A MUSLIM CAPTIVE’S VICISSITUDES IN OTTOMAN HUNGARY (MID-SEVENTEENTH CENTURY)

ZSUZSANNA J. ÚJVÁRY

“Captives from both sides should be returned and persons (i.e. captives) of equal value should be exchanged, so that the demand for a ransom by the captives’ masters on both sides should be satisfied; and those who have settled with their masters in the business of the ransom should pay it; and those who were taken captive in times of peace should be released without any payment,” reads Article 7 of the Treaty of Zsitvatorok.1 In fact, this agreement, together with the Treaty of Vienna,2 formed the basis for policy in seventeenth-century Hungary, remaining the official point of departure in Ottoman–Habsburg relations until 1664. It served as the basis of the negotiations in Vienna in 1615–16 and in Komárom in 1618 concerning the 158 villages whose fate was left unsettled in the Treaty of Zsitvatorok and subsequently.3 The peace treaty was renewed by Ferdinand II (1619–1637) and Murad IV (1623–1640) on May 28, 1625 in Gyarmat, and then on September 13, 1627 in SzPny, this time for twenty-five years.4 In 1629, there were again negotiations in Komárom,

1This was concluded at the mouth of the river Zsitva by the representatives of Em- peror Rudolf II and Sultan Ahmed I (1603–1617) on November 11, 1606. Its Hungarian text was published in Magyar történelmi szöveggy^jtemény 1526–1790 [A Collection of Hungarian Historical Texts]. I. Ed. by István Sinkovics. Budapest, 1968, 367–371. For more detail about the negotiations and the agreement, see Karl Nehring, “Magyarország és a zsitvatoroki szerzPdés (1605–1609) [Hungary and the Treaty of Zsitvatorok, 1605– 1609],” Századok 120:1 (1986) 3–50. 2Signed on June 23, 1606, this closed István Bocskai’s war of independence with the Habsburg monarch. 3Nehring, op. cit., 36; cf. Sándor Kolosvári – Kelemen Óvári, Corpus Juris Hungarici / Magyar Törvénytár. 1608–1657. évi törvénycikkek [Statutes of the Years 1608–1657]. Budapest, 1900, 115: 1613:35, 127: 1618:2–3. 4Cf. Antal Gévay, Az 1625. évi gyarmati békekötés cikkelyei magyarul, törökül és deákul [The Articles of the 1625 Treaty of Gyarmat in Hungarian, Turkish and Latin]. Vienna, 1837 and Idem, Az 1627. évi szPnyi béke cikkelyei magyarul, törökül és deákul 142 ZSUZSANNA J. ÚJVÁRY and on February 19, 1642 the Treaty of SzPny, concluded in 1627 but up- set by military operations by both sides, was prolonged by the envoys of Ferdinand III and 0brahim I (1640–1648) for a further twenty years. In 1646, then, a truce was in existence between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs. Its terms prohibited pillaging, the laying waste of territory, and all other violations of the peace, including, of course, raids aimed at the taking of captives.5 As captain-general of Transdanubia,6 Ádám Bat- thyány I was one of those responsible for preserving “the Holy Peace”. Despite this, the Ottomans seized more and more villages in the border areas, and even inside officially unoccupied territory of the Hun- garian Kingdom (where sipahis were often granted whole villages by the treasury as timar-holdings), or they else forced increases in the taxes of villages subjugated earlier. In response, the Hungarian borderland forces struck back and even re-annexed some settlements. Every responsible Hungarian politician and soldier in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries acknowledged the destructive nature of the Ottoman peace. In 1641, Miklós Esterházy, who served as Palatine (i.e. viceroy) from 1625 until 1645, summed this mood as follows: “Besides, even in times of peace (if it is to be called peace), the Turks have their own well-tried ways of launching attacks on and on the without resorting to open warfare. Firstly, they do so by means of theft, since, like the villainous thieves they are, the Turks in the border areas abduct and plunder at will those Hungarians who leave their homes, especially children and the young, just as hungry

[The Articles of the 1627 Treaty of SzPny in Hungarian, Turkish and Latin]. Vienna, 1837. 5A new, pioneering study on the holding of, and trade in, captives in Hungary is János J. Varga, “Rabtartás és rabkereskedelem a 16–17. századi Batthyány-nagybirtokon [Keep- ing of and Trade in Captives on the Batthyány Estates in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries],” in Unger Mátyás Emlékkönyv [Festschrift for Mátyás Unger]. Ed. by E. Péter Kovács – János Kalmár – László V. Molnár. Budapest, 1991, 121–133. – For a compre- hensive summary with an almost complete bibliography on the subject, see Géza Pálffy’s contribution to the present volume. See also the recent study by Hajnalka Tóth, “Török rabok Batthyány I. Ádám uradalmaiban [Turkish Captives on the Estates of Ádám Bat- thyány I],” Aetas 2002/1, 136–153. 6He obtained this office in 1633, with a temporary mandate at the time. András Koltai, “Egy magyar fPrend pályafutása a császári udvarban. Batthyány Ádám (Bécs 1630–1659) [The Career of a Hungarian Aristocrat at the Imperial Court. Ádám Batthyány (Vienna 1630–1659)],” Korall 9 (2002) 67–68.