certain,11 but the number, names and ethnic affinities of the master builders are uncertain. It is less certain whether or to what extent the soldiers of the garrison took part in major construction and fortification works. The possibility cannot be dismissed, because some of them may have been craftsmen. Written sources tell us that at some (large) forts, mainly in the early period of Ottoman Hungary, several craftsmen were maintained to perform minor, everyday works; they were recruited into the military organisation of the garrison and received pay.12 In the construction of 9  On the excavations, see Gyöngyi Kovács and Márton Rózsás, ‘A barcsi török palánkvár’, Somogyi Múzeumok Közleményei 12 (1996) 163–182; Gyöngyi Kovács and Márton Rózsás, ‘A barcsi török vár és környéke. Újabb kutatások (1999–2009)’, in Elek Benkő and Gyöngyi Kovács (eds.), A középkor és a kora újkor régészete Magyarországon / Archaeology of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period in Hungary. Budapest, 2010, 621–642. 10  One of the many examples: “As early as 24 February 1688, the alaybeyi of Kanizsa issued an order to the people of the villages to supply posts to be driven into the water tightly beside the palisade; and thick palisade posts carved to square section, which had to be five fathoms long; and finally posts for the wall.” Sándor Takáts, A ‘ magyar erősségek’, in Idem, Rajzok a török világból. Vol. 2. Budapest, 1915, 22. 11  The people of Barcs village had previously been required to carry wood for the Christian fort of Babócsa. Szakály, ‘A babócsai váruradalom’, 60. 12  Pál Fodor, ‘Bauarbeiten der Türken an den Burgen in Ungarn im 16–17. Jahrhundert’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 35:1 (1981) 71.

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the fort of Székesfehérvár (İstolni Belgrad) in 1572, for example, mustahfız, topçı, azab and martolos soldiers worked for daily wages as bricklayers, carpenters, smiths and lime slakers.13 Craftsmen selected for fort-building work by the Ottoman leaders were mostly from the local population. An interesting parallel is the construction of the Christian fort of Bajcsavár. An abundance of documentation on Bajcsavár survives in the Styrian Provincial Archive in Graz and the Military Archive in Vienna.14 This tells us that Styrian woodcutters and local Hungarian carpenters, smiths and bricklayers worked on building the fort, and that (German) infantry soldiers were also involved in the fortification works, but the Croatian infantry and Hungarian hussars declined to take part.15 In Barcs, as we have seen, the local peasants, rather than the soldiers, were probably responsible for cutting down the trees and driving in the palisade posts. The woodcutters cut down trees in the nearby forests and transported the timber to the fort on carts.16 The great continuous forests of the Dráva country are mentioned by Evliya Çelebi in his description of 1664,17 and show 13  Antal Velics and Ernő Kammerer, Magyarországi török kincstári defterek. 2 vols. Budapest, 1886–1890, I. 252–254. 14  László Vándor, Gyöngyi Kovács and Géza Pálffy, ‘A régészeti és az írott források összevetésének lehetőségeiről: a bajcsai vár (1578–1600) kutatásának újabb eredményei / Archäolo­ gische und schriftliche Quellen im Vergleich: Neuere Ergebnisse der Erforschung der Grenzburg Weitschawar (Bajcsavár) (1578–1600)’, in Géza Pálffy, ‘Függelék [Documents from Vienna Archives]’, Archaeologiai Értesítő 125 (1998–2000), 103–111; Leopold Toifl, ‘Bajcsavár története a stájer levéltári források alapján’, in Kovács (ed.), Weitschawar, 27–40. 15  Under the accord of May 1584, the local population had to carry out the repairs of Baj­ csavár. The soldiers of the garrison were also involved in the work, but the Hungarian guards did not perform their tasks. In autumn 1588, the master of works, Franz Marbl, complained that the castellan, Miklós Malakóczy, had refused to order the Hungarian soldiers to cut down the palisade logs required for fortification. In 1591, it was again German infantry soldiers who drove in the palisade posts. Toifl, ‘Bajcsavár története’, 28–34. 16  Timber and other building materials for large forts were brought in on hundreds of carts, sometimes from far afield. In the 1630s, “several thousand wagons of stone and lime” (Kalk und Stein von vielen tausend Wagen) were brought to Kanizsa from the Pécs area. Fodor, ‘Bauarbei­ ten der Türken’, 67. 17  “Setting out to the west from Szigetvár, we went on hills and then on sandy-soiled forests for six hours and arrived at the fort of Babócsa (Bobofça). … Then, going to the south in the forests for seven hours, we arrived at the fort of Berzence. … From Kanizsa, going south in

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up indirectly on the First Military Survey (1782–1785) (see Figure 1), which is close enough in time to be usable in reconstructing the late Ottoman environment of the seventeenth century. This is true despite the large-scale river regulation that started in the eighteenth century and the changes in the structure of settlement and roads. Woodcutting must have been an everyday activity for the fort and the villages that served it, in order to supply firewood and palisade posts required for maintenance. The hatchets, axes, hammers, pliers, drills, chisels, saws, nail extractors, etc. found on the site were the tools of craftsmen who built the fort (carpenters and smiths). Their owners did not necessarily belong to the garrison, and could have been workers from outside, who brought their own tools with them.18 They could also, however, have belonged to the basic equipment of the fort. The tools and iron implements are typical finds from excavations of forts from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, and the types serve as chronological markers. It is remarkable that excavations on the Turbék stockade19 built in the 1570s to defend the türbe of Süleyman the Magnificent, have not yielded many tools or working implements (at least on the basis of finds published to date).20 This is perhaps not surprising, because research on the area was directed at the türbe and the religious complex around it (mosque and dervish convent). The remains of buildings on this area are not comparable with average remains of Ottoman forts, and other finds – apart from some undoubted correspondences – are only partially comparable. Outside the area hills and forests for three hours, we arrived at the camp of the grand vizier and into the vicinity of İbrahim Kethüda. Starting from [… Kanizsa], we went west for one day, proceeding only through forests, and easily crossed the River Mura at a suitable ford.” Imre Karácson (transl.), Evlia Cselebi török világutazó magyarországi utazásai 1660–1664. Ed. by Pál Fodor. Budapest, 1985, 552, 554, 571, 577. 18  The estate of Gergely Nagy of Tolna County, for example, contained a drill (burga) and an axe (balta), but also a scythe (tırpan-i köhne) and a plough-iron (şaban demiri). Ibolya Gerelyes, ‘Inventories of Turkish Estates in Hungary in the Second Half of the 16th Century’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 39:2–3 (1985) 337. 19  Gábor Ágoston, ‘Muslim Cultural Enclaves in Hungary under Ottoman Rule’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 45:2–3 (1991) 197–198. 20  Erika Hancz, ‘Nagy Szulejmán szultán szigetvári türbe-palánkjának régészeti feltárása (2015–2016)’, in Norbert Pap and Pál Fodor (eds.), Szulejmán szultán Szigetváron. A szigetvári kutatások 2013–2016 között. Pécs, 2017, 89–130.

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Figure 1 The settlement of Barcs and its surroundings on the First Military Survey (1782) Col. VII, Sectio XXVII

of the religious complex, the situation is likely to be different, particularly on the as-yet unexcavated settlement (kasaba). Archaeological observations have found that the initial builders at Barcs placed the rows of posts in ditches dug two metres apart, the 20–25 cm diameter posts being spaced 40–50 cm apart and woven together with iron clamps, twigs and branches. Earth and clay was filled in between the rows of posts and the exterior of the wall was plastered with clay and lime. (In the seventeenth century, only one row of posts was driven into the ground in some cases.) The palisade – as required for such forts21 – was frequently repaired, and traces of repairs often show up in section walls. Forts were probably not built with geometrical precision, even if the work was supervised by an experienced master of works. The Ottoman palisade 21  Takáts, A ‘ magyar erősségek’, 75.

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stronghold of Újpalánk (Serdahel, Yeni Palanka), near Szekszárd, for example, did not have two bastions alike,22 and the same was probably true for the Barcs fort. (There may have been functional reasons, however, for differentiation among bastions.) A calculation based on the perimeter of the fort (gained from a comparison of the 1664 Esterházy ground plan and the excavation and field data) and the number of post holes observed in the excavations puts the number of logs required for the initial construction of the Barcs palisade at 1100–1200, requiring nearly 600 oak trees to be cut down.23 The amount of timber used for the walls of the fort during its nearly 100 years of existence, taking into account rebuilding and repairs, must have been several times this amount, because large quantities were needed for palisade walls as well as for fastenings, defensive ditches and associated defensive constructions, the bridge, the rampart in front of the gate, and of course the interior buildings, which formed part of the initial construction. The garrison soldiers lived in timber-framed buildings with walls of wooden planks plastered with clay; it is testified by remains of mud-and-daub. Among the evidence for the timber structure is the large quantity of 8–10 cm long forged nails24 (many of the larger nails were used to link up the timber frames of the palisade and to fasten the bastions). The living quarters were joined together and most had earthen or packed clay floors, which were occasionally renewed. There are traces of floorboards in some places. The interior of the fort resembled a small village, and according to the employees listed in the Ottoman 22  Attila Gaál, ‘Turkish Palisades on the Tolna-County Stretch of the Buda-to-Eszék Road’, in Ibolya Gerelyes and Gyöngyi Kovács (eds.), Archaeology of the Ottoman Period in Hungary. (Opuscula Hungarica, 3.) Budapest, 2003, 107. 23  Gyöngyi Kovács and Pál Sümegi, ‘Palánkvárak, fák, erdők. Régészeti és környezettörténeti adatok a török kori palánkvárak faanyag-felhasználásához’, in György Terei et al. (eds.), Várak nyomában. Tanulmányok a 60 éves Feld István tiszteletére. Budapest, 2011, 114–118. See further András Vadas and Péter Szabó, ‘Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees? Ottoman-Hungarian Wars and Forest Resources’, The Hungarian Historical Review 7:3 (2018) 477–509. 24  Interestingly, the register of a fort in the sancak of Semendire (Szendrő/Smederevo) records that 5 “mázsa” of nails (mismar) and much more of other nails were held in the store. Velics and Kammerer, Magyarországi török kincstári defterek, II. 3. (The mid-sixteenth to late eighteenth-century Hungarian “mázsa” = 58.80 kg. István Bogdán, Magyarországi űr-, térfogat-, súly- és darabmértékek 1874-ig. Budapest, 1991, 52, 457.)

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pay registers and the Esterházy sketch, it had a mosque, indeed a sultan’s or state-maintained mosque. The pay registers give the name of its staff. In 1619, the hatib was Ahmed Halife, the müezzin Mehmed Ali, and the kayyum Hüsrev Emirshah; in 1628, the hatib was Hubyar Halife.25 The mosque is marked on the Esterházy drawing on the southeast area of the fort, but we were unable to identify it. Judging from the remains of the dwellings found there, it must have been a simple structure, which may be difficult to identify even in future. The dwellings (whose floor dimensions, where they could be established, were 12 × 7 m, 12 × 5 m, and 5 × 6 m) were heated with stoves built with cupshaped tiles. The excavations yielded a large quantity of stove remains,26 which indicate that the stoves stood on approximately 80 × 80 cm bases made of bricks laid in clay. In front of the stoke-hole, there was a cooking surface for cooking over an open fire. Judging from the stove bases and the abundant stove tiles and fragments of stove-wall, the stoves were of the Balkan type (rectangular section below, with octagonal upper section and cupola),27 similar to those still found in houses in the Balkans.28 We used a computer program to reconstruct several stoves from the stove-wall pieces, with spectacular results.29 Most date from the sixteenth century. Fragments of their superstructure ended up in closed pits during the levelling of the ground that followed the Long War. The clay was prepared in situ or nearby. The stove builders may have come from villages or towns in South Transdanubia or the other side of the Dráva, and either brought with them the mass of unglazed hand-thrown stove tiles that 25  Balázs Sudár, Dzsámik és mecsetek a hódolt Magyarországon. Budapest, 2014, 157. 26  Some of the brick-surfaces, judging by their sizes and ground plan, may be regarded as stove remains. 27  Gordana Marjanovic-Vujović, ‘Kuća iz druge polovine XVII veka otkopana u utvrćenom podgraću beogradskog grada – Donjem Gradu’, Godišnjak Grada Beograda 20 (1973) 203–204, T. VII–VIII; Tibor Sabján and András Végh, ‘A Turkish House and Stoves from Water-Town (Víziváros) in Buda’, in Gerelyes and Kovács (eds.), Archaeology of the Ottoman Period, 281–300. Remains of a tile stove were found in a dwelling room of the dervish convent in Turbék (Hancz, ‘Nagy Szulejmán’, 108). We have no further details, but it may have been this type of stove. 28  Sabján and Végh, ‘A Turkish House’, 297–299, Figs. 16–18. See also, for instance, the stoves of the eighteenth-century Svrzo house in Sarajevo. 29  Gyöngyi Kovács and Zsolt Réti, ‘Stoves, Ovens and Fireplaces in the Ottoman Castle at Barcs’, Antaeus 2019 (forthcoming).

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Figure 2 Stove tiles from the excavations of the Ottoman fort at Barcs

have been found in the excavations (see Figure 2) or procured them in nearby markets, possibly in Babócsa30 or Verőce31 or even further away. The composition of the archaeological material, however, shows that Hungarian-type stove tiles also sometimes found their way into the purchases at the market. The large number of stoves and fireplaces obviously derives partly from the needs of the soldiers, but it may also be related to climatic conditions. There were signs of the “Little Ice Age” – cold winters and cool rainy summers – in the weather of the Carpathian Basin at that time, including this region, and with increasing frequency during the sixteenth century.32 In January 1664, 30  The correspondences between the stove tiles found in excavations of Nárciszos in Babó­csa and those from Barcs suggest that they came from a common set of workshops. Judging by a few stove-wall pieces containing stove tiles, it is possible that the stoves themselves were identical. Kálmán Magyar, ‘Babócsa története a honfoglalástól a mohácsi vészig’, in Idem (ed.), Babócsa története. Tanulmányok a község történetéből. Babócsa, 1990, 176–181, 211–213. 31  See for example Silvija Salajić, Srednjovjekovna nizinska utvrda u Virovitici. Virovitica, 2014, 28–29, pictures at top. The finds are dated earlier. 32  Lajos Rácz, Magyarország környezettörténete az újkorig. (Természettörténelem, 1.) Budapest, 2008, 141–151; Lajos Rácz, ‘The Climate History of Central Europe in the Modern Age’,

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for example, Evliya Çelebi graphically described bitter weather in Zimony (Zemun), where people and animals froze to death.33

THE SOLDIERY

The Ottoman pay registers preserve much information on the soldiers. The

entries beside the names include the soldiers’ original place of residence, religion, sometimes their marital status, and occasionally even their wounds. A summary by Klára Hegyi shows that most of the soldiers in Barcs were from the Balkans, and many of them were Muslim, some recent converts. The 1619 pay register, for example, states that 49% of the personnel (175 soldiers and three employees of the mosque) had Balkan names, some Bosnian. Nine had the surname Bosna and thirty two, Divane. Kurd Ömer Ağa is a name that suggests a distant origin. We know the standard bearers and the staff of the mosque by name. The daily pay of the top ranks varied between 10 and 30 akçes; other ranks were paid 5–6 akçes and mosque personnel 6–12 akçes. The high proportion of Muslims, including new converts, and data indicating Balkan origins, all have significance for the assessment of material culture. The fate of the Barcs palisade fort crucially depended on that of Babócsa and Szigetvár. The garrison did not defend the fort during the great military campaigns. Although the soldiers fled the fort, they did not stay out of minor skirmishes, wich proved disastrous for them several times. In 1600, Hungarian hajdús (heyducks) routed the forces of the commander of Barcs, executing the commander himself, and in the 1640s, thirteen horsemen from Légrád captured the chief serdar ağa of Barcs and three of his men.34 The main tasks of the garrison, at least in the sixteenth century, were to control the river, secure the in József Laszlovszky and Péter Szabó (eds.), People and Nature in Historical Perspective. Budapest 2003, 236–241. 33  For example: “…a hurricane blew, casting down everything, … the snow killed all of the camels, … several people, tormented by the great cold, froze to death.” Karácson (transl.), Evlia Cselebi, 440–442. 34  Csaba D. Veress, Várak Baranyában. Budapest, 1992, 113; Géza Perjés, Zrínyi Miklós és kora. Budapest, 1965, 101.

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Dráva bridge-head and serve the flotilla. The objects found there, however, do not give the impression that the fort was a riverside base or that its garrison carried out service on the riverbank or on boats. The only connection with boats comes from one or two sintels,35 all from the sixteenth-century layers. One possible explanation is that the ships anchored some distance away (perhaps in the area of the later ferry). Pál Sümegi and his colleagues have shown through a pollen study that the channel of the Dráva under the fort started to turn into a backwater in the late sixteenth century, and even at that time, may have carried running water only during floods.36 The swampy channel of the Dráva – which eventually served as a natural defence for the fort – was not well suited to navigation. The flotilla is not mentioned after the sixteenth century, and it was clearly withdrawn.37 Although there are almost no remains of river activity and navigation on the site of the fort, it is possible that such may be found in the silt strata that were subsequently deposited in the Dráva channel. Together with the azabs, martoloses and müstahfızes, there were a number of cavalry soldiers serving in Barcs; there were between 65 and 68 of them in the period 1577–1581.38 In the second half of the sixteenth century, horses usually fetched between 250 and 300 akçes at an auction of a deceased person’s estate,39 although individual cases could fall far outside this range.40 The daily pay of 35  The sintel was used to fasten the seals between the planks of the ship. It is an iron staple with an oval or disc-shaped plate that holds down the seal, with a small nail forged to each side of the plate. The nails were driven into the two adjoining planks. Attila János Tóth, Örvények titkai. Víz alatti régészeti kutatások. (A Régészet Világa, 2.) Budapest, 2018, 70. 36  Pál Sümegi, Dávid Molnár, Katalin Náfrádi, Dávid Gergely Páll, Gergő Persaits, Szilvia Sávai and Tünde Törőcsik, ‘The Environmental History of Southern Transdanubia during the Medieval and the Ottoman Period in the Light of Palaeoecological and Geoarchaeological Research’, in Gyöngyi Kovács and Csilla Zatykó (eds.),“Per sylvam et per lacus nimios”. The Medieval and Ottoman Period in Southern Transdanubia, Southwest Hungary: the Contribution of the Natural Sciences. Budapest, 2016, 40–49. 37 No martolos appear in the Barcs pay registers in the first half of the 1590s. Hegyi, A török hódoltság várai, II. 1329. Despite the plausible reason given for this, the suspicion remains that the temporary disappearance was actually due to the withdrawal of the flotilla. 38 Hegyi, A török hódoltság várai, II. 1328–1329. 39  Ibid., I. 213. 40  In the probate inventories of soldiers who died in June 1558, having served in the garrisons of the palisade forts at Szolnok (Solnok) and (Török)Szentmiklós (Senmikloş), horses were

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Figure 3 Ornamental discs for bridles (phaleras). Barcs, Ottoman fort

cavalry soldiers was between 9 and 13 akçes,41 but a horse (by itself, not to mention the saddle, bridle and other gear) had a very high value. Cavalry troops therefore probably did not leave their horses unattended, and since the fort was too small to accommodate horses, they may have lived outside the fort. This may explain the dearth of horse gear found in the excavations in Barcs. There were only a few phaleras (ornamental discs for bridles; see Figure 3), bits, webbing buckles and horseshoes. The phalera was clearly an item bought at a market, because examples identical to those found in Barcs have turned up elsewhere, such as the Christian fort of Bajcsavár.42 We hardly found any weapons or combat-related objects, which may partly be because the fort was evacuated in advance of being burnt down on both entered at prices of between 600 and 2500 akçes, simple used saddles at 25–100 akçes, and bridles at 7–20 akçes. Velics and Kammerer, Magyarországi török kincstári defterek, II. 221–223. A black saddle horse (siyah esb) belonging to the dizdar of Pécs (Peçuy) was evaluated in the probate inventory of 1572 at 780 akçes, and various saddles were entered at values of 10–100 akçes. Gerelyes, Inventories, 322–327. Cf. Klára Hegyi, Török források Pécs 16. századi történetéhez. (Források Pécs történetéből, 3.) Pécs, 2010, 245–250. 41 Hegyi, A török hódoltság várai, I. 207. 42  Kovács (ed.), Weitschawar, 161.

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occasions, and any valuable objects (cannons) would have been taken as booty by the Christian troops. Among the identifiable finds are cannonballs and musket balls (there were several cannonballs at the north wall, near the bastion), fragments of sabres and piercing weapons, and the category also includes carved bone weapon casings and a fragment of a bone gunpowder flask decorated with engraved flowers. Casting musket balls was probably something that every soldier could do, while larger, more complicated weapons were repaired by the fort gunsmith. As was general in forts, Barcs had its own blacksmith’s shop, as clearly indicated by special tools, traces of cinders and ball casting crucibles, although these finds fall far short of the recently-published blacksmith’s equipment from the Újpalánk fort.43 Soldiers’ clothing is the subject of many contemporary pictorial represen­ tations and graphic descriptions in probate inventories and travel accounts, and we do not attempt an analysis here. Most of the small costume items found in the excavations are extremely humble. Textiles and leather are rarely preserved. Data from written and visual sources can rarely be compared with – and of course does not exactly match – archaeological data. Notable finds from Barcs include heel plates, spurs, buttons, belt buckles, belt ornaments and clasps. These items do not appear (specifically) in probate inventories, although “buckled belts” and “boots with spurs” sometimes do.44 We also found a special item in Barcs: a carved walrus-tusk belt fitting45 that counts unique (at present) in Hungary. Its valuable material, which came from Russia, together with its 43  Attila Gaál, ‘A fémmegmunkálás leletei a szekszárd-palánki török kiserőd ( Jeni Palanka) feltárásából’, in Elek Benkő, Gyöngyi Kovács and Krisztina Orosz (eds.), Mesterségek és műhelyek a középkori és kora újkori Magyarországon. Tanulmányok Holl Imre emlékére / Crafts and Workshops in Hungary during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Studies in Memory of Imre Holl. Budapest, 2017, 215–239. 44  For instance Hudaverdi’s estate from Pécs (1560): “boots with spurs (çizme mahmuz) 26 akçes”, Hegyi, Török források, 114. In the estate of Szolnok müstahfız Ahmed bin Mahmud (1558): “One old belt with buckle, 15 akçes.” In the estate of the Szolnok cavalryman Kurd: “One pair of worn boots with spurs, 80 akçes”, Velics and Kammerer, Magyarországi török kincstári defterek, II. 221. Such objects can also be seen on pictures. Klára Hegyi and Vera Zimányi, Az oszmán birodalom Európában. Budapest, 1966, Plates 50–51 (spurs). 45  Erika Gál and Gyöngyi Kovács, ‘A Walrus-Tusk Belt Plaque from an Ottoman-Turkish Castle at Barcs, Hungary’, Antiquity 85:329, Project Gallery, September 2011, accessed 8 May 2019, http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/gal329; Erika Gál, ‘Objects Made from Tusk, Bone, and

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Figure 4 Seal with Arabic letters. Barcs, Ottoman fort

manufacture, point to one of the sultan’s workshops in Istanbul.46 Among the objects found beside the belt plaque was a seal with Arabic letters (see Figure 4; deciphered by Balázs Sudár). These and other rare finds may mark out the quarters of the high-ranking persons in the fort. The soldiers may have repaired their own clothes. A pair of scissors, an essential item for sewing, was probably a personal possession. In the estate of the Szolnok müstahfız Ferhad (1558), for example, “two shabby pairs of scissors” were worth 21 akçes.47 Other personal items were knives, clasp knives,48 iron fire strikers, whetstones, razors, bone combs and pipes, some of them is mentioned in estates.49 In Evliya Çelebi’s account of his travels, knives, clasp knives and Antler from the Ottoman-Turkish Fort at Barcs, Hungary’, in Kovács and Zatykó (eds.), “Per sylvam”, 133–135. 46  Cf. Rıfkı Melûl Meric, ‘Bayramlarda Padişahlara Hediye Edilen San’at Eserleri ve Karşılıkları. I. Sûret-i defter oldur ki usta kârlar bayramlık getürdiklerin beyân ider’, Türk San’ati Tarihi Araştırma ve İncelemeleri 1 (1963) 766–770 (balık dişinden kemer pulları). 47  Velics and Kammerer, Magyarországi török kincstári defterek, II. 222. 48  The Buda customs registers record the import of a great many knives into Ottoman Hungary. For example, in 1571, 200 akçes were collected on 4,000 knives from Hurrem rencber (tradesman, merchant), 500 akçes on five barrels of knives from Hoca Ömer rencber and 100 akçes on 4,000 knives from Matás (Mátyás) Bogdáni. Customs duty was collected from Pál “Diák”, a Christian retail merchant, on 2,000 knives, and from István Kados, also a retail merchant, on 18,000 (!) knives. The list goes on; see Lajos Fekete and Gyula Káldy-Nagy, Budai török számadáskönyvek 1550–1580. Budapest, 1962, 49, 59, 63, 74. 49  For instance Hegyi, Török források, passim.

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forks were in the belt carried by the Albanian, Bosnian and Croatian soldiers of Nova Varoş in the Balkans.50 The Barcs pipes are varied, most of them commercial goods, although one carved out of brick was almost certainly made in the fort, perhaps by a soldier with time on his hands. There were also various games to pass the time. The dice game played with an astragalus (a bone from a sheep’s leg, marked with points) was in all probability played in the Barcs fort, although the astragali we found (only four out of more than 10,000 animal bones!) may not have been used for playing games, because they do not show the corresponding signs of wear.51 The sheep astragali found on the site of the dervish convent in Turbék were gaming pieces.52 Other personal property was soldier’s pay. The pay registers record exactly who received how many akçes. We might expect large numbers of Ottoman coins to be recovered in excavations of Ottoman forts, but they are not common, and we only found a few in Barcs.53 One partial explanation for this is purely practical: scattered small silver coins are difficult to find on the site. The increasingly common use of metal detectors in excavations and in field surveys may make some improvement, but will certainly not greatly alter the present conclusion from research that few Ottoman coins were in circulation in Hungary. The money in use comprised a mixture of Ottoman, Hungarian and Western coins.54

PROVISIONS, COOKING, AND KITCHENAND TABLEWARE

Beef was the staple of soldiers’ diet in the Barcs fort, and they hardly ate meat

from any other animal. The vast majority (75.98%) of almost 10,000 animal

50  Ibolya Gerelyes, ‘Török viseletek Evlia Cselebi útleírásában’, Folia Historica 6 (1978) 22. 51  I would like to thank Erika Gál for this observation. 52  Hancz, ‘Nagy Szulejmán’, 107, Fig. 21. 53  Márton Gyöngyössy, Altin, akcse, mangir… Oszmán pénzek forgalma a kora újkori Magyar­ országon. Budapest, 2004. 54  Klára Hegyi, A ‘ török hódoltság és pénzforgalma’, Numizmatikai Közlöny 86–87 (1987– 1988) 77–83; Géza Dávid and Ibolya Gerelyes, ‘A hódoltság gazdasága és társadalma régész és történész szemmel’, Keletkutatás 1996. ősz–2002. tavasz, 88–90.

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bones found in the excavation were from cattle, and the only other substantial proportion comprises domestic hen bones (9.46%). The area was well suited for flood plain pig farming, but pig bones make up only 3.49% of the total. This low number may be due to the Muslim religion of the garrison soldiery.55 Meat was supplied from the cattle trade routes to Italy and Styria that passed through the region. The soldiers of the fort may have been involved in driving the cattle, but they could also have ordered assistance from the nearby villages. Beef came to the fort by purchase or as tax. An examination of the bones has established that the meat was butchered in the fort. Cooking-related remains reflect the Balkan traditions of the Ottoman conquerors. There are many fragments of chaff-tempered, pebble-lined baking bells, demonstrating the widespread use within the fort of an archaic type of baking utensil that in some parts of the Balkans was still used in the twentieth century.56 Like the copper vessels, ceramic pots must have been brought in to the fort, because we found no traces of a pottery workshop. The great majority of household pottery comprises hand-thrown Balkan-type pots and jugs of various sizes and types, made in the region. Notable are the “Bosnian jugs”, highly ornamented with a cog-wheel potter’s tool (see Figure 5). The small number of these (only ca. thirty among nearly 18,000 pottery fragments) suggests a special and as-yet unknown function. Glazed footed bowls traceable to Byzantine roots, the form of tableware most typical of the conquerors, were used mainly to serve soup-like food. The footed cups may, in the seventeenth century, have been used for drinking coffee.57 Probate inventory entries show 55  Erika Gál and László Bartosiewicz, ‘Animal Remains from the Ottoman-Turkish Palisaded Fort at Barcs, Southwest Hungary’, in Kovács and Zatykó (eds.), “Per sylvam”, 181–252, particularly 183, 200–201. 56  Béla Rőmer, ‘A sütőharang a történelem előtti időktől napjainkig’, Ethnographia 77 (1966) 390–422; Cvetko Ć. Popović, ‘Lončarstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini I.’, Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja u Sarajevu. Nova serija 11 (1956) 99; Persida Tomić, ‘Crepulje i vršnici u Severoistočnoj Srbiji’, Glasnik Etnografskog Muzeja u Beogradu 33 (1970) 43–54. 57  On Ottoman ceramics in Hungary in general: Gyöngyi Kovács, ‘Turkish, Balkan and Far Eastern Ceramics in Ottoman Hungary’, in Baha Tanman, V. Belgin Demirsal Arlı, Hatice Adıgüzel and Tufa Sağnak (eds.), Exhibition on Ottoman Art. 16–17th Century Ottoman Art and Architecture in Hungary and in the Centre of the Empire. İstanbul, 2010, 91–99; Géza Dávid and Ibolya Gerelyes, ‘History, Meet Archaeology. The Potter’s Craft in Ottoman Hungary’, in

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Figure 5 Fragments of a decorated, so-called “Bosnian jug”. Barcs, Ottoman fort

that tableware – especially the copper ware – was not cheap, and that many vessels were in personal property. Among the expensive but commerciallyavailable items, of which we found only a few fragments, were pieces of faience ware made in Iznik, Turkey, and Chinese porcelain cups. Suraiya Faroqhi (ed.), Bread from the Lion’s Mouth. Artisans Struggling for a Livelihood in Ottoman Cities. New York and Oxford, 2015, 70–87.

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AGRICULTURE AND TRADE

In peacetime, the soldiers engaged in agriculture, and there are abundant and detailed written sources concerning the farms they tended. Archaeological finds only confirm this fact. In Barcs, for example, although we have no written records of farming by the garrison soldiery, agricultural implements – scythes, sickles, a hay hook and, from the bottom of a sixteenth-century pit, a ploughshare and coulter (?) – have been uncovered from precisely datable strata. We also have finds relating to animal husbandry, such as curry combs, goads, horseshoes, etc., but these allow various interpretations, considering the presence of cavalry soldiers in the garrison and the possibility that cattle were driven into the fort for slaughtering. Our knowledge of crops grown in the region comes partly from contem­ porary tax surveys. The 1579 land/tax register of the sancak of Szigetvár states that the civilian population of Barcs paid tax on wheat, rye, cabbages, onions, garlic, lentils and peas,58 and that such produce clearly must have been delivered to the fort. The grain was milled within the fort on millstones of the late medieval type, about 50 cm in diameter,59 and the chaff-tempered plaster on walls and in stoves preserve a good number of grains suitable for archaeobotanical analysis. These may be wheat and rye, in accord with the data of the surveys. Customs register entries show that thousands of iron objects came into Ottoman Hungary from Styria.60 Iron knives from Steyr had been particularly popular since the late medieval period61 and have been found at many archaeo­ logical sites in Hungary. They also appear in Barcs, where their owners may have bought them for one or two akçes at markets in neighbouring towns. 58  Lajos Rúzsás, ‘Barcs a feudalizmus korában’, in Ottó Bihari (ed.), Barcs múltja és jelene. Barcs, 1979, 9–10. 59  Katalin T. Biró, ‘Lithic Artifacts from the Ottoman-period Site at Barcs Castle (Somogy County, Hungary)’, in Kovács and Zatykó (eds.), “Per sylvam”, 145, Figure 4.1. 60  Vera Zimányi, Magyarország az európai gazdaságban 1600–1650. (Értekezések a történeti tudományok köréből, 80.) Budapest, 1976, 154. The thousands of knives that were registered for customs duty in Ottoman Buda may also have included items from Steyr and Nuremberg. 61  Imre Holl, ‘A középkori késes mesterség’, Archaeologiai Értesítő 121–122 (1994–1995) 159–188.

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One lead seal is particularly interesting (see Figure 6), because it is not the usual kind of textile seal but a more modern bagseal. The letter A may be a master’s mark. Such pieces usually date from the eighteenth century or later, although there are similar lead customs seals from the seventeenth century in the Netherlands.62 How this item came to be among the seventeenth-century finds in the fort is a question demanding further enquiry. The finds from the Ottoman fort in Barcs are relatively modest, but clearly represent Figure 6 Bagseal. Barcs, Ottoman fort the characteristically diverse material culture of the soldiery of the conquering Ottoman forces in the frontier lands of the Ottoman Empire. Although their presence had a fundamentally military purpose, these men, in peacetime, also engaged in peasant and craft occupations. The picture that emerges from the finds confirms the data in written sources, particularly the pay registers, and reveal the Balkan origins and affinities of the garrison soldiery. Some of the finds, however, indicate relations with nearby towns and villages that involve a continuation of late medieval traditions. They also include Austrian, Styrian and Balkan commercial wares and more refined items of Ottoman culture, either purchased or brought in as part of supplies or as personal possessions. In any period, the nature of the site and the area of supply leave their mark on the composition and character of objects. At Turbék, for example, no sign has yet been found of ceramics of the Hungarian tradition, while Ottoman palisade forts in the Danube region (for example Ozora, Bátaszék and Újpalánk) are full of the products of Hungarian towns. The finds in Barcs, as is typical of the Dráva country, display a dominance of Balkan elements.

62  I would like to thank Maxim Mordovin for this identification.

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AN OTTOMAN GARDEN – THE PALACE OF BEYLERBEYİS IN BUDA Adrienn Papp Budapest History Museum Pázmány Péter Catholic University [email protected]

In 1955, archaeologist Győző Gerő of the Budapesti Történeti Múzeum

[Budapest History Museum] carried out the first archaeological excavation of the seventeenth-century palace of the beylerbeyis in Buda. The work was made possible by restoration work in the area subsequent to the destruction of World War II. He led planned archaeological excavations on the presumed site of the palace, designating the areas to be excavated according to scientific principles. He successfully identified remnants of buildings associated with the mediaeval Szapolyai (later Werbőczi) Palace, subsequently used by Ottoman beylerbeyis as their palace, and designated the excavation areas accordingly. Although he was unable to complete his field work, Gerő identified parts of utmost importance within the compound.1 These ruins were either filled back during the restoration works or preserved at the level of the cellar of the structure that was being restored.2

1  Győző Gerő, ‘The Residence of the Pasha’s in Hungary and the Recently Discovered Pashasaray from Buda’ in François Déroche, Antoinette Harri and Allison Ohta (eds.), Art Turc – Türkisch Art. 10th International Congress of Türkisch Art – 10 Congrès international d’art turc. Actes–Proceedings. Geneve, 1995. Genève, 1999, 353–360. 2  On the unearthed remnants of the palace, see Adrienn Papp, ‘Rövid összefoglaló a budai pasák palotájáról’, Budapest Régiségei 46 (2013) 167–185.

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Work on converting the modern age Carmelite monastery in Buda Castle District to serve a new function provided a new opportunity for archaeological investigation: salvage excavation was conducted on the site of the compound before it was renovated for the prime minister’s office. This archaeological method differed from Gerő’s: scientific inquisitiveness was no longer the main priority, and archaeological research was demarcated by the redevelopmental earthworks of the project. This restricted excavation to minor areas of the mediaeval Szapolyai/Werbőczi Palace, subsequently the beylerbeyis’ palace, and a vital investigation took place on a building plot north of the palace.3 The only large, homogeneous tract that could be excavated within the compound was adjacent to the wall of the castle. We present the results of this work here. The Carmelite monastery lies beside the north eastern corner of the castle wall, which protrudes in the shape of a bastion. In 2010, as a consequence of heavy rainfall, this section of the wall started to lean outward conspicuously. As a result, masses of earth behind it had to be removed and the wall relevelled. The removal of earth led to the discovery that this corner had been made from concrete. The removed debris showed that this place had been hit by massive bombing in World War II. The displaced section was a post-war addition, and so this entire block must have been demolished. As an emergency remedy, earth was removed to a considerable depth at the northern point of the bastionlike protrusion and to a lesser depth to the south. Beyond doubt, layers of archaeological ages within the northern sector were extracted to a considerable extent. Layers of the Ottoman period remained, however, in the southern zone. During this phase, a section of wall west of the bastion-like protrusion was identified as part of the town wall built in the Árpád era. Subsequently, in October 2014, a remedial project began with the digging of six pits. These pits took us down to the substratum at a depth of seven metres. Following disputes over the utilization of the land, an agreement was reached on the excavation of two thirds of the southern end of the bastion-like protrusion in the summer of 2015. From a sondage sunk by Gerő, we knew where to expect the Ottoman trodden surface. This surface was found to have 3  As to the excavation, see Adrienn Papp, Judit Szigeti and Viktória Horváth, ‘Három korszak – három lelet. Három kiemelkedő tárgy a budavári karmelita kolostor feltárásából’, Budapest Régiségei 50 (2017) 189–221.

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been left scarcely disturbed in the modern age, so that layers of the Ottoman period survived in a unique condition. The bastion was enclosed by four walls: the Árpád-era town wall to the west and the walls of the sixteenth-century fortification on the other three sides. The internal area was about forty metres long and on average ten metres wide. A road dating to the Ottoman period led to this area from the west. The medieval walls had been rearranged when the road was built. The remains of the palace that burned down in the siege of 1686 were unearthed on the uppermost level within the bastion. The intensity of the blaze was confirmed by traces of sand from ceramic roof tiles that had melted and become glass-like. The fire had been thoroughly destructive, but it preserved traces of everything. Underneath this stratum of debris lay a homogeneously burned surface divided by a few postholes and minor spots of pavement. Although the bastion can be identified in all contemporary illustrations, De la Vigne’s engraving shows a building over it,4 but Fontana’s does not.5 (See Figure 1) The archaeological data definitely confirms that there was no building over the bastion but the main annex of the palace was built beside the western side of the town wall dating to the Árpád era. The walls of the bastion were not entirely blind: loopholes were cut into its eastern wall, while walledup cellar windows were found in its western wall. The undivided space, the lack of paved surface and the positions of columns suggest that this must have been the site of the beylerbeyis’ palace garden. (See Figure 2) Excavation stopped at this level, and this was accepted by the engineers. This action guaranteed the preservation of sondaged walls and deeper-lying artefacts. According to the most recent archaeological investigation, we know that the beylerbeyis’ palace was composed of buildings arrayed around several courts, with its main annex facing the Danube. Some of these courts were unearthed, and all were found to be paved. The palace bath, together with its entrance and attached guard posts and several of its other walls, was also found. Since our previous information was very incomplete, the archaeological excavation of the garden was a great opportunity. 4  De la Vigne, 1686. Budapest History Museum Collection of Prints, Inv. No. 2004.9.1 5  György Rózsa, Budapest régi látképei (1493–1800). Budapest, 1963, cat. No. 27.

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Figure 1 Fontana’s drawing about the palace of the beylerbeys of Buda in Budapest (Budapest History Museum Collection of Prints, Inv. No. 52.54.1.)

The surface of the garden (Photo by Adrienn Papp)

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Gardens were ostensibly simple, but they had a complex function, and this was reflected in their design. They comprised in part an imperishable architectural creation, but their quintessence was manifested in ever-changing flora. The methods of archaeology are mostly suited to finding man-made elements, and what they uncover reflect only a fraction of the variety that once prevailed. Fruit and vegetable gardens designed specifically for the purpose of food growing were of utmost importance in the historic ages, but pleasure gardens were also constructed. Classic Islamic gardens evolved in desert and semi-arid climates, and in almost all cases were artificial creations surrounded by walls. Supplying them with sufficient water was a consideration of utmost importance, and was often achieved by brilliant feats of engineering.6 Gardens were very commonly rectangular or square in plan, and divided into four sectors by walkways or watercourses. Typical structures installed in gardens were basins filled with water and/or small pavilions.7 Water channels running from the centre toward the four points of the compass had a symbolic connotation: they signified the four rivers of Paradise. Paradise, as contrasted with deserts, stood for life, as did gardens. Gardens were also intended to meet certain climatic challenges: they provided shade for people resting there and water for the thirsty, and of course they nourished plants. Fascinating water channel and reservoir systems were designed and constructed.8 The man-made components of many of them have survived the trials of time. The most remarkable ones are historic and still function, such as the garden of Humayun’s Tomb or that of the Taj Mahal. Archaeological excavations have also unearthed parts of them, such as the brick-fenced portion of a primordial garden and its well in Cairo.9

6  János Géczi, A muszlim kert. Budapest, 2002, 32–33. 7  Michele Bernardini, ‘Die Gärten von Samarkand und Herat’, in Attilio Petruccioli (ed.), Der Islamische Garten. Stuttgart, 1994, 237–248, 239. 8  James L. Wescoat Jr., ‘Water and Waterworks in Garden Archaeology’, in Amina-Aicha Malek (ed.), Sourcebook for Garden Archaeology. Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, 2013, 421–452. 9  Stéphane Pradines, ‘Fatimid Gardens: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives’, Bulletin of School of Oriental and African Studies 79 (2016) 473–502.

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A crucial influence on the evolution of the Ottoman Empire, in addition to Islamic customs, was the architecture of the Byzantine Empire. Although there are a few illustrations, the main sources for Byzantine gardens are written. The mosaics of the Chora Church (today Kariye Camii) in Istanbul include an extraordinary piece: a basin from which water flows, with a design that depicts a spring surrounded by trees and flowers. Watercourses symbolizing the four rivers were components of early Byzantine gardens, but such symbolism faded in later times. Turkish attacks caused the residents of Byzantium to abandon the fruit and vegetable gardens that had been built on large areas at the periphery of towns. Rural villas typical of antiquity and the early Byzantine period vanished together with the pleasure gardens that adjoined them, partly because of the armed conflicts. In parallel with Ottoman expansion, hortus conclusus became widespread in towns. These had the function of producing food.10 The garden of the beylerbeyis’ palace in Buda does not display the strict formality and quadripartite garden layout typical of Islamic gardens, and neither did we identify the usual watercourses or basins. Ottoman gardens abandoned the traditions of classic Islamic gardens. One fundamental influence on this was the horticulture of the Byzantine Empire. Another was the prevailing climatic at the periphery of the expanding Ottoman Empire, which did not demand the sophisticated garden design preferred by state regimes in the arid conditions of the Near East. Ottoman towns outgrew their walled boundaries, so that their borders merged with the natural environment. Townsmen took advantage of this aspect by building walkways to the neighbouring woods and orchards. Parks in these towns were laid out around institutions such as camis, monasteries and türbes (mausoleums). Their design was essentially dictated by their functions and relations to the rest of the buildings. Routes were adjusted to the surrounding edifices to provide passage between the buildings. Cemeteries, that is, the surroundings of türbes, were a particular kind of garden, 10  Costas N. Constantinides, ‘Byzantine Garden and Horticulture in the Late Byzantine Period, 1204–1453: The Secular Sources’, in Antony Littlewood, Henry Mahurie and Joachim Wolschke-Bulman (eds.), Byzantine Garden Culture. Washington, 2002, 87–103.

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laid out with trees and orchards between the tombs. There were also walled gardens accessible to local residents.11 Less is known about the gardens of palaces and residences, despite references in written sources. Evliya Çelebi observed that there were gardens, and often orchards, connected to residences in most of the towns, and he also reported flowers during his journeys. Ottoman residences and palaces were normally built around courtyards, which did not meet the classic definition of gardens. Even though they had verandahs, many of them were paved. There were also gardens connected to palaces. Certain gardens of the Topkapı Palace were paved, but they included basins and areas planted with lawns, trees and flowers. Some, according to certain miniatures and written sources, had wild animals strolling in them.12 The “fashion trends” of the Ottoman elite were prescribed by Istanbul and the sultan’s palace. Gardens, forests and orchards designed in accordance with these became a feature of life in rural towns in Anatolia and even in occupied Europe. The travelogues of Evliya Çelebi tell of promenades in these towns leading to türbes and monasteries and through forests and hills. Evliya Çelebi describes the garden of the monastery of the Mevlevi order in Peçuy (Pécs) as the most beautiful in Ottoman Hungary, and subsequently, when describing Konya, he refers to it as one of the most marvellous in the empire.13 In his travelogue on Buda, he explains that the town had 7,000 gardens,14 which rather means that the town had a lot of gardens. He also imparted a few further details: he described the garden around Baruthane (Gunpowder Mill), where rose beds, orchards, meadows and tulips proliferated, as the most amazing.15 Baruthane stood outside the fortified town. It was an independent, fourcornered fort surrounded by thermal springs and ponds. This was not a new 11  Maurice Cerasi, ‘Der osmanische Garten im Spiegel der Landschaft des Bosporus’, in Petruccioli (ed.), Der Islamische Garten, 217–236 12  Nurhan Atasoy, 15. Yüzyıldan 20. Yüzyıla Osmanlı Bahçeleri ve Hasbahçeler. İstanbul, 2005, 106. (Hünername, I. Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Kütüphanesi, H 1523, fols. 18v–19r.) 13  Balázs Sudár, Pécs 1663-ban. Evlia cselebi és az első részletes városleírás. Pécs, 2012, 140. 14  Evliyâ Çelebi b. Derviş Mehemmed Zillȋ, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi. Topkapı Sarayı Kütüphanesi Revan 1457 Numaralı Yazmanın Transkripsiyonu–Dizini. Vol. 6. Ed. by Seyyid Ali Kahraman and Yücel Dağlı. İstanbul, 2002, 150. 15  Ibid., 151.

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garden, having already existed in the second half of the sixteenth century: Sokollu Mustafa, the pasha of Buda, referred to it in his endowment deed (vakıfname) as Miftah Baba’s garden.16 Gül Baba’s hanekah (convent), whose garden was similar to that of Irem according to Evliya Çelebi, stood nearby.17 There were some areas round Buda18 that served as sites of leisure and pleasure, including the garden of Hızır Baba, whose hanekah and türbe were located west of the town, Gürz İlyas’s Hill,19 and the old royal gardens.20 Most references are to such public gardens, but a few concern the gardens of residences and palaces. Evliya Çelebi mentions that residences on the outskirts of the town21 had orchards and flower gardens.22 Nearly one hundred years earlier (1587), Reinhold Lubenau had visited Buda and witnessed the same scenery: “The lords equip their lodgings with prodigious gardens.”23 However, gardens were not at all general in every part of town. Evliya Çelebi noted that dwellings in the tanners’ quarter had no gardens at all.24 In fact, archaeological excavations in an urban quarter today called Tabán have discovered that these dwellings did indeed have gardens.25 In the second half of the sixteenth century, magnates and pashas had preferred to have their palaces built in the proximity of the Danube. Sokollu Mustafa Pasha’s son was said to be able to jump out of the window of the 16  Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Arşivi, D 7000, fol. 9v. 17  Evliya Çelebi (ibid., 147) uses the same qualifier for gardens in the vicinity of the town and for the monastery of the Mevlevi order in Pécs. For further details about his travelogue, see Sudár, Pécs 1663-ban, 137–141. 18  Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, VI. 150. 19  Today: Gellért-hegy (Gellért Hill). 20  The medieval royal gardens lay on slopes next to the royal palace at the southern end of Várhegy (Castle Hill). Its little Renaissance pavilion was unearthed by Károly Magyar and Anikó Tóth. 21  This is an urban quarter called Víziváros (Water Town), stretching between Castle Hill and the Danube. 22  Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, VI. 144. 23  Sándor Haraszti and Tibor Pethő, Útikalandok a régi Magyarországon. Budapest, 1963, 89. 24  Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, VI. 143. 25  Adrienn Papp, ‘Relics of an Ottoman-era Tannery in Buda’s Tabán District’, in Elek Benkő, Gyöngyi Kovács and Krisztina Orosz (eds.), Crafts and Workshops in Hungary during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Studies in Memory of Imre Holl. Budapest, 2017, 431–440.

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palace into the river.26 These palaces in Buda may have resembled those on the coast of the Bosporus.27 Regretfully, neither residual nor archaeological artefacts pointing to these palaces have been found. The hostilities of the Long War (1591–1606) forced the pashas to move to the better-fortified conditions of Várhegy (Castle Hill). It was during that period that the pasha’s palace on the site of the Szapolyai palace was built, by remodelling the Renaissance palace in full conformity with Ottoman standards. This work resulted in a garden being laid out in the bastion after the war. Originally, the bastion had been built to modernize the fortification of the castle, and loopholes had been carved into its walls. The next paragraph explains what was unearthed in some detail. Győző Gerő positioned one of his sondages in the passageway leading to the garden, and found that Ottoman walls had edged the passageway on both sides. Archaeological excavations in the 1960s revealed that the Ottoman palace had been constructed by filling the huge mediaeval cellars and by relevelling the walls of the Renaissance palace. In that period, after the passageway was paved on top of several relevelled medieval walls. The garden had been landscaped within the bastion; its former trodden surface, which had burned and become a hard surface in the blaze of 1686, was unearthed. This trodden surface was basically earth, but paved parts were found along with the walls. Subterranean stone walls ran beside the eastern and western town walls. Parts of these were uncovered in sondages, and the lines of other parts were traced using by a ground-penetrating radar28 survey in the centre of the area. Remarkably, five column bases were found in situ on the western wall, positioned nearly equally near its southern end. Further north, the ground at the level where the columns were found had been disturbed by the removal of earth in 2010, but the columns had most likely continued in that direction, because stone bases were found in the debris. Six similar blocks of stone were uncovered along the eastern town wall and three along the western town wall. One of Gerő’s test trenches had been located at the southern end of the western wall; unfortunately, we have no information as to whether 26  Sándor Takáts, Rajzok a török világból. Vol. 1. Budapest, 1915, 117. 27  Cerasi, ‘Der osmanische Garten’, 226–229. 28  Completed by Gábor Bertók and Róbert Lóki in 2015.

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he found such stones. In addition, two column bases were uncovered in the middle of the garden. It was typical of the column bases that they had cavities of around 10 cm in diameter in their centres to accommodate joining wooden posts. These are typical architectural constituents of residences built in the Ottoman period.29 These column bases, resting on foundations, were made of blocks of stone neatly carved into truncated square pyramids. The column bases by the walls, on the other hand, were all made of amorphous blocks of stone, and their edges farthest from the walls were bevelled in several cases. The two blocks of stone positioned in the centre of the garden were made of fragments of a profiled medieval frame. One of the column bases located right next to the eastern wall had been placed exactly underneath a loophole, making it totally useless. (See Figure 3) The garden and the loopholes failed to function simultaneously, thus the interior of the bastion had been deprived of its martial character. The column bases were the foundations of a roof support structure. Ottoman miniatures that depict gardens show colonnades – usually roofed and open on one side – running along the outer walls. They were often shown running around all four walls of the gardens. Such a structure may have stood beside the western wall of the bastion. If so, the colonnade must have been located 2.5 metres from the wall built in the Árpád era and 12.5 metres long to the north from the passageway. It may have been designed to support a roof structure beside the western wall. Interestingly, the column bases were arranged beside the wall, even though it would have sufficed to affix the roof structure to the stone wall. This roof structure is thought to have been made of wood, because nothing in the remnants found indicate the use of brick or stone. In the central sector, many column bases were found in the proximity of the southern wall of the bastion. There was presumably a roof about six metres wide that ran along the entire southern end of the bastion. The eastern side was rather odd. A foundation was built parallel to the wall but not a single column was placed on it. It may have served to heighten the stone wall, because it had been elevated only by 1.5 meters in the Ottoman period. 29  Adrienn Papp, ‘Ottoman Earth Architecture in Buda (1541–1686)’, in Stéphane Pradines (ed.), Earthen Architecture in Muslim Cultures: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives. Leiden, Boston, 2018, 249–266.

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Figure 3 Eastern wall with a loophole and a column base in front of it (Photo by Adrienn Papp)

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Another interesting feature of the uncovered surface is a series of small holes preserved in good condition in the scorched surface. Large iron posts were found pinned into two of them. The holes densified throughout the length of the bastion and its central axis. Their function may have been to anchor textile sheets that provided shade or to support plants. The thing that this garden lacked was a water well. The excavation uncovered a pipe that must have drained water from the direction of the palace, but neither casing nor water pipes were identified. Carrying water to Castle Hill was an arduous task. Dug wells were of no avail even at the northern end of the plot, and water extracted from the Danube was supplied to the palace.30 Next to the cami (a converted Franciscan church) stood a fountain that was supplied with water conveyed from the river. Water was most certainly conveyed to the palace, for instance to its bath. Wells and basins were built in gardens not only for the purpose of “mise en scène” and ambience but to water the plants. The climatic conditions of Buda may have convinced the designers that digging wells and constantly protecting them from frost would be an unnecessary struggle. The irrigation problem was solved by other methods, such as the collection of water in containers.31 Little is known about the plants and flora grown in this garden. There was no room for trees; flowerbeds, possibly a fruit garden may have been cultivated there instead. Some initial clues to the vegetation may be obtained from the analysis – currently in progress – of samples taken from burned surfaces. Regretfully, flower seeds failed to survive the fire. No wet environment suitable for pollen analysis was identified. Therefore, the flowers that scented the garden of the palace of beylerbeyis can only be ideated: according to the written sources, most often roses, tulips and hyacinths,32 because these flowers were able to grow in the climate of Buda, so they might well have decorated the garden.

30  Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, VI. 145. 31  In fact, containers of water extracted from the Danube were carried by horses to the public bath on Castle Hill: Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, VI. 145. 32 Atasoy, Osmanlı Bahçeleri, 34–77.

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REGULATIONS AND PRACTICE: FICTION AND REALITY IN OTTOMAN HUNGARY (THOUGHTS ON SOURCE CRITICISM) Klára Hegyi Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest [email protected]

Hungarian historians have tried to convince the world that the administra­

tion of Ottoman Hungary differed significantly from that of Ottoman lands on the Balkan Peninsula, being full of local, individual characteristics. The world believes this up to a point, but dismisses the rest as a national whim. The differences, however, have a logical and simple explanation, and there is sound evidence to back them up. Hungary was where Ottoman expansion on the land of Europe came to a halt. Its territory was shared by three states: the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania, each of which constantly aspired to increase its sphere of influence. At the same time as the Ottomans were imposing taxation on a widening area of the kingdom, the nobility of the Hungarian parts of the country did all it could to retain effective authority over the life of Ottoman Hungary, reaching across the borders to do so. All three states possessed the two prerequisites for exerting influence at that time: military force and administration, of which the administration carried more weight. The national and county authorities of the Hungarian Kingdom systematically assessed and surveyed the border territories of Ottoman Hungary, and sometimes extended 243

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this activity into the central areas. Ottoman and Hungarian offices (and private individuals on the Hungarian side) produced a mass of documentation in two languages. Hungary is the only area of the Ottoman Empire for which the defters may be compared against survey registers and reports of investigations made by the opposite side. The parallel documents deal with the same fortresses, towns and villages, and report on everything from military clashes to everyday life. The archive material falls into two distinct periods, and there are striking differences in content between the Ottoman and Hungarian documents from the same time. There are plenty of Ottoman documents from the sixteenth century, and although the sources for some sancaks are limited, there is no topic or question which cannot be researched on the basis of convincing archive material. Compared to this wealth, barely any Ottoman material has survived from the seventeenth century, a period when the volume of Hungarian sources steadily increased. In both periods, the content of sources in the two languages is so different that, placed side by side, it is hard to believe they were written about the same territory. At first glance, the rich content and formal perfection of the Ottoman survey registers seem very convincing. They contain everything: families that lived at the time, production, taxes and landowners, and are apparently perfect. Their weakness is that they give no scope for imperfection, change or chance, and they conceal the cheating and juggling with numbers that was smuggled into the documents, as well as the conflicts between sipahis and their tax-payers. They reflect conditions tightly controlled by sub-sections of regulations, the orderly world expected by the authorities, and not the more colourful, changing, trouble-burdened reality of everyday life. The latter is not ignored by the Hungarian sources, which are full of horror stories. The officials of the Hungarian counties give long descriptions of settlements sacked and burnt, and of their inhabitants murdered and taken into captivity. It was under such duress that more and more towns and villages undertook to pay Ottoman taxes. Investigative reports traced and recorded the increase of the number and level of taxes, the imposition and reinforcement of the corvée, and the unlawful demands of sipahis and emins collecting tax. Some of the descriptions of increasing burdens and hardship are difficult to believe, but there are two reasons for considering them credible. Firstly, over a period 244

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of several decades in the seventeenth century, county officials conducted interviews with town and village foremen and the experienced elders about the turns their lives had taken. As time passed and memory faded, these people’s accounts became increasingly contradictory, but remained consistent in the description of long-term changes. Secondly, the interviewees were answering the questions under oath, and to give false testimony was, according to their faith, to risk punishment not on Earth but in the fires of hell. In the following pages, I will give a brief overview of the contradictions between the Hungarian and Ottoman sources in five areas: 1. the rate at which the territory subject to taxation increased; 2. ownership; 3. the methods and suspicious points of survey registers; 4. taxation as described in defters and as it was in practice, and 5. the effect that Hungarian methods of collecting tax had on the Ottomans. 1. In the border areas, mufassal defteris registered a number of towns and villages which the registrars, and the soldiers assisting them, had marked out as targets for taxation but were not yet officially subject to tax. An estimated, symbolic tax (ber vech-i tahmin) was imposed on these places.1 The commissioners of the Hungarian border counties visited their territories annually and counted the households subject to Hungarian military tax (Latin: dica).2 In 1548, the Hungarian diet passed a law declaring that towns paying tax to the Turks should be liable for only half the military tax.3 Accordingly, the surveyors recorded whether a town or village was “subjected to the Turks” (Latin: Turcis subjectus). The survey registers of these two kinds allow us to trace precisely when Ottoman taxes were levied and in which areas. These 1  The earliest defters of the northern sancaks are: Estergon (Esztergom): Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, İstanbul, Tapu Tahrir Defterleri [henceforth BOA TT. d.] 410, 104–157; Novigrad (Nógrád): BOA TT. d. 982, 1–39; Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Wien, Orientali­ sche Handschriften der Konsularakademie Nr. 291; Hatvan: Lajos Fekete, A hatvani szandzsák 1660. évi adóösszeírása. Jászberény, 1968; and Siçen (Szécsény): BOA TT. d. 293. 2  Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, Magyar Országos Levéltár [hereafter MNL OL], Magyar Kamara Archívuma, Conscriptiones Portarum E 158, in alphabetical order by county. Publication of dica registers from the mid-16th century by Ferenc Maksay, Magyarország birtokviszonyai a 16. század közepén. 2 vols. Budapest, 1990. 3  Sándor Kolozsvári and Kelemen Óvári, Corpus Juris Hungarici / Magyar Törvénytár. 1526–1608. Budapest, 1899, 234.

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areas always extended beyond the military border marked out by the line of the most advanced Ottoman fortresses. The distance between the military and taxation borders increased steadily over time. Analysis of Ottoman and Hungarian registers of the 1540–1560s point to identical taxation areas, with only some minor discrepancies at the very edges. Registers written in the 1570s, however, show notable differences. Mufassal defteris from this time onwards describe towns and villages that had already been surveyed and granted to landlords but were not yet paying tax as hali (empty, uninhabited). The Hungarian surveys, however, registered the majority of these as inhabited and subjectus. There was little direct state ownership in border areas, the majority of the land and collectable tax being turned over to sipahis and border soldiers, who imposed their will by military force (see point 2) and had the territory and the collectable income registered as if they were not paying tax. For the ziamet- and timar-holders it was beneficial that they possessed some of the villages assigned to their holdings with a nominally low income but in practice they collected all the available taxes from them. The mufassal defteris dried up in both the centre and the border area of Ottoman Hungary in the course of the seventeenth century.4 The Long War (1591–1606) greatly changed the military border in the north: The Ottomans lost their fortresses north of Buda, including three sancak centres (Novigrad/ Nógrád, Siçen/Szécsény and Filek/Fülek), but won Eğri (Eger), which became the centre of Ottoman Hungary’s third province (vilayet). Losing the centres meant the temporary disappearance of sancaks and the collapse of Ottoman taxation in them. The Ottomans had to win their territories back, but only through the Hungarian survey registers can we trace the path of reconquest. The war was concluded with the Treaty of Zsitvatorok (1606), which was renewed several times in the following decades. At the negotiations that preceded the renewals, the envoy of the Kingdom of Hungary arrived with documents based on the reports of thorough investigations in the border counties. These documents are gold mines. We learn from them that immediately after the capture of Eğri (1596), the soldiers stationed there, 4  Pál Fodor, The Business of State: Ottoman Finance Administration and Ruling Elites in Transition. Berlin, 2018, 236–286.

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together with those in Estergon (Esztergom), forced the villages to the south to pay tax, although initially at a restrained, low level. Although the peace treaty of 1606 decreed that only towns and villages that had been paying tax uninterruptedly since 1596 could be considered Ottoman subjects, the subjugation of more and more places continued until the end of the Ottoman period. It was pursued with the greatest violence and most unscrupulous methods in the years just before the renewals of the treaty, so that the new terms would sanction the takeover of the highest possible number of places. The Hungarian negotiator never managed to annul these aggressive conquests. The villages lived through the hardest decade before the last renewal of the treaty in 1642. For example, in the years between 1632 and 1641, thirty-seven villages in the central area of Gömör County yielded to Ottoman aggression. A few of them were ransacked and burnt down, some villagers were killed, and 240 people from the four villages that suffered most were taken into captivity. Having seen this, the majority of the thirty-seven villages decided to pay tax “willingly”.5 On 12 August 1641, seven villages in the area of Nógrád County just south of the Hungarian fortress of Kékkő were overrun by Ottoman soldiers from Eğri, Buda and Hatvan. Most of them were torched (in the largest village, thirty houses and twelve full barns were burnt to ashes), thirteen people were cut down, shot or burnt to death, 248 villagers were taken into captivity and 214 head of cattle and horses were driven off.6 By the 1650s, a combination of violent and bloodless occupation had brought the whole territory of the counties located along the northern border of Ottoman Hungary and the kingdom (Hont, Kishont, Zólyom, Gömör, Torna and Borsod) under Ottoman taxation. The same fate befell two counties in the northwest (Nyitra and Bars) and the southern half of two northeastern counties (Abaúj and Zemplén).7 The Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary was considered the enemy even in times of peace, and ransacking and dismembering its territory was not only 5  MNL OL Magyar Kancelláriai Levéltár, Magyar Királyi Kancellária regisztratúrája, Transylvanica A 98, Fasc. 13 [hereafter MNL OL A 98, Fasc. 13], pp. 945–949, 1133–1136. 6  MNL OL A 98, Fasc. 13, pp. 1181–1201. 7  MNL OL P 287, the Gácsi branch of the Forgách family, catalogued documents, box 33, 284–285.

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allowed, it was obligatory. The Principality of Transylvania, as a vassal state of the sultans, came in for different treatment. At the end of the sixteenth century, its tax boundary seems to have been stable. In the survey of the sancak of Solnok (Szolnok) of 1591,8 the registrar included every village he had heard of (to prove Ottoman claims with a defter), but even the line of villages registered as “uninhabited’ was a long way from the Transylvanian fortresses. For example, the settlements around (Nagy)Várad (Oradea) were registered as uninhabited and thus not entered into the defter even as a claim, indicating some respect for the principality’s territory. This respect began to waver during the Long War, when Transylvania attempted to break free and turned against Istanbul. Its army retook several fortresses of the vilayet of Temeşvar (Temesvár) in 1595. In 1599, the Ottoman military leadership unleashed the Tatar auxiliary army, which was stationed in Ottoman Hungary, into the County of Bihar under Transylvanian authority and then into the territory of the kingdom west of it. The Tatars burnt down 257 towns and villages, more than half of the 480 in the county.9 After the restoration of the state of dependency, incidents of subjugation became increasingly frequent during the first half of the seventeenth century, but only rarely involved the atrocities that were so common in villages of the kingdom.10 The fate of Transylvania (and its northern border area) was decided by the war which broke out in 1658 and the Ottoman capture of Várad in 1660: The principality did not become an enemy, but was no longer treated with respect.11 2. In Ottoman Hungary, the conquerors introduced the same timar system as they had in the Balkan Peninsula, but with modifications to suit the location and the time. The aim, as it was everywhere else, was to divide the income from the territory among the treasury, the local elite, the conquering soldiers and the administrative 8   BOA TT. d. 634. The first part of the survey was published by Gábor Ágoston, ‘A szolnoki szandzsák 1591–92. évi összeírása I–II’, Zounuk 3 (1988) 221–296; 4 (1989) 191–287. 9   MNL OL E 158, Vol. 8. 268–291. 10  MNL OL A Gyulafehérvári Káptalan Országos Levéltára, Miscellanea F 9, Cista 3, Fasc. 1, No. 2. 11  The raids intended to subjugate settlements in Transylvania and the changes which took place in the taxation of the subjugated villages have not yet been researched.

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class as efficiently as possible. As in the sixteenth century, the interests of the treasury were considered supreme, and a close eye was kept on the differences between the inner territories, which paid taxes regularly, and the border areas, which – as a result of continuous military conflicts – were more unstable and less reliable. In 1570, 66% of all tax income (not counting the cizye) from the sancak of Segedin (Szeged) situated in the south of the vilayet of Buda went to the treasury, and the figure was 100% for some nahiyes.12 In 1580, the treasury also took the overwhelming share (78%) of the income from the sancak of Buda.13 To the northeast, partly situated in the border zone, was the sancak of Hatvan, where the proportions were the opposite: in 1580, the treasury only claimed 29%.14 This not-quite-one-third came from the safe, rich part of the sancak stretching into the Alföld (Hungarian Plain). The less reliable income from the border zone was distributed among the sipahis and soldiers with salary timars. In 1579, the treasury claimed only 3% of the total tax income of the sancak of Novigrad, lying northwest of the sancak of Hatvan, along the border.15 Only one early icmal defteri from 1559 has survived on the distribution of the income from the youngest northern sancak, Filek (Fülek).16 There, the treasury’s share was 21%, a figure which must have decreased after 1570, when the infantry of the fortresses started to be paid from collective estates and several securelypaying has towns belonging to the sultan were sacrificed for this purpose. We have no figures for this, however. The soldiers serving on the border of Ottoman Hungary and the Hungarian Kingdom fought each other almost on a daily basis, and bore the responsibility for subjugation or, on the other side, for its prevention. The Ottoman military played a leading role along the border, and the state tried to favour them in every possible way. Although there were real towns and bustling villages there, just as there were further south in Ottoman Hungary, the Ottoman surveying 12  Gyula Káldy-Nagy, A szegedi szandzsák települései, lakosai és török birtokosai 1570-ben. Szeged, 2008, 45–63: nahiye of Vaşarhel (Vásárhely). 13  BOA TT. d. 590. 14  BOA TT. d. 662. 15  Gustav Bayerle, Ottoman Tributes in Hungary According to Sixteenth Century Tapu Registers of Novigrad. The Hague, Paris, 1973, 95–110. 16  BOA TT. d. 335.

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commissioners registered them with low numbers of tax units (hanes). Their total tax was also far below what was normal in other places. This practice can be explained by two factors. The first is that the state authorities and landlords on both sides were forced to restrain themselves in the border zone, since they had to share the taxes they could extract from their subjects. The second is that, because of these low taxes, Ottoman soldiers with timars guaranteeing the low annual income of 6,000 akçes received four to six villages, some of which did not yet pay tax and could almost certainly be forced to provide more than 6,000 akçes. The state obliged them to collect this extra income and also to continuously increase lawful taxes and introduced all kinds of new services, as we will see below. The shortage of icmal defteris in the early decades of the seventeenth century has left us with only a few timar ruznamçe defteris, containing fewer and fewer annotations and thus scant information about the distribution of income and the identity of the Ottoman landlords. Later, even these disappear and there is no Ottoman archive material at all. Hungarian assessments, however, become more numerous, particularly as the county foremen busied themselves in preparation for every new peace negotiation, but also at other times. These documents are rich sources, and make up for the paucity of the Ottoman sources to a certain degree. The three years between November 1593 and October 1596 are blank. That was when the northern sancak centres were lost and Eğri was captured, changes that caused the disappearance of the offices that had been responsible for distributing the income. The new offices set up in Eğri carried on the same rigid system for several decades, so that the estates they distributed among claimants’ estates had exactly the same composition and income.17 The war decimated the sipahis, new ones took their places, and the survivors of the war also petitioned for increased pay. The lucky ones received a timar with at least one or two villages located close enough to be easy to subjugate once more. Those who had only been granted more distant villages, however, had to get by as henchmen of their luckier peers, living mostly on robbery. These far-away villages only came within reach during the period 1630–1660. 17 An icmal defteri drafted in 1650 indicates that the composition of the estates surely did not change until 1650, and a few later annotations also indicate that no changes took place. BOA TT. d. 791.

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Re-subjugation started gently. Recollections of town and village leaders recorded a good twenty years later reveal that at first they were talked into paying tax rather than forced into it. The first taxes were more like gifts: a few florins (Latin: florenus) in cash, with a little butter and honey, and less frequently corn. Usually, the village started paying tax to whoever subjugated it. Among the first sipahis was a special group who were spoken of with scorn even decades later: Hungarians who either converted to Islam or remained Christians but entered Ottoman service (known by a term borrowed from Serbian: pribek). They continued to provide essential services in later times, being able to negotiate with the peasants. The investigation reports reveal that the better villages were turned into the sultan’s has (“reserved for the emperor”) in the 1620s, a period of consolidation. Their affairs were then managed by emins. The governors of Eğri also appeared as landlords, and just like the treasury, they picked out wealthy towns and villages for themselves. In the interviews, the village foremen often identified their landlords by name only, but sometimes also supplied their titles. Most of these were sipahis (in Hungarian, with some distortion, “Mehemet ispaia”, for example), the rest were officers and lieutenants, ağas and bölükbaşıs, many of high rank, such as the janissaries and gönüllü ağasıs serving in Eğri. Very few civilian timar-holders were mentioned; one of these was the head gardener and tailor of the pasha. The number of soldiers gradually increased, and the reports of Hungarian subjects reinforce the impression that soldiers were the main lords and beneficiaries of the border area, even more so in the seventeenth than in the sixteenth century. The treasury, on the other hand, appears less and less frequently. The last investigative documents for the County of Gömör, drafted in 1669, contain reports on 132 settlements.18 By then, the dwellers of only one village named the emin as their tax collector, and they mentioned that they also paid cizye.19 In the closing decades of the Ottoman occupation, the tax-payers paid various state taxes, but their testimony indicates that it was the sipahis 18  Štátny archiv v Banskej Bystrici, Gemerská župa (1453) 1504–1803 (1914), kongregačné spisy, sign. 53 (P. Z. 173), škatul’a č. 2 [henceforth ŠA v Banskej Bystrici P. Z. 173]. 19  Neither was cizye mentioned when, in 1688, after the recapture of Buda, seventeen towns and villages along the great bend of the Danube above Buda were interviewed about the taxes they used to pay to the Ottomans. MNL OL E 156-a, 64/13.

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who set, collected and forwarded them – if they did forward them – to the treasury or to the fortresses of Eğri or Uyvar (Érsekújvár/Nové Zámky). The Hungarian investigations suggest that Ottoman state offices shook off the burden of everyday tax collection. The disintegration of the timar system shows up from a comparison of the few ruznamçe defteris and the Hungarian investigations. The village did not make payment to the person to whom it was officially assigned. Sometimes, this even happened in the administration of the sultanic has. Several villages claimed that they paid tax to the mother or wife of the sipahi, and even more said that, after the death of their landlord, they became the property of the landlord’s child and were taxed by his guardian. The best example is a village in the County of Gömör, which was left to the widow of its sipahi.20 The woman remarried and took the village into her new marriage as her dowry. As she was more experienced in matters of taxation, the villagers stayed in touch with her. As noblewomen were common among Hungarian landlords, the village foreman recounted the affair quite naturally, for example: “Last year our Turkish lady took nine florins from us as a fine, but did not deduct this from our tax.”21 3. On 28 September 1579, the court of Gömör County brought an interesting decision. At the request of the villagers of Gedőkisfalud, it gave permission to pull down an uninhabited house because its owner, who was living somewhere else, would have had to pay tax if it had been included in the Ottoman survey register that was being drafted. The court granted permission on condition that the village should rebuild the house after the survey was concluded.22 This case illustrates the fact that the Ottoman registrars went to the villages to count the houses and heads of families and to survey the harvest – or at least their visit could be expected. Another method appears in the defters of this period which is very similar to that applied by officeholders of Hungarian counties who visited a larger settlement and questioned the town and village foremen who had been 20  These interesting cases were also mentioned by Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, ‘Changes in the Structure and Strength of the Timariot Army from the Early Sixteenth to the End of the Seventeenth Century’, Eurasian Studies 4:2 (2005) 168. 21  ŠA v Banskej Bystrici P. Z. 173, 121: Alsófalu. 22  Péter Tóth, Gömör vármegye közgyűlési jegyzőkönyveinek regesztái. Vol. 1: 1571–1579. Miskolc, 1996, 221.

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summoned to meet them. A chapter title that recurs in cizye defteris points to this method: “Villages which did not show up at the survey” (tahrire gelmeyen kariyelerdir ki zikr olunur, or next to the name of some villages: na amed). Whichever methods were used by the surveyors, the mufassal defteris can be considered real surveys inasmuch as any population or tax survey in that period could be complete and credible. The mufassal defteris contain many contradictions, however, and these are obvious even without Hungarian material for comparison. For decades, the northern sancaks quarrelled over their borders and neighbours surveyed whatever they considered as their own – with different results. The total tax of the village of Bánhorvát, claimed by both Hatvan and Filek, was set at 1,513 akçes by the surveyor from Hatvan and 1,218 akçes by the surveyor from Filek; for the village of Berente, it was set at 2,512 akçes by the former and at 2,135 akçes by the latter.23 (These numbers also indicate that the tax rate was higher in the sancak of Hatvan, only part of which lay on the border, than in Filek, located entirely on the border.) Another suspicious feature of these documents is the apparently unchanging composition of Ottoman high officials’ estates, which thus yield the same income for decades. Rüstem Pasha enjoyed the same estates at the beginning and end of service in Buda ( June 1559 to November 1563), and the taxes of the towns and villages granted to him neither increased nor decreased by a single akçe.24 The procedure is obvious and understandable: It would have been a pity to dismantle and then reassemble the established estate of the pasha in Buda just for the purpose of the new survey of 1562. Similarly, barely any changes were made in the estate of the beys of Hatvan, and between 1570 and 1590, the estates of the beys of Sigetvar (Szigetvár) serving in the southwest border zone were only modified to follow their varying income by taking away or granting the occasional village, but of the thirty-three towns and villages constituting the core of their estate, the tax of only six changed in the course of these twenty years.25 A substantial proportion of the estates of the Buda defterdars were in the sancak of Hatvan; the population and taxes of these places changed very little between 1570 and 23  BOA TT. d. 335, pp. 11, 69 and 32, 69. 24  BOA TT. d. 329, pp. 12–14; TT. d. 354, pp. 15–16. 25  Éva Sz. Simon, A hódoltságon kívüli „hódoltság”. Oszmán terjeszkedés a DélnyugatDunántúlon a 16. század második felében. Budapest, 2014, 153–154.

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1622, and their final sum was always 82,000 akçes.26 The procedure is also understandable in these cases, but casts doubt on the usefulness of the data on population and production, which barely changed for decades. Some counter-examples are villages transferred into the collective ownership of the infantry of fortress garrisons in 1570. As the maintenance of garrisons stationed in Ottoman Hungary was of the utmost importance, they were usually assigned wealthy, well-paying villages. However, we cannot suppose that they had enough vitality to explain the sharp increase in their taxes. The village of Szűcsi was obliged to pay 400 akçes in tax in 1546, 7,913 in 1559, 9,015 in 1562, 18,000 in 1570, and 19,000 in 1580 and 1590; in the same years, the total tax of the village of Jászladány was 1,273, 4,223, 8,220, 12,400 and 17,100 akçes respectively.27 The final sums were usually equivalent to what was due to each garrison squad of müstafızes, topçus or azabs. Obviously, this did not represent such a great increase in population, production or tithe; it was simply that the village had to maintain a garrison. There are less obvious but nevertheless suspicious assessments in sipahi villages. The most onerous tax levied on the villages of Heves County, allocated to the sancak of Hatvan, was the wheat tithe. In 1570, the nine heads of families living in the village of Bő held the production record, each being obliged to deliver a tithe of 26.7 kiles (684.6 kg). These figures imply that this tiny village produced more than 6 tonnes of wheat. The opposite happened to the village of Felsőerdőtelek, where the tithe levied on each of the 16 heads of families was 1.6 kiles (40 kg). The registrar found the annual yield of this village, almost twice as populous, to be only 640 kg. His management of the other kinds of tax was equally surprising. In the former village, he levied tax on every animal, fruit and vegetable, while in the latter, he calculated a mere 200 akçes for all branches of production. The final result is also interesting: The smaller village was required to pay exactly twice as much tax as the richer one.28 The reason for his 26  Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Wien, Türkische Handschriften Mxt. 571, p. 102 [henceforth ÖNB Mxt.]; BOA TT. d. 662, p. 5; BOA Ruznamçe 419, p. 10. 27 Fekete, A hatvani szandzsák, 21, 79; BOA TT. d. 318, pp. 2–3; TT. d. 1003, pp. 27, 94; Gustav Bayerle, A hatvani szandzsák adóösszeírása 1570-ből. Defter-i mufassal-i liva-i Hatvan. Hatvan, 1998, 43, 90; BOA TT. d. 662, pp. 27, 50, 52, 66; TT. d. 823, pp. 24, 27, 66. 28 Bayerle, A hatvani szandzsák, 108, 118.

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procedure lies in the identity of the owners of the two villages. The landlord of the bigger village, in both the 1570s and the 1580s, was one of the upcoming zaims of the sancak, with bright prospects. His villages were registered with taxes much lower than they actually yielded. The smaller village, heavily burdened with wheat tithes, was passed from one beginner timar-holder to the next in the 1560s. It belonged to an estate that – in a pattern repeated elsewhere – was taken to pieces, reassembled and given to a rapid succession of new owners,29 who were left to collect the impossible from it. The mufassal and icmal defteris continually declare that they were made side by side and that their former and future holders “helped” the surveyors. In the 1559 mufassals of the sancaks along the northern border,30 many villages had the name of the holder registered beside them, although they had not yet got to the end of the registration; indeed, it was never completed. In the 1590s, the text of the timar ruznamçesis did not even hide the fact that the donations, including the composition of estates, were double-checked with the holders. Opportunities for corruption were embedded in this method, and the local elite was particularly keen to take advantage of them. An illustrative example, which is paralleled with Hungarian documentation, concerns Felnémet, north of Eger. During the 1552 siege of Eger, the village was devastated. From then until 1570, it was declared a deserted area (mezra) with the annual income of 4,480 akçes and allocated to timars. Thereafter, still designated as an uninhabited village, its tax was set at 5,800 akçes and it was owned by the beys of Hatvan. According to the Hungarian survey registers, the village was resettled within a year. There were sixty-four peasant families living there in 1553, and in 1556, ninety-six people paid Hungarian wheat tithes and several hundred paid wine tithes.31 The beys must have made a huge profit from the estates. Eventually, however, Kara Üveys Pasha of Buda introduced strict measures that terminated this undeclared income. The village could no longer be hidden among the

29  ÖNB Mxt 571, p. 285; BOA Ruznamçe 42, p. 5; ÖNB Mxt 579, pp. 27, 43, 163; BOA TT. d. 662, p. 38. 30  BOA TT. d. 318. 31  Imre Soós, Heves megye községei 1867-ig. Eger, 1975, 203; Péter Bán (ed.), Dézsma­ jegyzékek. Heves és Külső-Szolnok vármegye, 1556 . Eger, 1998, 29–37, 87–89.

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“deserted” villages; it was properly registered, and from 1580, now called a town, it was part of the bey’s estate with a tax of 42,726 akçes.32 4. The greatest contradiction is between the taxes officially registered in survey registers and the dues that were actually demanded. The mufassal defteris had the same structure in Hungary as they had in the Balkan Peninsula. First, they stated the cash amount payable by the town or village (resm-i kapu), followed by the tithes on crops and livestock, stipulated in both quantity and money. The list concluded with numerous small cash tax items (fines, marriages, taxes on deserted areas, mills, fishponds and so on). The registers are utterly convincing, because they give the impression that the dues were adjusted to the size and production of the villages. When we try to use these sources, however, we get the feeling that something is amiss, even without the Hungarian material for comparison. The most important branch of agriculture in sixteenth-century Hungary – and the best guarantee of its survival through the two hundred years of war – was cattle breeding. This took up large amounts of energy and labour and was highly remunerative. And yet the Ottoman state claimed only the customs duties due on the export of this commodity. This revenue increased until the seventeenth century, during which it gradually declined. The owners of the places where cattle were bred claimed only the tax on the grazing pastures. How did this happen? The transformation of farming by the Hungarian nobility throughout the country lead to an increase in the use of corvée. Should we believe that only the sipahis refrained from it because it was not included in the registers? Nor did the registers include honey or butter. Does it mean that the Ottomans did not use anything to sweeten or fatten their victuals? After Hungarian forces recaptured many fortresses from the northern sancaks in late 1593, the counties engaged in a feverish round of investigations. To find out what kind of income they could count on from the territories liberated from Ottoman taxes (only temporarily, but they were not to know that), they thoroughly questioned the inhabitants about the dues that the Ottomans had extracted from them.33 The several hundred answers reflect 32  BOA TT. d. 662, p. 4. 33  MNL OL E 156-a 6/59, 11/34r, 24/76, 24/79, 57/42, 59/13, 65/84r, 86/3r, 106/75, 106/76, 108/66, 110/64v, 117/69; Richard Marsina and Michal Kušík, Urbáre feudálnych panstiev na Slovensku. Vol. 1: XVI. storočie. Bratislava, 1959.

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much adjustment to local habits and conditions and bear few similarities to the system officially laid down in the Ottoman survey register. This is further evidence that peasant services were above all defined by the needs and ideas of the soldier-landlords. Let us start with state taxes. Two of the dues mentioned most often were direct state taxes: the cizye and the short-lived “sword money” (kılıç akçesi, Latin: pecunia gladialis).34 What stands out is that instead of the standard sums prescribed by the treasury, which applied to everyone, these were collected in endlessly varying amounts. The cizye, despite being the most precisely-defined state tax, was levied at rates varying from half to three florins per hane, most often between one and one and a half florins. The sword tax was also applied at varying rates and collected at wildly different intervals (although that may be considered natural for an extraordinary military tax). Behind the inconsistencies, one suspects – even in the sixteenth century – the arbitrary behaviour of emins and sipahis. For the landlords, the most important dues were the items paid in cash, many of which were unknown to defters. Some of these were levied on religious practices: “church tax” (resm-i kilise, Latin: parochialis), which might have been a state tax; “priest money” (sacerdotalis), “disbelievers’ tax” (barbarus), and “schoolmaster tax”(?) (lector). They borrowed from the Hungarian system the lucrative tax on inn-keeping and wine-selling (educillationis). The village’s “negotiated” tax, the summa, was made up mostly of money and to a lesser extent of produce in defined quantities; the amount of the summa rose everywhere as time went by. Hungarian surveys make the way sipahis collected tax seem a lot simpler than what the Ottoman registers tell us. Roughly speaking, the towns and villages divided into three main groups: Those from whom the landlord demanded tithes in produce rather than cash, or levied only negligible sums; those from whom he demanded as much money as possible; and the smallest group, who paid both in cash and produce. The different forms taken by this tax burden in this description remind us of the diversity of survey registers. What all three groups had in common was that they provided large quantities 34  On this, see Fodor, The Business of State, 232.

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of both butter and honey. They differed, however, in whether or not they performed corvée, and if so, how much. The reason for the differences unquestionably lies in the distances from Ottoman fortresses. In Ottoman Hungary, especially in the border areas, no sipahi lived in any of the towns belonging to his estate, as the raiding Hungarian forces would have beaten him to death. They all lived within the protective walls of the fortresses and had their dues brought to them there: Produce and free labour from the nearby villages, and money from the more distant ones. When plotted on the map, the various taxation items clearly fall into zones. Areas in the close vicinity of fortresses were characterized by tithes of produce and heavy corvée. Going further out, we find a zone where the emphasis was on tax in cash, complemented with a certain amount of produce, primarily butter and honey, and often with livestock (this is where we find the cattle being brought in as tax) and corvée. In the outer zones there was less and less butter and honey, and the corvée disappeared (“because they lived too far away”). There, tax in cash predominated, and became increasingly onerous as time went by. Naturally, we cannot talk in terms of circles of increasing radius in a regular pattern measurable in kilometres and with no exceptions. The villages in the fortress districts of Filek, Siçen, Novigrad, Keköy (Kékkő) and Divin (Divény) usually fitted into this scheme, but the village of Tard, located far from the fortress of Canfeda ( Jászberény), did not; its inhabitants claimed to be paying tax in kind because their landlords, the infantry of the fortress, “appreciate money less”.35 Corvée benefited two masters: the state and the landlord. Ottoman fortresses and their civilian towns were maintained with the unpaid labour of their subjects. People doing corvée repaired battlements, cleaned trenches, transported building material and built houses. They primarily supplied the sipahis with hay and wood, and – not so often at this point – cultivated their vineyards. The Hungarian county investigations enable us to trace the development of taxes and dues almost throughout the seventeenth century. These bore gradually decreasing resemblance to the directives of the previous century’s mufassal 35  MNL OL 156-a, 106/75, p. 24.

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defteris, which – in the absence of new surveys – remained the norm in theory, but faded into the past, to be replaced by thousands of new demands. The first half of the century was spent re-conquering the border area. The towns and villages which fell victim started their second Ottoman era with symbolic dues. Their situation became dire and their burden heavy when the trouble blew over them and moved to north, so that they became regular taxpayers. The dues were set by negotiations and agreements between the sipahis and tax-payers. In contemporary terminology, they “reached an accord”. This accord changed with each new landlord, but incorporated any increase in taxes made by the previous landlord (although such an increase was unlikely to have been written down). Every new bargain carried new obligations, and it would be naïve to imagine that the two parties ever met on equal terms. A settlement could only pull any weight if, as a last resort, all the inhabitants were prepared to move away, leaving the town or village deserted. In such cases, the sipahi went after them, luring them back home with a new bargain involving lower taxes. Few settlements undertook such an elaborate method, being fully aware that, in a few years’ time, everything would start again. The inhabitants went through several periods of change in the first half of the seventeenth century. The 1606 Treaty of Zsitvatorok declared that the noble inhabitants of towns and villages under Ottoman taxation were, from then on, free in person and property, and exempt from Ottoman taxation. In the 1620s, however, the authorities obliged the nobles, sometimes as a body, sometimes as individuals, to pay taxes. Although the reform only affected a fraction of the nobility, it terrified both peasants and lords. At the same time, the sultanic has estates were being carefully selected; this unleashed the state tax-collectors, the often-changing, unscrupulous and corrupt emins, on numerous villages.36 In the 1630s – a decade already made miserable by increasingly frequent violent subjugation – the burdens increased frighteningly: The existing dues, especially the corvée, increased year by year, and many new obligations were introduced.37 36  The reports of investigation of the first three decades of the century: MNL OL A 98, fasc. 13, pp. 798–808 (material of the year 1627), pp. 936–948 (material of the year 1634). 37  For the 1630s: MNL OL A 98, fasc. 13, pp. 936–948, 1125–1143.

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Added almost everywhere to the original dues of wheat, hay, butter and honey were livestock (oxen, beef cattle, dairy cows and cows with calves, calves, and lambs), firewood, and a range of horticultural produce from lentils to dried fruit. Wine was also on the list, and the peasants increasingly complained that they had to cultivate the sipahi’s vineyard. In forested areas, beams, planks and shingles were quite often officially part of the summa, although presumably used for buildings belonging to the state, while in the vicinity of mines, wrought iron, horseshoes, hoes, nails, iron-rimmed cart wheels, and occasionally weapons appeared. The demands extended to all kinds of raw materials and manufactured products: copper, harnesses, wild animal pelts, fur-lined coats, mineral salt, millstones, falcons, pots, soap, knives, and even expensive imported products such as English cloth, other foreign textiles, and pepper. Of all these, only a few had been required by the sixteenth-century mufassal defteris. The cash part of the summa increased continuously, and another two lucrative sources of income added by the tax collectors became the target of complaints made en masse by subjects in both the border areas and the interior of Ottoman Hungary. They went as far as Istanbul to seek redress. Survey registers from earlier times considered fines from a village as part of the sipahis’ lawful income, but seventeenth-century punishments for crimes do not seem to have been the continuation of these. The sipahi could levy a fine on the village if the villagers delivered the tax late, missed the day of the corvée or were involved in fighting, or just at random, for crimes that never happened. The sum paid annually was higher than the yearly summa. The other idea was to collect a vast sum of blood money if the head of the family died of natural causes, as if it had been a murder, and the family’s horse or cow was held as surety until they paid up. In the County of Bihar, which bordered the Principality of Transylvania, the sipahi made the foreman of one village swear that he would report even quarrels; should he not do so, he would be beaten to death. Another sipahi expected the heads of families in his village to leave something valuable to him in their wills.38

38  MNL OL A Gyulafehérvári Káptalan Országos Levéltára, Magyar Kamara Archívuma, Miscellanea F 9, Cista 3, Fasc. 1, No. 2, p. 14r: Brondaszó, p. 10v: Mezőgyán.

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Corvée became the most serious grievance in the middle of the seventeenth century, in both the border areas and the interior of Ottoman Hungary.39 The 1641 investigation in one of the processuses (járás: district) of the County of Bars, north of Esztergom included a calculation of the expenses of the corvée. In the various towns and villages, these constituted between 28% and 89% of all dues that could be expressed in money.40 Previously, labour had primarily meant transportation (carrying coal, wood and building material) and building work, but these tasks had been overtaken by field work (ploughing, sowing, harvesting and reaping), cultivating vineyards, and tending animals. The peasants called these tasks “never-ending”, often causing them to fall behind with the farming of their own lands. The change clearly indicates that in the long peaceful period of the first part of the century, sipahis set up their own farms in the vicinity of their dwellings, on which they used the unpaid labour of their tax-payers to produce food needed for their households. With luck, they also had some surplus to sell at the market. Between 1658 and 1664, war raged again in Hungary, first in Transylvania, and then against the kingdom. The Ottomans took Varad in 1660 and Uyvar in 1663; both became centres of vilayets. The capture of these two vitally important border fortresses led to two very difficult decades for the inhabitants of Ottoman Hungary. The military forces were reinforced, boosting their selfconfidence, and the authorities gave them a free hand in everything, including the licence to steal. Uyvar became the strongest garrison against Vienna, and even the taxpayers of the southern areas had to contribute to its maintenance. They took food to the garrison of nearly three thousand troops, a task levied by the state (in every part of Ottoman Hungary this task was called “carting to Uyvar”). Another novelty of the period was making the “extraordinary war taxes” (avarız, sürsat, iştira) regular in Ottoman Hungary (in the Latin–Hungarian terminology, subjects universally called this item of tax “porte money”). 39  The County of Pest more or less corresponded to the sancak of Buda. There, too, the most frequent complaint was about corvée. The 1668 investigation of the county was published by István Purjesz, ‘A török hódoltság Pest megyében a XVII. század második felében (Pest megye 1668. évi vizsgálati jegyzőkönyve a török ellen)’, Levéltári Közlemények 28 (1958) 173–200. 40  MNL OL A 98, Fasc. 13, pp. 1002–1008.

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The report of an investigation in the County of Gömör, in the northern border area, has survived from this period.41 In early 1669, the county officials asked questions about the changes that had taken place since the Peace Treaty of Vasvár, concluded in 1664. The foremen of villages and towns gave a brief account of the further increase in the dues customarily payable to landlords and the appearance of new ones. Two new state taxes recur in their stream of complaints. They paid the avarız in cash, and surprisingly, the majority of villages also paid off the “carting to Uyvar” in cash, modifying its name to “hiring carts for Uyvar”. Their reports make clear that both were ordered by the sipahi; he decided how often they should be collected, and fixed the varying amount. He also took the money, and how much of it he delivered to Eğri and Uyvar is unclear. The whole of the investigative material speaks of tyranny and vulnerability, which also shows up in the manipulation of the money itself. Taxes were calculated in silver and gold, while the peasants usually only had copper coins of little value. The sipahis exchanged these at a reduced rate, a little trick that could increase their income by 10–20%. 5. The official system of land ownership and taxation that can be reconstructed from the mufassal and icmal defteris in Ottoman Hungary went through significant alterations in practice, especially in the border areas, mainly because the territory remained a war zone throughout the Ottoman period. Additionally, several points of day-to-day procedures were clearly adapted to the local Hungarian habits. The disintegration of the timar system was probably accelerated by the sipahis’ realization that the Hungarian nobles exercised full rights over their own estates. The sipahis must also have been influenced by how Hungarian landlords who were dissatisfied with the dues paid by their peasants set up their own farms. These farms were cultivated with corvée and provided income for the landlords. The sipahis also took a fancy to some Hungarian taxes and happily adopted them. In the northern border areas, “porte money” was being collected as early as the 1630s, a time when – according to the accounts of the peasants – the Hungarian counties also levied military tax. This seems to have been mere copying to begin with, and only after 1660 was the term transferred 41  ŠA v Banskej Bystrici P. Z. 173.

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to the avarız and other taxes of the same kind. Some villages near fortresses, which paid tithe and did corvée, gave detailed accounts of how their obligations were regulated. The dues were adapted to the villagers’ financial situation and the division of labour, very reminiscent of the way in which the urbarium, a kind of Hungarian economic document, regulated the relationship between Hungarian nobles and their serfs, the taxes and labour.

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ACCOUNTS OF THE BATTLE OF MEZŐKERESZTES IN THE PINELLI COLLECTION OF THE BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA IN MILAN Zsuzsa Kovács

Freelance researcher [email protected]

Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601),

son of a wealthy Genoese merchant family that had settled in Naples, moved to Padua in 1558 to study law, but never got as far as taking his doctorate. Instead, he pursued independent studies, satisfying his diverse interests. His reputation as a scholar caused his house in Padua – where he lived until his death – to become a meeting place for intellectuals who came to the city. He set up a botanical garden and collected minerals, fossils, astronomical and optical instruments, maps, ancient coins and portraits of famous persons. His collection of ten thousand books and manuscripts was almost unparalleled in Europe. Through his wide-ranging international correspondence, he linked up scholars in Italy with those north of the Alps, establishing an extensive information system for the exchange of ideas and news, as the enormous number of letters surviving in his collection attest. Besides the works of philosophy, theology and science in his universal collection, one of the largest thematic groups consists of political/diplomatic 1

1  For a biography with bibliography, see Marco Collegari, ‘Pinelli, Gian Vincenzo’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Vol. 83. Roma, 2015. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ gian-vincenzo-pinelli_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.

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documents from Italian and European courts and reports (Avvisi) from various cities, documenting Pinelli’s particular interest in current events. After Pinelli’s death, one third of his books and manuscripts were lost as the result of various vicissitudes, but in 1608, Cardinal Federico Borromeo managed to purchase the rest, laying the foundations of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. The manuscripts, most of them copies that Pinelli acquired from diverse places via his correspondence were bound into volumes. These codices often contain more than a hundred documents, some grouped thematically or chronologically, but in most cases mixed and unsorted. Consequently, a study of documents on one subject or period demands a systematic search. The collection includes manuscripts on the geography, history and financial affairs of the Ottoman Empire and also on the religion and customs of Turks. (There were also pictures of Ottoman emperors in the portrait collection.)2 Some codices contain several documents on this subject, grouped together,3 but most are scattered among several dozen volumes of miscellaneous content (such as a copy of Felix Petancius’s writing on the Turks, most recently studied by Géza Dávid). More is known on the Hungary-related manuscripts in the collection. Some pre-1550 documents of Hungarian interest in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana are registered in the Vestigia database, and these include manuscripts in Pinelli codices.4 Most of the collection, however, consists of contemporary documents dating from after the 1560s, and although some individual manuscripts and even substantial groups from this period are known to Hungarian researchers,5 they have not yet been studied systematically from a Hungarian viewpoint. 2  For the list of the portrait collection, see S 93 sup., fols. 175r–187r. 3  D 484 inf., G 56 inf., Q 116 sup., R 125 sup. 4  See http://vestigia.hu/kereses/?l=&t=&BAMi&mind&kifejezes=pinelli&BAMi&mind& kifejezes=pinelli. 5  Giacomo Bascapé, who has published several manuscripts containing descriptions of Transylvania, mostly from the Pinelli collection, has indicated many codices that contain documents concerning the general, military and cultural history of Transylvania. See Giacomo Bascapè, Le relazioni fra l’Italia e la Transilvania. (Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto per l’Europa Orientale, 2. serie: Politica, storia, economia, 20.) Roma, 1931. One of the most significant groups of Hungary-related manuscripts, the letters and other writings of Nicasius Ellebodius, who corresponded with Pinelli from Pozsony, are currently under study.

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Among the manuscripts on contemporary events in the Pinelli collection, besides news from the Italian courts and the Dutch war, there is a substantial group of letters and other writings concerning Ottoman expansion and wars against the Turks, and many of these come from the Hungarian theatre of operations. More than eighty documents in various codices have survived from the last ten years of Pinelli’s life, the time of the Long War (1593–1606), in which Italian forces played a substantial part. They are reports of Ottoman and Christian military strength, descriptions of forts, castle sieges and battles, letters from rulers and officers of various rank, speeches, political and strategic analyses, diplomatic instructions, and many Avvisi from Constantinople, Vienna, Pozsony (Bratislava) and the theatre of war.6 Several reports have survived of an Ottoman-Christian clash of 1596, one of the most important in terms of its long-term effects, the Battle of Mezőkeresztes:7 S 103 sup./16, fols. 242r–243v: Relatione di un gentil’huomo di Urbino venuto di Ongaria et capitato a Vicenza alli 24 9bre 1596 dal Conte Carlo Tiene. Inc.: Doppo preso Attuano che fu alli 3 di 7bre… Expl.: ...con tutto che l’inimico passasse M/100 soldati da combattere.

6  Most documents known to researchers of Ottoman Hungary are those manuscripts noted by Bascapè. It was his discovery, for example, that led to the publication of a report on the siege of Esztergom in 1595: Chiara Maria Carpentieri and Armando Nuzzo, ‘Egy olasz szemtanú beszámolója Balassi Bálint haláláról’, in Lymbus. Magyarságtudományi Forrásközlemények 2011. Budapest, 2012, 53–83. 7  The battle was the subject of several accounts and related corpuses published at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it received little attention later. It returned to the centre of attention in the last fifteen to twenty years. Some major publications: Sándor László Tóth, A mezőkeresztesi csata és a tizenöt éves háború. Szeged, 2000; Sándor József Lénárt, „Őszi ködben múló remények”. Mezőkeresztes 1596. [Mezőkeresztes], 2000; Kelenik József, ‘A mezőkeresztesi csata (1596. október 26.)’, in Róbert Hermann (ed.), „Fegyvert s vitézt...” A magyar hadtörténet nagy csatái. Budapest, 2003, 111–129; Günhan Börekçi, Macaristan’da Bir Osmanlı Padişahı. Sultan III. Mehmed’in Eğri Seferi Rûznâmesi (1596). İstanbul, 2016; Feridun M. Emecen, ‘1596. Sonucu Olmayan Büyük Zafer: Haçovası Meydan Savaşı’, in Feridun M. Emecen and Erhan Afyoncu, Savaşın Sultanları. Osmanlı Padişahlarının Meydan Muharebeleri. Vol. 2. Ed. by Coşkun Yılmaz. İstanbul, 2018, 65–145.

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(The entry on the strengths of various military units on fol. 243v were probably not part of the report, and its figures conflict with those in the text.) The report of a gentleman of Urbino who came from Hungary and visited Count Carlo Thiene in Vicenza on 24 November 1596. The author is unknown. (Probably he was not one of the Genga brothers of Urbino who served the prince of Transylvania. Simone Genga fought in the Battle of Mezőkeresztes but did not return to Italy,8 and it is clear from the report that its author was fighting in Maximilian’s army and not with the forces of the prince of Transylvania.) The text of the report is published in translation at the end of the chapter. S 103 sup./19, fols. 246r–247r: Di Cassovia a dì 28 8bre 1596. L’arciduca Massimiliano all’Imperatore. Inc.: Alli 22 del corrente, come il giorno precedente ne diedi avviso… Expl.: ...ma è stato liberato et ora è arivato a Filech. A newsletter sent by Giovanni Battista Corona – captain-general of Gradiška, which at that time belonged to Graz – to an unknown recipient. A note appended at the end informs of its origin: “This is all I could make out from Archduke Maximilian’s letter to the emperor, subsequently sent to our sovereign [Ferdinand II, archduke of Further Austria, with his seat in Graz, later king of Hungary], which the Nuncio showed me.” Italian translation of a known report of Archduke Maximilian.9 S 103 sup./20–21, fols. 249r–250v: Di Cassovia li 29 8bre 1596. Inc.: Alli 18 corrente ci congiongessimo con la persona del Transilvano… Expl.: ...che il re si sia salvato, e tutti fecero il medesimo. A newsletter in the customary form, with the location and date as title, and omitting the signature and addressee of the original letter. The first-personsingular narration of the events of the battle in the report suggests that the original letter was written by an Italian officer in the army of Archduke 8  Gianluca Masi, Nuovi documenti riguardanti la presenza di Simone Genga in Transilvania. (Istros, 18.) Brăila, 2012, 354. 9  Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 8969, 144. Hungarian translation in Gusztáv Gömöry, ‘Miksa főherczeg jelentése Rudolf császár és magyar királyhoz a mezőkeresztesi csatáról’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 5 (1892) 394–399.

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Maximilian after they retreated to Kassa (Košice). The text of the letter was subsequently probably disseminated in several copies. One variant is a report held in Venice, published by Hurmuzaki under the title “Relazione della battaglia”,10 and another, the battle description in the Melfi letter discussed below. The Venetian variant is the most distant descendant of the original letter, and is missing several details that appear in the other two. (Among these are sentences that excuse Maximilian from responsibility for the defeat: “It was to the great shame and loss of the poor archduke, who was not at fault in this, that some prompted him to turn and run as the battle went on into the night and nobody was chasing him… There were two who persuaded the archduke to cross the ford, the prince of Transylvania and Pálffy, saying that victory was ours. After the said error there was another, and greater mistake: they prompted the archduke to flee, and to run away after crossing the ford, because if he had only stopped, he could have gained control of the chaos.”) This variant would also be worth publishing. S 103 sup./20–21, fols. 250v–251r: Copia d’una lettera scritta al duca di Baviera dal colonello O. G. Di Cassovia 29 ottobre 1596. Inc.: Mi dispiace infinitamente avisare Vostra Alteza… Expl.: ...Vi è restato morto il Signor di Bletimbergh [Plettenberg] di una archibusciata avuta in fronte. The copy does not preserve the addressee, and gives name of the writer of the letter only in abbreviated form. Colonel O. G. (?) was probably the leader of the Bavarian forces in the battle. In his letter to Elector Maximilian I of Bavaria,11 he briefly summarizes the events of the battle and appraises its outcome, reporting the death of Count Plettenberg, commander of the Bavarian infantry, who fought in the battle.12

10  Eudoxiu de Hurmuzaki, Documente privitóre la Istoria Românilor. Vol. 3, Part 2: 1576–1600. Bucuresci, 1888, 224–225. 11  He was probably the addressee, although it was only in the following year that his father, William V, officially abdicated the title of elector in his favour. 12  Plettenberg was a colonel in the Bavarian infantry; cf. Cesare Campana, Delle historie del mondo. Vol. 2. Venetia, 1597, 50.

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G 271 inf./102, ff. 156r–159r: Letter of Antonio dall’Oglio to Francesco Cololongo in Venice, Kassa, 30 October 1569. Inc.: Per la mia bona fortuna son gionto a Cassovia… Expl.: … il tempo li dirà, facendo fine. Mario Pozzi published some excerpts from the letter in his book on Filippo Pigafetta,13 Pigafetta (of Vicenza) having sent a copy of the letter to Belisario Vinta, secretary of Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici of Tuscany on 6 December 1596, with the comment: “I herewith send you a letter from our Captain Antonio dall’Oglio of Vicenza, who was present at the defeat of the Christians, and in my opinion it contains many important details that are worthy of the attention of your highness.”14 Given the close relations between Pigafetta and Pinelli, it is reasonable to suppose that the copy of the letter in the Pinelli collection originates from Pigafetta, or vice versa. Antonio dall’Oglio is known to have already fought in the Hungarian theatre of war, having been a captain in the siege of Esztergom in 1595.15 He arrived in Fülek, the rendezvous point for the Christian armies, with the troops of Archduke Maximilian, and we learn from the letter that in the battle, where he was wounded, he fought alongside Margrave Karl von Burgau. He tells the story in detail and with passion. The account is all the more valuable for its closeness to dall’Oglio’s original letter, a direct or at most secondary copy, unlike the other battle descriptions formed into newsletters, which come from texts that have been copied several times and altered, with the attendant losses. – It would certainly be worth publishing the full text of the letter. G 271 inf./103, fols. 160r–162r: Letter of the Austrian provincial and ultramontane visitor Giuseppe Melfi to the rector of the Society of Jesus in Mantua, Vienna, 9 November 1596. Inc: Molte cose potrei addurre in escusatione

13  Mario Pozzi (ed.), Filippo Pigafetta consigliere del Principe. Vol. 1: La questione turca. Vicenza, 2004, 76–78. 14  Pozzi (ed.), Filippo Pigafetta, Vol 2: Lettere del periodo mediceo, 154. 15  Giovanni Nicolò Doglioni, Historia delle guerre d’Ungheria. Cremona, 1598, 316; Campana, Delle historie, 719, 727–729; Florio Banfi, ‘Gianfrancesco Aldobrandini magyarországi hadi­ vállalatai’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 40:1 (1939) 26–27. (Banfi – erroneously – describes him as a Florentine captain.)

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di questa mia si lunga tardanza… Expl.: …all’orazioni de’ quali similmente mi raccommando. The part of the letter reporting on the battle is in fact a variant of the text of the newsletter written in Kassa on 29 October, with some minimal changes in expression and formal alterations (the narrative is given in the third person instead of the first person singular, and is divided into paragraphs according to the days), with single-sentence comments appended to the text in two places. S 98 sup., fols. 256r–270v: Narratione di quantto è seguito in Ungheria del 1596 fatta per ordine dell’Arciduca Massimiliano. Arciducis Maximiliani, Ad principes christianos narratio rerum gestarum in Hungaria anno 1596. Inc.: Quandoquidem a multis fide dignis … Expl.: …ad eos provocamus qui consilijs, rebusque gestis interfuere. (Contains a description of the battle: fols. 263r–267v.) The codex containing this manuscript was probably also part of the Pinelli collection. In his Hungarian historical corpus,16 Kulcsár Péter identifies it – erroneously – as a report held in codex 8969 in Vienna. Another copy of Archduke Maximilian’s text is held in the Biblioteca Casanatense.17

appendix Relatione di un gentiluomo di Urbino venuto di Ongaria et capitato a Vicenza alli 24 9bre 1596 dal Conte Carlo Tiene18

||242r|| [1] Doppo preso Attuano che fu alli 3 di 7bre, sentendosi l’esercito del Turco con innumerabile gente, così dicevano, essere arrivato a Sonlek, si risolse la Maestà Cesarea del Re Massimiliano ritirarsi con l’esercito suo alli confini dell’Austria per poter ricevere gli aiuti, che gli veniva dato intentione di darli 16  ‘Inventarium de operibus litterariis ad res Hungaricas pertinentibus ab initiis usque ad annum 1700’, http://www.balassikiado.hu/BB/netre/Netre_kulcsar/Anno.htm. 17  Roma, Biblioteca Casanatense, Manoscritti, Ms. 712/5, fols. 51r–60v (see https://manus. iccu.sbn.it//opac_ SchedaScheda.php?ID=15652). 18  I have expanded the abbreviations in transcribing the text; the division of the sentences and the punctuation are mine; and I have followed modern norms in compounding or separating words, and the use of upper and lower case, and in marking the ‘h’.

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dalle provincie insieme di Alemagna, lasciando in Ongaria Superiore il signor Tifempoch, generale di quella parte con le sue genti, et con ordine di giungerne quel maggior numero che potette, inviando il signor luogotenente Conte della Torre con il suo regimento in Agria. [2] E poi certificato magiormente Sua Maestà che il campo nemico era per fare quella impresa, vi mandò il signor Conte Tersica con 600 moschettieri et il capitano Claudio Coccorani magiore di Sua Maestà Cesarea, li quali entrorono felicemente, ancorchè avessero sempre alle spalle li tartari, che la magior parte del camino gli accompagnorno. [3] Ritirato che fu Sua Maestà con l’esercito alla sponda del Danubio, credendo tardare le provisioni di Alemagna, et forsi raffreddare, poiché vedevano l’inimico impiegato in altra parte, et essendo avisato dal Prencipe di Transilvania, che sarebbe venuto agiuntarsi con Sua Maestà con assai buon numero delle sue genti, quando avesse voluto far presto ritorno in Ongaria Superiore, avendo per prima Sua Maestà dato ordine al signor Palfi, che mettesse in ordine quel magior numero di gente che potesse et che lo seguitasse, lasciando però ben guardate et presidiate le piazze di frontiera del suo governo, si partimmo alli 2 di 8bre dal Danubio in due truppe. [4] La prima guidata dal maestro di campo generale et l’altra da Sua Maestà; et caminando il signor Palfi per altro camino, poco lontano da Filech si trovorno tutti insieme, dove è intesa la perdita di Agria, et solicitando il camino, alli 18 si giuntassimo con il Transilvano et con il Teifempoch in una bellissima campagna. [5] Che fatto tutto uno esercito era di M/18 cavalieri ungari tutti con lancia, 9250 [!] raitri armati di tutte arme si come sono soliti et con le loro pistole, vi erano 7 compagnie di archibusieri a cavallo, et da 800 corazze tra li valloni dell’anno passato et li vesfali di questo anno, la infantaria alamana in tutto M/10 et la infantaria ungara M/12, che summa in tutto M/51 persone da combattere con M/72 carri da bagaglie et 100 pezzi d’artiglieria. [6] Il giorno seguente, senza perder punto di tempo, s’incaminorno per trovare l’inimico risoluti di dover combattere, et in due allogiamenti, che fu alli 20, arivamo al Mifols, ultimo luogo verso Agria, riparato all’ungara con palanche. [7] Et alli 21 si allogiò a un bosco, dove principiava una grandissima campagna; con la commodità ||242v|| della quale il giorno seguente, che fu alli 22, si ordinò l’esercito nella maniera che si disegnava voler combattere. [8] Dove che consumando molto tempo in questo, si tardò molto nell’arrivare a Rerste luogo abruciato sopra una picciola acqua, 272

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ma con cattivo fondo per passare. [9] Nel medesimo tempo ch’arrivò la nostra avanguardia, era arrivato il Turco con buon numero del suo esercito, et era passato con parte et con qualche pezzo di artiglieria da campagna a una chiesa disfatta, et quivi si attaccò un poco di scaramuccia. [10] Vedendosi l’esercito nostro che veniva per quella spatiosa campagna con spaventosa vista, si ritirò l’inimico oltre l’acqua senza fare alcuna resistenza. [11] Et li nostri godendo il beneficio del’occasione, passarono con l’inimico che pigliando la fuga lasciò 44 pezzi di campagna, ma li nostri, non li seguitando molto per la notte che già si era incominciata, si ritornò. [12] Né si poté per quella notte dare alcuna forma allo allogiamento, ma ogni persona si fermò dove era che per esser freddissimo in una campagna senza legno, si patì infinitamente. [13] Il giorno seguente, alli 23, fu riconosciuto un buon posto più vicino alla montagna, sopra la medesima acqua, lontano da Rerste da 3 miglia d’Italia; si condusse l’esercito in questo luogo, circondandolo dalle parti più pericolose con carri che rendevano così forte, come fusse trincerato, et con bellissima vista. [14] Alli 24 doppo mezogiorno, dall’altra parte del picciolo fiumicello si cominciò a vedere le prime squadre del campo inimico, che distendendosi per la campagna dalla parte sua, prima che fusse notte, si vidde tutto grandissimo veramente, il quale con perpetui gridi si allogiò lontano da noi un tiro di colubrina, ma noi sopra un poco di eminenza, et loro dietro un’altra, siché non si poteva far danno che il pretendere di dislogiarsi l’un l’altro. [15] La matina che fu li 25, noi ch’avamo l’esercito nostro con nuovo ordine da quello che si era tenuto alli 22, per contentare li transilvani che del primo non si sodisfavecano, et nel medesimo tempo l’inimico passò con qualche numero il picciolo fiumicello impadronendosi di una chiesa disfatta dalla parte nostra, lasciandone un’altra dalla parte loro, che vedendo li nostri volontariamente li lasciavano passare, perché magiormente s’impegnassero. [16] Passato mezogiorno, trattenendosi le cose né curando l’inimico di passare con magior numero alla chiesa, li nostri si accostorono, et ributtando li turchi li fece ripassare il fiumicello, et alcuni delli nostri vi passarono ancora, non vi morendo numero di gente considerabile. [17] Fatto scuro, tutti doi li eserciti si ritirarono a suoi alloggiamenti, lasciando grosse guardie nelle campagne, ma ognuno nella parte sua. [18] Nell’apparir dell’alba alli 26, alli 3 tiri di cannone fu tutta la gente nostra alla piazza d’arme, et con nuovo ordine si incominciò a caminare verso la chiesa, la quale di già era stata 273

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occupata da nemici, li quali ||243r|| li quali in assai buon numero erano passati, et da noi gli era dato tempo di passarne in maggior quantità. [19] Il corno nostro dritto caminava appresso il fiumicello, il manco alla campagna, alle spalle l’allogiamento nostro et alla fronte la chiesa. [20] L’inimico tenendosi forte si distese molto più di noi, con la fronte verso noi, et il corno suo dritto girò tanto con li tartari, che la nostra retroguardia gli voltò la faccia, avanzandosi sempre il campo nostro con bellissimo ordine. [21] Il corno dritto nostro attaccò con quelli della chiesa et ributtandoli li scacciorono, et accostandosi il rimanente della nostra gente, l’inimico più tosto ritirandosi che fugendo passò il fiumicello, discontandosi più di un miglio italiano. [22] Fu risoluto passare et seguitar la vittoria, ancorché grossissimo si vedessse l’inimico et ben posto; et così senza disturbo passammo, ma non con quel bell’ordine che si era tenuto di qua dall’acqua. [23] Et passato tutto l’esercito lasciandosi il fiumicello alle spalle, s’incominciò a caminare verso l’inimico, facendo l’artiglieria dall’una parte et l’altra l’officio loro. [24] Parve che li turchi volessero combattere, ma quando li nostri furono vicini una corsa di lancia, si cominciò a retirare, lasciando il suo allogiamento a noi sula parte dritta, non restando li tartari nel corno dritto loro di molestarne il sinistro nostro, ma avicinandosi al corpo dell’esercito inimico, abbandonando l’artiglieria, si ritirorno tutti. [25] Et li nostri entrando ne’ padiglioni si dettero a rubbare, così la fantaria come la cavalleria che mettendo li piedi a terra, molti satiavano la ingordia loro. [26] Arrivarono al padiglione del gran turco, dove era ancora qualche residuo de’ giannizzari et l’artiglieria incatenata, fecero un poco de difesa, di dove nacque la fuga de nostri, che moltiplicando questo, spaventarono tutto l’esercito [che] senza essere da nessuno cacciato, disordinatamente incominciò a correre verso il passo del fiumicello, che vedeasi, da pochissimi turchi furono gli ultimi delli nostri seguitati fino all’acqua. [27] Non fu possibile riparare questa fuga, che durando non corresse la maggior parte dell’esercito per molte leghe, chi da una parte, chi dall’altra, et alcuni al quartiero, li quali partirono passata la meza notte, et arrivarono sicuri con la magior parte delle bagaglie; et quelle che mancarono furono abandonate da proprij che né avevano cura, overo da nostri svaligiate. [28] Li nostri padiglioni furono lasciati volontariamente, le artiglierie rimasero per non avere chi le conducesse. [29] Né passò l’inimico la notte l’acqua, rimanendo dalla parte sua con più maturo consiglio di noi. [30] Così 274

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terminò la nostra infelice giornata delli 26 ottobre 1596 a Rareste, della quale non si è perso de nostri per mano de nemici M/6 persone et un palmo di terra, con tutto che l’inimico passasse M/100 soldati da combattere. ||243v|| Usari del Transilvano 6000 Slesia 1500 Usari del Teifempach 1800 Pipel Boemia 500 3000 Tetaur 500 Usari del Palfi Raitri Sassonia alta 1000 Austria 1000 Moravia 1000 Pepipeschi Boemia 1000 Franconia 1000 Sassonia bassa 1000

Campo del Reno 300 Campo de Svevia 300 Renuan 150 Archibugieri a cavallo Stetar campo una [!] Valloni campo due Tifempoch campo quattro Corazze valloni 800 Fanteria Alemana 7000 Zarab Transilvano 6000 Tifenpoch 10000 Palfi 6000

Report of a gentleman of Urbino who came from Hungary and visited Count Carlo Thiene in Vicenza on 24 November 1596.

[1] After the capture of Hatvan, which took place on 3 September, hearing that the sultan with his uncountable army – so they said – had arrived in Szolnok, his highness the emperor decided that King Maximilian should retreat with his army to the border with Austria to get assistance, because he was told that he was to be provided with assistance from all of the German provinces; he left in Upper Hungary Mr Teuffenbach,19 the general of that area, with his men, with the command to increase their number as far as he 19  Baron Christoph von Teuffenbach (1545–1598), captain-general of Upper Hungary.

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could; and he sent the Mr lieutenant, Count della Torre and his regiment to Eger. [2] Then, when his highness had better established that the enemy army wanted to take that town, he sent Mr Count Trčka20 with 600 musketeers and Captain Claudio Cocorano,21 his highness the emperor’s major, who fortunately managed to enter the town, even though the Tartars were always at their back and followed them for most of the way. [3] After his highness retreated to the bank of the Danube, because he believed that supplies from Germany were delayed and that perhaps the weather was turning cold (?) since the enemy had been seen to be engaged elsewhere, and the prince of Transylvania informed his highness that he would join him with a great number of men if he wanted to return to Upper Hungary soon, his highness first sent a command to Mr Pálffy22 to assemble as many men as he could and follow him, but leaving the forts along the border under his command with sufficient guards and defence; and on 2 October, in two groups, we departed from the Danube. [4] The first was led by the field marshal23 and the second by his highness; Mr Pálffy went by another route, and all met not far from Fülek, where heard of the loss of Eger, and accelerating the march, we made rendezvous on a beautiful field with the prince of Transylvania and Teuffenbach. [5] All of this constituted one army with 18 thousand Hungarian horsemen, all with lances; 9,250 reiters, according to their customs armed with all kinds of weapons and pistols; 7 mounted musket companies and about 800 cuirassiers, last year’s Walloons and this year’s Westphalians; the German infantry numbered 10 thousand in total and the Hungarian infantry 12 thousand; which made up a total of 51 thousand soldiers, with 72 thousand baggage wagons and 100 guns. [6] Next day, without losing any time, they set off to seek out the enemy, determined that they must do battle, and after making camp twice, we arrived on the 20th in Miskolc, the last place before Eger, defended in Hungarian style with a palisade. [7] On the 21st, we camped near a forest at the start of an enormous 20  Count Vilém Trčka z Lípy (Wilhelm Terzki von Lípa; Trzka), Bohemian lieutenant. 21  Claudio Cogorano (1554–1618), military engineer of Parma. The name Cocorano/ Cogorano appears erroneously in Hungarian literature in the form “Cogonara”. 22  Miklós Pálffy (1552–1600), field marshal of the Hungarian noble militia. 23  Adolf von Schwarzenberg (1547–1600), general of the Holy Roman Empire. In the Battle of Mezőkeresztes, he was the deputy to Archduke Maximilian, commander of the allied forces.

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field, and exploiting the opportunity, the next day, the 22nd, the army was set into battle order as planned for the encounter. [8] Since this took up much time there, they arrived only very late in Keresztes, a burned-down place on the bank of a little stream, although its course was very bad for crossing. [9] When our advance guard arrived, a large number of the sultan’s troops had already arrived, some of whom had crossed with a few field guns to a demolished church, and a small skirmish ensued. [10] Seeing our army, which approached with fearful spectacle on that wide field, the enemy retreated to the other side of the river without resistance. [11] Our troops, using the advantage offered by the occasion, crossed with the enemy, who fled leaving behind them 44 field guns, but our troops did not follow them for long, because night had descended, and they returned. [12] That night, it was not possible to make camp, and everyone stood where they happened to be, and because it was very cold on a field without firewood, we suffered endlessly. [13] The next day, the 23rd, a good place was designated nearer to the hills, on the bank of the same river, 3 Italian miles from Keresztes; the army was led there, and at dangerous points was surrounded by wagons, making them as strong as if they were surrounded by ditches, and presented a very fine sight. [14] On the afternoon of the 24th, the first troops of the enemy army started to appear on the far side of the little river, spread out on the field on their side, and before night descended, the whole thing appeared truly enormous, and they set up camp amidst constant shouts at culverin range, but we were behind a little hill and they behind another, so that we could cause no harm to each other, at most one could wish to displace the other from their place. [15] On the morning of the 25th, when our army stood in a new, different battle order than we had maintained on the 22nd – to satisfy the Transylvanians, who did not like the first battle order – in the same time, a small number of the enemy crossed the little river and took possession of a ruined church on our side, leaving another on their side, seeing which our side deliberately let them cross so that they would be more occupied. [16] After noon, the enemy keeping things to himself (?), and not taking trouble to cross to the church in larger numbers, our troops went closer and, beating back the Turks, forced them to the other side of the little river; and a few of ours also crossed without many of them being killed. [17] As darkness fell, both armies retreated to their camps, leaving a large guard on the fields, but 277

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each on their own side. [18] On the 26th, when dawn started to break, at the firing of three guns, our soldiers were all on the battlefield and in the new battle order marched towards the church that the enemy had captured, and had crossed in a large number, and we had given them time to cross in great quantity. [19] Our right wing proceeded beside the river and the left wing on the field, with our camp behind and the church ahead. [20] The enemy held themselves strongly and were much more spread out than us, their front towards us, and their right wing turned so far with the Tartars that our rearguard turned to face them, while our army advanced in very good order. [21] Our right wing attacked those at the church, beat them back and chased them away, and since the rest of our army was approaching, the enemy – retreating rather than fleeing – crossed the stream and moved away more than an Italian mile. [22] It was decided that we would cross and earn the victory – although the enemy seemed enormous and well placed – and we crossed without disturbance, but not in such good order as we had held on the near side of the water. [23] When the whole army had crossed and left the river at its back, they started to march towards the enemy, while the artillery did their work from one side and the other. [24] It seemed that the Turks wanted to fight, but when our side were at a lance-charge distance, they started to retreat, leaving to us the right side of their camp, and the Tartars did not remain on their right wing to trouble our left wing, but approaching the main enemy army, leaving their guns, all retreated. [25] Our side went into the tents and started to plunder, both the infantry and the cavalry, dismounting from the saddle, and many satisfied their greed. [26] They reached the sultan’s tent, where there remained some janissaries and the artillery chained together, and they defended a little, from where our troops started to flee, which, amplified, frightened the entire army, [who] without anyone pursuing them, started to run in disorder towards the river crossing, and seeing this, a very small number of Turks pursued the last of our soldiers to the water. [27] This flight was impossible to stop or to prevent from continuing, so that most of the army ran many miles, some this way, some that, and a few went to the camp and started out after midnight, arriving in Kassa in safety with most of the baggage; the baggage that was missing had been left by its owners, because they did not trouble with it or it was looted by our troops. [28] We left our tents deliberately, and the guns remained there 278

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because there was nobody to take them. [29] The enemy did not cross the river by night and stayed on their own side, more prudent than us. [30] That was how our luckless battle ended at Keresztes on 26 October 1596, the day when only five thousand of our troops and a palm-sized stretch of land were lost to the enemy, even though the enemy had more than a hundred thousand soldiers. Prince of Transylvania’s hussars 6,000 Silesia Teuffenbach’s hussars 1,800 Popel Bohemia Pálffy’s hussars 3,000 Tetaur Reiters Upper Saxony 1,000 Austria 1,000 Moravia 1,000 Pepipeschi (?) Bohemia 1,000 Franconia 1,000 Lower Saxony 1,000

1,500 500 500

Rhine army 300 Swabian army 300 Renuan (?) 150 Mounted musketeers Stetar number one camp Walloons number two camp Teuffenbach number four camp Wallonian cuirassiers 800 German infantry 7,000 Transylvanian Zarab (?) 6,000 Teuffenbach 10,000 Pálffy  6,000

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AYN ALİ’S TREATISE ON THE “RANKS” Douglas A. Howard Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan [email protected]

INTRODUCTION

Ayn Ali, the Ottoman scribe who wrote an influential work on the timar

institution, also wrote a second book. This second work is not as well-known as the first, yet in many manuscripts they appear one after the other,1 and thus for a great many Ottomans the two works must have been thought of together. His first work, called Kavanin-i Al-i Osman der Hulasa-i Mezamin-i Defter-i Divan, or “Regulations of the Ottoman Dynasty: a Synthesis of the Contents of the Council Registers”, was based on knowledge of the timar institution that Ayn Ali acquired while serving as intendant of the imperial registry (emin-i defter-i hakani). Now he wrote in response to a decree that another work be done like the first, but giving “the numbers of the kul class, what their daily [wages] and imposts were and, in a full year, what kind of treasure was given for the kul appropriations alone”. The grand vizier asked that a work be written giving this data, like the other, “in understandable terms and in a summary fashion”. Ayn Ali’s response to this challenge became his second work, titled Risale-i Vazife-Horan ve Meratib-i Bendegan-i Al-i Osman, or “Treatise on the Salaried Personnel and Ranks of the Bondsmen of the House of Osman”. As it happens, an anonymous one-page petition (arz) gives data in categories broadly similar to those used by Ayn Ali and from nearly the same date as the 1  The printed edition by Şinasi was based on one such manuscript; see Kavanin Risalesi. İstanbul, 1863, 82–102. The text was republished in facsimile with an introduction by M. Tayyib Gökbilgin. İstanbul, 1979.

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Risale, nevruz 1017 to nevruz 1018/22 March 1609–23 March 1610.2 The arz and the Risale must be related, but just how is unclear, perhaps both were written as a result of the decree referred to by Ayn Ali. One can imagine what might have prompted the grand vizier’s request. By 1609 Kuyucu Murad Pasha had defeated the celali rebels and attention may have turned to financial reform, in a situation where timar records were obsolete and the nature of a janissary career was radically different than it had been half a century earlier.3 Of this context Ayn Ali mentions nothing, and if he had it in mind his response seems to have been that good solutions required good information. No one, he wrote, really knew the figures beyond a small circle of specialists, who themselves knew only the specific matters with which they were concerned. No one had an overall grasp of the situation; no one before had “rattled the reed and pressed the figures in this respect”. The challenge to gather useful data motivated him; the information “had never been collected in one place”, and to do so “in such a way was beyond our capacity”. Of the many differences between the petition and the Risale the crucial one is Ayn Ali’s transparency about his sources and method. He was keen to lay out a conception of the Ottoman fiscal model and to demonstrate the value of a proper research method. Some interesting details in the petition do not appear in Ayn Ali, such as the five hundred fifty loads (yük) of akçes for salaries of personnel connected with Budun (Buda), Eğri (Eger), and Kanije (Kanizsa), because Ayn Ali gave only the salary payments and stipends to palace officials, and did not include figures for revenues at all. And the petition concludes with a request that the sultan be informed annually by such a report of revenues and expenditures, done nevruz to nevruz. Ayn Ali made no such recommendation. For later generations the value of both the Kavanin and the Risale lay in the data they contained. Koçi Bey, Paul Rycault, and Hezarfen Hüseyin all used the Kavanin for the number of timars in the provinces of the empire.4 Katib 2  Published in a readable photograph in Mehmet Genç and Erol Özvar (eds.), Osmanlı Mali­ yesi: Kurumlar ve Bütçeler. 2 vols. İstanbul, 2006, II. 103. 3  Linda T. Darling, ‘The Janissaries of Damascus in the Sixteenth Century, or How Conquering a Province Changed the Ottoman Empire.’ Otto Spies Memorial Lecture, University of Bonn, 29 June 2018. 4  Ali Kemali Aksüt (ed.), Koçi Bey Risalesi. İstanbul, 1939, 141–143; Paul Rycaut, The Present

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Çelebi reported that “his second work is on the number of Ottoman soldiers”,5 but later writers did not make comparable use of the Risale’s figures because they had access to more recent records – these did not exist for timars. Yet if it was the numbers that interested Ottoman readers, we today are confronted with the problem of the many discrepancies among the surviving manuscripts of the Risale. Of the more than three dozen known manuscript copies of the Risale I was able to consult ten.6 I based this study on the copy of the Risale in the manuscript Esad Efendi 2361,7 a codex that contains the Kavanin, the Risale, and the Niğbolu kanunnamesi. Since each of the manuscripts I looked at contained an identical omission, explained below, it is possible that all the copies I consulted are related as one group in a stemma, and that a superior copy might still be found. This manuscript does offer the important benefit of being very early, with a colophon dated 9 Şaban 1020/18 October 1611.

AYN ALİ’S RESEARCH

Ayn Ali brought together the records of

his own “auditing (comparing) bureau” (mukabele) with two others, the “foot soldier comparing bureau” (piyade mukabelesi), and the “lesser daybook bureau” (küçük ruznamçe).8 He based his research on one three-month quarter, the reşen quarter (RecebŞaban-Ramazan) of the Hijri year 1018 (30 September–27 December 1609). State of the Ottoman Empire. London, 1668, 190–201; Hezârfen Hüseyin Efendi, Telhîsü’l-Beyân fî Kavânîn-i Âl-i Osmân. (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, II/32.) Ed. by Sevim İlgürel. Ankara, 1998, 90–100. 5  Katib Çelebi, Kaşf al-Zunun. 2 vols. İstanbul, 1941–1943, I. 1314. 6  Süleymaniye Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi, Esad Efendi 2271/1; Süleymaniye Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi, Veliyüddin Efendi 1971 (henceforth Veliyüddin 1971); Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Yazma Eserler Kütüphanesi, Revan 1323; İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi Nadir Eserler Bölümü, Türkçe Yazmalar 1392; Koyunoğlu Şehir Müzesi ve Kütüphanesi, 13554; Öster­ reichische Nationalbibliothek, A.F. 356 [Flügel 1821] and H.O. 148b [Flügel 1819]; and Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Ms. Török O. 106 and Ms. Török O. 253. The Şinasi edition represents another, unidentified manuscript. 7  Ayn Ali, Risale-i Vazife-Horan ve Bendegan-i Al-i Osman. Süleymaniye Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi, Esad Efendi 2361 (henceforth Esad 2361). 8  Esad 2361, fol. 39rv.

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The bureaus were organised according to what information they needed or, in other words, according to what registers each kept.9 The titles of the registers and the bureaus that maintained them reflected their functions: the ruznamçe was a “daybook”, in which receipts and payments were recorded chronologically. The mukabeleci compared wage tickets with salary records and authorized payment.10 Modern readers might expect that finance operations ought to be divided between income and expenditures. But “the Ottoman division of labor was predicated on the nature of the revenue source and the records and types of problems associated with it”.11 One daybook bureau recorded the daily income and expenditures of the finance department, the other the müşahere-horan, palace personnel paid monthly rather than quarterly or half-yearly.12 The bureaus also recorded gold, silver, furs, cloth and other goods both coming into and leaving the treasury – income and expenditures were handled by the same bureaus.13 The piyade mukabelesi bureau paid the janissaries, armourers, cannoners and carters, as well as the newly recruited “foreign youths” (acemi oğlanıs) of Istanbul and Gelibolu, the palace falconers, helva makers, gardeners, stable saddlers, tent and banner musicians, craftsmen, tailors, footmen, gatekeepers, and palace slaves.14 A parallel accounts bureau for mounted soldiers (süvari) recorded the salaries of the palace cavalry and palace ağas, and the first and second ağas of the stirrup.15 Modern readers might also expect that annual accounts should have been regularly produced, just as the anonymous author of the petition advised. Ottoman officials did not evidently 9   Nejat Göyünç, ‘Ta’rih Başlıklı Muhasebe Defterleri’, Osmanlı Araştırmaları 10 (1990) 1–37. 10  Linda T. Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560–1660. Leiden, 1996, 53; see also Gülfettin Çelik, ‘Osmanlı Devletinde Merkezî Hazinenin Maliye Büroları’, in Genç and Özvar (eds.), Osmanlı Maliyesi, I. 115–147. 11  Quoting Darling, Revenue-Raising, 66. 12 Quoting ibid., 61. 13  İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Merkez ve Bahriye Teşkilâtı. Ankara, 1948; repr. 1984, 338–339. 14  Ibid., 350–351 and notes, and 338–341. 15  Çelik, ‘Osmanlı Devletinde’, 145; Uzunçarşılı, Merkez ve Bahriye, 356, 358.

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see things this way. Such quarterly and full-year income and expenditure listings as do survive do not seem to have been regarded as either the pinnacle or the ultimate aim of financial record keeping. Rather, the daybook method was preferred for tracking income and expenditures. An annual account would have required combining all daybook registers, or all monthly or quarterly records (campaign accounts too were kept separately), an impossible and impractical task.16

CONTENTS OF THE WORK

The Risale is made up of a prologue, four chapters each called a mertebe or

‘rank’, and a summary, after which comes a concluding hatime or ‘epilogue’, and an “epilogue of the epilogue”. In the prologue, the author gave first expression to the themes that would dominate the work, by offering praise to God and salutations to the Prophet Muhammad. The terms of these standard elements are virtually identical to those in the Kavanin, sometimes only substituting a synonym. The repetition suggests that the author used the prologues to conceptualize the Ottoman administrative structure as channeling God’s prosperity in two contrasting forms. In the Kavanin the contrast was between prosperity of the mind and prosperity of income and wealth, while the Risale refined this into a contrast between Ottoman servants who received the fruits of imperial prosperity indirectly, in the form of timars, and others directly, in the form of salaries. When read together the two works, each devoted to one of these in turn, offer a picture of an Ottoman system in two parts. A complete schema it is not, since it includes indirect timar revenues but leaves out the revenue-contracting organisation of customs collections, not to mention the whole area of endowed trusts.17 Yet the bifurcation does reflect the division of finance records and 16  Caroline Finkel, The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 1593–1606. Vienna, 1988, 231. 17  Mehmed Genç and Erol Özvar, ‘Giriş: Osmanlı Devletinde Bütçeler: Merkezî Hazinenin Yıllık Muhasebe Bilançoları’, in Genç and Özvar (eds.), Osmanlı Maliyesi, II. 7–18, particularly 8–10.

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registers and bureaus under a “money registrar” (mal defterdarı) on the one hand and records and bureaus under a “benefice registrar” (timar defterdarı) on the other.18 A paragraph in admiration of Sultan Ahmed I (1603–1617) marks the transition to the subject of the work. In an elegant, but also thematically relevant, comment on the breadth of the royal generosity, the author paved the way for report on the royal household. It was “wholly impossible to describe the Suez Gulf of his grace and benevolence, or to express the encircling World Sea of his liberality and beneficence.” The amount expended in a single day on the livelihoods of the servants and gifted slaves of the court left him “speechless and stupefied”.19 As it has been mentioned earlier Ayn Ali organized his data in four chapters, each with several subsections. In each “rank” he gave the numbers of personnel, their daily wage, and their mukarrer payments. Mukarrer means ‘established’, in the sense that by established custom certain groups received a sum in addition to their salaries, some monthly, some quarterly. He used the total of these daily wages and “established” sums to extrapolate figures for the payments to each group in a full year. A very large part of the whole work is simply a narration of these numbers, with no commentary and no analysis, and therefore unlike the Kavanin there seems little to be gained by a full translation of the Risale.20 Instead since most manuscripts also present the data in tables that follow the narration of each “rank”, it seems sufficient to transcribe these. In the first “rank”, Ayn Ali gave figures for the number of foot soldiers and mounted soldiers combined, including the janissaries and the “foreign youths” (acemi oğlanları), the standing cavalry known as the “six bölüks” or units, and the armourers, cannoneers, and carters or wagoners.

18 Darling, Revenue-Raising, 52. 19  Esad 2361, fol. 38v. 20  Ahmet Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri ve Hukûkî Tahlilleri. 9 vols. İstanbul, 1996, IX. 87–126, transcription is based on the Ms. Veliyüddin 1971, fols. 44v–65r.

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Table 1: Compilation of the comparison of the above corps, as described in Rank One

Number of persons

Per day salary, in akçe

Janissaries

37,627

Janissaries

284,381

Acemiyan

9,406

Acemiyan

24,53321

[Combined]

37,033 [sic]

[Combined]

308,914

Six bölüks

20,869

Six bölüks

369,685

Armourers

5,730

Armourers

26,12122

Royal canoneers

2,552

Royal canoneers

11,167

Wagoners

684

Total

66,868 [sic]

Wagoners

5,576

Total

721,463

Seventy-five thousand eight hundred sixty-eight [sic]

Seven hundred twenty-one thousand four hundred sixty-three akçe

“Established” payment, in akçe

Per year salary, in akçe

Janissaries

25,192,584

Janissaries

101,899,14623

Acemiyan

2,326,83024

Acemiyan

9,273,380

[Combined] Bölük personnel Armorers

24,53321

27,399,414 [sic] 32,717,121 2,311,753

[Combined]

111,172,526

Bölük personnel

130,868,484

Armorers

94,189,11225

26,12122 101,899,14623 2,326,83024 94,189,11225

21  Narration: twenty-four thousand five hundred forty-three. 22  Narration: twenty-six thousand one hundred sixty-seven and a half. 23  Narration: one thousand loads plus seven hundred seventy thousand thirty-six. 24  This number is not given in the narration, nor can it be calculated from the information given, because the amount of the zer-pul, a gold coin, is not given in akçe. 25  Narration: ninety-four loads eighteen thousand nine hundred twelve akçe.

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“Established” payment, in akçe

Per year salary, in akçe

Canoneers

988,32526

Canoneers

3,953,39227

Wagoners

493,520

Wagoners

1,974,080

Total

63,910,123 [sic]

Six hundred thirty-nine loads ten thousand one hundred twenty-three akçe

Total

257,387,294 [sic]

Two thousand five hundred seventy-three loads eighty-seven thousand two hundred ninetyfour akçe

988,32526 3,953,39227 The second “rank” consists of the captains, sailors, and shipyard personnel who went on naval campaigns with the imperial fleet. Here he counted 2,364 persons with a total daily wage of 22,395 silver akçe, a quarterly total of 19 loads and 43,746 akçe, and an annual total of 77 loads, 4,984 akçe. This data was so brief that he gave no table after the narration. The third “rank” is a lengthy section listing the same data for the palace personnel who accompanied the sultan on campaign. Among these were the staff of the imperial stables, the palace gatekeepers both of the Bab-i Hümayun and the Dergah-i Ali, the kitchen staff, the tailors and other craftsmen, the royal müezzins, musicians both of the banner and of the tent, the treasurers, the architects, the water carriers and footmen, the royal physicians, Jewish physicians, and astrologers, three groups of falconers, and the voyvodas of the tributary Danubian principalities.

26  Narration: nine hundred eighty-eight thousand three hundred twenty-three. 27  Narration: thirty-nine loads fifty-three thousand two hundred ninety-two akçe.

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Table 2: Compilation of the comparison of the above groups that are described in Rank Three28

Number of persons Royal masters of the horse Gatekeepers of the exalted threshold Gatekeepers of the imperial gate Kitchen servants

Per day salary, in akçe 4,322 1,935

29

417 1,129

Royal masters of the horse

23,743

Gatekeepers of the exalted threshold

16,981

Gatekeepers of the imperial gate

1,06330

Kitchen servants

9,03831

Tailors of the robe

319

Tailors

3,030

Craftsmen

947

Craftsmen

8,164

Royal müezzins

15

Royal müezzins

Musicians of the tent

835

Musicians of the tent

Musicians of the banner

228

Musicians of the banner

198 5,487 2,77432

Treasurers

19

Treasurers

742

Royal architects

44

Royal architects

499

Water carriers of the council

36

Water carriers of the council

335

Royal footmen

57

Royal footmen

332

Royal physicians

21

Royal physicians

893

Royal astrologers

5

Royal astrologers

24

1,93529 1,06330 9,03831 2,77432

28  For the translations of terms I have been guided by Gülru Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Cambridge, Mass., 1991, and by H.A.R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West: A Study of the Impact of Western Civilization on the Moslem Culture in the Near East. 2 vols. London, 1950. 29  Narration: one thousand nine hundred twenty-five. 30  Narration: one thousand six hundred three. 31  Narration: nine thousand three hundred eight. 32  Narration: two thousand seventy-four.

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Number of persons

Per day salary, in akçe

Royal falconers

271

Royal falconers

1,670

Royal peregrine falconers

275

Royal peregrine falconers

1,345

Royal sparrow hawkers

45

Royal sparrow hawkers

225

Resident envoys of the voivodes of Wallachia and Moldavia33

13

Resident envoys of the voivodes of Wallachia and Moldavia

590

Jewish physicians

41

Jewish physicians

Total: 10,964

“Established” payment, in akçe

64334 Total: 78,587 [sic]

Per year salary, in akçe

Royal masters of the horse

2,101,299

Royal masters of the horse

8,405,196

Gatekeepers of the exalted threshold

1,502,81835

Gatekeepers of the exalted threshold

6,011,272

Gatekeepers of the imperial gate

141,86536

Gatekeepers of the imperial gate

567,460

Servants of the imperial kitchen

823,802

Servants of the imperial kitchen

Tailors of the robe

268,155

Tailors of the robe

1,072,620

Craftsmen

722,558

Craftsmen

2,890,232

Müezzins

5,940

Müezzins

3,215,20837

71,280

Moldavia33 64334 1,502,81835 141,86536 3,215,20837 33 Narration: Boğdan ve Eflak voyvodalarınun kapu kethüdaları. 34  Narration: six hundred forty-two. 35  Narration: fifteen loads two thousand eight hundred. 36  Narration: fourteen loads one thousand eight hundred sixty. 37  Narration: thirty-two loads ninety-five thousand two hundred eight.

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“Established” payment, in akçe

Per year salary, in akçe

Musicians of the tent

485,643

Musicians of the tent

1,942,57338

Musicians of the banner

183,549

Musicians of the banner

734,13639

Treasurers

22,260

Treasurers

Royal architects

14,970

Royal architects

119,64040

Royal water carriers

29,631

Royal water carriers

119,55041

Royal footmen

267,120

9,960

Royal footmen42

Royal physicians

26,79943

Royal physicians

321,480

Royal astrologers

708

Royal astrologers

8,496

Royal falconers

147,795

Royal falconers

Royal peregrine falconers

119,032

Royal peregrine falconers

Royal sparrow hawkers Kethüdas Jewish physicians

19,912 17,00746 19,260 Total: 8,662,954 [sic]

591,18044 1,476,12845

Royal sparrow hawkers

79,648

Kethüdas Jewish physicians

212,400 231,12047 Total: 27,600,474 [sic]

1,942,57338 734,13639 119,64040 119,55041 Royal footmen42 26,79943 591,18044 1,476,12845 17,00746 231,12047 38  Narration: nineteen loads forty-two thousand five hundred seventy-two. 39  Narration: seven hundred thirty-four thousand one hundred ninety-six. 40  Narration: one hundred seventy-nine thousand six hundred forty. 41  Narration: one hundred eighteen thousand seven hundred sixty-four. 42  This figure, skipped in the manuscript, is given as 119,520 in the narration, matching the mukarrer (9,960) taken monthly. 43  Narration: twenty-six thousand seven hundred ninety. 44  Omitted in the narration. 45  Narration: four hundred seventy-six thousand one hundred twenty-eight. 46  Narration: seventeen thousand seven hundred. 47  In the narration this figure is given as two hundred thirty-one thousand one hundred twenty-six.

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The fourth “rank” lists the salaries of ağas and high officials in five subsections as follows, first, the ağas of the stirrup; second, “servants of the eminent and sons of vezirs and ulema”; third, retired ağas of the exalted threshold and müteferrikas and several other palace groups, including tasters, craftsmen, çavuşes; fourth, scribes and apprentices of the imperial council, the treasury, and the finance bureau and other unnamed officials who received monthly salaries; fifth, ağas of the sultan’s harem and other royal slaves (gılman) and ağas of the halberdiers of the imperial harem. The textual deficiency I mentioned above occurs in this section. The figure of the salaries of thirty-five men identified as the “servants of the eminent and sons of vezirs and ulema”, is written out fully in the narration but is omitted from the table following the narration and therefore from the totals. 3248 3349 1,28550 17,87551 88052 47153 Table 3: Combined comparison of the above who are described in Rank Four

Number of persons

Per day salary in akçe

Ağas of the exalted threshold

3248

Ağas of the exalted threshold

Retired ağas

3349

Retired ağas

Ağas of the craftsmen

5

Ağas of the craftsmen

4,442 1,28550 246

Müteferrikas of the exalted threshold

433

Müteferrikas of the exalted threshold

Tasters of the exalted threshold

117

Tasters of the exalted threshold

4,680

Chavushes of the exalted threshold

324

Chavushes of the exalted threshold

88052

Scribes of the council

47153

Scribes of the council

48  49  50  51  52  53 

24

17,87551

Narration: thirty-three. Narration: thirty-two. Narration: one thousand two-hundred fifty-eight. Narration: seventeen thousand five hundred eighty-five. Narration: eight thousand eight hundred two. Narration: four hundred seventy.

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Number of persons

Per day salary, in akçe

Scribes of the imperial treasury

16

Scribes of the imperial treasury

43354 1,130

Apprentices of the council

133

Apprentices of the council

Finance scribes

2155

Finance scribes

253

Monthly-salaried officials

35

Monthly-salaried officials

592

Ağas of the slaves

709

Ağas of the slaves

7,08657

Royal halberdiers

109

Royal halberdiers

52558

56

Total: 1,981 [sic]

“Established” payments, in akçe

Total: 47,880 [sic]

Per year salary, in akçe

Ağas of the exalted threshold

133,260

Ağas of the exalted threshold

Retired ağas

37,74060

Retired ağas

Craftsmen

7,38561

Craftsmen

2,599,12059 452,880 88,560

Müteferrikas

527,550

Müteferrikas

6,330,600

Tasters of the exalted threshold

140,400

Tasters of the exalted threshold

1,614,800

Çavuşes

264,060

Çavuşes

3,168,72062

43354 2155 3556 7,08657 52558 2,599,12059 37,74060 7,38561 3,168,72062 54  55  56  57  58  59  60  61  62 

Narration: four hundred ninety-three. Narration: twenty. Narration: twenty-five. Narration: seven thousand eighty. Narration: five hundred seventy-five. Narration: fifteen loads ninety-nine thousand one hundred twenty akçe. Narration: thirty-seven thousand seven hundred. Narration: seven thousand three hundred eighty. Omitted in the narration.

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Scribes of the council

14,130

Scribes of the council

169,560

Scribes of the treasury

14,790

Scribes of the treasury

177,48063

Apprentices of the council

33,90064

Monthly-salaried officials65

7,590

Apprentices of the council

406,800

Finance scribes

213,120

Ağas of the slaves

117,760

Royal halberdiers

212,52066

Ağas of the slaves

91,800

15,750

Royal halberdiers

207,70069

Butchers

67

68

Total: 1,526,830 [sic] Fifteen loads twenty-six thousand eight hundred thirty akçe

Monthly-salaried officials

2,550,960

Total: 18,070,680 [sic] One hundred eighty loads seventy thousand six hundred eighty akçe

177,48063 33,90064 M-s officials65 212,52066 Butchers67 15,75068 207,70069

Concluding, Ayn Ali presented composite totals of all of the numbers of personnel, their daily salaries, their quarterly established payments, and the total treasury output for the year of all of the above, organised by his four “ranks”. This table is discussed below.

63  Omitted in the narration. 64  Omitted in the narration. 65  In this list the copyist omitted the name of the katiban-i maliye, but not the figure of their “established” payment, which is, in the narration, seven thousand five hundred ninety akçe – the figure given here for the monthly salaried officials (müşahere-horan). For the remainder of the table, the groups of personnel are misaligned with the figures of their salaries. This error is “corrected” with the insertion of a previously unmentioned group, the butchers (satıran), on the last line – but whose revenue figures are those of the royal halberdiers from the narration. 66  Narration: two hundred twelve thousand five hundred eighty. 67  See note 64. 68  Narration: fifty-one thousand seven hundred fifty. 69  Narration: two hundred seven thousand.

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THE UNRELIABILITY OF NUMBERS IN THE MANUSCRIPTS

The tabulations leave the impression that Ayn Ali meant to explain exactly,

not approximately, how many personnel there were and what their annual treasury payments amounted to, on the basis of his documentary sources. Yet as anyone who has worked on manuscripts with numerical data in them must know, without an autograph of the manuscript the unreliability of the numerical figures in any given copy is acute. This is no different with the Risale. As can be seen above, in the first table, not only does the arithmetic not match in several places, but six of the twenty-four numbers do not match the figures as they appear in the immediately preceding narration. A seventh number that appears in the table, the “established” payment to the foreign youths, does not appear in the narration at all, nor can it be calculated from the information given, since it includes the zer-pul, a quarterly gift of one gold piece whose equivalent in silver akçe is not provided. In the second table, eighteen such errors occur in eighty figures, in addition to the arithmetic mismatches; the third table has twenty-one such errors in fifty-two figures. Only the fourth table seems to be error-free. Typically the errors are due to simple transpositions, but not always. This manuscript is not more prone to error than the others I surveyed. Of course, in view of the deficiency noted above in the fourth “rank” of the text, in which one group was omitted from the table in every manuscript I used, it remains possible that a better manuscript copy might be found, or even an autograph, to resolve these problems. In the meantime, it is tempting to rely instead on the numbers given in the narration, which are less likely to be erroneously copied. This is true in most cases, but it is not a perfect solution. Difficulties of handwriting may occur here as well. For example, altmış, ‘sixty’, is not so easily distinguished from yetmiş, ‘seventy’. Some copyists rounded down in the ten’s place. There are other anomalies. For example, while in every other manuscript that gives a number of the masters of the horse (mirahors) it is 4,322,70 one manuscript

70  The Vienna Ms. H.O. fol. 148v (Flügel 1819) leaves this blank.

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Figure 1 Esad 2361, fol. 47r (detail)

(Ms. Török O. 253) gives 4,324 not just in its table, but also in the narration, very clearly, “they are four thousand three hundred twenty-four persons”.71 Or consider the “established” and annual incomes of the royal footmen (şatıran-i hassa). According to Esad 2361 there were 57 footmen, whose daily wages amounted to 332 akçe. The narration gives totals for the monthly “established” payment and annual outlay for the footmen, but the figures are erroneous – they are not only miscalculated, they merely repeat the figures of the treasurers. And in the table that follows the narration, the figure given for the “established” payment of the royal footmen matches that of the treasurers, while the annual figure for the footmen is missing. The confusing result is that the table gives twenty lines for personnel but only nineteen figures for their payments (see Figure 1). 71  Ms. Török O. 253, fol. 47r; the table is on fol. 50v.

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HOW MANY JANISSARIES WERE THERE?

The other manuscripts provide no relief, being as confused as this one, albeit

in different ways. It might seem that the truly ideal solution would be to bypass the work of copyists altogether and go straight to Ayn Ali’s documentary sources, if these can be identified. I tested the feasibility of this, using a group that has been of great interest to historians, the janissaries.72 According to the narration in Esad 2361 the number of janissaries in the Ottoman Empire in 1609 was otuz yedi bin altıyüz yigirmi yedi,73 and this figure of 37,627 is given accurately in the first line of the subsequent table.74 Remarkably, all the manuscripts I checked agree.75 As will be seen in the details, however, the result of attempting to verify the figure by archival documentation was something less than fully satisfying. (The exactly contemporaneous Kavanin-i Yeniçeriyan is disappointingly silent in this regard.)76 By good fortune, the Ottoman archives in Istanbul hold a janissary pay register for the very period Ayn Ali said he used as the basis for his figures, the reşen quarter of the year 1018.77 Yet the defter is challenging. There are torn pages; the handwriting is the difficult and sometimes illegible siyakat script, including numbers. And if indeed this is the defter Ayn Ali used, it does not readily divulge his research method. In interpreting it I found Uzunçarşılı’s lengthy description of a similar janissary pay register dated five years later (1023/1614) quite helpful. Indeed, had I tried to read Uzunçarşılı’s discussion without such a pay register in hand, I would have found it incomprehensible,

72  For example, Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare 1500–1700. New Brunswick, N.J., 1999, 45. 73  Esad 2361, fol. 40v. 74  Esad 2361, fol. 43r. 75  Flügel 1819 too, which rounds the figure to 36,600 in the table, agrees with the rest in its narration. 76  See the facsimile edition of I. E. Petrosyan, Mebde-i Kanun-i Yeničeri Odjagi Tarikhi. Moscow, 1987. 77  MAD 4317, dated 1018/1607–1608. I owe a debt of gratitude to Linda Darling for locating this register.

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but having such a register in hand, it was indispensable.78 (This ought to be fair warning to the reader of the paragraphs that follow.) The entries in the register are organised by bölük, the units making up the corps. In this register and others of the era there are a total of 196 bölüks, presented invariably in three main sections set off by title pages, thusly: • The first section lists the ağa bölüğüs, of which there are exactly sixty-one, all numbered; • the second section contained bölüğüs numbered 1–60; • and the third section contained bölüğüs numbered 61–101, but also a section of exactly 34 sekban bölüğüs, numbered separately and interposed precisely between bölük 65 and bölük 66 of the main enumeration. The entries for each bölük run 1–4 pages except for the sekbans; many of these were short entries, four to a page. Each bölük entry is headed by an officer and by the name of the bölük if it had one (see Figure 2). In the margin at the very top of the first page of each entry there appears an uncommented figure; it is the number of men (neferen) in the bölük. The entry then proceeds as a list of the names of janissaries in the bölük and their daily wage, ten names and figures per line. In the margin running down the outer edge of the page are numbers; these are the sums of the daily wages of the men in each line. After all these lines there is appended a similar, but usually shorter, list of retired soldiers and their daily wage, and a third list naming the orphans of the bölük. At the bottom of each bölük entry appear several calculations, among which are: • the total daily wages of the men; • the daily sum multiplied by 88.5 (the number used for days in a quarter); • and the wages of the retirees, added to the above, yielding a figure for the total quarterly wages (the yekun) of the bölük. • One other figure at the end of the entry is the number of men in the bölük again, but this number is always lower than the number in the top margin of the first page of the entry. 78  İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devleti Teşkilâtından Kapıkulu Ocakları. 2 vols. Ankara, 1943; repr. 1984, I. 431–456.

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Figure 2 BOA MAD 4317, pp. 784–785

Although the date of this register matches the date given in Risale, its numbers do not. Let us be precise, beginning with the neferen, the number of men in the corps. As mentioned, the register gives two different figures for the neferen in each bölük, one in the top margin above the beginning of each entry, the other at the end of the entry. This register happens to be damaged, with a top corner torn off of the last four folia. The unfortunate result of this very slight blemish is that despite the fact that every single one of the figures in the top margins of all the other pages of the defter are written quite clearly, allowing very little chance of a misreading, this figure is missing from the entries of the final four bölüks. The total of the number of all the men given at the bottom of the bölüks’ 299

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entries in the defter is 30,073, but the total for the figure appearing in the top margins of the entries comes to 37,769, a difference of 25.6 percent higher – and also tantalizingly close to Ayn Ali’s 37,627. Not, however, an exact match. Might the damage to the last four folia account for the small discrepancy? Unfortunately not. The figures for the neferen in the top margin of each bölük’s entry – the number missing from the last four folia – correspond to the total number of names in the entry. The figure for the neferen at the bottom of each entry – not omitted in the last four folia – is never greater than this and almost always less. This latter number seems to correspond to the number of men in the bölük who actually collected their wage on this particular payday. Neither using this number in the bottom margin as the missing number at the top, nor doing a hand count of the men’s names in these last four bölüks (since the regular pattern of ten names per line allows us to guess what that total must be) yields an exact match with Ayn Ali. Thus we are left with the discrepancy between the number of janissaries in the register and the number of janissaries given in the Risale, and no good explanation of it. Yet it does seem that Ayn Ali must have used the figure at the top of each entry, which is to say that the Risale tells us the total number of men in the janissary corps, not those who received a payment on a given payday. The figures for daily, quarterly, and annual wages too are all significantly lower in the register than in the Risale. The daily wage totals that appear among the figures at the bottom of each entry turn out to be the sum of the daily wage figures in the margins of each page of the entry. The quarterly wage total calculated at the bottom of the entry was the result of multiplying the total daily wage figure79 of the bölük by 88.5 (the average number of days in a period of three lunar months of the Hijri calendar). The data from the defter yields a total daily wage figure of 232,761 akçe for the entire corps, while Ayn Ali’s figure is 284,381, a difference of about 22.2 percent. The defter’s data for total quarterly wage amounts to 20,354,649, where Ayn Ali’s is 25,192,584, a difference of about 23.8 percent. Hence Ayn Ali must have included figures for everyone who was owed a wage, not just those who collected it. 79  In actuality, often reduced by one or two persons’ daily wages – for reasons discernible only by reading the marginal notes accompanying the men’s names.

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Figure 3 BOA MAD 4328, p. 190

This surmise is strengthened by two other factors. First, perusal of the bölük entries shows that the daily wage sums in the margins exclude certain names in the line, the ones marked with a kef above the line,80 which is an abbreviation for the annotation terk (a quitting, leaving, refraining), or terk-i hizmet (left service), terk-i kale [kerde] (left the fortress), etc. Finally, in some pay registers of this era, a calculation of the total daily wages of the corps and the total payout of the quarter appear on a separate page at the end of the quarter, as a synopsis (icmal). For example, an icmal page appears in a similar pay register for the masar quarter (the months of Muharrem, Safer, and Receb) of the year 1017 [17 April–25 July 1607]81 (see Figure 3). Since our defter unfortunately does not contain such an icmal page, the totals must be calculated from the data given at the end of each bölük’s entry. When this is done and the figures 80  For example, MAD 4317, pp. 547–548, the entry for ağa bölüğü No. 2. 81  MAD 4328, p. 190.

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from our defter are compared to the figures in the icmal page of masar quarter 1017, it is apparent that the interest of the finance scribes who compiled the originals was in the daily and quarterly wages that were actually paid out, whereas Ayn Ali wanted a total potential outlay. The last of Ayn Ali’s figures for the janissary corps, their total wages in a full year, does not appear anywhere in the pay registers I examined. Like his figure for the number of men in the janissary corps, this figure is likely to have been his own calculation, and should be acknowledged as one of his main accomplishments. If we calculate this figure based upon the data provided by the daily and quarterly wage tabulations at the bottom of each bölük entry in the register, we come to a significantly lower number than that given by Ayn Ali, and the discrepancy is of a magnitude similar to the others – pointing once again to Ayn Ali’s use of the recorded daily wage figures of all the men, including those “missing” on this particular payday. Given the agreement among the manuscripts, we might state that the number of janissaries in the Ottoman Empire in 1609 was probably 37,627, and that the figures for their salaries and other payments and of all the groups Ayn Ali counted were intended to represent the on-paper enrollment of the corps and their dues, a theoretical maximum that the treasury might need to be prepared to pay out on a given payday. Yet it is disappointing to be in possession of a register matching the dates he used and be unable to reproduce his research method, or to reproduce one important figure that is identical in all the manuscript copies used.

THE AUTHOR’S VOICE

Writing a quarter-century later, Koçi Bey made a polemical argument about

the salaried persons in the palace corps. Koçi Bey used different sources and wrote with an utterly different purpose than Ayn Ali, claiming that salary rolls in his day were inflated and that the numbers of those who actually served their functions were but a fraction of those who drew pay. (It should be noted that Ayn Ali cited his sources and described his research, while Koçi Bey did

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neither.)82 Ayn Ali’s work is full of data but does not really argue a thesis; it is a report more than an essay. Its aim was simply to calculate the total cost to the treasury of these personnel in a single year. This is not to say that the author had no point of view, or that he left us no rewards for reading his work. The point of view might be implied by his accomplishments in the work and his remarks in the epilogue, the innovation in his use of the term “rank”. The rewards are found in his creative conclusion, the epilogue to the epilogue. The main accomplishment was that, like he had done in the Kavanin, in the Risale too Ayn Ali brought together, in one single place, diverse information nowhere else available in such a form. As noted above, Ottoman salary registers did sometimes include a synopsis page with the types of data Ayn Ali collected – the numbers of personnel and the total of their daily and periodic or“established” payments for that pay period. Yet the salaries of the various corps and bureaus were maintained in separate series of registers, and neither the combined outlay to all the groups for any given pay period, nor the cumulative total cost to the treasury in a full year, was found except rarely. Those rare documents were revenue-and-expenditure tallies for a given year, compiled during the first few months of the following year.83 The most recent surviving tally prior to the anonymous petition referred to above had been done 28 years earlier in 990/1582–1583.84 It is possible that others were done in the intervening years and do not survive, but in view of the anonymous petitioner’s request that they be done annually, it seems likely that they had not in fact been produced in those years. Given the complex structures of collection and expenditures, and the reality that the central government lacked control over sizable portions of both,85 there can be little wonder that these tallies were done only very occasionally.86 The main innovation of the Risale is its way of conceptualizing the Ottoman administration as a set of “ranks”. The term (mertebe) is used in the name of its chapters and in the plural (meratib) in the title of the work, “Treatise of the Salaried Personnel and the Ranks of Bondsmen of the House of Osman”. 82 Aksüt, Koçi Bey Risalesi, 141–143. 83  Genç and Özvar, ‘Giriş’, 7–18. 84  Published in Genç and Özvar (eds.), Osmanlı Maliyesi, II. 31–97. 85  Genç and Özvar, ‘Giriş’, 8–10. 86  Darling discusses the issue in her Revenue-Raising, 237–239.

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To understand this, let us look at the last table of the work, which summarizes the contents of the four chapters. Each “rank” is given a name that appears here for the first time. Ayn Ali explained, “The soldiers of land and sea (asakir-i berr u bahr), the servants of the Porte (hüddam-i asitane), and the royal specialists (zevi’l-ihtisas), and all the kul class who possess a salary having been thus classified in four ranks, and the circumstances of the salary of each having been explicated by way of summary, their figures in composite form too are here set forth, since it was asked that this all be inscribed in one place.” üres sor87 Table 4: Composite totals

Number of persons

Per day salary, in akçe

Land soldiers

75,868

Sea soldiers

2,364

Servants of the Porte

10,989

Royal specialists

1,980

Land soldiers Sea soldiers

22,395

Servants of the Porte

78,587

Royal specialists

47,880

Total: 91,201

“Established” payments, in akçe Land soldiers

721,463

…87

Per year salary, in akçe 63,910,123

Land soldiers

257,387,294

Sea soldiers

1,943,746

Sea soldiers

Servants of the Porte

8,662,954

Servants of the Porte

27,600,474

Royal specialists

1,526,830

Royal specialists

18,070,680

Total: 76,043,643 [sic]

7,774,984

Total: 310,833,432

87  Blank in the ms.

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The term mertebe, then, refers not to a layer within a hierarchy but to an array or rows of servants, standing before their master. The four mertebes stand not one above the other but side-by-side, all bondsmen (bendegan) of the House of Osman. In this creative image of the Ottoman ruling class the vast complexity of the Ottoman system is cast in a four-part schema. It comes as a surprise when, after this seemingly grand summation, the epilogue turns to another list of officials and their salaries, a group not mentioned previously at all, the daily salaries of several major ulema officials. They are the şeyhülislam (750 akçe); the kadıaskers of Rumeli (572 akçe) and Anadolu (563 akçe) and the retired holders of those two positions (250 akçe each); the former kadı of Istanbul (120 akçe), including some who became simple subjects after their term of service (200 akçe); the retired müftis of four cities, Mecca, Edirne, Bursa, and Medina, in that order (100 akçe each, or sometimes 120); and müftis retiring from other cities with the rank of mulla or mevleviyet (90 or 80 akçe). While acknowledging that these quite substantial payments also came out of the public treasury, Ayn Ali made no effort to calculate their impact, neither in annual totals nor in a composite total. Rather, he stated that such support for scholarship and the life of learning as that given by the Ottomans could not be seen in any prior realm (devlet). The sultan’s ancestors as well as the vezirs and other nobles and high officials “built exalted medreses and, on behalf of those who propounded and took in the sciences, opened and uncovered the doors of their goodness and grace and diverted and favored and conferred all kinds of donations and continuously established a great many trusts and good works”. As long as this continued, he wrote, the foundations of the Ottoman Empire would endure. Though the ulema were given their place in a structure invented by Ottoman tradition, they were not bendegan. Men of learning, scholars of religion and law, transcend the boundaries and the chronological beginning and ending of any empire. It remains for royalty and the servants of royalty to give them support, and in this the Ottoman house had excelled.

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THE GIFT OF THE PEN

In a concluding “epilogue to the epilogue” Ayn Ali returned to themes hinted in

the prologue and expressed a higher purpose, to leave something to posterity. Ayn Ali’s wording of this not uncommon hope of writers recalls his description of Ottoman imperial structures as gifts of the largesse of the sultans. It was true that this life is one of “dissolution and transience”. Yet “to leave something as a monument to posterity is a sacred obligation, the debt and duty of highest and lowest, rich and poor”.88 The wealthy and powerful are remembered for their kindness in charitable trusts (evkaf), donations and philanthropy. Ayn Ali himself could give nothing comparable to these, he wrote. What he had instead was the gift of his pen, and he wielded it deftly in several clever couplets of verse. The original begins in 11-syllable hezec, in a monosyllabic gazel form, and ends with a rhyming couplet, hard to reproduce in translation. Not that he was one of the great Ottoman literary masters. We are to picture not the venerable stone monuments of the great public works, but rather the simple home—a wooden frame filled with broken-up stone and overlaid with board planks.89 Wealth have I none, nor property to give Yet shall I build, and make profit and gain With materials of paper and a pen I commenced, my creative skills my plea. Lines the pen drew, just like an architect’s, Elifs the strokes were, timbers shaped by tools. Letters turned into stones, dots were pebbles; Lines they became, a filled and solid wall. Shortly it was done, and then moved into, A wonder of fortune and artistry. Should the Shah of Ages bless it with breeze, Bright it would be, full of light and fresh air.

88  Esad 2361, fol. 40v. 89  Thanks to William Hickman for help interpreting the poem, and to Linda Darling for reading this entire paper and making a number of valuable suggestions for changes.

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THE BOSNIAN FRANCISCANS IN OTTOMAN PEST-BUDA Antal Molnár

Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest [email protected]

Buda, the capital of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, was the centre of

Ottoman Hungary – the seat of a vilayet – between 1541 and 1686, and stood as the northernmost bastion of Ottoman Balkan culture.1 The former royal city and Pest, on the other side of the Danube, was home to large Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox and Catholic populations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, similarly to Sarajevo and Belgrade, but with the additional element of a Protestant Hungarian community. We have few sources on the everyday life of the nonMuslim population of Buda and their religious and cultural affairs, although their Ottoman-era history has been the subject of an excellent monograph by

This paper has been written with the support of the research project number NKFIH K-129236, Christianity versus Islam. At the Crossroads between Crusades and Coexistence in the 16th and 17th Centuries. 1  A recent survey of the sixteenth-century population of Ottoman Buda: Géza Dávid, ‘»…sem az várast nem vetik zsákmánra, sem senkit nem bántanak…« Török világ Budán’, in Idem, Pasák és bégek uralma alatt. Demográfiai és közigazgatás-történeti tanulmányok. Budapest, 2005, 79–87; On Ottoman Pest, see Katalin Melis Irásné, ‘Pest during the Ottoman Era’, in Ibolya Gerelyes and Gyöngyi Kovács (eds.), Archaeology of the Ottoman Period in Hungary. (Opuscula Hungarica, 3.) Budapest, 2002, 161–172.

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Lajos Fekete.2 Research in recent years has given us new knowledge of the Muslim religious institutions of the two towns,3 the Jewish communities,4 the Ragusan merchants5 and the Serbian Orthodox church.6 The upsurge in Vatican research after 1990 has turned up much less than expected on the Catholic church of Buda and Pest. The mission reports sent to Rome provide abundant information on religious affairs in South Hungary but rarely mention these two northern towns.7 A provincial seat lying far from the bases of the Bosnian and Croatian Catholics in Slavonia and South 2  Lajos Fekete, Budapest a törökkorban. (Budapest története, 3.) Budapest, 1944. See also: Lajos Fekete and Lajos Nagy, Budapest története a török korban. Budapest, 1986. 3  Balázs Sudár, Dzsámik és mecsetek a hódolt Magyarországon. (Magyar Történelmi Emlékek. Adattárak) Budapest, 2014, 170–230, 438–452. 4  György Haraszti, Két világ határán. Budapest, 1999, 57–105; Tamás Raj and Péter Vasadi, Zsidók a törökkori Budán. Budapest, 2002. 5  Antal Molnár, Egy raguzai kereskedőtársaság a hódolt Budán. Scipione Bona és Marino Bucchia vállalkozásának története és dokumentumai (1573–1595). / Eine Handelsgesellschaft aus Ragusa im osmanischen Ofen. Geschichte und Dokumente der Gesellschaft von Scipione Bona und Marino Bucchia (1573–1595). (Források Budapest Közép- és Kora Újkori Történetéhez, 2. / Quellen zur Budapester Geschichte im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, 2.) Budapest, 2009. 6  Antal Molnár, ‘Szerb ortodox egyházszervezet a hódolt Magyarországon’, in Tamás Csáki and Xenia Golub (eds.), Szerb székesegyház a Tabánban. Az eltűnt Rácváros emlékezete. Kiállítási katalógus. Budapest, 2019, 32–63. 7  Many of the Roman sources for Ottoman Hungary are available in print. István György Tóth, Relationes missionariorum de Hungaria et Transilvania (1627–1707). (Bibliotheca Academiae Hungariae in Roma. Fontes, 1.) Roma, Budapest, 1994; Idem, Litterae missionariorum de Hungaria et Transilvania (1572–1717). 5 vols. (Bibliotheca Academiae Hungariae in Roma. Fontes, 4.) Roma, Budapest, 2002–2008; Antun Dević, Đakovačka i Srijemska biskupija. Spisi generalnih sjednica Kongregacija za širenje vjere 17. stoljeće. (Monumenta Croatica Vaticana, 3.) Zagreb, 2000; Idem, Đakovačka i Srijemska biskupija. Arhiv Kongregacija za širenje vjere. Razni fondovi. 17–18. stoljeće. (Monumenta Croatica Vaticana, 6.) Zagreb, 2005; Marko Jačov, Spisi Kongregacije za propagandu vere u Rimu o Srbima. Vol. 1: 1622–1644. (Zbornik za istoriju, jezik i književnost srpskog naroda. II. odeljenje, 26.) Beograd, 1986; Idem, Le missioni cattoliche nei Balcani durante la guerra di Candia (1645–1669). 2 vols. (Studi e Testi, 352–353.) Città del Vaticano, 1992; Idem, Le missioni cattoliche nei Balcani tra le due guerre: Candia (1645–1669), Vienna e Morea (1683–1699). (Studi e Testi, 386.) Città del Vaticano, 1998. The documents that have been published in parallel with these books will be quoted only from István György Tóth’s corpus, which publishes the texts much more accurately than the other corpus, and with thorough annotations. See also: István György Tóth, ‘Bosnyák ferencesek a hódoltsági misszióban’, in Idem, Misszionáriusok a kora újkori Magyarországon. Budapest, 2007, 257–309.

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Hungary was not suited to be a Catholic mission centre, unlike with the betterdefended trade centre of Belgrade to the south. Catholic missionaries rarely ventured to the civil and military centre of Ottoman Hungary. Evliya Çelebi summed up the ethnic composition of the city with the words “Buda’s entire population is Bosniak and Bosnian.”8 Not surprisingly, the only Catholic clergy who dared to settle there permanently were the Bosnian Franciscans, after 1633. Pest-Buda appear very sporadically in the Roman documents, apart from missionaries’ contacts with the pasha of Buda and his authorities. The two towns are mentioned in some documents connected to the superiors of the Bosnian Franciscan residence in Buda and in the reports of visiting mission bishops. Using travel accounts, diplomatic dispatches, Ottoman census records, a few letters of the Buda and Pest councils and the classic corpus of Euzebije Fermendžin,9 Albert Gárdonyi, Lajos Fekete, Miklós Jankovich, Ágnes Ritoókné Szalay and László Balázs have produced a survey of the Ottomanperiod history of the Christian churches and population of Pest and Buda.10 Here, I have gathered together the scattered information and studied hitherto unpublished archive sources to present the history of the Bosnian Franciscan house in the capital of Ottoman Hungary, adding to the very little we know about the Christian population of Pest-Buda in the Ottoman age.11 8  Cümle ahâlî-i Budin Boşnak ve Bosnavîlerdir. Evliyâ Çelebi b. Derviş Mehemmed Zillî, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi. Topkapı Sarayı Kütüphanesi Revan 1457 Numaralı Yazmanın Trans­ kripsiyonu–Dizini. Vol. 6. Ed. by Seyyid Ali Kahraman and Yücel Dağlı. İstanbul, 2002, 153. 9  Eusebius Fermendžin, Acta Bosnae potissimum ecclesiastica cum insertis editorum documentorum regestis ab anno 925 usque ad annum 1752. (Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum meridionalium, 23.) Zagrabiae, 1892. 10  Albert Gárdonyi, ‘Buda és Pest keresztény lakossága a török hódoltság alatt’, in Tanulmányok Budapest múltjából. Vol. 5. Budapest, 1936, 13–33; Fekete, Budapest a törökkorban, 145–169; Miklós Jankovich, ‘Buda város keresztény tanácsa a török hódoltság korában’, in Tanulmányok Budapest múltjából. Vol. 14. Budapest, 1961, 147–159; Ágnes Ritoókné Szalay, ‘Csanaki János pesti pap’, in Tanulmányok és szövegek a magyarországi református egyház XVI. századi történetéből. (Studia et Acta Ecclesiastica, 3.) Budapest, 1973, 923–928; László Balázs, ‘A pesti református egyház a török hódoltság alatt’, in Kálvin téri tanulmányok. Tanulmányok a Budapest Kálvin téri Református Gyülekezet történetéhez. Budapest, 1983, 11–23. 11  The previous Hungarian version of this paper is: Antal Molnár, A katolikus egyház a hódolt Dunántúlon. (METEM Könyvek, 44.) Budapest, 2003, 167–181. István György Tóth and the present author have published new sources on the presence of the Bosnian Franciscans in Buda:

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BACKGROUND TO THE BOSNIAN FRANCISCANS’ ARRIVAL IN PEST

Our knowledge of the sixteenth-century history of the Christian congregations and churches of Ottoman Buda and Pest comes mostly from the writings of German and Hungarian Protestant reformers (mainly Philipp Melanchton, Zsigmond Torda of Gyalu and Péter Melius Juhász), and above all from the reports of travellers who visited Buda.12 After the Ottoman invasion in 1541, the Catholic church organisation disappeared from the city. The last Hungarian representatives of the Catholic Church, the Observant Franciscans, left Buda the same year, and the last time friars were sent to the Pest house was in 1542.13 In both towns, the majority of the Hungarian population who remained joined the Reformation, first following the Luther–Melanchton doctrines, but the Helvetic Confession became prominent in the 1550s and the Anti-Trinitarians also made an appearance in the second half of the century. Followers of the Catholic faith were primarily Ragusan merchants who came with the Ottomans and insisted on the right to practise their religion openly in Buda. Thanks to István György Tóth, ‘Kié Buda? Az esztergomi érsek és a belgrádi apostoli vikárius vitája a hódolt Budáról 1678-ban (Forrásközlés)’, in Péter Tusor (ed.), R. Várkonyi Ágnes emlékkönyv születésének 70. évfordulója ünnepére. Budapest, 1998, 251–257; Idem, ‘Sarajevói dokumentum a pesti bosnyák ferencesekről (1664)’, Történelmi Szemle 44 (2002) 115–133; Antal Molnár, ‘Az esztergomi érsek hódoltsági vikáriátusának történetéhez’, Magyar Egyháztörténeti Vázlatok. Regnum 14:1–2 (2003) 13–17. 12  The principal names, in chronological order, are: Hans Dernschwam (1555), Stefan Gerlach (1573), Salomon Schweiger (1576), Melchior Besolt (1584), Reinhold Lubenau (1587), Wenzel Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1591), David Chytraeus (Oratio, 1574) and Philippus Loni­ cerus (Chronicorum Turcicorum tomus primus. 1584). For other travellers’ accounts, see Aladár Ballagi, Buda és Pest a világirodalomban 1473–1711. Vol. 1. Budapest, 1925, 332, 352; Karl Nehring, Iter Constantinopolitanum. Ein Ortsnamenverzeichnis zu den kaiserlichen Gesandtschafts­ reisen an die Ottomanische Pforte 1530–1618. (Veröffentlichungen des Finnisch-Ugrischen Seminars an der Universität München. Serie C, 17.) München, 1984, 53–55; Irmgard Leder, Nachrichten über die Osmanen und ihre Vohrfahren in Reise- und Kriegsberichten. Analytische Bibliographie mit Standortnachweisen 1095–1600. (Bibliotheca Orientalis Hungarica, 49.) Budapest, 2005, 119–205. 13  János Karácsonyi, Szt. Ferencz rendjének története Magyarországon 1711-ig. 2 vols. Budapest, 1924, II. 22, 139–140.

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this, the Church of Mary Magdalene, which Christians were allowed to use,14 was the place of worship for both the Hungarian Protestants and the Ragusan and Bosnian Catholics: the choir was occupied by the Catholics, and the nave, separated by a wooden screen, by the Protestants. There were also Protestant Hungarians and Ragusan merchants living in Pest, but we are unable to establish with certainty the location of their church (which may also have been in joint use).15 During the Long War, the Ottomans, encouraged by their early successes, turned the Christians out of the Buda church and converted it into a mosque (Feth camii, ‘Mosque of Victory’). After the war, both Catholic and Protestant religious affairs focused on Pest, although Christian religious practice (particularly Protestant) probably did not completely cease in Buda. The destruction of the war and the resulting ethnic changes took their effect in Pest and Buda: the Hungarian population of both contracted during the seventeenth century, and Serbs and Bosnians arrived in their place. The shift in ethnic proportions strengthened the Serbian Orthodox and the Catholic churches at the expense of the Reformed churches. Although there are unbroken records of Reformed clergy in Buda and Pest after the 1620s, the two communities in the seventeenth century were only shadows of what they had been in the sixteenth.16 Catholic priests in Buda and Pest in the sixteenth century were all Ragusan clergy, as in other towns in Hungary and the Balkans. In 1565, the Ragusan Franciscan Seraphinus Pantanus arrived in Buda (or rather in Pest). His theological dispute with the Reformed Church preacher of Ráckeve, István Szegedi Kis, has been related by Máté Skaricza in his fascinating biography of

14  This was the later garrison church. It was damaged in the Second World War and demolished in 1952, leaving only the tower and some ruins of the walls. (Budapest I., Kapisztrán tér 6.) Frigyes Pogány (ed.), Budapest műemlékei. Vol. 1. (Magyarország Műemléki Topográfiája, 6.) Budapest, 1955, 365–383; Hungarian Atlas of Historic Towns. Vol. 4: Buda, Part 1: to 1686. Ed. by András Végh. Budapest, 2015, 40–41. 15  Gárdonyi, ‘Buda és Pest keresztény lakossága’, 14–15, 18; Fekete, Budapest a törökkorban, 157–159, 168; Balázs, ‘A pesti református egyház’, 13–17. 16  Gárdonyi, ‘Buda és Pest keresztény lakossága’, 18–21; Fekete, Budapest a törökkorban, 87; Jankovich, ‘Buda város’, 151–154; Balázs, ‘A pesti református egyház’, 18–21; Idem, ‘Csanaki János pesti református lelkész és utódainak története’, Theológiai Szemle 39 (1996) 363–371.

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Szegedi Kis.17 A will dated 1591 mentions two Buda chaplains: Friar Jacomo and Friar Giovanni.18 In the late sixteenth century, Don Vincenzo di Augustino of the Diocese of Ragusa worked in Buda, and we know much more about him than about his colleagues. He was the parish priest of Lisac near Ston (Stagno) from 1581 to 1587, when, at the request of the Ragusan merchants in Buda, the Archbishop of Ragusa, Raffaello Bonelli, appointed him chaplain of the trading post and the surrounding area. Two years later, he returned to Ragusa and became chaplain of St Mark’s nunnery in Ragusa, but at the end of the next decade, he was back in Buda. In 1599, he arrived in Rome from Ragusa and appeared before the Holy Office (Sacra Congregatio Romanae et Universalis Inquisitionis seu Congregatio Sancti Officii) as the former chaplain of the Hungarian capital. He delivered a long report on the affairs of the Church in Ottoman areas and requested many authorisations and exemptions for his pastoral work. His report is one of the most fascinating sources of religious affairs in the Ragusan trading posts and Ottoman Buda. He was even activly supported by the Buda merchants: they wrote a letter of recommendation on his behalf to the “strongman” of the court of Pope Clement VIII, Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santoro, who was in charge of the Catholic missions. The letter and the report confirm that even after being deprived of their church, Catholics continued to practise their religion in Buda after 1596. Subsequently, Don Vincenzo disappears from view for a decade and a half. We next hear of him in Sofia in 1613, and there is information on him as chaplain of the Ragusan merchants there until 1617.19 Reports on the Catholics of Buda start to become frequent in the 1620s, after the Long War. The first missionary to report on the Buda Catholics was a Ragusan priest named Paolo Torelli. He was the nephew of Bonifacije Drakolica, a Ragusan Franciscan and apostolic visitor in the Balkans, and had 17  Géza Kathona, Fejezetek a török hódoltsági reformáció történetéből. (Humanizmus és reformáció, 4.) Budapest, 1974, 105. 18  Jorjo Tadić and Toma Popović, Dubrovačka arhivska građa o Beogradu. Vol. 2. (1572– 1593). Beograd, 1976, 261; Molnár, Eine Handelsgesellschaft aus Ragusa, 275. 19  The report is published and discussed in Antal Molnár, ‘A Chaplain from Dubrovnik in Ottoman Buda: Vincenzo di Augustino and his Report to the Roman Inquisition about the Situation of the Balkan Catholicism’, Dubrovnik Annals 18 (2014) 95–121.

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served in Bácska (Bačka) since 1615 with the title of Abbott of Bács and VicarGeneral of the Archbishop of Kalocsa. In 1623, he travelled from Ragusa to Hungary, and was in Buda in August to retrieve the property of his deceased (probably merchant) brother. His efforts were in vain, because his brother’s 2000 scudos had been dissipated in the meantime. He also engaged in pastoral activities during his business trip, hearing confessions in a private house for a few days, and saying mass for the town’s 135 Catholics, who had not had their own priest for several years.20 At almost the same time as Torelli’s visit, the winter of 1623, two Jesuits also arrived in Buda. Dániel Vásárhelyi and Daniel Bastel were commissioned by the convert Count Michael Adolph von Althan to travel to Ottoman lands, accompanied by imperial envoy Michael Starzer, to redeem the Austrian, Bohemian and Moravian prisoners taken by the Ottomans during Gábor Bethlen’s attack. The Jesuits stayed in Buda until spring 1624 and succeeded in freeing about three hundred prisoners. The Jesuit annals record that there were no more than fifteen Catholics among them, the rest belonging to various Protestant confessions: Hussites, Picardites, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Schwenckfeldians, Swiss Brothers, and a few Lutherans. Encouraged by their preachers, they had awaited liberation by Bethlen’s troops, but instead, the Ottoman and Tatar forces had taken them captive. A condition of their freedom was naturally conversion to Catholicism. During their months in Buda, the Jesuits also engaged in pastoral work, as was reported in the Jesuit annals. Their journey was arduous because of the winter weather. They slept on the ground, lived on bread and water, and said mass in private houses, there being no churches. In Buda, in the house of allegedly the most stalwart Reformed follower, they said mass for the local Bosnian Catholics, and were not obstructed by either the host or the Turks. About a hundred confessed and took the sacrament, suggesting a rather small Catholic community. According to their report, they confirmed the faith of Bosnians who were leaning to Islam, and encouraged several Serbs to unite with the Roman Church, clearly without much success, despite the optimistic tone of the account. Like their fellow 20  Antal Molnár, Le Saint-Siège, Raguse et les missions catholiques de la Hongrie Ottomane 1572–1647. (Bibliotheca Academiae Hungariae in Roma. Studia, 1.) Roma, Budapest, 2007, 183; Tóth, Litterae, I. 157–159.

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Jesuits in Belgrade, they met with Bosnians who had converted to Islam but regarded themselves as having only superficially adopted their new religion and as being Christians in their souls. One such crypto-Christian helped them in redeeming children who had fallen into captivity.21 The increasing number of Bosnians in the 1620s took effect in the economic sphere. Like their compatriots in Belgrade and Sarajevo, the Bosnian merchants in Buda and Pest got the upper hand over their old rivals, the Ragusans. In Sarajevo, they took control of the trading post in 1626, while in Belgrade, their struggle with the Ragusans for commercial hegemony and the associated patronage of the Catholic chapel lasted nearly two decades. We know almost nothing of the commercial and church conflicts in Buda. In his 1630 account of the strife in Belgrade, Don Simone Matkovich mentioned the preceding events in Buda, where the Bosnians succeeded in undermining the Ragusans’ business.22 Some petitions submitted in 1632 and 1633 to the Roman authority in charge of the missions, the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, may be connected with the Bosnians’ presence and strengthening economic position in Buda. These concern a request for a Bosnian Franciscan who was studying in Naples to be appointed bishop of Buda. The documents are quite clearly fakes: Belgrade and Buda Bosnian “counts” and Italian Bosnian Franciscans asked the Roman authorities to appoint Giorgio Paleologo (alias Giorgio Pranich di Buda), son of their leader, Elia Paleologo (conte de Desni),23 as bishop of Buda 21  The list of liberated captives: Archivio storico della Sacra Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli o de “Propaganda Fide” (henceforth APF) (Città del Vaticano), Scritture Originali riferite nelle Congregazioni Generali (henceforth SOCG), Vol. 385, fols. 551r–554r. On Althan’s re-Catholicization activity that extended into Ottoman Hungary: Mihály Balázs et al., Erdélyi és hódoltsági jezsuita missziók (1609–1625). Vol. I/2. (Adattár XVI–XVIII. századi szellemi mozgalmaink történetéhez, 26/2.) Szeged, 1990, 412–413; Antal Molnár, ‘Végvár és rekatolizáció. Althan Mihály Adolf és a katolikus restauráció kezdetei Komáromban’, in Idem, Elfelejtett végvidék. Tanulmányok a hódoltsági katolikus művelődés történetéből. (Régi Magyar Könyvtár. Tanulmányok, 9.) Budapest, 2008, 139–148. 22  Antal Molnár, ‘Struggle for the Chapel of Belgrade (1612–1643): Trade and Catholic Church in Ottoman Hungary’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 60 (2007) 73–134, especially 104–105, 107–108. 23  Desni may mean the village of Besnyő, also referred to in the sources as Desna, Desinia and Desgna, see note 57 below.

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or possibly Belgrade. They grounded their request principally on the oppression they had suffered at the hands of the Serbian vladikas. The letters are utterly confused and the signatures obviously false. The Roman authorities dismissed the request, and would have done so in any case, because Buda had never been a bishop’s seat, and the Catholic missions in Ottoman lands never planned an ecclesiastical seat in the town. Nonetheless, the petition, as well as relating the ambition of a mountebank Franciscan, indicates the presence and aspirations of the Bosnians in Buda.24

THE FRANCISCAN RESIDENCE IN PEST AND ITS REGION

The Bosnian Catholics of Buda and Pest acquired their first independent

church in 1633, through the offices of Friar Filip Kamengrađanin, a Bosnian Franciscan with a somewhat chaotic life history. Brother Filip had evangelised along the River Drava in 1631 among Croatian followers of the Reformed Church, and in 1633, went to Pest, where he acquired the church from the Reformed Church congregation, converted seven Reformed Church families and introduced Catholic religious practice. According to his report, he achieved all this through a theological debate held before the pasha of Buda; in reality, he used the Bosnian Franciscans’ good contacts with the Ottoman apparatus and some bribery. He gained support for his Pest mission from István Balogh, captain-general of   Tata, who promised to maintain the two Bosnian Franciscans

24  The petitions and related documents: APF SOCG, Vol. 75, fols. 417r–424r; APF Acta Sacrae Congregationis (henceforth Acta), Vol. 8, fol. 227rv; APF Lettere e Decreti della Sacra Congregazione (henceforth Lettere), Vol. 13, fol. 54r. Pietro Massarecchi, Archbishop of Antivari, wrote in his opinion on the petitions that he had never heard of the counts who had signed them. The Turks did not grant such titles to Christians, although there were Catholic Bosnians serving in the Ottoman army in the frontier regions. Serbian bishops did not perform forcible conversions, and he did not understand why, if these alleged counts had as good relations with the Ottoman authorities in Buda as they asserted, they could not defend themselves from the Serbian priests. That aside, he found the Italian of the letters so good that they must have been written in Italy or Belgrade, because nowhere else was there a Bosnian or Hungarian who knew the language so well. APF SOCG, Vol. 75, fol. 420rv.

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Figure 1 Ludwig Nicolaus von Hallart and Michael Wening, Series of views of Buda from the four cardinal directions, south, 1684, detail (Budapest History Museum)

Figure 2 Ludwig Nicolaus von Hallart and Michael Wening, Series of views of Buda from the four cardinal directions, north, 1684, detail (Budapest History Museum)

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Figure 3 Unknown artist, Saint Anthony of Padua, around 1700, detail with the Franciscan church in Pest (Budapest History Museum)

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in the Pest chapel. Subsequently, he went to Transylvania, where he worked beside Stjepan Tuzlak, the leader of the Bosnian Franciscans sent to the principality. In 1634, he went to seek mission authorisation in Rome, where his experiences in Hungary immediately persuaded Propaganda Fide to commission him as visitor to the parishes in Ottoman Hungary. The Franciscan minister general, however, appointed him as visitor to the Bosnian Franciscan province to calm the internal discord there. Friar Filip’s appointment as commissary and visitor turned out to be the worst possible decision. In early 1635, the entire province turned against him and complained to the Ottoman authorities, effectively impeding his operation. He could not have been highly competent in any case: the astonishingly poor Latin of his letters and his previous career tell of an uneducated, vagabond friar. Seeing the opposition of the province, Propaganda Fide withdrew his commission and let him retreat to either the parish of Pest or a friary of his choice. The hapless friar spent some time in Sarajevo hoping something would turn up, and then left Bosnia for Pest. In a letter to Rome dated 2 February 1636, he complained that the provincial had seized and torn up the authorisations the Congregation had granted him and divested him of his clothes, books and other possessions. In Buda, he built a house, forced out the Reformed Church preacher, cleaned up the church and increased the number of the faithful. Although Friar Filip and his fellow members consistently gave Buda as their location of operation during 1636 and 1637, it is quite certain that he was again working in Pest, and the church he had occupied in 1633 became the Bosnian Franciscans’ Church of St Joseph in Pest. According to his fellows in the order, his activity in Pest was also ridden with scandal. In December 1635, Friar Marko Bandu­lović met in Vienna with some Buda merchants who urged his removal. There was no need for such action, however, because he had to flee Pest in early 1637. According to his enemies, the pasha of Buda nearly had him burned for his relations with Turkish women; his friends claimed that he had to depart because of false accusations by Reformed Church followers. After his departure, he became parish priest of the village of Selci in Slavonia, and that is the last we hear of him.25 The sources next 25 Molnár, Le Saint-Siège, 261–262; Tóth, Litterae, I. 474–482, 712–714.

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mention the Pest Reformed church only in 1647, when Nagykőrös council donated three forints and thirty deniers towards its construction.26 The Bosnian Franciscans continued to refer to their church as being in Buda, but it actually stood in Pest,27 and seventeenth-century engravings locate it to what is now Gerlóczy Street. It was probably destroyed during or directly after the recapture of the town.28 There is also a contemporary representation of the building: the little church in the background of a seventeenth-century painting of St Anthony can with near certainty be identified as the Bosnian Franciscans’ church in Pest.29 Records of the Franciscan Order in Pest and its chapel become more frequent in the 1640s, mainly in reports of visits by mission bishops. The first prelate to go to Buda was Giacomo Boncarpi of Belgrade, titular bishop of Himeria, who had started as an Italian Minorite friar. He set off for the Ottoman Empire from Vienna in the company of imperial envoys in October 1642. After an enforced rest in Komárom (Komarno) for three months, he went to Buda in 1643, and from there, the Bosnian Franciscans escorted him south to Slavonia. He spent a few days in Buda while his Ottoman passport was prepared and a wagon and escorts were found for him. During this time, he said mass several times for the local Catholics and administered confirmations and other sacraments. The great significance of his activity in Buda is that he was the first Catholic bishop to come to the former Hungarian capital since the Ottoman occupation.30 His 26  Áron Szilády and Sándor Szilágyi, Okmánytár a hódoltság történetéhez Magyarországon. Nagy-Kőrös, Czegléd, Dömsöd, Szeged, Halas levéltáraiból. Vol. 1. (Török-magyar-kori Történelmi Emlékek. Első osztály: Okmánytár, 1.) Pest, 1863, 142; Balázs, ‘A pesti református egyház’, 19. 27  According to old histories of the order, the church occupied by Filip Kamengrađanin stood in Buda, and the Franciscans moved to Pest later. Karácsonyi, Szt. Ferencz rendjének története, II. 364–365. 28  The building marked E in Pest in the series of urban views by Ludwig Nicolaus von Hallart and Michael Wening is the church of the Christians and thus almost certainly identical with the church of the Bosnian Franciscans. György Rózsa, Budapest régi látképei (1493–1800). (Monumenta Historica Budapestiensia, 2.) Budapest, 1963, 61–62, 167, 178–179, 264 (Nos. 15, 70, 77, 118), Plates XXVIII–XXXI; Hungarian Atlas, 4. (Buda), C.6. Plates 1–4. See the attached figures. 29  Erzsébet Szabó, ‘A ferencrendiek pesti XVII. századi temploma’, Műemlékvédelem 13 (1969) 13–18. See the attached figure. 30 Molnár, Le Saint-Siège, 286.

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successor, Marin Ibrišimović, bishop of Belgrade, stayed in Buda between 11 and 18 July 1649, during which he confirmed 238 people.31 The most active bishop in the history of Ottoman Hungary, Matej Benlić, visited the capital of the province several times between 1656 and 1673. On every occasion, he said mass, preached and administered confirmation, and sometimes even consecrated a church. The most detailed surviving report is of his visit in 1656: he stayed in Pest-Buda and the surrounding villages in June and September.32 During his time in Pest, the Reformed community were attempting to regain half of the church by giving 260 forints to the defterdar, who wanted to set up a mosque there, but at Benlić’s encouragement, the Catholics bought back their property for 300 forints.33 He was back in Buda in March 1660,34 and in 1664, confirmed 302 people there. At that time, many of the Pest Catholics had fled because of the war, and the Franciscans were obliged to billet soldiers during the winter.35 In 1669, he again toured the villages belonging to the Franciscan residence in Pest, when he conferred the sacrament of confirmation on 817 people.36 In summer 1673, he visited the whole of Ottoman Hungary, travelling through the Eger and Gyöngyös region and the villages around Buda and ending his tour in Pécs. As he went, he carried out many confirmations, ordained some priests, and consecrated twenty-three bells.37 The Franciscan house in Pest was not raised to the rank of friary, but like those in Belgrade and Sarajevo, it operated as a residence headed by a warden (praesidens). Until the late 1660s, it housed two friars: the warden served the faithful in Pest, while his fellow worked in the Bosnian villages around Buda. 31  Tihamér Vanyó, ‘Belgrádi püspökök jelentései a magyarországi hódoltság viszonyairól 1649–1673’, Levéltári Közlemények 42 (1971) 327–328; Tóth, Litterae, III. 1734. 32  9 June: Besnyő – 95 men and 105 women confirmed; 11 June: Ráckeresztúr – 132 men and 127 women confirmed; 13 June: Tököl – 86 men and 90 women confirmed; 24 June: Pest – 58 men and 2 women confirmed; 27 June: Esztergom: 7 men and 8 women confirmed. 22–28 September, he was again in Buda. 33  Iván Borsa and István György Tóth, ‘Benlich Máté belgrádi püspök jelentése a török hódoltság katolikusairól 1651–1658’, Levéltári Közlemények 60 (1989) 125–128. 34 Tóth, Litterae, III. 2276–2277. 35  Vanyó, ‘Belgrádi püspökök’, 331; APF SOCG, Vol. 306, fol. 66r. 36  Vanyó, ‘Belgrádi püspökök’, 333–334. 37  APF Scritture riferite nei Congressi (henceforth SC) Bosnia, Vol. 2, fol. 207r.

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In the last decade and a half of Ottoman rule, the number of residents increased sharply: a register of the province of 1674 records that there were six priests and one brother living in Pest,38 and in 1679, Franjo Sudić (Franciscus a Varadino) mentioned four brothers in his history of the order.39 The increase in the number of friars implies a rise in the significance of the residence and a higher rate of settlement by Bosnians in North Transdanubia. Unlike the Bosnian and Slavonian parishes, the residence was never subordinated to a friary but always directly to the provincial, who also received its income, using it to cover the enormous costs of calling together the provincial chapter. In a document issued in Fojnica on 7 March 1664, Matej Benlić confirmed the direct jurisdiction of the provincial on the grounds that the Bosnian Franciscans and the Bosnian merchants had founded the “Buda” and Tököl parishes and had ejected the heretics from St Joseph’s Church in Pest, and the provincials had always provided the parish priests. If they were nonetheless to come under some friary, it should be one in Bosnia and not Slavonia.40 The revenues must have been substantial. Friar Luka Ibrišimović claimed the income could have maintained a friary of thirty residents, and he thought it would be more proper to distribute among poorer friaries which were educating novices.41 Despite the insistence of the Bosnians, the superiors of the Pest house were usually chosen from among the Slavonian brothers. In 1658, the warden was a certain Friar Bonaventura, who – together with the Slavonian Franciscans – supported Bishop Benlić.42 The residence was headed between 1658 and 1662 by Luka Ibrišimović, and between 1662 and 1665, and again between 1671

38  18a familia di Buda in Hungaria supra numerata in principio: il P. fra Gioseppe Bilavich presidente, il P. fra Michele Celanovich, il P. fra Paolo Banovich, il P. fra Simone Ribarovich, il P. fra Marco da Dragotina, il P. fra Tomasso da Citluk, fra Gioanni da Bagnaluca laico. APF SOCG, Vol. 450, fol. 127v. An indication of the standing of the residence is that the first four friars were also provincial definitors. 39  Franciscus a Varadino, Descriptio Provinciae Bosnae-Argentinae Anno 1679. Szabadka, [1909]. 40  M.[ijo] V.[jenceslav] Batinić, ‘Njekoliko priloga k bosanskoj crkvenoj poviesti’, Starine JAZU 17 (1885) 83; Tóth, ‘Sarajevói dokumentum’, 131–132. 41  Josip Barbarić and fra Miljenko Holzleitner, Pisma fra Luke Ibrišimovića zagrebačkim biskupima (1672.–1697.) (Biblioteka Posegana, 6.) Jastrebarsko, 2000, 2–4. 42 Fermendžin, Acta Bosnae, 484.

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and 1674, by Luka Marunčić, both born in Požega.43 The Pest warden between 1666 and 1669 was probably the Martin Poženanin, who was praised by the Slavonian Franciscans in a certificate issued in 1669.44 From 1674 to 1677, the warden was Nikola Bilavić, and from 1677 to 1680, it was Nikola Perišić.45 In 1681, Šimun Varešanin headed the residence.46 We also know the names of the last two friars before liberation: Stjepan Turso and the Dalmatian Friar Jakov remained in the town right up to the siege of 1686, when Stjepan fled to Székesfehérvár, leaving Jakov to tend to the faithful in the town after it was surrounded.47 We find little in the reports of mission bishops, letters sent to Rome, or travellers’ accounts about the Catholics of Pest and the surrounding area. According to Benlić, only a few Bosnian Catholics lived in Pest. The Franciscans maintained St Joseph’s Chapel, provided the requisite liturgical appurtenances and said mass daily. In 1668, the church and the Franciscan house were renovated, and the chapel was given a timber roof. It was clearly for this building work that Leopold I, emperor and king of Hungary, had the Hungarian Chamber send 300 forints. The faithful from the surrounding area came to Pest for major feasts. In addition to the Catholics, there were many Serbs living in the town, who had their own church, but when Benlić visited, they and their priests attended Catholic worship.48 Travellers to Pest-Buda also mentioned the Franciscan chapel in the second half of the seventeenth century (Henrik Ottendorff, 1663; Edward Brown, 1669; and Giovanni Benaglia, 1680).49 The Bishop of Csanád, Giacinto Macripodari, also made an appearance in the Pest 43  Franjo Emanuel Hoško, ‘Luka Ibrišimović i sukobi među slavonskim i bosanskim franjevcima Bosne Srebrene’, in Idem, Franjevci u kontinentalnoj Hrvatskoj kroz stoljeća. (Analecta Croatica Christiana, 32.) Zagreb, 2000, 104, 116. 44  APF SOCG, Vol. 448, fol. 82r. 45  On these two, see the documents quoted below on Marunčić’s work as the archbishop’s vicar. 46 Karácsonyi, Szt. Ferencz rendjének története, II. 366. 47  Ivan Stražemanac, Povijest franjevačke provincije Bosne Srebrene. (Biblioteka Latina et Graeca, 26.) Ed. by Stjepan Sršan, Zagreb, 1993, 240. 48  György Piusz Szabó, Ferencrendiek a magyar történelemben. Adalékok a magyar ferencrendiek történetéhez. Budapest, 1921, 317–318; Borsa and Tóth, ‘Benlich Máté’, 126; Vanyó, ‘Belgrádi püspökök’, 334. 49  Gárdonyi, ‘Buda és Pest’, 20–21; Szabó, ‘A ferencrendiek’, 16–18.

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church on his journey to the Holy Land in 1668.50 By contrast, there were hardly any Catholics living in Buda by the seventeenth century. In 1656, the bishop found only eight Catholic families and occasionally-resident merchants in the town.51 The Pest Franciscans tended the Catholic population of two major Ottoman administrative centres: Esztergom and (Székes)Fehérvár. Benlić also visited Esztergom on 26–28 June 1656, where he inspected the castle and the Bakócz Chapel, whose altar and ornaments he found in good condition, considering the circumstances. The six Catholic families who lived in the populous suburbs of the castle received frequent visits from the Pest priests, and since there was no church, the priest said mass in the house of one of the Catholics.52 The bishop did not go to Fehérvár, and we have no details of the Pest Franciscans’ work there.53 Starting in the 1650s, the Pest brothers served three, and later four, formal parishes other than Pest. The largest was Tököl, on Csepel Island. In 1656, there were thirty-six Bosnian families living in the village, having taken the place of the previous Reformed-church inhabitants, and in 1672, the bishop counted 520 Catholics. They built their church in 1656 by restoring the 50  Antal Molnár, ‘Egy „magyar” püspök a török hódoltságban. (Macripodari Jácint csanádi püspök levele Szelepcsényi Györgyhöz 1668-ban)’, Levéltári Közlemények 72 (2001) 74. 51  Borsa and Tóth, ‘Benlich Máté’, 127. By contrast, according to an excerpt of a since lost report by Benlić of 1672, the bishop did not find Catholics in Pest, but there were 663 of them in Buda who visited the church in Pest. Tóth, Relationes, 179. This statement directly contradicts the other information, and the person who wrote the excerpt probably misunderstood the report. See Tóth, ‘Sarajevói dokumentum’, 124–125. 52  Borsa and Tóth, ‘Benlich Máté’, 127–128. According to Lipót Kollonich, there were two hundred Serbian families living in Esztergom in 1685; the Jesuit Márton Szentiványi put the number at one hundred. Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Archivio della Nunziatura in Vienna, Processi dei Vescovi e degli Abbati No. 222. On Ottoman Esztergom, see Géza Dávid, ‘Esztergom szerepe és sorsa a török korban’, in Idem, Pasák és bégek, 89–95. 53  Benlić mentioned in his 1669 report that they served the Catholics of Esztergom and Fehérvár. Vanyó, ‘Belgrádi püspökök’, 333. Regular pastoral connections may also be inferred from Friar Stjepan Turso’s departure for Fehérvár in 1686. Catholics of Esztergom and Fehérvár are also included among those who signed the letter (discussed below) that he sent to Rome in support of Marunčić on 24 September 1677. APF SC Bosnia, Vol. 3, fol. 70r. On Ottoman Székesfehérvár, see Klára Hegyi, Székesfehérvár a török korban. Székesfehérvár, s. d.

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medieval building that had since been used by the Reformed church, and the bishop dedicated it to the Nativity of Mary in September the same year.54 They repaired it in 1669, roofing it with timber.55 Towards the end of Ottoman rule, the Bosnian friars had their own house in Tököl, occupied by an elderly priest who served the surrounding Bosnian villages.56 In 1656, Benlić visited Besnyő, where there was no church, but appurtenances for mass were available for the Pest priests who visited regularly. In Ráckeresztúr, a cave-like little church was built immediately before the bishop’s visit, dedicated to Apostles Peter and Paul, and it was blessed by him in 1656.57 Letters written in the 1670s mention four parishes under the jurisdiction of the Franciscan house: Pest, Tököl, Besnyő and Varbica (Varbita or Varbizza).58 I have been unable to identify the latter, because it cannot be reconciled with any present place name or one that appears in a historical source. Its inhabitants most probably perished during the wars of reconquest.59 In seventeenth-century Hungarian sources, we also find several newly-built Catholic Bosnian villages in North-East Transdanubia tended by the Pest friars. There was a steady growth of the parishes already mentioned, as well as those of Ercsi, Ágszentpéter, Perkáta, Érd and Sóskut in the first half of the century.60 In 1658, Benlić estimated the number of Catholics 54  Borsa and Tóth, ‘Benlich Máté’, 126, 139; Tóth, Relationes, 179. 55  Vanyó, ‘Belgrádi püspökök’, 334. 56 Stražemanac, Povijest, 240. 57  Borsa and Tóth, ‘Benlich Máté’, 125–126, 139. 58  Barbarić and Holzleitner, Pisma, 4; APF SC Bosnia, Vol. 3, fols. 27rv, 70r; APF SOCG, Vol. 465, fol. 167rv. 59  Of the twenty-one South Slav villages in Fejér County, sixteen were abandoned between 1683 and 1686. Károly Jenei, ‘A délszláv betelepülés előzményei és folyamata Fejér megyében’, in Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Veszprémi Akadémiai Bizottságának Értesítője. Vol. 2: A Dunántúl településtörténete. 1. (1686–1768). A székesfehérvári településtörténeti konferencia anyaga (1975. május 26–27.) Ed. by Gábor Farkas. Veszprém, 1976, 187–199, particularly 193. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the villages Tököl, Érd (Hamzsabég), Ercsi and Perkáta belonged to the Pest residence. Stražemanac, Povijest, 246. 60  Jenei, ‘A délszláv betelepülés’, 190–192; Lajos Nagy, ‘Adalékok a Fejér megyei jobbágyság történetéhez (1543–1768)’, Alba Regia 1 (1960) 80–81. See also Károly Jenei, ‘Iratok Fejér megye török hódoltságkori történetéhez’, in Fejér Megyei Történeti Évkönyv. Vol. 6. Székesfehérvár, 1972, 171–210; Előd Vass, ‘Források a székesfehérvári szandzsák történetéhez 1543– 1688’, in Fejér Megyei Történeti Évkönyv. Vol. 19. Székesfehérvár, 1989, 69–200.

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served by the Pest Franciscans at two thousand,61 but using contemporary estate censuses, Károly Jenei has put the number of Catholic Bosnians and Croatians in Fejér County at three thousand.62

LUKA MARUNČIĆ, VICAR OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF ESZTERGOM IN BUDA (1676–1679)

One of the crucial developments in the late seventeenth-century history of

the Bosnian Franciscan province was the rise of Catholicism and Franciscan friaries (Velika and Našice) in Slavonia, accompanied by efforts to secede from the Bosnian province. The causes must be sought above all in the rising regional identity within the Bosnian Franciscan province, which had swelled to enormous proportions, and internal strife deriving from personal antipathies. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the friars of Velika, leading the movement of Slavonian members of the Bosnian province, tried to break away from the Bosnian friaries and set up their own province. Following several decades of struggle they also refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the bishop of Bosnia over the Slavonian parishes, and their ultimate objective was to set up a separate Slavonian diocese. Their first step was to support the bishop of Belgrade, and then in 1658, they were taken under the wing of the bishop of Zagreb, who subsequently chose a vicar from among them for the parts of his diocese that were under Ottoman rule. The first vicar was Petar Nikolić, guardian of Velika (1658–1675), and after he died, his mandate passed to Luka Ibrišimović (1675–1694). This rid them of the bishop of Bosnia, but their ambition to found an independent province fell on the resistance of Propaganda Fide. The chief mission authority moved to break resistance by banning the intake of Slavonian novices between 1665 and 1676. The appointment of the vicar-general had a long-term effect on several West Slavonian parishes that had belonged to the Diocese of Pécs in the Middle

61  Borsa and Tóth, ‘Benlich Máté’, 142. 62  Jenei, ‘A délszláv betelepülés’, 192.

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Ages. After the expulsion of the Ottomans, they were assigned to the Diocese of Zagreb.63 The Bosnian Franciscans were present north of the Drava-Danube line in a fundamentally different form than they were to the south, in Bosnia, Dalmatia and Slavonia. In Hungary, they did not set up a single friary during the 150 years of Ottoman rule, in sharp contrast to practice in the southern lands of establishing friaries as bases to serve the surrounding parishes. Instead, parishes in Hungary were placed under the authority of Bosnian and Slavonian friaries. Consequently, despite the constant presence of Franciscans of the Bosnian province, Hungary was always a peripheral area, and focal points of their activity were in the southern areas. The steadily-swelling Catholic population in the Temesköz area was served by the Bosnian friaries – principally Olovo – and apostolic prefectures centred in Karassevó and – later – in Karánsebes (Caransebeș) and Lippa (Lipova), all frequently quarrelling with each other. They managed to prevent the formal mission designation of the Bácska parishes, which thus operated under the jurisdiction of the Olovo friary.64 In Transdanubia, the area we are primarily interested in, the Bosnian Franciscans settled relatively late, and in smaller numbers. In the 1620s, they appeared along the Drava, in the major Ottoman centres of administration, and in the Croatian villages south of Lake Balaton. The pastoral division of the Catholic villages of Ottoman Transdanubia was in place by the second half of the century. Hungarian parishes in Baranya were served by Jesuits in Pécs, and Catholic villages to south and east of Lake Balaton by Jesuits in Andocs. This involved the work of between thirty and forty licentiates, lay Catholic pastors licensed by a prelate.65 The areas along the Drava and the Danube were served by the Bosnian Franciscans: scattered records tell us that friars from Olovo and – 63  Franjo Emanuel Hoško, ‘Luka Ibrišimović i crkvene prilike u Slavoniji i Podunavlju potkraj 17. stoljeća’, in Idem, Franjevci, 123–137. Much of the correspondence between the bishops and their vicars has also appeared in print: Radoslav Lopašić, ‘Slavonski spomenici za XVII. viek. Pisma iz Slavonije u XVII. vieku (1633–1709)’, Starine JAZU 30 (1902) 1–177, passim; Barbarić and Holzleitner, Pisma. 64  The most recent survey of their activities in Hungary is Tóth, ‘Bosnyák ferencesek’. 65  For a survey of the topic, see Antal Molnár, ‘Katholische Jurisdiktion im Grenzgebiet des Osmanischen Reiches. Das Beispiel Ungarn’, in Norbert Spannenberger and Szabolcs Varga (eds.), Ein Raum im Wandel. Die osmanisch-habsburgische Grenzregion vom 16. bis

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mainly – Našice worked in Kanizsa, Sziget, Atád, Bátaszék66 and the “Balaton Parish”, which embraced the villages of Somogy County inhabited by Catholic Croatians and Bosnians.67 In the final decades of the seventeenth century, the church organisations of the Kingdom of Hungary also started to show an interest in the Catholics of Ottoman Hungary. The Pauline friar Andrea Francisci ventured from the Pápa friary into Ottoman territory.68 The Bosnian Franciscans studying in the Sümeg friary also crossed the Habsburg–Ottoman border: in 1680, Miklós Kamengrádi received permission from István Sennyey the Younger, bishop of Veszprém, to be a mendicant in the lands beyond Lake Balaton.69 In the 1670s, missionaries of the Croatian–Slavonian Franciscan Province of St Ladislaus also appeared in Ottoman lands: in 1673, Ipoly Merkas built a church in Szentmárton near Kanizsa and tended the Catholic flock of the area.70 In these years, Jesuits on mission work in Légrád Castle also went into villages under Ottoman rule, and they, too, worked among Croatian Catholics in the Kanizsa area.71 The Pest residence stood apart from the other institutions of the Bosnian province in several respects. Firstly, it was the Bosnian Franciscans’ only formal institution in Hungary proper, located beside one of the main Ottoman political centres in Europe. The Franciscans clearly took advantage of the 18. Jahrhundert. (Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Mitteleuropa, 44.) Stuttgart, 2014, 181–196. 66  APF SOCG, Vol. 306, fols. 65v–66r, Vol. 320, fol. 105r, Vol. 446, fols. 257r, 258r; APF SC Bosnia, Vol. 1, fol. 136r; Borsa and Tóth, ‘Benlich Máté’, 136. 67  The Somogy County villages belonging to the “parochia di Balatin” are listed in Pavao Posilović’s report of his 1648 church visitation, but he distorted the names of the villages so much that they are very difficult to identify. Antal Molnár, ‘Scardonai püspökök ad limina jelentései 1624–1648’, Fons 1 (1994) 313; Tóth, Litterae, III. 1731–1733. A mention of the Balaton parishes: APF SOCG, Vol. 305, fol. 317rv. A Bosnian Franciscan saying mass in Miháld in Somogy County in 1664 was cut down by Tatars who burst into the church. Vanyó, ‘Belgrádi püspökök’, 331. 68 Molnár, Katolikus egyház, 129–130. 69  Magyar Ferences Levéltár, Szalvatoriánus rendtartomány iratai, Érseki és püspöki kiadványok, Sümeg, 14 November 1680. 70  APF SOCG, Vol. 440, fol. 106r, Vol. 446, fols. 255r–258r, Vol. 451, fols. 3r, 4r, 6v. 71  Litterae Annuae Societatis Iesu Provinciae Austriae, 1671. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Wien) Cod. 12068. pag. 113–114; Miroslav Vanino, ‘Misijska izvješća XVII. i XVIII. vijeka’, Vrela i prinosi 2 (1933) 59–61.

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proximity of the pashas of Buda during their proliferating court cases of the second half of the seventeenth century. Secondly, through the donations of Bosniak merchants and craftsmen in Buda, Pest, Esztergom and Fehérvár, and the wealthy Transdanubian villages, they had substantial revenues. Finally, it lay very far from the other friaries of the province but close to the border of the Kingdom of Hungary, and it was logical that in the 1670s, it became the principal nest of resistance for friars turning against the provincial leadership and aiming for independence. One key figure of the internal conflicts of the Bosnian Franciscan province was Luka Marunčić. He was the only prominent Slavonian-born Franciscan who did not join his compatriots’ autonomy movement but supported the Bosnian bishops’ claims for jurisdiction in Slavonia. His attitudes and activities clearly stemmed from personal ambitions, which did not – at least initially – seem to be completely unrealistic. Marunčić was born in Požega on 10 October 1623, probably into a merchant family. Matej Benlić, bishop of Belgrade, was his uncle.72 He entered the order on 28 October 1640, was ordained priest on 6 August 1647, and became secretary to Bishop Benlić in 1651. Between 1662 and 1665, he was warden of the Pest residence, during which he had a wall built around the church and acquired liturgical appurtenances. In 1665, he became guardian of Velika, in 1668, a provincial definitor, and in that capacity had the church and friary of Našice renovated. In the disputes of the 1660s, he still unequivocally supported the Slavonian Franciscans’ ambitions for autonomous jurisdiction.73 In 1671, he once again became the warden in Pest, rebuilt St Joseph’s Church in Pest, and

72  That, at least, is the message of his letter to his brother Ivan Marunčić in Rome, complaining that the provincial had broken into Friar Luka’s cell in Velika and taken away valuable goods which his third brother Đuro had left for safekeeping in the friary. APF SOCG, Vol. 449, fol. 228r. 73  He stated this claim in a complaint he lodged against his fellows in the order in 1667. It reveals that he was already very well-connected among the Ottoman authorities. The Bosnian Provincial, Franjo Miletić and his secretary were accused of taking tax to the pope and betraying the country in a Turkish-language document submitted to Ali Pasha of Temesvár in 1662. The guardians of Olovo and Fojnica bribed the pasha’s courtiers to retrieve the complaint. APF SOCG, Vol. 306, fols. 232r–233v.

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claimed to have converted many heretics.74 That may have been when he made contact with György Szelepcsényi, archbishop of Esztergom, whom he informed of events in Ottoman lands via the Hungarian Deputy Captain-General of Komárom, András Drahosóczy.75 In 1673, as confidant of Nikola Ogramić, bishop of Bosnia and provincial of Bosnia, he became the guardian of Velika, and at the same time, Ogramić appointed him Slavonian vicar-general, as a counterweight to the vicariate of Zagreb.76 Resistance by the Slavonian Franciscans forced him to resign his post early the next year. From that time on, Marunčić was dedicated to opposing the bishop of Zagreb’s jurisdiction in Ottoman Hungary and was the sworn enemy of its defender, Luka Ibrišimović. He effectively became the standard-bearer of the bishop of Bosnia’s plans to expand into Slavonia.77 In addition to his personal ambitions, he was no doubt influenced in his choice by diverging conceptions of Slavonian identity in church organisation and political and cultural affairs. In the second half of the seventeenth century, two conflicting visions for the future of the region – anti-Turkish and pro-Turkish – emerged in the Bosnian Franciscan province, most notably in its Slavonian friaries. This echoed developments in the Orthodox churches operating in the Ottoman empire and its vassal states. Ibrišimović’s entire work served the former conception, while the friars promoting links to Bosnia saw their longterm future within the framework of the Ottoman Empire, and that was one reason for opposing the break from the provincial centre. After the death of Bishop Benlić of Belgrade in 1674, Marunčić sought to take his place but the province, particularly the Slavonian Franciscans, and Bishop Martin Borković of Zagreb and Jeronim Paštrić, agents of the Dalmatian and Bosnian churches in Rome, unanimously took a stand against his appointment.78 In Rome, the old complaints against him were re-examined: 74  For his autobiography, see APF SOCG, Vol. 447, fol. 47r. 75  Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (Wien), Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Ungarische Akten, Specialia, fasc. 324, Konv. E, fols. 62r, 63r. 76  APF SC Ungheria e Transilvania, Vol. 1, fol. 422rv. 77  Of the many letters of complaint relating to him, see Barbarić and Holzleitner, Pisma, 16; Nadbiskupski arhiv Zagreb (henceforth NAZ) Epistolae ad Episcopos (henceforth Epist. ad Episc.), Vol. 101, No. 42. 78  Lopašić, ‘Slavonski spomenici’, 30–31, 34–35; NAZ Epist. ad Episc. Vol. 7, No. 75, 84, Vol. 8, No. 64; NAZ Epistolae Episcoporum (henceforth Epist. Episc.) Vol. 2, No. 98;

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that he had forcefully seized the parishes from the secular priests, reported his fellow members to the Ottoman authorities, conducted an affair with a married woman and taken dubious women into his cell. Propaganda Fide therefore excluded him from the list of candidates for bishop.79 In the middle of 1675, he returned home from Rome and submitted a complaint to Sokolović Ali Pasha of Diakóvár (Đakovo), accusing his opponent Luka Ibrišimović of spying, collusion with the enemy and plundering friaries and parishes.80 With his fellow Franciscan Luka Petrović, who according to the records of an investigation was his “evil spirit”, accused the Franciscan provincial of dressing up slaves in the newly-opened novitiate in Velika and smuggling them out of Ottoman territory. He also accused him that together with Ibrišimović he was plotting to bring forces from Hungary and Venice to expel the Turks.81 This led to Marunčić’s complete marginalization within the province. The Franciscan minister general excluded him from the list of candidates for provincial at the request of Propaganda Fide, and the commissary general of the Franciscan order wanted to banish him to a friary in Italy.82 Barbarić and Holzleitner, Pisma, 18–20, 28, 34; APF SOCG, Vol. 448, fols. 225rv, Vol. 449, fols. 187r–189r; APF Congregazioni Particolari (henceforth CP), Vol. 23, fols. 1r–106v, particularly fols. 58r–59v, 66r, 74r, 76r, 81rv, 83rv, 86r–93r, 97r, 100r–101r. For the story of the quarrels see Hoško, ‘Luka Ibrišimović i sukobi’, 116–118; Idem, ‘Luka Ibrišimović i crkvene prilike‘, 130–133. 79  APF Acta, Vol. 46, fols. 67v–68r, 182r–183v; APF Lettere, Vol. 63, fols. 23v–24r. 80  Lopašić, ‘Slavonski spomenici’, 42–43; Barbarić and Holzleitner, Pisma, 54, 302–306. On his return to Fojnica and Velika, Nikola iz Iloka, the Procurator of the Bosnian Franciscans in Rome, sent several letters to their Roman agent, Jeronim Paštrić, reporting on Marunčić’s manoeuvres against Provincial Antun Travničanin and against Ibrišimović. APF SC Bosnia, Vol. 2, fols. 415rv, 417r, 418r, 419r. 81  After the death of Nikolić, Petrović wrote a letter to the bishop of Zagreb claiming that Ibrišimović was born illegitimately and preached heresies and Mohammedanism. According to the witnesses, mainly from Požega, the reason for the conflict between the two friars was the Zagreb vicariate, for which Petrović was also obviously applying. APF SOCG, Vol. 461, fols. 204r–213v. See also: APF SOCG, Vol. 458, fols. 154r–159v; APF Acta, Vol. 46, fols. 182r–183v. 82  APF SOCG, Vol. 455, fols. 241r; NAZ Epistolae Diversorum ad Diversos (henceforth Epist. Div.), Vol. 5, Nos. 21, 26. Interestingly, in 1675, the previous provincial, Antun Travničanin, directly approached the emperor in his capacity of apostolic king to prohibit Rome from directly intervening to support Marunčić’s candidacy as provincial. This was too much even for the Hungarian Chancellery, who were particularly attentive to the royal rights of patronage. They said that it was not their affair. APF SOCG, Vol. 455, fols. 238r, 239rv.

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With this history, he had little opportunity for advancement in the Bosnian province, and in 1676, tried different means to gain church office. Joining forces with Petrović, he launched an attempt to gain control of the Pest residence and to wrest autonomy from the Bosnian province. Petrović travelled to Rome and bribed an official of the Holy See, Andrea Renalducci, to have Propaganda Fide formally declare the Pest residence a mission.83 Parishes with mission status were no longer accountable to the province and handled their revenues autonomously, as it had happened in the case of the Temesköz parishes. Since the Bosnian province clearly did not wish to lose revenue and jurisdiction, it bitterly opposed the foundation of missions on the areas under its pastoral authority.84 After the failure of their efforts in Rome, the two renegade friars approached the other party with an interest in Ottoman Hungary, the Hungarian Catholic hierarchy. In late 1676 or early 1677, Marunčić visited Archbishop György Szelepcsényi of Esztergom and – as had been done two decades earlier by his fellow Franciscan, Bishop Petar Nikolić of Zagreb – offered to defend the archbishop’s jurisdiction in the parts of his archdiocese under Ottoman rule. He had himself appointed the archbishop’s vicar-general, with his seat in Buda, and Petrović was granted the parish of Varbica. They then went to Buda, forced out the warden, Nikola Perišić, and took control of the Buda residence.85 These manoeuvres by Marunčić and Petrović provoked outrage in Rome and Bosnia that raged for two years. Their case became the object of heightened interest when Marunčić, under the pseudonym Cozianovich, contrived to obtain a favourable decision from Propaganda Fide, and when this failed, he simply forged a Roman decree assigning the Buda residence to himself. His appointment as vicar gave his rebellion a significance far beyond the usual rows among the Bosnian Franciscans, and the events became part of the struggle of the Hungarian bishops and the mission hierarchy. Letters sent to Rome between 1677 and 1679 give us a clear idea of the interests pursued by the parties to the dispute and the positions they took. Two clerics working in Ottoman lands, Provincial Marko Vasiljevčanin and the vicar general of the bishop of Belgrade, Ivan Branković iz Dervente, particularly 83  APF SC Bosnia, Vol. 2, fol. 470rv, Vol. 3, fols. 27r–28v. 84 Molnár, Le Saint-Siège, 306–311. 85  APF SC Bosnia, Vol. 3, fol. 27rv.

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opposed Marunčić’s appointment as vicar-general. With the mandate granted by Szelepcsényi, covering the whole of Ottoman Hungary, the two friars had firstly withdrawn themselves from the jurisdiction of the order and secondly got hold of the substantial Pest revenues, without which – according to the provincial – it was impossible to call the provincial chapter. To avoid similar cases, the provincial proposed that no Hungarian bishop should appoint a vicar for Ottoman lands from among the Bosnian Franciscans without the permission of Propaganda Fide, because the Bosnian Franciscan friars only accepted such a post for money and power.86 Branković, vicar-general of Belgrade, hung on with tooth and claw to the positions of the mission system in Hungary, and wanted to get Propaganda Fide’s help in having the Hungarian bishops withdraw their vicars’ mandates. In letters sent to Rome, he complained about the vicars of non-resident bishops: the Pécs Jesuits representing the bishop of Pécs, the Szeged Franciscans working under the authorisation of the bishop of Csanád, and the Bosnian Franciscans appointed as vicars of Esztergom and Zagreb, who did not accept the jurisdiction of Propaganda Fide, obstructed the work of the mission bishops and their vicars, and brought the suspicion of espionage upon themselves and their flock.87 The archbishop of Esztergom, who was defending the jurisdiction of the Hungarian church under Ottoman rule was of course determined to uphold his rights as the highest ordinary in Ottoman Buda. He saw the resistance of the Bosnian province as being directed solely at enabling the Franciscans to escape ordinary jurisdiction and live freely without any discipline. He justified his endeavours before Propaganda Fide on the grounds of church discipline: he considered the proper care of his flock, and the removal from the parishes of friars ignorant of the language and living scandalous lives, to be his obligation as prelate. Without proper church representation, he was unable to uphold his rights: one Bosnian Franciscan tore up the indulgence he had sent to Buda, and Branković and the provincial wrote letters to the Buda flock vilifying his name and denying all of his jurisdiction in Ottoman lands.88 We know the least about the opinion of the Buda faithful. Only two letters from them survive, expressing opposite standpoints. One, demanding Marunčić’s 86  APF SOCG, Vol. 465, fols. 167r–168v, 174r–175v, Vol. 470, fols. 285rv. 87  APF SOCG, Vol. 465, fols. 171r, 172r; APF SC Ungheria e Transilvania, Vol. 2, fols. 94rv. 88  APF SOCG, Vol. 465, fols. 169r, 170r.

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removal, was sent to the Bosnian provincial on 12 February 1676 by sixteen Buda Catholics. They praised the chaplains sent from Bosnia and protested the presence of Marunčić, with whom they had many disputes in the past, during his six-year priesthood in Buda.89 The other is dated 24 September 1677, sent to Propaganda Fide by representatives of the faithful in Besnyő, Tököl, Varbica, Buda, Esztergom and Fehérvár, requesting that Marunčić be appointed. In this letter, the objects of complaint are the Bosnian chaplains. The last of these, Nikola Perišić, had bargained away their church, costing them five thousand forints to redeem it. Consequently, they would rather remain without a priest than endure the outrages of the Bosnians. They accepted only the excellent Marunčić, and they would give their donations to friaries in need rather than to the provincial, who used the money to buy horses and clothes for the Turks.90 The tenor and wording of both of these letters clearly betray that they were at least inspired by the two opposing Franciscan groups if not written by the friars themselves. The letters certainly reveal that there were many Bosnian Catholic merchants, craftsmen and peasants living in and around Pest, and both sides in the church dispute sought their support.91 Propaganda Fide and its representative in the Vienna court, the Nuncio Francesco Buonvisi, took a quite unequivocal position in the matter. In the preceding years, Marunčić’s enemies had discredited him in Rome to such an extent that the chief mission authority was certainly not going to support his aims, and the forgery of letters had certainly not improved his position. The mandate as vicar he had received from the archbishop of Esztergom again violated Propaganda Fide’s jurisdiction. Consequently, the nuncio’s task right from the start was to explain to Szelepcsényi the Congregation’s concerns and discreetly persuade him to withdraw the mandate given to Marunčić. The idea of arresting 89  APF SC Bosnia, Vol. 3, fol. 30rv. 90  Ibid., fol. 70r. 91  The Bosnian provincial and Branković’s strongly-worded instructions to the Catholic merchants of Buda against Marunčić: APF SOCG, Vol. 465, fols. 171r–175v. (Bosančica original and Latin translation that Szelepcsényi sent to Rome). On the presence of Bosnian merchants and craftsmen in Hungary in the second half of the seventeenth century, see Bogumil Hrabak, ‘Srpski i bosanski trgovci i zanatlije u Ugarskoj pre i peposredno posle velike seobe 1690. godine’, Sentandrejski zbornik 3 (1992) 57–99.

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Marunčić was also considered, but the plan proved unfeasible in Ottoman Pest.92 In the first week of August 1678, Marunčić fled the plague epidemic in Pest and Buda and went to the village of Besnyő, where he worked in the church of St John the Baptist. The Bosnian provincial sent a new parish priest to replace him, Friar Petar from the parish of Majevac in North Bosnia. Petar naturally did not recognize the archbishop of Esztergom’s jurisdiction over the Pest residence. Marunčić wanted to clarify this somewhat confused situation to the leadership of the order. Accordingly, he sought an appearance before the newly-elected provincial, Grgo Kovačević, bearing the archbishop’s mandate.93 The archbishop, seeing the disquiet in Rome concerning his vicar, somewhat toned down the assertive tone of his previous letters and tried to change his line, while maintaining his authority. He clearly recognized that the Bosnians had been using him in their internal disputes, which were of no interest to him whatever. Accordingly, he tried to contact the provincial and, ridding himself of the compromised Marunčić, appoint as vicar the Franciscan designated by the provincial. The provincial did not cooperate, however, having no wish for the jurisdiction of another prelate to work its way into Ottoman Hungary. Ultimately, the relatively insignificant Buda position was not worth all the trouble it was causing Szelepcsényi, who – stressing the damage to his jurisdiction and his obedience to Propaganda Fide – declared himself willing to renounce the appointment of the vicar. All he asked was to be told the reasons for the decision, to soothe his conscience. Propaganda Fide fulfilled this request: its decision of 28 January 1679 instructed the nuncio to inform the archbishop.94 This brought the story of the short-lived Buda vicariate to an end. From then on, we hear about what happened to Marunčić mainly from his enemies, principally Luka Ibrišimović. After the Buda fiasco, he returned to Slavonia. In autumn 1680, he again denounced Ibrišimović to the Ottoman authorities 92  APF Acta, Vol. 47, fols. 150r–151v, Vol. 48, fols. 87r–88r, Vol. 49, fols. 29r–30r; APF Lettere, Vol. 66, fols. 21v–22r, Vol. 67, fols. 27v–28r. 93  He signed his letter to Szelepcsényi from Besnyő, written on 29 August 1678, with the name Lucas Kocianovich. Molnár, ‘Az esztergomi érsek’, 16. 94  Tóth, ‘Kié Buda?’, 253–257; Ferenc Galla, Pápai kinevezések, megbízások és felhatalmazások Erdély, a Magyar Királyság és a Hódoltság területére, 1550–1711. (Collectanea Vaticana Hungariae. Classis II, 3.) Ed. by Péter Tusor and Krisztina Tóth. Budapest, Vác, 2010, 132.

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with the accusation of treason. Ibrišimović languished in the prison of the bey of Požega from 1 to 19 October, released only with the help of his influential Turkish friends and a 210-forint bribe paid by the friary of Velika.95 In autumn 1682, Marunčić went to the parish of Dugo Selo to obtain the letters of the Slavonian Franciscans and show them to the Turks, but Ibrišimović’s friend and helper, the Franciscan László Jankovics of Varasd (Varaždin), persuaded the hajdús/heyducks to capture him and take him to Kapronca (Koprivnica). He was supposed to stay in the St Ladislaus Franciscan province of Croatia– Slavonia, but in captivity, he promised to improve himself and took part in gathering intelligence. He was released in early 1683. The leopard did not change its spots, however: he obtained Ibrišimović’s letters to the imperial officers and threatened to hand them over to the grand vizier. The Slavonian Franciscans wanted to have him captured by Ivan Radmanić, voivode of Szentgyörgy (Đurđevac), their greatest supporter in the years before the war.96 In May 1683, he was taken to Kapronca once again.97 In a letter from the castle jail of Krapina written on 28 September 1683, he complained bitterly to Bishop Martin Borković of Zagreb about the injustices wrought upon him. He was on his way, in the public interest, to the emperor, the archbishop of Esztergom and from there to the bishop of Zagreb, when he was treacherously taken captive.98 In the final years of the century, he worked in the Slavonian parishes for Bishop Ogramić of Bosnia.99 After 1686, relationships between the Bosnian Franciscans of Pest and the Hungarian hierarchy, as in the whole area of Ottoman Hungary, formed up under the restored Hungarian church organisation, independently of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide.100 95  Barbarić and Holzleitner, Pisma, 106. 96  Ibid., 116–124. 97  NAZ Epist. ad Episc. Vol. 98, No. 79. 98  NAZ Epist. ad Episc. Vol. 15, No. 43. He claimed to have been known in the Vienna court for thirty years, and among his supporters were Archbishop György Szelepcsényi of Esztergom and his predecessor, György Lippay, Chancellor Tamás Pálffy, Count Portia and Prince Lobkowitz, and Generals Leslie, Puchaim, Souches and Montecuccoli. 99  Barbarić and Holzleitner, Pisma, 162, 174; Hoško, ‘Luka Ibrišimović i sukobi’, 118; Idem, ‘Luka Ibrišimović i crkvene prilike’, 132–133. 100  Franjo Emanuel Hoško, ‘Prosvjetno i kulturno djelovanje bosanskih i hrvatskih franjevaca tijekom 18. stoljeća u Budimu’, Nova et vetera 28 (1978) 113–179.

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THE STORY OF MÜRTEZA PASHA Balázs Sudár Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest [email protected]

In seventeenth-century Ottoman affairs, the network of contacts among high-

placed persons played perhaps an even larger part than it had in previous times. As the scope of authority shifted from the sancakbeyis to the beylerbeyis, many of whom came from the sultan’s palace, Ottoman internal politics became much more centralized. There were fewer players on the stage, and they knew each other better and maintained closer relations, in both the positive and negative senses. In addition, their contacts were not restricted to officials of the empire, but included the rulers of vassal states and leading figures in neighbouring countries. Consequently, we can properly understand the events in a specific region only if we know about the careers of the principal players and their personal networks. Géza Dávid has done lasting and essential work in this field, including biographies of many dignitaries and identifying the heads of administrative units. Here, I would like to wish him a happy birthday with work of a similar kind: the biography of an Ottoman dignitary whose activity extended to the Hungarian frontier lands. Mürteza Pasha’s career followed a well-established pattern. He served in the palace for a long period, and although his membership of the leading elite lasted only fifteen years (1621–1636), he performed very important functions.1 He also had a major impact on the Hungarian frontier lands, and although the

1  There is very brief summary of his life in Antal Gévay, A’ budai pasák. Vienna, 1841, 29; Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmani. Osmanlı Ünlüleri. İstanbul, 1996, IV. 1118. Much more detailed is Nedim Zahirović, Murteza Pascha von Ofen zwischen Panegyrik und Historie: eine

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beginning and the end of his active period was spent on the eastern frontiers, he spent several eventful years on the western front. As pasha of Bosnia, Buda and Silistra, he was highly influential in “Hungarian affairs” and attracted considerable attention from Hungarian, and especially Transylvanian, leaders. Before launching into his story, let us look at the principal outlines of Ottoman history in the 1620s and 1630s, the stage on which Mürteza had to play his part.2 His career started in a period of deepest crisis. The young and combative Osman II (1618–1622) was murdered by the janissaries in May 1622, the first time anything of the kind had happened in the House of Osman. He was replaced by the previously-deposed, half-witted Mustafa I (1617– 1618, 1622–1623), put on the throne through the harem lobby led by his mother Halime Sultan. Hardly a year passed before his leadership was leading the empire to ruin, and the younger Kösem Sultan effected a putsch in 1623, placing her child Murad on the throne but in fact ruling herself, through the grand viziers. This arrangement brought some stability, but when Murad IV (1623–1640) reached his majority in 1632, to everyone’s surprise, with the support of his mother, he seized complete power. High-handed, full of his own ideas and with a high reputation for martial skills, Murad evoked the old, great rulers, but lacked experience and moral strength, and his rule was oppressive, if successful in many respects. The 1620s started with severe problems on the Polish front, but the peace of 1621 temporarily settled relations there. Subsequently, a series of celali revolts in Anatolia caused much worry for the leaders in Istanbul. Taking advantage of these internal problems, the shah of Persia launched an attack, capturing Baghdad in 1623 and endangering the stability of the eastern frontiers. Murad literarisch-historische Analyse eines osmanischen Wesirspiegels von Nergisi (El-vaşfü l-kāmil fīah. vāli l-vezīri l-ādil). Wiesbaden, 2010, 103–107. 2  İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi. Vol. III/1. Ankara, 1995, 127–208; Halil İnal­ cık, Devlet-i ‘Aliyye. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu Üzerine Araştırmalar. Vol. 2: Tagayyür ve Fesâd (1603–1656): Bozuluş ve Kargaşa Dönemi. İstanbul, 2014, 167–228; Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. New York, Oxford, 1993, 91–112; Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream. The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York, 2005, 196 –222; Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire. Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World. New York, 2010, passim.

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responded with a series of campaigns, ending with the recapture of the city in 1638 and the Treaty of Kasr-i Shirin in 1639, and the fighting stopped for a while. As well as the “big questions” there were of course a host of smaller matters to deal with. In the northwest region, these included Gabriel Bethlen’s (1613–1629) attacks against the Kingdom of Hungary, the uprising of Şahin Giray in the Polish frontier region and the movements of the Nogais. Bethlen, the prince of Transylvania, saw the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War as his opportunity to gain control of Hungary and put an end to the Habsburg dynasty’s possession of the Hungarian crown. His connection with the Ottomans gave the venture an awkward aspect. Would the newly-captured lands be joined to Transylvania and thus become territories subject to the sultan, or remain independent, preventing the establishment of a single state that included Transylvania? Initially, Bethlen attempted to keep Ottoman forces out of the campaigns and declared the independence of the territory he captured, but later, for both military and political reasons, he increasingly relied on Ottoman forces. By doing so, he alienated the Hungarian nobility of the kingdom and his campaigns to take possession of the country were thereby condemned to failure, although he did manage to obtain seven counties in East Hungary and have this possession set into peace treaties. From the Ottoman perspectives, Bethlen’s campaigns of 1619, 1621, 1623 and 1626 held out the attractive prospect of extending Ottoman suzerainty to the Kingdom of Hungary, but they also threatened the outbreak of a Habsburg–Ottoman war, which the Porte certainly wanted to avoid at a time when the Persian front was much more important. The Ottoman leaders in Istanbul and Ottoman Hungary therefore played a double game, supporting Bethlen but maintaining contacts with Vienna, through which it conveyed the attitude that the prince of Transylvania was acting on his own account. Despite the obvious hostility, several peace treaties were signed (Gyarmat, 1625 and Szőny, 1627), and the Ottoman leaders successfully confined the conflict to the regional level and prevented war on a broader front.3 3  Katalin Péter, ‘The Golden Age of the Principality (1606–1660)’, in László Makkai and Zoltán Szász (eds.), History of Transylvania. Vol. 2: From 1606 to 1830. New York, 2002, 67–95; Pál Jászay, ‘Értekezés a gyarmati békekötésről’, Tudománytár 1837:2, 39–75; Mahmut Halef Cevrioğlu, ‘Garmat (1625) ve Sön (1627) Muahedeleri/The Peace Treaties of Gyarmat (1625)

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There were similar frontier problems in the Crimean region. Although the Polish campaigns ended in 1621 with a peace treaty that was renewed in 1625 and 1630, trouble arouse out of an internal crisis in the Khanate of Crimea. Crimean leaders dissatisfied with Canibek Giray Khan (1610–1624) obtained Ottoman assistance to replace him with a banished prince, Mehmed. The new khan attempted to reorganize the country and its foreign relations, negotiating with its ancient enemies – the Kozaks, Poles and Persians – but also trying to minimize relations with the Ottomans. Mehmed refused to take part in the Persian campaign, and the Ottomans tried, unsuccessfully, to remove him in 1624. In 1628, however, with the help of one of the clans of the Crimean state, the Mansurs, they ejected Mehmed, who was killed shortly afterwards by the Kozaks. In his place, they reinstated Canibek, who proved unable to stabilize his power, and life in Crimea was beset with unceasing internal dissension.4 In the meantime, the Ottoman Empire was without a truly strong leader, and various power groups formed and attempted to take control. It was a deadly struggle, in which opponents were regularly banished or executed. Mürteza was thus treading treacherous ground, but his thirty years of service in the Topkapı Palace, and the web of contacts he had woven there, no doubt helped him through. We know little about Mürteza’s origins. His name is rare and revealing, a word that means “selected” or “loved”; it is a qualifier always applied to Ali, sonin-law of the Prophet Muhammad. Echoing this is the inclusion of Ali’s twobladed sword, Zülfikar, on the pasha’s seal.5 This may indicate a connection with the Bektashi dervishes, and it is curious that we do not know of any mosque founded by Mürteza. (Nergisi, Mürteza’s “biographer” mentions the pasha’s mystical dedication, but we cannot be sure whether this is a true fact or and Szöny (1627)’, Ege ve Balkan Araştırmaları Dergisi/Journal of Aegean and Balkan Studies 3:2 (2016) 67–86; Balázs Sudár, ‘Bethlen Gábor török segélyhadai a harmincéves háborúban (1619–1626)’, forthcoming. 4  Gáspár Katkó, Az Oszmán Birodalom és a Rzeczpospolita határán: Kantemir mirza fel­ emelkedése és katonai pályafutásának első szakasza (1621–1629). PhD Dissertation, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 2015, 137–180; Yücel Öztürk, Özü’den Tuna’ya Kazaklar. İstanbul, 2004, 373–394. 5  Lajos Fekete, Türkische Schriften aus dem Archive des Palatins Nikolaus Esterházy 1606–1645. Budapest, 1932, Plate 1.

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just a stylistic flourish.)6 No substantial conclusions can be drawn from any of this. He called himself the child of a poor man,7 although we know from the Ottoman chronicles that he was related to a grand vizier, Damad İbrahim Pasha.8 He was probably born around 1581, because he said of himself in 1627 that he was forty-six years old, a claim that is consistent with other information he gave. His first steps may have been guided by İbrahim Pasha himself, who died in 1601, when our hero was twenty years old. This assistance may have consisted of getting a child of his poor relatives into the palace school at the age of eight, around 1589–1590. He thus embarked on thirty years of service in the palace, where he excelled in his skills and combat abilities. He performed so well that he joined Sultan Ahmed (1603–1617) himself in riding and archery, the “compulsory sports” of the Ottoman elite.9 He thus may have been the sultan’s personal armbearer. In a world where only a few of the highest officials of the empire could speak to the sultan, this personal, everyday contact was enormously valuable, opening up great opportunities; it was through these people that the sultan could be approached, and nurturing relations with him must have been very desirable. The young Mürteza was thus in a very advantageous position. Additionally, he rose to the greatest heights during the reign of Sultan Murad IV, who was also an outstanding warrior of exceptional strength and no doubt greatly esteemed Mürteza’s qualities.10 Mürteza’s outstanding abilities are mentioned in several sources. He himself claimed that he and his fellow pages entertained themselves by shooting across the “ravine sea”, perhaps the Golden Horn.11 This is confirmed by his biographer Nergisi.12 He was also an excellent cirit player, and displayed his skills to the Hungarian envoys in Buda in 1627, and played with the sultan himself in 6  Zahirović, Murteza Pascha, 125. 7   Ferenc Salamon, Két magyar diplomata a XVII. századból. Pest, 1867, 22. 8   İbrahim Peçevi, Tarih-i Peçevi. 2 vols. İstanbul, 1866–1867, II. 236. 9  Salamon, Két magyar diplomata, 22, 215. The envoys also knew him to have fine greyhounds: ibid., 225. 10  On records from Buda of the sultan’s abilities, see Balázs Sudár, ‘A Bécsi-kapu átdöfött pajzsa és a szultáni kar ereje’, Keletkutatás 2009. ősz, 91–100. 11 Salamon, Két magyar diplomata, 223. 12 Zahirović, Murteza Pascha, 129–132.

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Scutari in 1632.13 He described himself as one who “revels in horse-riding”, and according to Nergisi he was the finest horseman on the frontier, which despite the customary exaggeration, meant that he rode masterfully.14 Mürteza’s career had the usual trajectory. After internal service, he became one of the outer ağas, the head of the doğancı (“falconer”) troop.15 (The doğancı­ başı was the closest hunting ağa to the sultan, in this case Osman II.)16 This office was a good springboard for provincial service, and Mürteza was soon appointed pasha, starting the truly interesting part of his story. In 1621, as chief falconer he marched to the Polish front, and on his return, at the great divan of Edirne (9 December 1621), the sultan made him beylerbeyi of Damascus, also granting him the title of vizier; this was an extremely strong start, if not unprecedented.17 Consequently, he was far away when Istanbul was in ferment following the sultan’s assassination in spring 1622. In late autumn 1622, he was ordered to Van, and soon found himself on the waiting list, having to put up with being governor of Karahisar-i Şarki (now Şebinkarahisar).18 This brought him into the thick of events. In 1623, the Caucasus-born Abaza Mehmed Pasha, beylerbeyi of Erzurum, considered that the sultan’s assassination had not been properly avenged. He made a pronouncement, and in the name of justice, gathered the pashas around him. There were subsequently many rebellions of this kind in the empire, but we should not regard it as simply arbitrary action. Provincial military leaders saw the troubles at the centre as being power struggles among opposing groups rather than attempts to solve the real problems, and not surprisingly longed for the “good old times”.19 Abaza Mehmed issued a call to arms to the pashas of the area. Tayyar Mehmed of Sivas supported him, but Mürteza – who was really his subordinate, because Karahisar-i Şarki belonged to Erzurum province – refused. In February 1623, 13 Salamon, Két magyar diplomata, 172; Antal Beke and Samu Barabás (eds.), I. Rákóczi György és a porta. Levelek és okiratok. Budapest, 1888, 19. 14 Salamon, Két magyar diplomata, 209; Zahirović, Murteza Pascha, 129. 15  Topçular Katibi ’Abdülkādir (Kadrî) Efendi Tarihi. 2 vols. (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, III/21.) Ed. by Ziya Yılmazer. Ankara, 2003, II. 711. 16  İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Teşkilâtı. Ankara, 1988, 421. 17  Topçular Katibi, II. 757. 18  Ibid., 768, 770. 19  On the celalis, see William J. Griswold, Anadolu’da Büyük İsyan, 1591–1611. Ankara, 2011.

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Abaza Mehmed besieged Karahisar-i Şarki and forced him to surrender and thus join his side.20 (The extent to which Mürteza, an ağa of falconers and a confidant of Osman II, opposed Abaza Mehmed’s aims, the bringing to justice of those responsible for the sultan’s murder, is an interesting question.) In September 1624, when the new grand vizier Çerkes Mehmed Pasha defeated Abaza Mehmed near Kayseri in Central Anatolia, Mürteza – together with several other pashas and Türkmen – abandoned the rebels to join the grand vizier.21 From that time, he is again mentioned in the sources as pasha of Van, but he was soon removed and sent to the sultan’s court.22 The background to this is unclear. The factional struggles surrounding the change of ruler did not touch Mürteza and he probably did not yet count as a major player, but involvement in a failed celali rebellion was not an advantage. His attempt to hold Karahisar-i Şarki against Abaza Mehmed must have been a point in his favour, but his surrender was not. Perhaps Çerkes Mehmed did not sufficiently trust him, but the reason for removing him from his post in Van may not have been any failing on his part but simply the need to install someone else there – its former beylerbeyi, Mehmed. Mürteza was back on the waiting list, but had to be satisfied, and that is clearly why he was given Bosnia.23 Who was instrumental in making the appointment – the grand vizier himself or his deputy in Istanbul, Gürcü Mehmed – is not clear.24 We do not even know for certain who was pasha of Bosnia before him; until the end of 1623, it was certainly Sarhoş İbrahim, who had successfully carried out a large-scale campaign on the side of Gabriel Bethlen.25 He subsequently appeared on the waiting list, but exactly when and why, we do not know. In 1626, he was still signing his letters as the dismissed (mazul) pasha of Bosnia,26 which means that there was no hurry to give him a new job. It is possible that the 1623 campaign, which had led to open conflict with the Habsburgs, was the reason for his dismissal. 20  Topçular Katibi, II. 774; Katib Çelebi, Fezleke. İstanbul, 1879, II. 35. 21  Katib Çelebi, Fezleke, II. 56. The battle took place on 4 September 1624. 22  Topçular Katibi, II. 800–801. 23  Ibid., 801. 24  Katib Çelebi, Fezleke, II. 54. 25  Sudár, ‘Bethlen Gábor’ (forthcoming). 26  Sándor Szilágyi and Áron Szilády (eds.), Török-magyarkori történelmi emlékek. Első osztály: Okmánytár. Vol. III. Pest, 1868, 467.

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Mürteza was certainly a newcomer in the defensive system of the northwest frontier, but his rank as vizier commanded respect. In Buda, however, there was an even more substantial figure. Sufi Mehmed had taken an active part in putting Mustafa I on the throne, had several times been kaymakam (deputy) to grand viziers, and knew his way about the region, having been born in Hungary.27 We do not know what relations were like between them, but in 1625, to secure the outcome of talks in Gyarmat, the Bosnian forces were ordered to the Pest camp, where a major Ottoman armed force gathered.28 Affairs warmed up in 1626, when Bethlen prepared for another campaign. He was to be supported by the entire Ottoman frontier region, including the pasha of Buda, who was required to follow Bethlen’s instructions. Leaving their cool relations behind them, Bethlen and Sufi Mehmed adopted each other as relatives. The Bosnian forces were of course also ordered out, and Mürteza was in the Pest camp at the head of his army by August.29 He informed the Porte that the pasha of Buda, commander of the campaign, freshly appointed serdar (commander-in-chief ) had died. He offered himself as commander, and at the same time requested the post of pasha of Buda.30 At this time, the grand vizier was Hafız Ahmed, who not long previously had brought eight months of an unsuccessful siege of Baghdad to an end (November 1625–July 1626) and retreated to Diyarbekir. He was preoccupied with writing his report to the sultan, and with his future. The question of who was to be pasha of Buda was somewhat less in his mind.31 In any case, it was 27  János B. Szabó and Balázs Sudár, ‘A hatalom csúcsain. Magyarországi származású renegátok az oszmán birodalom politikai elitjében’, Korunk 25:11 (2014) 29. 28  Szilágyi and Szilády, Török magyarkori, I. 421; Sámuel Gergely, ‘Adalék „Bethlen Gábor és a porta” czímű közleményhez. 1. közlemény’, Történelmi Tár 5 (1882) 465–466; Sámuel Gergely, ‘Adalék „Bethlen Gábor és a porta” czímű közleményhez. 2. közlemény’, Történelmi Tár 6 (1883) 144; for the peace agreement, see Jászay, ‘Értekezés’. 29  On the gathering of the forces and the arrival of the Bosnians, see Zahirović, Murteza Pascha, 95–99. 30  The pasha died just as Mürteza arrived. Salamon, Két magyar diplomata, 216. On the death, see Zahirović, Murteza Pascha, 99–100. 31  On the siege of Baghdad, see Özer Küpeli, ‘Irak-ı Arap’ta Osmanlı-Safevi Mücadelesi (XV–XVII. Yüzyıllar)’, History Studies. International Journal of History 2 (2010) 235–236; Claudia Römer, ‘Die Osmanische Belagerung Bagdads 1034–35/1625–26’, Der Islam 66 (1989) 119–136.

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the grand vizier’s deputy in Istanbul, the kaymakam, who usually decided such affairs. This was Bethlen’s old ally – and adoptive father – Gürcü Mehmed Pasha. Great changes were under way in Istanbul. Receb Pasha, aspiring to power, accused the kaymakam of having failed to give the grand vizier sufficient support, thus bearing some of the blame for the defeat at Baghdad. His tactic succeeded. Gürcü Mehmed was executed in August 1626 and his place taken by Receb himself, who became the de facto political leader of the empire.32 A few days later, news arrived of the death of the pasha of Buda, the serdar appointed beside Bethlen, and the appointment of Mürteza must have been one of Receb’s first tasks (29 or 30 August).33 Why the choice fell on Mürteza is not entirely clear, but one thing definitely stood in his favour: The campaign was ready to start and the pasha of Bosnia, with the rank of vizier, was the highest-ranking military commander in the area.34 The decisive factor may even have been – as some sources state – a request by the prince of Transylvania. Bethlen may have addressed the request to Gürcü Mehmed, whose support he still enjoyed. If so, then Mürteza must have had every reason for gratitude and loyalty to Bethlen, whom he adopted as “kin”.35 Their relationship got off to a somewhat difficult start. The 1626 campaign failed, for which Mürteza and Bethlen blamed each other. Mürteza argued that he did not know the purpose of his involvement, because neither Sufi Mehmed nor Bethlen had informed him, and he had certainly not imagined that he should function as a serdar.36 He was also aware – or at least alleged – that Sufi 32  Katib Çelebi, Fezleke, II. 54, 90. The changes utterly upset internal affairs at the Porte. Tamás Borsos saw the court as being partially paralysed, because the viziers sitting in the divan were “novices and inexperienced”. Sámuel Gergely: ‘Adalék „Bethlen Gábor és a porta” czímű közleményhez. 3. közlemény’, Történelmi Tár 6 (1883) 610. Gürcü Mehmed was certainly executed before 18 August. On his life, see Katib Çelebi, Fezleke, II. 94. 33 Gévay, A’ budai pasák, 29. 34  He gave this reason himself: Salamon, Két magyar diplomata, 216. 35  10.12.1626. MNL OL P 123 II. i. no. 74. (I am grateful to Gábor Kármán for this information.) Further information: Sándor Szilágyi, ‘Bethlen Gábor és a porta. 2.’ Történelmi Tár 5 (1882) 47, 75; Salamon, Két magyar diplomata, 13. (In April 1627!) After his death, he called him his “beloved kin at peace with God”. Sándor Szilágyi, ‘Bethlen Gábor utolsó tervei és halála’, Budapesti Szemle 7 (1867) 274–245. 36 Salamon, Két magyar diplomata, 13, 16.

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Mehmed’s primary task was to maintain the peace, but his insatiable, greedy nature had caused him to choose war, unlike himself, who sought peace talks as soon as he received the appointment, and started to negotiate with Miklós Esterházy, palatine of the Kingdom of Hungary.37 Nothing came of this, and Bethlen’s diplomats attempted to deny the whole matter.38 The appointment was certainly a promotion for Mürteza. He was now in charge of a whole region rather than just a province, and had become the serdar of a campaign involving a large army. He was not responsible for the meagre outcome of what had been promised to be a large-scale enterprise, because it was due to a decision of Bethlen’s taken, once again, behind the backs of the Ottomans.39 The brief campaign left the local Ottoman leaders highly dissatisfied and increasingly distrustful of Bethlen. It was no doubt their opinion that was expressed by İbrahim Peçevi: “A few times I heard from his own [Bethlen’s] gossiping mouth: ‘I am not helping out of a liking for the people of Islam or for their faith. But whenever I have intended to scorn the Muslims, great remorse and misfortune have always come to me and I have suffered loss.’ It seems certain to me that if a conquest happens through the helps of infidels, it still counts a miracle of the Prophet. Because they [the Christians] are the enemies of the true faith. Even those who show friendship, in reality do not wish the victory of Muslims at all.”40 Mürteza bore no grudge, however, and maintained good relations with Gabriel Bethlen. Within Ottoman Hungary, he rearranged power relations with a strong hand. He settled scores with the rebellious officials of Buda and the zaims of Alacahisar, and executed the chief müfti of Buda, Nasreddinzade Efendi and Çifut Ahmed Pasha of Eğri (Eger).41 The latter two were condemned for allegedly failing to sufficiently represent Ottoman interests at 37  Ibid., 221. 38  Ibid., 21–22; 23.08.1626; 01.09.1626. MNL OL P 123 II. i. no. 18. 39  On the campaign: Gyalókay, ‘Bethlen Gábor mint hadvezér’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 30 (1929) 427–459; János B. Szabó, ‘Bethlen Gábor hadai a harmincéves háborúban. A kora újkori hadügyi fejlődés Kelet-Közép-Európában: az Erdélyi Fejedelemség példája a XVII. század első felében (2. rész)’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 127:1 (2014) 65–70; Zahirović, Murteza Pascha, 153–186. 40 Peçevi, Tarih, II. 353. 41  Ibid., 352.

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the Gyarmat peace talks in 1625, in return for substantial bribes, a misdeed that could have led to the resumption of the war. (Both were old peace negotiators, and had been involved in concluding the Peace of Zsitvatorok in 1606.)42 İbrahim Peçevi, the historian of the Hungarian frontier lands, who could always see the worst in Mürteza, naturally saw them as innocent, and Mürteza could undoubtedly be cruel, prepared to use any means to remove anyone who stood in his way.43 He was also on very bad terms with Deák Mehmed, whom he displaced from political affairs in Ottoman Hungary, having threatened him for allegedly improperly moving an Ottoman embassy.44 His rule certainly brought new players on to the field, such as Papazoğlu Mehmed Pasha, who had probably long been a good acquaintance and protégé of Bethlen and could now support him as pasha of Eğri. After the 1626 campaign, the new pasha of Buda – who, it seems, was indeed unprepared for the campaign – turned on the holders of the revenue estates: he claimed that many had not met their obligations to join the campaign. He confiscated the estates of these persons. The procedure elicited outrage, and the complainants went to Istanbul to prove themselves. They found no comfort there, the authorities deciding in Mürteza’s favour. Mürteza then ordered a census of the province in 1627. His action made military preparations more effective, but did nothing to improve his local popularity.45 After the brief campaign of 1626, Mürteza did not enter any serious combat in Ottoman Hungary. (He was fortunate, because Bethlen had lost his taste for war.) The year 1627 was mainly taken up with the Szőny peace talks, and Mürteza probably immediately set to work on castle repairs. His biography gives an imposing description of construction in various towns, comprising the renovation of fortress walls and the sultan’s mosques.46 Since the book was completed in August 1629,47 the work on the fortifications must have been

42  Ibid., 324. 43  Ibid., 144–145, 353. 44 Salamon, Két magyar diplomata, 20, 188. 45  Ibid., 188. 46 Zahirović, Murteza Pascha, 142–153. 47  Ibid., 13.

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complete. The construction work is also mentioned in a document worded in the first person singular, but without name or date, held in Istanbul.48 The period of calm lasted until Bethlen’s death on 25 November 1629, sparking off a major succession crisis. The Transylvanian throne was occupied by Catherine of Brandenburg for a while, followed by Stephen Bethlen (28 September–26 November 1630) and eventually by George Rákóczi (on 26 November 1630).49 As a first step, the pasha of Buda attempted an arrangement with the hajdús (heyducks), instructing Papazoğlu Mehmed to negotiate with them on support for the Bethlen family. The pasha entered Debrecen with a retinue of 2000. (The Temeşvar [Temesvár/Timişoara] forces were mobilized for the same purpose.)50 Palatine Esterházy naturally took a dim view of the march, and wrote a series of letters in complaint, at which Mürteza withdrew his forces. In this tense situation, however, Mürteza – and his right-hand man, Papazoğlu Mehmed – were dismissed from their posts, and Mürteza was sent to the other side of Transylvania, to Silistra. The dismissal may have been prompted by the complaints from the Kingdom of Hungary. This would certainly be the local interpretation. On the other hand, Stephen Bethlen was lobbying in the Porte to prevent it.51 From that viewpoint, the transfer may even have been a punishment. The final decision in Istanbul may have been made by Grand Vizier Hüsrev Pasha.52 That might have provided Mürteza with the motivation, two years later, for the key part he played in Hüsrev’s death (of which more below). Another potential factor in his Silistran appointment other than punishment, however, was the need for Mürteza’s abilities on the Polish frontier. The holders of this post were mostly required to deal with Polish and Kozak affairs. Mürteza was familiar with the region, having been on the Hotin 48  Published by Pál Fodor, ‘Néhány adat a török végvári rendszer állapotáról a 17. század középső harmadából’, in Sándor Bodó and Jolán Szabó (eds.), Magyar és török végvárak (1663–1684). Eger, 1985, 165–172. 49  Péter, ‘The Golden Age’, 100–107. 50 Zahirović, Murteza Pascha, 13. 51  Szilágyi, ‘Bethlen Gábor és a porta’, 65. 52  Ibid.

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campaign in 1621. Although that war had ended with a peace treaty, it did not put a stop to attacks on the Black Sea coast by the Kozak chaikas (and neither did it restrain the Crimean Tartars).53 Although the peace treaty was renewed in 1625, the Khan of Crimea, Mehmed Giray, pursued an increasingly antiOttoman policy and built up relations with the Kozaks and the Poles. He was deposed in 1628, but Canibek, restored to the throne, could not keep firm control. In August 1629, the Nogais and Tatars launched a major raid on Poland. Although this ended in failure, the Poles were afraid of further and more serious attacks, and entered preventive negotiations with the Ottomans. These were at first between the frontier leaders, Stanislaw Koniecpolski and the pasha of Silistra, Mürteza, who reached an agreement on 9 September. This perhaps brings us to the other reason for Mürteza’s appointment: He already had substantial experience in frontier talks, those that led to the Peace of Szőny in 1627. This experience, however, almost backfired. Mürteza wanted responsibility for the full agreement, and therefore did not wish to allow the Polish envoy to continue to Istanbul for talks with the sultan. He eventually realized that customs were different there, and Aleksander Piaseczynski eventually reached the Ottoman capital and entered negotiations with the kaymakam, Topal Receb Pasha. The sultan’s ahdname was issued about the same time as Mürteza’s agreement and effectively coincided with it, indicating close consultations in the background.54 The peace treaty was renewed, and the next year, the Tatar forces were fighting on the Persian front, making 1631 a rare year of peace on the Polish frontier. In the meantime, however, the conflicts between power groups in the sultan’s court were intensifying. 53  According to Charles King, the Kozak raids were what undermined Ottoman positions on the Black Sea, when it lost its character as the “inner sea” (Osman gölü) in the early seventeenth century. Charles King, The Black Sea: History. Oxford, 2004, 132–134. See further Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, ‘Inner Lake or Frontier? The Ottoman Black Sea in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Faruk Bilici, Ionel Cândea and Anca Popescu (eds.), Enjeux politiques, économiques et militaires en Mer Noire (XIVe au XXIe siècles): études à la mémoire de Mihail Guboglu. Braila, 2007, 125–139. 54  Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, The Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania: International Diplomacy on the European Periphery (15th–18th Century). A Study of Peace Treaties Followed by Annotated Documents. Leiden, 2011, 139–141; Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic Relations (15th–18th Century). An Annotated Edition of Ahdnames and Other Documents. Leiden, 2000, 135–136.

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At the end of 1631, Mürteza was called to the palace, and soon afterwards (on 22 January 1632), the sultan received him in person. It seems they played the traditional Turkish equestrian sport of cirit together.55 This may have been when Mürteza was given a secret mission. He was ostensibly appointed pasha of Diyarbekir, but his actual job was to execute the grand vizier, Hüsrev Pasha, who was wintering in Tokat. Several persons in the Topkapı Palace seemed to have joined forces against Hüsrev, who was a Bosnian. They included his deputy, the ağa of the janissaries, the grand müfti and the sultan’s inner ağa Musa.56 They manoeuvred to have him dismissed and executed. The sultan subsequently regretted his decision, and sent a messenger with a pardon, but Mürteza was too quick, and Hüsrev Pasha was executed. The event set off turmoil in Istanbul. Certain factions in the palace were enraged by Hüsrev’s execution and on 10 February, they killed Grand Vizier Hafız Ahmed in the sultan’s presence and demanded the heads of the other perpetrators. The sultan defended his subjects, but the arrival of Hüsrev’s head in Istanbul on 11 March whipped up passions again.57 The janissary ağa and the defterdar were murdered, and the grand müfti fled. The figure behind the events was Topal Receb Pasha, who had long been a vizier and kaymakam and felt thwarted in his ambitions after the appointment of Hüsrev and then Hafız Ahmed. By exploiting the febrile mood, he managed to thin out the sultan’s inner circle, obtained the grand vizier’s seal, and then went on to plot the fall of the sultan. In the midst of this wave of score-settling, Mürteza was rightly afraid that revenge would eventually reach him, as Hüsrev’s executor, and there were already rumours in Istanbul that his fear would turn him into a celali, or rebel.58 But he had the support of the sultan, who granted him an honour and appointed him serdar of the Persian front (May 1632).59 The sultan was by then in direct control of events, and ordered the execution of the overambitious Receb and his associates, and later the execution of the grand müfti, who had also supported Receb. 55  Beke and Barabás (eds.), I. Rákóczi György, 19. 56  For an overview of the events, see İnalcık, Devlet-i ‘Aliyye, II. 207–217. On Hüsrev, see Uzun­ çarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, III/2. 381–383. On Hüsrev’s execution, see Peçevi, Tarih, II. 419–420. 57  On the date, see Beke and Barabás (eds.), I. Rákóczi György, 5. 58  Ibid., 28. 59  Ibid., 15.

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Having previously been regarded as a minor and denied real power, Murad ruled his empire with a strong hand for the next eight years, relying to a great extent on his mother Kösem. His manner was reminiscent of the old, great sultans. Mürteza Pasha was one the sultan’s confidants, and the new system suited him well. His recall to Istanbul in 1631 had clearly been for a purpose. The new grand vizier, Tabanıyassı Mehmed Pasha, was also close to Kösem and Murad IV and owed his rise to the harem ağası, Hacı Mustafa, a close collaborator of Kösem. He was a homo novus, about ten years younger than Mürteza, whom he allegedly favoured. Shortly afterwards, in February 1633, Mürteza was again touched by the sultan’s grace: He was given as wife a daughter of Ahmed I, sister of Murad IV, Ayşe Sultan, whose mother was Kösem Sultan herself. The betrothal tied Mürteza even closer to the governing elite. Ayşe was born around 1605, and was thus 25 years or so younger than Mürteza, who was nonetheless her fourth husband. Her first had been Nasuh Pasha, the grand vizier, to whom she was betrothed in 1612. After his death, she became the wife of Karakaş Mehmed, who had been pasha of Buda. He fell at the siege of Hotin in 1621. In 1626, she was given to Hafız Ahmed, pasha of Van, who as we have seen, was murdered in 1632. Then came Mürteza, to whom she was betrothed in February 1633, although it was only in 1635 that he spent long enough in Istanbul for them to get married. This marriage did not go the distance for her either: She later became the wife of the Hungarian-born Ahmed Pasha,60 and then of Voynuk Ahmed, who died in Crete, and finally of İbşir Mustafa Pasha, in 1655. Ayşe Sultan died in 1656.61 From the middle of 1632, Mürteza was again stationed on the eastern frontier, where he built again, renovating the Süleymaniye Mosque – named after an associate of Muhammad and not the sultan – in the castle of Diyarbekir. Later, it was also called after him. He also built a smaller masjid and a school alongside and refurbished the well-known place of pilgrimage connected to the mosque, the tomb (türbe) of the Sahaba (Companions of the Prophet).62 The 60  B. Szabó and Sudár, ‘A hatalom csúcsain’, 27. 61  M. Çağatay Uluçay, Padişahların Kadınları ve Kızları. Ankara, 2001, 50–51. 62  Alaattin Dikmen, ‘Diyarbakır’da Sahabe Kabri Olan Hz. Süleyman Türbesinde Yapılan Dinî/Geleneksel Uygulamalar’, Elektronik Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 12:44 (2013) 140–141; Halis

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period of peace and construction did not last long, because in summer 1633, news arrived of an impending attack by the shah of Persia. The target was the castle of Van, which should have counted on the support of Demirkazık Halil Pasha of Erzurum. By that time, however, Mürteza had been appointed serdar and given command of the military forces of Anatolia, Sivas, Rakka, Karaman, Trabzon and Erzurum, and a court cavalry troop (bölük). An open battle fought near Van on 14 October was sufficient to force the Persians into retreat, even though the battle itself was undecided. Relations between Mürteza and Halil deteriorated during the manoeuvres. The serdar considered that the pasha of Erzurum had not shown sufficient enthusiasm for the operation.63 After the successful defence of the castle, Mürteza was ordered back to Istanbul in December. He was needed on the Polish front, where hostilities had broken out again, and peace had to be restored.64 After the death of Sigismund III of Poland in 1632, the Russo-Polish war flared up again, and the tsar asked for the sultan’s assistance. Abaza Mehmed, previously stationed in Bosnia, was appointed by Sultan Murad as pasha of Silistra, and invaded Podolia with the Tatars and forces of the Moldavian and Wallachian principalities. In the battles of October 1633, however, he was defeated and forced to retreat. In February 1634, the Poles defeated the Russians at Smolensk and forced them to sign a peace treaty in July. This freed up their troops to fight in Podolia. The sultan himself led his troops against the Poles in spring 1634, but in July, he appointed Mürteza serdar (and also pasha of Silistra), putting him in command of the Bosnian and Rumelian forces as well as those from his own province, and even mobilizing Transylvania troops.65 His appointment, even as seen by contemporaries, reflected the desire for settlement: “They chose Mürteza Pasha as serdar for the same reason Fikrî Şüûn, ‘Dıyarbekir Abidelerinden Ulu Cami Kitabeleri’, in Ziya Gökalp (ed.), Küçük Mecmua. Vol. 3. Antalya, 2010, 84. The Companions of the Prophet were those of his followers who joined Muhammad in Mecca and are thus held in special respect in the Islamic world. 63  Sıdki Paşa, Gazavat-ı Sultan Murad-i Rabi‘. Vol. 4: Murad’ın Revan Seferi. İstanbul, 2006, 8; Küpeli, ‘Irak-ı Arap’ta’, 137–140. 64 Gévay, A’ budai pasák, 29; Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, III/2. 179. 65  Mustafa Na‘ima, Tarih-i Na‘ima. İstanbul, 1283, I. 580; Sıdki Paşa, Gazavat-ı Sultan Murad, 31. The troops assembled by August 1634, and although György Rákóczi did not want to march to war in person, he intended to delegate the command to János Kemény or János Szentpáli.

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that they hope that he loves peace, and if it is offered to him, he will not disdain it. It is also favourable for the Poles, because if [the Ottomans] only wanted war, they would have appointed Abaza as serdar.”66 And indeed, Mürteza’s old trusted aide Şahin Ağa immediately set off on a diplomatic mission to Poland. Marching with his troops, Mürteza met the Polish envoy at Giurgiu, where the peace of 1630 – in which Mürteza had also had a hand – was renewed in September 1634.67 The success of the operation further boosted Mürteza’s authority. When he returned to Istanbul in December, a new honour awaited him: He became the kaymakam of the grand vizier, Tabanıyassı Mehmed Pasha.68 Abaza Mehmed fared rather worse, being blamed for the failed military campaign and for the violation of the peace. He was executed on 24 August 1634, before the peace had been signed.69 Several high-ranking people in the palace had an interest in his removal. Some saw Abaza Mehmed as being too close to the sultan, who greatly esteemed his bearing and personal martial abilities. There were also rumours that Mürteza had a hand in the matter… The need for peace derived above all from the sultan’s decision to bring the conflict with the Safavids to a conclusion. Preparations for the Yerevan campaign were proceeding apace.70 Mürteza seems to have fallen ill at the start, and his gout prevented him from leaving the divan. A few months later, however, he drove the pegs of the sultan’s tent into the ground near İzmit. He took part in the campaign, during which he managed to have Halil Pasha – with whom he had fallen out during the relief of Van – executed. The sultan quickly regretted the loss of Halil and turned his anger on Mürteza, conferring 66  Beke and Barabás (eds.), I. Rákóczi György, 131 (27 July 1634). 67 Kołodziejczyk, The Crimean Khanate, 143–145; Idem, Ottoman-Polish, 137–139. 68  Katib Çelebi, Fezleke, II. 318. 69  Mücteba İlgürel, A ‘ baza Paşa’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 1. İstanbul, 1988, 11–12. 70  Küpeli, ‘Irak-ı Arap’ta’, 142–154; Süheyl Ünver, ‘Dördüncü Sultan Murad’in Revan Seferi Kronolojisi’, Belleten 16:64 (1952) 547–577; Yunus Zeyrek, IV. Sultan Murad’ın Revan ve Tebriz Seferi Ruz-Namesi. Ankara, 1999; Topçular Katibi, II. 1042–1045; Ömer Kucak, Zafernâme (Tarihçe-i Feth-i Revan ve Bagdad). MA Thesis, Afyon Kocatepe Üniversitesi, Afyonkarahisar, 2007 (cf. http://studylibtr.com/doc/2741656/--tari%CC%87h%C3%A7ei%CC%87-feth-i%CC%87-revan-ve-ba%C4%9Fdad---%C3%B6mer-kucak-tarih).

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on him trivial tasks in punishment. The grudge was short-lived, however, and after the fall of Yerevan, Murad appointed him to head the province. The imperial army captured several other castles in the area during the remainder of the campaign, and Mürteza took Makut in October. The building of the new province seemed to be proceeding well, and the sultan went home content. In winter, however, the shah mounted a counter-attack and put Yerevan under siege (25 December 1635). In the hard winter, the surrounding Ottoman provinces were unable to relieve it.71 Mürteza, in the thick of the fighting, was wounded, and died soon afterwards (in the second half of February 1636).72 The fortress he was in charge of was lost on 1 April. Murad was not broken by this failure, and in 1638, launched a campaign in the region on a larger scale than ever before, retaking Yerevan and Baghdad and establishing the Ottoman positions in the long term. The officers who surrendered the castle took Mürteza Pasha’s corpse with them to Hasankeyf. He was presumably buried in Diyarbekir, in the tomb of the Sahaba, which he had renovated and provided with foundations a few years previously.73 We do not know whether he had any sons. Having worked his way up from the bottom, he was unable to establish a dynasty. He certainly had at least one daughter: Hatice Hanım died in Diyarbekir in 1658, and lies beside her father in the tomb of the Sahaba.74 Mürteza’s life story is a good illustration of the opportunities available in the Ottoman Empire. A good background got him into the palace school, from where he emerged after the long period of thirty years as a vizier. He was active first on the eastern front (1621–1623), transferred to the northwest frontier (1624–1630), and then had to show his mettle on the Polish front (1630–1631). Afterwards, major hostilities awaited him on the eastern front: The defence of Van, the siege of Yerevan, the capture of Maku and finally the 71  On the siege: Küpeli, ‘Irak-ı Arap’ta’, 155–158; Kucak, Zafernâme, 19–20. 72  Nermin Yıldırım, Kara Çelebi-zâde Abdülaziz Efendi’nin Zafername adlı eseri (Tarihçe-i feth-i Revan ve Bağdad). Tahlil ve Metin. Yüksek Lisans Tezi, İstanbul, 2005, 59b. 73  Küpeli, ‘Irak-ı Arap’ta’, 159; Katib Çelebi, Fezleke, II. 180–181; Na‘ima, Tarih, II. 830–831. 74  Savaş Yıldırım, ‘Diyarbakır Sahabeler Türbesi Çini Süslemeleri’, Iğdır Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 5 (2014) 26.

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defence of Yerevan (1632–1636), in the middle of which he was again ordered to the Polish front for six months (1634). As a vizier, he did not command very many campaigns, and was more inclined to settle matters by negotiation. He was instrumental in the renewal of the Peace of Zsitvatorok at Szőny in 1627, and in the peace treaties with Poland in 1630 and 1634. In Ottoman fractional disputes, he acted ruthlessly. He dealt with his opponents in Ottoman Hungary (the execution of Ahmed Pasha and Nasreddinzade) in a similar way as he did with those in the east (the killing of Halil Pasha and Tevfikizade Mehmed Efendi, kadı of İzmir), and he also carried out the execution of Grand Vizier Hüsrev Pasha, although the initial plan was not his. He certainly had considerable martial qualities and courage, but does not seem to have had great success as a commander. In 1623, Abaza Mehmed forced him out of Karahisar-i Şarki by siege; in 1627, Gabriel Bethlen led him by the nose, and he failed to prevail even with a substantial army; in 1633, he fought an indecisive battle near Van; and in 1636, he was unable to hold Yerevan. Mürteza also had cultural inclinations. Proof of this is his employment of Nergisi Efendi, one of the finest prose writers of the age, to write a biographical account of his period as pasha of Buda and the story of his deeds there. Additionally, the Pest-born divan poet Hisali, who was active for a long period in Ottoman Hungary, must have had good reason to write Mürteza a laudatory poem in which Sultan Murad calls him an unmatched vizier.75 Mürteza thus appears to us as an Ottoman leader with good appraisal skills, decisive in action and an adept negotiator, who raised himself from humble beginnings, more through politics than military prowess, to the rank of deputy grand vizier and sultan’s son-in-law, during a stormy period of the empire’s history. If he had not fallen in battle, he could have gone further. He enjoyed the confidence of the sultan and was quite young relative to his fellows, dying at the age of 55 or 56.

75  Özlem Ercan, Peşteli Hisali Divanı Tahlili (İnceleme–Metin). PhD Dissertation, Uludağ Üniversitesi, Bursa, 2003, 22.

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THE 1635 PETITION OF THE TATARS OF KAZAN RE-EXAMINED Mária Ivanics University of Szeged, Hungary [email protected]

In 1839, Alexander Kasimovich Kazem-Bek, professor at the University of

Kazan, published his Grammar of the Turco-Tatar language, which received great acclaim from contemporaries in Russia and abroad.1 The second, revised edition of the Grammar, issued in 1846,2 was translated into German two years later by the prominent orientalist Julius Theodor Zenker. Zenker added an appendix of letters, diplomas and written samples, some set in Arabic type and some in facsimile. One of these documents, set in Arabic type and with a German translation,3 was a petition of the begs and religious men of Kazan addressed to an unnamed dignitary of the Crimean Khanate. The document remained latent for historical research for quite a long time. A hundred years later, the Tatar-born Turkish historian Akdes Nimet Kurat published a transcription and facsimile of the petition in his monograph on the relationship between the Volga region and the Ottoman Empire, but his use of it did not constitute a detailed treatment. His findings found no echo, even though the

1  Grammatika turecko-tatarskogo jazyka. Kazan’, 1839. The “Turco-Tatar language” is to be understood as contemporary Turkic of the nineteenth century. For the appreciations of the work, see A. K. Rzaev, Muhammad Ali M. Kazem-Bek. Moskva, 1989, 33−36. 2  Obščaja grammatika turecko-tatarskogo jazyka. Kazan’, 1846. 3  Allgemeine Grammatik der Türkisch-Tatarischen Sprache von Mirza A. Kazem-Bek. Ed. by Julius Theodor Zenker. Leipzig, 1848, 255–257. The German translation of the document contains many mistakes. I will refer to the essential differences in the edition of the source given here.

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letter contains information that is not available anywhere else.4 Recently, the Kazan historian Damir Iskhakov studied the letter and translated it into Tatar.5 Neither Kurat nor Iskhakov applied deep source criticism to the document, which seems at first sight to be of questionable authenticity and raises many questions.

THE PETITION

The petition describes the potential benefits of a conquest of Astrakhan and

Kazan. Firstly, it would have blocked the direct contact between the Russian tsar and the Persian shah on the Caspian Sea, preventing the tsar from supporting the Kizilbash6 with money and provisions. The Don Cossacks would have become subordinated to the Crimean ruler. The khan would thereby have freed from the rule of unbelievers a people who had belonged to the darü’l-islam since the times of Caliph Umar. Failure to do so would count against him on Judgement Day. After stating these religious duties, the authors of the petition give a detailed account of the military potential of the Volga region, how many soldiers this rich land could sustain, the sizes of the different ethnic populations − Cheremises, Chuvashes, Bashkirs, Ars (Udmurts), Siberian Tatars − and how much tax might be collected from them in form of honey and furs. They also mention the income deriving from the trade caravans from Central Asia and from fishing. Finally, they emphasise that all of the

4  Akdes Nimet Kurat, Türkiye ve İdil Boyu. 1569 Astrahan Seferi, Ten-İdil Kanalı ve XVI− XVIII. Yüzyıl Osmanlı-Rus Münasebetleri. Ankara, 1966, Facsimile No. XI. I used this facsimi­ le. Elsewhere, Kurat published the petition only in transcription and in Arabic typography: Akdes Nimet Kurat, IV−XVIII. Yüzyıllarda Karadeniz Kuzeyindeki Türk Kavimleri ve Devletleri. Ankara, 1972, 373–377. 5  Damir Iskhakov, ‘Ob odnom poslanii iz Povolž’ja v Krymskoe Hanstvo v 1635 g.’, Krymskoe Istoričeskoe Obozrenie 2 (2014) 50–62, accessed 14 November 2018, http://www.ionutcojocaru.ro/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/КИО_2.pdf. 6  Kizilbash means ‘Red Head[ed]’. It was a pejorative label given by the Ottomans to the Persian military and to the shah himself. The name kızılbaş derived from the special red headwear of these militant groups, followers of the Shiite branch of Islam. Here it is meant for the Safavid Shah Safi I (1629–1642).

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ethnic groups mentioned are Muslims7 who are fit for military service, and therefore the khan had a duty to free them from the hands of the infidels.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The existence of contacts between the Crimea and Kazan has deep historical

roots. While the Russians were trying to subdue the Turkic peoples of the steppe, the Crimean khans never gave up their claim to rule the entire former territory of the Golden Horde. They had most success in the first half of the sixteenth century, when some members of the Giray dynasty ascended the thrones of Kazan and Astrakhan, but Muscovy’s foreign policy was more successful. Making use of the conflicts among the Kazan elites and the turmoil in the Crimea following the murder of Khan Sahib Giray and his sons in 1551, they conquered first Kazan in 1552 and then Astrakhan in 1556.8 From this moment on, the reconquest of the two Muslim khanates was constantly on the agenda of Crimean foreign policy. In 1569, in preparation for reconquest, work started at the order of the Sublime Porte on digging a channel to connect the Rivers Don and Volga at the place where they are separated by the shortest distance – only 11 km. Although the climate, the lack of equipment, the problems of the warriors’ provisioning and the passive resistance of Khan Devlet Giray9 caused the venture to fail, the Porte did not give up the plan altogether. Revival of the plan was clearly related to the long war against the Persians (1578–1590). To facilitate transport of war material, particularly guns, some of the logistical tasks for the campaigns were to be transferred to the Caspian Sea from the rough Anatolian mountain terrain. This, however, would require

7  Among the Finno-Ugric people, Islamisation was superficial at best; among the Chuvash, it was completely absent. ‿ ān. Histoire de Sahib Giray, khan de Crimée de 1532 8  Özalp Gökbilgin, Tārih‿ -i S. āh. ib Giray H à 1551. Edition critique, traduction, notes et glossaire. Ankara, 1973, 142−143. 9  Halil İnalcık, ‘Osmanlı-Rus Rekabetinin Menşei ve Don–Volga Kanalı Teşebbüsü (1569)’, Belleten 12 (1948) 349–402; Akdes Nimet Kurat, ‘The Turkish Expedition to Astrakhan’ in 1569 and the Problem of the Don–Volga Canal’, The Slavonic and East European Review 40:94 (1961) 7–23.

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retrieving Astrakhan from the Russians, so as to prevent contact between the Russian tsar and the Persian shah.10 Since Shirvan and Derbent had been incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in the course of the war (1583), the road to Astrakhan was open from the south. The Ottoman historian Selaniki attributed the critical impetus for launching the campaign to a report sent to the Porte by Abdullah, khan of Bukhara (1583–1598) and by the Great Nogai Horde in early September 1587.11 It stated that in autumn 1586, Murad Giray, one of the khanzades who had yielded to the tsar, and who had fled to Moscow during the power struggle in the Crimea, was ordered by Feodor I Ivanovich to reside in Astrakhan.12 A potential pretender to the Crimean throne constituted a permanent threat to the Crimean khans and was also dangerous for the Ottoman Empire. On the order of the tsar, Murad Giray would have been able to mobilize the Cossacks on the Rivers Don and Terek against the Ottoman army.13 Therefore, Grand Vizier Siyavuş Pasha had a thorough discussion about the potential outcome of the undertaking with Sadi Efendi, the later şeyhülislam, during which there was no attempt to conceal the failure of the 1569 campaign. The plan was submitted to the sultan, who granted his approval on 21 September 1587, upon which they began the preparations for a campaign against Astrakhan.14 They asked the Crimean khan and the Great Nogai Horde for auxiliary troops to ensure the success of the venture.

10  The Habsburg ambassadors who sought alliance with the Persian shah against the Ottomans travelled through Astrakhan. Barbara von Palombini, Bündniswerben abendländischer Mächte um Persien 1453–1600. (Freiburger Islamstudien, 1.) Wiesbaden, 1968, 65–93, 100–105. 11  Selânikî Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Selânikî (971–1003/1563–1595). Ed. by Mehmet İpşirli. İstanbul, 1989, 190. Although Selaniki writes Little Nogai Horde, the response from the Porte was addressed to Urus, the head of the Great Nogai Horde, and so it is definitely an erratum. 12  A. V. Vinogradov, ‘Russko-Krymskie otnošenija v 1570–1590-h gg. v kontekste dinastičeskogo krizisa Gireev’, in Srednevekovye Tjurko-tatarskie gosudarstva. Vyp. 2. Kazan’, 2010, 274–299, accessed 1 October 2018, http://www.tataroved.ru/publicat/sttg_2.pdf. 13  A. V. Beljakov, Čingisidi v Rossii v XV−XVII vekov: prosopografičeskoe issledovanie. Rjazan’, 2011, 214, 285–287. 14 Selânikî, Tarih, 190–191.

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In 1587, an order was sent to Ali, the beg of the Şirin clans of the Crimea, instructing him to take part in the expected campaign in person.15 In a few days, the leader of the Great Nogai Horde, Urus, and twelve Nogai mirzas received letters with similar content.16 Military preparations were entrusted to Piyale Pasha, but the campaign was never realized.17 The Persian war came to an end in 1590, and the immediate threat passed with the death of Murad Giray in 1591. The plan for the reconquest of Astrakhan came off the table for the next half a century. The Ottoman Empire was busy with the Long War in Hungary (1591–1606) and, immediately afterwards, with the new Persian wars (1603–1618, 1623–1639), and there was also a rebellion in the Crimea in 1624. As soon as these wars ended and the situation in the Crimea stabilized, the plan emerged again,18 but not at the initiative of the Sublime Porte. This time, the Muslims of the Volga region sent a letter requesting the Muslim rulers to rid the region of Russian supremacy. One of the duties of Muslim rulers, besides securing the circumstances of worship, was to ensure the security of believers making the pilgrimage to Mecca. As Persia was a Shiite country, the only way Central Asian Sunni pilgrims could go to Istanbul and join the caravans was to pass through the territory of Astrakhan and the Crimea.19 This gave the khans a very strong reason, in addition to their claims to the heritage of the Golden Horde, to keep permanent contact with the Volga region. Seventeenth-century Crimean diplomatic documents frequently mention responsibilities towards Muslims. A letter in which Khan Canibek Giray announced his second accession to the throne (1628) to Gabriel Bethlen, prince of Transylvania, includes the words, 15  Ilias A. Mustakimov, Dokumenty po istorii Volgo-Uralskogo regiona XVI–XIX vekov iz drevlehranilišč Turcii. Kazan’, 2008, 226–232. 16 Mustakimov, Dokumenty, 233–240. 17 Kurat, Türkiye ve İdil Boyu, 53–54; Mustakimov, Dokumenty, 241–247. 18  For the uprising against the Porte led by Mehmed Giray Khan and his brother Şahin Giray, see Alexander Bennigsen, Peter Naili Boratav, Dilek Desaive and Chantal LemercierQuelquejay, Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives du Musée du Palais de Topkapı. Paris, La Haye, 1978, 336–338. 19  Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, ‘Les routes commerciales de l’Asie centrale et les tentatives de reconquête d’Astrakhan d’après les registres des « Affaires importantes » des Archives ottomanes’, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 11:3 (1970) 391–422.

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“God made me khan of the Crimean land, caliph of mankind and padishah of Islam”.20 In the ahdname (treaty document) of the same khan sent to the Polish King Vladislaus IV, he gives his title as “Great padishah of all the faithful and Muslims”, a reference to the claim of protection over all Muslims. Twenty years later, in 1654, Mehmed IV Giray announced his accession to the throne to King John Casimir and Emperor Leopold I with the same image: “God put the robe of the caliphate on my imperial shoulder.”21 There was rather unsettling news from the Muslims of the Volga region. A letter from Sefer Gazi Ağa, the vizier of Crimean Khan Mehmed IV Giray, to a high dignitary of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (the document calls him “vizier”), indicated that the Muslims in the Russian Empire had great need of the khan’s protection: “If you asked why your army was defeated, well, it is one hundred years that Kazan and Astrakhan have been in your hands, since the time of yours ancestors. Until now, violence against the Muslims living there has not been applied. Your ruler [thinks] he is wiser than his ancestors. You have destroyed the mosques and medreses, the words of the almighty God [that is, the Koran] were thrown into the fire, for that reason your army was defeated. … If for some reason a prisoner came [in]to you[r hands], you do not give him [for ransom], but you make him by torture a Christian. This will not make more Christians. There are many Christians with us [but] we do not

20  Kırım yurtıga han eyleyüb halife-i enam ve padişah-i islam edüb… Ivanics Mária, ‘Két krími-tatár oklevél Bethlen Gáborhoz’, Néprajz és Nyelvtudomány 19–20 (1975) 253–276. The new number of the document is Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára, Budapest, F 126-a-1-No. 2. 21 ...hilat-i hilafeti duş-i hümayunuma giyürüb… Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, The Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania. International Diplomacy on the European Periphery (15th–18th Century). A Study of Peace Treaties Followed by Annotated Documents. Leiden, Boston, 2011, 975. Although the Ottoman sultans were the caliphs of Islam from 1517 until 1924, as Kołodziej­ czyk has pointed out, “in that period, Muslim jurists commonly agreed that any Muslim ruler could claim the caliphal title on the condition that he defended and supported Islamic law.” Kołodziejczyk, The Crimean Khanate, 363. For details about the caliphate, see Dominique Sourdel, Ann K. S. Lambton, Frederick de Jong and Peter M. Holt, ‘K halīfa’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. 4. Leiden, 1990, 937–953. With the same words to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I: HHStA, Wien, Türkische Urkunden 1660 XI–XII 1071. Rebiülahir (3 December 1660–1 January 1661).

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make them Muslims. To make [someone] a Christian or a Muslim by force is unworthy.”22 The seventeenth-century sources cited below also show that, a hundred years later, the Muslim rulers had not given up their wish to regain the two cities. Among the Tatar documents first published by Veliaminov-Zernov is a letter from İslam Giray suggesting to the Poles that they make an alliance against Muscovy: “It is in Allah’s hand – may He be exalted! – to give. Should the almighty God grant it, as many castles and lands that you can lay your hands on, you can keep them all, they can be under your rule. It has been less than a hundred years since Kazan and Astrakhan were conquered. Now, we strive, and we would be satisfied with bringing back the people of Muhammad into our hands.”23 The document is undated, but was presumably issued after the Peace of Zborów (17 August 1649). It is clearly of a confidential character, because it was taken to the Polish chancellor – most probably to Jerzy Ossoliński, who died on 9 August 1650 – by Muhammed Gazi atalık, the former educator of Khan İslam Giray. Senai, the author of a Crimean Tatar chronicle, seems to have known that the plan for the anti-Muscovite alliance must have come from Sefer Gazi Ağa.24 The Polish king did not want to ally against the Russians, but 22  Bu askerinüz ne sebebden kırıldı der bolsanız yüz yıl vardır Kazan ve Ejderhan baba ve dedelerinizden beri sizün elinüzdedir bu zamangaça anda bolgan müslümanga kıyın bolgan yok erdi padişahınuz baba ve dedesinden akıllı bolub mescid ve medreselerin bozub tengri-i tealanun kelamın ateşe yakdınuz ol sebeble askerinüz kırılmış dır […] size bir işe tutsak düşse culuvga bermeyüb kıyın bilen hristiyan etesiz anın birle hristiyan köp bolmaz bizde de hristiyan köbdür güç bilen müsliman etmeziz güç ve kıyın birle hristiyan etmek ve müslüman etmek layık tügeldür. V. V. Veliaminov-Zer­ nov and H. Feyzhanov, Materialy dlja istorii Krymskogo Hanstva. Sankpeterburg, 1864. (Kırım Yurtına ve Ol Taraflarga Dair Bolgan Yarlıglar ve Hatlar. Ed. by A. Melek Özyetgin and Ilyas Kamalov. Ankara, 2009), 874: No. 362. 23  Vermek Allahu teala elindedür hakk-i teala verüb her ne kadar kala ve memleket ele girürse sizindür zabt edesiz bizim de bu mertebe ikdamımız yüz yıl olmuşdegüldir (sic!) Ecderhan ve Kazan alındugı ol ümmet-i Muhammed elimize girdikde kayıluzdır. Veliaminov-Zernov and Feyzhanov, Materialy, 861: No. 353. On the title atalık, see A. V. Beliakov, A. V. Vinogradov and M. B. Moiseev, ‘Institut ataličestva v postzolotoordynskom mire’, Zolotoordynskoe Obozrenie 5:2 (2017) 412–436. 24  Kırımlı Hacı Mehmet Senai, Historia Chana Islam Gereja III. Tekst turecki wydał, przełożył i opracował Zygmunt Abrahamowicz; uzupełniający komentarz historyczny Olgierd

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he did want to make use of Tatar ambitions, as is clear from Mariusz Jaskólski’s embassy to Khan İslam Giray. Jaskólski arrived at Bakhchisaray in 7 April 1654.25 He was instructed to demand only a few auxiliary troops for the Rzeczpospolita, saying that the khan should use his main strength against Alexei Mikhailovich to recapture Kazan and Astrakhan.26 After the death of İslam Giray in October the same year (1654), Jaskólski returned to the Crimea to take a solemn oath from the new khan, Mehmed IV Giray, for the treaty agreed with his predecessor. The peace instrument granted by Mehmed IV Giray to King John Casimir on 11 November 1654 shows that – as Dariusz Kołodziejczyk has noted – the khans continuously upheld their claim to Kazan and Astrakhan and even to all of the former territories of the Golden Horde, including South Siberia and the Pre-Caucasus: “You should sincerely keep your oath and engagement, and until the end of your life you should not make peace with the Moscovian ruler, but you should set out with your troops against him; if – by the grace of His Excellency, God (may He be exalted!) – God enables us the conquest of Kazan, Astrakhan, Terek and Tura, being [presently] held by Muscovy, or any region in that country inhabited by Tatars or Nogais, neither you, our brother, nor any of the Polish lords should interfere, as [these conquests] will belong to us.”27 The Polish-Tatar negotiations, Górka i Zbigniew Wójcik; pod red. naukową Zbigniewa Wójcika. Warszawa, 1971, 136. The Tatars’ proposal had already been brought up during negotiations in Zborów, but the Poles rejected it, citing the eternal Polish–Russian peace concluded on the Poljanovka River in 1634; cited by Kołodziejczyk, The Crimean Khanate, 161: note 465. 25  In February 1657, the Polish king sent him to Istanbul to persuade the sultan to punish Prince György II Rákóczi of Transylvania. On the life of Mariusz Stanislaw Jaskólski (died 1683), see the article by Tadeusz Novak, Polski Słovnik Biograficzny. Vol. 11. Warszawa, Kraków, 1964–1965, 63–66. 26  Sławomir Augusiewicz, ‘Dwa poselstwa Mariusza Stanisława Jaskólskiego na Krym w 1654 roku’, in F. Wolański and R. Kołodziej (eds.), Staropolski ogląd świata. Rzeczpospolita między okcydentalizacją a orientalizacją. Vol. 1: Przestrzeń kontaktów. Toruń, 2009, 46–60, particularly 52. 27  Siz ahd ü yemini ŋüzde sadıq olub ömri ŋüz ahir oluncaya degin Mosqov padişahı ile barışmayub üzerine asker çıqup Haq taala hazretleri lutf edüp fethi müyesser olursa Mosqov zabtında olan Qazan ve Ecderhan ve Terek ve Tura ve ol vilayetde her ne qadar Tatar ve Noġay halqı var ise siz qarındaşımız ve cümle Leh bekleri qarışmayub bizim olub... Kołodziejczyk, The Crimean Khanate, 974–981: No. 64; for the quotation, see 976 and 979 respectively.

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of course, did not remain a secret to the Russians. The voivode of Moscow learned from Lukasz Bunowski, a captured Polish “tongue”,28 that in Bakhchisaray, Jaskólski was shown a letter from the Tatars of Kazan and Astrakhan asking the khan to free them from the slavery of the tsar.29 It is probably that letter, or an updated copy of it, which is now held in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden (see Appendix) and is re-examined below.

DATE OF THE PETITION

The petition bears no date, but the period it was written in may be discerned

from the events it describes. Russia and Persia forged diplomatic ties to help them face their respective enemies – the Crimean Tatars and the Ottomans – in the mid-sixteenth century. They maintained regular mutual embassies from 1586 until 1651, when the two sides came into conflict over a power rivalry in the Caucasus.30 The source must therefore date from the time these ties were in place, because afterwards, Muscovy was unable to deliver war material to the Persians. The Ottoman–Persian war ended in 1639, after which these empires did not fight each other for a century. Kurat’s proposal for the date 1635, the last year of the reign of Khan Canibek Giray, is therefore acceptable, but can be refined by Russian sources. At the end of 1634, the Porte commanded Khan Canibek Giray to liquidate the Cossack camp on the River Don. Canibek Giray launched a campaign against them in early 1635. He spent January in Kerch, on the strait between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea. In the following months he crossed the strait and stayed in the vicinity of Temrük.31 However, the campaign came to a premature 28  In Russian, too, jazyk means ‘language’ or ‘tongue’ which is a calque from Turkic dil, that is, a prisoner of war expressly taken for obtaining information. 29  Cited after Jaroslav Fedoruk, Mižnarodna dyplomatija i polityka Ukrajiny 1654–1657, pt. 1: 1654 rik. L’viv, 1996, 42. 30  P. P. Bušev, Istorija posol’stv i diplomatičeskih otnošenij russkogo i iranskogo gosudarstv v 1585–1612 gg. Po russkim arhivam. Moskva, 1976, 36, 52. 31  Aleksej A. Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo gosudarstva s tatarami v pervoj polovine XVII. veka. Moskva, Leningrad, 1948, 244–245.

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end in mid-March, when the Porte removed Canibek and appointed a new khan in his place. A soon as Canibek Giray received the news of his deposition, he fled to the Nogais on the River Kuban, from where he sailed to Kefe and then to Istanbul.32 The use of the expression“this winter” in connection with Canibek’s campaign shows that the petition must have been written between January and mid-March 1635. If what the captured Polish “tongue” Lukasz Bunowski said during his interrogation in 1654 is true, then the letter – despite being twenty years old – could have been shown to Jaskólski in Bakhchisaray for the purpose of convincing the Poles that the Tatars of Kazan and Astrakhan were ready to stand up in support of the Crimean Khan.

THE ADDRESSEE OF THE PETITION

According to Kurat, the recipients were the Crimean müfti and, through him, the Crimean khan; according to Iskhakov, they were the Crimean müfti and the Ottoman sultan. The invocation of the document: Faziletlü efendi! (“Meritorious lord!”) refers to the religious elders, showing that the addressee was undoubtedly the Crimean müfti. Iskhakov cites the presence of the title sultan to argue that the petition was addressed directly to the Ottoman ruler. It comes up twice in the text: Benüm izzetlü sultanum! (“My honourable sultan!”), and Sultanumdan rica bu dir ki zikr etdüğimüz ahvali tafsil üzere yazub han hazretlerine arz eyleyüb… (“The request towards my sultan is to write down this mentioned situation in detail and report it to his majesty the khan”).33 The Ottoman diplomatic manual required that a petition submitted to the Ottoman ruler should use the title “padishah”, complemented with such epithets as devletlü ‘illustrious’, ‘excellent’, saadetlü ‘prosperous’, ‘happy’, ‘fortunate’, şevketlü ‘majestic’, kerametlü ‘generous’, ‘noble’ and with the title hazretleri ‘his majesty’.34 Looking carefully at the text, we find: saadetlü padişah hazretlerine

32  The reason for his dethronement was his refusal, on the grounds of old age, to join the Porte’s Persian campaign in person. He lived out his life in exile on the island of Rhodes. Bennigsen et al., Le Khanat de Crimée, 336. 33  Iskhakov, ‘Ob odnom poslanii’, 50: note 1. 34  Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, Osmanlı Belgelerinin Dili (Diplomatik). İstanbul, 1994, 207.

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(“to his majesty, the fortunate padishah”), and in the case of the Crimean khans: Kırım padişahları (“The padishahs of Crimea”). In the Ottoman Empire, the form of address: Sultanım! (“My sultan!”) was used for the grand vizier or for persons of lower military, religious or juridical ranks.35 It is also found in correspondence between officials and even in family letters.36 I conclude from this that the sole addressee of the petition was the Crimean müfti, and Benüm izzetlü sultanum! (“My honourable sultan!”) referred to him rather than the Ottoman ruler. It was merely a polite formula, which may correspond most to “My honourable lord!”

THE LANGUAGE OF THE SOURCE

Another difficulty is the language of the petition, which is very different from

that of the seventeenth-century Volga Tatar sources I know. These are wholly free of Ottoman Turkish influence, which reached the Volga region only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The language also differs from that of diplomatic documents sent from the Crimean chancellery to the Polish kings and to the Russian tsars. This strongly suggests that the petition kept today in Dresden is not the original, but a contemporary or later translation from Tatar to Ottoman Turkish. The translator had clearly mastered Ottoman Turkish, but left in the translation some traces of his Tatar mother tongue. For example, he used the Tatar word ulun (‘the shaft of an arrow’) of Eastern Turkic origin; instead of Ottoman gidiş-geliş (‘comings and goings’), he wrote barış-keliş; instead of demir (‘iron’), temir; and instead of asker çıkarırız (‘we set up warriors’), asker çıkarız. If the translation is contemporary, it could have been made at the chancellery of Bakhchisaray, because the khans used Ottoman Turkish in their correspondence with Istanbul.37 From the style of writing, 35  Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, ‘Elkāb’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 11. İstanbul, 1995, 51–54; Mehmet İpşirli, ‘Arzuhal’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 3. İstanbul, 1991, 447–448. 36  Ludwig Fekete, Türkische Schriften aus dem Archive des Palatins Nikolaus Esterházy. Budapest, 1932, Nos. 51, 57, 63, 64. 37  Bennigsen et al., Le Khanat de Crimée.

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however, I have the impression that it is probably a later translation, and the original petition in the Tatar language is missing or has not yet been found.

DEMOGRAPHIC DATA IN THE PETITION

As for the population of the Volga region who could be rallied for war, the number of two or three hundred thousand warriors given in the petition is obviously an exaggeration, as is the statement that the land can feed hundreds of thousands of troops, even though the Volga basin is one of the most fertile areas in the Russian Empire. In my experience, excessive numbers are usually to be divided by ten. Iskhakov and Trepavlov give a more solid estimate of the military strength of the Kazan Khanate.38 Tatar and Russian historians have estimated the total population of the multinational khanate to have been 400–500,000 in the first half of the sixteenth century.39 Of these, 150–200,000 were Tatars, and 50– 80,000 Chuvash. The number of Cheremis was given in the very wide range of 70–120,000, with the comment that there could have been no more than 200,000 of them.40 The number of warriors that could be brought to the field out of a population of 400–500,000 can be determined only from external sources. Sigismund Herberstein, ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Habsburg and Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg, estimated the Tatar army, including the Cheremis and Chuvash, to number 30,000 in 1526.41 Adam Olearius first travelled to Moscow as secretary of the embassy of Duke Frederick III of 38  Iskhakov, ‘Ob odnom poslanii’; V. V. Trepavlov, ‘“Oteckie deti”: Elita kazanskogo Hanstva v litovskoj metrike’, Zolotoordynskoe Obozrenie 5:3 (2017) 600–611, accessed 18 October 2018, http://goldhorde.ru/RU/2017-t5-n3/. 39  Trepavlov, ‘“Oteckie deti”’, 603. 40  Ibid. 41  Sigismund Herberstein, Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii. Synoptische Edition der lateinischen und der deutschen Fassung letzter Hand, Basel 1556 und Wien 1557. Unter der Leitung von Frank Kämpfer erstellt von Eva Maurer und Andreas Fülberth. Redigiert und herausgegeben von Hermann Beyer-Thoma. München, 2007, 296, accessed 16 November 2018, https://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/publikationen/Herberstein_ gesamt.pdf.

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Holstein-Gottorp in 1635, and a few years later, he went through Kazan and Astrakhan to Persia. He gave the strength of the former Kazan Khanate army as 60,000, presumably also including the Nogais.42 Iskhakov warned that the demographic data concerning the Finno-Ugric peoples should be treated carefully because of their geographical location. Half of the people might have lived under Russian rule, and the other half under the Tatars. He found that the number of tax-payers given in Russian sources for 1631–1632 (11,000–12,000) was close to the number of households given in the petition (10,000). In the case of the Udmurts (also called “Ar”) the situation is the same. The Udmurt population was estimated to be 29,000 at the end of the seventeenth century, but only 17,000 of them – the Southern Udmurts – were ruled by the Tatars and could thus be taken into consideration. This figure is also close to the 15,000 tax-paying Udmurt households in the petition.43

conclusions

There are two central questions to be addressed by analysis of the source: Can

we consider the petition by the people of Kazan as authentic, and did the plan have any chance of being carried out? Our source is certainly not the original petition. It is a translation, either from that period or, more likely, from a later age. Nevertheless, both historical and linguistic arguments support the proposition that at least one letter with this or similar content must have been written. This is also supported by the demographic data. The addressees were without doubt the Crimean müfti and, through him, the Crimean khan. Although the Porte might also have received a copy of the document,44 the Ottoman ruler was clearly not the secondary addressee. How the document 42  Adam Olearii, Außführliche Beschreibung Der Kundbaren Reyse Nach Muscow und Persien: So durch gelegenheit einer Holsteinischen Gesandschafft von Gottorff auß an Michael Fedorowitz den grossen Zaar in Muscow/ und Schach Sefi König in Persien geschehen.../ Adam Olearius. Jetzo zum dritten und letzten mahl correct heraus gegeben. Schleßwig, 1663, 348, accessed 19 November 2018, http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/xb-4f-140/start.htm. 43  Iskhakov, ‘Ob odnom poslanii’, 53. 44  No traces of it can be found in documents concerning Kazan kept in Istanbul: Osmanlı Belgelerinde Kazan. (T. C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü; Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı, Yayın Nu. 72.) Ankara, 2005.

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ended up in the Dresden colligatum is unknown. Errata found in the German translation of the petition may be attributed to Zenker’s lack of geographical knowledge. Were such plans in any way realistic? Hardly. The military technology that the Russian army used, especially its firearms, was already far superior to that of the Tatars. Control of the Volga water route also gave the tsar some clear logistic advantages. Neither could it have been taken for granted that the ethnic groups listed in the letter would have started an anti-Muscovite uprising. In the siege of Kazan in 1552, the Nogais were primarily concerned with their own economic interests, to the extent of being prepared to give up Muslim confessional solidarity.45 We should also bear in mind that the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth would gain little from weakening Muscovy, despite its interest in doing so, if the result was to make the Crimean Khanate much stronger. Finally, it is questionable whether the Giray dynasty’s claim to historical and confessional rights over the two former Muslim khanates would have been approved by the Porte.

appendix (1) İzzetlü ve faziletlü ve fukaraya merhametlü EFENDİ hazretlerinün huzur-i alilerine yüz sürdüğümüzden sonra arz-i hal-i fukara bu dir ki:46 benüm izzetlü sultanum Kızılbaş fethinin ilacı (2) vallahi-alem Gazan ve Ejderhan fethidür zira ol şah-i melunun mamur ve rahat ocak47 yeri Bahr-i Kulzüm kenarıdur Gazan ve Ejderhan feth olınacak İdil

45  Some researchers believe that the involvement of the Nogais in the siege of Kazan, or at least their neutrality, played a significant role in the Russian capture of the Volga region and helped the Russians to reach the foothills of the Caucasus and to conquer Siberia in the 1580s. Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, ‘Co-optation of the Elits of Kabarda and Daghestan in the Sixteenth Century’, in Marie Bennigsen-Broxoup (ed.), The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance Towards the Muslim World. London, 1992, 18–44, particularly 22. 46  Henricus Orthobius Fleischer, Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium Bibliothe­ cae Regiae Dresdensis. Vol. 1. Part. E. Lipsiae, 1831, 54: Cod. turc. No. 361, https://digital. slub-dresden.de/data/goobi/48837961X/48837961X_tif/jpegs/48837961X.pdf. 47  Zenker, and after him Kurat, read olıcak, which is a wrong reading.

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(3) suyı kenarında kadırgalar ve şaykalar yapılub Bahr-i Kulzüm etrafında olan vilayetlerin ihlak ve ihrak olmaları mukarrerdür zira Maskav beği ile dostdur (4) Gazan ve Ejderhan feth olundukdan sonra ol Kızılbaş-i bed-maaş bu ahvali eşidüb Kırım hanlarına tabi olmaları mukarrerdür evvela saadetlü padişah (5) hazretlerine asi olmasına sebeb Maskav beği olmışdur bu tarafdan padişahlara sizün ile dostluğımız mukarrerdür düşmanunuz ile düşmanuz derler şah-i zalalet(6) penaha gerçi asker göndermez amma tüfenk ve barut ve kükürt ok-ulun48 temir kurşun bakır ve bundan maada kese kese nokratlar sene ber sene eksik (7) etmezler Gazan ve Ejderhan feth olıcak bunlarun mabeynleri kesilür zira İdil suyiyle49 barış ve kelişleri katı olınur muhassal Gazan ve Ejderhan (8) feth olınması padişahlarun himmetlerine mevkufdur vilayet-i Gazan hazret-i Ömer zemanından berü islama gelüb mumin-i muhlislardur beş vakit namazların[d]a (9) kaim daima dualarında ya rabbi padişah-i din-i islam eli altında olmak nasib eyle derler alelhusus bu kışın Kefe beğlerbeğisi saadetlü İbrahim paşa (10) hazretleriyle Kırım hanı şevketlü Canibek Giray han hazretleri nehr-i Ten’de vaki Ten Kazagı taburlarınun hedmi içün teveccüh buyurub Canibek (11) Giray han hazretleri Temrük’de Kuban nam mahalde mani düşüb kalmagıyle Kefe beğlerbeğisi İbrahim paşa hazretleri kale-i Azag’a gelüb devlet-i (12) padişah-i islamda tamam mertebe tamir ve termim etmişdirki rus-i menhus eşkıyasına havf ve haşiyet düşmüşdür eger Kırım hanı tob ve tüfenk ve (13) asker ile Gazan fethi kasdına geliyor deyü eşidirlerse inşallahu teala her birleri muti olmaları mukarrerdür bu hakir kulınuzı beğler ve ihtiyarlar (14) cem olub ittifak ile gönderdiler elbette bizüm ahvalimüzi ve askerimüzi ve mamurlıgını ve mahsulını bir bir bildürib saadetlü Kırım hanından istimdad (15) eyle ve ulema ve suleha ve meşayih izamlarına her birlerine arz her birleri muavenet edüb Kırım padişahların bu tarafa teveccüh etmesine sebeb olub bir alay (16) ümmet-i Muhammedi kafirler elinden kurtarsunlar eger bu beyan etdigimiz ahvali etmezlerse bizim ellerimiz anların yakası deyüb kemal mertebe her birleri tazri ve 48  In the German translation, Alaun, without any explanation. Zenker probably did not know the Eastern Turkic word ulun ‘a thin stick or shoot; hence, the shaft of an arrow’; see Sir Gerard Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish. Oxford, 1972, 147. 49  In the facsimile, ‫ ﺍﻭﻝ ﺼﻭﻳﻳﻠﻪ‬ol suyiyle. It is obviously a copying error instead of ‫ ادل ﺼﻭﻳﻳﻠﻪ‬İdil suyiyle, which was not taken into account by previous researchers.

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(17) niyaz edüb yalvarmışlardur iki üç kerre yüz bin asker çıkarız derler ve imareti olkadardurki üç yıla dek bir avuç tohum bırakmasalar ve yüz bin asker (18) içinde dursa kifayet eder derler terekesi ve balıgı asla kesilmez bir kavm vardurki Çerşi-Çermişi derler kırk bin hane dur her hanesi yasaklı dur (19) baba dedesinden mülklerine göre kimi on batman bal ve kimleri beş batman bal ve hiç vermeyen bir batman bal verirler ve Tav-Çuvaşı derler bir kavm ki (20) yigirmi bin hane dur cümlesi yasaklıdur işbu uslub üzere akçe ve tereke ve zerdava ve sincab ve tilki ve as cümlesinden uslub-i sabık üzere verir (21) İştek-Baş-kurt on bin hane dur işbu uslub üzere yasak verirler ve Tura vilayetinin mahsulı yedi şehir dür sekiz kerre yüz bin50 semmur verirler (22) ve kara tilki dahi olkadar verirler ve dahi taife-i Ar on beş bin hane dür yasaklıdur anlar dahi ol uslub üzere akçe ve bal ve semmur ve sincab ve zerdava (23) ve kunduz, kama, as sudan balık ve karadan yasak verirler Çermiş Çuvaş İştek-Baş-kurt Ar cümlesi atlıdur yaraklıdur Gazan ile Ejderhan mabeyni (24) otuz günlük yoldır ol yerin bir yanı ak kumdır Gazandan Ejderhana varınca arşınla satılur balık avcılarına verirler ve dahi Gazan ve Ejderhan iskeledür (25) her yıl Kızılbaş ve Buhara ve Ürgenc’den ve Taşkend ve Türkistan ve Kaşkardan Hata ve Hotan’dan ve Hindustan’dan kerban gelür baci u haracı ve çil yeki ve deh yeki (26) ve penc yeki gelür saadetlü Kırım hanı olan kimesnelere gayret-i din-i mübin ve icra-i sünen-i51 seyyidü’l-mürselin ahra52 ve ahsen belki evceb ve elzem oldugı ilm-i şerifine (27) puşide degildür küffar-i haksar elinden bir alay ümmet-i Muhammedi tahlis etmenin mesubatı ne mertebe oldugı meczumınızdur burada[n] asker-i islam ile Gazana teveccüh olunsa (28) bu kadar ehl-i islam askerinden asla kimse mukabele edüb mukatele ve mücadele etmek ihtimalı yokdur bu hakir kulınuzı ittifakla bu canibe gönderüb asker-i islam ne zeman gelür

50  The source states sekiz kerre yüz bin (“eight hundred thousand”), Kurat read sekiz kerre bin (“eight hundred”). 51  Kurat read sünü (?). 52  Kurat read ecri, which is a wrong reading.

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(29) deyü andagı müslümanlar bu hakirin varmasına müntezirlerdür sultanımdan rica bu dir ki zikr etdügimiz ahvali tafsil üzere yazub han hazretlerine arz eyleyüb bir alay (30) ümmet-i Muhammedi küffar-i haksar elinden halas bulmaları babında himmet-i ulyaları53 bi-dirig buyuralar baki ne diyelüm ki muhat-i ilm-i şerifleri olmıya men el-hakir Rahman Kulı Translation54

After

prostrating ourselves in the high presence of his excellency, the honourable, meritorious EFENDİ who is merciful towards the poor, the petition of [this] humble one (that is, Rahman Kulı) is as follows: My honourable lord (sultan)! The remedy for the victory of the Kizilbash (that is, the shah of Persia) is – God knowing it best – would be the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, because the flourishing and comfortable land of this accursed shah is located on the shores of the Caspian Sea.55 If Kazan and Astrakhan are conquered, and galleys and barges are built on the banks of the River Volga, the destruction and burning of his provinces located at the shores of the Caspian Sea is certain, because he (that is, the shah of Persia) is a friend of the beg of Moscow.56 It is certain that as soon as the miscreant Kizilbash hears about the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan he will submit himself to the khan of Crimea. The cause of his previous rebellious behaviour57 toward his majesty, 53  Kurat read aliyeleri instead of ulyaları which is the correct one. 54  My thanks go to Claudia Römer for revising the English translation of the Ottoman source. 55  Zenker translated it as Red Sea. Although the Bahr-i Kulzüm may mean the Red Sea, too, the context of the petition excludes this option. For the twofold meaning of Bahr-i Kulzüm, see Mahmut Ak, ‘Osmanlı Coğrafyasında İki Yer Adı (Bahr-i Kulzüm/Kurzüm) Üzerine’, İlmî Araştımalar 2 (1996) 7–12. 56  Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov (1613–1645). From 1547 onward, the Russian rulers wore the title of tsar. Halil İnalcık, ‘Power Relationships between Russia, the Crimea and the Ottoman Empire as Reflected in Titulature’, in Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Gilles Veinstein and S. Enders Wimbush (eds.), Passé turco-tatar, présent soviétique: Études offertes à Alexandre Bennigsen. Louvain, Paris, 1986, 208–211. 57  It is a reference to the long Persian war of Sultan Murad IV (1623–1639).

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the exalted [Ottoman] padishah was the beg of Moscow. “From our side our friendship is certain towards you and your enemies are our enemies too” – they (that is, the Muslims of Kazan) said to the padishahs. Although he (that is, the beg of Moscow) does not send the shah, the refuge of error, any troops, he supplies him with guns, gunpowder, sulphur, arrow shafts, iron, lead, copper and moreover with gold bags, which do not diminish from year to year. If Kazan and Astrakhan were conquered, their connection would be disrupted, because their dealings (barış ve kelişleri) via the Volga would be cut. In short, the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan rests only upon the effort of the padishahs. The province of Kazan is converted to Islam since the time of Umar,58 they are faithful believers, they consistently perform their five daily prayers and in their invocations they say, “O Lord, let us live under the rule of the padishah of the Islamic faith.” Especially this winter, his excellency, İbrahim Pasha,59 the fortunate governor-general of Caffa, and his majesty, the khan of Crimea, the powerful Canibek Giray moved out for the destruction of the camp of the Don Cossacks on the Don.60 Now his majesty, Canibek Giray Khan, remained because of an obstacle in a place named Temrük, on the River Kuban.61 His excellency, the governor-general of Caffa, İbrahim Pasha, came to Azov,62 and had [the fortress located] in the realm of the padishah of Islam so perfectly 58  It is an obvious anachronism, since Umar, the second caliph of Islam, occupied the position between 634 and 644, while in the Volga region Almısh, ruler of Volga Bulgaria was the first who converted to Islam in the early tenth century. 59  İbrahim Pasha is mentioned as beylerbeyi of Caffa in an undated (1636?) letter of the Crimean khan addressed to the grand vizier. Bennigsen et al., Le Khanat de Crimée, 147. 60  The Don Cossacks stood in constant struggle with the Tatars of the Little Nogai Horde, who were subordinates of the Crimean khans. V. V. Trepavlov, ‘Malaja Nogajskaja Orda. Očerk istorii’, Tjurkologočeskij Sbornik 2003–2004. Tjurkskie narody v dervnosti i srednevekov’e. Moskva, 2005, 273–311. 61  The fortress of Temrük is located on the Taman Peninsula, on the right bank of the southwestern branch of the River Kuban, not far from its mouth. Zenker was apparently not familiar with any of the place names, and translated Temrük’de Kuban nam mahalde as “an einem Orte mit Namen Tumurkda Kaban”. 62  Azak (today Azov), is a fortress at the mouth of the River Don. Taking advantage of the conflict between the new Crimean khan, Inayet Giray (1635–1637) and the head of the Mansur clans, Cantemir, as well as the engagement of the Sublime Porte in the Persian war, the Don Cossacks captured Azov on 28 June 1637.

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restored and renovated that the cursed Russian bandits strike into fear and dread. If they hear that the khan of Crimea marches with cannons, guns and an army to conquer Kazan − if the almighty God wills − certainly all of them will yield. After the begs and the elders gathered, they have sent unanimously me, your humble servant, “By all means, one by one inform him [that is the müfti of Crimea] about our circumstances and our army, about the flourishing and revenue [of the land]. Ask the fortunate Crimean khan to help. Submit to each of the distinguished scholars, the pious men and the sheikhs [a petition] that each of them should help, that they should be the cause for the padishah of the Crimea to come here in order to free a group of Muslim people from the hands of the infidels. If he does not act as explained by us, so we will judge him on the Day of Judgement”63 – each of them asked and begged in the most humble way. They say, “Two or three hundred thousand men we can draft. The fertility [of the land] is so great that even if one does not hold on to a handful of seeds for three years, and even if a hundred thousand warriors remain there, it would still suffice. Grain and fish do not run out. The people (kavm) called Cheremis (Çerşi-Çermişi),64 is forty thousand households (hane), all are tributary (yasaklı). From father and grandfather they give according to their wealth, some ten batmans of honey, some five batmans and who has nothing still gives a batman of honey.65 The Hill-Chuvash (Tav-Çuvaşı)66 is a people (kavm) of twenty thousand households and all are tributary. In the same way they give money, grain, marten, squirrel, fox, and ermine furs, all of them according to the old usage. The IshtekBashkirs67 are ten thousand households and give tribute (yasak) in the same 63  Literally: our hand is on his collar, that is, we stick to his collar/we pinch his neck. 64  It is the Tatar name of the Meadow Mari (Cheremis), who speak a Finno-Ugric language. 65  Batman was a measure of weight, which varied from place to place. In the Volga region, it was equivalent to 4 Russian poods (ca. 65.5 kg) in the seventeenth century. One Russian pood measured 16.38 kg. Posol’skie knigi po svjazam Rosii s Nogajskoj Ordy (1551−1561 gg). Sost. D. A. Mustafina and V. V. Trepavlov, Kazan’, 2006, 381. However batman also means a honey pot, an operculate tube 25–35 cm in diameter and 35–45 cm in height, made from linden wood and used to store honey, and this may be the meaning it has here; accessed 14 December 2018, https://ru.glosbe.com/ba/ru/батман. 66  It is the Tatar name of the Northwest Chuvash. 67  Ishtek is an exonym for the Bashkirs. They were called so by the Nogais, the Kazakhs, the Crimean Tatars and the Kalmyks.

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way. The income of the province of Tura is [the tribute of ] seven cities,68 they give eight times one hundred thousand sable furs and just as many black fox furs. Further, the people (taife) of Ar are fifteen thousand households, all tributary. They give in the same way money, honey, sable, squirrel, marten, beaver, otter and ermine furs. They give from the rivers fish and from the land tribute. Cheremis, Chuvash, Ishtek-Bashkir and Ar all are mounted and armed. Between Kazan and Astrakhan there is a thirty days’ journey. One side of this place is white sand. It is sold to fishermen by arshins from Kazan to Astrakhan.69 Furthermore, Kazan and Astrakhan are ports. Every year caravans arrive from Persia, Bukhara, Ürgendj, Tashkent, Turkistan, Kashgar, Khatai (China), Khotan and Hindustan. The customs and taxes are one fortieth, one tenth, and one fifth.” It is not hidden from the noble knowledge of the khans of Crimea that the effort for the true faith and the carrying out of the ordinances of the Lord of Prophets (that is, Muhammad) is worthy and salutary, and is in fact required. He knows for sure what the reward of freeing a group of Muslim people from the hands of the miserable infidels is. If he moved against Kazan from here (that is, Crimea) with troops of Islam, certainly no one would oppose so many Muslim warriors, the possibility of doing battle with them, to fight against them is excluded. Me, your poor servant having been sent here by unanimity the Muslims [of Kazan] are awaiting [my return] and ask when the army of Islam comes. The request towards my sultan is to write down this mentioned situation in detail, report it to his majesty the khan, and to deign to make without refusal his exalted efforts in the case of freeing a bunch of Muslim people from the hand of miserable infidels. Incidentally, what more may we say what is not known already to his sublime knowledge? Me, the poor Rahman Kuli70

68  In the German translation, vierzig ‘forty cities’ which is a mistake. 69  In the Volga region, 1 arshin is 0.7112 cm. Lazar Budagov, Sravnitel´nyj slovar´ turecko-tatarskih narečij. Vol. 1. Sanktpeterburg, 1869–1871, 28. 70  It is a common Muslim name. Kurat, and after him Iskhakov, considered him a Kazan merchant. His name has not yet been found in other sources.

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Figure 1 After Kurat, Türkiye ve İdil Boyu, Facsimile No. XI.

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VON DER HEERESFOLGE FREIGESTELLTE TIMAR-INHABER IN DER ZWEITEN HÄLFTE DES 17. JAHRHUNDERTS Hans Georg Majer Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München [email protected]

Die osmanische Armee bestand traditionell vor allem aus den Pfortentrup-

pen, den Janitscharen und den belehnten Truppen, den Sipahis. Die Janitscharen waren besoldete Infanteristen, standen in ihren Kasernen in der Hauptstadt, waren allezeit verfügbar und stellten die Garnisonen in zahlreichen Festungen des Reiches.1 Die Sipahis lebten von den Abgaben der Dörfer, die ihnen der Staat als Timar, bis 19.999 Akçe Einkommen, oder als Ziamet, von 20.000 bis 99.999 Akçe Einkommen, manchmal wesentlich höher,2 gegen die Verpflichtung zur Heeresfolge übertrug.3 Lange Zeit bildete diese belehnte

1  Siehe: Kemal Beydilli, ‘Yeniçeri’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi [=TDVİA]. Bd. 43. İstanbul, 2013, 450–462; Rhoads Murphey, ‘Yeñi Čeri’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2. Aufl. [=EI. 2. Aufl.]. Bd. 11. Leiden, 2002, 322–331; Mücteba İlgürel, ‘Yeniçeriler’, in İslâm Ansiklopedisi [=İA]. Bd. 13. İstanbul, 1986, 385–395. 2  Siehe: Géza Dávid, A ‘ ssigning a Zeamet in the 16th Century: Revenue-Limits and OfficeHolding’, in Ingeborg Baldauf und Suraiya Faroqhi (Hrsg.), Armağan. Festschrift für Andreas Tietze. Praha, 1994, 47–57. 3  Statt Timar und Ziamet verwende ich gelegentlich die Bezeichnung Lehen, denn obwohl nicht deckungsgleich, sind die Begriffe einander ähnlich genug.

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Kavallerie das Gros des osmanischen Heeres.4 Ein Befehl des Sultans genügte, um das Heer einzuberufen. Dazu ergingen Fermane an die Gouverneure der Provinzen, die Beylerbeys und Sandschakbeys, die dieses Timar-Aufgebot kommandierten, sich zu einem festgelegten Termin mit ihrer Truppe an einem bestimmten Sammelplatz einzufinden. Im späten 17. Jahrhundert verlief das nicht immer ganz reibungslos. Häufig musste Befehl auf Befehl an dieselben Empfänger ergehen, denn mancher Timar-Inhaber war bestrebt sich seinen Pflichten zu entziehen.5 Andererseits gab es aber auch Personen, die offiziell vom Kriegsdienst im Timar-Aufgebot entbunden wurden.

DIE QUELLE

Ein Defter in der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek zu Wien,

gibt darüber Auskunft. Dieses Defter, Cod. mixt. 1305, zeigt mit den Maßen 30,5 × 10 cm das hochrechteckige Format der meisten osmanischen Defter, umfasst 228 Blatt (fol. 204r–228v unbeschrieben) und ist in einen osmanischen Ebru-Pappeinband mit Lederrücken und ledernen Stoßrändern gebunden. Die Schrift, teils Divani teils Siyakat, weist auf mehrere Schreiber. Ohne Titel beginnen die Einträge am 14. Safer [10]79/24. Juli 1668 und laufen bis zum 16. Ramadan [10]94/8. September 1683. Ein Vergleich mit Deftern des Başbakanlık Os­manlı Arşivi in Istanbul erweist es als ein Register aus dem Defterhane-i 6

4  Halil İnalcık, ‘Timar’, in TDVİA. Bd. 43. İstanbul, 2012, 168–173; Halil İnalcık, ‘Tīmār’, in EI. 2. Aufl. Bd. X. Leiden, 2000, 502–507; Ömer Lûtfi Barkan, ‘Timar’, in İA. Bd. 12/1. İstanbul, 1974, 286–333; Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. New York, 2002, 193–206 (Kapitel: Fiefs); Douglas A. Howard, ‘Why Timars? Why Now? Ottoman Timars in the Light of Recent Historiography’, Turkish Historical Review 8:2 (2017) 119–144; Géza Dávid–Pál Fodor, ‘Changes in the Structure and Strength of the Timariot Army from the Early Sixteenth to the End of the Seventeenth Century’, Eurasian Studies 2 (2005 [2007]) 157–188. 5  Demnächst darüber: Hans Georg Majer, Krieg–Frieden–Umsturz. Das Osmanische Reich unter Sultan Mustafa II. (1695–1703). 6  Smail Balić, Katalog der türkischen Handschriften der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. Neuerwerbungen 1864–1994. Mit einem Anhang: Bosnische Aljamiado-Handschriften. Ankara, 2006, 253–254.

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amire,7 verwandt mit den Tahvil Defterleri8 die die Vergabe von Timaren (timar tevcihatı) registrierten. Für die Jahre dieses Wiener Defters besitzt das Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi im Kamil Kepeci Tasnifi9 sechs Tahvil Defterleri. Sie überschneiden sich teilweise zeitlich und es klaffen Lücken zwischen ihnen.10 Das Wiener Defter kann keine der Lücken füllen, sondern ist parallel zu einigen der Defter angelegt worden. Anders als diese Defter, die nach Provinzen geordnet, Vergaben von Timaren und Ziamets an berechtigte Personen verzeichnen, erweist sich das Wiener Defter als ein spezialisiertes Defter, das über Provinzgrenzen hinweg bestimmte Personen oder Personen­gruppen vom Dienst in den für sie zuständigen militärischen Einheiten direkt oder indirekt freistellt. Ein zeitlich früheres, ähnliches Defter im Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi definiert sich nach seiner Aufschrift als Cebelü Defteri11 und in diese Defter-Gattung passt auch das Wiener Exemplar. Lücken in den Beständen des Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi gehen nicht selten auf den zumindest teilweisen Verlust der osmanischen Kanzleien bei Niederlagen der Großwesire zurück, besonders auf die Niederlage Großwesir Kara Mustafa Paschas vor Wien am 12. September 1683. Es war osmanische Tradition auf den von Sultanen oder Großwesiren geführten Feldzügen einen

7  Zu dieser wichtigen Kanzlei, die das gesamte Timarsystem verwaltete siehe Erhan Afyoncu, Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilâtında Defterhâne-i Âmire (XVI.–XVIII. Yüzyıllar). Ankara, 2014. 8  Zu Tahvil, dem Tahvil Kalemi und Tahvil Defterleri siehe: Recep Ahiskalı, ‘Tahvil’, in TDVİA. Bd. 39. İstanbul, 2010, 440–442; İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Merkez ve Bahriye Teşkilâtı. Ankara, 1948, 43–45, 83–88; Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi Rehberi. İstanbul, 2017, 59–69; Afyoncu, Defterhâne-i Âmire, siehe Index. 9  Defter Nr. 438 (für die Jahre 1075–1088/1664–1677), Nr. 439 (für 1075–1077/1664– 1666/67), Nr. 440 (für 1076–1081/1665–1670/71), Nr. 442 (für 1079–1081/1668–1670/71), Nr. 449 (für 1093–1097/1682–1685/86) und Nr. 451 (für 1095–1099/1683–1687/88). 10  Diese Defter sind registriert in Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi Rehberi, 63–64. 11  Defter oldurki Rumili ve Anadolunun cebelülerin beyan eder. Dieses Defter KK. d. 405 das, eingeordnet unter die Tahvil Kalemi Defterleri, die Jahre 1059–61/1649–1651 umfasst, ist aber anders als das Wiener Defter zum Teil auch nach Sandschaken gegliedert und registriert nur Knaben und Kranke und ihre Verpflichtung Cebelüs zu stellen. Dieses Register wurde auch von Dávid und Fodor benutzt: ‘Changes in the Structure and Strength of the Timariot Army’, 167, 184–185.

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funktionsfähigen Teil der großherrlichen Kanzlei mitzuführen,12 da der Großwesir auch während dieser Zeit die Geschicke des Reiches lenkte. Dazu gehörten neben aktuellen Registerbänden (defter) auch für die Amtsführung unentbehrliche ältere Registerbände. Diese Bände konnten bei der Niederlage eines Großwesirs in die Hände des Gegners fallen.13 Zu den aktuell geführten Deftern gehörte das Cebelü Defteri Cod. mixt. 1305, das während des Wiener Belagerung noch bis zum 8. September, also bis vier Tage vor der Schlacht am Kahlenberg geführt worden ist. Wer im Lager vor Wien das Defter sich genommen hat ist unbekannt, ebenso sein weiteres Schicksal.14 Erst 1931 ist es als Geschenk in die Österreichische Nationalbibliothek gelangt.15 Das Defters zeigt, dass und wie Personen und Personengruppen von der persönlichen Heeresfolge innerhalb des osmanischen Timar-Aufgebot freigestellt waren oder freigestellt werden konnten: minderjährige Knaben, Kranke, Alte und Verletzte, Mekkapilger, Defterlüs hoher Würdenträger und Sipahis mit besonderen Aufgaben oder Funktionen. Eine Schwächung der Armee sollte daraus aber nicht entstehen und so gab es Bedingungen.

12  Feridun Emecen, ‘Sefere Götürülen Defterlerin Defteri’, in Prof. Dr. Bekir Kütükoğlu’na Armağan. İstanbul, 1991, 241–268. 13  Hans Georg Majer, ‘Almanya Arşivleri ve Kütüphanelerindeki Osmanlı Belgeleri’, in Yonca Köksal und Mehmet Polatel (Hrsg.), Avrupa Arşivlerinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu. Ankara, 2014, 21–25; Hans Georg Majer, ‘Fundstücke aus der vor Wien verlorenen Kanzlei Kara Mustafa Paşas (1683)’, in Klaus Kreiser und Christoph K. Neumann (Hrsg.), Das Osmanische Reich in seinen Archivalien und Chroniken. Nejat Göyünç zu Ehren. Istanbul, 1997, 115–122. 14  Einen Hinweis geben jedoch Besitzervermerke auf dem Vorderdeckelspiegel: „Ex Bibliotheca Crainensi H.V.S.“, wohl aus dem 18. Jahrhundert, sowie „G. v J.“ wohl erst im 20. Jahrhundert mit Bleistift geschrieben und aus derselben Zeit, ebenfalls mit Bleistift am oberen Rand AHZ no/ RHZ (wohl Vermerk aus dem Antiquariatshandel). Für diese Auskünfte danke ich Frau Dr. Katharina Kaska, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Wien. 15 Balić, Katalog, 254.

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KNABEN

Von der Heeresfolg befreit wurden in allererster Linie unmündige Knaben

(sabi), die die Timare oder Ziamets ihrer Väter nach deren Tod zugewiesen bekommen hatten. Im klassischen Timarsystem wird, wie beispielsweise im osmanischen Kanunname über die Timar-Vergabe von 1575/1576 festgelegt, bei der Vergabe von Timaren und Ziamets deutlich unterschieden, ob ein Vater verstorben oder gefallen ist und wie hoch die Einkünfte seines Timars oder Ziamets waren. Danach richtet sich der Anspruch der Söhne oder des Sohnes auf Versorgung durch ein Timar bis zur eigenen Dienstfähigkeit, und die Verpflichtung bis dahin Cebelüs zu stellen.16 Etwa hundert Jahre später zeigt das Wiener Cebelü Defteri Cod. mixt. 1305, dass sich vieles geändert hatte. Wie präsentiert sich nun die osmanische Praxis? Noch immer erhalten unmündige Söhne Timare und weiterhin haben sie sich durch bewaffnete Knechte (cebelüs) im Heer vertreten zu lassen. Die Vergabe an unmündige Söhne verstorbener Inhaber wurden nun für alle Provinzen, die in Timare eingeteilt waren, zumindest in den Jahren 1659–1661 und 1668–1683 gesondert erfasst und in die Cebelü Defterleri eingetragen. Ein Eintrag in das Defter beginnt mit einer horizontalen Linie, die sich am Ende nach oben krümmt und das Wort Timar symbolisiert. Über der Linie, links erscheint die Bezeichnung des Sandschaks. Unter der Linie steht der Name des Knaben, meist in der Form Mustafa Sohn des Musli (Mustafa veled-i Musli). Er kann durch Titel und Ämter des Vaters erweitert sein. Darunter in Siyakat-Schrift die Bezeichnung des Timars und sein nomineller Ertrag in Akçe. Schräg von unten rechts nach oben links geschrieben folgt darunter der aktuelle Text. Er beginnt meist mit den Worten: „nach dem Tode seines Vaters

16  Zu diesem Kanunname siehe: Douglas A. Howard, ‘Ottoman Administration and the Timar System. Sūret-i Kānūnnāme-i ‘Osmānī Berāy-i Tīmār Dāden’, Journal of Turkish Studies 20 (1996) (= In Memoriam Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, Hatıra Sayısı, Bd. 21.) 71 (englische Übersetzung), 94–95 (Transkription), 115 (Faksimile); Joseph von Hammer, Des osmanischen Reichs Staatsverfassung und Staatsverwaltung dargestellt aus den Quellen seiner Grundgesetze. Erster Theil. Die Staatsverfassung. Wien, 1815 (Nachdruck Hildesheim 1977), 353–354; siehe auch: Maria M. Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru, ‘Sur la transmission du timar dans l’Empire ottoman (XVe-XVIe siècles’, in Hans Georg Majer und Raoul Motika (Hrsg.), Türkische Wirtschaftsund Sozialgeschichte von 1071–1920. Wiesbaden, 1995, 3–10.

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hat er es erhalten“ (babası fevtinden alub), oder auch: „nach dem Tode ihres Vaters wurde es ihnen verliehen“ (babaları fevtinden tevcih olunub).17 In keinem Fall wird wie im Kanunname unterschieden, ob der Vater in der Schlacht oder zu Hause gestorben ist und die Höhe der an die Knaben vergebenen Timare wurde nicht mehr danach differenziert. Erben zwei Knaben zusammen, bekommen sie nach wie vor jeweils die Hälfte.18 Allerdings sind die ihnen übertragenen Einkünfte nicht auf die im Kanunname genannten Timare von 2000 bis 6000 Akçe beschränkt. Sie erhalten das Timar oder Ziamet des Vaters mit den vollen Einkünften. Ihre Lehen variieren nun zwischen einem Ziamet von 83.390 Akçe das an zwei Söhne je zur Hälfte ging19 und einem Timar von nur 1600 Akçe.20 Die Einträge betonen dann, dass sie als Knaben zur Feldzugsteilnahme nicht die Kraft hätten, sie müssten aber nach dem Kanun einen oder mehrere Cebelü für das Heer stellen. Die kanungemäße Zahl der Cebelüs wurde indes in manchen Fällen auch herabgesetzt, weil der tatsächliche Ertrag des Timars oder Ziamets deutlich geringer war als der nominelle (bi-hasıl).21 Dass die sechzehn Cebelüs der beiden reichen Knaben auch eingetroffen sind, und ebenso der Cebelü des armen Erben, bestätigte der Cebelü Ağası, der für diese Cebelüs zuständige Offizier durch seine Bescheinigung (ilam). Daraufhin reichte der Miralay oder Alaybeyi, zweiter im Rang nach dem Sand­ schakbey, seine entsprechende Eingabe (arz) ein. Nun konnte im Defterhane 17  Manche Einträge beginnen aber auch, ohne dass auf den Tod des Vater Bezug genommen wird, mit der Formulierung „da der Erwähnte ein Knabe ist“ (mezbur sabi olmağla) eine Formulierung, die sich im Defter KK. d. 405 durchweg findet. Es handelt sich dabei also um eine Kurzform, nicht um eine andere Art des Erwerbs. Die Formulierung: „er erhielt es durch Übertragung von seinem Vater“ (babası tahvilinden alub) besagt demgegenüber, dass der Vater noch am Leben war, sein/ein Timar aber an den Sohn abgetreten hatte (KK. d. 405, fol. 101r; Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 16v, 97r, 138v, 141r, 141v, 143v, 145r, 148r, 172r, 182r, 182v, 184r, 187v, 191v, 199r). 18  Einige Beispiele von gemeinsamem Erbe und der entsprechenden Aufteilung: Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 12v, 16v, 19v, 34v, 45v, 46r, 87v, 101r, 140v, 157r, manchmal sind nicht alle Brüder noch Knaben. 19  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 192v; das mit 101.617 Akçe insgesamt höchstdotierte Ziamet hat der Müteferrika Hasan inne, ein Mekkapilger (71v). 20  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 136r; ungewöhnlich niedrig ist ein Eintrag mit 300 Akçe auf fol. 164v. Es dürfte sich um ein Versehen des Schreibers handeln. 21  Cod. mixt. 1305, beispielsweise fol. 28v: um zwei verringert, 190r: auf sechs ermäßigt.

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nach der Überprüfung eine Urkunde (cebelü hükmi) ausgefertigt und übergeben werden, worauf der Eintrag in das Cebelü Defteri erfolgte. Damit hatten die Knaben und ihre Familien die Möglichkeit unberechtigte, feindliche Ansprüche auf ihr Lehen wegen Nichterscheinens abzuwehren. Timare und Ziamets waren faktisch, in deutlichem Gegensatz zum klassischen System,22 in voller Höhe erblich geworden.23 Das zweitgrößte Ziamet das ein Knabe erbte, erbrachte 74.978 Akçe,24 sein Vater trug den Titel Pascha und hatte, wie der Vater mit dem ertragreichsten Ziamet zu den vornehmen Müteferrikas gehört, unter denen auch im Defter nicht wenige Wesirssöhne erscheinen. Meist waren es diese Müteferrikas oder die Çavuşe,25 Angehörige berittener Garden des Sultans aber auch hoher Würdenträger, die für vielerlei Missionen eingesetzt wurden, sowie hohe Ränge der Verwaltung (katib), die Ziamets über 50.000 Akçe innehatten und an unmündige Söhne vererben konnten.26 Nach dem Kanun galt die Freistellung von der Heeresfolge zunächst bis zum zwölften Lebensjahr, später wurde sie bis zum sechzehnten ausgedehnt.27 Vereinzelte Altersangaben im Defter variieren zwischen zwei und dreizehn

22  İnalcık, ‘Tīmār’, 502: timars are “non-hereditary prebends to sustain a cavalry army and a military-administrative hierarchy”; İnalcık, ‘Timar’, 170: „Osmanlı timar sisteminin batılı feudal uygulamalardan farklı temel özelliklerden biri miras yoluyla mirascılara geçmemesidir.“ 23  Dies wurde auch von Dávid und Fodor festgestellt: ‘Changes in the Structure and Strength of the Timariot Army’, 162–168. 24  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 88r, 133r. 25  Zu den Müteferrikas siehe: Erhan Afyoncu, ‘Müteferrika’, in TDVİA. Bd. 32. İstanbul, 2006, 183–185; J. H. Kramers, ‘Müteferrika’, in EI. 2. Aufl. Bd. 7. Leiden, New York, 1993, 794; Mehmet Tayyib Gökbilgin, ‘Müteferrika’, in İA. Bd. 8. İstanbul, 1960, 853–856. Zu den Çavuşen siehe: Robert Mantran, ‘Čā,ūsh’, in EI. 2. Aufl. Bd. 2. Leiden, London, 1965, 16; Orhan F. Köprülü, ‘Çavuş’, in TDVİA. Bd. 8. İstanbul, 1993, 236–238. Vgl. Géza Dávid, ‘Ottoman Armies and Warfare, 1453–1603’, in Suraiya N. Faroqhi and Kate Fleet (eds.), The Cambridge History of Turkey. Vol. II: The Ottoman Empire as a World Power, 1453–1603. Cambridge, 2013, 292. 26  Cod. mixt. 1305: Müteferrika Mehmed: fol. 163r, 177r, 189r; Müteferrika Hüseyin (?): fol. 37v; Mehmed Çavuş: fol. 176v; Çavuş Mustafa Paşa: fol. 34r; Kâtib Ali: fol. 173v, 181r, 187v. 27 Hammer, Staatsverfassung und Staatsverwaltung, I. 362.

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Jahren,28 bleiben also innerhalb dieses Rahmens. War der Sohn beim Tod des Vaters noch sehr jung, konnte die Verpflichtung Cebelüs zu stellen über Jahre hinweg wiederholt werden. Ein Knabe Ali, Erbe eines Ziamets in Höhe von 57.387 Akçe, erscheint in den Jahren 1079/1668–1669, 1080/1669–1670, 1083/1672–1673 und 1085/1674–1675 im Defter.29 Es sind dies Jahre des Krieges, des kretischen Krieges und des polnischen Krieges. Man brauchte jeden Cebelü. Die Aufsicht über die von den Knaben gestellten Cebelüs hatten die beiden Cebelü Ağas von Rumelien und von Anatolien, deren namentliche Nennung geradezu Amtslisten für Rumelien30 und Anatolien ergeben.31 Ihnen wurden die Cebelüs übergeben, meist nur einer, insgesamt aber bis zu sechzehn. Sobald sie am Sammelplatz eingetroffen waren, stellte der regional zuständige der beiden Ağas seine Bestätigung (ilam) aus. Die Cebelüs selbst übernahm dann der Miralay ihrer jeweiligen Heimatprovinz als zuständiger Kommandeur des Timar-Aufgebotes und führte sie während des Feldzuges an. Die Zahl der Einträge über die von der Heeresfolge freigestellten unmündigen Timar- und Ziametinhaber schwankte von Jahr zu Jahr. In bestimmten Jahren des Krieges um Kreta (1668–1669), des polnischen Krieges (1672– 1673, 1674–1675), des russischen Krieges (1678–1679) und im Jahr des Wiener Feldzuges (1683) lagen die höchsten Zahlen jährlicher Einträge zwischen rund 600 (Polen) und 180 (Russland), in militärisch ruhigeren oder friedlichen Jahren ging sie von rund dreißig bis unter zehn zurück. Der Eintrag in das Defter sicherte den nachgelassenen Söhnen den Status als Sipahi und die Einkünfte des Vaters. Er sollte sie auch, und das war für die Knaben und ihre Familien besonders wichtig, gegen die feindliche Einmischung Fremder sichern, die ihnen das Timar oder Ziamet streitig machen wollten. Das alles entsprach auch den Interessen des Staates, der damit seiner 28  Beispielsweise: Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 11v, 88r, 89v, 34v, 92r, 95r (5 Jahre), 89v (6), 87v (7), 97r (8), 87v, 138v (9), 34v (12, 13 Jahre); KK. d. 405 gibt das Alter der Knaben fast regelmäßig an, manchmal mit dem Zusatz „schätzungsweise“ (tahminen). Vgl. Géza Dávid und Pál Fodor, ‘Az oszmán timár-birtokos haderő nagysága és összetétele a XVII. század második felében’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 117 (2004) 488–489. 29  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 3v, 58r, 123v, 143r. 30  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 2r, 18r, 47r, 134v, 161v, 185r. 31  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 1v, 134v, 165r, 184r.

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Fürsorgepflicht für Unmündige nachkam, der darüber hinaus nach stabilen sozialen Verhältnissen im Land strebte, den Überblick über die Timare wahren wollte, und vor allem seinen Anspruch auf die Stellung von Cebelüs in jedem einzelnen Fall betonen wollte. Während im Cebelü Defteri KK. d. 405 die Stellung von Cebelüs als Aufforderung formuliert wird,32 bestätigt im Wiener Defter der Cebelü Ağa, dass die Cebelüs bereits eingetroffen sind.33 Diese Effizienz ist wohl eine Folge der Köprülü Reformen.

KRANKE, VERWUNDETE UND ALTE SİPAHİS

Alter, Krankheit und Verletzungen konnten es einem Sipahi unmöglich

machen, seiner Verpflichtung zum Kriegsdienst nachzukommen.34 Sobald er aber bei der Musterung der Truppen seines Sandschaks fehlte, konnte sein Timar oder Ziamet als erledigt angesehen und neu vergeben werden. Es lag daher im Interesse des betroffenen Sipahi, seinen Zustand aktenkundig zu machen und sich um einen Befehl (hükm) zu kümmern, der seine Verhinderung amtlich machte. Während der Jahre 1668 bis 1683 beschritten über achtzig Sipahis diesen Weg. Die Gründe, die für eine solche Freistellung angegeben wurden, waren vor allem Alter und Krankheit: ein Sipahi war über achtzig Jahre alt (196v), ein anderer hatte seit über fünfzig Jahren an den Feldzügen teilgenommen, nun waren seine Augen schwach geworden (160r), ein dritter war einfach alt (106v), ein vierter außerordentlich alt und krank dazu (174r), ein fünfter schließlich war alt, krank und blind (162r). Weiteren Sipahis ging es ganz ähnlich. Einer hatte auch die Gicht (88r), einer hatte die Wassersucht und war bettlägerig (163r). Bettlägerig waren auch andere, zwei von ihnen konnten deshalb nicht zum kretischen Krieg ausrücken (16v, 18r). Die Kriege des Zeitraums machen sich bemerkbar: wegen einer Verwundung wurden nicht wenige Sipahis vom Dienst freigestellt. Meist wird nur die 32  BOA, KK. d. 405, 8v: kanun üzere cebelüsü eşmek içün emr-i şerif verilmişdür. 33  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 62r: bir nefer cebelüsün cebelü ağasına teslim etmekle; oder auch 165r: bu sene-i mübarekede cebelüsü hizmetde mevcud olduğunu… 34  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 18v.

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Tatsache der Verwundung erwähnt, doch gelegentlich gibt es auch Details: ein Hüseyin hatte seine rechte Hand verloren und konnte kein Schwert mehr halten (84r), zwei Sipahis waren, ebenfalls während des osmanisch-venezianischen Krieges um Kreta, an einem Arm und einem Bein verwundet worden (176v, 181v), einer wurde in der Festung Kandiye (heute: Iráklio, Kreta) verletzt (113r). Der Sipahi Mehmed wurde beim polnischen Feldzug von einer Gewehrkugel in die linke Hand getroffen, sie musste amputiert werden (153r). Einer wurde während des osmanisch-russischen Krieges beim Feldzug nach Çehrin (heute: Czehryń, Ukraine) verwundet (183v), zwei bei der Belagerung dieser Festung (171r, 178r), ein anderer wurde von einer Kanone am linken Arm verletzt (184v). Da alle diese Sipahis einleuchtende Gründe hatten und Cebelüs stellten, wurden sie freigestellt und erhielten ausdrücklich staatlichen Schutz gegen den Verlust ihres Timars oder Ziamets. Schließlich zeigen einige wenige Einträge auch alte Sipahis, die mit einem Timar versorgt, unter der Bedingung im Kriegsfall einen Cebelü zu stellen, ausdrücklich in den Ruhestand versetzt (tekaüd) worden waren (119r, 119v, 120v, 123v). Die Einträge über die kriegsunfähigen Sipahis verteilen sich sehr ungleich über das Defter. Während der ersten vier Jahre, es ist die Schlussphase des kretischen Krieges und die Zeit bis hin zum polnischen Krieg finden sich lediglich elf Einträge, die übrigen über siebzig fallen in die Jahre des polnischen und russischen Krieges und in das Jahr des Feldzugs nach Wien.

MEKKAPILGER

Die Pilgerfahrt nach Mekka soll jeder Muslim, der dazu in der Lage ist,

mindestens einmal im Leben unternehmen, gehört sie doch zu den fünf religiösen Hauptpflichten des Muslims.35 Der Inhaber eines Timars oder eines Ziamets, der durch seine Verpflichtung gegenüber dem Staat gebunden war, konnte sich jedoch nicht ohne Weiteres der jährlichen Pilgerkarawane 35  Zur Pilgerfahrt besonders in osmanischer Zeit: Suraiya Faroqhi, Herrscher über Mekka. Die Geschichte der Pilgerfahrt. München, Zürich, 1990.

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anschließen, da er sonst Gefahr lief, dass sein Timar oder Ziamet als frei angesehen und an einen anderen vergeben wurde. Andererseits konnte sich natürlich auch der Staat dem frommen Wunsch nicht verweigern. Während der Jahre 1079/1668 bis 1094/1683 wurde die Pilgerfahrt von rund 270 Sipahis amtlich gebilligt und im Defter registriert. Ihre Pilgerfahrten verteilen sich allerdings sehr ungleich auf die einzelnen Jahre des Zeitraums. In den Jahren 1079/1668–1669, 1084/1673–1674, 1085/1674–1675 und 1094/1682–1683, es sind Kriegsjahre, ist keine Pilgerfahrt von Sipahis eingetragen. In den übrigen Jahren liegt die Zahl der Pilger nur zwischen zwei und achtundzwanzig. Das Jahr 1080/1669–1670 jedoch erlebte einen Andrang. Rund hundert Timar- und Ziamet-Inhaber machten sich auf nach Mekka. Die ungewöhnlich hohe Zahl dürfte eine Reaktion auf das Ende des osmanisch-venezianischen Krieges um Kreta (1645–1669) sein, der nach vierundzwanzig Jahren gerade zu Ende gegangen war. Diese militärischen Mekkapilger kamen aus den verschiedensten Provinzen Rumeliens und Anatoliens und natürlich mussten sie sich die Reise leisten können. Die Höhe der nominellen Einkünfte der Pilger schwankt zwischen 543 (179v) und 101.617 Akçe (71v). Die reichsten Siebzehn hatten Ziamets von über 50.000 Akçe inne, während die ärmsten Siebzehn nur Timare mit einem nominellen Einkommen von unter 3.000 Akçe zur Verfügung hatten. Allerdings bildete zu dieser Zeit das nominelle Einkommen eines Timars oder Ziamets nicht mehr unbedingt die Wirklichkeit ab und zusätzliche Einkommensquellen bleiben im Dunkel. Wortlaut und Umfang der Einträge variieren, die knappste Form lautet: „dem Genannten wurde für die Teilnahme an der heiligen Pilgerfahrt das Erlaubnisschreiben (izin hükmi) übergeben.“36 Mehr Details zum Verfahren enthält ein anderer Eintrag: „Da der Genannte die fromme Intention ausgesprochen hat, die heilige Pilgerfahrt zu unternehmen, wurde ihm gemäß seiner Petition das Erlaubnisschreiben übergeben.“37 Die fromme Intention (niyet) ist die Voraussetzung für die Gültigkeit einer rituellen Handlung im Islam. Die Wichtigkeit der Petition wird unterstrichen: „Da er die Gnade erbat ihm eine 36  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 73v. 37  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 72v.

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großherrliche Erlaubnis zu erteilen, wurde entsprechend seiner Petition für die Beurlaubung eine Urkunde ausgestellt.“38 Häufig wird in den Einträgen zudem der Kanun als gesetzliche Grundlage des Verfahrens erwähnt.39 Weitere Einträge stellen den wichtigsten Aspekt einer förmlichen Beurlaubung in den Vordergrund: den Schutz der heimischen Interessen des Pilgers: „Da der Genannte zur Pilgerfahrt aufbricht wurde ihm, damit ihm in diesem gesegneten Jahr kein Außenstehender sein Ziamet und Gedük streitig macht, ein edler Erlass ausgehändigt.“40 Eine Verpflichtung der Mekkapilger zur Stellung von Vertretern für die Zeit ihrer Abwesenheit wird in den Einträgen nicht erwähnt. Hier ging es nicht wie sonst um militärische Interessen des osmanischen Staates, sondern um religiöse. Einem Ali aus dem Sandschak Kastamonu der blind und schwach war, der aber auf Grund seines Berats zur Stellung eines Cebelü verpflichtet war, wurde, da er den frommen Vorsatz zur Pilgerfahrt gefasst hatte, für das Jahr der Pilgerfahrt die Stellung seines Cebelü daher auch ausdrücklich erlassen (181v). Doch gibt es einzelne Ausnahmen: ein Festungssoldat von Sinop stellte wohl selbst bis zu seiner Rückkehr einen Vertreter (176r). Für Hüseyin den Obersten der Festung (dizdar) von Hanya auf Kreta setzte der Kommandant (muhafız) Wesir Ahmed Pascha41 einen Vertreter ein (156r). Diese Festungen vertrugen offenbar keine Minderung ihrer Mannschaftsstärke, nicht einmal wenn es um die religiös verdienstvolle Pilgerfahrt ging.

DEFTERLÜ ADAMLAR

Inhaber von Timaren und Ziamets die, nach einer in früheren Zeiten oft

umstrittenen Praxis,42 im persönlichen Dienst des Sultans (rikab-i hümayun),

38  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 82r. 39  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 82r. 40  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 71v. 41  Zu Ankebud Ahmed Pascha siehe: Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmani. Bd. 1. İstanbul, 1308/1890, 223. 42  Klaus Röhrborn, Untersuchungen zur osmanischen Verwaltungsgeschichte. Berlin, New York, 1973, 64–84.

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dem Dienst eines hohen Würdenträgers, eines Wesirs, eines Beylerbeys oder eines Sandschakbeys standen, blieben Teil der Timar-Organisation und hatten wie alle Sipahis im Prinzip die Pflicht unter dem Banner ihres Sandschakbeys Kriegsdienst zu leisten. Ihr Dienstherr erfasste sie aber auch seinerseits in Deftern, weshalb sie „seine im Defter verzeichneten Männer“ (defterlü adamları), oder kurz Defterlü genannt wurden. Um sie nicht der Anklage auszusetzen, sie hätten sich nicht bei ihrer Truppe eingefunden und um zu verhindern, dass dadurch der Besitz ihres Lehens gefährdet wurde, übersandte ihr Dienstherr eine meist gesiegelte Liste mit ihren Namen und der Angabe ihres Timars oder Ziamets an das dafür zuständige Defterhane. Dort trug man die Liste in das Cebelü Defteri ein und stellte dem Sipahi eine Urkunde (hükm) aus, die ihm den Besitz seines Timars im Fall eines solchen Einspruchs absichern sollte. Das Timar wandelte sich auf diese Weise faktisch von einem Militärlehen in eine bloße Einkommensquelle. Einträge zur Sicherung des Timar-Besitzes von Defterlüs finden sich im Cebelü Defteri Cod. mixt 1305 in zwei Formen: in Form von Listen (defter), die zwischen zwei und hundertsechsundzwanzig (35v–37r) Sipahis nennen und in Form von Einträgen, die lediglich einen einzelnen Sipahi betreffen. Insgesamt sind es rund fünfzig Listen, die Würdenträger in den fünfzehn Jahren eingereicht haben. Unter all den männlichen Würdenträgern mit Defterlüs hebt sich eine einzige Frau hervor: die Mutter des Sultans, die Valide Sultan Hatice Turhan Sultan (1627–1683).43 Ihr Sachwalter (kethüda) Mustafa Kethüda reichte eine Liste von sechs Defterlüs der Valide Sultan ein, drei davon sind Müteferrikas (29r). Ahmed Çavuş, in einem einzelnen Eintrag genannt, wird wie manch einer im Dienst eines Wesirs, ausdrücklich als mande bezeichnet (31v), als von der Teilnahme am Feldzug befreit. Welche Aufgaben den Cebelüs im Gefolge der Valide Sultan zukamen bleibt offen. Ein militärischer Einsatz ist höchst unwahrscheinlich obwohl Hatice Turhan Sultan, durch den Bau zweier Festungen an den Dardanellen und finanzielle Unterstützung der Armee, ein aktives Interesse an militärischen Angelegenheiten bewiesen hat. 43  M. Çağatay Uluçay, Padişahların Kadınları ve Kızları. Ankara, 1980, 56–59; Ali Akyıldız, Haremin Padişahı Valide Sultan. Haremde Hayat ve Teşkilât. İstanbul, 2017, 302–309.

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Die Defterlü-Listen der Großwesire, ihrer Stellvertreter (kaymakam) und der Großadmirale haben den größten Umfang. Großwesir Köprülüzade Ahmed Pascha (1661–1676) verzeichnet zwölf Listen und zwanzig einzelne Defterlü-Einträge. Insgesamt sind das 196 Defterlüs, darunter Müteferrikas, Müteferrikasöhne und Çavuşe. Großwesir Kara Mustafa Pascha (1676–1683) kommt zwischen 1676 und 1683 auf eine Liste mit lediglich zwei Defterlüs (184r) und drei Einzeleinträge. In seiner Zeit als Kaymakam und noch kurz danach hatte er jedoch acht Defter vorgelegt und acht einzelne Eingaben mit insgesamt 212 Defterlüs.44 Der zweimalige Großadmiral (kapudan-i derya) Kaplan Mustafa Pascha reichte während seiner ersten Amtsperiode acht Listen mit 185 Defterlüs ein, danach als Vali von Aleppo noch eine Liste mit zwei Defterlüs,45 dazu kommen neun Einzeleinträge, zusammen sind das 196 Defterlüs. Rund dreißig weitere Würdenträger reichten Listen ein mit zwischen zwei und siebenundsechzig Defterlüs, dazu kommen Einzeleinträge. Trotz mancher Reformen ergibt sich daraus eine beachtliche Zahl von Lehensinhabern, die weder selbst einrückten, noch, wie die Knaben und Kranken, wenigstens die vorgeschriebene Zahl von Cebelüs aufboten. Jahrzehnte zuvor war die Minderung der Truppen durch die Vergabe von Timaren und Ziamets an Unberechtigte für die Verfasser von kritischen Traktaten über den Zustand des Reiches ein zentraler Punkt der Kritik gewesen. Vor allem hatten sie gerügt, dass Hofbedienstete wie Müteferrikas, Çavuşe aber auch Katibs solche Lehen erhielten und dass Würdenträgern zahlreiche Timare als reine Geldquelle, oft durch Strohmänner, an sich gebracht hatten. Inzwischen befand man sich aber in der Zeit der Köprülü Reformen mit ihrer strafferen Verwaltung. Der Ernst, der hinter der Androhung des Timarverlustes bei Nichterscheinen stand, ist im Defter spürbar. Doch viele Müteferrikas waren beispielsweise noch immer im Besitz von Ziamets, war es doch inzwischen längst Usus, dass ein Teil von ihnen zur Entlastung der Staatskasse mit Lehen besoldet wurde. Ob die widerrechtliche Akkumulation von Timaren und Ziamets durch Würdenträger als Problem noch fortdauerte, lässt das Defter nicht erkennen. 44  Die Listen: fol. 13r–13v, 13v–14r, 14r–14v, 30r, 69v–70r, 70v, 83v, 89v. 45  Die Listen des Kapudan: fol. 14r–14v, 14v–15r, 15r–15v, 40r, 40v–41r, 41r, 80v, 129r.

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SİPAHİS MIT BESONDEREN AUFTRÄGEN

Weil ihnen verschiedenste Aufgaben übertragen wurden und sie Dienste

leisteten, die im Interesse des osmanischen Hofes und Staates lagen, wurden auch einzelne Sipahis, obwohl sie weder selbst dienten noch Cebelüs stellten, für die Zeit ihres Dienstes im Besitz ihrer Timare und Ziamets gesichert, meist, wie es heißt, durch einen Zusatz zu ihrem Deftereintrag. Viele von ihnen waren Müteferrikas und Çavuşe, aber auch hohe Ränge aus der Verwaltung. Einige Beispiele aus verschiedenen Bereichen ihres Einsatzes: Der Müteferrika Ahmed und ein gleichnamiger Katib des Defter-i hakanî wurden 1080/1669 mit einem Siegesschreiben (fethname) zu Schah Sulayman von Persien (1666–1694) gesandt (78r), als Kreta nach so vielen Jahren Krieg erobert war. Der Seferli Yusuf diente im großherrlichen Harem (155v). Sinan und vier seiner Kollegen hatten als Şatır,46 die Aufgabe dem Sultan bei öffentlichen Auftritten feierlich voranzugehen (125v, 126r), der Müteferrika Mehmed war ihr zweiter Offizier (kethüda) (161r). Der Müteferrika Dilaver wirkte im Großherrlichen Marstall (161r). Der Çavuş Yusuf hatte sich um die staatlichen Gefangenen (beylik esirleri) zu kümmern (142v). Mehmed, Inhaber eines Timar im Sandschak Temeşvar (ungarische Temesvár, heute Timişoara, Rumänien), war mit den übrigen Sipahis zum Feldzug aufgerufen, als man aber erfuhr, dass er in der Wissenschaft der Timar-Verwaltung (defterhane kitabeti ilmi) bewandert war, wurde er als Timar Tezkirecisi des Sandschaks angestellt (131v). Bestandsschutz erhielten auch osmanische Sipahis im Dienst der Krim­ chane. Zwei Ziamet-Inhaber standen im Dienst des viermaligen Krimchans Selim Giray I. (zwischen 1671 und 1704; 130r, 149v, 157v). Alişah wird als Defterlü des Chans bezeichnet (158r), ein weiterer Ahmed als Defterlü des Krimchans Murad Giray (1678–1683; 172r). Um sie im Besitz ihrer Lehen zu sichern haben die Krimchane zum Teil selbst eine Eingabe (arz) zu ihren Gunsten gemacht. Sipahis, die Aufgaben im Bereich des Militärs durchführten, aber eben nicht dort, wo sie als Timar-Inhaber eigentlich erscheinen sollten, wurden 46  İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Teşkilâtı. Ankara, 1945, 445–446.

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ebenfalls faktisch freigestellt und erhielten Schutz gegen den Verlust ihrer Lehen. Ein Bekir Murad Çavuş beaufsichtigte den Kanonenguss in der großherrlichen Kanonengießerei (84r), drei einzelne Sipahis und zweiundachtzig Sipahis auf einer Liste waren Humbaracıs, dienten also in Mörsereinheiten,47 andere Timar-Inhaber dienten in der Flotte (20r). Ein Müteferrika Ali war mit der Funktion des Voyvoda der Türkmenen von Aleppo betraut (116v, 129r). Eine Reihe Sipahis, die in der Festung Kamaniçe (heute: Kamjanec-Podilskyj, Ukraine) Dienst getan hatten und im Herbst 1674 zu ihren Timaren zurückkehren wollten – wozu sie als Timar-Inhaber durchaus Anlass hatten –, wurden beurlaubt mit der Auflage zu Beginn der Feldzugssaison im Frühjahr (ruz-i Hızır, 6. Mai) sich wieder unter der Fahne ihres Sandschaks einzufinden, ansonsten würden ihre Timare an andere vergeben (151r–152v). Einen Tahrir durchzuführen, der meist die Grundlage für staatliches Handeln, oft für die künftige Besteuerung eines Gebietes bilden sollte, war eine verantwortungsvolle Aufgabe. Auch hier wurden Sipahis, die Çavuşe und Katibs waren, eingesetzt, beispielsweise für Tahrirs von Mudaniya (127v), der Bozulus Türkmenen (123v), im Sandschak Tirhala (128v) und von Uyvar (ung. Érsekújvár, heute: Nové Zámky, Slowakei; 85r). Reparaturen waren ein weiterer Bereich für den Einsatz von Sipahis. İbrahim Çavuş hatte auf großherrlichen Befehl die verfallene Moschee Sultan Ala’addaulas in Gerger zu restaurieren (155r), Hasan Çavuş war mit einer Brückenreparatur betraut (188v), İbrahim Çavuş hatte Reparaturen an der Festung von Temeşvar, Siyavuş Çavuş wurde zu Reparaturen nach Medina entsandt (176r). Dem Oberstallmeister (und späteren Großwesir) Sarı Süleyman Ağa, der beauftragt war die Wasserleitungen in Mekka wiederherzustellen, wurde sein Sohn, der Sipahi Yusuf zur Seite gestellt (180r).48 Memi Çavuş hatte 1679 Renovierungsarbeite in Küre-i Mamure bei Kastamonu (174v), im 47  Cod. mixt. 1305, fol. 124v–125v, 127v, 151v, 171r. 48  Über Sarı Süleyman, seine Karriere und Familie siehe: Hans Georg Majer, ‘Bavyera ve İstanbul’da İzleri Olan Bir Osmanlı Sadrazamı: Sarı Süleyman Paşa’, in Feridun M. Emecen, Ali Akyıldız und Emrah Safa Gürkan (Hrsg.), Osmanlı İstanbulu III. İstanbul, 2015, 19–51; eine überarbeitete und vor allem um seine Stiftungen erweiterte Version: „Spuren des osmanischen Großwesirs Sarı Süleyman Pascha in Bayern und Istanbul“ erschien in EOTHEN. Münchner Beiträge zur Geschichte der Islamischen Kunst und Kultur 7 (2018) 189–224, dort leider mit einem sinnlos erweiterten Titel.

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VON DER HEERESFOLGE FREIGESTELLTE TIMAR-INHABER

Jahr 1683 Reparaturen an Festung und Moschee von Estergon (Esztergom, Ungarn) durchzuführen (193r), wofür der Müteferrika Mahmud Material herbeizuführen hatte (193r). Während des polnischen Krieges wurden Müteferrikas und Çavuşe beauftragt, Transporte von Proviant (130r, 131r, 145v), Munition (87r, 132v), Vieh (133r) und selbst Pontons (tombaz) für den Brückenbau (147r) teils auf Wägen, teils auf Schiffen zu transportieren. Die Festung Kamaniçe war eines der Ziele dieser Transporte, Siebenbürgen und die Walachei gehörten zu den Ausgangsorten. Schließlich finden sich Freistellungen in besonderen Fällen. Receb Çavuş hatte den Auftrag die fünfundvierzig Beutel (kise) Akçe, die das Schatzamt dem Vali von Aleppo Wesir Kaplan Mustafa Pascha zugewiesen hatte, (für ihn) einzuziehen (132r). Der Sipahi Ahmed in Diensten eines Ömer Pascha hatte sich um dessen Schulden in Höhe von 200 Kise zu kümmern (177r). Allahverdi, der Dizdar von Karahisar-i Şarki musste wegen eines Prozesses in die Hauptstadt reisen. Er stellte, wie bei Festungskommandanten offenbar üblich, einen Vertreter und erhielt ebenfalls die Dienstbefreiung und die Sicherung seines Amtes verbrieft (175r).

FAZIT

Auch im späten 17. Jahrhundert galt noch, dass der Inhaber eines Timars oder Ziamets sich zur Heeresfolge unter der Fahne seines Sandschaks einzufinden hatte, unabhängig davon ob er zusätzlich oder eigentlich einen anderen Status oder eine andere Funktion hatte wie etwa Müteferrika, Çavuş, Katib oder Festungssoldat. Wer von ihnen also nicht bei der Truppenmusterung eintraf, riskierte den Verlust seines Lehens. Wer aber nicht zur Armee einrücken wollte oder konnte, hatte die Möglichkeit aktiv die Folgen eines Timarverlustes zu vermeiden. Unmündige Söhne von Sipahis, die nun nicht mehr wie früher nur Anspruch auf ein geringes Einstiegstimar hatten, sondern das gesamte Timar oder Ziamet ihres Vaters erhielten, also faktisch erbten, konnten die vorgeschriebenen Zahl von Cebelüs stellen. Damit waren sie freigestellt und geschützt. Kranke, Kriegsversehrte und Alte wurden behandelt 397

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wie die Knaben, da kriegsuntauglich, konnten sie zu Hause bleiben, mussten aber die auf ihr Timar entfallende Zahl von Cebelüs stellen. Wer die Pilgerfahrt antreten wollte, benötigte eine Genehmigung, seine Abwesenheit unterlag aber keinen Bedingungen, war seine Freistellung doch fromm, kurzfristig und beschränkte sich weitgehend auf Friedenszeiten. Unabhängig davon ob sie eigentlich Sipahis waren, die im Dienst von Würdenträgern standen, oder Gefolgsleute von Würdenträgern, die mit Timaren und Ziamets entlohnt wurden, das Defterhane nahm auch die Defterlüs als Sipahis wahr, die Heeresfolge zu leisten hatten. Da sie aber für ihren Dienst­ herren Leistungen erbrachten, wollte und konnte der sie nicht für den Kriegsdienst im Timar-Aufgebot freigeben. Andererseits wurden sie über ihre Timare und Ziamets honoriert und der Dienstherr konnte nicht riskieren, dass sie diese finanzielle Basis verloren. Daher sandte er Listen mit ihren Namen ein und erklärte sie als seine Defterlüs. Ihr Dienst für den Würdenträger wurde offensichtlich inzwischen als ein mit dem Kriegsdienst gleichwertiger Dienst geduldet, keine Bedingungen wurden gestellt, keine Cebelüs gefordert und sie erhielten Schutz gegen den Verlust ihrer Lehen wegen Nichterscheinens. Die gleiche Regelung galt auch für Inhaber von Timaren und Ziamets, meist Müteferrikas und Çavuşe, die individuell in staatlichem Auftrag mit einer bunten Vielfalt von Diensten betraut wurden, von der diplomatischen Reise, über das Erstellen von Katastern, der Reparatur von Festungen, dem Kanonenguss, dem Transport von kriegswichtigen Gütern, dem Eintreiben von Geldern bis hin zum Dienst im Gefolge des Chans der Krim. Der Eintrag in das Defter bedeutete für die Knaben, Kranken, Mekkapilger, Defterlüs und Staatsbeauftragten aus unterschiedlichen Gründen die Freistellung vom persönlichen Kriegsdienst unter dem Banner ihres Sandschaks und die staatliche Sicherung ihrer Lehen, teils mit, teils ohne Stellung von militärischem Ersatz. Der Staat seinerseits erhielt einen differenzierten Überblick darüber, wer, wo, wann, welches Lehen aus welchen Gründen, für welche Zeit ohne Heeresfolge innehatte.

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OTTOMAN TRIBUTES AND CIRCULATION OF MONEY IN THE PRINCIPALITY OF TRANSYLVANIA, 1658–1687 János Buza Corvinus University, Budapest [email protected]

In its state of involuntary independence following the three-way division of

the Kingdom of Hungary, the Principality of Transylvania1 was required to pay tribute2 to the Ottoman sultan. The annual sum payable was initially set at 10,000 ducats, increasing to 15,000 ducats in the 1570s but returning to 10,000 after the Long War (1593–1606). The prince could request exemption for periods of military action against the principality or campaigns mounted with the sultan’s permission, opportunities taken up several times by Prince Gabriel Bethlen (1613–1629). His successor, George I Rákóczi (1630–1648), refused to pay more than 10,000 ducats a year, despite Ottoman threats.3

1  Ladislaus Makkai, Histoire de Transylvanie. Paris, 1946, 120–149; Gábor Barta, ‘From the Kingdom of Hungary to the Principality of Transylvania’, in Béla Köpeczi, Gábor Barta, István Bóna, László Makkai and Zoltán Szász (eds.), History of Transylvania. Budapest, 1994, 247–264. 2  János Lipták, A portai adó története az Erdélyi Fejedelemségben. Késmárk, 1911, 18 et passim. 3 Lipták, A portai adó, 38–45. The sums collected towards the tribute naturally contained an assortment of coins, for example: 24. Januarii [1659]. Hunyad vármegyéből hoztanak aranyat 22, jó tallért 74, oroszlányos tallért 22 ½. Poltura s garaspénzt 847 forintot, mely in summa teszen fl. 1100 [d.] 30: Sándor Szilágyi (ed.), Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek. (Monumenta Hungariae Historica, III. Comitialia/b.) Budapest, 1887, XII. 268–269 (henceforth EOE).

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The sultan’s wish to be paid in ducats is not hard to understand. These gold coins were the most valuable and most sought-after currency in the middle of the sixteenth century and were the customary means of payment in long-distance trade. High-purity Viennese-style ducats minted in the Ottoman Empire were well known throughout Europe, even in Vienna,4 although the Venetian zecchino5 topped the list of foreign gold coins in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, and Hungarian gold florins were also highly sought-after there.6 Thalers played a modest part in international circulation of money, and the Venetian exchange rates published in the middle of the sixteenth century covered only gold coins,7 including the Ottoman sultanino. In the Viennese exchange rate tables, patterned on the Venetian, there were ten columns for gold coins8 and only one for thalers. It is therefore not surprising that the tax collectors of the Ottoman Empire came across these large silver coins,9 which they called guruş, only after the capture of Buda. The Buda revenue accounts for 155810 include large sums in guruşes, indicating a gradual increase in the circulation of thalers.11 4   Siegfried Becher, Das österreichische Münzwesen vom Jahre 1524 bis 1838. Wien, 1838, II. 24; János Buza, ‘The Exchange Rates of the Hungarian and Turkish Ducats in the Mid-16th Century’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 60 (2007) 36–43. 5   Ugo Tucci, ‘Les emissions monétaires de Venise et les mouvements internationaux de l’or’, Revue historique 260 (1978) 99; Halil Sahillioğlu, ‘The Role of International Monetary and Metal Movements in Ottoman Monetary History 1300–1750’ in John F. Richards (ed.), Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds. Durham, 1983, 272. 6  “A second favourite ducat was the ungaro…”: F. W. Hasluck, ‘The Levantine Coinage’, The Numismatic Chronicle 1 (1921) 39–91, particularly 48. 7   Nicolo Papadopoli Aldobrandini, Le monete di Venezia. Vol. 2: Da Nicolo Tron a Mariono Grimani, 1472–1605. Venezia, 1907, 178–179, 214–215, 264–265, 272. 8  Michael Schaerhauf, Wienn nach Venedig oder Venedig nach Wienn… Wienn, 1563. (without pagination); Buza, ‘The Exchange Rates’, 46–47. The original copy, attached to the Meder’sches Handelsbuch is preserved in the Premonstratensien convent library in Prague (Klášter premonstrátu na Strahově). 9   Sahillioğlu, ‘The Role ’, 281. 10  Lajos Fekete and Gyula Káldy-Nagy, Budai török számadáskönyvek, 1550–1580. Budapest, 1982. Based on this corpus: Klára Hegyi, ‘A török hódoltság és pénzforgalma’, Numizmatikai Közlöny 86–87 (1987–1988) 79–80. 11  Pál Fodor, A ‘ z oszmán pénzrendszer 16. századi válságáról’, Aetas 4 (1999) 28.

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As more and more places in Europe began to issue thalers,12 in increasing volumes, they came to be regarded as “good money”, and the Principality of Transylvania was eventually allowed to pay its tribute to the Sublime Porte in thalers as well as ducats. Murad IV (1623–1640)13 confirmed 10,000-ducat annual tribute in spring 1625, but in March 1628, Gabriel Bethlen, in view of the shortage of gold coins, stated that “…we have always paid our tribute in thalers and good dutkas, and have never sent other coins there”.14 Bethlen thus mainly paid tribute in silver coins, and the concept of  “good money” included, besides the thaler, a smaller-denomination coin known as the dutka,15 which was minted in Poland, or on the Polish model. Neither did George I Rákóczi (1630–1648) pay solely in ducats. In 1631, he sent “to the mighty emperor ten thousand”, but to the many officials, he sent thalers – 4275 in total, and to the embassy staff, dutkas and small denominations.16 He achieved great effect in 1634 with an extraordinary gift to İbrahim Efendi in a wagon; the recipient did not even count the money,17 “but quickly had it loaded, and set off with the money”. In 1643, with a view to expanding his territory, Rákóczi promised the Porte an extra 20,000 thalers.18 Since the traditional tribute of 10,000 ducats was itself equivalent to 20,000 thalers, the upper limit of  “regular” and “extraordinary” tribute combined – without gifts – may be estimated at 40,000 thalers. 12  Wolfgang Heß and Dietrich Klose, Vom Taler zum Dollar. Staatliche Münzsammlung. München, 1986, 48–49. 13  Áron Szilády and Sándor Szilágyi (eds.), Török-magyarkori állam-okmánytár. Pest, 1868, I. 427–430 (henceforth TMÁO). 14  TMÁO, II. 60. 15  At several times during the sixteenth century, Polish thalers and dutkas were minted from alloy of the same purity, as stated in Stephen Báthory’s decree of 1580. Cf. Max Kirmis, Handbuch der polnischen Münzkunde. Posen, 1892, 62; Marian Gumowski, Handbuch der polnischen Numismatik. Graz, 1960, 208; Andrzej Mikołajczyk, Einführung in die neuzeitliche Münzgeschichte Polens. Łódź, 1988, 50. 16  There were of course considerable gifts that accompanied the cash. Antal Beke and Samu Barabás, I. Rákóczy György és a porta. Budapest, 1888 (unnumbered insert owing to a fault in the binding). 17  Report of envoy Pál Nagy, Constantinople, 22 November 1635: Beke and Barnabás, I. Rákóczy, 156–157. 18 Lipták, A portai adó, 41.

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The diplomatic and military complications of the late 1650s,19 however, had catastrophic consequences for the Principality of Transylvania and its payment of tribute. The Transylvanian army suffered grave defeats during the Polish campaign. The main army fell into Tatar captivity, and only those whose relatives sent enough thalers to cover the enormous ransom could hope for release. Ottoman and Tatar forces ravaged Transylvania, leaving behind enormous material and human losses. Wars between competing princes further weakened the country. The fall of Várad (Oradea) to the Ottomans was a woeful loss of territory and, in 1658, the Porte demanded the enormous sum of 500,000 thalers in war reparations and raised the principality’s annual tribute to 80,000 thalers.20 This was double the – theoretically temporary – 40,000-thaler tribute, but simple arithmetic does not convey the long-term burden it gave rise to in the deteriorating monetary circumstances. Transylvania’s two major coin-issuing neighbours – the Kingdom of Poland and the Habsburg Empire – were compelled to restructure their coinage, in 165821 and 1659 respectively.22 Put most simply, this involved expanding the issue of low-quality small denominations and restraining – even temporarily suspending – the minting of high-value thalers. This monetary policy inevitably, if not immediately, led to the rise in exchange rates of thalers and ducats. There was also a long-term increase in the demand for thalers from two nearby great powers, the Russian and Ottoman Empires, where thalers and similar coins were not minted but were increasingly familiar and sought-after. The considerable reserves of ducats and thalers must have been held by private individuals in Transylvania in the late 1650s and early 1660s were rapidly depleted by ransom, war reparations and increased levels of tribute. 19  Katalin Péter, ‘The Golden Age of the Principality (1606–1660)’, in Köpeczi et al. (eds.), History of Transylvania, 325–332; Ágnes R. Várkonyi, ‘The End of the Turkish Rule in Transylvania and the Reunification of Hungary (1660–1711)’, in ibid., 359–400. 20 Lipták, A portai adó, 46–48. 21 Mikołajczyk, Einführung, 149–157. 22  Günther Probszt, Österreichische Münz- und Geldgeschichte. Von den Anfängen bis 1918. Wien, Köln, Graz, 1983, 461–467.

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Diets held after 1658 became preoccupied with the questions of how to impose and collect tax, broaden the tax base, and compensate those who had given “good money” by good intention23 “for the defence of the homeland”.24 There was a pressing need to turn usualis coins, used in day-to-day transactions, into “good money”, which meant thalers and gold coins. Usualis coins were often veiled in anonymity, but some were named at the 1664 Diet of Nagysink (Cincu).25 Before explaining this, we must take a look at contemporary minting in Poland and Austria. In 1652, after a break of several decades, the Kingdom of Poland resumed the minting of the three-grossi and one-and-a-half-grossi coins, known in Hungarian as dutka and poltura respectively, and in 1658, a six-grossi coin called the szóstak (Hungarian szuszták). The coins issued in 1652 contained less silver than their predecessors, and there was a further debasement in 1658. These small denominations of reduced precious-metal content were minted in large quantities and soon found their way to foreign countries. Their exchange rate in Lower Austria was reduced as early as spring 1659. An observation made in 1669, at the time of a further devaluation, has particular significance for our case: “These coins have almost completely flooded Hungary, to the detriment of the public and of trade.”26 Another adverse development in the meantime (1663) was the issue of a new Polish coin, the thirty-grossi złotówka, with silver content equivalent to only eighteen Polish grossi. Circulation of the new szuszták and the złotówka, known in Hungarian as the “new ort” caused such discontent in Transylvania that a proposal to confiscate them was made in 1664.27 Nonetheless, the Nagysink Diet passed a law “accepting them by value” in such a way that their exchange rate was not defined in either polturas or deniers. The spread of the “new orts” may explain why, at the Diet of Radnót 23  Diet of Marosvásárhely, 6–11 November 1658, article VIII: EOE, XII. 102. 24  Diet of Beszterce 26 February–25 March 1659, article V: EOE, XII. 223. 25  EOE, XIII. 282–283; János Buza, A ‘ z Erdélyi Fejedelemség pénzértékei és a nagysinki országgyűlés (1664)’, Erdélyi Múzeum 78 (2016) 56–67. 26  Codex Austriacus. Pars secunda. Wien, 1704, 29; Probszt, Österreichische, 467. 27  The Tibor Antal Horváth collection in the Rákóczi family archives. Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books, MS 5260 (henceforth LHAS MS 5260).

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(Iernut) in 1665, the exchange rate of the better-quality “Danczka ort”,28 which was well established29 in the Mediterranean,30 was set at forty deniers.31 The Nagysink Diet decided – as it did for Polish coins – to accept the “emperor’s grossi” and another small denomination known as the Leopoldrinus, whose precious metal content was set by the 1659 money decree of Leopold I. The “emperor’s grossi” was the three-kreuzer (Hungarian krajcár) that had been minted since the middle of the sixteenth century, and the Leopoldrinus was a new fifteen-kreuzer coin introduced in 1659.32 These were also to be obligatorily accepted at face value, even though the new three-kreuzers were of lower quality than their predecessors. The fifteen-kreuzers, although minted in large quantities, were less known in Transylvania.33 At the ninety-kreuzer exchange rate, the fifteen-kreuzer was equivalent to one sixth of a thaler, but its precious metal content fell short of the face value. The accepted exchange rate of the thaler in the Principality of Transylvania, as in Upper Hungary, was 180 deniers, and receipts and accounts surviving from 165934 record the accounting of one “whole imperial”35 thaler as one forint 28  Their reputation stemmed from the handsome, high-purity coins of Sigismund III (1587–1632). Hasluck, ‘The Levantine’, 53. 29  Given the quantities they were issued in (thirteen and a half million between 1616 and 1621), they must have been widely familiar. Kirmis, Handbuch, 131; Gumowski, Handbuch, 50. 30  The “new ort” and the “Danczka ort” issued in 1654 had the same weight but differed substantially in silver content – 3.363 g and 4.626 g respectively; cf. Andrzej Mikołajczyk, Obieg pieniężny w Polsce środkowej w wiekach od XVI do XVIII. Łódź, 1980, 16. 31  EOE, XIV. 143. 32  The name “Leopoldrinus“ was apt: the fifteen-kreuzer was the central coin of Leopold’s monetary decree of 1659, “…das Herzstück des Einrichtungswerks von 1659…”: Eduard Holzmair, ‘Der Umfang der österreichischen Münzprägung in den Jahren 1659–1680’, Numismatische Zeitschrift 89 (1974) 54. 33  More than twenty-six million were struck in the Vienna mint alone in the first half of the 1660s! Eduard Holzmair, ‘Die Münzstätte Wien unter Andrea Cetto (1660–1665)’, Numismatische Zeitschrift 67 (1934) 85. 34  István Fodor gave 4000 thalers, “…which equals fl. 7200” and Kristóf Paskó 2000 thalers …facit juxta ejus quietantiam fl. 3600 for “livestock”, meaning that they purchased estates: EOE, XII. 262. 35  Császári tallér or császártallér. The term was applied in the broader sense to any thaler regarded as of equal purity to the imperial thaler. Its material was collected by Attila Szabó T., Erdélyi Magyar Szótörténeti Tár. 14 vols. Bukarest, Budapest, 1993, V. 579, 667 (henceforth SzT).

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and eighty deniers.36 (The forint was not a coin but a monetary value equal to a hundred deniers.) This exchange rate was usually also used to express the thaler value of the szeges tallér (or csegely, a hexagonal coin),37 small denominations and unminted silver.38 Some accounts, of course, also record a premium. According to data from 1659, “gréczi thalers”39 could be exchanged for 190 rather than 180 deniers, and “good imperial thalers” for 185 deniers.40 Premium soon turned to raised exchange rate, and although the 200-denier rate for good thalers was not set into law, by 1660, those paying tax in small denominations had to pay two forints for every thaler demanded.41 By spring 1662, tax-payers – again described as those who gave “good money [for war reparations] out of good intent”42 – had to hand over two forints for a thaler and four forints for a ducat. In the broader sense, it applied to any thaler that was regarded as equal in quality to the “imperial thaler”. Lajos Huszár, Habsburg-házi királyok pénzei 1526–1657. Budapest, 1975, 49. 36  The 180-denier exchange rate was entered into a record written on 26 August 1659 in the Keresztesmező camp: …singulos imperiales talleros centum et octoginta denarios…: EOE, XII. 347. 37  There is also a later record of the exchange rate of the szeges tallér: “…183,5 szeges tallér are equal to 330 forint 30 deniers”, that is, 330.3:183.5 = 1.8, and thus one szeges tallér was counted as 180 deniers. 27 November 1661: MNL OL Rákóczi lt. Cf. LHAS MS 5260. 38  “Die 3. Mai… 103 grains and 40 drachms of silver … equals 935 thalers, + 2497.5 thalers, + 255 lion thalers, + 372 gold pieces (= 744 thalers), total = 7925 forints 70 deniers”: EOE, XII. 261, and: “From Kolos County… 56 gold pieces equalling 201 forints 60 deniers. 49 ½ imperial thalers equalling 89 forints 10 deniers. 1 Zlotto equalling 1 forint. Item, 93 grains and 40 drachms of silver… equalling 795 ½ thalers, 1 1/2 n, equalling 1431 forints and 46 ½ deniers”: EOE, XII. 262. 39  The qualifier gréczi (Graz) suggests that the thalers were of Styrian origin (cf. SzT, IV. 667), but the more commonly-occurring Tyrolean thalers were also popularly known as gréci tallérok; cf. János Buza, ‘Der Erfolg der Tiroler Taler während der Türkenzeit in Ungarn’, in Beiträge zum 6. Österreichischen Numismatikertag 2014. Vol. 6: Haller Münzblätter. 2015, 227–239. 40  “My lord György Rádai administered five hundred and thirty-two thalers, forty of which were greci, which at 1 forint 90 deniers to one are equal to 76 forints. The four hundred and ninety-two good imperial thalers at one 1 forint 85 deniers to one are equal to 910 forints 20 deniers”: EOE, XII. 266–267. 41  Tax-payers paid twenty-five thalers per plot if they had good money, and fifty forints otherwise. Diet in Segesvár 5 July 1660: EOE, XII. 443; cf. Lipták, A portai adó, 12. 42  Diet in Görgényszentimre 10–26 March 1662, article XIII: EOE, XIII. 129.

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The rates of 200 deniers to the thaler and 400 deniers to the ducat were set into law, but could not be sustained in the prevailing conditions. Among the decisions of the Nagysink Diet that made it so important for financial affairs43 was the effective acknowledgement – in Act XXXVII44 – of the existence of an (unstated) premium: the law prohibited the exchange of ducats at rates above four forints, thalers above two forints and lion thalers above 180 deniers. The deepening scarcity of good thalers may clearly be inferred from the law, which imposed penalties on offenders. The law included among “good money” the low-purity Dutch lion thaler,45 whose exchange rate increased from 160 to 180 deniers. Small-denomination coins flowing in from the north (Poland)46 and the west (Austria) were joined by a competitor that arrived from the Ottoman Empire. It became known in Transylvania and Ottoman Hungary under the name timon, a word of Arabic origin meaning one eighth, but has been falsely identified in Hungarian literature as an Ottoman coin. It was in fact one of the high-purity small denominations minted in France,47 with a face value of five 43  EOE, XIII. 50. 44  EOE, XIII. 283. 45  H. Enno van Gelder, De Nederlandse munten. Utrecht, Antwerpen, 1965, 73, 79, 218, 221, 230, 268; Friedrich Schrötter, Wörterbuch der Münzkunde. Berlin, 1970, 359–360; Huszár, Habsburg-házi, 49; János Buza, ‘Der Kurs der Löwentaler in Ost-Mitteleuropa mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Siebenbürgen und Ungarn’, Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 17 (1981) 335–358; Lajos Huszár, Az Erdélyi Fejedelemség pénzverése. Budapest, 1995, 18; SzT, X. Kolozsvár, Budapest, 2000, 29. 46  Their frequency is confirmed by coin hoards. Ferenc Pap and Judit Winkler, ‘Erdélyi és külföldi pénzek Erdélyben’, in Lajos Huszár, Ferenc Pap and Judit Winkler (eds.), Erdélyi éremművesség a 16–18. században. Csíkszereda, 1996, 124–125 [summary: ‘Coin and Medal in Transylvania (XVIth–XVIIIth Century)’, 211–220.] 47  The coin name timon comes from the Arabic word tumn meaning an eighth (there were eight timons to the thaler). This enabled the popular twelfth-thaler French coin to be exported to the Ottoman Empire at a profit, and after a while, forgeries of coins known as timon, timmin, Luigino, etc. started to appear. A token of the abundant literature on this topic: Hasluck, ‘The Levantine’, 54–70; Schrötter, Wörterbuch, 362, 695; Robert Mantran, Istanbul dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle. Paris, 1962, 245–246, and János Buza, ‘Les monnaies françaises ou du système français dans la circulation monétaire en Hongrie au XVIIe siècle’, Revue numismatique, VIe série 18 (1976) 119–135; Lutz Ilisch, ‘Levantinische Gegestempel auf französische Münzen des 17. Jahrhunderts. Der Timminhandel in zeitgenössischen französischen Berichten’, in Thomas

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sous (French grossis), and was equivalent to d’ouzième d’écu, one twelfth of the French thaler48 issued in 1641. With a high silver content and made to a high technical standard, this French coin became increasingly popular in the Ottoman Empire, from where it progressed northwards into Hungary49 in 1663 and Transylvania50 in 1664. Its rapid spread is clear from a decision of the Radnót Diet of 1665 to set its exchange rate at fifteen deniers.51 The gallica pecunia known as timon must have had a much higher circulation documents record, because large amounts were converted to thalers, as some examples demonstrate: The prince of Transylvania gave Dávid Rozsnyai, a student of the Turkish language, fifty thalers in summer 1664 and another hundred at the end of the year, both amounts paid in timons.52 The envoy to the Porte also received his 100 thalers in timons in spring 1665.53 After some transitional internal circulation, the French timons clearly found their way back from Transylvania to the Ottoman Empire. There was no problem having them accepted there, but conversion to thalers left room for abuse, for which there is documented evidence from the Ottoman-occupied part of the Kingdom of Hungary.54 French thalers were known popularly in some regions of occupied Hungary as “timon thalers”, but their circulation there was unproblematic, and Fischer and Peter Ilisch (eds.), „Lagom”: Festschrift für Peter Berghaus zum 60. Geburtstag. Münster, 1981, 315–326; Carlo M. Cipolla, ‘La truffa del secolo (XVII)’, in Idem, Tre storie extra vaganti. Bologna, 1994, 59–72. According to the opinion of a Turkish historian “The effect of this scandal was greater in Europe than in Turkey itself.” Sahillioğlu, ‘The Role’, 287. 48  Adolphe Dieudonné, Monnaies royales français depuis Hugues Capet jusqu’à la révolution. (Manuel de numismatique française, II.) Paris, 1916, 347. 49  After the capture of Érsekújvár (Nové Zámky/Uyvar) Ottoman soldiers were paid their monthly bounty in timons. Horváth Tibor Antal, ‘Régi magyar pénznevek’, Numizmatikai Köz­ lemények 52–53 (1953–1954) 20. 50  Customs official’s report, Barcarozsnyó (Râșnov), 16 September 1664: TMÁO, IV. 147. 51  EOE, XIV. 143. 52  Sándor Szilágyi (ed.), Rozsnyai Dávid, az utolsó török deák történeti maradványai. (Monumenta Hungariae Historica, Scriptores). Pest, 1867, 312. 53  EOE, XIV. 97. 54  In Buda, twelve and sometimes thirteen timons were demanded instead one thaler, and the pasha of Várad demanded fifteen in 1674. József Koncz, ‘A hódoltság történetéhez’, Törté­ nelmi Tár (1894) 683, 685; János Buza, ‘A tallér és az aranyforint árfolyama, valamint szerepe a pénzforgalomban Magyarország török uralom alatti területén a XVII. században (Nagykőrös 1622–1682)’, Történelmi Szemle 20 (1977) 85–86.

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as elsewhere in Europe, they were accepted at an exchange rate that corresponded to their silver content. Of the coins that flowed into Transylvania in the second half of the seventeenth century from the Mediterranean region via the Ottoman Empire, one of the most significant was the lion thaler. Contemporaries never referred to the Dutch origin of these coins, and often called them “Wallachian lions”, a reference to the Wallachian principality through which the coins arrived. There was a general desire to convert lion thalers into imperial thalers as long as there were sufficient in circulation. In 1658, 5,000 “Leoninus thalers” were counted in the princely treasury as “good money”.55 Lion thalers became a widely-used currency in the early 1660s, and their familiarity,56 together with the increasing shortage of thalers, explains why, in 1663, Prince Michael Apafi extended a minting licence granted the previous year to a goldsmith of Kolozsvár (Cluj Napoca), János Joó, permitting Joó to mint lion thalers.57 Lion thalers were also accepted currency in the Ottoman Empire. They were minted in great quantities in the Netherlands58 and used in payment by English traders, and Italian imitations59 circulated in the Levant. Lion thalers naturally took on an increasing role in the economic life of the Principality of Transylvania60 as imperial thalers became scarce, particularly in the payment of tax. Towards the end of Ottoman control of Transylvania, lion thalers appreciated in value thanks to the circulation of silver guldens known as zlot or zolota. Their name gave rise to subsequent errors, because zolotas were often interpreted as – sometimes Polish-minted – gold coins, while they were in fact 55  LHAS MS 5263/2. 56  Lion thalers were as readily accepted as Spanish thalers in payment in the Levant region. Artur Attman, Dutch Enterprise in the World Buillon Trade 1550–1800. Göteborg, 1983, 93–94. 57 Huszár, Az Erdélyi Fejedelemség, 17. 58  Approximate figures are given by A. Delmonte, Le Benelux d’argent. Amsterdam, 1967, 178–289. 59  Hasluck, ‘The Levantine’, 51–52. 60  The circulation of lion thalers is documented in customs records concerning the trade of salt, mercury, grain and livestock. Béla Szádeczky, I. Apafi Mihály udvartartása. I. Bornemissza Anna gazdasági naplói (1667–1690). Budapest, 1911, passim.

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various Silberguldens. The exchange rate of zlots changed over time, but there are examples of consistent rates: in 1677, zlots were entered in the income of the iron forge of Csíkszék at the rate of 120 deniers,61 which corresponds, with rounding, to the exchange rate in the 1679 customs revenues. The customs accounts62 are particularly useful in giving us the exchange rates for several different coins: there were 180 deniers to the lion thaler, 120 to the zolota, 60 to a coin we have not yet mentioned, the tult, and 45 to the ort. The order of values was thus: 1 lion thaler   =   1.5 zolota  =  3 tult  =  4 ort 1 zolota =  2 tult  =  2 2/3 ort 1 tult  =  1 1/3 ort These coins circulated along with small denominations, whose proportions are unknown. In 1681, sheep were sold from the princely estates for thalers, zolotas, orts, “ordinary money” (that is, a mixture of small denominations) and tults.63 The zolotas in circulation at the time were of varied origin, and the above order of values probably applied to Dutch guldens or guldens on the same pattern, the florijn achtentwintig, which had a face value of twenty-eight stuivers.64 The term “Dutch zolota” first occurred in other countries in 1676,65 and an imitation from the town of Emden was known in Transylvania as the Wallachischer Slott,66 again attesting to a route that led through the Mediterranean region.

61  Ibid., 259. 62  Ibid. 63  Fogaras, 14 September 1681: Szádeczky, I. Apafi Mihály, 291. 64  Van Gelder, De Nederlandse munten, 235–237. 65  Vuk Vinaver, Pregled istorije novca u jugoslavenskim zemljama. Beograd, 1970, 161. 66  Mentioned as florenus valachicus in Latin and oláh zlot in Hungarian. Many examples of the oláh zlot are given in SzT. An eighteenth-century pictorial representation is published in János Buza, ‘Silbergulden als „Zlot” im Geldumlauf des Fürstentums Siebenbürgen am Ende des 17. und am Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Bernd Kluge and Bernhard Weisser (eds.), XII. Internationaler Numismatischer Kongress Berlin 1997. Akten – Proceedings – Actes. Berlin, 2000, II. 1121–1125.

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There are physical as well as documentary records. An outstanding example is the coin hoard of Denta67 in Temes County, containing 1,387 coins, the latest bearing the date 1668. It included 252 thalers, eleven half-thalers and five florijn achtentwintigs, from nine Dutch mints. Of the sixty-two imitation silver guldens (“Wallachian zlots”), thirty-four were minted in Emden and twenty-eight in the Duchy of Oldenburg.68 A considerable proportion of the coins known as zlot or zolota appear in the sources with no mention of their place of origin, but the “German zlots” are clearly distinguishable from the florijn achtentwintig type and may be identified with the two-thirds thalers minted in large quantities after 1667. These have turned up in considerable numbers in hoards from within the Carpathian Basin,69 as demonstrated by Lajos Huszár. Broadening the geographical scope, we should also mention observations by Marsigli, who claimed that the “Solota” or “imperial gulden” – that is, from the Holy Roman Empire – and the “Caragrosch”, the imperial thaler, were among the most widespread foreign silver coins in circulation in the Ottoman Empire.70 The two-thirds thalers,71 not surprisingly, also spawned imitations, and many forgeries were produced in Italy.72 67  Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Éremtára, list of finds: No. 365/1882. 68  Anton Kappelhoff, ‘Emdener “Silbergulden” und “Löwentaler” – ein Beitrag zur Münzprä­ gung der Stadt Emden im 17. Jahrhundert’, Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst und vaterländische Altertümer zu Emden 42 (1962) 150–164; Heinrich Kalvelage and Hartmut Tripp­ler, Die Münzen der Grafen, Herzöge und Großherzöge von Oldenburg. Osnabrück, 1996, 223. 69  Lajos Huszár, ‘Deutsche Guldiner in Ungarn im 17. Jahrhundert’, in Tony Hackens and Raymond Weiller (eds.), Actes du 9eme Congrès international de numismatique. Berne, septembre 1979. Louvain-la Neuve, Luxembourg, 1982, 975–980. The authoritative literature on twothirds-thalers is given in Paul Arnold, ‘Die Währungsunionen von Zinna (1667–1690) und Leipzig (1690–1750/1763) unter besonderer Berüchsichtigung des kursächsischen Münzwe­ sens’, in Rainer Cunz (ed.), Währungsunionen. Beiträge zur Geschichte überregionaler Münz- und Geldpolitik. Hamburg, 2002, 221–226. 70  La piu commune d’Argento e il Fiorino detto Solota, et il Tallero chiamato Caragrosch tutta Casarea. Marsigli quoted by Hasluck, ‘The Levantine’, 90. 71  Paul Greissler, ‘Les monnaies spécifiques de Strasbourg, 1682–1690’, Revue numismatique 151 (1996) 316–317. 72  Hansheiner Eichorn, ‘Die Fälschung-Sachsen-Lauenburger Gulden in Italien’, Hamburger Beiträge zur Numismatik 7:22–23 (1964–1965) 111–116.

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Without attempting a full survey, we should mention the terms “Hungarian zlot” and “Turkish zlot”, which appear in works of economic and linguistic history. Hungarian monetary historiography has not yet covered the issue of the “Hungarian zlot”, but it is likely that it was one of the half-thalers that were minted in various places. In the Ottoman Empire, large silver coins were issued only after the loss of Buda – or from the Hungarian viewpoint, the liberation of Buda. The first was a coin of about 19.2 grams,73 corresponding not to a thaler but to a silver gulden or zolota. It was popularly known as the török (Turkish) forint, or in German, the türkischer Gulden. There is a surviving example from 1704 that attests to the name török zlot.74 The principality had ceased to pay tribute to the Porte before the dreaded conquerors’ silver gulden came into circulation in Transylvania. The tult, according to exchange rates calculated from the 1679 customs revenues, was equivalent to half a zolota or one third of a lion thaler. A Transylvanian report of 1719 (“Tuld oder halber Slott”) confirms75 that the zolota was equivalent to two tults. Authoritative literature puts the tult as one third of the piaster,76 but Transylvanian exchange rates held it to be one third of the lion thaler. Since both the leeuwendaalder and the florijn achtentwintig came from the Netherlands, we may reasonably infer that the tult was also of Dutch origin. If we bear in mind that coins corresponding to a half and a quarter of the silver gulden, which had a face

73  “Dieser nationale Ghurush wurde zu 6 (Constatinapler) Gewichsdirhems (19,24 gr.), also bedeutend leichter als der damals in der Türkei vorherrschende österreichische Taler (der zu 9 Dirhems tarifiert war) ausgebracht.” Eduard von Zambaur, ‘Ghrūsh’, in Enzyklopedie des Islam. Vol. 2. Leiden, Leipzig, 1927, 174–175; Mantran, Istanbul, 240; İbrahim Artuk and Cevriye Artuk, ‘Die Münzen des osmanischen Sultans Mustafa II’, in Hackens and Weiller (eds.), Actes du 9eme Congrès international de numismatique, 989–995. 74  “török zlot. 1704. I gave the price in török zlots…”: SzT, XIV. 740. 75  „Bericht über die in 7-Bürgen kursirenden, aus der K. Walachei einlaufenden fremden Gold- und Silbermünzen”, Karlsburg [Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia)], 28 June 1719: Österreichi­ sches Staatsarchiv, Wien, Hofkammerarchiv, Realien B 19. 76  “Tult” = tult oder Drittel-Piaster…” Walter Hinz, Islamische Währungen des 11. bis 19. Jahrhunderts umgerechnet in Gold. Ein Beitrag zur islamischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Wiesbaden, 1991, 54.

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value of twenty-eight stuivers,77 then the tult could be identified as a coin of face value fourteen stuivers. This possibility cannot be excluded, but for a proper identification of the tult, we must look to the above Transylvanian report of 1719. That contains the name Tuld (sic!) and provides us with an image of the coin, which seems to be a teston of Charles IV (?), duke of Lorraine, a “quarter thaler” in the old German terminology.78 The presence of this part-thaler in Transylvanian circulation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could not be an isolated or random event, because the large hoard found in Denta contained twenty-one Lorraine testons.79 The classic work on the money of the Levant also mentions the common occurrence of “the Nancy testons of Charles of Lorraine” and their Italian imitations.80 The depiction and legend on a copy struck in Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia) in 1719 is rather identical than similar to the Lorraine testons held in the Coins Collection of the Hungarian National Museum. Now we will turn from thaler-like coins and coins of part-thaler value to the small denominations, referred to at the time as usualis or “ordinary” money. A recurring issue of debate in the diets of the 1660s was who should convert garas (Groschen) and poltura coins into “good money”, which meant exchanging them81 for thalers and ducats. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the terms garas and poltura, as mentioned in the laws, embraced traditional Polish dutkas and those minted on the Polish pattern, three-grossi dutkas, six-grossi szusztáks, and Austrian, or Austrian-pattern three-, four- and fifteenkreuzers. The Hungarian denier, which Act 72 of 165982 made equivalent 77  Van Gelder, De Nederlandse munten, 235–237. 78  “Ortsthaler”, cf. Christian Jacob Götz (ed.), Der Beiträge zum Groschen-Cabinet…. Vol. 1. Dresden, 1811, 161. 79  Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Éremtára, list of finds: No. 365/1882. 80  An imitation issued by the duke of Modena and known in the Mediterranean as bolognino. Hasluck, ‘The Levantine’, 54. 81  Conversion was a requirement for legal entities as well as private individuals, and not only those in Transylvania. In spring 1666, Debrecen was required to raise 10,000 thalers, in autumn, it was obliged to convert 6000 forints’ worth of garases and polturas to thalers, convert 10,000 garases and polturas to thalers, of total value 6000 forints: EOE, XIV. 189, 198. 82  Dezső Márkus (ed.), Magyar Törvénytár. Corpus Juris Hungarici. 1657–1740 közötti törvényczikkek. Budapest, 1901, 176–179.

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to half a kreuzer, had a gradually dwindling role in the circulation of money. In Transylvania, Michael Apafi broke from his predecessors83 when he ordered the minting of large quantities of “two-garas” coins on the pattern of the Polish szóstak, but he had little success84 with these twelve-denier coins. As we have seen, several Western European coins came into circulation in Transylvania via the Mediterranean region. By contrast, the most abundant small denomination in the Ottoman Empire, the asper (akçe), never acquired significance in Transylvania or even in the Ottoman-occupied part the Kingdom of Hungary.85 Although its name in Hungarian, oszpora,86 was widely known, it did not circulate in the quantities that would have been required for Ottoman tribute. Gábor Bethlen had the idea of minting aspers87 and using them to pay tribute after good coins had almost disappeared following the “Kipper- und Wipperzeit” inflation that originated in the Holy Roman Empire and caused coins of very low purity, from kreuzers to thalers, to flood even the eastern regions of Central Europe.88 Only rarely did the Ottomans demand small-denomination coins in tribute. One occasion for this was the scarcity of small denominations in the first half of the 1640s.89 Polturas and dutkas were in many places counted at artificial exchange rates against thalers and ducats, to the detriment of the tax-payer. These monetary distortions imposed less of a burden on the public in the Principality of Transylvania than in the occupied areas of the Kingdom of 83  On the idiosyncrasies of small denominations issued in the Principality of Transylvania, see Huszár, Az Erdélyi Fejedelemség, 11. 84  For the many variants, see ibid., 18 and 186–191, including the catalogue: Nos. 789–823. 85  Géza Dávid and Ibolya Gerelyes, ‘Ottoman Social and Economic Life Unearthed. An Assessment of Ottoman Archeological Finds in Hungary’, in Raoul Motika, Christoph Herzog and Michael Ursinus (eds.), Studies in Ottoman Social and Economic Life. Heidelberg, 1999, 55– 59; Márton Gyöngyössy, Altin, akcse, mangir… Oszmán pénzek forgalma a kora újkori Magyar­ országon. Budapest, 2004, 24–29, and passim. 86  SzT, X. 75. 87  Princely edict, 22 March 1621: TMÁO, I. 280–281. 88 Probszt, Österreichische, 425–440; János Buza, ‘Schlesische Kipperprägugen im Geldumlauf Oberungarns’, in Krisztina Bertók and Melinda Torbágyi (eds.), Festschrift für Katalin BíróSey und István Gedai zum 65. Geburtstag. Budapest, [1999], 339–355. 89  Sahillioğlu, ‘The Role’, 287.

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Hungary.90 Many medium-value denominations, particularly the French twelfth-thalers known as timons and the Austrian fifteen-kreuzers, were counted in thalers for payment of tax. There are no itemized records from Transylvania, and we must have recourse to examples from Buda. There, eight timons were initially accepted in lieu of a thaler, rising to nine, ten, eleven and twelve. In the second half of the 1660s and the early 1670s, thirteen timons were demanded per thaler.91 When thalers were scarce, tax could also be paid in fifteen-kreuzers, which were issued in very large numbers.92 The Buda officials of the Ottoman Empire initially demanded six fifteen-kreuzer coins for each thaler payable, rising to six and a half, and then seven.93 Since there was no such thing as a “half-fifteenth kreuzer”, thirteen of the coins were counted for two thalers.94 Payment could also be made in a combination of timons and fifteen-kreuzers, the latter being accepted in normal circulation as equal to two of the former.95 Transylvania faced increasing difficulties in finding the 80,000 imperial thalers96 required to pay its tribute and sent a large proportion in equivalent amounts of smaller denominations – timons. We can infer the extent of this 90 Huszár, Habsburg-házi, 38; Probszt, Österreichische, 456–457; János Buza, ‘Bihar és Zaránd megyei települések az adóprés szorításában’, Századok 151 (2017) 119–146. 91  Account book of the chief judge of Kecskemét, 1672, p. 25, and “Gave 26 timon pro duobus talleris.” Nagykőrös accounts book, 1672. 17. MNL OL scroll f. 3416, see Buza, A ‘ tallér és az aranyforint’, 85–86. 92  About 90 million fifteen-kreuzers were minted in the eight principal Habsburg mints between 1659 and 1680. Holzmair, ‘Der Umfang’, 54. 93  For many examples, see János Buza, ‘Öreg garas (A hódoltság utolsó éveinek pénzforgalmához)’, Történelmi Szemle (1973) 153–155. 94  Garast minden két-két tallérért tizenhárom garast számlálván Nro. 190 tallér (“Counting thirteen garases for each two thalers, 190 thalers”). In fact, 1235 fifteen kreuzers were given in place of 190 thalers. Nagykőrös szk. 1679. 189. MNL OL film archive, roll No. 3416. 95  Hornyik János, Kecskemét város története oklevéltárral. Kecskemét, 1861, II. 202; Buza, ‘A tallér és az aranyforint’, 87. 96  [Pre-1668 record:] Az császár tárházában kell administrálni tall. imp. 80,000 (“To be administered in the emperor’s storehouse, tall. imp. 80,000”), in István Domján, A ‘ datok Váradi Gyulai István portai követségéhez’, Történelmi Tár (1894) 518; Klára Jakó, ‘ Rozsnyai Dávid portai „Tanító írása”’, Levéltári Közlemények 84 (2013) 169–186.

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from a report by the chief envoy confirming the receipt of a sum nineteen timons short of 3,000 thalers97 in February 1666. The delayed payment of the 1665 tribute is informative in several respects. After paying homage to the sultan, Transylvania’s envoy extraordinary, Kristóf Paskó, reported to the grand vizier the arrival of the tribute98 and its content: ducats,“Graz” thalers, lion thalers, hexagonal thalers and smaller denominations: orlaks99 and timons. He had to present a sample consisting of three pouches – equivalent to 1,500 imperial thalers – consisting of Graz, lion and hexagonal thalers. The grand vizier approved the Graz thalers, demanded additions to the lion thalers, but insisted that the hexagonal thalers be changed to ducats. Then came the “reading of the money”,100 the detailed count that stretched into the night. Thanks to the envoy’s continuous presence, only twenty thalers had to be added to the final amount, equivalent to 80,000 thalers, not counting the losses incurred in the conversion. With a view to his country’s future and the work of envoys that would follow him, Paskó boldly urged101 acceptance of such a mixture of coins; “if they do not take an assortment of money now, they must certainly do so in future”, he reported to the prince.102 When the Porte refused to accept large sums in thalers for its tribute and insisted on ducats, the Transylvania leaders faced serious difficulties. This happened in 1671, when the Transylvanian envoy was called on replace 30,000 thalers in the payment with ducats.103 He sent a vexed letter to Michael Apafi’s counsellors, warning them that in Istanbul, ducats could be obtained only at enormous losses, at the rate of 2.25 thalers plus a premium of ten oszporas.104 97   Letter of Kristóf Paskó, Constantinople, 6 February 1666: TMÁO, IV. 302. 98   This took place on 14 January 1666: TMÁO, IV. 304. 99  The orlak has not yet been satisfactorily identified, but in great probability correspon­ ded to the Polish three-grossi, originally called the trojak, and in Hungarian, the dutka. 100  Transylvania’s tribute was received by the Sublime Porte nearly three weeks later, on 2 February 1666: TMÁO, IV. 305. 101  Cf. Vencel Bíró, Erdély követei a portán. Kolozsvár, 1921, 40, 49, 75. 102  TMÁO, IV. 304. 103  Sándor Szilágyi, A ‘ páczai Tamás 1671-iki portai követsége. Naplók és emlékiratok a XVII-ik századból’, Történelmi Tár (1890) 42. 104  See Apafy’s letter to Mihály Teleki, Algyógy, 28 October 1671: Sámuel Gergely (ed.), Teleki Mihály levelezése. Vol. 5 (1670–1671). Budapest, 1910, 634.

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The ducats clearly had to be found in Transylvania, where – as in the Kingdom of Hungary and occupied Hungary – a ducat was held to be equivalent to two thalers, although exchange rates varied. The influential János Haller105 considered the acquisition of this sum in a short time to be impossible, and like Kristóf Paskó, recommended sending the tribute in various coins: “…as long the tribute has been 80 thousand thalers, we have gathered it as we could, and they have always accepted it that way…”, he wrote in reply. The obvious solution to the increasingly desperate shortage of thalers and ducats was to pay the tribute in the thaler-like coins that were widespread in the Mediterranean and, as we have seen, found their way into Transylvania. There are examples of timons and lion thalers being used for this, but payment did not always go smoothly. In 1682, however, an attempt to pay tribute in Lorraine testons and Dutchpattern silver guldens ended in failure. Envoy extraordinary György Gyerőffy reported that one item of the tribute, equivalent to 2,067 thalers, was not accepted because it comprised “new tuhs” and zlots. His offer to pay a premium of 150 thalers was also refused, and he was obliged to borrow 2,100 lion thalers106 at an interest rate of four per cent per month. This represented a “promotion” of lion thalers, considering previous demands for imperial thalers. Even in early 1685, the defterdar desired to see Transylvania’s annual tribute for 1684 in the form of “old imperial thalers”, which meant large, heavy coins. He offered the spurious reasoning107 that tribute to the Porte “has always been accounted in this way since the time of Sultan Süleyman”. Transylvania clearly had a pressing need to pay its tribute in lion thalers rather than imperial thalers, but received the sultan’s permission to do so only in summer 1685: “…send it in that way – as you wrote – the eighty thousand lion thalers as tribute.”108 A contemporary record tells us that the prince seized 105  R. Várkonyi, ‘The End of the Turkish Rule’, 399. 106  Adrianopole, 26 December 1682: TMÁO, VI. 302–303. 107  Report by envoy extraordinary István Mikó, Adrianopole, 27 February 1685: TMÁO, VI. 523–525. 108  “Around the middle of the month of Muharrem (which for us is August). Anno 1097.” The post from Adrianopole arrived in Nagyszeben (Sibiu) in December 1685: TMÁO. VII, Pest, 1872, 120.

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the opportunity and paid mostly in lion thalers.109 Perhaps the slowness of communication was part of the reason why the envoy to the Sublime Porte, pressing for the tribute to be sent, asked as late as January 1686 for a letter of confirmation that “…the acceptance of eighty thousand lion thalers is permanently granted”. Mehmed IV’s concession provided a double – if modest – relief. Firstly, lion thalers were much more readily available than imperial thalers, and secondly, there was a significant difference in the exchange rate: in 1683, imperial thalers were exchanged at two forints and twenty-five deniers, while lion thalers were worth only two forints.110 Payment of tribute in lion thalers cannot be traced back111 to earlier times. The sultan’s concession of 1685 was prompted not by wise assessment but by a series of defeats that started in 1683. Transylvania paid its last tribute shortly afterwards, in summer 1687, and not in Istanbul but in the field of Zimony (Zemun) near Belgrade,112 where it was presented by János Sárosi of Kissáros, the principality’s envoy on several occasions.113 Inspection and acceptance of the tribute in specie must have been technically more straightforward when it was paid as initially demanded, in ducats. Silver coins varied considerably in size and origin, making the work much more complicated. These variations offered loopholes for both sides, although the Ottoman officials were of course always in the stronger position. The regular tribute of 80,000 thalers imposed an extremely heavy burden on the Principality of Transylvania. The impoverished population had to find money of a kind that was increasingly scarce, and the difficulty was compounded by the gradual – and after the loss of Várad, considerable – loss of territory.114 109  1685: “…this year, the greater part of the country’s tribute was sent to the Porte in Orosz­lanjos Taller”: SzT, X. 29. 110  Letter of Pál Gyárfás, Adrianopole, 17 January 1686: TMÁO, VII. 129. 111  Article 2 of the Diet of Segesvár (10–25 February 1683). The 200-denier exchange rate of the lion thalers includes a premium, because only the rate corresponding to their precious metal content would only have been, with rounding, 180 deniers. 112  Zdenka Veselá-Přenosilova, ‘Contribution aux rapports de la Porte Sublime avec la Transilvanie d’après les documents turcs’, Archív Orientální 33 (1965) 555. 113  Sándor Szilágyi, Erdélyország története. Vol. 2. Pest, 1866, 360; Lipták, A portai adó, 59. 114 Bíró, Erdély követei, 134, 136–137.

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Extraordinary tributes and war provisions must also be added to the regular payments, and then there were gifts, much smaller in proportion but not insignificant. In drawing up the balance sheet for posterity, however, this heavy overall financial burden is still heavily outweighed by the human losses, not measurable in either gold ducats or silver thalers, inflicted by Ottoman conquest and rule and the repeated onslaught of military campaigns.

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JÁNOS FERDINAND AUER AND HIS IMPRISONMENT IN THE SEVEN TOWERS (1663–1674): A PRISONER OF DIPLOMACY Özgür Kolçak Istanbul University [email protected]

In the summer 1663, the Ottoman and Habsburg empires were once again at war, an instance of a recurring theme in their political relations, the power play over Transylvania. The principality was in a condition of political instability following György II Rákóczi’s disastrous venture into Poland in 1657, and on 7 June 1663, Emperor Leopold I of Habsburg declared his intention to call on the military capabilities of his Hungarian magnates to face the approaching Ottoman army of Köprülüzade Fazıl Ahmed Pasha. Included in the insurrectio were the troops in the Pozsony (Pressburg/Bratislava) region, and one of the men who girded on their swords to meet the Ottoman attack was a young nobleman of the city, János Ferdinánd Auer. Auer was a lieutenant in the Pozsony regiment recruited under the banner of Count Miklós Pálffy, who joined forces with Ádám Forgách, the captain-general of the fortress of Érsekújvár (Neuhäusel/Nové Zámky/Uyvar). He also kept a diary in which he narrated the Ottoman–Habsburg military engagement in 1663 and his experiences in Ottoman captivity.1 The research is supported by the Bilimsel Araştırma Projeleri Birimi of the Istanbul University (Project No. 30143). 1  János Ferdinánd Auer’s memoir has been published by Imre Lukinich with an extensive introduction in Hungarian: Auer János Ferdinánd pozsonyi nemes polgárnak héttoronyi fogságában írt naplója 1664. Budapest, 1923; for the reference, see 5–8.

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In the first days of July 1663, the Ottoman troops were struggling to ford the Danube near Esztergom, a very troublesome task for all early modern military bodies. Forgách was lured by false intelligence into cornering the Ottomans at Párkány. The Ottoman army apparently fell into complete disarray after the floating bridge carrying the soldiers collapsed into the water. Rallying a select force of nearly five thousand cavalry and a thousand musketeers, he launched a surprise attack on the Ottoman group that had become detached on the near side of the river.2 The German and Hungarian troops, however, found a formidable Ottoman force before them, ready and equipped for a full engagement, and realized they had acted on false information. At the end of the day, Forgách was forced to flee, leaving a good number of soldiers under his command on the battlefield. Ottoman cavalry pursued the escaping enemy horses as far as Érsekújvár and collected a large number of captives, primarily German infantry, on the way back to their camp.3 János Ferdinand Auer of Pozsony was among them. After being taken captive by one of Fazıl Ahmed’s officers, Auer claims he was tied up by his own belt and dragged along the ground; he was then placed on his feet to follow a horse he was fastened to. He seems to have been badly 2  Warhafftiger Bericht/ auß unterschiedlichen Extract-Schreiben zusammen getragen /Welcher Gestalt zwischen den Christen und Türcken den 8. Aug.St.n. eine Recontre für Neuhäusel gehalten worden, gedruckt im Jahr 1663, report of 8 August 1663; Georg Kraus, Siebenbürgische Chronik des Schässburger Stadtschreibers Georg Kraus, 1608–1665. Herausgegeben von Ausschusse des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde. II. Theil, IV. Band. Wien, 1864, 335–336; Paul Rycaut, The History of the Turkish Empire, from the Year 1623, to the Year 1677. Containing the Reigns of the Last Three Emperors, viz. Sultan Morat, or Amurat IV. Sultan İbrahim and Sultan Mahomet IV, his Son, The Thirteenth Emperor, now Reigning. London, 1687, 141; Evliyâ Çelebi b. Derviş Mehemmed Zillî, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi. Topkapı Sarayı Kütüphanesi Revan 1457 Numaralı Yazmanın Transkripsiyonu–Dizini. Vol. 6. Ed. by Seyyid Ali Kahraman and Yücel Dağlı. İstanbul, 2002, 175–181; Mehmed Halife, Tarih-i Gılmanî. By Ertuğrul Oral, PhD Dissertation, Marmara University, 2000, 93–95. 3  Abubekir Sıddık Yücel, Mühürdar Hasan Ağa’nın Cevâhirü’t-Tevârîh’i. PhD Dissertation, Erciyes University, 1996, 151; Erzurumlu Osman Dede, Târîh-i Fazıl Ahmed Paşa (Köprülüzâde Fazıl Ahmet Paşa Devrinde [1069–1080] Vukuatı Tarihi: Transkripsiyon ve Değerlendirme. MA Thesis, Marmara University, 2002, 12; Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, VI. 175–176; Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Ağa, Zeyl-i Fezleke. Ed. by Nazire Karaçay Türkal. PhD Dissertation, Marmara University, 2012, 291–292; Tâ’ib Ömer, Fethiyye-i Uyvar ve Novigrad, İstanbul Üniversitesi Nadir Eserler Ktp., İbnülemin Mahmud Kemal 2602, fols. 10v–11r.

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battered and exhausted, because his captor offered Auer fresh water and let him finish the journey on horseback. In the Ottoman camp, he was first questioned by Köse Ali Pasha, an established Ottoman dignitary with great expertise in Transylvanian and Hungarian affairs, who enquired about the captive’s standing within the enemy’s army. Auer, according to his assertion, bluntly denied that he was an officer or a nobleman and insisted on being nothing more than a common horseman. He and the other captives were also careful not to reveal any acquaintance with each other that could expose their true identities.4 Considering the bloody events to come, concealing his official standing and noble background would not have been Auer’s best option. It was partly thanks to his high social status that he survived while his lowborn fellows were executed en masse. The simplest explanation is that he reconstructed his narrative later, during his imprisonment in Constantinople, adding a series of elements chosen to underline his lack of cooperation with the Ottomans in an attempt to absolve himself from the indictment of betraying his brothers-inarms at the last minute. This presumption, however, seems very unlikely. For several years, Auer was held in the Seven Towers together with a group of German prisoners who most probably had a clear knowledge of the circumstances that led up to him being taken to Constantinople. Since they were constantly surrounding him while he wrote his memoirs, he could not have been in a position to distort the facts to such an extent. I believe that he truly tried to deceive his Ottoman captors in the hope of not being sent to the inner parts of the empire. There was one thing, however, that he could not see coming. According to a marginal note written on the itinerary of the 1663 Ottoman campaign appended to a copy of Kemalpaşazade’s Tevarih-i Al-i Osman in the Austrian National Library, Auer was included in a crowd of 1700 prisoners assembled in front of the grand vizier’s tent.5 The only support for this number of captives, however, is given by Paul Rycaut in his monumental history of the 4 Lukinich, Auer János, 77–79. 5  Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, H.O. 46r, fol. 124v. See also Vojtech Kopčan, ‘Zwei Itenerarien des osmanischen Feldzuges gegen Neuhäusel (Nové Zámky) im Jahre 1663’, Asian and African Studies 14 (1978) 59–88.

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seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire. He stated that the Ottomans gathered nearly 1800 Christian captives in the flat ground before the grand vizier’s tent.6 By contrast, an eyewitness, Mühürdar Hasan Ağa, seal-bearer of Fazıl Ahmed, related that after the battle of Párkány, the Ottomans captured nearly a thousand enemy soldiers alive and confined them in their tents. This number is further confirmed by an anonymous report propagated in the works of Martin Meyer, the renowned German compiler of the seventeenth century.7 For a number of reasons, a few of which are briefly discussed below, I am inclined to believe that the defeated and captured crowd of soldiers in which János Auer stood under the parching sun on 7 July 1663 numbered approximately one thousand. While walking towards the grand vizier’s tent, Auer’s captors heard from some of their fellows who were returning from the horde of people ahead that no prisoners were to be kept; all were to be executed there and then. In his memoirs, Auer describes the agonizing confusion he suffered deep in his mind at this point, and the miserable feelings that overcame his aching body in face of death. All of a sudden, however, he was pulled out of the crowd by a “sur bassi” (çorbacı) and admitted into the grand vizier’s tent. Obviously, the Ottomans suspected something. In the tent, Auer once again met Ali Pasha, who openly asked him whether he was a Hungarian captain. Auer claims he refused to expose himself even at this final hour of judgment and stuck with his story of being a simple cavalryman. Notwithstanding his efforts at disguise, his hands and stripped torso (his clothes had been taken from him on the way) betrayed him; the same çorbacı guided him to another tent instead of to the ground that was by then filled with severed heads and butchered bodies.8 Fazıl Ahmed was not willing to keep captured professional soldiers with the Ottoman army as it marched towards the fortress of Érsekújvár for an 6 Rycaut, The History, 141–142. 7  Cevâhirü’t-Tevârîh, 153; Martin Meyer (Philemerici Irenici Elisii), Theatrum Europaeum oder außführliche und warhafftige Beschreibung aller und jeder denkwürdiger Geschichten … IX. Franckfurt am Mäyn, 1672, 948; Martin Meyer, Ortelius Continuatus, Das ist der Ungarischen Kriegs-Empörüngen/Fernere Historische Beschreibungen … Getruckt zu Franckfurt am Mäyn, 1665, 263. 8 Lukinich, Auer János, 81–84.

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all-out siege. Andreas Höltzel, a German spy in the Ottoman camp, reported to Vienna that an appeal to the grand vizier by ağas in the army to spare the lives of the younger prisoners (in other words to let them keep the prisoners for themselves) was denied on military grounds. That day, according to Höltzel, the Ottomans killed nearly five hundred captives and left the butchered bodies naked on the ground, soaked in blood. The elderly officers in the army, most probably those serving in the frontier fortresses,9 meekly protested the decision and murmured that it would lead to a much bloodier war.10 Höltzel’s testimony is corroborated by the Ottoman chroniclers, who depict a rather gruesome, if commonplace, wartime episode.11 In the meantime, Auer was kept in the tent of a çorbacıbaşı, still carrying his head on his shoulders. There, he met Nicolaus Brenner, quartermaster of the Marquis Pio regiment.12 This suggests that there could have been other soldiers who did not vanish during the bloody massacre but were kept somewhere else, to be removed from the frontier areas. But how many?

THE TRANSPORT OF THE HABSBURG PRISONERS TO CONSTANTINOPLE

An anonymous report on the Habsburg prisoners first appeared in 1664, less than a year after their capture by the Ottomans at Párkány. It is allegedly a list of the prisoners who arrived in Buda on 14 August 1663, a week after falling 9  Rycaut writes in his history that Ottoman frontier soldiers were upset by the grand vizier’s order which, as a violation of “Law of Arms”, would merely enflame their rival neighbours to vengeance (Rycaut, The History, 142). 10  Andreas Höltzel, Relatione. Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Ital. Fol. 53, fols. 23v–25v. For a brief description of Höltzel’s work, see M. Halef Cevrioğlu, ‘Andrea Höltzel’in Raporuna (1664) Göre Uyvar Kuşatmasına Katılan Osmanlı Balkan Vasalları’, Anadolu ve Balkan Araştırmaları Dergisi 2:3 (2019) 35–67. 11  On 7 August 1663, the Ottomans erected three mounds of flesh – two of bodies and one of severed heads – adorned with the captured enemy flags as memorials of victory (Cevâhirü’t-tevârîh, 153; Erzurumlu Osman Dede, Târîh-i Fazıl Ahmed Paşa, 13; Tâ’ib Ömer, Fethiy­ye-i Uyvar, 12v). 12 Lukinich, Auer János, 86–87.

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into the hands of the Ottomans. The document lists only ninety-nine German soldiers, and its author claims that the total number of captives was 342 including the Hungarians, whom he was not able to identify.13 Mehmed Halife likewise asserts that after the mass execution, the Ottoman military leadership still had 300 imprisoned captives in addition to a group of nearly thirty elite prisoners who were delivered to the muhzırbaşı.14 Auer might have been one of these elite prisoners. According to his memoirs, he was removed soon after to another tent, where he met nineteen German and Hungarian noblemen and officers including Maximilian Ernst Freiherr von Weltz, Leonhard Rüblandt, Ludwig Pikwardy von Lick, Bálint Berényi, János Varsányi, and Georg Longo who, as we know from several historical documents and accounts, would share the burden of captivity with Auer in the Seven Towers in Constantinople. Auer recorded that the Ottoman authorities compiled a list of the prisoners as soon as they were transported to Esztergom. This first count came to nearly 300, according to enquiries he made at this time of muddle and confusion.15 The Ottomans did indeed compile a list of prisoners in Esztergom. According to the first list, which resembles a scribe’s professional attempt to bring his notes together, Ali Ağa, overseer of the dungeons in Esztergom, received from ten ağas a total of 280 prisoners to be held temporarily before they resumed their journey to Buda. The Ottoman list helps us to assess Auer’s credibility through a comparison with his description of a specific event. He writes in his 13  Martin Meyer, Diarium Europaeum Insertis quibusdam, maximè verò Germano-Gallo-Hispano-Anglo-Polono-Sueco-Dano-Belgo-Turcicis Actis Publici. X. Franckfurt am Mäyn, 1664, 571–576. The list of prisoners was separately published the same year in ‘Verzeichnis aller gefangenen Teutschen/ welche nach dem unglückseeligen Einfall H. Gr. Forgatschens von den Türcken seyn auf Ofen gebracht worden den 14. Augusti/ im Jahr 1663’, in Der Türkische Feldzug. Warhaftiger gründlicher Bericht/ von der Türkischen Armee/ welche und wieviel Bassen solche geführet/ wie stark dieselbe von Belgrad abmarchiret/ und was mit selbiger/ bis zu des Käyserl: Lega­ tens H. Baron de Gois Abreise/ denkwürdiges passiret. Samt einer Beschreibung der Vornehmsten Personen bey der Türkischen Armee: auch einer Lista, derer in Forgatsischen Treffen gefangenen Christen. Von einer begalubten Person/ welche aller Ortenmit gegenwärtig gewesen/ mit Fleiß be­ schrieben und aufgezeichnet, 1664 and was reproduced by Johannes Gradelehn the next year in Hungarische/ Sibenbürgische/ Moldau-Walach-Türck-Tartar-Persian -und Venetianische Chronica … Franckfurt am Mayn, 1665, 670–672. 14  Mehmed Halife, Tarih-i Gılmanî, 94. 15 Lukinich, Auer János, 97.

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historical account that Miklós Nógrádi, unable to escape his notorious past, was killed by Ottomans in Esztergom despite having been spared by Fazıl Ahmed at Párkány. He was noticed by a couple of Ottomans who had been in captivity in Royal Hungary and did not harbour good feelings towards him.16 We are now in a position to confirm Auer’s statement on the basis of the first Ottoman list of prisoners. Although we do not have an explicit name for the saddening event, Emin Mehmed was given permission to execute a prisoner from the group of captives ushered by Solak Hüseyin soon after they entered the town.17 I believe, however, that Auer and the other elite prisoners he was huddled with were not counted in the list of Habsburg captives delivered to Ali Ağa. This list included the “captives of the grand vizier” (sadr-i azam hazretlerinün dutsakları)18 who were later referred to by Simon Reniger, the imperial resident to the Porte, as being incarcerated in deß Groß Vesirs Gefängnüß (“the grand vizier’s prison”; that is, the prisons within the Ottoman imperial arsenal).19 Besides, Auer wrote in his memoirs that in Esztergom they were not placed in the citadel but were lodged in the house of an aged widow who showed empathy and compassion towards her unfortunate guests.20 Auer and his fellow captives arrived in Buda on 14 July, only a week after the battle of Párkány. The imperial plenipotentiary Johann von Goëss was, together with Simon Reniger, in the city at the time, hoping to conclude a peace with the Ottoman decision-makers before the war between two states took an irreversible turn.21 In a dispatch to the emperor sent from Buda on 18 July, von 16  Ibid., 97–98. 17  İstanbul, Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (henceforth BOA), Maliyeden Müdevver Defterler (henceforth MAD) 3279, 373 (Defter oldur ki Uyvar keferesinden ahz olunan esirler Estergon kalesine habs içün teslim olunduğı beyan eder ber muceb-i temessükat-i Ali zindani-i farisan-i evvel der kale-i Estergon). 18  BOA MAD 3279, 388. 19  Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (henceforth ÖStA HHStA), Staatenabteilung (henceforth StAbt), Türkei I/138, Konv. 1, fol. 42r: S. Reniger, 12 February 1665, Belgrade. 20 Lukinich, Auer János, 111–112. 21  Cevâhirü’t-Tevârîh, 206–207; Mehmed Halife, Tarih-i Gılmanî, 92; Alfons Huber, ‘Österreichs diplomatische Beziehungen zur Pforte, 1658–1664’, Archiv für Österreichische Geschichte 85: II. Hälfte (1898) 577.

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Goëss and Reniger described the desperate conditions of the captives brought into the city. They reported that the Ottomans drove nearly 200 Germans and Hungarians in front of the mansions in which the Habsburg diplomats were confined, as if on a parade of victory.22 In Buda, the Ottomans prepared two more lists of the prisoners of war being dispatched to Constantinople. These were more detailed documents, listing the prisoners by name and sometimes with supplementary notes containing more lucid descriptions. There was no doubt a pressing need to compile new lists, because captives were dying one after another, reducing their number with each passing day. In his memoirs, Auer frequently lamented his fellow townsmen who passed away along the devastating journey. In the list of captives “imprisoned in the fortress of Buda”, Auer’s name appears in the second line, under the heading “those known as Hungarian captains”, at the top of a list that contains the names of 205 persons.23 Auer’s frequent assertions in his memoirs that he denied admitting his true identity during the numerous interrogations he went through between Párkány and Buda seem to be at odds with the rather good information the Ottomans seem to have had about his rank within the Habsburg army. The Ottoman administration in Buda made another list specifically recording the names of prisoners who had died till the day it was produced. From Auer’s remarks about his fellow prisoners, we can safely conclude that the first list, comprising the captives incarcerated in the notorious Csonka Torony (“Stump Tower”),24 was produced within the first two weeks after the train of prisoners were delivered to Buda, whereas the list of the deceased was compiled sometime between the end of July and the middle of September. For instance, Auer wrote that Hans Matthias, a fellow soldier from Pozsony, died two weeks after being required to attend the parade naked while entering the 22  ÖStA HHStA, StAbt, Türkei I/135, Konv. 4, fols. 121rv: Johann von Goëss and S. Reniger, 18 August 1663, Buda. 23  BOA MAD 3279, 377–378 (Budin kalesinde mahbus olan üsera beyanındadur). 24  Sándor Takáts, Rajzok a török világból. Vol. 1. Budapest, 1915, 257–258; Géza Pálffy, ‘Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman–Hungarian Frontier in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (eds.), Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Early Fifteenth–Early Eighteenth Centuries). Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2007, 41–42.

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city of Buda. Matthias, or “Matyas Hans”, as his name was written by the Ottoman scribe who copied the list, was still alive at the time the first list was compiled.25 Kristóf Kolosz (or probably Kolos, Kolozs – a bearded Hungarian captain from Pozsony, according to the Ottoman clerk), on the other hand, drew his last breath on 15 September and was duly recorded among the deceased, bringing the total number to ninety-three.26 The Habsburg prisoners continued their journey towards Belgrade in midOctober.27 For the march, Auer was bundled into a group of eighteen elite prisoners.28 His description is once again confirmed by an Ottoman list that starts with the names of nineteen German and Hungarian captains.29 (A Hungarian captain by the name of Stephan Boronkai had already died in the last days of September 1663).30 Auer claims that the Ottomans made a fourth list of prisoners along the way to Belgrade, this time referring to each prisoner by name, nation, and “condition” (army rank). They were also supplied with clothing to cover their worn-out bodies against the impending cold.31 Auer is also right about another Ottoman list of captives that recorded 152 prisoners “coming from Buda to the fortress of Belgrade.”32 Therefore, we may conclude that fifty prisoners were lost between the two cities. Auer’s claim that they received clothes of comparatively good quality from the Ottoman authorities while the rest of ordinary prisoners had to make do with garments made of coarse wool is also supported by archival documents. In Belgrade, Mahmud Ağa, who was tasked with providing provisions and clothing for the prisoners, dispensed pairs of aba, kebe coats, and cotton shirts to captives who

25 Lukinich, Auer János, 117 and BOA MAD 3279, 377. 26 Lukinich, Auer János, 140 and BOA MAD 3279, 375. The list of the “deceased captives” continues on page 388 (Defter oldur ki sadr-i azam hazretlerinün dutsaklarından mürd olan dutsaklardur ki zikr olunur sene-i erbaa ve sebain ve elf). 27 Gradelehn, Hungarische, 672–673. 28 Lukinich, Auer János, 167. 29  BOA MAD 3279, 377. 30 Lukinich, Auer János, 140. 31  Ibid., 169. 32  BOA MAD 3279, 381–382 (Budinden Belgrad kalesine gelen esirler beyan olunur).

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were about to make their journey during the freezing Balkan winter.33 Reniger also noted in a report from Belgrade that the grand vizier ordered that the prisoners who were packed into the dungeons of Belgrade should be clothed.34 The Ottoman officials may have been doing their best to maintain the prisoners in good health, but they were certainly not succeeding. Auer recalls from his days in Belgrade that one day, Reisülküttab Acemzade Hüseyin Efendi, or Reis Efendi in his wording, summoned him and a number of other captives to his tent, where he sipped a cup of coffee under the alcove. He was truly upset and furious because of the loss of prisoners and reprimanded the deputy of Belgrade for not being able to furnish at least the captives of high value with better conditions.35 We are, in fact, sure that eighteen captives died in Belgrade, two of whom the Ottoman scribe recorded as “captain” (kapudan).36 According to Reniger, the number of Habsburg prisoners in the fortress of Belgrade dropped to as low as 115 before the grand vizier sent them to Adrianople in December.37 The Habsburg prisoners departed from Belgrade on 14 December 1663. Auer cursed the terrible cold that tormented the vulnerable bodies of the captives, although he appreciated the effort made by Ottoman officials to find them rooms for the night that were heated, albeit badly.38 We can therefore propose with confidence that some of the 33,531 akçes spent under the supervision of Mahmud Pasha, the chief treasurer’s deputy in Adrianople, on the transportation of the “state prisoners” from Belgrade to Constantinople went on lodgings along the way.39 The Habsburg prisoners of war reached Adrianople on 8 January 1664. A week after their arrival, the defeated soldiers of Párkány, or the remnants of 33  The Ottoman treasury disbursed a sum of 14,362 akçes for the state prisoners in Belgrade: BOA Kamil Kepeci (henceforth KK) 1957, 86, 22 Cemaziülahir 1074/21 January 1664. 34  ÖStA HHStA, StAbt, Türkei I/136, Konv. 1, fol. 69r: S. Reniger, 30 December 1663, Belgrade. 35 Lukinich, Auer János, 170. 36  BOA MAD 3279, 381. 37  ÖStA HHStA, StAbt, Türkei I/136, Konv. 1, fol. 69r: S. Reniger, 30 December 1663, Belgrade. 38 Lukinich, Auer János, 173–176. 39  BOA Bâb-ı Defteri Baş Muhasebe Kalemi (D. BŞM) 225, 3.

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them I should say, were arrayed in a column to march through the inner city and out through the city walls up to Mehmed IV’s residential palace. Auer and his group of elite prisoners (now thirteen noblemen and high ranking officers) were dressed for the parade in new garments, to create a striking image for the curious eyes watching the subdued infidels being taken to the glorious sultan.40 On 22 January, the captives finally arrived in Constantinople, where they were immediately confined in the “Bagnio”, the prisons in the Ottoman imperial arsenal. Next morning, Auer and his twelve comrades of diplomatic value were taken from the arsenal by İbrahim Pasha’s men, the deputy of Constantinople, to be delivered to the Seven Towers, where they would eventually spend nearly ten years of their lives. Auer calculated that they left eighty-six of their German and Hungarian fellows in the arsenal at that time.41 This means that two thirds of the soldiers captured at Párkány six months before had vanished on the road during the cruel winter.

CONSTANTINOPLE, THE END OF ALL THINGS?

János Auer, as a nobleman and a junior officer from Pozsony, would certainly

know that it was much more fortunate for a captive of the Ottomans to be detained somewhere along the Ottoman–Habsburg frontier. From a frontier fort, there was hope of a comparatively swift salvation by payment of a negotiated ransom collected and delivered through a system of letters and bailsmen. A prisoner who had been dragged as far as Constantinople, even if considered valuable enough to be imprisoned in the Seven Towers, was practically left in the hands of diplomacy, still a rather clumsy and sluggish apparatus in the mid-seventeenth century.42 He could expect a long period of imprisonment, since the sultan, as his legal owner, would not accept money in return for the freedom of his prisoners, but rather asked for an honourable 40 Lukinich, Auer János, 183–185. 41  Ibid., 186–190; ÖStA HHStA, StAbt, Türkei I/136, Konv. 4, fols. 132r–142v: S. Reniger, 12 March 1664, Belgrade. 42  For a detailed and extensive work on early modern ransom slavery along the Ottoman– Habsburg frontier, see Pálffy, ‘Ransom Slavery’, 35–83.

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exchange of Ottoman captives of equal rank and quality. The sultan could, of course, free a prisoner out of sheer generosity, but this was an unpredictable possibility, one that could perhaps only be dreamed of by a captive spending years in prison. The imperial ambassador Walter Leslie arrived in Constantinople on 7 September 1665, as part of the exchange of ambassadors between the Ottoman and Habsburg courts that followed the conclusion of the Treaty of Vasvár a year before. He was instructed by the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I to attempt – besides many other issues of state – to gain the release of prisoners captured during the previous war between the two states. Leslie was not able to start his mission until the sultan and the grand vizier returned to the city in mid-October.43 A Jesuit group within the imperial embassy, however, visited the German and Hungarian captives in the Seven Towers on 10 September, only three days after they came to the city. On 21 September, Leslie, accompanied by several members of the embassy, wandered in the city as far as the Seven Towers, but we do not have historical evidence that he contacted his imprisoned countrymen.44 We cannot exclude the possibility, however, that some members of the embassy carried letters for the captives in the Seven Towers (a very common practice in early modern society). Towards the end of October, Leslie visited Şeyhülislam Minkarizade Yahya Efendi in his mansion and most probably discussed the conditions of the Habsburg prisoners, especially those for whom a high ransom was demanded.45 Eventually, on the 43  For the imperial delegation in 1665, see Özgür Kolçak, ‘Habsburg Elçisi Walter Leslie’nin Osmanlı Devlet Yapısına Dair Gözlemleri (1665)’, İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Dergisi 54 (2011) 55–89; Philip Steiner, ‘Zwischen Religiösen Vorbehalten und dem Pflichtgefühl. Die habsburgische Grossbotschaft unter Walter Leslie an die Hohe Pforte (1665‒1666)’, Historisches Jahrbuch 132 (2012) 276–303; Philip Steiner, ‘Die hasbsburgische Großbotschaft unter Walter Leslie anhand des Reiseberichts des jesuitischen Gesandschaftskaplans Paul Tafferner (1665/66)’, in Karin Sperl, Martin Scheutz and Arno Strohmeyer (eds.), Die Schlacht von Mogersdorf/St. Gotthard und der Friede von Eisenburg/Vasvár 1664. Rahmenbedingungen, Akteure, Auswirkungen und Rezeption eines europäischen Ereignisses. Eisenstadt, 2016, 233– 267; Özgür Kolçak, ‘Walter Leslie Habsburg követ látogatása a Portán. Diplomáciatörténeti adalékok (1665‒1666)’, Aetas 30 (2016) 98–125. 44  ÖStA Kriegsarchiv (henceforth KA), Alte Feldakten 166, 1665/13/Beilage, fol. 11rv. 45  ÖStA KA, Alte Feldakten 166, 1665/13/Beilage, fol. 13v; Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches. Vol. VI. Pest, 1830, 167.

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29th, Leslie met Grand Vizier Fazıl Ahmed Pasha to discuss the issues brought forward by the imperial ambassador.46 It was during this diplomatic conversation that Leslie made his most serious intervention on behalf of the Habsburg prisoners. Paul Tafferner, a Jesuit priest in the Habsburg delegation, wrote in his travel book (practically a semi-official report of Leslie’s mission in 1665–1666) that the German and Hungarian captives in Constantinople were filled with joy and happiness upon hearing the arrival of an imperial envoy in the city.47 The image of a prisoner in the Seven Towers, or in the arsenal, dreaming of his salvation through the intervention of a celebrated diplomat is quite convincing, because the prisoners sent many letters to residents and envoys representing their monarchs asking for help in gaining their freedom. In addition, the Porte and the Hofburg were, in 1665, making sincere efforts to restore their political affairs to the condition they had been before the war. To deliver freed war captives to the visiting embassies would surely have served as a token of goodwill and friendship. This was indeed done by the Ottoman and Habsburg authorities. The problem for János Auer was that this act of generosity did not embrace him and his fellow captives in the Seven Towers, but was restricted to the German and Hungarian prisoners in the imperial arsenal (and later evidence suggests that not even all of them were released). Soon after he addressed the issue of the discharge of Habsburg prisoners, Leslie realized that the Ottoman government was no way inclined to release the elite captives incarcerated in the Seven Towers – János Auer, the protagonist of our story, and the noblemen and high-ranking officials he was imprisoned with. Reniger had already warned the Hofburg in February, nearly six months before the imperial embassy reached Constantinople, that the only feasible way 46  Cevâhirü’t-Tevârîh, 288; Mehmed Râşid, Târîh-i Râşid. İstanbul, 1282/1865, I. 109; Silahdar, Zeyl-i Fezleke, 415–416. For the topics discussed between W. Leslie and Fazıl Ahmed, see the ‘Hauptrelation des Grafen Leslie’ in Alois Veltzé (ed.), ‘Die Hauptrelation des kaiserlichen Residenten in Konstantinopel Simon Renigen von Reningen 1649‒1666’, Mitteilung des k.u.k. Kriegs-Archivs Neue Folge 12 (1900) 57–170; for the reference, see 157–158. 47  Paul Tafferner, Der Röm. Kay. May. Leopoldi I. An Deß grossen Türcken Sultans Mehmet Cham Ottomanische Porten Anno 1665. den 25. May abgeordnete Bottschafft, Welche Ihro Hochgrafl. Excellentz, etc. Herr, Herr Walther Leßlie, deß Heil. Röm. Reichs Graff und Herr zu Pettau ... denckwürdig verrichtet. Wien, [ca. 1670], 117–118.

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of getting the prisoners out of the Seven Towers seemed to be an exchange with Ottoman prisoners of equal rank and quality being held in Habsburg lands.48 A month later, Reniger sent another dispatch from Belgrade to Vienna informing his monarch that Fazıl Ahmed was receiving numerous requests for help in letters from Ottoman soldiers held captive by Hungarian magnates. He claimed that unless the emperor arranged for their freedom, neither he nor the soon-to-arrive imperial ambassador would be able to accomplish much in this matter. Furthermore, if Leslie left the prisoners behind in the Seven Towers when he departed Constantinople for Vienna, the emperor’s reputation would be seriously harmed.49 This, however, was exactly what happened. Leslie claimed that at the diplomatic talks of 29 December, the Ottoman authorities told him in an unmistakable tone that he should give up on the elite prisoners in the Seven Towers. In his final report of 1666, he excused his failure by referring to letters in which Kara Mehmed Pasha, the Ottoman ambassador in Vienna, reported on the Ottoman notables held captive in Villach and several Hungarian towns and advised the Ottoman government to keep the elite Christians in the Seven Towers until the Ottoman captives were returned.50 He conceded that there was no easy and prompt solution to the problem. Before embarking on his return journey, he delivered a sum of 700 golden ducats to Giambattista Casanova, the recently appointed imperial resident at the Porte, to be transmitted to the aristocrats and high-ranking officers in the Seven Towers.51 In December 1665, 48  ÖStA HHStA, StAbt, Türkei I/138, Konv. 1, fol. 42r: S. Reniger, 12 February 1665, Belgrade. 49  ÖStA HHStA, StAbt, Türkei I/138, Konv. 1, fols. 65r–68r: S. Reniger, 3 March 1665, Belgrade. 50  ‘Hauptrelation des Grafen Leslie’, 157–158. 51  ÖStA HHStA, StAbt, Türkei I/139, Konv.1, fol. 29r: Giambattista Casanova, 24 November 1666, Adrianople. According to Johann von der Reck, an adventurer from the lesser nobility of Dren-Steinfurt, Leslie was informed by Ottoman officials on 17 December that he had to leave Constantinople without the imperial prisoners in the Seven Towers. Thus the imperial ambassador might have engaged in backchannel diplomacy for the liberation of the Habsburg prisoners even after his meeting with the grand vizier. For the letters and travel notes of Johann Theodor von der Reck, see Reinhard Lüdicke, ‘Eine Gesandtschaftsreise nach Konstantinopel 1665–66. Aufzeichnungen des Freiherrn Joh. Theod. v. Reck im Freiherrlich-Landsbergschen

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the Habsburg delegation, together with newly freed captives from the arsenal,52 left the Ottoman capital, where Auer and his fellows were abandoned to suffer imprisonment that eventually lasted ten years.

A CONCLUSION TO BE CONTINUED: JÁNOS FERDINAND AUER IN THE SEVEN TOWERS

A proper conclusion to an article dealing with the prison experiences of an early modern soldier should, I admit, extend to the circumstances in which the captive was eventually freed. Here, however, I simply avoid such an attempt, and end my paper with the notes that Auer made inside the Seven Towers until 1667 (at which point his diary also ends). These offer an insight into the conditions of early modern captivity, or – in Auer’s case – “being a hostage of diplomatic concern”. Auer records that in January 1664, the group of Habsburg prisoners were received by Mehmed Ağa, commander of the Seven Towers, who recorded the names and nations of the incoming prisoners at the main gate of the fortress. After registration, they were escorted to a tower on the left side of the inner court that had previously been used as a cellar by the Venetian captives. Auer would later learn that the tower they were settled in was called “Jessir” (Esir) or “Zendan Kulassi” (Zindan Kulesi). He also mentions the strict discipline they were placed under in their early days in prison. At nights, they were shut behind the massive walls of the tower, in darkness relieved only by the three lamps that could barely twinkle and certainly did not warm the room. Neither did they have any money in these days to buy firewood or charcoal which could have relieved their battered, shabbily-clothed bodies from the biting cold. A wooden platform was soon erected over the floor so that they could carry on with their daily activities in the tower without being in constant contact with the frigid ground. They were also hungry. Auer writes that the several loaves of Archiv des Hauses (Dren-)Steinfurt’, Zeitschrift für vaterländische Geschichte (Westfalens) 64:1 (1906) 191–247; for the reference, see 222. 52 Tafferner, Der Röm., 226–227; John Burbury, A Relation of a Journey of the Right Honourable My Lord Henry Howard… London, 1671, 208–209.

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bread they obtained in Constantinople before being handed over to the ağa of the Seven Towers soon ran out. The Venetian community in the Seven Towers, particularly Marco Antonio Delfino and Sebastiano Molin, who were held there until 1670,53 supported the newcomers – according to Auer – while they struggled to settle into a life of imprisonment, and offering them bread and wine in times of need. The exit was guarded by two janissaries, who spent the entire night with the prisoners.54 The escape of a prisoner from the Seven Towers was unlikely, but would certainly cause a humiliating scandal for the Ottoman authorities, especially considering that these prisoners belonged to the sultan himself. This was proved by the astonishing escape of Monsieur Beaujeu in 1670.55 We know that in April 1664, only a couple of months after Auer’s arrival in the Seven Towers, a unit of 138 janissaries under the command of Mehmed Ağa was already on duty for the purpose of avoiding such an eventuality.56 This state of affairs did not last long. Leonhardt Rüblandt, a German captain taken captive by the Ottomans on the same day as Auer, expressed his gratitude towards the fort commander in his letters from the Seven Towers, stating that he was a man of justice, willing to listen to the problems of the prisoners with a temperate reason.57 The warm relations the Habsburg prisoners established with Mehmed Ağa culminated in permission being granted to drill holes through the tower walls to let sunlight and fresh air into their cell.58 53  Géraud Poumarède, ‘Les Infortunes de Sebastiano Molin, patricien vénitien et prisonnier de guerre à Constantinople au milieu du XVIIe siècle’, Cahiers de la Méditerranée 65 (2002) 273–300. 54 Lukinich, Auer János, 191–199. 55  Joris Oddens, Een vorstelijk voorland: Gerard Hinlopen op reis naar Istanbul (1670–1671). Zutphen, 2009, 153, 197–199. I am grateful to Mahmut Halef Cevrioğlu for having called my attention to Hinlopen’s travel book and for making a translation of the relevant part. Jean Chardin, Journal du Voyage du Chevalier Chardin en Perse & aux Indes Orientales. Paris, 1686, 35–36; Guillaume-Joseph Grelot, Relation Nouvelle d’un Voyage de Constantinople. Paris, 1680, 27–29. 56  BOA KK 1960, 16 and 72. 57  ÖStA HHStA, StAbt, Türkei I/139, Konv. 2, fols. 236r–239r: 15 May 1667, Leonhard Rüblandt, the Seven Towers, Constantinople. 58 Lukinich, Auer János, 99; ÖStA HHStA, StAbt, Türkei I/139, Konv. 2, fols. 236r–239r: 15 May 1667, Leonhard Rüblandt, the Seven Towers, Constantinople.

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Auer and other Habsburg prisoners were soon allowed to use the inner court whenever they needed, day or night. They even erected a wooden shed in front of their tower, to be used as a kitchen. The Habsburg prisoners’ freedom of movement within the Seven Towers is corroborated by other historical narratives from the latter part of the seventeenth century. For instance, the Venetian aristocrat Sebastiano Molin was jugged in a dark pit with a shackle on his feet in his early days in the Seven Towers in 1655 but was soon moved to a cell where he lived with several Venetian companions with relatively broad liberty of action.59 This was also true for the members of the Transylvanian embassy (including the famous Jakab Harsányi Nagy) who were sent to the Seven Towers in August 1657.60 The inner court of the Seven Towers actually resembled a small town, with many sheds, barracks, and even lodges where some of the prisoners lived while attending their poultry yards during daylight.61 The prisoners were also allowed to receive guests in their lodges or cells, albeit seemingly after an amount of money had been paid to the ağa of the fortress. In 1667, Franz Ferdinand von Troilo, while staying in a house he rented in Galata, occasionally visited the Seven Towers, where he spent the entire day with the imprisoned Christians. In his travel book, Troilo describes Rüblandt as an old friend and also mentions Nicolaus Brenner, Maximilian von der Weltz, and Ludwig Pickwardy, but not a Johann Auer from Pozsony.62 The Hungarian nobleman’s inability to catch Troilo’s eye may have been due to an introverted personality, as is also suggested by his use of the first person in his narrative, uniquely among the prisoners in the group. Or maybe Troilo did 59  Poumarède, ‘Les Infortunes de Sebastiano Molin’, 275. 60  Gábor Kármán, A Seventeenth-Century Odyssey in East Central Europe: The Life of Jakab Harsányi Nagy. Leiden, 2016, 95–101. 61  For visual representations of the Seven Towers from the second half of the seventeenth century, see E. Natalie Rothman, ‘Visualizing a Space of Encounter: Intimacy, Alterity, and Trans-Imperial Perspective in an Ottoman-Venetian Miniature Album’, The Journal of Ottoman Studies 40 (2012) 42–43, 64–65. 62  Franz Ferdinand von Troilo, Frantz Ferdinand von Troilo, aus Ober-Schlesien, auf Lassot, Teutritz, Birßdorff und Roißdorff, Ritters des heiligen Grabes, Sr. Churfl. Durchl. zu Sachsen wohlbestalten Cammer-Junckers, und bey dero Unter-Leib-Guardie zu Fuß Fendrichs Orientalische ReiseBeschreibung… Dresden, 1676, 507–508.

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not see him at all, because Auer did not belong to the privileged party of Germans (which seemingly emerged even in circumstances of imprisonment). The latter seems unlikely, however, because he joined Rüblandt, Weltz, and Brenner in signing several letters that were to be taken to Vienna by agents of the imperial embassy to the Porte (although, perhaps significantly, his signature always came last in such letters). Auer’s letters, today preserved in the Turcica collections of the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, should – and hopefully will – be a part of a broader study of the Habsburg war prisoners who were brought to Constantinople in 1664.

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PETITION BY REBEL HUNGARIAN NOBLES FOR COMPLETE SUBMISSION TO THE OTTOMAN PORTE (1672) Sándor Papp University of Szeged, Hungary [email protected]

After the failure of the armed revolt (Magnatenverschwörung, 1670–1671)

by the Hungarian magnates Péter Zrínyi (1621–1671), Ferenc Nádasdy (1623–1671), Ferenc Frangepán (1643–1671) and Francis I Rákóczi (1645– 1676) against Leopold I, King of Hungary (1655–1705) and Holy Roman Emperor (1658–1705), some of the rebels saw their only remaining hope in the possibility of Ottoman assistance. Their petition reads as a desperate attempt to gain support from the Porte, but it is also an important document of the times, showing how a primarily Protestant Christian political group conceived the idea of obtaining assistance against a ruler belonging to another – Catholic – Christian denomination by placing themselves under the authority of a great Muslim power. As was customary in this period, they presented the dominion represented by Leopold I as foreign to Hungarians, a regime of religious and ethnic oppression. In addition to expressing the denominational conflict, the document is a statement of submission by subjects

This essay is based on the research project “Everyday Life and Imperial Politics in the Time of the Köprülü Restoration” (OTKA K 109070) and the work of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences–University of Szeged Ottoman Period Academic Research Group. I would like to thank András Oross, the Hungarian archival delegate responsible for the materials in the Austrian State Archives, the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv and the Hofkammerarchiv, and my university colleague Zsuzsanna Cziráki, for their assistance.

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of the Holy Crown of Hungary – and therefore of Leopold I of Habsburg – to the authority of a rival – Muslim – power. Through this essay, I would like to express my thanks and esteem for Géza Dávid, under whose direction I began to study Hungarian/Transylvanian–Ottoman diplomatic relations. The document is held in the Türkische Urkunden collection of the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, where it is believed to date from around 1669–1670.1 It measures 44 x 32.5 cm, and is written on thick Turkish paper divided into four columns, three of which are completely filled with text and the fourth has three lines and a signature. The document was written in the name of the “poor inhabitants of Upper Hungary” (in Ottoman Turkish, Orta Macar “Central Hungary”). It does not bear the name of the addressee or a precise date. A careful reading, however, and the Italian note on the back, reveal that it is addressed to the grand vizier, Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha (1661– 1676). It has a different style of writing to any that was used in the Ottoman chancellery, however, it was not surprising in this period. The handwriting shows some similarities to translation documents made by the interpreters of the Habsburg diplomatic delegation in Constantinople.2 This does not, however, imply that it is the work of Habsburg diplomats, because the wording suggests that it may have been a translation from Hungarian. The translator does not seem to have been a native speaker of Ottoman Turkish, and in several places wrote according to the logic of Hungarian grammar. Using Transylvanian historical data, I first hypothesized that the translator was the Transylvanian interpreter of Turkish, György Brankovich (1645–1711).3 However, it seems 1  The reference mark of the document: Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (henceforth ÖStA HHStA), Türkische Urkunden 1669–1670; I indicated at the archives that it would be possible to provide a more precise date for the document, and so I entered the date as the end of October or beginning of November 1672. 2  ÖStA HHStA Türkei 1. (Turcica) Karton 150. Konv. A fol. 30, 30 October 1679, Prague. A friendly letter sent to the grand vizier by the başvekil (chairman of the War Council) of the emperor: fols. 32–33; ÖStA HHStA Türkische Urkunden Karton 10: Raimondo Montecuccoli to Grand Vizier Mustafa Pasha, Vienna, 4 May 1677, copy of a decree of the sultan on the rights of Catholics, particularly Jesuits, in the Ottoman Empire, 29 November – 8 December 1665/21–30 Cemaziülevvel 1076. 3  Sándor Papp, ‘Az ellenreformáció ellenhatása: A felkelő rendek szándéknyilatkozata az Oszmán Birodalomba való teljes behódolásra. (Erdélyi–Habsburg–Oszmán diplomácia)’, in

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more likely to be the work of the most famous Transylvanian interpreter of Turkish, Dávid Rozsnyai (1641–1718). According to available data, Rozsnyai was actually in Edirne with the delegation that brought the tribute at the time the text was written.4 The style is similar to that of other non-Muslim scribes, and can be traced back to the influence of Nikosios Panagiotis (Nikosio Panajotti 1613–1673), the interpreter for the Habsburg delegation in Constantinople for a long period. Panagiotis was Rozsnyai’s first teacher of Turkish. Although Rozsnyai later also studied under Ottoman Turkish masters, Panagiotis’s influence may have remained in his style of writing. Similarities to documents produced in the Habsburg delegation may also be due to Panagiotis’ influence, although he had by that time been appointed head interpreter of the Sublime Porte, leaving the duties of interpretation for the Habsburg delegation to his relative, possibly a cousin, Giannakis Porphyritis ( Janaki Cleromono).5 A brief note in Italian on the back of the document states that the text was submitted to the grand vizier. The document therefore seems to have made its way to the chancellery of the grand vizier, and from there, to Vienna. Although the prevailing opinion in the Vienna archives is that the document was written in 1669–1670, an analysis of the text and examination of Transylvanian and – especially – Habsburg diplomatic documents has led me to date it to 1672. This involved studying documents contained in boxes numbered 142–145 related to the years 1670–1673 in the Türkei I (Turcica) collection of the archives in Vienna.

Peter Kónya (ed.), Rekatolizácia a uhorska spoločnosť v 17.–18. storičí. Prešov, 2016 [2018], 380–383. 4  Sándor Szilágyi, Rozsnyai Dávid, az utolsó török deák történeti maradványai. Pest, 1867, 12. On interpreters and their activities, see Gábor Kármán, ‘Az erdélyi török deákok: kora újkori értelmiségiek állami szolgálatban’, Sic Itur ad Astra 6:1–2 (2006) 155–182. 5  Gunnar Hering, ‘Panagiotis Nikousios als Dragoman der kaiserlichen Gesandschaft in Konstantinopel’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 44 (1994) 174. For the life and work of Panagiotis, see Damien Janos, ‘Panaiotis Nicousios and Alexander Mavrocordatos: The Rise of the Phanariots and the Office of Grand Dragoman in the Ottoman Administration in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century’, Archivum Ottomanicum 23 (2005–2006) 177–196.

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According to the Latin chronicle of the chancellor of Transylvania, János Bethlen, the first diplomatic mission from the exiled Hungarian rebels arrived at the Ottoman camp next to Philippopolis (Plovdiv, Filibe) on 30 June 1671. It was led by two well-known individuals from Upper Hungary, Baron István Petrőczy, whose wife was the aunt of the later prince, Imre Thököly (1682– 1685, 1690), and Pál Szepessy, a member of the lower nobility from Borsod County and another key player in the uprising. They were accompanied by Imre Balassa, András Radics and a staff numbering at least another ten. Johann Philip Beris, Emperor Leopold’s secretary of the treasury, and perhaps already reporting as a councillor, recorded the activities of the delegation of exiles in the Ottoman Empire. The Hungarians arrived with gifts, which they handed over to the grand vizier on the third of July. The Hungarian mission proposed submission to the Porte and promised 50,000 thalers in annual tribute. In exchange, they requested Ottoman military support of 5,000 men. They also proposed to fight the imperial armies with a force of 18,000 soldiers. They did not, however, claim to be acting on behalf of the entire Hungarian nobility, for which they did not have the authority. According to Bethlen, one of their grievances was that the imperial authorities were not honouring the king’s promise that rebels who put down their arms would not come to any harm. They treated everyone the same, whether innocent or guilty. Following the negotiations, the grand vizier promised to place the Hungarians under the protection of the sultan but referred their affairs to the pasha of Buda. He also sent a kapucı named Mustafa to Vienna to investigate the matter and deliver a letter to the emperor.6 By directing the exiles’ petitions and envoys to the pasha of Buda, the grand vizier in effect indicated that serious assistance could not be expected. The pasha of Buda did not have the authority to make an independent decision on a matter of such importance. 6  Zsolt Trócsányi, Teleki Mihály (Erdély és a kurucmozgalom 1690-ig). Budapest, 1972, 91–146; Gyula Pauler, Wesselényi Ferencz nádor és társainak összeesküvése 1664–1771. 2 vols. Budapest, 1876, II. 427–431; Joannes Bethlen, Historia rerum Transylvanicarum ab a.(nno) MDCLXII. ad a.(nnum) MDCLXXIII. 2 vols. Viennae, 1782–1783. (Elek Hornyák also published the work in 1789 in Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca). I used the modern Hungarian translation of the work: János Bethlen, Erdély története 1629–1673. Translated by Judit Vásárhelyi, postscript and notes by József Jankovics. Budapest, 1993, 408–410.

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Those in Hungary awaited the news with great interest. However, all of them interpreted the events in accordance with their own aims. Some clearly saw that the grand vizier was not going to violate the peace once he was preparing to move against Poland.7 A contrasting view was taken by Mihály Teleki (1634–1690), the military commander of Transylvania’s western borders and thus the commander of the Hungarian exile units. He would have been satisfied with far less assurance, and accepted the meaningless phrase that the Porte had placed the Hungarians under Ottoman protection. This attitude determined his later actions, and he was already preparing for military intervention against the Kingdom of Hungary, for which he needed some promise of support from the Porte. He took the risk, and was satisfied with a seeming promise, because he believed that the upheaval might put a portion of Hungary into the hands of the prince of Transylvania, Michael I Apafi (1661–1690).8 To gain a more precise idea of the Porte’s intentions, Hungarian exiles and Transylvanian politicians sent a series of envoys to both the pasha of Buda and the grand vizier. In Buda, Hungarian rebels were seen as being, for Vienna, the same as the Anatolian rebels (celalis) were for the sultan’s court. The Porte usually sent military force against these groups and so it was natural for the emperor to do the same. László Baló, Apafi’s envoy, understood precisely that until some particular interest arose at the Porte that made it worthwhile to aid the exiles, they could not expect anything.9 Exiled Hungarians could draw little hope from these opinions, but continued their diplomatic efforts nonetheless. I found significant information relating to the petition amongst the documents of the new Habsburg resident envoy Johann Christoph Kindsberg (1672–1678) who had recently arrived in Edirne, the seat of the sultan at 7  István Nalánczy to Mihály Teleki, Katona, 3 August 1671: Sámuel Gergely, Teleki Mihály levelezése. 8 vols. A római szent birodalmi széki Teleki család oklevéltára. Budapest, 1910, V. 596–597; Trócsányi, Teleki Mihály, 109; Dénes Bánffy to Mihály Teleki, Örményes, 6 September 1671: Gergely, Teleki Mihály, V. 603. 8 Trócsányi, Teleki Mihály, 109; Mihály Teleki to István Nalánczy, s.l., 6 September 1671: Gergely, Teleki Mihály, V. 600–601. 9  László Baló to Mihály Teleki, Gyulafehérvár, 3 November 1671: Gergely, Teleki Mihály, V. 643–644.

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that time, to replace the ailing Giovanni Battista Casanova (1665–1672).10 Transylvanian sources also mention the arrival of the new Habsburg envoy and record that the Transylvanian László Baló and Dávid Rozsnyai negotiated with the ,cavuşbaşı, presumably Divrikli Mehmed,11 the second most important dignitary of the grand vizier’s divan.12 The envoy of the Hungarian rebels, Pál Szepessy, had another meeting with the grand vizier, probably a secret night audience. Despite this, observers close to the Porte did not see much chance for Hungarians to obtain Ottoman support.13 Kindsberg arrived at about the same time that Mehmed IV (1648–1687)14 returned from the Polish war. He received the new Habsburg resident envoy almost immediately – a courtesy not often granted to the Hungarians–, even though Habsburg–Ottoman relations were not free of troubles. Reports were spreading that the Ottomans in Hungary were cooperating with the Hungarian rebels, and imperial forces had ransacked the city of Debrecen – an Ottoman tributary – on the pretext that it was harbouring rebels. The Habsburg envoy’s report is the most detailed source about the issues of the time and Hungarians’ activities in Edirne. It records that Pál Szepessy, an agent of the rebels, arrived in Edirne along with a Transylvanian courier on the evening of 23 December 10  Kindsberg stayed in Constantinople from the end of 1672 until his death on 14 December 1678. The inventory of his estate, which is also of interest to the history of scholarship, has been published by Dóra Kerekes, ‘Johann Christoph von Kindsberg konstantinápolyi császári követ hagyatéki leltára 1678–ból’, Lymbus. Magyarságtudományi Forrásközlemények 1 (2003) 129–157. 11  It is difficult to identify the ,cavuşbaşı, because European sources do not mention him by name, only by position. According to the chronicle of Sarı Mehmed Pasha, the ,cavuşbaşı Mehmed Ağa was appointed beylerbeyi of Trablus-Şam (Tripoli, Lebanon) on 20 January 1677. Def­ terdar Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât. Tahlil ve Metin (1066–1116/1656–1704). Ed by Abdülkadir Özcan. Ankara, 1995, 80. According to Mehmed Süreyya he was the chief defterdar of Adana in 1683 and had the title of vizier at the beginning of 1684; in 1685, he was serdar in the Eszék (Ösek/Osijek) campaign, after which he was the vali and serdar of Mora and the defender of Narda; he died in 1688/1689. Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmanî. Ed by Nuri Akbayar and Seyit Ali Kahraman. İstanbul, 1996, IV. 1031. 12  Orhan F. Köprülü, ‘Çavuş’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 8. İstanbul, 1993, 236–238. 13  János Kabos to Mihály Apafi, Edirne, 8 January 1673: Áron Szilády and Sándor Szilágyi, Török magyarkori államokmánytár. Vol. 5. Pest, 1871, 156–157. 14  İsmail Hâmi Danişmend, İzahlı Osmanlı Tarihi Kronolojisi. İstanbul, 1972, III. 442.

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1672. He brought with him six letters of commission – for the sultan, the grand vizier, the kaymakam, the ,cavuşbaşı (dem chiaus bassi, oder hoffmarschallen), the kiaya (kihaia, daß des vesiers hoffmeister) and the head interpreter of the Porte, Nikosios Panagiotis. He handed over the letters the following day but was unable to talk with anyone except for the ,cavuşbaşı and Panagiotis. Pál Szepessy was particularly eager to get Panagiotis’s help. He hoped that the letter of commission carried by what was considered to be the exiles’ sixteenth diplomatic mission, signed on behalf of the counties, barons, aristocrats and nobles of Upper Hungary, would finally gain him the support of the sultan. The rebels were seeking protection and regular financial support for the 10,000-strong army they were trying to pay regularly, camped near the Habsburg-held castle of Szatmár (Satu Mare). This force had destroyed the castle of Kálló (Nagykálló) and brought other towns over to the rebel side. The rebels were confident that the remaining German forces could also be expelled with a little Ottoman support. If they were victorious, they could have taken Upper Hungary and the long-desired castles and territories there, after which they might have been able to attack Lower Hungary and even Austria, where they also had a great desire to get their foot in the door.15 Szepessy must have

15  den Scepessi Paul geschickht, der neben einem courrier auß Sibenbürgen den 23. dezember nachts mit sechs an den sultan, groß vesier, an caimecan, den chiaus bassi, oder hoffmarschallen, denn kihaia, daß des vesiers hoffmeister und an dem Panaiotti lauttenden creditium schreiben in diese statt, bey deß Abaffi agenten angelangt. Die brieff hat er den volgenden tag übergeben, aber bißhin mit keinen, alß mit dem hoffmarschallen und dem Panaiotti reden könen. Welcher von ihme, Scepessi Paul absonderlich ersuecht worden, bey der Porten zu intercedieren, daß die in bedeuten, mit sech zehen pottschafft (worunter daß erste des Petrozzi währe, die andern aber nit erkent worden) gefertigten creditien schreiben in genere unterzaichnete comitates, barones, nobiles et ordines militium Superioris Ungariae, von der Porten möchten protegiert werden. Sintemallen sy mit landt und leuth und zu gleich mit einer von ganz Ungarn richtig bezahlten, auch unter Zattmar campierenden storkhen armada von 10.000 mann, welche Kallo zuschleifft und andere örtter, an sich gebracht, versehen sein. Und also zu vertriebung der übrigen teutschen wenigen mannschafft nichts anderß, alß der Türckhen hilff und protection von nöthen. Mit welcher sie türchkhen, die von langen jahren hero verlangten vöstungen und länder in Ober Ungarn, ohne gegenwöhr, leichtlich erober und vollgentß weitterß gegen Nider Ungarn, ober gar, gegen Österreich verbrechen und darselbst einen storckhen fueß setzen könten. Johann Christoph Kindsberg to Leopold I, Edirne, 12 January 1673: ÖStA HHStA Staatsabteilungen, Türkei I (Turcica) Kart. 144, Konv. (2) fol. 34rv.

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expected these military plans to be very tempting to the Ottoman court, but they had little impact. The retiring resident envoy of the Habsburgs, Giovanni Battista Casanova, also requested an audience with the grand vizier, together with Kindsberg. The audience took place on 30 December. Since Casanova was sick, he was not able to appear in person and the Turkish interpreter of the Oriental Company (Wiener orientalische Handelskompanie), Georg Ridolffi Alepinum, attended the audience in his place. Alepinum was taken before the grand vizier by an escort of fifteen mounted ,cavuşes. On the Ottoman side, Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha was accompanied by the chief treasurer (defterdar). The grand vizier naturally permitted the ailing Casanova to return home. Mutual assurances of the desire for peace were exchanged, and Kindsberg handed over his letter of commission as the new permanent envoy to the Porte. The report contains a great deal of important information about the diplomatic manoeuvres of the exiles from Transylvania and Upper Hungary and about several incursions into the emperor’s territories by exiles who had fled to Transylvania, together with Ottoman troops from Varad (Várad/Oradea).16 It also gives an account of the Transylvanian delegation’s payment of Transylvania’s annual tribute, an event mentioned above (although the report placed the amount at 80,000 thalers, double the actual figure).17 Kindsberg reported an extraordinary interlude that took place at the payment of the tribute. The grand vizier asked the Transylvanian delegation what news there was from Transylvania. The envoy, probably the Transylvanian László Baló, responded by saying “nothing in particular”. The grand vizier turned to Panagiotis and said, “This dog does not want to confess his transgressions”. The Transylvanian envoy went from the grand vizier to the kaymakam (Kara Mustafa) and handed over to him the gift he was due. The kaymakam also 16  Im massen etliche in Sibenbürgen aufgehaltene und mit dem wardeiner Türckhen coniungierte ungarische rebellen zu mehr mallen E(ure) K(önigliche) M(ajestäts) landt und gränizen überfallen, grossen schaden und ungelegenheit verübet. ÖStA HHStA Staatsabteilungen, Türkei I (Turcica) Kart. 144, Konv. (2) fol. 36v. 17  ist deß Abaffi gesandter auch mit dem jahrlichen tribut von 80.000 taller zu dem sultan bald darauf zu dem groß vesier vorgelassen worden, disen ein gewöhnliches regal überreichendt. ÖStA HHStA Staatsabteilungen, Türkei I (Turcica) Kart. 144, Konv. (2) fol. 38r.

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inquired what news there was from Hungary. The envoy said that there was an envoy from Hungary called Szepessy who was awaiting an audience, which the grand vizier had not granted him yet. The kaymakam went to the sultan and reported the arrival of the “rebel”. The sultan, out of curiosity, wanted to know from the grand vizier what this person had brought. The grand vizier then allowed Szepessy to come before him on the fourth of January. His introduction began with the following words, “He has been sent here by the Estates of Upper Hungary to plead for support and aid against the tyranny of the Germans, whom the rebels had attacked and taken several castles from. They serve the Porte, which cannot expect anything else from the Germans but that they will destroy the villages under Ottoman rule with fire and iron.” The grand vizier considered these allegations to be lies, so he ordered him to be silent and then said, “We are not going to violate the peace with the Germans because of you. Not even if you have been ruined and torn into a thousand pieces. When we were in Hungary and called you to us with letters and asked you to come, you just laughed and mocked us. Now that you have got into trouble with the Germans, you come to us to give aid and support. If we give this to you, then you will again turn to the Germans. Go away from here, we do not want to hear about you.” The envoy Pál Szepessy responded and made a plea for him to at least receive the letters he had brought, which included one from Apafi, in which the prince confirmed the successes of the exiles, and one for the sultan. In the end, the grand vizier took these and immediately handed them over to Panagiotis. Panagiotis immediately discovered that they had enclosed Latin and Turkish translations to the letter, which was probably originally written in Hungarian, so he immediately handed it back to the grand vizier, who began to read it and then handed it back to Panagiotis, who finally asked what kind of response must be given to this. The grand vizier said that he already had provided the Hungarian with a perfectly satisfactory response. The letter to the sultan contained the following: “He, his imperial highness, had ordered and forced the Hungarians through a few documents to accept the Catholic faith, otherwise he would massacre them all. In addition, they had already taken their churches. Therefore, they had been forced to take up arms in defence of their souls and their lives, which appeared to be fortunate, and as 445

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voluntary subjects of the sultan had scored two victories over the Germans. They had taken castles and large territories. However, on the third occasion, when the Germans had assembled from everywhere, they had to retreat, so they came with their righteous cause to be put under the protection of the invincible Porte. They would report that in order to ensure and confirm their voluntary respect and state as subjects, they are ready to send an ambassadorial mission and to hand over two or three hundred thousand thalers, in addition to make themselves and the remaining parts of the Kingdom of Hungary the subjects of the sultan and they hope for some kind of substantial support.” The letter was signed by the representatives of the counties, barons, aristocrats and nobles of Upper Hungary on 4 November 1672 at the castle of Polgár. Later in the report, Kindsberg claimed that the letter showed the rebels to be using every opportunity to plot against his majesty and place themselves under Ottoman protection. He assured the monarch that the rebels did not have sufficient troops, lacked a leader and controlled little territory. In reality, there was no need to fear any action by the sultan or any threat from Apafi, despite his ambitions to be king of Hungary. The only thing that could come of this was that, in the end his country, Transylvania, would be subjugated by the Ottomans just like Wallachia.18 18  Er befragte den Siebenbürger, ob waß newes in seinen landt vorgangen? Er andtwortete: in geringsten nichts. Der groß vesier wendete sich gegen den Panaiotti und sagte: dise hundt wollen ihre vebrechen nit gestehen; von groß vesier begabe er sich zu dem caimecam und überreichte in glechen sein regall. Der von ihme auch zu wissen begehrte: „Was newes auß Ungarn?” Der meldete: „Eß seye ein gesandter auß Ungarn, mit nahmen Sceppesi Paul, aillents heiher komben. Verlange audienz, die ihn aber von dem groß vesier noch nit verstattet worden.” Der caimecam begabe sich zu dem sultan und referirte ihm, das rebellen ankunfft, welcher auß curiositet von dem groß vesier wissen wolle, was er gebracht. Also hat der groß vesier den 4. januari ihme Scepessi vor sich komben lassen. Sein vortrag bestundte vollgenden worten: „Die oberungarischen ständen hetten ihme hieher gesandt, protection und assistenz wider die Teutschen tirannen zu suechen, welche von ihnen aufs haupt geschlagen und vill vöstungen recuperiert. Die zu der Porten diensten sein, die Teutschen hingegen khündten sich nit anderst rechnen, alß die türckhischen dörffer mit sengen und brennen euserrist verderben. Der vesier wurde über dise erdichtungen uhrdrissig und befahl ihme still zu schweigen und andtwortte mit unwillen diese formalirn: „Wegen eurer wöllen wir den friden mit den Teutschen nit brechen. Wann ihr verderben und ein tausent stuckhen zerhaut werden sollet. Dan wie wir unß in Ungarn befunden und euch alle durch schreiben an unß geladen und begehrt, habt ihr unß außgelacht und verspottet. Anietzo, da ihr wider die Teutschen diesguistirt, kombet ihr umb unser hilff und protection. Und wan

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Kindsberg’s long excerpt from the report tells us much about Szepessy’s diplomatic activities. The handing over of a letter addressed to the sultan, together with Latin and Turkish translations, at an audience with the grand vizier, is particularly remarkable. The report’s quotation of the letter from the rebel Hungarian nobles is strikingly similar in content to the petition chosen as the starting point of this essay, with two significant differences: the Turkish wir euch solche ertaillten, würdet ihr widerumb an die Teutschen kehren. Backhet euch forth, wir wollen umb euch nichts wissen. Gesandter Scepessi Paul replicierte und bätte auffß wenigist die habende brieff, worüber eines von dem Abaffi, welcher der rebellen progressus confirmierte, neben daß an sultan lauttende schreiben zu acceptieren. Der vesier nembe es endtlich an und gabe es gleich dem Panaiotti. Diser vesehete, daß der brieff lateinisch und die türkische verdolmätschung annectiert währe. Also an evitandam suspiccionem überreichte er solche widerumb dem vesier, welcher es anfieng zu lesen und gäbe es abermallen dem Panaiotti, der endtlich befragte, was man darauf andtworten solle. Vesier sagte, er habe diesen Ungarn schon genugsamb geandtwortet. Dieses schreiben an den sultan enthaltet, das Eure Kayserliche Majestät vermittelst etlicher schrifftlichen bevelch, sy zu annehmbung der Catholischen religion zwingen. Alß in widrigen alle niederhauen lassen wolten. Zumallen ihnen die kirchen schon entnomben und dahero sy zu rettung ihre seele, ja leib und leben noth gedrungen worden, die waffen zu ergreiffen, wie es dan auch glükhlich beschehen, daß sy als des sultans freywillige unterthanen zu seiner höchsten glory die Teutschen zwy mall aufß haupt geschlagen. Vill vestungen und grossen landt erobert. Daß dritte mall aber, weill die teutschn von allen orthen zusamb geloffen, sy sich reteriert hetten. Also komben sy mit ihrer gerechten sach im schutz der unüberwindtlichen Porten. Und versicherten den sultan, vill darauf vollgenden victorien. Und währen sy auch bereith, zu stabilirung und befestigung diser ihrer freywillgen devotion und unterthänigkeit, einen grossen pottschaffter mit ansehlichen praesenten von zwey, ja auch drey mall hundert tausendt taller zu überschichen. Mithin auch ihme, sultan den über[r]est von Khönigreich Ungarn untherhänig zu machen. Und verhoffeten, durch solche angesuechte hiffliche protection, nunmehr consoliert zu werden, daß schreiben währe datiert ex castris ad Pagum Polgas (Polgar) 4. Novembris 1672 und die unterschrifft, wie obgemelt, comites, barones, nobiles et ordines militium Superioris Ungariae. Auß welchen allen ersehen Euer Kaiserliche Majestät, daß die rebellen ohne unterlaß die Türckhen umb protection überlauffen und wie wollen sie sich derselben, der zeit nit annemben thuen. So geschiht es nit auß lieb gegen Euer Kaiserliche Majestät, in deme dise leuth, welche nit ex pacis, sondern allein, ex occassione rerum et temporum ihre sachen abmessen, mit keiner genugsamben armee vor dis jahr aufkomben können. Und inen zugleich bekandt ist, daß Euer Kaiserliche Majestät voll armiert stehen, hingegen die rebellen ohne haubt, mit wenig landt und leuth versehen sein. Und auf deß sultans gefahr und unkosten ein ruptur verursachen wolten, zu welcher sie entlich im fall sy nicht ex fundamento ausgerottet unvelbarlich den weeg bannen. Vorzu dann auch der Abaffi, auß ambition, ungarischer khönig zu weden, sich undt daß ganze landt muß verderben stürzen wirdt. Zumallen die Türkhen untern praetext seiner absetzung ganz Sibenbürgen überfallen und wie Wallachey, ihnen unterthänig zu machen, suechen werden. Johann Christoph Kindsberg to Leopold I, Edirne, 12 January 1673: ÖStA HHStA Staatsabteilungen, Türkei I (Turcica) Kart. 144, Konv. (2) fols. 38r–40v.

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version of the petition that we know of does not specifically mention a gift of two or three hundred thousand thalers to the sultan and it bears no signature or date. The differences can be explained by the existence of several letters with similar content written by the Hungarians, in accordance with the customs of that time. The Habsburg envoy read the letter addressed to the sultan, while the version given below in the appendix was addressed to the grand vizier and slightly differed from the first. I conclude that the original of the letter sent to the grand vizier was written on 4 November 1672 in the hajdú (heyduck) city of Polgár. Habsburg diplomacy considered the rebels of Upper Hungary to be dangerous adversaries who had to be eliminated, no matter the expense. The Habsburg resident envoy, Kindsberg, reported the good news to Vienna that Szepessy, one of the leaders of the rebels, had been contemptuously expelled from the Porte, or rather from the seat of the sultan and the grand vizier in Edirne. In addition, the grand vizier had sent his own çavuşbaşı to all of the border castles in Hungary to put a stop to the raids against Hungarian territories under Habsburg control. The permanent Transylvanian envoy reported on Szepessy’s reception by the grand vizier, judging it to have been unsuccessful.19 Kindsberg did not shy away from any solution to the problem of the Hungarian rebels. According to a report sent through the diplomatic secretary Christoph Dorsch, Panagiotis found a Greek who had previously been Szepessy’s Turkish interpreter and was prepared – for the price of a thousand ducats per head – to have the five main rebels ushered into the afterlife in a way that would not have appeared to be murder. Kindsberg discussed this with another Greek, the diplomatic interpreter Gianakkis ( Jannaki) Porphyritis, saying that his name should not be mentioned to the assassin and that Porphyritis should negotiate with him only in his own name. It seems from the report that the Greek went after Szepessy before receiving an assurance that he would be paid for the murder. In a few words in his report, Kindsberg lamented the difficulty of registering the assassination money in the treasury accounts if the men were killed. The final sentence also made it clear 19  Johann Christoph Kindsberg to Leopold I, Edirne, 20 February 1673: ÖStA HHStA Staatsabteilungen, Türkei I (Turcica) Kart. 144, Konv. (2) fol. 99r.

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that he had not given the order for the murder, since he was awaiting an urgent decision from the highest authority in Vienna.20 Kindsberg’s achievement in having Szepessy thrown out of Edirne must have been considered a substantial act of vengeance, because it is mentioned several more times in Habsburg diplomatic dispatches. Information about the loyalties of hajdús came to light at the same time, and Mátyás Szuhay wanted to keep them loyal to the sultan. However, General Wolfgang von Cobb sent a threatening letter to the hajdú towns of Szoboszló, Böszörmény, Hadház, Nánás and Dorog demanding that they send him three hostages, as well as rations and fodder, to prove their loyalty. If they refused, he would send an army against them. This fact has significance if the rebels indicated in the statement of subjugation (see below) they intended for the grand vizier that the hajdú region was an area loyal to the sultan. Kindsberg thought that Petrőczi was preparing to come to the Porte at the head of a new delegation to make the final offer of the annual tribute and obtain a capitulation (ahdname or imperial pledge of the sultan) under which Hungarian Estates would all offer their loyalty and accept their status as subjects of the sultan’s court. He wrote that, since the frontier had been 20  Die füff hauptrebellen, als nemblich Teleki, Petrozi, Suchay, Kende und Sebeski überlauffen ohne unterlaß die Ottomanische Porten und bitten die in schuz und protection zunemben. Sie verlangen derowegen durch allerhandt mittl einem türkhischenkrieg zu verursachen und die Chistenheit in grosse confusion zu sötzen, dahin sie es entlich bringen möchten, wann die nicht zeitlich von leben zum todt gebracht wurden. Der Panaiotti hat mir vor seiner abraiß durch den Janaki sagen lassen, daß mann auf ein mittl quocunque modo gedenchken und dadurch eines in wenig iahren zusteheenden grossen krieg und blutvergiessen sich entzichen solle. Wozue dann der Janaki einen Griechen, der besagten rebellen gewesten dolmätschen gefunden, der sich erbotten angedeüte rebellen auf ein gewisse weiß unvermördet auß den leben zu helffen, da– und in fall mann ihme vor jedwederen todtfahl 1000 duggatten raichen würdet. Dieses erzehlte mir der Janaki und ich antwortte er solte mich gegen disen griechen nit benennen und alles nur von sich selbsten negocieren. Die 1000 dugaten wuden nach jedweders rebellen vernehmenden todtfalls richtig zufolgen. Vorüber selbiger Griech denen rebellen nachgeraist. Jetzo ist die frag, ob mann post rem factam die gelder zu bezahlung solcher gehaimben execution ohne cameralischer, oder buechhalerischer berichts abforderung alsobalden überkommen wird oder nit? Und ob mann auch dem werkh nacharbeite oder darvon aussögen solle, dises alles bitte gehörigen hochen orths a’ parte zue referieren und mich unverzüglich zuvurbeschaiden. Johann Christoph Kindsberg to Leopold I, Edirne, 20 February 1673: ÖStA HHStA Staatsabteilungen, Türkei I (Turcica) Kart. 144, Konv. 2. fol. 112rv; on this issue, see Hering, Panagiotis Nikousios, 174.

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completely devastated by the civil war, they were unable to bring a more significant gift than the entire Kingdom of Hungary (Der Petrőzi und ihre commissaren hetten zwar für dißmall, weil sie von den Teutschen ganzlich spolirt, kein großes und vornembens praesent ihrem sultan, als daß ganze Khöngreich Ungarn und den gehorsamb selbiger ungarischen treuern ständten zu überbringen, mit welcher die Porten verhoffentlich wohl zu frieden sein wirdt).21 At the end of the report, Kindsberg lists where the leaders of the rebels were located (Mihály Teleki in Transylvania, Szuhay in Upper Hungary, Pál Szepessy in Wallachia, and Petrőczi and Kende on their way to Edirne), and added, “God willing, these five rebels will pay with their lives and thus the evil deed they have planned will now be prevented (Gott gebe, daß diße fünff rebellen von leben zum tott gebracht und dan durch ihre üble vorhaben dermahlen verhindert werden).”22 News from Hungary communicated by the emperor to his permanent envoy in Constantinople in a letter from Vienna dated 23 April 1673 seems to suggest that the Ottomans stationed on Hungarian soil were still working together with the rebels. In particular, the rebels had attacked Nagykálló and Tokaj, where they took twenty-five German musketeers captive and sold them as slaves in Eger, the seat of the Ottoman vilayet. The imperial court thought that another delegation from the exiles was on its way, although the names were not the same as those above. According to this information from Vienna, the exiles had held a meeting (congregatio) at Somlyó (perhaps Szilágysomlyó/ Şimleu Silvaniei), from where Zsigmond Forgách, Gábor Kende and Boldizsár Mikolay had set off for the Porte. The advisors of the emperor were of the opinion that this effort would not result in anything more than Pál Szepessy had achieved.23 In conclusion, Kindsberg’s dispatch, with its version of the statement of subjugation brought by the Hungarians, enables us to determine more precisely when the statement was written and provides us with an insight into the series 21  Johann Christoph Kindsberg to Leopold I, Edirne, 13 April 1673: ÖStA HHStA Staatsabteilungen, Türkei I (Turcica) Kart. 145, Konv. 1. fol. 15r. 22  Johann Christoph Kindsberg to Leopold I, Edirne, 13 April 1673: ÖStA HHStA Staatsabteilungen, Türkei I (Turcica) Kart. 145, Konv. 1. fol. 16r. 23  Leopold I to Johann Christoph Kindsberg, Vienna 23 April 1673: ÖStA HHStA Staatsabteilungen, Türkei I (Turcica) Kart. 145, Konv. 2. fols. 127–128.

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of attempts by the rebelling Hungarian nobles to obtain the sultan’s support for their cause. The attitude of the Porte was completely dismissive. Contributing to this was the grand vizier’s personal failure to wrest Hungary from the Habsburg dynasty in 1663 due to the resistance of the Hungarian Estates. The attempts continued, however, and success came a few years later, when Imre Thököly took over the leadership of the rebels.24

appendix Petition by rebel Hungarian nobles for complete submission to the Ottoman Porte (1672) ÖStA HHStA Türkische Urkunden 1669–1670 (1672 XI–XII)

Hüve!

Saadetlü ve mürevvetlü sultanum hazretleri sağ olsun // geçen sene tarafımuzdan gönderilen elçi kulları ile her ahvallerimüzi murad // olduğı üzre eğer ağızdan ve eğer arz-i hal ile huzur-i izzetinüze // ilam eyleyüb malum-i saadetinüz olmış idi bu defa dahi ahval-i // ser-neccamımuz böyledür ki Nemçe kafirinün ayin-i batılaları üzre bir ulu //günleri vardur ol-gün mah-i cemaziülahirün yiğirmi dokuzuncı // günidür Nemçe kralı Orta Macar taifesine bir hükm gönderür ki siz ki Orta // Macar halkısız fermanum size vasıl oldukda gerekdür kim umumen pay u // gedanuz bu günden eski dininüzi terk edüb benüm dinüme ki // papasdaş dinidür ona tabi olanuz şöyle kim inad u muhalefet // edüb benüm dinümi kabul etmeyecek olursanuz emrüm bu yüzden // olmışdur-ki büyüklerinüzi katl-i amm idüb kıralar ve evs[a]tlarınuzı // evlad u ensablarıyla esir-bend giriftar eyleyeler ve dahi ednalarınuzı // mameleket ellerinden alub vilayetden taşra süreler gördük kim // hala ayrıksı oldı ihmal edecek olursak istedüğin // eşedd bi-z-zaruri geldikim dinimüzi ve memleketimüzi şerr u fesad//larından halas etmekiyçün cemiyet edüb askerleri // vilayetimüzi gelüb girmeden evvel biz üzerlerine varuruz bu // defa vaki olan cemiyetimüzde cenk [u] cidalimüze bais bu // olmışdur Nemçe kralınun daima adeti bu-dur her kaçan ki bir memleket // feth u teshirini murad 24  Sándor Papp, ‘Szabadság vagy járom? A török segítség kérdése a XVII. század végi magyar rendi mozgalmak idején’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 116:2–3 (2003) 633–669.

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eyleye ibtida bu takrir eyledüğümüz ahvalleri kendi // mühüriyle bir nice kağıdlara yazub ol memleketün her bir köşesine perakende // eder hala ol kağıdlar Orta Macar içinde elden ele gezmek üzere//dir devletinüzde bu defa bu denlüce gayret u himayet idüb // hakkınuzdan gelüb cevab verdük amma bundan sonra Nemçe kralınun // hareket ü hicranı Orta Macar fukarasına vardukça ezdiyad // bulub bu gün gine bizden ahz-i intikam25 içün asker-i // karavulun gönderüb gelüb vilayetimüze girüb bazımuzı // kırub ve bazımuzı esir idüb bazımuzı dahi // mameleket alub vilayetden sürüb ve kalelerimüzi // soyub alet-i zarb-i harbın aldukdan-sonra umumen Orta // Macarı zabt etmesi mukarrerdür ve hala kurb-i civarımuzda // olan Hayduşak dedikleri bir gerdeh ve serhaddlerimüzde bazı // sancaklar saadetlü padişahımuz tarafına itaatları malum olsun // içün ol cemiyetimüze maen bulunub bir hayli Nemçe kafirine kılıç // urub kahr eylemişlerdür el-hamdu l-illahi teala bu aralıkda bir nice // güzide karib kale ve palangalarımuzı kimin zar-zor ve kimin müdara ile ellerinden // alub halas eyledük ve bu zikr olunan sancaklar ve Hayduşak taifesi saadetlü padişahimüzün kulluğına ve hizmet-i şeriflerine // kemal-i sadakat ve istikamet [ile] beraber bağlamışlardur üste // yanımuzda bir kaç26 sancaklar dahi vardur biz27 dahi size tabi oluruz // diyü söz vermişlerdür ve memleketimüz içinde papasdaş dininde // olan bir kaç ruhbanlar Rakotşi oğlı karısı // ile yek-dil ve yek-cihet olub daima Nemçe kralına kağıd // gönderirler ki Orta Macar taifesinün min bad ne saadetlü // padişah tarafından ve ne Erdel tarafından bir vechle imdadları // yokdur bu tedarüki ve bu cemiyeti kendü rey-i tedbirleriyle // etmişlerdür bu daima tahrib itmek28 üzeredürler netice-i kelam // bu ana değin Nemçe kafiri ile üç defa cenk-i azımımuz vaki // olub cenk-i evvel ve cenk-i sanide hakk-i teala bize fırsat // verdi çok kafir kırub toprağa düşürdük üçüncide // küffarun girüden yardımı gelüb azdılar böldiler cenki tehir eyleyüb // Tisa suyınun öte canibinde ve berü canibinde bizüm askerimüz // cemiyet üzre hazır u amade olub durdıyorlar29 // ve gine her gün ceteciler durmayub birbirine varub gelüb // cenkden hali değillerdür belki 25  Written with a ‘d’ in the original ( ) 26  In the original kah, the three dots were left out. 27  In the original bir, the dot above the ‘z’ was left out. 28  Corrected in the original: tah. rīk ėtmek (as if the stem of the ‘kef ’ had been crossed out later). The text is incomprehensible with the change. 29  In the original, this is written durdıyorlar.

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şimdiye değin cenk-i azim dahi vaki // olmuşdur daima ahvalimüzi Budun ve Eğre ve Uyvar ve Varat // paşalarına ilam eylemekden hali değilüz bize bir imdadları yok // eğer bu serhaddlarda olan askerden Erdel askerinden bizüm ile maen // bir mikdar adem olaydı Nemçe kafiri aslan vilayetimüze el uzatmağa kadir olmayub her yüzden vilayetimüzi kurturmağa kadir // olurduk amma nice eyidelüm bu denlüce asker ile ancak // bu mikdar hareket kadir olduk bir kulluğımuzda ve itaatımuzda her // vechle sabit kademüz eğer döğüp kovarsanuz dahi asitane-i // devletinüze terk etmek ihtimalimüz yokdur kapunuza na-murad gelen // ber-murad ve ağlayu gelen köle gitmişdür bu kulları bu nice zamandur // rikab-i hümayuna yüz sürüb adem gönderirüz ve her vechle // merhamet ve şefkat ümid ederüz aslen ve katen bir cevab-i // şafi buyurılmaz bu hususda mütehayyir ve ser-gerdan olduk // vilayetimüz içinde ve dostımuz ve düsmanımuz güft [ü] guya düşüb bizi // hud aceb eyleyeler ki bunca zemandur varub gelüb itaat // ederler ne saadetlü padişah tarafından ve ne Erdel hakimi tarafından bunlara // bir imdad ve iltifat olunmadı dimeğe başladılar cümleden // artık bu gayret bizi helak eyledi hala bu güne değin // Nemçe kafiri elinden çıkduğımuz eziyet ve ser-gerdanlığımuz // ol asitane-i saadetde itaat eyledigimüz içündür // vaki halimüzi künhiyle sultanum hazretlerine ilam eyledük // Allahu teala ve Resul devletlü başınuz ve saadetlü padişah başıyçün // olsun bu fakir kullarınuzun haline merhamet ve şefakat ve ahval-i // perişanınuza tekayyüd-i şerifinüz olub bizi na-murad komayub // kulluğınuza kabul eyleyüb beynü l-akran mümtaz ve ser-firaz // eyleyüb kendü ayagıyla doğruyub kelehini mahrum göndermeğe // şah-i şerifinüze ve devlet-i aliyenüze layık görmeyüb bizi dahi // sayir bende-i efgendelerinüz zümresine ilhak buyurub // baz-i hususımuzda muavenet u mutaheret üzre olub // imdadimüzde bulunmagıyçün serhadd beğlerbeğilerine ve Erdel hakimine // tenbih buyurasız el bizüm ve emn [ve] mürüvvet ü merhamet sultanum // hazretlerinündür inşa’llahu teala bundan-sonra kadir olduğımuz // mertebe olığeldüği üzre hedaya u pişkeşimüz ile baş // elçimüz dahi hazır u müheyyadur her vechle kulluğımuz ve ahd // u emanımuza istihkam buldurmagıyçün asitane-i saadetde // bulmamız30 mukarredür mürevvetlü efendimden ricamuz budur-ki // bu varan elçimüzi çok eğlendirmeyüb bir gün // mukaddem bir cevab-i şafi ile berü tarafa yollatmağa ihsan // eyleyesiz 30  In the original, this is written bullmamız. If it were by chance yollamamız, then saadete would be correct instead of asitane-i saadetde.

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ki biz dahi ne hizmet ve ne kullukda olduğumuzı // bilüb ona göre tedarükimüzi görevüz zira kim Nemçe // kafirleri günden güne şerr u fesada ağaz eyleyeler vaki // halimüz budur-ki sultanum hazretlerine ilam eyledük // baki ferman mürüvvet u ihsan sultanum hazretlerinündür. Bendegan-i umumen fukara-yi Orta Macar Copia d’un Memoniale delli Ribelli presentato al G: V: [Gran Vesir] Translation

Our felicitous and compassionate Lordship (sultan), may your greatness be

healthy! Last year our envoy (elçi) was sent as your servant, who explained all of our affairs in person and in writing in accordance with your wishes in your honourable presence, which you so graciously recognized. Now the essence of our matter is that the great days of the Austrian unbeliever have come. This day was on the 29th of the month of Cemaziülahir (2 November 1671 or 22 October 1672). The Austrian king sent a command to the people of Central Hungary:31

31  I do not know of this memorandum of Leopold I. It is possible that the date is incorrect and indicates the document dated 21 March 1671 that was also issued. There is no modern publication of this document, which is of great interest from a historical perspective. Its most complete text was published in French in the eighteenth century. There is also an abridged version in Hungarian from the very beginning of the nineteenth century. Histoire des troubles de Hongrie. Vol. I. Paris, 1685, 320–326; Notitia historia comitatis Zempleniensis per Antonium Szirmay de Szirma. Edita et indicibus provisa industria Martini Georgi Kovachich. Typis Regiae Universitatis Pestanae, 1804, 229–230. The full Latin text can be found under the reference mark ÖStA Hoffinanzarchiv, Hoffinanz Ungarn, 21 March 1671. Hungarian historiography has not acknowledged that this text does not list the tribute taken from the counties and does not make a direct attack against the Protestants. I can find no evidence that the document cited by the Turkish text, calling upon the Protestant subjects to convert, was created at the Habsburg chancellery. I have not found traces of anything similar either in Hungarian historical documents or in the archives in Vienna, and such a demand would have been in contradiction of the spirit of leadership of the Habsburg Empire. I would like to thank András Oross, the Hungarian archival delegate of the HHStA and the Hoffinanzarchiv for finding the manuscript preserved in the archives in Vienna for me.

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“People of Central Hungary, on the day when my order arrives, it will be necessary that you beggars must universally abandon your old religion and join my confession, which is the faith of the Pope. If you show hostility and disagreement, and do not accept my faith, then the greatest of you will be slaughtered and injured, your middle class along with its children and descendants will be placed in captivity, and your lowest class will be driven out of their homeland, which will be taken from them.” We see that the matter has become extreme. If we do not take it seriously, the greatest danger will unavoidably befall us. Defending our faith and land from the evil and damage we have incurred, we must march against his army before they come to us. This was the reason for us to congregate and to fight at this time. This is the eternal custom of the Austrian king: If he at any time conquers and subjugates a land, he first writes down the aforementioned conditions on paper and signs and seals this and sends it to every corner of the country. Now these letters are travelling from hand to hand in Central Hungary. We felt trust and protection to such an extent from your Lordship that we replied to them, “you will be punished”. However, hereupon the encroachment and intervention of the Austrian king reached the poor of Central Hungary and increased their poverty. On this day he has again sent troops against us with the aim of vengeance, who have come and invaded our country and broken some of us, taken others captive and dispossessed others of their estates and driven them off their land. They have looted our castles and taken away our armaments, thereby fulfilling the conquest of Central Hungary. Therefore to testify to our loyalty to our blessed padishah, the district known as the Hajdúság near to our borders and some another [Hungarian] counties (sancaks) joined our troops and attacked with the sword the many disbeliever Germans and showed their bravery. Thanks to the exalted God, we were able to retrieve castles and palisades, some of which had fallen from their hands through effort and some of them through artifice. The aforementioned counties (sancaks) and the people of the Hajdúság showed perfect devotion and loyalty through their noble efforts for the blessed padishah and became his servants (kulluğuna), joining this noble service. Beyond this, there are a number of counties alongside us who have promised, “we will join you”. 455

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There are in our country a few monks of the religion of the Pope (papasdaş), they have one heart and soul (yek-dil u yek-cihet ‘completely agree’ ) with the wife [Zsófia Báthory] of the son of Rákóczi (Rakotşi oğlı = George II Rákóczi). They constantly send letters to the German king, [claiming] that “the people of Central Hungary hereafter will not have any help from either the blessed padishah or from Transylvania. They have made these preparations and assemblies only upon their own intention and they are constantly getting weaker”. The essence of the words (netice-i kelam) [is the following]: Up to this moment we have had three great fights with the German unbelievers. In the first and second clashes the exalted God allowed us to break the unbelievers and pound them into the dust. In the third case, the unbelievers once again received help, but they became flustered and fell apart, and the fight was delayed.32 Our soldiers have gathered on the other side and this side of the Tisza River and they are ready and prepared. The raiders are coming and going without stop, fighting one another, and the clashes have no end. Perhaps even bigger clashes have taken place by now. We inform the pashas of Buda, Eger, Várad and Újvár ceaselessly about our situation. We do not get any help from them. If some of the [Ottoman] soldiers on this frontier and the Transylvanian soldiers were to join ours, the German unbelievers would not have been able to reach their hand out to our country at all and we would have been able to defend our country. But whatever we would have to say, we were only able to do this much with this many soldiers. In our service and in our loyalty we are in every way firm. Even if we will be driven off with whips, there is no way to break us away from the felicitous Porte. We are like the servant who comes to your gate hopelessly but at departure all his desires are fulfilled and he is relieved (na-murad gelen ve ber-murad ve ağlayu gelen köle), we, your servants, have been rubbing our faces at the imperial threshold for a while and sending our men, and we hope in every way for mercy and compassion. However, since we have not received any answers from you, we have been surprised and left to wonder (mütehayyir u ser-gerdan). 32  The text is not clear. In reality, the Habsburg forces gained the advantage over the rebels.

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In our country, both our friends and our enemies talk about this (güft [ü] guya düşüb). They are surprised and have started to say, “These people have been loyal for a long time, yet they have not received any kind of help or attention from the blessed padishah or the prince of Transylvania.” All of this effort has only brought to us destruction. Now, we have announced the truth of the torture to your greatness of how we have been able to get free from the hands of the Germans and our confusion at our present situation which has come from our loyal allegiance to your greatness. For the exalted God, his blessed Messenger (Mohammed), for your illustrious head and for the blissful head of the majestic padishah, look at the condition of these poor servants with benevolence and grace; turn your noble attention to our sad situation, and do not push us into hopelessness, receive us among your servants and make us distinguished and primary among them, to stand on our own feet, it should not be worthy of the noble shah and majestic empire to leave us alone! Receive us among your submissive servants! Please provide protection and support in some of our affairs, and encourage the beys on the frontier and the Transylvanian prince to give us support. The country is ours, but security, generosity and mercy belongs to his majesty our sultan! Thanks to the exalted God, our ambassador is now prepared and ready [for departure] with presents and gifts of money (hedaya ve pişkeş) based of our ability and the custom. Certainly, in order to have our service accepted, to secure our treaty (ahd) and your protection (eman) for us, we will be present at the sublime Porte. Your honourable Lordship, our request of you is not to keep our envoy (elçi) for a long time, but to return him to us as soon as possible with a satisfactory answer. And as soon as we know how to serve and what kind of service we will be in, we will look to our preparations, whereas the unbelieving Germans are violent and harming us every day. Such is our situation, as we have told it to your Lordship. Otherwise, the decision, generosity and magnanimity are his majesty my sultan’s prerogative. All of the poor in Central Hungary. Copia d’un Memoriale delli Ribelli presentato al G: V: [Grand Vizier] 457

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ROMA ÇASARIYLA ŞEVKETLÜ PADİŞAHIMUZUN SULH [U] SALAHI OLUB – THE TWO ALİ PASHAS OF TEMEŞVAR ON THE HABSBURG, HUNGARIAN AND OTTOMAN FRONTIER AT THE TIME OF THE RÁKÓCZI WAR OF INDEPENDENCE * Hajnalka Tóth University of Szeged, Hungary [email protected]

The war in the last third of the seventeenth century that resulted in the

Ottoman Empire’s loss of dominance in East Central Europe came to an end in January 1699 with the signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz between the members of the Holy League (the Habsburg Monarchy, Venice, Poland) and the Ottoman Empire. And a separate armistice was also declared between the Russians and the Ottomans.1 The twenty articles of the Habsburg–Ottoman

*  The present study was supported by a János Bolyai Research Scholarship entitled “Temes­ vári Oszmán aga diplomáciai tevékenysége a 17–18. század fordulóján a Habsburg–oszmán határvidéken, 2016–2019”. – The translation of the quotation in the title: “Our majestic padishah is at peace with and has complete trust in the Holy Roman Emperor”. Ali Pasha of Temeşvar (Temesvár/Timişoara) to Sándor Károlyi. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (henceforth ÖNB), Mxt. 175, fol. 17r. 1  On the peace negotiations of the Treaty of Karlowitz, see Ignác Acsády, A karlo­viczi béke története, 1699. Budapest, 1899; László Szita and Gerhard Seewann, A karlócai béke és Európa: Dokumentumok a karlócai béke történetéhez, 1698–1699. Pécs, 1999, XXV–L; Mónika F. Molnár, ‘Der Friede von Karlowitz und das Osmanische Reich’, in Robert Spannenberg

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peace treaty of Karlowitz specified what territories were to be assigned between the two empires. One of the biggest territorial changes was the transfer of Transylvania to the control of Austria. In addition to drawing new borders, the treaty provided rules governing castles, fortresses, towns and villages close to the frontiers, the prohibition of looting, the handling of rebellious or dissatisfied subjects, the exchange of prisoners of war and the protection of merchants. Following renewed military conflict between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, lasting from 1716 to 1718, another peace treaty was concluded in Passarowitz (Požarevac) in 1718.2 These treaties, at least theoretically, assured settled living conditions and properly-organized administration for subjects on the two sides of the border for the next decade and a half. Although there was peace between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, there was an insurrection in the Kingdom of Hungary, whose territories, except for the Banat region in the south, which remained and Arno Strohmeyer (eds.), Frieden und Konfliktmanagement in interkulturellen Räumen: Das Osmanische Reich und die Habsburgmonarchie in der Frühen Neuzeit. Stuttgart, 2013, 197–220; Mónika F. Molnár, ‘The Treaty of Karlowitz in the Venetian Sources: Diplomacy and Ceremony’, in Hasan Celal Güzel, Cem C. Oğuz and Osman Karatay (eds.), The Turks. Vol. 3: Ottomans. Ankara, 2002, 405–414. For the Latin text of the Habsburg–Ottoman treaty, see István Katona, Historia critica regum Hungariae stirpis Austriacae: 1526–1710. Vol. 36. Budae, 1805, 106–125. For the Ottoman Turkish text of the treaty, see Muahedat Mecmuası. Vol. 3. İstanbul, 1297/1880, 92–102; Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât. Tah­ lil ve Metin. 1066–1116 (1656–1704). Ed. by Abdülkadır Özcan. Ankara, 1995, 654–662; Silâhdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Ağa, Nusretnâme. Vol. 1. İstanbul, 1962, 357–364. For the Venetian-Ottoman treaty, see Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât, 667–672; Silâhdar, Nusretnâme, 365–370. For the Polish–Ottoman treaty, see Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât, 662–667; Silâhdar, Nusretnâme, 371–375. For the Russian and German versions of the Russian–Ottoman treaty, see Sándor Gebei, ‘Az orosz–török béketárgyalások Karlócán és Konstantinápoly­ ban, 1699–1700’, Aetas 17:2 (2001) 134–154, especially 141: note 16. This treaty was signed in Constantinople on 3 June 1700. On the Russian–Ottoman treaty, see Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât, 692–698. 2  For the most recent Hungarian literature in the topic, see Sándor Papp, ‘A pozsareváci békekötés és a magyarok’, Aetas 33:4 (2018) 5–19; Ferenc Tóth, A ‘ francia külpolitika és Magyar­ ország a pozsareváci béke idején’, Aetas 33:4 (2018) 20–34; Mónika F. Molnár, ‘Karlócától Pozsarevácig: A Velencei Köztársaság és az Oszmán Birodalom kapcsolata olasz szemmel’, Aetas 33:4 (2018) 35–51.

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under Ottoman control, had been acquired by the Habsburg Monarchy. The Rákóczi War of Independence, which lasted from 1703 until 1711, was a reaction to the authority, laws and policies of the Habsburg government in Vienna. Hungarian historians have made extensive studies of the war, but for a long time, they paid little attention to the Ottoman issue: the diplomacy or the background, aims, opportunities and results of Rákóczi’s attempts to establish relations with the Porte. Kálmán Benda was the scholar to produce the first significant work on this subject in 1962.3 Then, in 1982, Éva Bóka dealt with the issue in her study on the embassy of Charles de Ferriol at the Ottoman court.4 An article by Sándor Papp published in 2004, focusing on the diplomatic activities of Rákóczi during his War of Independence, was an essential starting point for subsequent research.5 Then Gábor Vatai conducted research into diplomatic relations at the time, considering the realities of an Ottoman alliance.6 As soon as the rebellion in Hungary started, Ferenc Rákóczi directed his diplomatic efforts towards obtaining Ottoman assistance. Until 1705 (according to Benda) or 1704 (Vatai), Rákóczi had been planning to ask for Ottoman support in freeing Transylvania and nominating Imre Thököly as prince of Transylvania.7 Although memories of the century and a half of Ottoman rule over his country must have been on Rákóczi’s mind as he sought sources of support, he wanted to rule as prince of Transylvania and – after 1706 – he had no chance of attaining this ambition without gaining some kind of support from the Ottoman Empire. Kuruc8–Ottoman relations were affected by the foreign political environment, the position and the intentions of Western and Eastern European countries, and the Porte’s assertion of its interests within the confines of the prevailing legal framework. So what was 3  Kálmán Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc török politikájának első évei 1702–1705’, Történelmi Szemle 5:2 (1962) 189–209. 4  Éva Bóka, ‘Charles de Ferriol portai követsége’, Történelmi Szemle 25:3 (1982) 519–536. 5  Sándor Papp, ‘A Rákóczi-szabadságharc török diplomáciája’, Századok 138:4 (2004) 793–821. 6  Gábor Vatai, ‘Út az irrealitásba: Rákóczi török diplomáciája a szabadságharc idején’, Keletkutatás 2011. ősz, 91–108. 7  Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 191; Vatai, ‘Út az irrealitásba’, 91. 8  The term kuruc denotes anti-Habsburg rebels in Royal Hungary from the 1670’s until 1711.

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the Porte motivated by? What served the interests of the Ottoman decisionmakers? And what change did this bring to the Habsburg–Kuruc–Ottoman frontier in the first years of Rákóczi’s War of Independence? Here, I offer some information that throws light on these questions, gained from documents dated from 1705 to 1707 in the collection(s)9 Kitab-i İnşa of Osman Ağa of Temeşvar (Temesvár/Timişoara).

CHAOS IN THE OTTOMAN GOVERNMENT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The Porte was bound by the 1699 treaty with the Habsburg Monarchy. The

Ottoman Empire had suffered severe military and economic losses, and this was the first agreement in its history that was considered as anything but a momentary break in war. Indeed, the treaty provided the Ottomans with their only chance to keep their territories in the Balkans – at least for a decade and a half.10 This did not mean that the Ottoman government lacked influential members who supported another war. However, until September 1702, Grand Vizier Köprülü Amcazade Hacı Hüseyin Pasha (17 September 1697– 9  This paper is based on documents from two collections (münşeat) kept in public collections in Vienna: ÖNB, Mxt. 175 and Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (henceforth ÖStA HHStA), Konsularakademie, Kt. 9. Orientalische Handschriften (henceforth OHSch), No. 125. Authors usually apply the term Kitab-i İnşa (“Book of Letters”) to the collection in the archives, but here it is also applied to the collection in the library. On the relationship between the two manuscripts, see Hajnalka Tóth, ‘Temesvári Oszmán Aga levélgyűj­ teménye: Habsburg–oszmán–kuruc határvidéki konfliktusok a 18. század elején’, in Emese Egyed and László Pakó (eds.), Előadások a Magyar Tudomány napján az Erdélyi MúzeumEgyesület I. szakosztályában. (Certamen, 3.) Kolozsvár, 2016, 286–287; Hajnalka Tóth, ‘Vár, sánc vagy őrház?: Miket építettek az erdélyi–temesközi határvidék Habsburg-oldalán a karlócai békekötés után?’, Keletkutatás 2017. ősz, 34: note 6. 10  Cf. Rifa’at A. Abu-el-Haj, ‘The Formal Closure of the Ottoman Frontier in Europe: 1699–1703’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 89:3 (1967) 467–475. The Porte had to employ force against the rebellious tribes and military forces in the Crimean Khanate who were dissatisfied with the treaty and its consequences. Hajnalka Tóth, ‘A karlócai béke és a Krími Kánság’, Keletkutatás 2012. tavasz, 19–31. Cf. the 3 September 1701 report of the French Charles de Ferriol, ambassador at the Ottoman court, cited by Bóka, ‘Charles de Ferriol’, 531.

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4 September 1702)11 definitely favoured peace. After his resignation, the ideology of war was briefly reasserted during the brief tenure as grand vizier of Daltaban Mustafa Pasha (4 September 1702–24 January 1703).12 He intended to restore Ottoman prestige to compensate for the enormous losses suffered in the Treaty of Karlowitz.13 His political orientation could also have provided a more favourable background for the Hungarian War of Independence. However, Mustafa Pasha was relieved of his office before attaining his military goals. For the next seven months (25 January 1703–22 August 1703), Rami Mehmed Pasha, the statesman who represented the empire in the peace talks leading to the signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz,14 was appointed as grand vizier, and the Porte bound itself strictly to the terms of the agreement. The government of the empire was wrestling with difficulties, as clearly reflected by a military coup in summer 1703 that deposed Mustafa II (1695–1703) and put Ahmed III (1703–1730) on the throne. The first exploratory talks between Rákóczi and the Ottoman government and frontier officials may have been held, with the mediation of French envoys, under the grand vizierate of Mehmed Pasha, who was an excellent diplomat and a pacifist. According to available sources, the first envoys of Rákóczi arrived in Constantinople on 6 September 1703. This is recorded in a dispatch sent to Charles Hedges (Secretary of State, northern department) by George Stepney, English envoy extraordinary to Vienna, based on a dispatch from Robert

11  On the pasha and his political orientation, see İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi. Vol. 3. Part 1: II. Selim’in Tahta Çıkışından 1699 Karlofça Andlaşmasına Kadar. Ankara, 1988, 587; Joseph Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches. Pesth, 1835, III. 907; IV. 36–40; Münir Aktepe, ‘Amcazâde Hüseyin Paşa’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi (henceforth TDVİA). Vol. 3. İstanbul, 1991, 8–9. 12  On the pasha, see Abdülkadir Özcan, ‘Daltaban Mustafa Paşa’, in TDVİA. Vol. 8. İstanbul, 1993, 433–434. 13  On the military plans of the pasha (he was about to occupy Buda), see Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte, IV. 41–48; Johann Wilhelm Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches in Europa. Vol. 5. Gotha, 1857, 333–335; Tóth, ‘A karlócai béke’, 29. 14  Recep Ahıshalı, ‘Râmi Mehmed Paşa’, in TDVİA. Vol. 34. İstanbul, 2007, 449–451; Rifa’at A. Abou-el-Haj, ‘Ottoman Diplomacy at Karlowitz’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 87:4 (1967) 498–512.

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Sutton, English ambassador to Constantinople.15 It was also mentioned by Michael Talman, secretary at the Habsburg embassy, who became a resident of Constantinople in April 1704, in a dispatch from Belgrade.16 Because of the events in Hungary, the Habsburg government was anxious to know what contacts were being established between the two countries (Rákóczi’s state and the Sublime Porte), but the pasha of Belgrade calmed Talman’s fears by assuring him that the Ottomans were inclined to comply with the treaty.17 Rákóczi’s envoys arrived in Ottoman territory at the beginning of September, and may have been greeted by Grand Vizier Kavanoz Ahmed Pasha (22 August 1703–11 November 1703),18 but Sutton’s dispatch of 18 October states that they were still staying in Constantinople at that time and were about to win the support of the new grand vizier with the help of the French envoy. We are

15  Deputys from Rakotzi arriv’d at Constantinople on the 6th and found a very favorable reception from the Ministers of the Port. Dispatch by George Stepney to Charles Hedges, Vienna, 26 September 1703: Ernő Simonyi (ed.), Angol diplomáciai iratok II. Rákóczi Ferencz korára. Angol levéltárakból. (Archivum Rákóczianum. II. Rákóczi Ferencz levéltára. Bel- és külföldi irattárakból bővítve, II/1.) Pest, 1871, 36; quoted by Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 195: note 21; Bóka, ‘Charles de Ferriol’, 535. 16  Gleich anjezo khombt mir von sicherer hand nachricht, das etliche Hungarn von dem Ragozy an die Ottomanische Porten geschikht gewesen, alß den 7 septembris abends in das türkischen landt angekhomen seyend… Dispatch from Michael Talman to the Hofkriegsrat [Imperial War Council]. ÖStA Kriegsarchiv (KA), Hofkriegsrat (HKR) Acten No. 271. Expedit 1703, cited by Papp, ‘A Rákóczi-szabadságharc’, 796. According to Papp, Talman’s dispatch confirmed that some (presently unknown) envoys had entered the territory of the Ottoman Empire. – On Talman’s activities, see János Szabados, ‘Michael Talman konstantinápolyi Habsburg rezidens két jelentése az Udvari Haditanács részére (1705. július 25. és augusztus 13.)’, Fons 20:3 (2013) 385–386; János Szabados, ‘Hírek Konstantinápolyból 1705 derekán: A nagypolitika történései egy Habsburg diplomata szemüvegén keresztül’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 128:1 (2015) 76; Hajnalka Tóth, ‘Török kereskedők nehézségei a kuruc korban – avagy hogyan ne kereskedjünk Magyarországon a Rákóczi-szabadságharc idején’, Acta Historica 143 (2018) 87–106. 17  Dispatch from Michael Talman to the Hofkriegsrat. Belgrade, 24 February 1703: ÖStA KA HKR Acten, No. 271. 1703. Expedit; ÖStA HHStA, Staatenabteilungen, Türkei I. Kt. 177. Konv. 1, fols. 127–132; Papp, ‘A Rákóczi-szabadságharc’, 796. On the question of the identity of the pasha of Belgrade, see later. 18  On the pasha and his activities, see Abdülkadir Özcan, ‘Ahmed Paşa, Kavanoz’, in TDVİA. Suppl. 1. İstanbul, 2016, 49–50.

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unable to confirm this.19 We do not know whether Ahmed Pasha showed any interest in the Hungarian events, but he had no real opportunities to do anything for the Hungarians or make them any promises. It seemed obvious to Sutton that the grand vizier would have been willing to help them, but he also mentioned the pasha’s hesitation and the envoy also claimed to be certain that the pasha was not going to hold his position for a long time.20 The first period that seemed propitious for Rákóczi to start developing relations with the Ottomans – which meant starting negotiations or asking for actual help – was the grand vizierate of Moralı Damad Hasan Pasha (18 November 1703–28 September 1704), brother-in-law of the sultan, who was of Morean origin.21 However, Michael Talman praised the grand vizier for not being willing to plunge into war.22 After the appointment of Hasan Pasha, a number of changes took place among the pashas serving in frontier eyalets, for example, in Belgrade,23 Temeşvar24 19  Robert Sutton to an English under-secretary of state, Constantinople, 18 October 1703: Simonyi (ed.), Angol diplomáciai iratok, 44–45. 20  Ibid., 45. 21  On the pasha and his activities, see Münir Aktepe, ‘Hasan Paşa, Damad’, in TDVİA. Vol. 16. İstanbul, 1997, 336. 22  On the basis of Michael Talman’s reports dated 3 December 1703 and 9 April 1704; see Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 196. 23  According to Benda, on the basis of Michel Talman’s dispatch of 3 December 1703, Ali Pasha in Belgrade was replaced by the pasha from Thessaloniki, who was fostering pro-Habsburg sentiment. Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 196. Moreover, in a letter dated 18 October 1703, Robert Sutton wrote that the pasha of Temeşvar became governor-general of Belgrade, and the pasha of Sofia was sent to Temeşvar. Simonyi (ed.), Angol diplomáciai iratok, 45. These frequent changes makes the identification of some pashas extremely difficult, because the new pasha may not have had enough time to take up his position in situ before being removed again. Before being sent to Belgrade, (İzmirli?) Ali Pasha sent a letter to Vienna on 23 August 1703 to congratu­ late on his appointment, which confirms his own appointment in Belgrade: ÖStA HHStA Staatenabteilungen, Türkei I. Kt. 176. Konv. 1, fols. 140–141. If he is the person who was mentioned by Sutton in his letter, we could conclude that Ali Pasha had previously been the Otto­man governor of Temeşvar. Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Pasha wrote in respect of the year 1114 (May 1702–May 1703) that it was Ali Pasha originating from Eğriboz (Negroponte) who was appointed to serve in Temeşvar: Zübde-i Vekayiât, 753. Due to these frequent changes, the two pashas mentioned here are not definitely the same two people; what is more, there could even have been one more replacement in that period of a few months. Ali Pasha was

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and Bosnia.25 The identity of some of the new governors in the region is very difficult to trace, but it is certain that in March 1704, İzmirli alias Gümrükçü Ali Pasha was given the title of pasha of Temeşvar, which probably also meant that he was sent back to the Habsburg–Kuruc–Ottoman frontier.26

dismissed in Belgrade after 18 November 1703 and was sent to Niş; and he was replaced by Hasan Pasha. Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât, 753, 838; cf. Lajos Fekete, ‘A Rákóczi– Aspremont-levéltár török iratai’, Levéltári Közlemények 13 (1935) 131. However, we have no information about whether or not Hasan was in Thessaloniki, but it is sure that he served there as a pasha in 1708. 24  The identity of the pasha sent to Temeşvar is also uncertain. Osman Aga’s Prisoner of the Infidels made mention of a certain Koca Hüseyin Pasha, who had been the commander of the guards in the sultan’s garden. Richard Franz Kreutel and Otto Spies, Der Gefangene der Giauren: Die Abenteuerlichen Schicksale des Dolmetschers ʽOsman Ağa aus Temeschwar, von ihm selbst erzählt. Graz, Wien, Leiden, 1962, 205; Oszmán aga, A gyaurok rabságában. Pasák és generálisok között. Trans. by László Jólesz. Notes and preface by Imre Bánkúti. Budapest, 1996, 146. Concerning the year 1116 (May 1704–April 1705), Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Pasha wrote that the pasha of Temeşvar was called Vizier Yusuf Pasha, who had just been relocated: Zübde-i Vekayiât, 842. As we can see, a number of changes took place here as well. 25  Benda concluded from Michael Talman’s dispatch of 3 December 1703 that Elçi İbrahim Pasha, former ambassador to Vienna, became the governor of the vilayet of Bosnia: Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 196. Elçi İbrahim Pasha – former cebecibaşı – had arrived in Vienna as the official ambassador of the Porte in January 1700: Anonim Osmanlı Tarihi (1099–1116/1688– 1704). Ed. by Abdülkadir Özcan. Ankara, 2000, 138. Upon returning home from Vienna, Elçi İbrahim was appointed governor of the vilayet of Temeşvar: Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât, 681; Mónika F. Molnár, ‘Tárgyalási technikák és hatalmi játszmák: A Habsburg és az Oszmán Birodalom közötti határ meghúzása a karlócai békét követően’, Századok 140:6 (2006) 1486; Eadem, Az Oszmán és a Habsburg Birodalom közötti határ kijelölése a karlócai békét követően (1699–1701). PhD Dissertation, Eötvös Loránd University, 2008, 168, 222, accessed 10 December 2018 (pages according to the pdf version of the work); Kreutel and Spies, Der Gefangene der Giauren, 205; Oszmán aga, A gyaurok rabságában, 145. After serving as the pasha of Temeşvar, Elçi İbrahim received the rank of governor-general in Rumelia (Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât, 753; Kreutel and Spies, Der Gefangene der Giauren, 205; Oszmán aga, A gyaurok rabságában, 146); and then he was sent to Bosnia to receive the title of Ottoman vali after Damad Hasan Pasha’s appointment as the grand vizier: Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât, 838. 26  Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât, 841; Fekete, ‘A Rákóczi–Aspremont-levéltár’, 143: note 39.

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CONTACTS BETWEEN THE KURUC ARMY AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN THE FIRST YEARS OF THE RÁKÓCZI WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

We have seen that Rákóczi’s envoys arrived in the Ottoman Empire, under unknown circumstances, in the autumn of 1703. At the beginning of 1704, Rákóczi also sent András Bay,27 who was stopped and sent back by the pasha of Temeşvar.28 Through the good offices of Marquis Charles de Ferriol, French ambassador to Constantinople, János Szent-Andrási finally managed to get to Istanbul in May 1704.29 Public sentiment had changed in the Ottoman government by that time, due above all to the French and Hungarian successes against the Habsburg Monarchy, and the army was demanding military intervention. Real war preparations were made in Constantinople in the first half of the year, and although it was not clear where the war was to be waged, the Habsburg government had good reason to be afraid of the consequences.30 Grand Vizier Hasan Pasha granted permission for over 2,000 Hungarians to return to their homeland under the leadership of Miklós Orlay.31 Moreover, due to the huge number of malcontents in the Ottoman army, especially among 27  On András Bay, see Gusztáv Heckenast, Ki kicsoda a Rákóczi-szabadságharcban? Budapest, 2005, 50–51. 28  Kálmán Thaly (ed.), II. Rákóczi Ferencz leveleskönyvei, levéltárának egykorú lajstromaival. 1703–1712. Vol. 1: (1703–1706) (Archivum Rákóczianum, II. Rákóczi Ferencz levéltára, belés külföldi irattárakból bővítve. Első osztály: had- és belügy, 1.) Pest, 1873, 156, 218, 284; Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 198. It is difficult to tell from the available sources whether it was İzmirli Ali Pasha who sent the envoy back to Hungary; this may have happened due to the replacement of pashas. Michael Talman, in a letter to the Hofkriegsrat sent on 6 March 1704 (ÖStA HHStA Staatenabteilungen, Türkei I. Kt. 176. Konv. 2, fol. 37), wrote that the sultan had granted a hearing to the two envoys of Rákóczi on 3 February, which Benda related to the above mentioned embassy and considered to be false information. 29  Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 198. 30  Dispatch from Michael Talman to the Hofkriegsrat, Constantinople, 6 March 1704: ÖStA HHStA Staatenabteilungen, Türkei I. Kt. 176. Konv. 2, fols. 37–42; Robert Sutton to an English under-secretary of state. Constantinople, 18 January [1704]: Simonyi (ed.), Angol diplomáciai iratok, 112–113; Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 198–200; Vatai, ‘Út az irrealitásba’, 96. 31  Várkonyi Ágnes, ‘A Rákóczi-szabadságharc kibontakozása Erdélyben’, Századok 88:1 (1954) 44; Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 196; Heckenast, Ki kicsoda, 317.

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soldiers on the frontier, he also commanded that the pashas had no right to prevent soldiers from joining the Hungarians if they refrained from displaying the Ottoman flag and avoided wearing their turbans.32 This could have meant 8,000–10,0000 new soldiers, but the Porte did not intend to intervene openly. A messenger sent by the sultan arrived at Rákóczi’s camp in Ordas at the beginning of May to inform Rákóczi that the Porte was willing to let him and his army cross the border and would also provide military support.33 Louis Michel, the secretary of Charles Ferriol, who arrived in the region on 25 May, brought the false or misleading information that there were 10,000 Ottoman soldiers waiting in readiness on the frontier.34 Rákóczi was also doubtful about the help offered by the Ottomans, and he wanted Louis XIV to guarantee that the Ottoman troops were not going to take control of Hungarian territories. Furthermore, Rákóczi was also planning to ask for 4,000 janissary troops and 2,000 sipahi soldiers to be sent to Hungary and Transylvania each and placed solely under Kuruc command.35 Through Michel, he asked the Porte to recruit 6,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry troops for him and to supply provisions and ammunition.36 In the end, the only Ottoman help Rákóczi was offered was a unit of approximately one hundred volunteer soldiers, and no recruitment took place whatsoever.37 Grand Vizier Hasan Pasha was unwilling to break the peace and oppose the Habsburgs directly, but under pressure from the military, 32  Dispatch from Michael Talman to the Hofkriegsrat, Constantinople, 21 April 1704: ÖStA HHStA Staatenabteilungen, Türkei I. Kt. 176. Konv. 2, fols. 49–80; Michael Talman’s report sent to the Hofkriegsrat from Constantinople on 3 June 1704: Ibid., fols. 107–114; Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 199–200, 203; Vatai, ‘Út az irrealitásba’, 97. 33  Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 202. 34  Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 202–203; cf. Papp, ‘A Rákóczi-szabadságharc’, 801; Vatai, ‘Út az irrealitásba’, 97. 35  Ferenc Rákóczi to Pál Ráday, 21 May 1704: Kálmán Benda et al. (eds.), Ráday Pál iratai. Vol. 1. Budapest, 1955, 155; Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 202–203. 36  Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 203. 37  Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 203; cf. Lőrinc Pekry to Ferenc Rákóczi, Küküllővár, 14 January 1705: Géza Lampérth, ‘Gróf Pekry Lőrinc leveleiből: II. Rákóczi Ferencz 1704–5-iki erdélyi hadjáratának történetéhez’, Magyar Történelmi Tár (1899) 462–463; Géza Dávid, ‘Török és tatár katonák Rákóczi seregében’, in Béla Köpeczi, Lajos Hopp and Ágnes R. Várkonyi (eds.), Rákóczi-tanulmányok, Budapest, 1980, 159–167; István Seres, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc török katonái 1708-ban’, Keletkutatás 1996. tavasz, 91–98.

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he kept the option open for a certain time, and he did not want to lose the possibility of turning the consequences of the events taking place in Hungary to his own country’s advantage. Finally, on 28 September 1704, he was relieved of office, and Kalaylıkoz Hacı Ahmed Pasha took over his duties, but only for three months (October 1704–25 December 1704). The latter treated the French envoy in a very hostile manner and did not want to hear about the matter of Hungary.38 Despite the seemingly favourable diplomatic environment, Rákóczi did not manage to start official negotiations because of the Ottoman government’s limited opportunities and safety-first policy. Although the Porte saw the advantageous consequences of events in Hungary, they were not ready to violate the peace treaty they had signed with the Habsburgs. At the end of 1704, Baltacı Mehmed Pasha, who supported the French and was in favour of war, was appointed as grand vizier of the empire (25 December 1704–3 May 1706).39 His nomination seemed to be an important turn for Rákóczi and the War of Independence, and under his reign, Rákóczi assembled the first official group of envoys for a mission to Constantinople under the leadership of András Török.40 Only one, unofficial envoy was actually sent, however: Ferenc Horváth travelled to the Ottoman Empire in August 1705. He was followed by János Pápai, who bore broader authority and was given the task of concluding an alliance with the Ottomans.41 The Habsburg diplomat Michael Talman was of course active at the same time, and following the death of Leopold I on 5 May 1705 and the crowning of Joseph I, Christoph Ignatius 38  George Stepney to Robert Harley, Vienna, 13 December 1704: Simonyi (ed.), Angol diplomáciai iratok, 592–593; İsmail Hami Danişmend, Osmanlı Devlet Erkâni. İstanbul, 1971, 51; Papp, ‘A Rákóczi-szabadságharc’, 801; Vatai, ‘Út az irrealitásba’, 99. 39  On the change of grand viziers, see the dispatch of Michael Talman to the Hofkriegsrat, Constantinople, 24 October 1704: ÖStA HHStA Staatenabteilungen, Türkei I. Kt. 176. Konv. 2, fols. 176–181. On the pasha, see Münir Aktepe, ‘Baltacı Mehmed Paşa’, in TDVİA. Vol. 5. İstanbul, 1992, 35–36. 40  Benda, ‘II. Rákóczi Ferenc’, 205; Papp, ‘A Rákóczi-szabadságharc’, 801–802; Vatai, ‘Út az irrealitásba’, 99–100. On the instructions for the envoy András Török, see Benda et al. (eds.), Ráday Pál iratai, 135–140. 41  Ferenc Rákóczi to Pál Ráday, 29 July 1705: Benda et al. (eds.), Ráday Pál iratai, 283– 284; Papp, ‘A Rákóczi-szabadságharc’, 801–805; cf. Ferenc Rákóczi to the pasha of Temeşvar, Rákóczi’s camp in Vác, 11 July 1705: Benda et al. (eds.), Ráday Pál iratai, 444/3.

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von Quarient und Raal (1706) was sent as envoy extraordinary, in accordance with diplomatic protocol, in an attempt to renew the peace between the two empires. This development was indirectly encouraged by the defeat of Rákóczi and his army at the Battle of Zsibó on 11 November 1705.

THE TWO ALI PASHAS, DEFENDERS OF TEMEŞVAR, AND RÁKÓCZI’S WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

In the meantime, it was both essential and unavoidable for Rákóczi to establish

contact with the local representatives of the Porte on the Habsburg–Kuruc– Ottoman frontier. When Rákóczi set out to occupy Szeged in the summer of 1704, he made a direct contact with the then pasha of Temeşvar.42 İzmirli Ali Pasha was the head of the vilayet between March 1704 and July 1706.43 Several documents and letters are known from the time when he held the title of beylerbeyi: a text by his interpreter, Osman Ağa of Temeşvar starts with a letter from Ferenc Rákóczi to İzmirli Ali.44 The addressee was in fact Ali Pasha, although the date written on the letter – 13 Cemaziülahir 1115/24 October 1703 – is wrong. It states that Rákóczi and his army left the Bácska region and arrived in Szeged, where he started the siege in July 1704, after Ali Pasha’s

42  Robert Sutton’s dispatches also confirm that Rákóczi had negotiated with the representatives of the pashas of Belgrade and Temeşvar: Simonyi, Angol diplomáciai iratok, 369, 371, 407. The governor-general of Belgrade at that time was probably Çakırcı Hasan Pasha. For the excerpts of his letters, see Fekete, ‘A Rákóczi–Aspremont-levéltár’, 131–135. 43  Fekete, ‘A Rákóczi–Aspremont-levéltár’, 143: note 39; see also notes 23 and 24 above. On the sultan’s ordinance addressed to İzmirli Ali, pasha of Temeşvar, see Imre Karácson (ed.), Török–magyar oklevéltár 1533–1789. Budapest, 1914, 318–325. 44  Friedrich Kornuth and Richard Franz Kreutel (eds.), Zwischen Paschas und Generalen. Bericht des ʽOsman Ağa aus Temeschwar über die Höhepunkte seines Wirkens als Diwansdolmetscher und Diplomat. Graz, Wien, Köln, 1966, 17–19; Oszmán aga, A gyaurok rabságában, 153–154. The original manuscript of Osman Ağa, bearing no title or author’s name, is available here: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB), Mxt. 657. Cf. Gustav Flügel, Die arabischen, persischen und türkischen Handschriften der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Hofbibliothek zu Wien. Vol. 2. Wien, 1865, 276: No. 1078.

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transfer to Temeşvar.45 Before the letter was written, the Serbian (Hung. rác) population living close to Szeged had fled to Muslim territories. Rákóczi asked the pasha to allow only those who were willing to settle in the Ottoman Empire to take refuge there. He wished the rest – mainly Serbian hussars and hajdús (heyducks) – to be banished from the country. Rákóczi expressed his hope of Ottoman support and military assistance against the Habsburgs (a pasha with an army of some thousand men and requisite ammunition). The letter and Rákóczi’s message were taken to the pasha of Temeşvar by Count András Csáki and András Török.46 Two previous letters of Grand Vizier Damad Hasan Pasha, dated 8 Zilhicce 1115/13 April 1704, also confirm that the pasha had already forwarded Rákóczi’s letters to the Porte. Moreover, the pasha had been ordered to inform the Porte about the events taking place in Hungary and not to provide the messengers sent by Rákóczi to the Ottoman Empire with the escort customarily due to envoys.47 Ali Pasha’s letters of between June 1704 and 3 April 1706, held in the archives of the Rákóczi–Aspremont family, also prove that the pasha was very eager to gather valuable information and send it to Constantinople, as instructed by the grand viziers.48 He was being supportive and reserved at the 45  Rákóczi began his campaign in the Bácska region on 29 June 1704. He occupied the city of Szeged on 20 July and started the siege of the fortress of Szeged, which he finally abandoned on 13 August. Kálmán Benda (ed.), Magyarország történeti kronológiája. Vol. 2: 1526–1848. Budapest, 1982, 533; cf. Kornuth and Kreutel (eds.), Zwischen Paschas, 132. (The siege of Szeged in the Hungarian translation is wrongly dated 2–13 August. Oszmán aga, A gyaurok rabságában, 229.) Kreutel explains this mistake by claiming that there had been twenty years between the writing and the translation of the letters, and Osman Ağa must have been neglectful when explaining the Ottoman Turkish abbreviations. 46  Kornuth and Kreutel (eds.), Zwischen Paschas, 23; Oszmán aga, A gyaurok rabságában, 157; Bánkúti Imre, A kuruc függetlenségi háború gazdasági problémái (1703–1711). Budapest, 1991, 244. Following the compilation of the letter, Osman Ağa wrote that the pasha let Count Csáki and one of his servants cross the border in order to reach the Porte. On András Csáki and András Török, see Heckenast, Ki kicsoda, 92, 438–439. 47  ÖNB Kodex A.F. 159, Nos. 643, 644; Kornuth and Kreutel (eds.), Zwischen Paschas, 133; Oszmán aga, A gyaurok rabságában, 229–230. 48  Excerpts of the eleven letters written by İzmirli Ali Pasha, see Fekete, ‘A Rákóczi–Aspremont-levéltár’, 143–146. The letters were mainly addressed to Ferenc Rákóczi himself, with two exceptions: one from the pasha to General János Bottyán and another to a French envoy

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same time. During this time, as we have seen, the Ottoman government was led for a couple of months by the peace-minded Kalaylıkoz Hacı Ahmed Pasha, who was replaced by Baltacı Mehmed Pasha in December 1704. İzmirli Ali Pasha sent short letters of similar content, including forwarded letters and information, to Sándor Károlyi in the summer of 1705.49 The collection of Ottoman Turkish letters compiled by Osman Ağa of Temeşvar includes some correspondence of Ali Pasha of Temeşvar. Because the manuscripts in the two archives differ in content, I will refer the version in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB) as MS A and the version in the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (ÖStA HHStA) as MS B. The collection comprises six letters dated 1705, two of which – existing only in MS B – are copies of correspondence between Ali Pasha of Temeşvar and General Johann Friedrich von Globitz50 in Szeged, dated 5 and 14 January 1705.51 Another letter in MS B was written by General “B[i]lzon” in Arad to Ali Pasha of Temeşvar, dated 2 December 1705.52 The pasha’s reply, dated 4 December 1705, exists in both MS A and B.53 Both manuscripts also include copies of correspondence between Sándor Károlyi and Ali Pasha of Temeşvar, dated by the ağa to 24 and 27 December 1705.54 The knowledge that has accrued concerning the letters between Ali Pasha and General Globitz and the undated report related to them seems to bear out the dating, but they contain no further information about the time of the staying with Rákóczi. Lőrinc Pekry wrote about the benevolence of Ali Pasha to Prince Rákóczi. Küküllővár, 14 January 1705: Lampérth, ‘Gróf Pekry Lőrinc’, 462–463. 49  The Hungarian National Archives of the National Archives of Hungary (MNL OL) P 398. The Archives of the Károlyi family, Missiles, Nos. 76 282, 76 283, 76 284. The German versions of the letters translated by Osman Ağa of Temeşvar were sent to the Archives together with the Ottoman Turkish originals. Today, the letters are also available with Hungarian excerpts prepared by Ignác Kúnos. Lőrinc Pekry wrote about the letters sent by the pasha of Temeşvar in his letter of 14 January 1705: Lampérth, ‘Gróf Pekry Lőrinc’, 462. 50  On Johann Friedrich von Globizt, see Heckenast, Ki kicsoda, 160. 51  ÖStA HHStA Konsularakademie, Kt. 9. OHSch, No. 125, fols. 28r–29r, 29r–30v. 52  Ibid., fols. 32r–34v. 53  Ibid., fols. 34v–37r; ÖNB Mxt. 175, fols. 12r–14r. 54  ÖStA HHStA Konsularakademie, Kt. 9. OHSch, No. 125, fols. 37r–38v, 39r–41v; ÖNB Mxt. 175, fols. 14v–15v, 15v–17v. In MS B, the day of the week is not indicated in the date of Károlyi’s letter.

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conflict they describe. The dates in January 1705 fit with the terms of service of both İzmirli Ali Pasha and General Globitz. The Pasha complained that Serbian hajdús in the regions of Csanád and Kanizsa had harassed some merchants who were subjects of the sultan. The pasha sent Osman Ağa to Szeged to investigate the case, search for the culprits, carry out their punishment and effect the return of the stolen goods; Globitz sent Popoviş55 to Temeşvar.56 However, there must have been some mistakes in identifying the persons, dates and content of the correspondence between the “general of Arad” and “Ali Pasha”. If the person referred to as Ali Pasha was İzmirli Ali Pasha, then the identification of the general of Arad – Arad ceneralı B[i]lzon – as Eduard ( Johann) Wilson is problematic, because he is known to have arrived in Arad only in June 1707.57 The writers of both letters mentioned that Arad was being besieged by the Hungarian (Kuruc) troops at the time of writing, and if we suppose that the letters did not refer merely to some minor clashes around Arad, then they must originally have been dated July 1707,58 suggesting that the identity of Wilson might be correct and the dates incorrect. If the letters were indeed written during the summer of 1707, the pasha of Temeşvar they mention should be identified not as İzmirli Ali but as Karayılanoğlu/KaraAylanoğlu Ali Pasha, who was the Ottoman governor-general of Temeşvar between 15 July 1706 and October 1708,59 during a different period of Kuruc– Ottoman relations. 55  Probably János Tököli-Popovics, the Serbian captain-general of Arad. Heckenast, Ki kicsoda, 437. 56  Report by Osman Ağa: ÖStA HHStA Konsularakademie, Kt. 9. OHSch, No. 125, fols. 31r–32v; cf. Lampérth, ‘Gróf Pekry Lőrinc’, 462: at the beginning of January 1705, the pasha of Temeşvar complained about the damage caused by the Kuruc soldiers. 57  Kálmán Mészáros and István Seres were of great help to me in identifying Eduard ( Johann) Wilson, for which I would like to thank them. On Wilson, see Heckenast, Ki kicsoda, 457–458. 58  Sándor Károlyi began the siege of Arad on 5 July 1707 and abandoned it on 25 July. Benda, Magyarország történeti kronológiája, 542. 59  Fekete, A ‘ Rákóczi–Aspremont-levéltár’, 146–147: note 44. Kreutel and Spies, Der Gefangene der Giauren, 207; Oszmán aga, A gyaurok rabságában, 147. Ali Pasha later replaced Elçi İbrahim Pasha, the governor of Belgrade, who died in October 1708. Fekete, ‘A Rákóczi–Aspremont-levéltár’, 146: note 44; Dispatch by Dietrich Nehem to the Hofkriegsrat, St Petersburg, 5

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Before the second Ali Pasha replaced the first, the time when János Pápai’s submission was finally to have been discussed in the imperial council of the Ottoman Empire,60 yet another new grand vizier was appointed: Baltacı Mehmed Pasha was replaced by Damad Çorlulu Ali Pasha (3 May 1706–15 June 1710).61 This deprived Rákóczi’s representatives of any chance to be welcomed as his official envoys at the Porte. Letters by Karayılanoğlu Ali Pasha of Temeşvar dated between 19 September 1706 and June 1708, kept in the archives of the Rákóczi–Aspremont family, mention the importance of keeping good relations with the neighbouring countries and complain about the Kuruc soldiers who harassed and robbed the sultan’s subjects and merchants, stole their animals or did not pay for goods.62 The same issues recur in the letters he sent to Sándor Károlyi between February and November 1708.63 As Rákóczi’s diplomatic position with respect to the Ottoman Empire worsened, Ottoman complaints became more frequent. This was due to the military events on the Habsburg–Kuruc side of the frontier and abuses by both parties. Although the Treaty of Karlowitz signed in 1699 allowed merchants of the Ottoman Empire to trade in territories of the Habsburg Monarchy,64 and the Ottomans believed that Rákóczi would honour his promise to prevent his soldiers from

October 1708: ÖStA HHStA Türkei I. Kt. 178. Konv. 3, fol. 59; Dispatch by Dietrich Nehem to the Hofkriegsrat, St Petersburg, 11 January 1709: Ibid., Konv. 4, fol. 23. 60  János Pápai arrived in Constantinople in November 1705 but was able to hand in his propositions to the Porte only on 23 January 1706; they remained unanswered for a long time. Benda et al., Ráday Pál iratai, 503; Kálmán Benda (ed.), Pápai János törökországi naplói. Budapest, 1963, 73, 110–113, 130; Dispatch by Michael Talman to the Hofkriegsrat, Constantinople, 23 March 1706: ÖStA HHStA Staatenabteilungen, Türkei I. Kt. 177. Konv. 2, fols. 2–3; Dispatch by Michael Talman to the Hofkriegsrat, Constantinople, 23 April 1706: Ibid., fols. 4–6; Papp, ‘A Rákóczi-szabadságharc’, 808; Vatai, ’Út az irrealitásba’, 103. 61  On the pasha, see Münir Aktepe, ‘Çorlulu Ali Paşa’, in TDVİA. Vol. 8. İstanbul, 1993, 370–371. 62  Fekete, ‘A Rákóczi–Aspremont-levéltár’, 146–148. 63  MNL OL P 398. The Archives of the Károlyi family, Missiles, Nos. 76  289, 76  290, 76 291, 76 292, 76 293 and 76 296. The latter document, written in German, is undated but has the same content as a letter from the pasha to Rákóczi that Fekete, in his summarized version, dated to before 15 November 1708: Fekete, ‘A Rákóczi–Aspremont-levéltár’, 147. 64  On article 14 of the Treaty of Karlowitz, see Muahedat Mecmuası, 99.

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harming Muslim merchants,65 circumstances had changed, and merchants faced considerable risks in continuing their activities in the war-stricken areas. In most cases, they accepted these risks in the hope of making huge profits, but the situation led to a number of conflicts between the Ottomans and both the Kuruc66 and Habsburg armies concerning merchants on every side. The pashas of the frontier lands were reluctant to violate the terms of the treaty, but did so in certain cases. For example, after two years of diplomatic procrastination following the raid on the town of Kecskemét on 3 April 1707, Elçi İbrahim Pasha marched his troops to the border in an attempt, with the support of the Kuruc army, to threaten the Habsburgs.67 Furthermore, good relations with the Kuruc forces also served the interests of their merchants and soldiers, so that to a certain extent, local policies were likely to deviate from the official position of the Porte. The correspondence between Ali Pasha and General Wilson dated July 1707 can be considered as one of the aforementioned letters sent by Karayılanoğlu Ali Pasha.68 After describing the state of siege in Arad, the general, citing the treaty between the two emperors, asked the pasha to protect the Habsburg subjects who had fled the region of Arad and taken their animals and all their personal goods and chattels to the Ottoman Empire. He also complained that there were Ottoman soldiers fighting in the Kuruc army on the frontier and that runaway Kuruc soldiers were given help by the Ottomans. In his reply, Ali Pasha assured Wilson that no harm would come to any Habsburg subject seeking refuge in the Ottoman Empire and that he had 65  Kornuth and Kreutel (eds.), Zwischen Paschas, 50–51; Oszmán aga, A gyaurok rabságában, 174–175. Rákóczi restricted the movement of merchants, enabling them to travel only as far as Kecskemét and Debrecen. Rákóczi to Hasan Pasha of Belgrade, Kistapolcsány, 10 May 1706: Benda et al. (eds.), Ráday Pál iratai, 573–574; cf. Fekete, ‘A Rákóczi–Aspremont-levéltár’, 134; Rákóczi’s instructions for Gáspár Pápai, envoy, who was sent to İzmirli Ali, the pasha of Temeşvar: Benda et al. (eds.), Ráday Pál iratai, 624, 626. 66  István Seres, A sarkadi hajdúk (unpublished manuscript). 67 Serbian hajdús and hussars in service to the Habsburgs attacked the town and robbed and killed fifty-five Muslim and Greek merchants. On the diplomatic settlement of the conflict, see Tóth, ‘Török kereskedők’, 87–106. 68  ÖStA HHStA Konsularakademie, Kt. 9. OHSch, No. 125, fols. 32r–34v, 34v–37r, and ÖNB Mxt. 175, fols. 12r–14r.

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ordered the officers on the frontier to respect this rule. He also claimed to be unaware that anyone had helped the Hungarians on the Ottoman side, but he was willing to look into the matter and was ready to arrest and punish anyone violating the peace treaty. He also explained that each and every person crossing the border was questioned, a maximum of three or four people were able to cross the frontier at once, and no soldiers or merchants were allowed to join the Kuruc campaign. The reply thus gave the Habsburg general ample and reassuring information.69 In the both of Osman Ağa’s compilations, these letters are followed by correspondence between Sándor Károlyi and Ali Pasha of Temeşvar.70 He dated this correspondence to 1705, but its content is closely related to the topics discussed by General Wilson and Karayılanoğlu Ali Pasha. The originals were written during the siege of Arad. One of Károlyi’s letters reveals that the siege had begun the day before (...tarih-i mektubdan bir gün evvel Arad kalesi altına gelüb kaleyi muhasara edüb...). The Kuruc general mentioned soldiers in service to the Habsburgs – Serbian hajdús and those of other nationalities – fleeing the advancing Kuruc army and taking their animals and personal goods and chattels into Ottoman territories. He asked Ali Pasha to order such people to be turned back from the border and wanted him to refuse them any help. This is the same issue – this time from the Kuruc perspective – discussed in the correspondence between General Wilson and the pasha, suggesting that these letters were written in the summer of 1707 and Osman Ağa was mistaken about the dates. In his reply to Károlyi, the pasha gave a lengthy explanation of the terms of peace between the two emperors, and wrote that the Serbians (Sırf reayaları) in the Arad region were allowed to graze their animals on land on the Ottoman side of the border. The pasha did not know about any armed hajdús who were crossing the Ottoman border and attacking Kuruc soldiers, and he claimed that no armed people were allowed to cross the frontier, but he was willing to look into the matter. Additionally, he stated that as long as peace 69  Although the Habsburg generals on the frontier were on good terms with Karayılanoğlu Ali Pasha, they had difficulties with Ali Pasha of Belgrade during the final settlement of the conflict because of the attack on Kecskemét in 1707. Tóth, ‘Török kereskedők’, 103–105. 70  ÖStA HHStA Konsularakademie, Kt. 9. OHSch, No. 125, fols. 37r–38v, 39r–41v; ÖNB Mxt. 175, fols. 14v–17v.

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prevailed between the two empires, merchants holding a permit issued by the Habsburg emperor were going to cross the border whenever they wished, but if the Kuruc forces occupied Arad, they would need to make a treaty with their Ottoman neighbours as well. The pashas must have had good reason to state the importance of complying with the Treaty of Karlowitz and to continually emphasize the neutrality of the Ottoman Empire. İzmirli Ali Pasha did so in April 1706, when he denied Rákóczi’s request to stop the Habsburgs sending money across the border, on the grounds that both parties were providing asylum in the Ottoman territories.71 We find the same in Zwischen Paschas und Generalen.72 The idea appears again – although possibly as dissemblance – in the ağa’s report, written at the time of the Kuruc army’s siege of Arad, on the issues mentioned in the correspondence given in the Appendix.73 During the siege of Arad, General Wilson and Sándor Károlyi both had envoys in Temeşvar. These two captains were separated from each other, but the Kuruc envoy, who was called Kristóf Steöszel (İsteç[e]l),74 dropped in unexpectedly just as the Habsburg captain was in the middle of railing against the Hungarians. The two envoys got into an altercation in German, and were almost at each other’s throats. When, in the heat of the debate, the German envoy said that the Hungarians were soon going to learn to show obedience to the emperor, Steöszel replied that they would rather submit to the sultan than to the Habsburgs. Meanwhile, the Ottomans, to avoid a major diplomatic conflict, emphasized their neutrality, or at least this was narrated by the ağa: İşbu mahall ve bu kale sizün içün muaf bir şehirdür bunda dostyane75 olmak lazımdur mücadele ve muharebe ve mukatele bundan olmaz heman birbirinüz ile ekl şürb edüb ayş [u] işret eylemelüsiz (“this city and palace are free for you, therefore you have to be on good terms here, 71  Fekete, ‘A Rákóczi–Aspremont-levéltár’, 145. 72  Kornuth and Kreutel (eds.), Zwischen Paschas, 48–49; Oszmán aga, A gyaurok rabságá­ ban, 173. 73  ÖNB Mxt. 175, fols. 17v–19v; ÖStA HHStA Konsularakademie, Kt. 9. OHSch, No. 125, fols. 42r–43v. 74  István Seres and Kálmán Mészáros were of great help to me in identifying Kristóf Steöszl, for which I would like to thank them. On Kristóf Steöszel, see Heckenast, Ki kicsoda, 393. 75 Correctly: dostane.

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there is no quarrel, war or fight in this place, you have to eat, drink and entertain here in the company of one another”).76 Whatever sympathies the pashas may have held for the Kuruc cause, they were not willing to go beyond their bounds. The activities of the two Ali Pashas of Temeşvar reflect that of the government in Constantinople, appearing to support the aims of the Kuruc army when it was in their own interests, but ruling out any violation of the Treaty of Karlowitz.

appendix The report of Osman Ağa of Temeşvar [ July 1707] Kİtab-İ İnşa. ÖNB Wien, Mxt. 175, fols. 17v–19v.

[17v] Vakt-i mezburda Arad kalesi Macar tarafından muhasara oldukda \ gerek ceneral B[i]lzon77 ve Karoli78 ceneralun taraflarından gelen [18r] ademlerinün takrirlerin beyan eder \ zikr olunan vakitde Macar tarafından balada tahrir olunan İsteç[e]l 79 \ nam argutan80 Karoli Şandor ceneralun tarafından mektubla \ ve lisanen baz-i müsaadeler taleb edüb kalemüzde müsaferetde \ iken Arad ceneralı B[i]lzon tarafından dahi mektubla ve lisanen \ baz-i kelimatlar ile bir bayrak kethüdası Nemçe zabıtı gelüb anı-dahi \ bir yere kondurub her birini başka başka paşa hazretlerine \ buluşdurub mektubların tercüme edüb mefhum bildükde \ matlubları birbirinün aksi olub Macar ceneralı taleb etdüği \ Nemçeye müsaade olunmayub hudud-i islamiyye geçemeyüb \ kabul olunmaya Nemçenün istedüği budur-ki kurus taifesi çasarımuzun \ reayalarından asi olub sahib-i fesad yaramazlarından olmağla ba-kaıd bu defa \ fürce bulub bu tarafa gelmişlerdür-ki iki padişah-i azimü’ş-şan beyninde [18v] vaki olan sulh[a] mugayır bir işde bulunub bir takrib ile devlet-i \ aliyeyi tahrik edebilelerdi amma Nemçenün cevabında Macar taifesi \ bu vechle nice defa fetret edüb ba-husus Erdel voyvodası \ Ferenc Rakoçi gibi ve sairleri nice defa fetret 76  77  78  79  80 

ÖNB Mxt. 175, fol. 18v. Eduard ( Johann) Wilson. Sándor Károlyi. İsteč[e]l: Kristóf Steöszel. Arġut. an: the distorted form of the German word ‘Adjutant’.

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edüb \ bir kaç eyyam tuğyan üzere olduklarından sonra kendüleri peşiman \ ve krallarından eman taleb edüb verildükde maiyetleri her kim ise \ sonra yalnız açıkda kalub başlarına iş düşmüşdür bu dahi \ bir sel suyı gibi gelüb geçer Macar sözine itimad eyleyen daim aldanub \ peşiman olmışdur zira mesfurlar kendi ecnas vekilleri \ birbirlerinden bi-ayn[?] olmayub her biri aharın zevalın taleb ederler \ olmaya ki mesfurların laf [u] güzafına ina[n]mayasız deyü bu musahib ile \ hatta Nemçe kapudanı öyle taamında soframuzda iken İsteç[e]l \ kapudan na-gehanı kapudan içerü girüb bi-tekellüf aşinalık [19r] ederek yanumuzda oturdukda amma Nemçe kapudanı mezburı görünce \ öte gayrı gune olub ol dahi Nemçeyi görünce adavet tamarları \ hareket edüb birbirlerine nice na-yazan bakışları ile nazar \ edüb sofrada oturub yedükleri belki ikisinün \ dahi halkumlarından geçmez idi işte İsteç[e]l kapudan an \ asıl Nemçelü olub gereği gibi Nemçe lisanın söylerdi durmayub \ birbirlerine kinayetler söylemeğe başlayub adavetlerin izhar \ edince biz dahi tefekkür edüb bunlar giderek ziyade mücadeleye \ ve gavgaya bais olurlar deyü kendülere istimalet verüb \ demiş idikki işbu mahall ve bu kale sizün içün muaf \ bir şehirdir bunda dostyane81 olmak lazımdur mücadele \ ve muharebe ve mukatele bundan olmaz heman birbirinüz ile ekl \ şürb edüb ayş [u] işret eylemelüsiz bundan çıkub [19v] hududunuza vardukda beyninüzde her ne gune uzlaşırsınız \ siz bilürsiz diyerek amma mezburlar ikisi dahi birbiri \ üzerine şol mertebe adavet izhar eylemişler idi-ki \ Nemçe kapudanı dedükde bizüm çasarımuz sizün kurben bir gune \ itaat götürür-ki siz kendünüz kıyas etmeyesiz ne zuhur eder \ dedükde Macar kapudanı cevabında bizüm ahvalimüz bir perdeye \ gelmişdür ki fi-ma-bad Nemçeye itaat üzere olmakdan ise \ devlet-i aliye tarafından cüz-i padişahı kabul eylemek \ irtikab etmişizdür Nemçe hükümetinde zabıt olmakdan osmanluya reaya olmak efzal deyüb bu gune musahebetden sonra \ her biri konaklarına ve paşa tarafından lazım olan mektub \ cevabları ile sair mühimmatlar tedarik olunub geldükleri mahalle \ irsal olunmışdur.

81 Correctly: dostane.

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ESCHATOLOGY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF OTTOMAN IMPERIAL PROPAGANDA IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: SOME REMARKS ON THE TREATISE OF İBRAHİM MÜTEFERRİKA Nándor Erik Kovács Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest [email protected]

Many details of the mystery-shrouded career of İbrahim Müteferrika, famous

for having set up the first printing press with Arabic type in the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic world, have come to light in recent years, but most concern the second part of his life, following his conversion to Islam, when he was active in the service of the Sublime Porte.1 The first definite date in his period in Ottoman 1  Here we mention only some of the latest works. Orlin Sabev’s monograph has done little to fill in the blank areas of İbrahim’s biography but has considerably improved our knowledge of his printing activity. The book draws on the latest investigations of the inheritance defters to fill out our knowledge of the operation of the printing works and provide an exhaustive and balanced account of his life and work: Orlin Sabev, İbrahim Müteferrika ya da İlk Osmanlı Matbaa Serüveni (1726– 1746). İstanbul, 2006. İbrahim’s activity is presented in a lavishly-illustrated book that publishes several new archive documents: Fikret Sarıcaoğlu and Coşkun Yılmaz, Müteferrika : Basmacı İbrahim Efendi ve Müteferrika Matbaası. İstanbul, 2009. For İbrahim’s diplomatic activity, see Ferenc Tóth, ‘Ibrahim Müteferrika, egy oszmán diplomata a magyar függetlenség szolgálatában’, Magyar Tudomány 172:1 (2011) 38–47; Idem, ‘Ibrahim Müteferrika, un diplomate ottoman’, Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique 125: 3 (2012) 283–295; Zsuzsa Barba­rics-Hermanik, ‘İbrahim Müteferrika als transkultureller Vermittler im Osmanischen Reich’, in Arno Strohmeyer and Norbert Spannenberger (eds.), Frieden und Konfliktmanagement in interkulturellen Räumen. Das Osmanische Reich und die Habsburgermonarchie in der Frühen Neuzeit. Stuttgart, 2013, 283–308.

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service is April 1716, when he was admitted to the ranks of the court müteferrikas2 for his services as a court sipahi in the war against the Habsburgs.3 From then until the end of his life, he took part in a series of diplomatic missions, and it is well known that when Francis II Rákóczi (1676–1735) entered Ottoman territory at the invitation of the Porte in 1717 and was eventually accommodated in Tekirdağ, he served as his interpreter and court liaison right up to Rákóczi’s death. His role in book printing and the contents of the seventeen works he published between 1728 and 1743 tell of a supremely ambitious Muslim intellectual with a strong sense of faith and a European education, and this further stimulates curiosity about the early stage of his life. Unlike many other renegades, we do not know İbrahim’s original name, or anything for certain about his youth or the circumstances and time of his conversion. The abundance of contemporary accounts of his pre-Muslim period of life4 and some legendary narratives that have grown out of them5 2  To give a permanent soubriquet designating social status and occupation was common practice in Ottoman society. In this case, müteferrika denoted İbrahim’s position in the Porte. The müteferrikas provided various personal services to the sultan, originally as bodyguards, and later in diplomatic and administrative functions. Their number fluctuated widely from one time to another. In İbrahim’s time, the Tulip period, the number of paid (ulufeli) müteferrikas gradually decreased below a hundred and fifty. Cf. Erhan Afyoncu, ‘Müteferrika’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 32. İstanbul, 2006, 183–185. 3  Erhan Afyoncu, ‘İlk Türk Matbaasının Kurucusu Hakkında Yeni Bilgiler’, Belleten 65:243 (2001) 607–622. 4  Most worthy of mention is a short report in a letter by César de Saussure, who lived in the Tekirdağ court of Francis II Rákóczi. Although Saussure must have met İbrahim, the checkable parts of his information are inaccurate at several points (such as the date of İbrahim’s death). Saussure was the original source of the story that the young İbrahim, who had been studying to be a Calvinist minister, came as a captive into the possession of his Turkish lord, whose cruelty eventually forced İbrahim to convert. See Kálmán Thaly, De Saussure Czézárnak II. Rákóczi Ferenc udvari nemesének törökországi levelei 1730–1739-ből és feljegyzései 1740-ből. Budapest, 1909, 192–194. The view that İbrahim was of Jewish origin is based on several dispatches by the Habsburg’s resident in the Porte, Joseph von Dierling: Wilhelm Heinz, ‘Die Kultur der Tulpenzeit des Osmanischen Reiches’, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 61 (1967) 61–116. 5  Besides the proposed Unitarian background, there is a legend-like, speculative view that İbrahim was originally a Sabbatarian, and even, somewhat anachronistically, connected with Simon Péchy, the leader of the Sabbatarian community in Transylvania that was dispersed in

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contain such irreconcilable contradictions that none can be regarded as a reliable source. The only tiny clues to his Christian past are the autobiographical references in his polemic-eschatological treatise examined in this paper. The manuscript treatise, discovered in the early twentieth century by the Turkologist Imre Karácson (d. 1911) in the then disordered Istanbul archives, is linked to İbrahim Müteferrika by a subsequently-entered note including the title Risale-i İslamiye (henceforth RI), or “Treatise on Islam”.6 The work is undated, but the contemporary events it mentions indicate that it was written in 1710. It displays a high level of knowledge of the Ottoman-Turkish language and a high level of Muslim literary scholarship. This implies that İbrahim must have been active in a Muslim-Turkish environment by the first years of the eighteenth century at the latest, and must have adopted Islam by the time he wrote the work. The treatise is İbrahim’s first direct sign of life and the first trace of his activity in the Ottoman milieu. Its opening lines are our only source of direct information on his life. They tell us that he was born “in Hungary, in the town of Kolozsvár” (today ClujNapoca) and he originally studied theology. Niyazi Berkes, who produced the first critical analysis of the treatise, combining these two pieces of information with the debating style of the work and some of its dogmatic elements, concluded that İbrahim was originally a Unitarian.7 İbrahim’s inclination to the exact sciences and his expertise in and commitment to printing clearly link him to Transylvanian Protestant society. Pointers to a Unitarian background are his place and date of birth and several aspects of his learning, but Berkes’s claim that the theological conclusions in his treatise support this proposal does not stand up to scrutiny. Setting the scant biographical clues against the the 1630s; cf. J. József Horváth, ‘Ibrahim Müteferrika Magyarországon’, accessed 20 January 2019: http://members.iif.hu/visontay/ponticulus/rovatok/limes/ muteferrika.html. 6  Imre Karácson also used the treatise in writing Müteferrika’s biography, but neither Karácson nor later researchers noticed aspects that reveal the development of his ideological outlook. Imre Karácson, ‘İbrahim Müteferrika’, Tarih-i Osmani Encümeni Mecmuası 1–6 (1911) 178–185. The first to attempt a thorough critical analysis of the treatise and to review contemporary reports was the social historian Niyazi Berkes. His cultural-history findings have not been essentially disputed since then: Niyazi Berkes, ‘İlk Türk Matbaasının Kurucusunun Dinî ve Fikrî Kimliği’, Belleten 26:104 (1962) 723–737. 7  Berkes, ‘İlk Türk Matbaası’, 729–731.

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Habsburg invasion of Transylvania in 1688, the subsequent deprivation of Protestants’ rights and the closure of the Unitarian college suggest that he might have been forced into political exile and eventually converted to Islam. So far, the main question in examining İbrahim’s way to his MuslimOttoman identity was whether we can believe the accounts and clues concerning him. Here we will examine the origins and sources of İbrahim’s text in the light of some new observations and put the question of what we can believe of what İbrahim wrote.

THE MANUSCRIPTS

Imre Karácson, author of the first scholarly article on the life and work of İbrahim Müteferrika, claimed that copies of the manuscript were “to be found here and there”, but he named only one, a manuscript discovered in the Yerebatan district of Istanbul.8 Now preserved in the Süleymaniye Manuscript Library in Istanbul, it was until recently thought by historians to be a unique copy (Süleymaniye Yazma Eserler Kütüphanesi,9 mark Esad Efendi 1187).10 An entry on the flyleaf reads: “The treatise on Islam by the convert İbrahim Efendi, who practised the science of printing at the Porte during the time of Ahmed III.”11 This is the source of the title by which authors always refer to it: Risale-i İslamiye. The Latin-script transcription of the manuscript was published by Halil Necatioğlu in 1982.12 Of all the manuscripts known today, this version is possibly an autograph copy and very likely the earliest, although there is no definite proof. We discuss the supporting evidence for this hypothesis below. Subsequently, another copy was found in the same collection 8   Karácson, ‘İbrahim Müteferika’, 180: note 2. 9   Henceforth SYEK. 10  Henceforth EE 1187. This is the variant I will refer to throughout this paper. 11  Devr-i Ahmed-i salisde basma sanaatını asitanede icra eden muhtedi İbrahim Efendinün Risale-i İslamiyesidir.” 12  Halil Necatioğlu, Matbaacı İbrâhîm-i Müteferrika ve Risâle-i İslâmiye (Tenkidli Metin). Ankara, 1982.

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unit of SYEK (mark Esad Efendi 3442).13 Since then, other untitled copies of the treatise have been found: a third in SYEK (mark Bağdatlı Vehbi 2022)14 is bound together with other manuscript works, perhaps explaining why it escaped the attention of researchers for a long time. In the colophon of the BV 2022, it is mentioned that the manuscript was copied by a scribe named Nedimi in 1170/1757, ten years after the author’s death. The copyist of the undated manuscript EE 3442 was a certain Hafız Osman. This was written in nastalik script, in contrast with the nashi style of the others. The invocation section of EE 3442 also differs strikingly from that of the other two versions, and a comparison with EE 1187 shows up several copying errors that alter the meaning to such an extent as to rule out the possibility that EE 3442 served as the basis for the other two.15 A fourth manuscript is preserved in the Türk Tasavvuf Musikisi Vakfı collection, also in Istanbul, but we have not been able to access it yet. The existence of these manuscripts within a narrow area in Istanbul hints at the possibility of discovering others, and it also implies that in contrast with previous assumptions, İbrahim’s treatise attracted considerable attention.16 This strengthens the view that writing the treatise was connected to İbrahim’s subsequent rise. As I will 13  Hereafter EE 3442. One page of the manuscript was used as an illustration in Sarıcaoğlu and Yılmaz, Basmacı İbrahim, 81. They were probably unaware of the significance of their discovery, because they did not mention that the copy was not the same as the only one previously known to scholarship, EE 1187. 14  Henceforth BV 2022. 15  This is underlined by a series of errors in the Latin-language, Arabic-script citations, made by a copyist who obviously did not know language. Some of these: in the first Latin passage on fol. 2r of manuscript EE 3442, in the Arabic transliteration of the word ‘super’, instead of the three points denoting the ‘p’ there are only two points (and thus reads ‘y’). At the head of the Latin quotation on fol. 37v, ghayn denoting the ‘q ’ in the second word is missing (cf. EE 1187, fol. 37r). This manuscript also differs from the others in gross substantive deficiencies. The text in EE 1187 from the second line of fol. 4r to the ninth line of fol. 7r is simply omitted, rendering the broken section incomprehensible. A great part of EE 3442 was bound subsequently, but prior to the numbering of the folio, in the wrong order. On fol. 12r, the absence of the immediately preceding sheets is noted by a later entry above the text area. The text that should be on these missing pages is that from the last lines of fol. 18v to the top of fol. 34v of EE 1187. 16  Cf. Tijana Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam. Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Stanford, 2011, 116.

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attempt to show, İbrahim probably wrote the treatise with his prospects in mind, and his subsequent spectacular career trajectory was quite probably a direct consequence rather than a by-product of his accomplishment.

THE CONTENT

Imre Karácson considered the treatise to be an apologia for the Islamic faith.

17

About fifty years later, Niyazi Berkes challenged Karácson’s assessment and found that the treatise echoes ideas on forgery of the Bible that appear in the writings of protestant theologians Michael Servetus (1511–1553) and Ferenc Dávid (d. 1579). This finding, by highlighting some of the common features of Islam and Unitarianism that appear in the treatise and ignoring their many doctrinal differences, muddles the two religions.18 As I will try to show below, İbrahim’s outlook – including his denial of the Holy Trinity, in which Berkes sees evidence of the author’s Unitarian past – fully reflects his Muslim convictions and scholarship. The hypothesis that these convictions were formed in the Transylvanian period of his life and subsequently contributed to his conversion is a reasonable conjecture, but cannot be proved. Despite its polemic tone and terminology, the treatise is not a work of theological disputation. With its idiosyncratic combination of the Muslim prophecy tradition (tebşirat) and the Protestant apocalyptic approach, it fits better into in the political pamphlet category. The author gives a hint of his ambitions right at the start of the treatise where, after a long laudation of Sultan Ahmed III (1703–1730), he claims that prophecies in the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel(s) foretell that the people of Muhammad will take possession of the Earth, including the Eastern and Western countries of 17  Karácson, ‘İbrahim Müteferika’, 180. 18  Berkes’s position reveals that, despite great efforts, he fell into the same error he accused Karácson of: reading the treatise superficially. Berkes interpreted the treatise – apart from some details – as essentially a manifestation of the Unitarian creed. He wrote that the RI was a demonstration of the truth not so much of Islam as the author’s Anti-Trinitarian convictions, and a more fitting title would have been Risale-i Tevhid, or “Treatise on the Monotheism”. Despite the idiosyncratic approach of the work, it is unmistakeably based on the Islamic faith, and the title is concise but relevant. Berkes, ‘İlk Türk Matbaası’, 731–732.

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Christendom, and indeed that this shall come to pass with the rule of the Ottomans: “It contains hidden and unambiguous hints that his highness Sultan Ahmed, in the glorious days of the rule, will eliminate violence, unlawfulness, oppression and suffering from the surface of the Earth, bring the power of the Ottoman Empire to a climax, triumph over all other peoples and extend his rule to enormous lands.”19 He says the same even more expressively in the closing lines of the work, thus putting a frame around his polemic and eschatological excursions.20 İbrahim declares at the beginning of the work that in his youth he felt an intense desire to study the deleted, prohibited parts of the Torah. In these, he discovered passages foretelling the coming of Muhammad and the rise of the people of Islam, and these played a crucial part in his “divine guidance” (hidayet) or conversion to the Muslim faith. He showed his teachers the sections he had found in the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospels, but in the ensuring disputation, he was unable to convince them.21 The author undertook, with his knowledge of the Bible, to reveal the aberration of Christianity, demonstrate prophecies predicting the prophet of Islam and provide evidence foretelling the imminent, final triumph of Islam (that is, the Ottoman Empire). He supported his argument by including verses of the Koran and fourteen quotations of various lengths from the Bible, transcribed into vocalized Arabic script.22 19  EE 1187, fols. 4v–5r. 20  EE 1187, fol. 64v. 21  EE 1187, fols. 2r–3r. 22  The introduction to the Latin-script transcription of the treatise by Halil Necatioğlu (Mahmud Esad Coşan) provides a useful overview of the circumstances in which it was written and the life of the author, but spares even basic textual criticism. Lacking the necessary competencies or desire to expand the Biblical interpolations and subject them to critical analy­ sis, the transcription of the Latin citations failed. For identification in the Vulgata of the passages included by İbrahim, see Nándor Erik Kovács, ‘Mozaikok Ibrahim Müteferrika szellemi hagyatékából’, in Mihály Dobrovits (ed.), A segítő kéznek ez a mesterfogása. VIII. Nemzetközi Vámbéry Konferencia. Dunaszerdahely, 2011, 248–249: note 21. In a later edition of Necatioğlu’s transcription, supplemented with a modern Turkish translation and a facsimile of the RI, attempts were taken to identify the Biblical interpolations. Mahmud Esad Coşan, Risale-i İslamiyye. Matbaacı İbrahim Müteferrika ve Risale-i İslamiyye Adlı Eserinin Tenkitli Metni. Ed. by Necdet Yılmaz. İstanbul, 2012. See the relevant notes. A peculiar phonetic feature of the transcription of the Latin passages in the treatise indicating the author’s Hungarian origin is

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Together with all of its references to the Bible and to church history, the RI adopts the rhetorics and traditions of Muslim apologetic literature and the basic theses and arguments of Muslim “biblical criticism” that had developed over centuries to attack Christianity for centuries.23 The basis of this is the observation formulated in medieval Muslim commentaries that verses of the Koran referring to Jewish and Christian religious writings24 substantially contradict the parts of the Bible they are related to. To explain this, Muslim theology, which regards the Koran as the unquestionable word of God, developed the thesis that the Bible is falsified and distorted (tahrif). The accusation of distortion and deliberate fabrication of the scripts is a tenet in polemical discourse criticizing Christianity and Judaism that recurs throughout the centuries,25 and İbrahim bases his argument primarily on this thesis and not the Unitarian doctrines. The tone of the work conveys the irreconcilable tension of Islamic dialectics, which arises from its disputation with the Jewish and Christian foundations that serve as its precedents. Nonetheless, İbrahim goes beyond the general framework and aims of religious polemic and gives his treatise a special political-propagandistic character by focusing exclusively on prophetic passages – and passages he makes prophetic – and on updated explanations of these. His eschatological expositions are the most important and also the most original sections of the treatise, an

that endings that sound ‘s’ in Latin ( ), such as in masculine nouns in the nominative, appear in the distinctively Hungarian adaptation, the ‘sh’ sound ( ). The transcription of the Latin letter ‘c’ is usually . 23  Cf. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, ‘The Prediction and Prefiguration of Muh. ammad’, in John C. Reeves (ed.), Bible and Qur’ān. Essays in Scriptural Intertextuality. Leiden, 2004, 107–131, particularly 107–110. 24  The good news of salvation in Christianity appears in the Islamic perception as a book of recitation that has been passed down from above, like the Torah and the Koran, and its Arabic name derivative (injil), probably deriving from the Ethiopian version of the name (wangél), does not refer to its original meaning. In contrast with the “Christian” Gospel, the four books of the good news of salvation, Islamic tradition holds only one Gospel, which God disclosed to Jesus (and not about Jesus), and which treats it essentially as similar to the Koran and the Torah. Sidney H. Griffith, ‘The Gospel, the Qur’ān, and the Presentation of Jesus in al-Ya’qūbī’s Ta’rīkh’, in Reeves (ed.), Bible and Qur’ān, 135. 25 Krstić, Contested Conversions, 85.

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idiosyncratic combination of the Protestant apocalyptic approach with the Muslim tradition of prophecies of Muhammad’s mission (tebşirat).26 İbrahim devotes particular attention to the story of Abraham and to interpreting Daniel’s dream and the visions in the Book of Revelation. The latter are dealt with first in the section on the prophet Daniel and again during the interpretations elaborated at the end of the treatise.27 In İbrahim’s explanation, the great dragon that appears in the Revelation to John (12–14) is none other than the Roman papacy, and the seven-headed, ten-horned dragon represents Rome built on seven hills, contrasting with the contemporary Christian interpretations, also quoted by the author, which see Istanbul also surrounded by seven hills, and Islam as the proper explanation of this vision (fol. 14r). Perhaps the cardinal point of the attack on the papacy and the contemporary Christian world order is the impact of the Book of Revelation on Müteferrika. In İbrahim’s reading, with reference to Daniel,28 Jeremiah and Solomon, the ten eras (on zaman) leading to the consummation of times correspond to the ten dynasties: Omayyads, Abbasids, Samanids, the empire

26  In Muslim teaching, the Koran is Allah’s ultimate, unquestionable revelation, also mentioning and recognising previous revelations (such as K 5:44–46, 9:111) and even sometimes referring to them as previous, authentic sources of the proclamation (K 10:94). In the Muslim conception, the Koran is not just the continuation of the series of divine disclosures embodied in these scripts, but their culmination (see K 46:12), and the prophet of Islam is accordingly “the seal of the prophets” (see K 33:40). In many places, the Koran refers to Jewish and Christian writings as forms of divine revelation. These parts distinguish the holy scriptures of the people of the book (ahl al-kitab or, in Ottoman-Turkish ehl-i kitab) in the form of the Torah (Tawrat/Tevrat), the Psalms of David (Zabur/Zebur) and the Gospel (given as an indivisible unit, Injil/İncil). Other verses related to these – some obscurely, others stating more directly – claim that these books contain prophesies of the prophet of the last times, Muhammad (for instance K 2:129, 3:83, 7:157, 61:6). These verses form the basis of the Muslim “Bible criticism” that can be traced back to the ninth and tenth centuries, and define the framework of the theological-polemic work of religious scholars and the apologetic works of Muslims, mostly converts from Christianity. McAuliffe, ‘The Prediction’, 107–113; Ts. Kasnakova and H. Shaldzhiev, ‘Zones of Idological Conflicts Between Christianity and Islam in the Balkans’, Trakia Journal of Sciences 9: Suppl. 3 (2011) 136–147, particularly 138. 27  EE 1187, fols. 49r–51v, 59v–61v. 28  See Daniel 7:7; 7:20; particularly 7:24.

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of Sebuktigin; Dailamites; Khwarazmians; Seljuks; Ismailites;29 Genghisids; and the House of Osman.30 The author sees the Ottoman Empire as the vanquisher of the great dragon, and in the figure with the iron sceptre appearing in chapter 19 of the Book of Revelation, he links the iron sceptre with the Ottoman Empire and the power conferred on the Muslim community,31 inferring from this the imminent fall of Eastern (ekalim-i moskoviyye) and Western Christianity (memleket-i kızıl elmaviyye).32 The work concludes with the triumph of Islam, of which the perceptible omens are the unification of Islam, the increasing divisions and internal wars of contemporary “faithless” Europe, manifested in the Habsburgs being driven out of Hungary under the rule of Francis II Rákóczi, the War of the Spanish Succession, the conflict between the papacy (Clement XI) and Emperor Joseph I (1705–1711) and the Great Northern War between the Swedes and the Russians.33 Although the author gives some clear signs of his Protestant education, he deliberately builds his argument and approach on Islamic tradition and narratives. One of the most direct evidence of this is the koranic presentation of biblical characters throughout the treatise. İbrahim portrays the biblical figures completely deprived of their original, “salvation-history” context, their characters stripped down, and apart from the extremely obscure task of proclaiming the true faith, the only common motif in their mission is the prophecy of the coming of the last prophet, Muhammad. İbrahim portrays Muslim adaptations of Adam, Noah, Lot, David, Solomon and Zacharias the priest, father of John the Baptist (persons not considered prophets in the Old Testament) and Jesus. He confers the same rank (nebi) on all of them.34 Among the biblical names accepted as authentic in the Islamic tradition, but here stripped of the specifics of their missions, appear some non-biblical “prophets”, not mentioned in the Koran or even widely accepted in the Islamic tradition, 29  30  31  32  33  34 

The list uses the plural of the word mülhid, melâhide. EE 1187, fol. 62r. EE 1187, fol. 34v. EE 1187, fol. 4v. EE 1187, fols. 62v–64v. EE 1187, fols. 18v; 39v–58v.

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such as İskender, identified as the Macedonian conqueror, and İdris.35 The name Hanzala ibn Safvan also appears, claimed by the author to appear at length in the Torah together with the prophecy of the coming of Muhammad. Hızır, who is usually taken to correspond to Elijah, appears during the Flood as the travelling companion of Noah in the arc.36 He incorporates, with roles distorted in accordance with the Koran, the story of Jesus’ birth,37 the complete disregard of Mary’s husband Joseph, and the miracle of birds made of clay, traceable to the apocryphal tradition;38 the resurrection of Noah’s son Shem;39 non-biblical role of Zacharias40 and the denial of Jesus’ crucifixion.41 Through his portrayal of the legitimizing power of the papacy, İbrahim analyses the power politics of contemporary events and makes a digression to the spread of European Christianity in America. He discusses in detail the problems of the origins of the Bible and the translations of the Torah and the Gospels, and then sharply criticizes Rome-centred Christianity. He describes, with a critical edge, the custom of holy water, the erection of graves and statues, and the veneration of relics (such as the cross of Jesus). He describes the articles of faith of apostolic Christianity that most markedly defy Islam as phenomena that derive from Satan: Jesus as son of God; the “muddling, confusion-inducing” doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which he decries as the inspiration of three “devils” (fols. 21r–23v); the “ruse” of apostle Paul (Baulus-i bi-din); and the formation of the institutions of the papacy. İbrahim presents the episodes of the development of Christianity as an anachronistic blend of historical reality and curious, fabulous elements. He presents the early schism as the devilish work of apostle Paul, describing the Melkites (melkaniye), for example, as those who believe in the Holy Trinity of Jesus, Mary and God. This speculation is probably an invention based on the part of the Koran warning against the 35  On the form of Idris, see John C. Reeves, ‘Some Explorations of the Intertwining of Bible and Qur’an’, in Reeves (ed.), Bible and Qur’ān, 43–60. 36  EE 1187, fols. 40r–40v. 37  EE 1187, fols. 16v–17r, cf. K 19:16–34. 38  EE 1187, fols. 17v–18r, cf. K 3:49; 5:110. 39  EE 1187, fol. 19r. 40  EE 1187, fols. 17v–18v, cf. K 23:35. 41  EE 1187, fols. 19v–20r, cf. K 4:157.

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deification of Mary (K 5:116). The narrative of Jesus sending out the disciples and the propagation of Christianity coincides at several points with motifs of Muslim tradition that can be traced back to the Middle Ages. Such is the mission of apostles Matthew and Andrew in the land of the man-eaters and the inclusion of the Roman “king” acting to protect the Christians against the Jews. These assorted apocryphal stories, traceable to the Latin manuscript tradition, are clearly rooted in the author’s Muslim literary knowledge, even if their direct sources are still uncertain.42 One of the few clear, tangible pieces of evidence of the author’s knowledge of Church history and Christian theology is his explanation of the question of the translation of the Bible. İbrahim cites the translator of the Torah and the Psalms into Latin, Immanuel Tremellius (1510–1580) and probably his son-in-law, Franciscus Junius (1545–1602), and Theodeore de Bèze (1519–1605), the translator of the New Testament.43 In the same section he explains at some length that their translations were completed in 1639, obviously referring to the Biblia Sacra printed that year. It was probably from that version that İbrahim acquired the – indeed existing – biblical verses he cited in the manuscript.44 In a surprisingly ludicrous manner, however, he presents the activities of these translators as being upon the order of “Pope Andraliş Rivetuş”, a person who cannot be identified as a pope or even as a Catholic and is more likely to have been the French Huguenot theologian André Rivet (1572–1651).

THE THEORY OF TAHRİF

As we have mentioned, İbrahim takes his premises from the old principle

of Muslim “Bible criticism”: the assertion of the distorted state of biblical texts.

42  These two motifs appear in the work of the eminent religious scholar and historian Jarir al-Tabari (839–923); see The History of al-T . abarī. An Annotated Translation. Vol. 4. The Ancient Kingdoms. Transl. by Moshe Perlmann. New York, 1987, 123–124. 43  See the marginal notes in EE 1187, fol. 5r–5v. The BV 2022 also includes this note with some mistakes. 44  The inventory of İbrahim Müteferrika’s estate includes an Old and a New Testament, and these copies, of which nothing more is known, could have been those he used when writing the treatise. See Sabev, İbrahim Müteferrika, 349–350, items 4 and 19.

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In the light of the author’s argumentation, three categories of biblical verses can be distinguished in terms of their credibility. First are the still-retrievable parts of the Old and New Testaments of a general nature that render them capable of being linked to the prophet of Islam and the rule of the people of Islam. İbrahim does not argue with the content of these passages, but with their Christian interpretation. Among them are several parts of the first book of Moses, but mostly the interpretation of the dream of the prophet Daniel45 and the Book of Revelation. Second are the prophecies labelled as falsified. These include parts of the first book of Moses concerning the story of Abraham, and particularly the debate around the inheritance of Ishmael and Isaac (Genesis 21:19). The author adjusts the relevant passage to honour Isaac and of course to recognize the superiority of Ishmael, and consistently with the relevant parts of the Koran, makes Ishmael the true heir of Abraham. İbrahim adduces contemporary knowledge to lend weight to his argument, saying that the heirs of the blessing of Abraham are the Muslims, because the lands promised to him – Syria, Palestine and Harran – were ruled by the Ottomans, and thus by the people of Islam (fol. 42r). “Falsified” parts of the Gospels containing any prophetic revelation that fit the conception undergo a similar operation. For example, John 1:27, “He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie”, is transformed: the author would put Jesus in place of John and Muhammad in place of Jesus.46 He similarly refashions Jesus’ promise in John 14–17 on the sending away of the Holy Spirit, which he claims also concerns Muhammad. Since the Bible makes no literal reference to the Holy Trinity, the latter passage provides one of the foundations for that doctrine, and is therefore also a focus of the Anti-Trinitarian creed. Strongly reminiscent of this revelation of Christ is sura 61, verse 1 of the Koran: “And [recall] when Jesus, the son of Mary said, ‘O Children of Israel, I am God’s messenger to you, confirming the Torah that was [revealed] before me, and giving you good tidings of a messenger who will come after me, whose name will be Ahmad [ismuhu ahmadu].’ And when he 45  EE 1187, fols. 49r–55r; Daniel 2:31–45. 46  EE 1187, 8v–9r. The verse quoted is also found in Luke’s Gospel 3:16.

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brought them the clear proofs, they said, ‘This is clear magic.’”47 The echoes of John 14–17 in K 61:6 offer Muslim argumentation a logical avenue to appropriate the prophecy. Muslim commentators unanimously interpret the word ahmad (which means ‘supremely blessed’ but is also regarded as one of the names of Muhammad) as a personal name and directly apply it to Muhammad.48 Speaking against the interpretation of the comparative participial form deriving from the radical hmd as a personal name is that it is one of the typical adjectives (theophoric names) of Allah. Lodovico Maracci (1612– 1700) was the first to propose the explanation of the contradiction between the ‘advocate’ (Greek parakletos) in this passage of the Gospel and the koranic passage. He argued that the meaning of the corrupt version of parakletos, periklytos corresponds to that of ahmad. However, this etymology has since turned out to be dubious.49 What is certain is that the criticism of these verses, which serve as the basis for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, is where AntiTrinitarian theology comes closest to Muslim theology, as it both verifies the prophet of Islam and undermines the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.50 The third group, in the author’s argumentation, consists of passages that clearly predict Muhammad as the prophet of the last times, and have therefore been completely removed from the Bible. The most mysterious sections of the 47  The translation was taken from: The Qur’ān. Transl. by Alan Jones. Exeter, 2007. 48  Cf. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, ‘Muhammad’, in Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān. Vol. 3. Leiden, Boston, 2003, 445, and Róbert Simon, A Korán világa. Budapest, 1987, 100, 363–364. 49  Der Koran. Kommentar und Konkordanz by Rudi Paret. Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, Mainz, 1971, 476. 50  We should note here that the Unitarian argument rejecting the Holy Trinity as a doctrine in contradiction with monotheism displaced one of the key (but of course not the only) partition between Islam and Christianity. A remarkable parallel is that in Michael Servetus’ Anti-Trinitarian treatise (Servetus, De Trinitatis Erroribus), Islam appears as a positive point of reference: The author reflects on Islam for the “adjustment” of Christianity and makes the acrimonious remark that the dogma of the Holy Trinity makes Christians offensive and ridiculous in the eyes of Muslims and Israelites. He also alludes, without an exact reference to Muhammad’s otherwise sympathetic allusions to the early Christians in the Koran. See Earl Morse Wilbur (transl.), ‘On the Errors of the Trinity, Seven Books’, in Idem, The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity. (Harvard Theological Studies, 16.) London, 1932, 66–67. The identity of Unitarianism and Islam can hardly be read into Servetus’s ad hoc references, although we can say that Unitarian doctrines promote orientation in the direction of Islam.

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treatise concern passages from versions of the Torah and the Gospels known to him that were allegedly removed from the translations. They include several revelations – not given in detail – from the books of Daniel and Jeremiah that predict Muhammad.51 The first of these, immediately following the introductory lines of the RI quoted above, cites an alleged passage of the Torah that was later deleted.52 Another “quotation”, which compounds the confusion of the scholar and raises the probability of the author’s manipulation, was supposedly deleted, together with several other associated verses, from one of the Gospels.53 A marginal note claims that the passage reappears in “part 11”, but – the author regrets – some accept this only with the name of Jesus (İsa), instead of the “original” Ahmedus.54 The defective Latin of these passages, their vocalization problems, and the Latinized form of Ahmed (Ahmedus) dispel all doubts that İbrahim intended this “well-intentioned fabrication” – not appropriate for a theological treatise, but useful in a propagandistic contention – to link his expositions specifically with verse 61:6 of the Koran and thus provide a decisive argument to settle the centuries-old basic question of anti-Christian Muslim polemic literature. 51  EE 1187, fol. 49r. 52  One possible “banned passage” mentioned by the author may be the Latin text quoted at the beginning of the work (fol. 2r), which he claims was once incorporated in the Torah. I have attempted to transcribe the quotation: Ego Jahve ... sum in tempore ultimo virum benedictum (sic!) super omnia laudatum (sic!) ab omnibus principio electus in ultimo missus ille erat heres totius terrae et sequentes illum regnabunt in mundum in saecula saeculum. 53  The location of the reference is not usually clear from the references in the margin. Here he talks of “the first chapter of the Gospel” (İncilde, sure-i evvelde). The verses could be located only through a comparison of the two texts. 54  EE 1187, fol. 7r. Even if identification is impossible, it is worth juxtaposing with the verses containing the prophecy: Matthew 11:9, 11. Heightening the suspicion is that this passage – unlike the other citations, which are given precisely and can be verified and mostly reconstructed – is probably spiced with extraneous elements and can only partly be restored into Latin. An attempt to decipher it: Nam omnes profeta et ibsales (?) et Muzes et Davud profeta rentadet (?) ego dico vobis quis (?) n..t (?) iscripta in libris maior ego sum Ilias et post me venturus maior ez me est. Nomen eius Ahmedus ad est laudatus. (It is not sure that the word I have highlighted is the Persian preposition of ablative case, but considering the possibility of a slip of the tongue as the text was being dictated and the function of the word in the comparative of the adjective, we might suspect this. In the context, it means “greater than me”. In Latin it would be sufficient to say: maior me est.)

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THE AIM OF THE TREATISE

We can now see clearly that İbrahim, unlike several other known renegades, puts himself forward not as a polemic theologian who wishes to convince his former co-confessionalists,55 but as a new, astute propagandist aiming for laurels, esteem and position in his new Muslim environment.56 His purpose was to textually “verify” the accusations of classical Muslim anti-Christian polemics to the Muslim public and thus provide a solid foundation for his eschatological explanations. It is clear from the content and methods of the treatise that İbrahim wanted his expositions to dazzle the Muslim public and win the attention, trust and favours of the Porte, and thereby to promote his own career. His methods would not have convinced Christians, but could have been effective in eliciting the awe and acknowledgement of literate Muslim Turks. His explanations of biblical texts did not have to contend with constraints of authenticity, and he could bring his criticism before a Muslim public without risking any challenge, and with warranted confidence of success.57 As with many other known renegade authors,58 the writing of this treatise no doubt earned İbrahim his admission into higher circles in his new 55  In contrast with İbrahim, the Muslim “Bible critic” authors, who did design their arguments to convince Christians (too), usually based their arguments on the Bible and focused on its contradictions, and avoided making references to the Koran. One classic example is Ali al-Tabari (fl. mid-9th century), who explicitly denotes in his polemical work that “if Christians agree with me about [theological questions] they will abandon the religion they follow, and if they disagree with me they will disagree with the Torah and Gospel.” Rifaat Ebied and David Thomas (eds.), The Polemical Works of ‘Alī al-T . abarī. Leiden, 2016, 66–67. 56  İbrahim’s eschatological explanations and propagandistic rhetoric, which fit into the great-power context of the Ottoman Empire and the Christian powers, harmonizes with the printing activities that formed the core of his life’s work. See Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik, ‘The Visual in Transcultural Exchange: Emblems, Propaganda and the Ottomans’, in Christine McCall Probes and Sabine Mödersheim (eds.), The Art of Persuasion. Emblems and Propaganda. (Glasgow Emblem Studies, 17.). Glasgow, 2014, 117–135. 57  This presumed expectation on the part of the author is neatly demonstrated by the modern appraisals of the treatise produced in the Muslim cultural sphere. 58  These apologetic works have varying forms in accordance with their secondary aims (after their declaration of Muslim faith), their target public and their authors. For examples of two previous renegades, see Pál Ács, ‘Tarjumans Mahmud and Murad: Austrian and Hungarian Renegades as Sultan’s Interpreters’, in Wilhelm Kühlmann and Bodo Guthmüller (eds.), Europa und

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world: It expressed the denial of his Christian past, stated his commitment to Islam, and above all, declared his political loyalty. In compiling and formulating his subject matter, İbrahim, like these others, was motivated by his education and pre-Muslim life and the current historical-political context. He could hardly have chosen a more suitable form: interpretations of passages of the holy book of the Christians provided welcome predictions and ideological munition for followers of Islam and for the Ottoman authorities, who were at that time particularly receptive to “good news”.59

THE PROBLEM OF THE SOURCES

Although the attitude and argumentation of the RI was essentially inspired

by the Koran, Muslim traditions and the rhetoric of anti-Christian polemics based on these, what make it interesting are the author’s knowledge of the Bible and church history and his idiosyncratic adaptation of Protestant apocalypticism in support of Islam. To understand the circumstances that inspired the RI, we must consider that in contemporary Ottoman literature, imitation and following a model enhanced rather than diminished the chances of success and even the appearance of authenticity and legitimacy of a text.60 In this regard, İbrahim’s treatise is no exception. The primary criterion in its composition was conformity to the model constructions in this type of literature, taking precedence over

die Türken in Renaissance. Thübingen, 2000, 307–316. And on one of them: Krstić, Contested Conversions, 100–110. 59  İbrahim’s visions may have found an appreciative audience in court circles hoping for revanche even after the Peace of Karlowitz (1699). The series of military failures in the war against the Holy League prompted increasing recourse to ideological, symbolic devices in Ottoman imperial propaganda. On this, see Rifaat Abou el-Haj, ‘The Narcissism of Mustafa II (1695–1703). A Psychohistorical Study’, Islamic Studies 40 (1974) 115–131, particularly 118–119. 60  This pervaded the forms of both verse and prose works. Cf. Benedek Péri,‘ “… beklerüz”: An Ottoman Paraphrase (nazīre) Network from the 16th Century’, in Christiane Czygan and Stephan Conermann (eds.), An Iridescent Device: Premodern Ottoman Poetry. Bonn, 2018, 147–180.

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such considerations as the realism of the personal conversion narrative or the credibility of expositions of biblical texts. Although it has many individual features, the RI displays close parallels to the narratives of seventeenth-century authors who turned away from their Christian or Jewish backgrounds,61 and goes as far as to use at least one of them as a direct source. This was the work of a Greek Orthodox novice priest who studied in Athens and converted to Islam, taking the name Mehmed. He wrote his apologetic work in the early 1620s.62 The style of the introduction to this work, the way the author describes his pre-Muslim past, the role of biblical passages in his “enlightenment”,63 his self-reflections, the form in which he renders the Bible verses, and his discussions of these passages show such a level of similarity with some parts of the RI as to suggest that it was the main inspiration for İbrahim in writing his own work. Using somewhat fewer biblical citations than İbrahim, Mehmed reaches essentially the same conclusions. For example, he identifies as the subject of one of David’s psalms the coming prophet whose “followers will be the Arabs” and he dwells at length on the “true interpretation” of the revelations of John the Baptist.64 Unlike İbrahim, however, Mehmed does not enter into lengthy expositions. His work is considerably shorter than the RI and contains no grand eschatological visions. In contrast with the RI, Mehmed’s work is centred around how the biblical discoveries affected him. In the second half, he goes into great detail on the inner wranglings that led up to his conversion. Further strengthening the suspicion that İbrahim was directly inspired by this text is his practice of introducing some of his Latin quotations as being Greek (lisan-i Yunan), echoing the fact that Mehmed’s citations in Arabic script are to be read in Greek.65 This “negligence”, as well as further evidence of the link between the two texts, could hardly be ascribed to anything other than the 61  Cf. Krstić, Contested Conversions, 98–119. 62  An account of the author and his work, but without direct mentions of parallels with the RI, is given in Krstić, Contested Conversions, 110–113. Two copies of the work by Mehmed of Athens are known. One is: Österreichischer Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, N.F., 380. The other (referred to here) is held in SYEK, Ali Nihat Tarlan 144 (hereafter ANT 144). 63  ANT 144, fol. 58r; Krstić, Contested Conversions, 110–113. 64  ANT 144, fol. 59r; cf. the connections between John 14–17 and K 61:6 and the related parts in the RI discussed above. 65  EE 1187, fols. 2r, 3v.

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casualness İbrahim displays to the Muslim public concerning the authenticity of Latin-Christian borrowings, and indicates the primacy of literary forms of substantive details. A comparison of the two works strongly suggests that İbrahim’s polemic approach, the incorporation of biblical verses into his argumentation, and even the idea of writing the treatise, derived not from the experience of enlightenment gained from some mysterious “banned” biblical passages but from the work of Mehmed of Athens and possibly another – as yet unknown – treatise that imitated Mehmed’s. This circumstance does not challenge the authenticity of İbrahim’s account of his place of birth and school years in Kolozsvár. Indeed, the aspects of the Greek author’s career that echo his own (the study of theology) may have prompted İbrahim to reminisce about his own youth. We can hardly accept, however, that what underlay İbrahim’s conversion were Christian apocryphal sources and enigmatic, allegedly deleted passages of the Bible, and we should perhaps regard even the memory of arguing with his former teachers as no more than an anecdote designed to dazzle his target audience, one that fitted well into the construction he had taken as his model.

“POPE ANDREAS” – A JEWISH THREAD?

Finally, we should note that the literary influences and sources that inspired

the writing of the RI at one point go beyond both Muslim and Protestant literary learning. The section of the treatise describing the emergence of the Roman papacy includes a detail that cannot be traced to either the Muslim or the Christian traditions, or indeed to any source. İbrahim introduces a person named Andrayiş/Endrayiş (Andreas/Andrew)66 as the first head of the church, someone who wormed his way into the trust of the apostles with feigned piety and “by learning certain verses of the Gospel”, proclaimed himself leader of the Christian community, and adopted new customs (such as pictorial representations), thereby starting to spoil the church.67 This is a startling 66  The story woven around him clearly rules out identification with the apostle Andrew. 67  EE 1187, fols. 26v–27r.

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contention considering the author’s knowledge of church history, however it seems quite deliberate, and it is not pure invention.68 The figure of Pope Andrew, who did not exist in reality, connects with a legend that survives in several version in the Jewish tradition. The story bears an affinity with the legends of St Peter that spread in various versions in the Middle Ages. The hero is a talented child of Jewish parents who was abducted by Christians, and through his outstanding abilities, rises to the papal throne.69 Narratives woven from a blend of historical reality and Muslim traditions run through the whole treatise, and in this case, İbrahim seems to have taken only the character of the hero – Pope Andrew – and the motif of identity change for a role that fits into his conception. We can only guess why İbrahim chose to concoct this story. The deliberate avoidance of the Petrine tradition resonates with the anti-Catholicism of the fanatical Unitarian-turned-Muslim author, and perhaps he wanted to distance the figure of Peter the Apostle, who elsewhere appears in a neutral tone, from the history of the despised Roman church. This aspect bears a curious echo of a hypothesis that İbrahim was originally Jewish, a possibility, however, seemingly refuted by the Protestant learning and knowledge of the New Testament that pervades the RI and İbrahim’s entire oeuvre. Nonetheless, it presents us with new evidence of his Jewish connections.70

conclusions

İbrahim Müteferrika’s treatise is rather a political pamphlet based on Muslim

anti-Christian polemic literature and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century 68  The only hypothesis concerning this curious yarn considers the use of the name to be simply an error: Sarıcaoğlu and Yılmaz, Müteferrika, 82. 69  For an overview of the various versions of the legend, see Hyman Gerson Enelow, A ‘ ndreas’, in Jewish Encyclopaedia. Vol. 1. New York, London, 1901, 578–579; cf. Gertrude Landa, Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends. New York, 1919, 213–224. 70  Jewish printers in Constantinople provided İbrahim with assistance in the technical preparations for printing. Cf. Rachel Simon, ‘The Contribution of Hebrew Printing Houses and Printers to Ladino Culture and Scholarship’, Judaica Librarianship 16 (2011) 125–135, particularly 126: note 7.

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Ottoman autobiographic conversion narratives. It seems that the main impetus to write it came from much more the author’s political ambitions than simply desire of confession. The form and content of the treatise was shaped by a combination of İbrahim’s learning, the interpretive framework provided by the political-ideological context and the requirement to conform with existing literary constructs. It was his adaptation to this literary tradition rather than the veracity of the content that assured the positive reception of the treatise, and underpinned its legitimacy and influence. The autobiographical passages concerning the nature of the author’s conversion are thus of dubious authenticity. İbrahim’s expositions and his entire approach derive primarily from his Muslim learning, a “dense fabric” that nonetheless allows his knowledge of Protestant theology to filter through. The hypothesis that he was of the Unitarian faith prior to his conversion is, on balance, supported rather than refuted by certain of his polemic expositions, but cannot be proven. In addition to the Muslim and Protestant influences that inspired İbrahim, the text betrays a connection with the Jewish tradition that he works into his narrative in an idiosyncratic way. Judging from the existence of several copies of the work and from how İbrahim’s career subsequently developed, we may have no doubt that the treatise propelled its author to success.

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FIRES IN ISTANBUL: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY REFLECTIONS ON THE SULTANS’ LEGITIMACY Suraiya Faroqhi Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul [email protected]

Fires in preindustrial cities, built largely of wood, were a recurrent calamity: in 1666, only six years after the infamous Istanbul fire of 1660, the London City burnt down almost completely. In the aftermath, Christopher Wren and other architects reconstructed the centre, by now largely in brick and stone.1 New York burnt down in 1776, during the Revolutionary War, and another Great Fire followed in 1835, when the city was already a financial hub of the fledgling United States.2 Even so, Istanbul fires were especially frequent and destructive, due to the strong winds determining the city’s climate. As these winds blow mostly from the Northeast, they often drove a fire originating in the storerooms and workshops near the Golden Horn, at that time the city’s main business district, all the way through the triangle surrounded by the Byzantine walls, until the conflagration reached the Sea of Marmara.3 1  Matt Brown, ‘Everything you know about 17th century London is wrong’, accessed 26 December 2018: https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/everything-you-know-about17th-century-london-is-wrong/; on the Istanbul fire of 1660, compare Kenan Yıldız, 1660 İstanbul Yangını ve Etkileri: Vakıflar, Toplum ve Ekonomi. Ankara, 2017. 2  Hannah Frishberg, ‘These 9 Disasters Forever Changed New York’s Infrastructure’, Curbed NY 15 September 2014, accessed on 26 December 2018: https://ny.curbed. com/2014/9/15/10047076/these-9-disasters-forever-changed-new-yorks-infrastructure. 3  For the most fundamental works, see: Ahmet Tekin, Istanbul in Flames: City Conflagrations, Governance and Society in the Early Modern Period. MA Thesis, İstanbul Şehir Üniversitesi,

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However, our present concern is not with the fires per se. Rather we analyse the comments of a few eighteenth-century authors, in an attempt to determine the ways in which these men connected their “fire stories” with the “legitimacy question”, a central and difficult issue involving Ottoman monarchs and grand viziers. For on the one hand, eighteenth-century sultans had not repudiated the image of the great warrior, which Mehmed the Conqueror (1451–1481) and Kanuni Süleyman (1520–1566) had once projected. In real life, however, Ahmed III (1703–1730) and his successors had long been sedentary figures, whose viziers commanded the empire’s campaigns. In addition, by the 1700s, the sultans’ armies several times suffered notable defeats, and even though Ottoman commanders managed to retake certain lost territories including Morea (1715) and Belgrade (1740), it was no longer realistic to claim that the sultans were always and ever victorious. The legitimacy deficit arising from this situation being a domestic problem, we discuss only Ottoman authors, although foreign visitors to the city have described Istanbul fires as well.4 Even so, in the 1700s, the legitimacy – or lack of same – of an Ottoman sultan was of marginal concern to foreigners, who were not (yet) in the business of making and unmaking monarchs and viziers. Closely connected to the legitimacy question, at least from the late 1700s onward, are the problems of urban violence and insecurity. Many villagers and townspeople sought a better life in Istanbul, where recurrent epidemics must have vacated positions that the migrants hoped to fill. Often poorly integrated into familial and guild networks, these migrants became “the usual suspects” to whom the authorities and established inhabitants of Istanbul attributed all kinds of misdeeds. As Betül Başaran and Aysel Yıldız have shown, Selim III 2016, accessed on 29 December 2018: https://www.academia.edu/36664394/OTTOMAN_ ISTANBUL_IN_FLAMES_CITY_CONFLAGRATIONS_GOVERNANCE_AND_ SOCIETY_IN_THE_EARLY_MODERN_PERIOD; Kenan Yıldız, ‘1782 İstanbul Yangını: Kadı Sicillerinden Tespit, Çıkarım ve Yorumlar’, in Feridun Emecen, Ali Akyıldız and Emrah Safa Gürkan (eds.), Osmanlı İstanbulu: II. Uluslararası Osmanlı İstanbulu Sempozyumu. Bildiriler. İstanbul, 2014, 707–722, and Yıldız, 1660 İstanbul Yangını. My thanks go to Zeynep Çavuşoğlu for pointing out Tekin’s work. Due to space constraints, the notes contain only the titles cited and not the full bibliography that I have consulted. 4  Rifa’at A. Abou-El-Haj, ‘Ottoman Attitudes toward Peace-making: The Karlowitz Case’, Der Islam 51 (1974) 131–137.

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(1789–1807) and his Istanbul subjects shared a belief that due to footloose unattached migrants, they had “no security” left.5 While the sultan attempted to remedy this situation by intensifying controls, his policies were mostly unsuccessful and in 1807–1808, this failure was one of the major reasons leading to his deposition and murder. Space constraints make it necessary to focus on merely five authors. Raşid Mehmed Efendi (1670–1735), Çelebi-zade İsmail Asım Efendi (about 1685–1760) and Çeşmi-zade Mustafa Reşid Efendi (d. 1770) all were vakanüvis or officially appointed historiographers.6 By contrast, Şemdanizade Süleyman Efendi (about 1740–1779) and Derviş Efendi-zade Mustafa Efendi (d. 1816–1817) certainly were part of the Ottoman bureaucratic hierarchy, but they did not write ex officio, and Şemdani-zade did not hesitate to voice criticisms of official figures.7 After a brief overview over the careers of these five men, we summarize their comments on fires and sultanic legitimacy. In particular, we focus on a spectacular conflagration (1767) spread by burning ships, and on which both Çeşmi-zade and Şemdani-zade have reported extensively: an official next to an – at most – semi-official voice. The final section approaches the “legitimacy question” through the accounts that some of the relevant authors have given of the punishments, which the sultans deemed appropriate for people considered responsible for urban fires: the monarchs had some of them imprisoned and executed, while opting for clemency in other cases.

5  Aysel Yıldız, Crisis and Rebellion in the Ottoman Empire: The Downfall of a Sultan in the Age of Revolution. London, 2017; Betül Başaran, Selim III, Social Control and Policing in Istanbul at the End of the Eighteenth Century: Between Crisis and Order (The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage. Politics, Society and Economy, 56.) Leiden, Boston, 2014. 6  For Raşid and Çelebi-zade, see Abdülkadir Özcan, Yunus Uğur, Baki Çakır and Ahmet Zeki İzgöer (eds.), Târîh-i Râşid ve Zeyli: Râşid Mehmed Efendi, Çelebizâde İsmaîl Âsım Efendi (1071–1141/1660–1729). 3 vols. İstanbul, 2013; on Çeşmî-zade, see Bekir Kütükoğlu (ed.), Çeşmi-zâde Mustafa Reşid: Çeşmi-zâde Tarihi. İstanbul, 1993. 7  Münir Aktepe (ed.), Şem’dânî-zâde Fındıklılı Süleyman Efendi: Târihi Mür’i’t-Tevârih. 2 vols. İstanbul, 1976 and 1978; Hüsamettin Aksu (ed.), Derviş Efendi-zâde Derviş Mustafa Efendi: Lehibu’l-Ukalâ fî Fikri’l-Guraba: 1782 Yılı Yangınları (Harik Risalesi 1196). İstanbul, 1994.

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THE AUTHORS

Eighteenth-century sultans often appointed religious scholars as vakanüvis. However, it was not sufficient to be an expert in Islamic law, for the holder of this particular office needed to be a person of standing in the militaryadministrative world as well and thus be familiar with courtly etiquette. Furthermore, it was an advantage if the candidate had acquired some distinction as a writer, and his skills had come to the attention of people in the sultan’s environment. Put differently, the candidate had to find and retain high-level patronage, often a daunting task. The instability of the sultans’ rule must have had an impact, direct or indirect, especially upon the careers of the vakanüvis, but on those of less exposed authors as well. After all, among the seven sultans who ruled during the 1700s, three lost their thrones due to rebellions, and the new monarchs often deposed and/or banished the men closely identified with the regimes of their predecessors. Thus, writers such as Raşid, Çelebi-zade and Çeşmi-zade needed to think twice before recounting events that their patrons considered “politically sensitive”. This concern must have become even more important when in the later part of the century, a former vakanüvis might hope for reappointment, sometimes even several times over.8 Raşid and Çelebi-zade were official historiographers consecutively during the reign of Ahmed III (1703–1730); thus, they both had to negotiate the regime change following the deposition of this sultan in the so-called Patrona uprising.9 Raşid, at least, had substantial experience with crises of this type, as he was already in mid-career in 1703, when Mustafa II (1695–1703) lost his throne and Şeyhülislam Feyzullah his life.10 As for Çelebi-zade, aged eighteen in this same year, he was at the beginning of his madrasa career, and thus probably a less likely target for removal than a senior person would have been. Even so, Çelebi-zade had begun to work at a young age and possibly had 8   Bekir Kütükoğlu, ‘Vak’anüvis’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 42. İstanbul, 2012, 457–461. 9   Münir Aktepe, Patrona İsyanı. İstanbul, 1958. 10 Özcan, Târîh-i Râşid, I. XV–XXII.

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learned about the dangers threatening a bureaucratic career when still a pupil.11 As a descendant of prominent religious scholars, Çeşmi-zade was an insider to the system as well: all three men must have known what they could – or could not – afford to write. The son of a successful religious scholar and judge from Malatya, Raşid Mehmed followed the footsteps of his father, and succeeded even better in both these roles. In 1723, shortly after the fall of the Safavids, Ahmed III sent Raşid to Iran as his ambassador, an appointment that ended his work as vakanüvis (1715–1723). For this embassy, Raşid received the temporary rank of paşa, a title by which his friends referred to him even after his return. In part, this success was due to the astute manner in which Raşid located the “right” patrons, including first Grand Vizier Şehid Ali Pasha and after the latter had died in the battle of Petrovaradin (1716), the author focused on Damad İbrahim Pasha, grand vizier from 1718 to 1730. However, Raşid’s luck ran out in the last years of the reign of Ahmed III (1703–1730). For the former vakanüvis had the misfortune to officiate as a kadı of Istanbul at a time when fatty substances had become very scarce, so that householders had trouble feeding their families and lighting their homes. Istanbul’s artisans loudly expressed their discontent, focusing on the illicit opening of new shops, and in such cases, the kadı of Istanbul was always a likely scapegoat. Once the new sultan Mahmud I (1730– 1754) was securely in office, he temporarily banished Raşid from the capital. However, by 1734, the former ambassador and high-level kadı had returned, ending his career as the kadıasker of Anadolu, the third man in the hierarchy of judges and scholars. Raşid was still in office when he died in 1735. Çelebi-zade İsmail Efendi, often known by his poetical sobriquet Asım, had a similar career, although his father had not been a religious scholar but a chief scribe (reisülküttab) of the grand vizier. Appointed vakanüvis in 1723, after Raşid’s departure, Çelebi-zade lost this office in 1731, after Mahmud I had stabilized his position, an event that once again demonstrated the highly politicized quality of the vakanüvis’s office. Similar to Raşid’s experience, this mishap did not however prevent the author from later pursuing a high-profile career as a professor and judge, and in the last year of his life, he even became 11 Özcan, Küçük Çelebizâde, III. VII–XVIII.

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the şeyhülislam, briefly heading the entire hierarchy of Ottoman scholarbureaucrats. The third vakanüvis discussed is Çeşmi-zade Mustafa Reşid Efendi, the son and grandson of leading religious scholars, who had begun his teaching career by 1740–1741. Deceased before ever becoming a judge, Çeşmi-zade was thus a younger contemporary of Çelebi-zade İsmail Asım. Çeşmi-zade’s tenure as vakanüvis was short, lasting only from late 1766 to the middle of 1768, when an Ottoman campaign in Georgia was the most “newsworthy” event. His term ended before, in October, the sultan entered into a new confrontation with Russia (1768–1764), and thus Çeşmi-zade wrote about the last months of peace before a catastrophic war. However, apparently the sultan and his viziers did not expect the author to say much about the delicate political situation, and apart from the war in the Caucasus, Çeşmi-zade recounted crucial events in the careers of high dignitaries, to say nothing of the Istanbul fires, numerous even in the short period under consideration. From a less elevated background than the official historiographers, Şemdanizade Süleyman Efendi was the son of an Anatolian merchant, who had settled in the Istanbul suburb of Fındıklı, where the author spent part of his life. As he was not a scion of one of the – very few – great families that by the 1700s shared the highest offices of the Ottoman juridical cum teaching hierarchy, he at most held offices of middle rank.12 Şemdani-zade worked as a kadı or substitute kadı in provincial towns of Rumelia and Anatolia, and we even find him in Fayyum (Egypt), a remote place where one might have expected a local person rather than an emissary from Istanbul.13 Thus, Şemdani-zade was a widely travelled man, with an interest in foreign affairs, particularly those of Prussia; and perhaps because of his occasional employment as a scribe, he had occasion to consult certain reports of Ottoman ambassadors to the Habsburg court. He completed his chronicle in 1777, after thirteen years of work, when employed in the Istanbul law court in charge of dividing the inheritances of the sultan’s servitors (kısmet-i askeri mahkemesi). The author dedicated his work to Sultan Abdülhamid I (1774–1789). This 12 Aktepe, Şem’dânî-zâde, I. XVIII; Madeline Zilfi, The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Classical Age. Minneapolis, 1988. 13 Aktepe, Şem’dânî-zâde, I. XVIII.

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dedication makes it likely that he expected some approval or even a reward from the Ottoman monarch, but we do not know if he succeeded. Şemdanizade died in 1779. Much less information survives on Derviş Efendi-zade Mustafa Efendi, who lived into the reign of Mahmud II (1808–1839).14 According to his gravestone, Derviş Efendi-zade’s most prominent office was that of şehremini (appointed in 1802). In the 1700s and early 1800s, this official was responsible for procuring materials needed for public buildings and especially palace projects. Derviş Efendi-zade was not very forthcoming with respect to sultanic legitimacy, and only the records in the kadı registers unearthed by Yıldız show how many contentious issues the author must have encountered but preferred to leave out.15 After all, when a major fire had occurred, defending the sultan’s legitimacy as a just arbiter involved dealing, for instance, with the owners of surviving houses demanding astronomically high rents, and the resultant complaints of tenants, who expected the sultan’s officials to remedy the situation. While the administration used the time-honoured device of setting price ceilings (narh), we may wonder how often tenants preferred to pay high rents rather than camp out in the open.

WHAT THE VAKANÜVİS MIGHT SAY

All three vakanüvis have assigned several separate (and usually short) chapters to urban fires. Unfortunately, we do not know by what criteria they selected the events to include, as surely Istanbul fires were more frequent than we might conclude from their accounts alone. Nor do the authors often tell us from which sources they obtained their information. Sometimes, they may have consulted court records, or else, a person from the grand vizier’s entourage may have passed on bits of information. We get some notion of Raşid’s attitude when reading his account of a fire of twenty-seven hour duration, which took place in 1130/1717–1718, at about 14 Aksu, Derviş Efendi-zâde, 12, and album section image No. 2. 15  Yıldız, ‘1782 İstanbul Yangını’, 715–717.

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the time when the Ottoman government began the negotiations that resulted in the peace of Pasarofça/Passarowitz.16 The fire began outside the walls separating the inner city from the Golden Horn, in a Jewish home located in the crowded quarter of Cibalı. At a later stage, it jumped the walls, burning down much of the city centre. Raşid emphasized the despair of Istanbul’s inhabitants, including the men whose job it was to extinguish the fire. For the ways in which the conflagration spread proved impossible to predict, and after people had taken a great deal of trouble to move their possessions to supposed places of safety, including the Şehzade mosque, they found that the fires had caught up with them. For the firefighters, it was especially demoralizing to see fires emerge in places seemingly remote from the original foci. Raşid described them as in complete passivity they watched the disaster unfold, until the rain finally extinguished the flames. The author did not record how high-level administrators reacted, noting only that officials stationed in Istanbul sent messengers to the sultan and grand vizier, both absent from Istanbul at that time. Apparently, Raşid intended to depict a force of nature, sent by the deity and about whose inner-worldly reasons it was impossible to speculate. In the following year (1131/1718–1719) the author had to describe another major fire, this time attended by a host of dignitaries beginning with Sultan Ahmed and his grand vizier. In this case, Raşid did mention an inner-worldly reason for the fire, namely the tendency of house owners to build their dwellings close together, especially in popular locations. The vakanüvis recorded a dispute between janissaries who wanted to pull down an important church, supposedly as a firefighting measure, and a group of Christians, who tried to prevent this act. Avoiding all comment, the author baldly stated that in the meantime, the church burnt down and the dispute ended. While Jews and Christians certainly occurred in his accounts of Istanbul conflagrations, Raşid never said that nonMuslims were especially to blame. In 1141/1728–1729, Çelebi-zade reported an Üsküdar fire in broadly similar terms. In this case, too, the fire started in a Jewish quarter, where, as the author noted, the wooden houses were very close together and the dry timber caught fire like tinder. Here too, the grand vizier appeared to encourage the 16 Özcan, Târîh-i Râşid, II. 1097–1098.

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firefighters, and while the Jewish quarter burnt down, only a few Muslim houses suffered damage. Çelebi-zade recorded that the firefighters brought pumps (tulumba), still a relative novelty in the early 1700s.17 While the author did not say whether these new-fangled devices were helpful, he did note that the fire did not spread any further, immediately after having referred to the tulumbas. Çeşmi-zade’s short chronicle records only minor fires, apart from one exception that we discuss later on. The author did liven up his text by including some stories about dignitaries who lost their homes, especially the unfortunate Defterdar İbrahim Sarim Efendi, who being sick, had a narrow escape when his new house burnt down. Later on the official had to abandon the place where he had found refuge, as that caught fire as well.18 In this instance, the author noted that some of the servants of the defterdar had used the confusion to steal valuables belonging to their master, some of which later reappeared. Çeşmi-zade did not say how the grand vizier and/or the sultan dealt with this affair.

INDICATIVE DETAILS: ŞEMDANİ-ZADE FINDIKLILI SÜLEYMAN EFENDİ

In contrast to the blandness characterizing many vakanüvis accounts, Şemdani-

zade was more inclined to record certain – sometimes telling – details. Perhaps due to his relatively modest position, this author expressed his political opinions more openly than the official historiographers did. Thus, he made it clear how much he disapproved of İbrahim Pasha, the grand vizier of Ahmed III.19 Different from the three vakanüvis, Şemdani-zade wanted his work to provide moral lessons and he often stated the lesson intended already in his chapter headings. Thus, he criticized the distinguished official chronicler Mustafa Naima (1655–1716) for the interest of the latter in astrology/ astronomy. For according to Şemdani-zade, the most important pre-condition for writing history, apart from factual knowledge, was to distinguish right from

17  On the debate whether the pumps were useful or not, see Tekin, ‘Istanbul in Flames’, 63. 18 Kütükoğlu, Çeşmî-zâde, 29, 44. 19 Aktepe, Şem’dânî-zâde, I. 11–15.

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wrong, and the stars were thus irrelevant to historiography.20 Misogyny, open or concealed, was (and is) of course a world-wide phenomenon; but it is noteworthy that Şemdani-zade often enough took this tendency to extremes. When the author discussed the social and political context within which Istanbul fires took place, he typically mentioned officials, whom the sultan or grand vizier had considered negligent or culpable and therefore deposed, banished or even executed. Thus, after a fire in 1750, the commander of the janissaries lost his position, as during his period in office, there had been a great many fires. Perhaps Sultan Mahmud I felt that the commander should have weeded out possible arsonists.21 In fact, a number of people had accused the head of the janissary corps of employing arson for political purposes; supposedly, the fires were to inform the ruler of “popular discontent” with the vizier currently in office.22 Şemdani-zade was scandalized by this form of “politics” as so often a fire that according to the arsonists’ plan should have destroyed five or ten houses, spread over wide areas with enormous damage to property and life. At the same time, Şemdani-zade did not fail to mention that another commander of the janissaries, wounded when trying to extinguish a fire, received a robe of honour from his monarch.23 Of special interest, given the author’s concern with protecting the legitimacy of the sultanate, is his comment that after a fire, which had destroyed the business district of Mercan, a loan from the Ottoman state coffers financed rebuilding, with the owners later repaying the treasury.24 The sultan thus appeared as a benevolent figure, who accepted temporary losses of revenue to assist his subjects. Nor does Şemdani-zade neglect the emotional aspect, telling his readers that Osman III (1754–1757) cried when witnessing the destruction that the fire of 1755 had caused in the ancient mosque of Mahmud Pasha. Evidently, neither the monarch nor Şemdani-zade felt that expressing grief in public was in any way shameful.25 20  21  22  23  24  25 

Ibid., II/A. 40. Ibid., I. 154. Ibid., I. 164. Ibid., II/A. 48. Ibid., I. 154, 163–164. Köprülü Mehmed Pasha (d. 1661) had seen this matter differently: Robert Dankoff,

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Intriguingly, the chronicler noted that when the [grand] vizier gave a feast to the monarch shortly after the fire, some “clever people” or perhaps – according to the more modern meaning of the term ukala – some people who thought of themselves as clever, indicated that this gesture was inappropriate given the extent of the calamity.26 Şemdani-zade, however, apparently felt that the actions of a sultan, while on the throne, were beyond criticism by ordinary mortals. Even so, this sentiment did not prevent him from attempting a justification: Perhaps the sultan had attended the feast so that his subjects would not give in to despondency and depression. Of course, the sultan and his vizier had not just lost their entire livelihoods… Given the catastrophic conflagration of 1755, the chronicler was somewhat at a loss when recounting the yet direr catastrophe of 1757, which produced such a wasteland that the affected areas became unsafe to traverse for a man alone. Şemdani-zade claimed that this fire was comparable only to a conflagration that had occurred under Selim II (1566–1574). Presumably, he meant the fire of 1569, which Minna Rozen and Benjamin Arbel have described as the “great fire in the metropolis”.27 Interestingly, the author noted that in the late sixteenth century, population density had not been high as it was in his own time, so that the current destruction was proportionally greater, an observation confirmed by Ahmet Tekin’s recent work.28 We might expect Şemdani-zade, a religious scholar, to interpret the extremely destructive fires about which he wrote as examples of divine wrath. However, on this issue, the author was circumspect; and in one of the few cases where he described a fire as God’s punishment, it was with reference to two dignitaries who Şemdani-zade felt were especially oppressive to the subject population. They therefore thoroughly deserved the misfortune of having their houses burn The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman: Melek Ahmed Pasha 1588–1662 as Portrayed in Evliya Celebi’s Book of Travels (Seyahat-name). With an Historical Introduction by Rhoads Murphey. (SUNY Series in Medieval Middle East History.) Albany, NY, 1991, 234. 26 Aktepe, Şem’dânî-zâde, II/A. 9–10. 27  Minna Rozen and Benjamin Arbel, ‘Great Fire in the Metropolis: The Case of the Istanbul Conflagration of 1569 and its Description by Marcantonio Barbaro’, in David J. Wasserstein and Ami Ayalon (eds.), Mamluks and Ottomans: Studies in Honour of Michael Winter. London, New York, 2006, 134–165. 28  Tekin, ‘Istanbul in Flames’, 31–32.

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down not once but twice, and in the second case, they could not even salvage at least a fraction of their properties.29 In a similar vein, the author commented on a fire that in 1771 destroyed the official residence of the janissary commander.30 He pointed out that hundreds of men, including specialized guards, were responsible for guarding the residence. Yet all these measures were in vain, a fact that Şemdani-zade attributed to God’s ire. Apparently, the author was not part of the coalition between janissaries and sections of the religious establishment that played such an important role in eighteenth-century Istanbul politics, and preferred to see the soldier-artisans as oppressors who had thoroughly deserved their fate. A degree of envy may have been part of Şemdani-zade’s motivation as well. For earlier on, when the janissary barracks needed restoration after a serious fire in 1751, some of the wealthier units had supplemented the sultan’s grant for repairs out of their own funds. Şemdani-zade recorded that on this occasion, they had sponsored gilded decorations, a gesture, which he may well have regarded as presumptuous.31

BLAND BUT NOT OFFICIAL: THE “FIRE STORY” (HARİK RISALESİ) AND THE PRAYERS OF SULTAN ABDÜLHAMİD

The Harik Risalesi by Derviş Efendi-zade Mustafa Efendi covers two serious fires that both took place in 1782.32 In fact, as Yıldız has shown in his recent article, there were even three such disasters in the same year. It so happens that the Dutch ambassador Reinier van Haeften has described this calamity as well, including a map that shows the extent of the destruction.33

29 Aktepe, Şem’dânî-zâde, II/A. 104–105. 30  Ibid., II/B. 87. 31  Ibid., I. 158–159. 32  Hüsamettin Aksu, Derviş Efendi-zâde, accessed 31 December 2018: https://www.academia.edu/10014726/1782_%C4%B0stanbul_Yang%C4%B1n%C4%B1_Kad%C4%B1_ Sicillerinden_Tespit_%C3%87%C4%B1kar%C4%B1m_ve_Yorumlar. 33  B. J. Slot, ‘The Fires of 1782 and 1784 According to Maps and Reports by Dutch Diplomatic Representatives’, Güney-Doğu Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi 4–5 (1975–1976) 47–66.

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For writing his text, Derviş Efendi-zade used an ancient justification, namely a request from his friends. Given its formulaic character, this statement does not tell us very much about his actual intentions. The text is very ornate stylistically, and full of witty allusions that apparently were acceptable in the 1700s, even when describing a major disaster. Less conventionally, the author also claimed that his obligation to the sultan had induced him to write, recounting in detail how Sultan Abdülhamid I toured Istanbul, probably to supervise the firefighting operations. As customary, the monarch offered rewards to people who laboured beyond the call of duty and punished those that he felt were sabotaging the rescue efforts. Furthermore, we learn that Sultan Abdülhamid visited the relics of the Prophet Muhammad in the Topkapı Palace; on these tours, the ruler often stayed in the palaces of dignitaries that the fire had not (yet) reached. Intriguingly, Derviş Efendi-zade does not tell us how, while Istanbul was still in flames, the sultan addressed the discontent resulting from the calamity. After all, the ruler must have responded to the immediate danger to his legitimacy, put differently, the rampant unrest in the city, where, as the Dutch ambassador reported, arson rumours were flying about. Once the conflagration had ended however, Sultan Abdülhamid took the initiative, appointing a new grand vizier, and there were rumours of secret executions and a rebellion that the newly appointed dignitary just had managed to suppress before it could spread.34 Of course, not every story that the Dutch ambassador picked up in his Büyükdere retreat was necessarily true; presumably, he depended on what his dragoman told him. Even so, the political blandness of the Harik Risalesi is quite remarkable, especially when compared with the outspoken account of Derviş Efendi-zade’s contemporary Şemdani-zade.

FIRE ON WATER

In terms of sultanic legitimacy, we possess two intriguing accounts about a fire “on the water”, namely the Golden Horn, the site of the sultanic dockyards of 34  Slot, ‘The Fires’, 50, 57–59.

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Kasımpaşa.35 As Çeşmi-zade recounts, on 8 January 1767, a fire broke out on a naval galleon, and the ropes fastening it to its place burned away. Adrift, the ship first set fire to a number of boats anchored before Galata and then the wind drove it to the Istanbul shore, where the blaze spread to the fire-prone commercial cum residential area known as Cibalı, with its populous Jewish quarter. However, Çeşmi-zade noted that most of the damage was on the northern shore of the Golden Horn, and from an official point of view, it was surely most distressing that one of the burning ships had set fire to the sultan’s pavilion in the imperial dockyards (Tersane Kasrı). As the captain of the galleon had been absent when the catastrophe occurred, and afterwards fled the locality, the Chief Admiral Tosun Mehmed Pasha had to face the ire of Mustafa III (1757–1774) all by himself. Çeşmizade noted that the monarch first had the admiral arrested. However, the latter soon benefited from an amnesty and received an appointment to Eğriboz, distinctly a demotion although the penalty could have been worse. The tersane emini, another high-level naval officeholder, lost his job as well and received an order to remain in his villa on the Bosporus: a kind of house arrest. The harbour director was worse off, as the sultan banished him to the distant island of Cyprus, where he was to be a prisoner in the fortress of Magosa/Famagusta. Şemdani-zade covered this fire too, telling the same story in outline but including more details.36 As the navy galleon was due to leave for the Mediterranean, it lay at anchor in the middle of the water, between Galata and the Yeni Cami district. When the captain and most of the officers had gone home, a fire broke out which the skeleton staff on board was unable to control. The vessel broke loose, and the wind pushed it against ships lying in the nearby repair docks. As these boats caught fire in their turns, six burning craft were now like loose cannon, hitting coastal sections of the Golden Horn. Among others, they ignited the Jewish quarter in Cibalı on the Istanbul shore and the royal palace of Aynalı Kavak, next to the dockyards of Kasımpaşa, on the northern, Galata side of the water. However, the workers of the dockyards, noticing the approach of one of the burning ships, managed to bore holes in its 35 Kütükoğlu, Çeşmî-zâde, 10–14. 36 Aktepe, Şem’dânî-zâde, II/A. 94–95.

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body and load the vessel with ironware, so that it sank. At Aynalı Kavak, an energetic member of the religious establishment arrived in his personal boat and oversaw the removal of the furniture and interior decoration, including the costly mirrors. The main features are common to both accounts, including the punishment of the officials responsible for the disaster. However, only Şemdani-zade records the initiative taken by a religious scholar and the heroism of the dockyard workers, so that the reader can envisage the disaster more clearly than when reading Çeşmi-zade’s account. Presumably, the differences between the two texts are due to the genre adopted: “annals of the empire” versus a chronicle authored by an individual. It does not seem possible to link the differences between the two accounts to the authors’ differing social or political positions.

URBAN SECURITY, PUNISHMENTS AND THE LEGITIMACY OF THE SULTAN

While most descriptions of Istanbul fires do not say very much about the

manner in which officialdom tried to preserve the sultan’s legitimacy, we can glean some information from those cases in which the authorities identified a person really or supposedly responsible for the mishap. For when the sultan punished the people deemed responsible, the inhabitants of the city must have understood that even if the monarch could not protect their property, he could at least see to it that the persons causing fires did not walk away from their crimes or negligence. When officials investigated, however, their mistreatment of suspects might lead to dubious confessions. On the other hand, most eighteenthcentury sultans were less inclined to shed blood on a mere assumption than had been true of a personage such as Murad IV (1623–1640), whom even his former page Evliya Çelebi described as bloodthirsty.37 On the contrary,

37  Evliyâ Çelebi b. Derviş Mehemmed Zillî, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, Topkapı Sarayı Bağdat 304 Yazmasının Transkripsyonu–Dizini. Vol. 1. Ed. by Robert Dankoff, Seyit Ali Kahraman and Yücel Dağlı. İstanbul, 2006, 103, calls Murad IV “just and bloodthirsty”, before enumerating the many officeholders whom the sultan caused to be killed.

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for the officials or ex-officials defending the legitimacy of sultans Mustafa III (1757–1774) and Abdülhamid I it was important to stress that the monarchs took the safeguards of the sharia against doubtful accusations very seriously indeed. Three accounts make this fact especially apparent: Apart from the story, previously discussed, of the “floating fire” on the Golden Horn, we have the crime-story of some low-lives scheming to delay the discovery of a robbery in/ near the silver wire manufactory (Simkeşhane). A further tale of crime deals with the combustion caused by the rivalry between two bakers.38 In the case first mentioned, the sultan punished people occupying senior positions in the dockyard administration, while he apparently spared the sailors on the galleon, who had been unable to control the fire. He thus acted as a sovereign handing out justice in an even-handed manner, well aware that the neglect of administrators might be the most significant cause of a catastrophe, even if these men were not present when the accident occurred. On the other hand, despite the horrific damage, the sultan did not go beyond deposing and banishing the dignitaries at issue. In the Simkeşhane and bakery cases, the chroniclers considered that lowly people were responsible: Explicitly at least, they did not indicate that any people of status took part. According to Çelebi-zade’s account, the Simkeşhane fire did not spread very far because the grand vizier took an active part in fighting it. Once the site had become accessible to investigating officials, they found the dead bodies of two guards. Thereupon, the forces of order arrested a number of porters and water carriers, whom they released when it turned out, that the suspects had no part in the crime. However, the sultan’s servitors found a more viable suspect in a certain Yusuf, who led them to a gang of four Muslims and one Orthodox Christian, all connected with the Simkeşhane. Questioning took place first in the barracks of the corps of the sultan’s gardeners (bostancı), who had a secondary function as police officers, and later in the headquarters of the janissary commander, in the presence of a scribe serving one of the kadıs officiating in Istanbul. Once before the judge, the accused

38 Özcan, Küçük Çelebizâde, III. 1471–1472.

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declared that their confessions were the result of torture, while the authorities seem to have suspected some – unspecified – political complications. In the end, only Yusuf confessed to the murder before the kadı of Istanbul and his execution took place in front of the Simkeşhane. The other men suffered banishment; we do not know how and why they avoided the gallows. It is noteworthy that Çelebi-zade, who had juridical training, recorded the claim of the accused that the bostancıs and/or janissaries had tortured them. Possibly, the sultan had made it clear that he only wanted sentences which conformed to the sharia. Raşid Mehmed’s story about rivalry among bakers as source of fire setting is of special interest, as it highlights an aspect of artisan life not often recorded otherwise.39 In 1133/1720–1721, the authorities suspected that a series of fires was due to malevolence. When a – soon extinguished – fire broke out in the central district of Vezneciler, officials concluded that the arsonist had operated in the bakery of the quarter. When questioning a suspect worker, the officials heard that the master of the nearby bakery of Koska supposedly felt that the bread baked in Vezneciler was proving so popular that his own bakery was losing customers. The suspect claimed to have received forty guruş and the materials needed to set a fire: his punishment was a public hanging. As for the master baker of Koska, he denied any involvement, and the sultan’s officials thought that perhaps a personal quarrel was involved. Even so, they did not see fit to let the man go, and the baker’s punishment was “being placed on a ship”, for conveyance to a place of banishment, or else to row a boat belonging to the naval arsenal. Officially, the aim was to scare potential criminals away from repeating the experience, and in addition, the administrators may have considered it “fair” to punish both sides, although the baker got off more cheaply than the poor worker. After all, in early modern times as today, poor people were more likely to arouse suspicion than those who were somewhat better off.40

39 Özcan, Târîh-i Râşid, II. 1229. See further Tekin, ‘Istanbul in Flames’, 46. 40  On the question of “honour” in court cases, compare Leslie Peirce, ‘Honor, Reputation, and Reciprocity’, European Journal of Turkish Studies 18 (2014) 1–13, accessed 10 January 2019: https://journals.openedition.org/ejts/4850.

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TO CONCLUDE: COMBINING LEGITIMIZATION AND THE INTERPRETATION OF AN ISTANBUL FIRE

Throughout the 1700s, fires in Istanbul were more “politically dangerous”

than similar accidents would be if occurring in the present time. The inhabitants of the capital, and particularly the soldier-artisans making up a large part of the city’s Muslim population might consider it necessary to enforce the resignation of the sultan or vizier who had not prevented the calamities at issue. In the course of public protests, some grand viziers even had their residences set on fire, and while plunder was surely a dominant motive, humiliation – and thus de-legitimization of the relevant dignitary – were concerns as well.41 Given this situation, fires in Istanbul might diminish the legitimacy of a grand vizier or even of a sultan, but at the same time, they might indicate preexisting legitimacy deficits. After all contemporaries sometimes recorded that the discontent of certain inhabitants of Istanbul was responsible for disastrous fires, especially during years of crisis.42 These rumours are impossible to verify and many if not most fires must have had “natural” causes. Even so, it is surely meaningful that the rumours even made it into the written record. Probably, the relevant authors had their reasons for selecting these particular stories from the many tales that circulated orally, and which they never recorded. Once embarked on their descriptions of Istanbul fires, most Ottoman authors focused on the manner in which the major conflagrations spread over wide swathes of urban territory.43 We have not covered this issue, as Ahmet Tekin has done so with admirable thoroughness.44 In any case, this“geographical” concern was compatible with a perception that accorded fires a vitality of their own; we might describe them as “acts of God”. Given this situation, the sultans’

41  Tülay Artan, ‘The Making of the Sublime Porte near the Alay Köşkü and a Tour of a Grand Vizierial Palace at Süleymaniye’, Turcica 43 (2011) 145–206, particularly 148. 42  Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Fear, Hatred, Suspicion, and Attempts to Protect the Legitimacy of the Sultan: Istanbul Fires as Reflected in Şânî-zâde’s Chronicle’, in Selim Karahasanoğlu and D. Cenk Demir (eds.), History from Below: A Tribute in Memory of Donald Quataert. Istanbul, 2016, 515–528. 43  For Derviş Efendi-zâde, this is the principal concern. 44  Tekin, ‘Istanbul in Flames’, 10–27.

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subjects could only resign themselves to their fates and submit to the decrees of the deity. On the other hand, even Şemdani-zade, although he certainly castigated what he saw as the sins of his contemporaries, especially those of women, was not much inclined to claim that fires were divine punishments of humankind in general. Rather, Şemdani-zade reserved this interpretation for individuals whose oppressive conduct had gained them widespread reprobation. Assuming blanket punishments for large groups of people seems to have been more common among Christians, and this trope was part of the rhetoric common in Latin as well as Orthodox/Armenian churches.45 As for Abdülhamid I, Derviş Efendi-zade in his “fire story” had the monarch touring Istanbul, encouraging the firefighters and otherwise offering prayers for the salvation of his subjects. In practical life, the sultan must have played a more active role, than Derviş Efendi-zade was willing to assign to him. In particular, the emphasis on Islamic ritual attributed to the sultan by this author warrants some attention. Perhaps the monarch really emphasized his concern with Islamic ritual or else, for a reason unknown to us, Derviş Efendi-zade thought that this was the image, which he should convey. Possibly, at least a section of the eighteenth-century Ottoman elite considered that the sultan’s ritual role was a crucial component, or even the crucial component, of his legitimacy in Islamic terms. When Mustafa III and Abdülhamid I stressed that punishments should conform to the sharia, their concern was thus in harmony with the notion that the – now sedentary – sultan guaranteed the permanence of the empire by upholding Islam and its ritual.

45  Hrand D. Andreasyan, ‘Eremya Çelebi Yangınlar Tarihi’, Tarih Dergisi 27 (1973) 59–84.

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THE SANCAK OF SEMENDİRE AND ITS GOVERNORS IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Mehmet İnbaşı Erciyes University, Turkey [email protected]

Smederevo (in Turkish Semendire, in Hungarian [Vég]szendrő) is a historic city in Serbia, lying 45 km to the east of Belgrade on the flat terrain on the south bank of the Danube at its confluence with the Jezava. Known as Mons Aureus during the Roman period, Smederevo became the capital of Serbia in 1430 and remained as such until the Ottoman period began in 1459. It was then known as Semendire, the centre of the very significant Ottoman sancak of the same name, and rapidly developed into an Ottoman-Islamic city until 1521. Semendire was conquered several times by Hungarians, Austrians and Serbians, and repeatedly recaptured.1 Starting in the times of Olivera Despina, the Serbian wife of Bayezid I (1389–1402), the Ottomans often raised the issue of inheritance regarding Serbian lands, and this policy came to a head during the period of Murad II (1421–1444, 1446–1451). Hungarian dominance in Wallachia (Eflak) and Serbia started to gain strength in the early years of Murad II’s reign. Stefan Lazarević (1389–1427), the ruler of Serbia, followed a policy which was 1  Aleksandar Fotić and Machiel Kiel, ‘Semendire’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 36. İstanbul, 2009, 468–470.

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sometimes pro-Ottoman and sometimes pro-Hungarian. In 1426, an Ottoman messenger did not receive a warm welcome from Lazarević, and Murad II responded by sending a military force that plundered Serbian lands up to Alacahisar (Kruševac). Lazarević agreed to leave the territory as far as Alacahisar to the Ottomans, and to pay tribute. After Lazarević died on 19 July 1427, his nephew Đurađ Branković (Brankovics György in Hungarian, 1427–1456) became the new despot of Serbia. The struggle resumed, this time between the Hungarians and the Ottomans, who claimed Serbian lands on the grounds of inheritance. King Sigismund of Hungary (1387–1437) occupied Belgrade, prompting the Ottomans to capture Alacahisar and the fortress of Güvercinlik (Golubac/Galambóc) on the Danube. The Hungarians failed to recapture these places in the winter of 1427 and the spring of 1428. At this point, Branković sent a messenger to Murad II to declare his agreement with the pacts concluded during the Lazarević period, and also agreed to send his daughter, Maria, to be the wife of the sultan.2 After Ottoman rule in Alacahisar began, Branković asked Murad II for permission to establish a new capital. A new town was established in the village of Smederevo, lying on a triangular area on the banks of the Danube and Jezava rivers. The inhabitants dwelt within the fortress, which was strengthened by twenty-six towers and surrounded by high bulwarks. A palace was erected for Branković within the inner fortress at the summit of this triangular city. A very active market emerged next to the fortress, and traders from Dubrovnik settled there.3 The Hungarians pressed Branković to leave Smederevo, offering land in Hungary in return. After Sigismund’s death in 1437, however, Murad II launched an expedition to conquer Serbian lands and Wallachia. Smederevo was captured on 27 August 1439, and Branković escaped to Hungary. Murad II also surrounded the fortress of Belgrade in 1440, but was unsuccessful in

2  Halil İnalcık, Kuruluş Dönemi Osmanlı Sultanları. İstanbul, 2010, 139–140; Feridun M. Emecen, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun Kuruluş ve Yükseliş Tarihi (1300–1600). İstanbul, 2015, 115–116. 3  Fotić and Kiel, ‘Semendire’, 468.

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this attempt. The Ottomans learned from this defeat, and it marked the beginning of a new period in Ottoman military history.4 On 12 June 1444, Murad II signed the Treaty of Edirne and the Peace of Szeged and agreed to leave Serbian lands to Branković. This followed Hungarian counter-attacks and the Battle of Zlatitsa of 1443, which ended to the detriment of the Ottomans. The Kingdom of Serbia regained part of its lands and the Danube was accepted as the border. On the other hand, Branković agreed to become a vassal of the Ottomans and to pay tax, and remained neutral to the crusader alliance of 1444. After capturing Istanbul, Mehmed II returned to the inheritance issues deriving from Despina Hatun and his stepmother, Maria Sultan, and engaged in intensive political activity against Serbia between 1454 and 1456. The Ottoman army reached the Morava Valley in 1454 and conquered the town of Ostrovitsa (Ostroviç).5 When Mehmed II launched a second expedition on Serbia in the summer of 1455 and conquered Trepča (Trepeça), Novo Brdo (Novoberde) and the silver mining regions of Lab, Branković accepted Ottoman suzerainty again and agreed to pay annual tax of three million akçes and to send auxiliary forces during military campaigns. New inhabitants were settled in the conquered areas. The unsuccessful siege of Belgrade in 1456 raised the hopes of Westerner rulers and the pope. However, the question of inheriting Serbia regained its currency after the deaths of Branković in 1456 and his son Lazar in 1458. Mehmed II spent the winter of 1458 in Üsküb (Skopje) and, in the following spring, made preparations to capture the fortress of Semendire, which was achieved on 20 June 1459.6 The Ottomans installed a garrison in the fortress and turned the biggest church into a mosque. The first sancakbeyi of the region, Minnetoğlu Mehmed Bey (1459–1463), erected a mosque (mescid), and Firuz Bey, who participated in the expedition against Serbia, built a Turkish bath. Other commanders also had mosques and many monasteries (zaviye) constructed. In 1467, the vilayet of Braniçeva (Braničevo) was greatly extended and attached to the sancak of 4 İnalcık, Kuruluş Dönemi, 145–146; Emecen, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun, 118. 5  Halil İnalcık, ‘Mehmed II’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 28. İstanbul, 1988, 398. 6 İnalcık, Kuruluş Dönemi, 168–170; Emecen, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun, 147–148.

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Semendire, where a kadı court was established. The Ottomans called Semendire Darü’l-guzzat ve’l-mücahidin (“the House of Holy Warriors”).7 With the passing of time, Muslim immigrants and construction works gave Semendire a Turkish-Islamic appearance. Many Christian timariots joined the Ottoman military forces, in line with Mehmed II’s policy of using Serbian soldiers. It is possible to track this development in the tahrir defteris (land/tax survey registers).8 After unsuccessful attacks against Semendire and its environs in 1476, the nearby fortresses and Semendire itself were reinforced against possible Hungarian attacks during the reign of Bayezid II. The capture of Belgrade, the most significant city of the via militaris, gave the Ottomans a major military base, which they called Darü’l-cihad (“the House of the Holy War”). Subsequently, the sancak of Semendire became an administrative centre of secondary importance. In sixteenth-century tahrir registers, we find one mosque and seven mescids within the fortress of Semendire. In the four districts (mahalle) outside the city walls, the Hacı Veli Mosque and the mescids of Güvercinlikli Yusuf and Ohrili Sinan were registered and the imaret (soup kitchen) of Ahmed Çelebi. Yahyapaşaoğlu Bali Bey (1495–1527), who was local sancakbeyi between 1513 and 1527, erected a mosque, an imaret, a han (inn), and a zaviye in the town. Ömer Bey and Ahmed Çelebi also built zaviyes here. The Christians lived in eight distinct mahalles.9 Evliya Çelebi, who visited Semendire in 1661, wrote: “This fortress was conquered seventeen years before the conquest of Istanbul and each rectangular tower of the fortress is as high as a minaret. The fortress is inhabited by twelve thousand people and surrounded by the Danube on three sides while the remaining part is attached to the land. Since this land side is on the same level as the Danube, due to deep double ditches, the fortress is 7  Fotić and Kiel, ‘Semendire’, 468–469. 8  Halil İnalcık, ‘Stefan Duşan’dan Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’na. XV. Asırda Rumeli’de Hıristiyan Sipahiler ve Menşeleri’, in Idem, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu. Toplum ve Ekonomi Üzerinde Arşiv Çalışmaları, İncelemeler. İstanbul, 1993, 67–108; Mehmet İnbaşı, ‘Üsküp’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 42. İstanbul, 2012, 377–381; Ema Miljković, ‘The Timar System in the Serbian Lands from 1450 to 1550: with a Special Survey on the Timar System in the Sanjak of Smederevo’, Journal of Ottoman Legacy Studies 1:1 (2014) 38–40. 9  Fotić and Kiel, ‘Semendire’, 469–470.

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almost like an island and the inner fortress is beside the River Danube.”10 Evliya Çelebi also mentions the rectangular court and the thirty towers of the fortification, and that there were four Friday mosques and several mescids, adding up to twenty four places of prayer in total. Semendire was occupied by Austrian forces in October 1688, but was recaptured by the Ottomans two years later. In August 1717, the Ottomans abandoned Semendire again after Belgrade had been invaded by the Habsburgs. During the approximately twenty years Semendire was under Habsburg control, many Ottoman buildings in the town were destroyed. Following the retreat of the Austrian army in 1738, the Ottomans reshaped the city according to their needs. The economic crisis and political insecurity that arose in the second half of the eighteenth century took effect on Semendire. The Habsburgs captured the city on 13 October 1789, but ceded it to the Ottomans by the Treaty of Sistovo of 20 October 1791. Semendire citadel (Semendire hisarı) became a centre for outlaws and rebels in the following years. After 1805, the city served as the most important basis of the Serbian rebels. Continual disturbances prompted the Muslim population of Semendire to abandon the city and settle in Bosnia between 1834 and 1862. On 12 April 1868, Semendire was one of seven cities that were relinquished to the Serbians.11 As regards the administrative structure of Rumelia, from the second half of the fifteenth century, the vilayet was subdivided into sancaks, smaller territorial, military and administrative units governed by sancakbeyis. The Paşa Sancağı was divided into left and right wings at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The number of sancaks increased as the conquests in the Balkans expanded

10  Bu kal‘a İslâmbol’dan on yedi sene mukaddem feth olmuşdur ve her kullesi minâre kaddi çârkûşe âlî kullelerdir ve cümle on iki bin aded dendân-ı bedendir ve üç tarafı nehr-i Tuna’dır. Bir tarafı karadır. Ol tarafı ise iki kat amîk handak olup nehr-i Tuna ile leb ber-leb olduğundan bu kal‘a hemân bir cezîre gibi kalmışdır ve iç kal‘ası Tuna kenârı köşesindedir. Evliyâ Çelebi b. Derviş Mehemmed Zıllî, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi. Topkapı Sarayı Bağdat 307 Yazmasının Transkripsiyonu– Dizini. Vol. 5. Ed. by Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman and İbrahim Sezgin. İstanbul, 2001, 308–309; Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme. Vols. 5–6. Ed. by Seyit Ali Kahraman. Ankara, 2014, fols. 182v–183r. 11  Fotić and Kiel, ‘Semendire’, 470.

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and new districts were established in parallel with this increase in the second half of the sixteenth century.12 One of the new sancaks was that of Semendire. According to the cizye register dated 1490–1491, Semendire was one of twenty-six sancaks in the vilayet of Rumelia.13 The appointment book of beylerbeyis and sancakbeyis (tevcihat defteri) of 1521–1522, however, states that the vilayet of Rumelia consisted of 33 sancaks:14 Paşa, Bosna (Bosnia), Mora (Morea), Semendire, Vidin, Hersek (Herzegovina), Silistre (Silistra), Ohri (Ohrid), Avlonya (Vlorë), İskenderiye (Shkodra), Yanya (Ioannania), Gelibolu (Gallipoli), Köstendil (Kustendil), Niğbolu (Nicopolis), Sofya (Sofia), İnebahtı (Lepanto or Naupaktos), Tırhala (Trikkala), Alacahisar, Vulçıtrın (Vučitrn), Kefe (Caffa), Prizrin (Prizren), Karlı [İli] (around Angelokastron), Ağriboz (Euboea), Çirmen (Ormenion), Vize, İzvornik (Zvornik), Florine, İlbasan (Elbasan), Çingane (Gypsies), Midilli (Mytilene), Voynuk (= a kind of auxiliary force headed by a sancakbeyi), Karadağ (Montenegro), and Müselleman-i Kırkkilise (the müsellems of Kırkkilise). According to a list of the names of beylerbeyis and sancakbeyis dated 1526, preserved in the archives of the Topkapı Palace, the sancak of Semendire was governed by Mehmed Bey, the son of Yahya Pasha.15 Another register of similar character from 1527 contains the following entry: Liva-i Paşa be-nam-i mirmiran-i Rum İli hazret-i Kasım paşa (“District of Pasha, in the name of the governor-general of Rumeli, the exalted Kasım Pasha”). It mentions thirty-one sancaks in the province of Rumelia, including Semendire.16 A defter dated 1533 concerning timar-holders and cavalrymen in

12  Aleksandar Stoyanovski, ‘XVII. Yüzyılın Sonuna Kadar Makedonya’nın Osmanlı Hâkimi­ yeti Devrinde İdari Taksimatı’. Çev. İ. Eren. Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi 4–5 (1974) 215. 13  Ömer Barkan, ‘894 (1488/1489) Yılı Cizyesinin Tahsilâtına Âit Muhasebe Bilânçoları’, Belgeler 1:1 (1964) 12. 14  TSMA D. 9772, fols. 1v–2v; cf. Ömer Lûtfi Barkan, “H. 933–934 (M. 1527–1528) Malî Yılına Ait Bir Bütçe Örneği’, İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 15 (1953–1954) 303–304. 15  TSMA D. 10057, fols. 1v–3r; cf. M. Tayyib Gökbilgin, ‘Kanunî Sultan Süleyman Devri Başlarında Rumeli Eyaleti, Livalari, Şehir ve Kasabaları’, Belleten 20:78 (1956) 252. 16  TSMA D. 5246, fols. 1v–3r, published by Metin M. Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants. The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650. (The Modern Middle East

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Rumelia, however, mentions twenty-nine sancaks – again including Semendire – in the province.17 The cizye register of 1551–1553 gives the number of sancaks belonging to Rumelia as twenty-six. These were Paşa, Silistre, Vidin, Köstendil, Vulçıtrın, Prizrin, Alacahisar, Semendire, İzvornik, Sirem (Latin Sirmium, Hungarian Szerémség, Croatian Srijem, Serbian Srem), Pojega (Požega/Pozsega), Bosna, Kilis (Klis/Clissa/Klissza), Hersek, Tirhala, Ağriboz, Karli İli, İnebahtı, Yanya, Avlonya, Delvine (Delvinë), İşkodra, İlbasan, Ohri, Dukakin (Dukagjin), and Mora.18 After Buda (Budin) came under Ottoman rule in 1541, a new vilayet was established there and some of the sancaks that had been parts of the vilayet of Rumelia were attached to this new province. First, the sancaks of Semendire, Alacahisar, Vulçıtrın, İzvornik, and Pojega, that is territories south of the former Hungarian capital city, were incorporated into the beylerbeyilik of Buda. (This change, however, is not fully reflected in the 1551–1553 defter, where the liva of Semendire is still indicated as being under Rumelia.) These administrative units were followed by others as further territory was conquered. In 1568, the vilayet of Buda almost reached its final borders and had twenty sancaks: Budin, Semendire, İzvornik, Vulçıtrın, Pojega, Peçuy (Pécs), İstolni Belgrad ([Székes-] fehérvár), Estergon (Esztergom), Segedin (Szeged), Sirem, Hatvan, Şimontorna (Simontornya), Kopan ([Török-]Koppány, Filek (Fülek/Fiľakovo), Seksar (Szekszárd), Sigetvar (Szigetvár), Seçen (Szécsény), Novigrad (Nógrád), Solnok (Szolnok) and Sekçöy ([Duna-]Szekcső).19 The vilayet of Buda shrank Series, 14.) New York, 1983, 104–116. The relevant note is on pp. 105, 109. The translation follows Kunt’s wording. 17  TSMA D. 734, fols. 1v–9v. 18  Cf. Hamid Hadžibegić, Glavarina u osmanskoj državi. Sarajevo, 1966, 60–61; see also Skënder Rizaj, Kosova gjatë shekujve XV, XVI dhe XVII. Administrimi, ekonomia, shoqëria dhe lëvizja popullore. Pristhinë, 1982, 44. (The original is kept at Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Kâmil Kepeci Tasnifi 3523.) 19  Cf. Géza Dávid, ‘Ottoman Administrative Strategies in Western Hungary’, in Colin Heywood and Colin Imber (eds.), Studies in Ottoman History in Honour of Professor V. L. Ménage. Istanbul, 1994, 31–43; Idem, ‘The Ottoman Administrative System in Hungary in the Sixteenth Century’, in Hasan Celâl Güzel, C. Cem Oğuz and Osman Karatay (eds.), The Turks. Vol. 3: Ottomans. Ankara, 2002, 491–497.

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considerably, however, when the sancaks of Solnok, Hatvan, Segedin and Fülek were assigned to the province of Eğri (Eger), established in 1596, and the districts of Sigetvar, Pojega and Peçuy were transferred to the vilayet of Kanije ([Nagy-]Kanizsa, formed in 1600). Nonetheless, Buda still ranked ahead of the other provinces to some extent,20 and its significance was enhanced when beylerbeyis with vizier rank were appointed to govern it. Some of the appointment registers of the sixteenth century, however, continued to enumerate the sancak of Semendire among the administrative centres of Rumelia.21 The sancak of Pojega, previously attached to Buda, was appended to the new province of Bosna, formed in 1580.22 In the sixteenth century, the sancak of Semendire contained six kazas (judicial districts) – Semendire, Belgrad, Braniçeva, Niş (Niš), Pojega and Rudnik – and twenty-nine nahiyes (subdivisions of the sancak).23 Writing in 1609 but using earlier documents, Ayn Ali Efendi recorded seventeen sancaks in the province of Buda.24 With minor differences, his data were repeated by other authors, such as Sofyalı Ali Çavuş25 and Hüseyin Hezarfen Efendi,26 but their lists are misleading as far as the seventeenth century is concerned. In reality, Buda had eleven districts in this period. The appointment register of 1631–1632 specifies the following sancaks within the vilayet: Budin, Semendire, İstolni Belgrad, Sekçöy or Mohaç (Mohács), 20  Cf. Géza Dávid, ‘Kanizsa (Kanije) ve Buda (Budin) Beylerbeyleri Arasındaki İtibar Mücadelesi’, in Hayrunnisa Alan, Ömer İşbilir, Zeynep Aycibin and Muhammet Ali Kılıç (eds.), Tarihin Peşinde Bir Ömür: Abdülkadir Özcan’a Armağan. İstanbul, 2018, 516–519. 21  İ. Metin Kunt, Sancaktan Eyalete. 1550–1650 Arasında Osmanlı Ümerası ve İl İdaresi. İstanbul, 1978, 150–152. 22  Mehmet İnbaşı, ‘Bosna Eyaleti ve İdarecileri (1750–1800)’, in Abdülkadir Yuvalı Armağanı. Vol. 2. Kayseri, 2015, 803. 23  Osmanlı Yer Adları, I. Rumeli Eyaleti (1514–1550). Ankara, 2013, 26–27. 24  İstanbul, Süleymaniye Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi, Esad Efendi 2361, fol. 5v. Kindly imparted by Géza Dávid. – Remarkably, the author does not specify the number of sancaks belonging to Buda, in contrast to the other provinces; this was added as “twenty” only by the editors together with several erroneous notes and remarks in the late nineteenth century. Cf. Ayn Ali Efendi, Kavanin-i Âl-i Osman Der Hülasa-i Mezamin-i Defter-i Divan. İstanbul, 1280, 17–18. 25  Midhat Sertoğlu (ed.), Sofyalı Ali Çavuş Kanunnâmesi. İstanbul, 1992, 26–27. 26  Hezarfen Hüseyin Efendi, Telhîsü’l-Beyân fî Kavânîn-i Âl-i Osman. Ed. by Sevim İlgürel. Ankara, 1998, 119–120.

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Estergon, Sirem, Şimontorna, Seksar, Seçen, Kopan, and Novigrad.27 The same source mentions that the sancak of Semendire was in the possession of Vizier Musa Pasha in the form of arpalık (literally ‘fodder money’), a widespread practice at that time. In the eighteenth century, there was a considerable decrease in the number of sancaks in the eyalet of Rumelia as a result of the long wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League (1684–1699). The Ottomans came out badly from these wars, and a substantial loss of territory, especially in Hungary, was finalized in the Treaty of Karlowitz. After the fall of Buda on 2 September 1686, the status of the sancaks that the Ottomans retained from the former province remained unclear for some time. Thus, Semendire was still labelled as belonging to Buda, which was no longer the seat of a province.28 We may infer that the Ottomans lost Semendire for a while around that time. After its recapture on 28 September 1690, it was made a sancak of the eyalet of Temeşvar (Temesvár/Timişoara),29 headed by Hasan Pasha, who was otherwise the “guardian pasha” (muhafız paşa) of Uzunca region, which is difficult to identify (perhaps in the vicinity of Filibe/Plovdiv). Documents from 1707–1708 also corroborate that Semendire was one of the sancaks of Temeşvar at that time.30 However, Semendire was lost again when the Austrian army took Belgrade in July 1717 and was ceded to the Habsburgs together with Belgrade under the Treaty of Passarowitz of 21 July 1718. Ottoman victory in the Battle of Mehadia in July 1738, during the reign of Mahmud I, brought Semendire back under Ottoman control. It follows logically, and may also be inferred from the appointment register of the epoch (discussed below), 27  Şerafettin Turan, ‘XVII. Yüzyılda Osmanlı İmparatorluğunun İdarî Taksimatı (1041/1631–32 Tarihli Bir İdari Taksimat Defteri)’, in Atatürk Üniversitesi 1961 Yıllığı. Ankara, 1963, 210–211. – As kindly imparted by Géza Dávid, another official list from the period 1660–1663 also enumerates 11 livas as parts of the vilayet of Budin. 28  Liva-i Semendire der eyalet-i Budin. 29  Sadık Müfit Bilge, ‘Macaristan’da Osmanlı Hakimiyetinin ve İdari Teşkilatının Kuruluşu ve Gelişmesi’, Osmanlı Tarihi Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi (OTAM) 11 (2000) 53–54. 30  Orhan Kılıç, Osmanlı Devleti’nin İdari Taksimatı, Eyalet ve Sancak Tevcihatı. Elazığ, 1997, 100–101; Mihai Maxim, ‘Tımışvar’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 41. İstanbul, 2012, 94–95.

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that the district of Semendire was once again appended to Rumelia, bringing the number of sancaks in that province to fifteen. After the surrender of Belgrade in October 1789,31 the Austrians retook Semendire for the last time. 1713)32 1800)33 The affiliation of the sancak of Semendire in the eighteenth century

Eyalet of Temeşvar (1707–1713)32

Eyalet of Rum İli (1750–1800)33

Temeşvar

Paşa Sancağı (Manastır/Bitola)

Sirem

Köstendil

Semendire

Semendire Tırhala Yanya Delvine İlbasan İskenderiye Avlonya Ohri Alacahisar Selanik (Thessaloniki) Dukakin Prizrin Üsküb

Total: 3

15

Information concerning the governors of the sancak of Semendire in the eighteenth century was obtained from the appointment register (tahvil defteri) 31  İ. Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi. Vol.4: Part 1. Ankara, 1978, 133, 142, 281, 555. 32 Kılıç, Osmanlı Devleti’nin, 49. 33  BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 9–13.

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preserved in the Başbakanlık Arşivi, Istanbul. This is one of the defters of the imperial council (divan-i hümayun), and lists the names of top level officials such as viziers, beylerbeyis, sancakbeyis and provincial treasurers (defterdars) in chronological order. Data from this register on these officials and the admiral of the fleet (kapudan paşa) between 1755 and 1805 are very important in shedding light on the administrative mechanism of the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the eighteenth century. The present author’s investigation and analysis of the administrative history of some of the sancaks and eyalets using this valuable source have been the subject of several articles.34 The defter under scrutiny opens with the title: “In the time of Mustafa Pasha, vizier of the high ranking viziers [namely the grand vizier]35 and Seyyid Mehmed Avni Efendi, head of chancery36 – long may they live! 8 Şevval 1169 [6 July 1756].”37 The appointments recorded in the book concerning the sancak of Semendire start with 1 Rebiülahir 1169/1 February 1756 and cover thirty-six years up to 27 Şaban 1206/20 April 1792. Although the top level officials sent to Semendire were mentioned as district governors (mutasarrıf) in the defter, many of them were actually “guardian pashas”, bearing the title of vizier. The names, previous and actual places of duty, and dates and forms of appointment were regularly indicated. The grant of vizieral rank was recorded by the entry: vezaret payesi ile, Rum İli beylerbeyliği payesi ile (“with honorary vizierate and with honorary governorship of Rumelia”) etc.38 Entries of the register reveal that since the eyalet of Rumelia was the leading administrative entity within the protocol of the Ottoman Empire outside the 34  See, for example, Mehmet İnbaşı, ‘XVIII. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında Rumeli Eyaleti ve İdarecileri’, in M. Y. Ertaş and H. Kılıçarslan (eds.), Osmanlıda Yönetim ve Savaş. İstanbul, 2017, 117–134. 35  Köse Bahir Mustafa Pasha was appointed to this post for the second time on 1 April 1756 and remained in office until 11 January 1757. His third term fell in the years 1763–1765. 36  He was reisülküttab between December 1755 and April 1757; cf. İsmail Hami Danişmend, İzahlı Osmanlı Tarihi Kronolojisi. Vol 5: Osmanlı Devlet Erkânı. İstanbul, 1971, 343. 37  Der zaman-i sadr-i sudurü’l-vüzera Mustafa paşa ve reisü’l-küttab Seyyid Mehmed Avni efendi tale bekahüma fi 8 [şevva]L sene 1169. BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 1. 38  BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 26–27.

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capital city, the majority of the office-holders appointed as governor-general there already held vizier rank, while others, be they mirmirans/beylerbeyis, mutasarrıfs or court officials, were granted the post with honorary vizierate. Some typical entries in the defter are: “The distinguished vizier and esteemed pasha who is the current governor of the aforementioned sancak has been reappointed upon the order of the sultan.”39 “The high rank of vizierate has been given according to the order of the sultan.”40 “The aforementioned person has been appointed on condition that he defends the fortress of Belgrade, including the sancak of Semendire.”41 “Granted with the high rank of vizierate according to the glorious, honourably issued order of the sultan.”42 “With the elevated rank of vizierate.” 43 “Given upon the imperial order.”44 “Given upon the sultan’s decree.”45 In dates, days were clearly specified, months were abbreviated, years were given without the first figure (for example; 4 M [Muharrem] 169; 24 Za [Zilkade] 177; Selh-i (last day of ) L [Şevval] 180; 3 N 203). What draws attention is that the majority of the appointments were made in month Şevval in compliance with the practice of Ottoman bureaucracy at that time, although some appointments and extensions were made in other months. Altogether, forty-eight appointments to highest post in the sancak of Semendire were made during the thirty-six years between 1756 and 1792. Twenty-three of these were extensions of office and twenty-five were new appointments. This was a lower rate of appointments than in the sancaks in the 39  Liva-i mezbure hala mutasarrıfı vezir-i mükerrem saadetlü paşa hazretlerine ba hatt-i hümayun ibka kılınmışdur. Similar forms are: ba-hatt-i hümayun ibka (“reappointed upon the order of the sultan”); ba hatt-i hümayun ibka ve mukarrer kılındı (“reappointed and confirmed upon the order of the sultan”); kemakan ibka ve mukarrer kılınmışdur (“reappointed and confirmed as he was”). 40  Rütbe-i vala-i vezaret ile ba hatt-i hümayun tevcih olunmuş. 41  Müşarun ileyh Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla Semendire sancağı dahi ilhaken tevcih. On other occasions we have: müşarun ileyhe ilhaken tevcih (“given to him including...”); ...kalesi muhafazası şartıyla tevcih (“appointed on condition that he defends ... fortress”). 42  Rütbe-i vala-i vezaret ile şeref-yafte-i sudur olan hatt-i hümayun-i şevket-makrun mucibince tevcih olunmışdur. 43  Mertebe-i vala-i vezaretle. 44  Emr-i hümayun tevcih. 45  Ba-hatt-i hümayun tevcih.

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rest of the empire that have been investigated so far, because Semendire changed hands between the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire several times in the eighteenth century. Given the city’s proximity to Belgrade, which was under intense Western pressure, especially after the Ottoman–Habsburg wars between 1683 and 1699, the governors of the sancak of Semendire were also entrusted with the task of defending Belgrade. This duty was entered into the appointment register as “on condition that he protects Belgrade fortress (The House of the Holy War)”. Forty-two of the forty-eight appointments to the sancak were made with the stipulation that the district governor was to defend Belgrade, and only six governors were charged solely with the administration of the sancak. The records in the defter also show that six district governors of Semendire were additionally assigned the liva of Tırhala, and one also received the sancak of Alacahisar. In the period 1761–1772, El-Hac Mustafa Pasha, Abdi Pasha, Mehmed Pasha, Mustafa Pasha, El-Hac Hasan Pasha and El-Hac Ali Pasha enjoyed the revenues of the sancak of Tırhala on top of their local income, on the condition that they took care of the fortress of Belgrade.46 Ahmed Paşazade Mehmed Pasha, who took office between 1772 and 1774, was privileged to get the sancak of Alacahisar in addition to his duty as the district governor of Semendire.47 Some of the district governors of Semendire had previously served in more distinguished offices, or did so later. Among these, İzzet Mehmed Pasha, who took office for approximately eight months from July 1783 to March 1784 and was entitled to keep his vizier rank, had served as a grand vizier twice (in 1774–1775 and 1781–1782) and was appointed to Semendire while living as a pensioner in Filibe.48 46  Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla ve Tırhala sancağı ilhakıyla. BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 26. 47  Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla ve Alacahisar sancağı ilhakıyla. BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 26. 48  Semendire sancağı Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla sabıka mütekaiden Filibede ikamet üzere olan sadr-i esbak vezir İzzet Mehmed paşa hazretlerine vezareti ibkasıyla tevcih. BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 26.

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There were also administrators of the sancak of Semendire who held the office in parallel with their tenure of the office of provincial governor of Rumelia. One was Vizier El-Hac Hasan Pasha, who was reappointed three times between February 1758 and February 1761. During these three consecutive years, he governed Semendire and defended Belgrade as additional duties.49 Another was İbrahim Paşazade Mehmed Pasha, who was responsible for the administration of Semendire for nine months from October 1782 to July 1783.50 According to an entry in the defter, another Mehmed Pasha, who held the responsibility for Semendire in 1792, had previously served as the vali of Rumelia. Former governors of the eyalets of Girid (Crete), Özü (Ochakiv), Mısır (Egypt), Mora, and Sivas were also charged with the defence of Belgrade side by side with their post in Semendire. “Guardians” (muhafız) of Ağriboz, İnebahtı, Özü, Bender, İbrail (Brăila), Hotin (Khotyn) and Vidin fortresses and pashas with vizier rank, who had served as seraskers in Silistre were also sent to administer Semendire. The beys of Beğşehri, Hüdavendigar, Karesi, Koca İli, and Karahisar-i Sahip were also appointed as district governors of Semendire with vizier status.51 El-Hac Mustafa Pasha, who had been admiral of the fleet for five months in 1760–1761,52 ruled Semendire and Tırhala for more than a year starting in 1761, with the added responsibility of defending Belgrade.53 Former çavuşbaşı Selim Sırrı Efendi is another unusual example.

49  Liva-i mezbur Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla hala Rum İli valisi vezir-i mükerrem El-Hac Hasan paşa üzerinde olan Rum İli eyaletine ilhaken ba hatt-i hümayun tevcih olunmışdur. BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 26. 50  Semendire sancağı Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla Rum İli Eyâleti tevcih olunan İbrahim Paşazade vezir-i mükerrem Mehmed paşaya Rum İli eyaleti üzerinde kalmak şartıyla ilhaken tevcih. BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 26. 51  Semendire sancağı Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla ve rütbe-i vala-i vezaret ile sabıka Koca İli mutasarrıfı mir-mirandan… BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 26. 52 Danişmend, İzahlı Osmanlı, V. 216. 53  Liva-i mezbur sabıka derya kapudanı vezir-i mükerrem saadetlü El-Hac Mustafa paşa hazretlerine Tırhala sancağı ilhakı ve Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla ba hatt-i hümayin tevcih olunmışdur. BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 26.

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He obtained honorary vizierate, functioned as district governor in Semendire and was also charged with the protection of Belgrade.54 Fifteen of the twenty-five governors of Semendire appointed between 1756 and 1792 were reappointed – a total of twenty-three times. Of these, El-Hac Hasan Pasha and El-Hac Halil Pasha were reappointed three times; El-Hac Mustafa Pasha, Ahmed Paşazade Mehmed Pasha, and Abdi Pasha twice; and the others only once. The entries in the tahvil defteri indicate that the district governors of Semendire, due to the strategic importance of the fort, served for longer periods than other officials in the eyalet of Rumelia. Certain sancaks had up to five beys who held their posts for less than three months, while Semendire had only one: Mehmed Pasha, former governor-general of Mısır, who was in office for one month between September and October 1782. The above mentioned Selim Sırrı Pasha remained in office for only four months – February to June 1785. Nine district governors were sent to serve in the sancak of Semendire for a period of six months to one year. Three of them served for one year each, and the others for seven to eight months. The most interesting is Vizier İbrahim Paşazade Mehmed Pasha, a former district governor of the sancak of Karesi, who served in Semendire for a year from September 1781 to September 1782.55 He was reappointed to the same post in October 1782 and held office for a further eight and a half months, following Mehmed Pasha, the governorgeneral of Egypt who – as mentioned above – worked in the sancak for only one month. Seven of the district governors of Semendire stayed in office for one to two years, most of them for more than a year and a half. Five persons administered Semendire for periods of between two and three years, four of them for three 54  Semendire sancağı Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla ve rütbe-i vezaret ile sabıka çavuşbaşı Selim Sırrı efendiye tevcih. BOA A.DVN Tahvil Defteri 16, 26. 55  The relevant entries are as follows: Liva-i mezbur Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla sabıka Karesi mutasarrıfı İbrahim Paşazade vezir-i mükerrem Mehmed paşa hazretlerine ba hatt-i hümayun-i şevket-makrun tevcih olunmışdur. – Semendire sancağı Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyle Rum İli eyaleti tevcih olunan İbrahim Paşazade vezir-i mükerrem Mehmed paşaya Rum İli eyaleti üzerinde kalmak şartıyla ilhaken tevcih. BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 26.

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consecutive years and one for two years and seven months, having been reappointed twice. El-Hac Hasan Pasha, El-Hac Halil Pasha, Mehmed Pasha (the “guardian” of Hotin), and Osman Pasha (former mutasarrıf of Karahisar-i Sahib) were reappointed as district governor of Semendire between one and three times, with terms starting in 1758, 1769, 1776 and 1788, respectively. The only governor to remain in office for more than three years was Vizier Mustafa Pasha, former administrator of the sancaks of Ağriboz and Karlı İli, who served for three years and three months from November 1764 to February 1768, during which he has been reappointed twice.56 Our source shows that there were fewer administrative changes in the sancak of Semendire than in other sancaks in Rumelia – like Üsküb, Köstendil and Niğbolu – or the eyalet of Bosna during the 36 years between 1756 and 1792. This was due above all to the military and strategic importance of Belgrade. In conclusion: Semendire was captured by the Habsburgs in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, only to be retrieved by the Ottomans in August 1738. Several Ottoman features of the city were damaged during the twenty years or so of Austrian occupation. Upon their return, the Ottomans did much to rebuild the city, which – apart from a brief Austrian occupation at the end of the eighteenth century – remained Ottoman until 1868. As Ottoman administration weakened, the fortress of Semendire became a centre for rebels. Continual disorder caused the Muslim population to abandon the city and settle in Bosnia. Semendire finally came under Serbian control in 1868. With the passing of time, most of the local Ottoman-Islamic features of the city disappeared. Today, the inner fortress stands still firm, but some parts of the outer walls are in ruins.57

56  Liva-i mezbur Belgrad kalesi muhafazası şartıyla ve Tırhala sancağı ilhakıyle sabıka Ağriboz ve Karlı İli sancakları mutasarrıfı vezir-i mükerrem saadetlü Mustafa paşa hazretlerine ba hatt-i hümayun tevcih. BOA A.DVN, Tahvil Defteri 16, 26. 57  I had the chance to make on-the-spot observations in Smederevo Fortress during my journey in September 2018.

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Figure 1 BOA A.DVN, Tahvil defteri 16.

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HUNGARIAN DIPLOMATIC ENVOYS IN CONSTANTINOPLE DURING THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION AND WAR OF INDEPENDENCE OF 1848–1849 György Csorba Researcher, Hungarian National Assembly, Information Services for MPs [email protected]

On 15 March 1848, in parallel with other events in Europe, revolution broke out in Hungary. It resulted in a set of laws codified by the last diet of Hungary and sanctioned by the king of Hungary, who was also the Austrian emperor. These provided the legal basis for a new system of government and facilitated reforms that had been at issue for decades. The ensuing War of Independence thus had a solid legal background, ensuring broad support among Hungarian society and from the army. The Viennese court, intent on re-establishing the old order, first incited the non-Hungarian nationalities in Hungary to armed resistance, and after repressing the Italian uprising, resolved in September 1848 to find a military solution to the Hungarian problem. To their surprise, however, the Hungarian army, set up from scratch, repelled the attack and began a sustained war of self-defence.1 Even before the open break, the Austrian court purposefully prevented its experienced diplomatic organization from upholding Hungarian interests 1  Comprehensive history of the Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence: István Deák, The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848–1849. London, 2001; Gábor Bona (ed.), The Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence, 1848–1849: A Military History. Highland Lakes, New Jersey, 1999.

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under the influence of the Hungarian government. Hungarian foreign affairs and diplomatic activity in 1848 were principally focused on the German question as it affected the Austrian empire and on gaining the support of Western governments and public opinion.2 The critical situation at the beginning of the war of self-defence, however, prevented the Hungarian government from pursuing a properly thought-out foreign policy that took account of all options.

THE FIRST MOVES: AN ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH AN INDEPENDENT CONSULAR NETWORK IN 1848

The first attempt to set up an independent Hungarian diplomatic – specifically

consular – network was aimed at the Ottoman Empire. When news of the Hungarian Revolution reached Constantinople on 9 April 1848, dozens of Hungarians there gathered together and made a written approach to the palatine (and thus the alter ego of the king), Archduke Stephen (d. 1867), asking him to have Hungarian interests represented and protected via a new independent department of the Austrian internuntiature in the Ottoman capital. The Austrian internuntius Bartholomäus Stürmer (d. 1863) was at first reluctant to forward the request, but it was eventually delivered to Vienna and then to the Hungarian government. On 6 June, to the surprise of Vienna, the Hungarian government ordered the minister for trade to appoint Hungarian consuls to Serbia, Moldavia, Wallachia and Constantinople.3 So it was a request from the Hungarians living in Constantinople that led to the creation of the first independent Hungarian diplomatic institutions. The content of the request, and the way it was delivered, also served as a clear proof of discrimination against Hungarians.4

2  Domokos Kosáry, Hungary and International Politics in 1848–1849. New York, 2003, 13–16. 3 The Journal de Constantinople wrote about the Hungarian Revolution on 6 April: A ‘ szabadságharc magyar diplomáciai levelei’, A Háborús Felelősség 1:3 (1929) 268. 4  In detail, see György Csorba, ‘Kísérletek az önálló magyar konzulátusok létrehozására Keleten 1848-ban’, Keletkutatás 2015. ősz, 131–144.

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On 26 June, the situation in the Lower Danube prompted the council of ministers to make another decision to send consuls, and the following day, Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány (d. 1849) ordered Prince Pál Esterházy (1786–1866), the “minister near his majesty”, which meant the Hungarian foreign minister, to arrange for the diplomatic acceptance and reception of Hungarian consuls and agents in Jassy, Constantinople, Bucharest and Belgrade.5 The Austrian government, despite several urgent requests, was reluctant to deal with the issue and the Austrian foreign minister subsequently issued an instruction to all embassies informing them that the authority of the Hungarian ministry of foreign affairs was limited to private and administrative issues. He thus effectively prevented the Hungarian government from establishing a basis for independent diplomacy. Undeterred by being denied consent from Vienna, the Hungarian government proceeded in its efforts to set up a diplomatic organization and started to select appropriate candidates.6 The issue finally ended with a memorandum sent to the Hungarian government on 31 August, by which the Austrian government essentially tore up the regulations that the (Austrian) emperor had granted in spring and questioned the legality of developments in Hungary. The document also condemned the Hungarian government for their attempt to set up an independent ministry of foreign affairs.7 An important question is why it was only in the East that the Hungarian government attempted to set up a consular system. According to István Hajnal, they were convinced that the Habsburg Empire, which was showing signs of disintegration, could only survive if its focus moved to Budapest. 5  Az 1848–1849. évi minisztertanácsi jegyzőkönyvek. Ed. by Erzsébet F. Kiss. Budapest, 1989, 58–59; Kossuth Lajos az első magyar minisztériumban. (Kossuth Lajos Összes Munkái, 12. Ed. by István Sinkovics) Budapest, 1957, No. 227; National Archives of Hungary, Budapest (hereinafter: MNL OL), Archive of Prime Ministry, 1848–1849. Papers of The Ministry near His Majesty H 6 1848:346, published in Aladár Urbán (ed.), Gróf Batthyány Lajos miniszterelnöki, hadügyi és nemzetőri iratai. 2 vols. Budapest, 1999, I. 809. 6  MNL OL Archive of Prime Ministry, 1848–1849. General Papers H 2 1848:549, MNL OL H 6 1848:552 and 1848:763; István Hajnal, A Batthyány-kormány külpolitikája. Budapest, 1987, 125, 128; Csorba, ‘Kísérletek’ 131–141; Gróf Batthyány Lajos, II. 1040–1041. 7  Dénes Pap, Okmánytár Magyarország függetlenségi harczának történetéhez 1848–1849. Vol. 1. Pest, 1868, 411.

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Since this would have brought the foreign diplomatic institutions to the Hungarian capital and automatically provided Western representation for Hungarian affairs, they did not wish to abandon joint diplomacy. By contrast, consulates in the East could have taken advantage of strong historical relations and interests deriving from direct proximity.8 A kind of moderation may also have played a role in the apparent indifference towards Western countries: Diplomatic moves in that direction would have triggered much stronger protest from the Viennese court than setting up consulates in territories that were neglected by Vienna but of increasing importance to Hungary. In theory, Hungarian consulates could not have created any real obstacles, because they would have been restricted to protecting Hungarian citizens and representing economic interests, but we can understand Vienna’s standpoint: Such consulates would have given the Hungarian government an opportunity to express opinions on foreign policy that conflicted with those of the Austrian government. Furthermore, to have permitted the establishment of consulates would have meant accepting the independence of Hungary and its foreign policy. The first locations selected for consulates were all in neighbouring countries that were in some way connected to the Ottoman Empire. These countries could also exert substantial influence on their kindred minorities in Hungary and Transylvania. In the case of Serbia, the flow of Serbian volunteers to Hungary represented a serious problem. In the Romanian principalities, there was a need to gather information on the revolutionary situation and the tsar’s response to it.

HUNGARIAN ENVOYS IN CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1849

As revolutionary movements failed in Europe in the autumn of 1848, the

Hungarian government became isolated internationally; its diplomats were either not received by foreign governments or could make contacts only 8 Hajnal, A Batthyány-kormány, 111, 124.

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informally. When hostilities broke out, the borders were closed because of the rebelling minorities and attacks from several directions by the Austrian army. During the winter and early spring of 1849, however, the Hungarians had considerable success in fighting the Austrian army and even defeated a small Russian intervention force, driving them both out of the country. When the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country had been more or less restored, parliament declared the dethronement of the Habsburg dynasty (14 April 1849). Diplomatic rejection by the Western powers and the threat of Russian intervention gradually caused the Hungarian government to direct their attention towards the Ottoman Empire. They saw Russian great power policy as a threat not only to an independent Hungary but also to the Ottomans, and therefore saw the Porte as an obvious ally. Another reason for the opening to the East was that in the military and geographical situation of the time, the only safe route for travel to Western Europe led through Constantinople. Hungarian diplomats were sent to the Ottoman capital from various places and at various times during the spring of 1849, but they all had the same tasks: 1. make the Porte sure of the Hungarian government’s friendship and good intent; 2; make open and official diplomatic relations, or at least informal contacts, between the two countries; 3. contact foreign diplomats in Constantinople; 4. seek the disarmament of Austrian troops pushed into Wallachia and have their arms handed over to the Hungarians; 5. object to Serbian volunteers’ attacks against Hungary; 6. object to Russian intervention, 7. persuade the Porte to stay neutral in the conflict and persist in nonintervention; 8. draw the attention of the British to the potential for trade in Hungary and thereby urge them to support the Hungarian cause; 9. hand over the Hungarian Declaration of Independence; 10. buy arms and military equipment. The people sent to perform these manifold tasks were all inexperienced in diplomacy, and they faced strong Russian and Austrian headwinds and the neutrality, or rather rejection, of the Western powers, but as we will see, their mission was not completely unsuccessful.

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COUNT SAMU WASS, THE FIRST HUNGARIAN AGENT IN CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1849

Count Samu Wass (1814–1879), member of parliament and a fluent speaker

of several languages, was the first Hungarian diplomatic agent who reached Constantinople. He travelled through Bucharest, and in accordance with his assignment, subsequently went on to Paris.9 The decision about his posting was made at the beginning of March, but because of serious difficulties in contacting the Ottoman authorities, he only received his passport on 18 March and could not cross the border until the beginning of April. The British ambassador Stratford Canning (d. 1880) reported on 25 April that Wass arrived with a passport issued in the name of Weber, but with the support of, and as a servant to, de la Haute, French consul in Jassy. The Austrian internuntiature did not seem to have any information about Wass’ presence.10 In a dispatch written in Paris on 15 May, Wass reported that he had only been able to make unofficial contact with the British and the French diplomats in Constantinople and therefore could not hand in an official objection against the Russian intervention or persuade the British or French to object against Russia, because they took the view that Austria had called in the Russians, against which they had no objection. Wass failed to establish the independence of Hungarian diplomacy. Despite the opposition of the British and French ambassadors, he talked to the foreign minister, Âli Pasha (d. 1871), several times. Wass himself was well received by the Ottomans, who were following the events in Hungary. He also talked to Serbian, Romanian and Polish agents based in the Ottoman capital. He intended to return to Constantinople from Paris, as his assignment entitled him to be a representative at the Porte, and was encouraged to do so by Count László Teleki (1811–1861), who was

9  Kossuth Lajos az Országos Honvédelmi Bizottmány élén. Vol. 2. (Kossuth Lajos Összes Munkái, 14. Ed. by István Barta) Budapest, 1953, No. 354. 10  MNL OL Ministry of Finance H 29 2707. 8 March 1849; Kossuth Lajos az Országos Honvédelmi Bizottmány élén, II. No. 354; Éva Haraszti, Az angol külpolitika a magyar szabadságharc ellen. Budapest, 1951, 166–170; Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Wien, Staatskanzlei, XII. Türkei, Berichte 1848–49; copy in MNL OL W1010 microfilm.

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directing Hungarian diplomacy towards Western Europe from Paris, but in the end, he was unable to do so.11

UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT BY ÖDÖN BEÖTHY

Meanwhile, without waiting for Wass’ report, the government sent another

envoy, but initially only to Bucharest. This was Ödön Beöthy,12 lord lieutenant of Bihar County. According to his instructions, dated 1 April 1849, he was to represent Hungarian interests in diplomacy with countries of the Lower Danube region, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire and other consulates. He was to present his letter of credence only after his consular position had been acknowledged by the Porte and at least one of the great powers. Meanwhile, as a special agent, he was to contact first the French consul and then, if possible, Ömer Pasha, commander of the Wallachian army, and Fuad Efendi, chief commissioner of the Porte in Bucharest. What prompted his assignment was that on 22 March, Pierre de Ségur, the French consul in Bucharest, officially called upon Hungarian General József Bem (d. 1850) not to cross the border and to inform the Ottoman leadership about this decision. General Bem promised to do so but demanded that the Austrian troops fleeing to Wallachia should be disarmed and their weapons handed over to the Hungarians, and that the Porte should prevent any action against Hungarians on its territories. Beöthy was assigned these tasks and issued with various letters of credence to use if he was successful.13 Beöthy was kept waiting in Transylvania for a long time, however, for reasons we can only guess. 11 Haraszti, Az angol, 166–170; MNL OL Lajos Kossuth’s Papers, R 90 I. 1608. His negotiation with Âli Pasha was confirmed by Polish sources: Museum Narodowe w Krakowie Biblioteka Czartoryskich rkp (MNK) 5372. No. 72; copy in MNL OL Mf. 8372. 152–153; Haraszti, Az angol, 165. 12  Ödön Beöthy (Nagyvárad, 2 December 1796 – Hamburg, 7 December 1854): opposition liberal reform politician, county deputy, lord lieutenant of Bihar County and government commissioner in 1848. After the suppression of the War of Independence, he fled abroad, lived in London and Jersey, and then settled in Hamburg. 13  Kossuth Lajos az Országos Honvédelmi Bizottmány élén, II. No. 466.

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On 20 April, Beöthy received new instructions concerning the Declaration of Independence: He had to send the document to Fuad Efendi and ask him to forward it to the Ottoman minister of foreign affairs. Beöthy sent the letter to Bucharest, and it eventually reached the Ottoman capital.14 Beöthy may at first not have been in a hurry to go to Ottoman territory, as he hoped for a portfolio in the newly appointed Hungarian government. However, according to a memoir, “Beöthy intended to enter a diplomatic career, and he will be an envoy in Constantinople”.15 In his letter to Âli Pasha dated 8 May, Kostaki Mussurus (d. 1891), the Ottoman ambassador in Vienna, wrote about the dethronement of the Habsburgs and claimed that the Hungarians aimed to build good relationships with European states, especially the Ottoman Empire, Italy, and the neighbours of Austria. He also noted that Lajos Kossuth (1802 –1894), the governor-president was to send a representative, Beöthy, to Constantinople.16 On 29 May, Beöthy sent a note to Fuad Efendi protesting the Russian intervention and demanding that the Austrian deserters be disarmed, failing which the Hungarians might pursue their enemies across the borders of the country. Finally, at the end of May, having not been granted a passport by Bucharest, he considered his mission impossible and resigned his post.17 Beöthy differed from subsequent Hungarian envoys in waiting in Hungary for his diplomatic status to be acknowledged. By not crossing the border, he missed the opportunity to make even informal contacts with foreign diplomats and representatives of the Porte and apprise them of Hungarian affairs.

14  Kossuth Lajos kormányzóelnöki iratai. (Kossuth Lajos Összes Munkái, 15. Ed. by István Barta) Budapest, 1955, No. 37; Eszter V. Waldapfel, A forradalom és szabadságharc levelestára. Vol. III. Budapest, 1955, 275–276. Copy of the French letter was sent to Fuad: İstanbul, Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (hereinafter BOA) İrade-i Hariciye No. 2528/5. 15  Tamás Katona (ed.), Vukovics Sebő visszaemlékezései 1849-re. Budapest, 1982, 103. 16  BOA Hariciye Nezareti Mektubi Kalemi (HR.MKT), Nos. 25–88, 23 May 1849. 17  MNL OL H 2 1849:7730; Antal Csengery, Történeti tanulmányok és jellemrajzok. Vol. II. Pest, 1870, 42; Kossuth Lajos az Országos Honvédelmi Bizottmány élén, II. No. 466; Márton Hegyesi, Bihar vármegye 1848–1849-ben. Debrecen, 2000, 24.

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THE MISSIONS OF BARON LAJOS SPLÉNYI AND FRANCIS WILLIAM BROWNE

In March 1849, Hungarian diplomats in Paris informed their government

that the Porte was taking significant action against the Russians and it would be advisable to send an appropriate person to Constantinople to represent Hungary’s interests. The letter was delivered by William Browne, who was even prepared to undertake a mission to Constantinople. The Hungarian government, probably in reaction to Beöthy’s failure, made use of this option and sent him to Constantinople as a diplomatic agent. His British citizenship was a great benefit. Because he did not belong to any of the warring parties, he could cross the borders freely, and if something went wrong, British diplomacy would have helped him, and not only because his government always stood up vehemently for the rights of British citizens: He was related to Edward John Stanley, 1st Baron Eddisbury, the British under-secretary of state for foreign affairs between July 1846 and December 1851. Browne had already been given the rank of major by Teleki, and on 24 April, he received his diplomatic instructions from the Hungarian government and set out from Hungary for the Ottoman capital.18 The instructions he was given are known from a copy of the document made when he visited Robert G. Colquhoun, the British consul in Bucharest, as he passed through that city on 6 May. Browne told Colquhoun about his mission and might have dropped a hint about some documents he was carrying. The consul made a copy in secret and sent it to Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston. His instructions were similar to those given to the previous envoys, but with the additional task of obtaining an exequatur for Beöthy as envoy to Bucharest and permission to set up a permanent Hungarian agency in Constantinople. Âli Pasha was informed that Browne had been appointed as

18  ‘A szabadságharc magyar diplomáciai levelei 1848–1849’, A Háborús Felelősség 1:4–5 (1929) 427, 436–438. He was probably the same “Browne” who had served as captain in the Hungarian 6th (Württemberg) Hussar Regiment; see Béla Horváth, A 6. (Württemberg) huszárezred az 1848–49-es magyar szabadságharcban. Budapest, 2017, 57; Kossuth Lajos kor­ mányzóelnöki iratai, Nos. 36 and 57.

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Hungarian chargé d’affaires to support mutual diplomatic relations, and would provide a detailed account of Hungarian positions and policies.19 On 19 May, Canning informed Palmerston that he had received Browne as a private person and advised him not to reveal the original aim of his mission, that is, he is the Hungarian government’s diplomat, or else he would be expelled at once.20 Unlike Wass, Browne was not received by Âli Pasha, perhaps because of a conference that the Austrian internuntius Stürmer requested with Reşid and Âli Pasha to explain his objections against the Hungarian envoys. As a result, the pashas decided to communicate with the envoys through Michal Czajkowski (d. 1886), the Constantinople agent for Prince Adam Czartoryski (d. 1861), leader of the Polish émigrés, as they wished to appear neutral.21 It appeared to Browne that the Ottomans wished to maintain strict neutrality, for which they had to demand that their borders be respected, otherwise they would be driven into the hands of the Russians and be forced to take action against the Hungarians. They should not be expected to take strong action in case of Russian intervention.22 In a letter of 16 June, Teleki tried to encourage Browne to persuade the Ottomans to break the Convention of Balta Limanı, because the Western powers would not leave the Ottomans to themselves if they broke from the Russians.23 Browne was also assigned practical tasks: He had to obtain weapons from abroad, because the Hungarian army suffered from a constant lack of arms and war material. He wrote in a dispatch that he had acquired ten thousand rifles with bayonets and five thousand swords, but would be able to acquire a further fifty thousand rifles with bayonets. This would require paying a deposit

19  The National Archives, United Kingdom, Foreign Office (hereinafter: TNA FO), 78/788 34; copy in National Széchényi Library (hereinafter OSZK), Budapest, Manuscripts, Fond 27 Collection of Dénes Jánossy No. 74. 29–33. 20  TNA FO 78/776 167; copy in OSZK Manuscripts, Fond 27/74. 149–150. 21  MNK 5372. No. 72; copy in MNL OL Mf. 8372. 152–153; MNK 5426/IV. No. 17; copy in MNL OL Mf. 8851. 571–574. 22  MNL OL H 2 1849:8453. 23  MNL OL Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1849 H 8. 204–205.

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to the Hanson trading house in Constantinople, which would undertake the transportation of the weapons.24 In the meantime, it became increasingly important for Teleki to build good relations with the Ottoman Empire, as both the British and French governments refused to deal with the Hungarian war. All the Hungarian government could do in Western Europe was to influence public opinion. Teleki had established a good relationship with the Ottoman ambassador in Paris, Kallimachi, who could have informed him about the sympathy for the Hungarians in Constantinople. Teleki would have liked to travel to Constantinople himself, but his illness prevented him from doing so.25 However, having considered the importance of the issue, and being apparently unaware of Browne’s journey, he hurriedly sought an appropriate person. His choice fell on Lajos Splényi (Pest, 27 September 1817 – Constantinople, 13 January 1860),26 a person known for his unrestrained way of life, but there were very few suitable people available, and the country was diplomatically isolated. Teleki looked on him as a temporary solution until the government appointed someone directly.27 Splényi was instructed, among other tasks, to express his thanks to the Porte for their protest against the Russian army’s entry into Transylvania in the winter of 1849. He had to secure the Ottomans’ total neutrality beyond making a protest 24  Kossuth Lajos az Országos Honvédelmi Bizottmány élén, II. No. 316. Czajkowski’s letter: MNK 5426/IV. No. 17; copy in MNL OL Mf. 8851. 729–742, and MNK rkp 5370. No. 93; copy in MNL OL Mf. 8372. 198–202; Haraszti, Az angol, 229. For the Hansons’ commercial house: Ü. Serdar Serdaroğlu and Kadir Yıldırım, A ‘ n Ottoman-English Merchant in Tanzimat Era: Henry James Hanson and his Position in Ottoman Commercial Life’, Turkish Studies 10:6 (2015) 923–946. 25  OSZK Manuscripts, Fol. Gall. 74. 5370/No. 9; 1848. A szabadságharc, 360–361. Ferenc Pulszky, Életem és korom. Vol. I. Budapest, 1958, 513–515; OSZK Manuscripts, Fond VIII, Ferenc Pulszky’s Papers, No. 2835. 26  Lajos Splényi, Baron, Hungarian noble landowner. His father was an imperial lieutenantgeneral, and he became a captain in 1839. In December 1848 he was made brevet-captain, the Hungarian government’s commissioner at the Sardinian royal government. He acted as a diplomatic agent in Constantinople in 1849, and emigrated to Western Europe following his expulsion. He returned to the Ottoman capital in 1851 and lived with the support of his brother-in-law, General Richard Guyon, who joined the Ottoman army. He converted to Islam, turned into a hashish addict and became a dervish, eventually dying in drug addiction and poverty. 27 Pulszky, Életem, I. 515; OSZK Manuscripts, Fond VIII/2835; OSZK Manuscripts, Fol. Gall. 74. 5370/Nos. 10–11.

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against further Russian interventions and to persuade them to disarm and intern the Austrian troops who fled to their territory. If the Porte had entered a war against Russia over the Romanian principalities, Splényi was to persuade the Ottomans to undertake military cooperation with the Hungarians.28 We do not know the actual date of his arrival, but it may be inferred from indirect data as 26 or 27 May. It is known that he performed his tasks in coordination with Browne after that date. According to Czajkowski’s analysis, Browne, as a British citizen, was less vulnerable to attack by the Austrians and Russians, but could have embarrassed the Ottomans, who could not know for sure how deep an insight the British envoy had into the discussions. The Porte was also frightened by the idea, conveyed by Austria and Russia, that a new, independent Hungary might conquer the lands of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia and Bulgaria. Splényi responded by announcing that his government was willing to send the flags of these countries back to the Porte to dismiss their worries.29 Browne and Splényi continuously informed the Hungarian leaders that the Porte was determined to maintain its integrity and would not act against Russia without British or French support. The Porte’s repeated protests against the violation of its territorial rights were having no effect at all. It took so long to decide what to do with the Austrian troops who had been pushed into Wallachia that in the meantime they went over to Serbia undisturbed and were ready to move against Hungary again.30 The Porte was willing to receive Browne and Splényi but took pains to avoid protests by Russia and Austria. The French and British embassies were also trying to prevent the Porte from contacting them. When the agents took up residence in the Hotel d’Angleterre in Pera, which was the only modern hotel in the area and consequently a focus of attention, the Ottomans let them know that they would not meet them there. They subsequently moved outside the city, and the Porte dealt with them 28  Mihály Horváth, Magyarország függetlenségi harczának története 1848 és 1849-ben. Vol. 2. Pest, 1865, 576–577. 29  MNK 5426/IV. No. 17; copy in MNL OL Mf. 8851. 729–742; MNK rkp 5370. No. 93; copy in MNL OL Mf. 8372. 198–202. 30  OSZK Manuscripts, Fond VIII/2835; OSZK Manuscripts, Fond 67, Ferenc Pulszky’s Papers, No. 101. For the British support: Correspondence Relative to the Affairs of Hungary 1847– 1849. London, 1850, 229.

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through a separate negotiator, Ahmed Vefik (d. 1891), who later had a special role in the refugees’ question and became known as a statesman.31 On 1 June, Ahmed Vefik assured the Hungarians that the Porte wished to implement its neutrality more strongly, having hitherto merely expressed it in words. He told them that the Porte was well-intentioned towards them and hoped to maintain good informal contact even if there could be no formal relationship. They were advised by an influential Ottoman that the Porte and the sultan would be willing to receive the envoy of the king of Hungary, but even if they sympathized with the Hungarians, they continued to recognize the Austrian emperor as their king until another king was proclaimed. Referring to the allegation that Hungary had proclaimed itself a republic, he said that they regretted this decision, but as they had acknowledged the French Republic, they could also acknowledge the Hungarian republic. The Austrian and Russian envoys constantly attempted to convince the Porte to expel the Hungarian envoys and kept them under continuous surveillance. It was already known in diplomatic circles on 10 June, that Stürmer protested against Splényi and called him a deserter who would not be protected even by his Sardinian passport if the Russians took action against him.32 Finally, as a result of the protests, Splényi left Constantinople on 25 June. After the end of June, Browne assisted Count Gyula Andrássy (1823–1890) and, on 5 August, he left to take up an assignment to Piedmont.33 The Porte was also weighing up the potential outcome of the war: A victorious Hungary could become a new middle power in the region at the expense of Austria, and its defeat could tremendously increase Russian influence in Europe. The Ottoman leaders could not wish for an outcome that would put the empire’s territory at the mercy of its most dangerous neighbour.34 The British strongly encouraged the Porte to maintain strict neutrality regarding the Hungarian issue.35 31  OSZK Manuscripts, Fond VIII/127. and Fond 67/101. 32  MNK rkp 5372. No. 77; copy in MNL OL Mf. 8372. 167–175. 33  Journal de Constantinople, 4 July 1849, 2; MNL OL Kázmér Batthyány’s Papers, R 5 2/97; Haraszti, Az angol, 229. 34 Haraszti, Az angol, 222. 35  Correspondence Relative, 233.

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MISSION OF COUNT GYULA ANDRÁSSY

At its meeting of 19 May, the council of ministers decided on the contents of a note that the minister of foreign affairs was to send to the diplomatic delegations in Bucharest. The note repeated the Hungarian government’s undertaking to respect the borders and its wish to maintain good relations with the neighbouring countries. However, on the basis of the principle of non-intervention, it demanded that the Austrian troops who fled to Wallachia should be disarmed and their weapons and equipment handed over to Hungary; they should also be prohibited from participating in any hostile action. The note was to be sent to Fuad, the pashas of Orsova and Belgrade, and the Serbian monarch and prime minister. The government also instructed Beöthy, who was still in Transylvania, to leave for Bucharest immediately upon receiving the documents, but this never happened.36 That must have been when the decision was taken to send another envoy to the Porte. The task was assigned to the 25-year-old Count Gyula Andrássy (Kassa [Košice], 3 March 1823 – Volosko, 18 February 1890), who was to become the first Hungarian prime minister after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and subsequently minister of foreign affairs of the Dual Monarchy. Andrássy’s secretary in the Ottoman capital was László Kiss, who had played an important part in the resolution made by the Hungarians in Constantinople in April 1848. Having served various families as a private tutor for several years, he knew the Ottoman capital very well. Andrássy probably left for Constantinople on 29 May, first travelling to Belgrade, where the pasha assured him that the Porte would help the Hungarian government in all matters that did not have “great resonance”, but he also advised Andrássy to keep his mission secret. He also talked to the Serbian minister of interior and the French and Piedmontese consuls. He was in Bucharest when he heard the news that Splényi had arrived in Constantinople.37 Following an adventurous journey, Andrássy arrived in the Ottoman capital around 24 June. He first stayed in the Hotel d’Angleterre, but after a week, he rented a house in Bebek, 36  Kossuth Lajos kormányzóelnöki iratai, No. 195. 37  1848–1849. évi iratok a nemzetiségi megbékélésről. Budapest, 1948, 188–191.

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at Kilise sokak 26, which was still standing in 1909.38 In his first known dispatch, dated 3 July, he wrote that the Porte did not dare to contact him openly. “There is only one way of inducing the Porte to take forceful action – it needs to be compromised, or else it will never have the courage on its own.” In his later dispatches, he also complained that the Ottoman government would not take steps against the military and political attacks on Hungary by either the Austrians or the Russians without the consent primarily of the British, but also of the French. Also on 3 July, he received a message from the Porte telling him that if he had the chance to meet the sultan and hand over his letter of credence, he would also need to present a letter from Kossuth to Grand Vizier Reşid Pasha (d. 1858), and so he asked for these documents to be sent to him. He also seemed to have successful talks about buying weapons.39 Andrássy informally contacted Canning, the French minister plenipotentiary Jacques Aupick (d. 1857), the Piedmontese chargé d’affaires Romualdo Tecco (d. 1867), Czajkowski, the leading Romanian émigré politician Ion Ghica (d. 1897), and several Ottoman politicians.40 Andrássy was able to negotiate with the Porte through Ahmed Vefik, who had initially said he was only willing to meet Browne. By the middle of July, the situation had settled: Browne was the permanent chargé d’affaires, and Andrássy was an “ambassador extraordinary”. Both were in constant contact with the Porte.41 Unlike Splényi, Andrássy did not fall victim to Austrian and Russian attempts to have him expelled. In the middle of July, the Hungarian foreign ministry sent its agents in Constantinople an instruction requiring one of them to go to Piedmont, where negotiations with Austria were reported to have broken down. The agent staying in the Ottoman capital was instructed to wake the Porte out of its “lethargy”. The instructions also argued that the Ottoman Empire could lead 38  OSZK Manuscripts, Quart. Hung. 2651: Imre Karácson, Konstantinápolyi tartózkodásom főbb eseményei. Vol. 2. 40v–41v; Bertalan Reiner, A ‘ ndrássy Gyula gróf, mint a szabadságharc diplomatája’, in Idem, Magyar kultúrképek. (Újabb sorozat, 3.) Budapest, 1892, 99–100. 39  A Háborús Felelősség 1:6 (1929) 514–515. 40  For details of Andrássy’s mission, see Róbert Hermann, ‘„A szép akasztott” Andrássy Gyula 1848–1849-es szerepéről’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 103:4 (1990) 37–53. 41  MNK rkp. 5427/IV. No. 21; copy in MNL OL Mf. 8852. 15–23; No. 22; copy in MNL OL Mf. 8852. 75–83.

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an alliance that included Hungary, which would nonetheless keep its national independence. Such a federation would substitute Austria in re-establishing the balance of power, a development that would also be to the satisfaction of the British.42 Historians consider this offer of an alliance as a fantasy, although a document found in the archive of the Topkapı Palace Museum proves that Count Kázmér Batthyány, the minister of foreign affairs, did make an offer of an association to his Ottoman colleague.43 Following a lengthy historical introduction, Batthyány proposed that the Ottoman Empire should unite most closely with Hungary (“l’Empire Ottoman devroit le plus étroitement s’unir avec la Hongrie”), which would result in peace among the Hungarians, the Romanian principalities and the Slavs living in Hungary. The basis for a new state that rested on law, truth and freedom of the nations had already been formed by the Ottoman government in the Empire. Batthyány expressed his hopes that an “offensive and defensive alliance would be created” between the two countries. He also hoped that the Porte – in its own as well as Hungary’s interests – would take strong action in respect of the Russian intervention and protest against it, as it infringed both human rights and international agreements. Such action would also be in the Porte’s own interests. If the Ottomans were not willing to set up an alliance, the Hungarian government would see it as a sign that the Porte was keeping strict neutrality. The Hungarian government expected the Porte to order all of its nations to respect the borders of Hungary in the strictest way, and also asked it to disarm the enemies of Hungary and other foreign troops when they entered Ottoman territories in future. Hungary would do the same to all those who wished to act against the Ottoman Empire. In conclusion, he wrote that the Hungarian government would be very much obliged if the Porte made these issues officially and mutually public. Batthyány claimed that an Ottoman–Hungarian alliance as outlined in his letter could settle the nationality conflicts in Eastern Europe and create a worthy rival and counterbalance to the Russian Empire. 42  ‘A szabadságharc magyar diplomáciai levelei 1848–1849’, A Háborús Felelősség 1:6 (1929) 516–518. 43  İstanbul, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Arşivi (hereinafter TSMA), İstanbul, Fransız Evrak 168.

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The idea was obviously one of the last straws of Hungarian diplomacy. Christian, European Hungary, troubled by nationality conflicts, would have faced serious difficulties and disadvantages if it had been integrated into the empire. The federation would have fundamentally altered the proportions of Christians and national groups in an empire that embraced radically different socio-political systems, and would add further, unknown problems to the existing issues of Hungary’s own nationalities. Furthermore, Britain saw a strong Austria as the key to the balance in Central Europe, and this alternative would have unsettled the region in an unwanted way. We should also note that the Ottoman Empire was going through a political transition that rendered it internally unstable. Its army was weak and poorly equipped and had suffered recent defeats, particularly against Russia. The government thus feared Russian military power and could not realistically have entered into a two-front war against an Austrian–Russian alliance without external – British and French – help. So far, no Turkish documents have been found that record how the Ottoman government reacted. The offer most likely came too late, but there can be no doubt that in the light of the coming Russian intervention, inaction by Britain and France, pressure from the Western powers for the neutrality of the empire, the collapse of Hungarian resistance and not least the realism of the Ottoman government, it was – or would have been – rejected. Andrássy never referred to the offer or to the reply in his known letters.44 The offer was not a secret in Constantinople; the Scottish traveller and historian Charles MacFarlane wrote with horror in his book that Reşid Pasha and Âli Pasha received Kossuth’s envoys, “at least listening to proposals for an alliance between the absolute despotic Ottoman empire and the anarchic mad republic of Hungary!”45 Wilhelm Alter – in a book which is to be read with some scepticism – inferred from a dispatch written by Canning to Palmerston at the end of July 1849 that Andrássy’s offer was received with enthusiasm by 44  In detail, see György Csorba, ‘Egy török–magyar szövetség ajánlata 1849-ből’, in Róbert Hermann and Péter Zakar (eds.), A források bűvöletében. Ünnepi tanulmányok Katona Tamás 75. születésnapjára. Szeged, 2007, 47–60. 45  Charles Macfarlane, Turkey and its Destiny: The Result of Journeys Made in 1847 and 1848 to Examine into the State of that Country. Vol. II. London, 1850, 335.

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Reşid, who thought it could help restore the glorious past and the sixteenthcentury borders of the Ottoman Empire.46 Another noteworthy letter, written on 10 August by an author who is still unknown, put forward a proposal for Circassian–Polish–Hungarian cooperation. The author was visited by three Circassian men who said that the Hungarian War of Independence gave them renewed hope, based on which all Circassians could be called to arms. The main point of the plan was that one of the Circassian leaders, accompanied by a Hungarian envoy and ten Polish officers, should be sent to Circassia and unite all the Circassian tribes under his command. The Hungarian envoy would call to the Circassians and Tatars in the name of the Hungarian nation, while the Polish officers would lead military actions and persuade their compatriots in the Russian army and the Cossacks to change sides. All this would be an effective distracting operation to help the Hungarian cause, facilitate a Polish uprising and provide significant advantages for the Ottoman government in the region. The document detailed the costs, which would add up to six hundred thousand piasters, but in exchange, sixty thousand Circassians would stand in arms to prevent the Russians from accomplishing their plans in connection with the Ottoman Empire.47 This idealistic plan was doomed to failure from the outset, for several reasons. By the time the letter was written, the Hungarian army had already suffered a disastrous defeat at Temesvár (Timişoara), so that the Circassian leadership would have known about the fall of the Hungarian War of Independence before the plan could have been put into action. It is very doubtful whether the Ottoman leadership could have been persuaded to support the idea of a Caucasian action and thus risk a serious confrontation with Russia. The promise to raise an army of sixty thousand soldiers seems to be exaggerated, as does the low assessment of the strength and skills of the Russian troops. Some years later, during the Crimean War, which was much more important for them, these troops were able to keep the Caucasus under 46  Wilhelm Alter, Die auswärtige Politik der ungarischen Revolution 1848/1849. Berlin, 1912, 185–189. For a criticism, see Charles Sproxton, Palmerston and the Hungarian Revolution. Cambridge, 1919, 75. 47  TSMA Fransız Evrak 262. Constantinople, 10 August 1849.

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control and even defeat the Ottomans, who greatly outnumbered them.48 Neither should we overlook the conflicts among the Circassian tribes. These involved both religion and power, and would not have been solved by a handful of Hungarians or Poles.49 On 2 August, the Austrian and Russian envoys called on the Porte to join the alliance of these two powers and declare war on Hungary, as a reply to General Bem’s incursion into Moldavia. The Ottomans rejected the proposal, taking the position that Bem had not invaded the area but only struck back at the Austrian and Russian troops that were using the lands of the empire as a base.50 News about the Hungarian surrender at Világos on 13 August reached Andrássy only at the end of the month. From then on, he worked against the extradition of the refugees who had fled to the Ottoman Empire. The sultan denied Austrian and Russian requests for extradition, resulting in serious diplomatic tension. Because of the threats from Russia, the Ottomans suggested in secret that the refugees should convert to Islam. Andrássy thought Russia would look on the refugees’ conversion as a casus belli. “The Hungarian War will be continued in Turkey,” he wrote to the Vidin refugee camp on 11 September.51 The refugees were divided as to Andrássy’s letter. Most of them, including Kossuth, refused to convert to Islam, but more than two hundred did, at least nominally. Some of the converts later became well-known in the Ottoman Empire, like General Bem (Murad Pasha), General György Kmety (İsmail), General Richard Guyon (Hurşid) and Josef Kohlman (Feyzi). In this tense political situation, although he successfully resisted two calls by Âli Pasha to leave the empire, Andrássy felt that there was little he could do in Constantinople. His requests were all rejected, and a decision was made to intern the refugees. Sensing that the same fate was awaiting him, Andrássy left 48  William E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields. A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border 1828–1921. Cambridge, 1953, 57–102. 49  For the details, see György Csorba, ‘The Circassian–Polish–Hungarian Alliance Plans Against the Russian Empire in the Final Days of the 1848–1849 Hungarian Revolution’, Journal of Caucasian Studies 2:3 (2016) 97–114. 50  MNL OL R 5, 2/97. 51  István Hajnal, A Kossuth-emigráció Törökországban. Vol. 1. Budapest, 1927, 469.

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the empire at the end of November.52 Andrássy’s subsequent Russophobia can be dated from this time, but he remained grateful for the Ottomans’ fair treatment towards the Hungarians and demonstrated this in his contribution to the Treaty of Berlin that ended the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.

conclusions

The Hungarian envoys were severely limited in their activities, owing to

Austrian and Russian political protests, international isolation, and failure to gain acknowledgement. The British embassy provided them with some minor, informal support, but France had no real political importance in the Ottoman capital at the time. Nevertheless, they were able to make unofficial contacts with the Ottoman political elite, who listened to the claims of the Hungarian government and even agreed with their anti-Russian arguments. The Hungarian envoys must have had an effect, because the Ottomans did not intervene even when Austria and Russia requested them to do so. However, the empire’s interests and the circumstances at the time did not allow the Ottomans to actively support the Hungarian claims, although they agreed on many issues. After the final Hungarian defeat, in their attempts to save the Hungarian and Polish refugees from extradition, the envoys were dependent on the support of the great powers, who were led by different motives. The refugee issue could be regarded as a prelude to the Crimean War.

52  MNL OL R 90 I. 530, 531, 533, 545, 548, 578; Hajnal, A Kossuth-emigráció, I. 463–470, 489–499, 541–542; György Csorba, ‘Hungarian Emigrants of 1848–49 in the Ottoman Empire’, in Hasan Celâl Güzel, C. Cem Oğuz and Osman Karatay (eds.), The Turks. Vol. 4: Ottomans. Ankara, 2002, 224–227; Hermann, ‘Szép akasztott’, 49–52.

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This book is dedicated to Prof. Géza Dávid, the renowned Hungarian

Ottomanist on his seventieth birthday. His books, papers and text publications are of first-magnitude significance for the understanding of the administrative system, demographics and economic history of the Ottoman Empire and, specifically, Ottoman Hungary. His friends and colleagues from Hungary and abroad gathered to present him with a Festschrift. It is intended as more than an expression of respect – an encouragement for work that remains to be done in the coming years for the benefit of all of us.

ISBN 978-963-416-182-0

9 789634 161820