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Sultans and Voivodes 251

Chapter 11 Sultans and Voivodes

1 The Reign of Süleyman the Magnificent and New Legal Sovereignty

Throughout the 1520s and 1530s, a tremendous change swept through South- eastern and Central Europe; as the Ottoman Empire reached the zenith of its power, power relations within the region were reshaped and readjusted to the new circumstances.1 In 1521, at the beginning of the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, the Ot- tomans captured the Hungarian city of Belgrade, and five years later, in 1526, the sultan again invaded Hungary and defeated its army at the battle of Mo- hács. By the late 1530s, Polish claims and Habsburg attacks prompted Sultan Süleyman to consolidate Ottoman control over the territories north of the Danube. His personally-led expedition against Moldavia, undertaken in 1538, succeeded in ousting the incumbent voivode, Petru Rareș and brought the country firmly under imperial control. Three years later, Ottoman troops invaded Hungary and occupied Buda under the pretense of protecting John Si- gismund Zápolya’s interests against the Habsburg challenge. While all of central Hungary was incorporated into the empire, Süleyman granted Zápolya Transylvania as a tributary principality.2 These events, which represented but a fraction of the expanding imperial edifice in this period, had a profound impact on the Ottoman perception of legal sovereignty vis-à-vis Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania. As the

1 For Süleyman Kanunî’s reign, see Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, ed. Gilles Veinstein, Paris: La Documentation français, 1992; Süleyman the Second and his Time, edited by Halil Inalcık and Cemal Kafadar, Istanbul: The Isis Press, 1993; Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age. The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World, edited by Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead, London, New York: Routledge, 1995; Gilles Veinstein, “Süleyman I,” EI-2, IX, 868–878. See also Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It. London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004; Palmira Brummett, Mapping the Ottomans. Sovereignty, Territory and Identity in the Early Modern Mediterranean, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 2 For details, see: Berindei, Veinstein, Documents, 17–46; Pál Fodor, “Ottoman Policy towards Hungary, 1520–1541,” AOH, XLV (2–3), 1991, 271–345; Cristina Feneșan, Constituirea principatului autonom al Transilvaniei, Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedică, 1997; R. Constantinescu, Moldova și Transilvania în vremea lui Petru Rareș. Relații politice și militare (1527–1546), Bucharest: Direcția Generală a Arhivelor Statului, 1978; Ștefana Simionescu, “Țările române și începutul politicii răsăritene antiotomane a Imperiului habsburgic (1526–1594),” RdI, 28, 8, 1975, 1197–1214.

Ottomans’ pretentions to universal sovereignty, be it secular or God-anointed,3 reached their climax, the Porte increasingly saw tributary polities as an inte- gral part of the “Well-Protected Domains.” In line with this tendency, Süleyman Kanunî became the first sultan to claim outright ownership over the princi- palities and consider their inhabitants his subjects (reʿaya). This emergent stance is reflected in the correspondence between the Porte and its main rivals in the region: Poland (all original letters preserved in the Central Archives of Old Documents in Warsaw) and the Habsburgs. For ex- ample, the letter of 18 April–17 May 1531 sent to King Sigismund I of Poland stated:

The voivode of Moldavia as well as that of Wallachia are my slaves and tribute-payers, and their possessions, included among our other Well- Protected Domains like Bosna and Semendire, are my lands; even though he was informed that there are covenants between us and there is no or- der to attack your territories, yet the voivode dared to do contrary to our orders. Also, we are informed that the above-mentioned voivode [Petru Rareș of Moldavia] dispatched to you an envoy; who is he to dare and have audacity to send an emissary to you? He and the voivode of Walla- chia are my tribute-payers and slaves; consequently, we enacted severe orders for they do not dare to dispatch envoys, no matter to whom; as well no emissary is allowed to be sent to them; if somebody has a question with them, he must appeal to our powerful Porte, which is opened all times, and acknowledge what he needs.4

As a result, the tradition of the “imperial conquest” of Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania was attributed to Süleyman Kanunî although it grew stronger in the following centuries, and was regularly invoked in Ottoman documents and chronicles.

3 On these legal and political changes, see Imber, Ebu’s-su‘ud, 65–79. According to Colin Imber, until around 1500 the Ottomans limited themselves “to a claim to rightful sovereignty in Anatolia and the Balkan peninsula” (Imber, Ebu’s-su‘ud, 74). 4 Hurmuzaki, Documente, Supl. II/1, doc. IX: Ecrit au commencement du mois Ramazan, l’an 937 (1531). The same phrases are employed in a letter of eva’il-i Cemazi ül-evvel 938/10–19 January 1531: Imdi sizinle sabıkda makrur olan muʿahede-yi hümayunum. Mezbur Boǧdan voyvodası kulum ve haracgüzarımdır (AGAD, AKW-Tureckie, K. 67, t. 33, no. 75; Abrahamowicz, Katalog, doc. 29). Likewise, in a letter from Fall 1531, Grand Vizier Ibrahim pașa pointed out the Ottoman view writing to Sigismund i in similar terms (AGAD, AKW-Tureckie, K. 67, t. 32, no. 72 and Abrahamowicz, Katalog, doc. 28: evasıt-ı Rebi ül-evvel 938/23 October–1 November 1531. A different date in Hurmuzaki, Documente, Supl. II/1, doc. XIV: 12 October–10 November 1531).