WAR AND PEACE IN THE FRONTIER: OTTOMAN RULE IN THE UYVAR PROVINCE, 1663-1685 A Master’s Thesis by MUHAMMED FATĐH ÇALIŞIR Department of History Bilkent University Ankara July 2009 To My Family WAR AND PEACE IN THE FRONTIER: OTTOMAN RULE IN THE UYVAR PROVINCE, 1663-1685 The Institute of Economics and Social Sciences of Bilkent University by MUHAMMED FATĐH ÇALIŞIR In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BĐLKENT UNIVERSITY ANKARA July 2009 ABSTRACT WAR AND PEACE IN THE FRONTIER: OTTOMAN RULE IN THE UYVAR PROVINCE, 1663-1685 Çalışır, Muhammed Fatih M.A., Department of History Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Evgeni Radushev July 2009 Not only the provocative activities of the Transylvanian Prince György II Rákóczi but also the centuries-long Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry became the reason of an Ottoman campaign in Hungary in 1663. The war ended with the peace treaty of Vasvár signed on August 10, 1664. It was after this treaty that Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Paşa, the Ottoman Grand vizier, gave an order to establish a province around the Uyvar fortress, the most significant acquisition of the Ottomans at the end of the war. Thus, the Ottoman rule started in the Uyvar province that formed the Ottoman- Habsburg frontier for 22 years. Based mainly on the Ottoman chronicles, archival documents, and the secondary sources this thesis first describes and analyses the Ottoman campaign in 1663. Then, it pays close attention to the Ottoman administration in the Uyvar province. Finally, it gives us an opportunity to see the tendencies in Ottoman governmental mentality in the Habsburg frontier of the empire. Keywords: Ottoman Empire, Seventeenth Century, Mehmed IV, Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Paşa, 1663 Campaign, Uyvar Province, Frontier. iii ÖZET SERHADDE SAVAŞ VE BARIŞ: UYVAR EYALETĐ’NDE OSMANLI HÂKĐMĐYETĐ, 1663-1685 Çalışır, Muhammed Fatih Yüksek Lisans, Tarih Bölümü Tez Yöneticisi: Yard. Doç. Dr. Evgeni Radushev Temmuz 2009 Erdel Prensi György II Rákóczi’nin kışkırtıcı faaliyetleri ve bölgede uzun süredir devam eden Osman-Habsburg mücadelesi Osmanlı ordusunun 1663 yılında Macaristan serhaddine doğru bir sefere çıkmasına neden oldu. 10 Ağustos 1664 tarihinde imzalanan Vaşvar Barış Antlaşması’yla son bulan bu sefer sonrasında Vezir-i azam Köprülüzâde Fazıl Ahmed Paşa’nın emriyle Uyvar kalesi etrafında yeni bir eyalet oluşturuldu ve bu sınır bölgesinde 22 yıl sürecek Osmanlı hakimiyeti başlamış oldu. Büyük ölçüde Osmanlı kronikleri, arşiv belgeleri ve ikincil kaynaklara dayalı bu tezde öncelikle 1663 Osmanlı seferi incelenmiştir. Ayrıca Uyvar eyaletindeki idari yapılanma ve yönetim pratikleri üzerine durulmuş ve Osmanlı-Habsburg serhadi özelinde Osmanlı yönetiminin serhadlerde ortaya koyduğu pragmatik ve esnek idare tarzına dikkat çekilmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Osmanlı Đmparatorluğu, Onyedinci Yüzyıl, Mehmed IV, Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Paşa, 1663 Seferi, Uyvar Eyaleti, Serhad iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to all who have helped me in the preparation of this thesis, and in particular to my supervisor, Dr. Evgeni Radushev, for his advice and constructive criticism throughout; to the examining committee members, Dr. Evgenia Kermeli and Dr. Hülya Taş, for their significant comments; and to the faculty of the History Departments of both Fatih and Bilkent Universities for their lectures that enlarged my intellectual horizon, which one way or another was reflected in the present work. Besides, I am thankful to Dr. Pál Fodor who accepted me as his student during my stay at Budapest. I would like to express my gratitude to my classmates at Bilkent, particularly to Gisele Marien for her constant support and encouragement and to Sibel Kocaer whose close companionship helped me much to overcome many difficulities. I also extend my appreciation to Sadık M. Bilge, Cemal Bölücek, Fatih Durgun, Serkan Keçeci, M. Ali Kılıç, A. Zeki Olaş, Mustafa Öksüz, M. Burak Özdemir, Faruk Yaslıçimen, Harun Yeni, and Yasir Yılmaz for their unforgettable friendship. My greatest debt of gratitude, however, is to my family for their tolerance and love. Many institutions and programs supported my studies and researches in Turkey and abroad. I owe special thanks to International Programs Office at Fatih University for arranging grants to finance my studies at Matej Bel University in Slovakia under v the framework of EU Socrates/Erasmus program; to Bilkent University History Department for funding my graduate studies; to Slovak National Scholarship Program for a research visit to the Slovak archives; to Turkish Ministry of Education for a Slovak language summer school scholarship; to Central European University for a fellowship; and to TÜBĐTAK for a conference grant. These research opportunities have enabled me to collect valuable sources, some of which were put to good use in this thesis. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................ iii ÖZET........................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................... v TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................... vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 1 1.1 Sources and Historiography ....................................................................... 8 CHAPTER II THE OTTOMAN CAMPAIGN IN HUNGARY, 1663 ....................... 19 2.1 Politics and Diplomacy ............................................................................ 19 2.1 March and Confrontation ......................................................................... 32 CHAPTER III OTTOMAN ADMINISTRATION IN THE UYVAR PROVINCE .. 44 3.1 Physical Description ................................................................................ 44 3.2 Administrative Units ................................................................................ 46 3.3 Officials ................................................................................................... 48 3.4 Garrison ................................................................................................... 52 3.5 Vakıf ........................................................................................................ 56 CHAPTER IV PECULARITIES OF THE FRONTIER ............................................ 58 CHAPTER V CONCLUSION ................................................................................... 74 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................... 77 APPENDICES ........................................................................................................... 92 A. Military camps en route Buda ..................................................................... 92 B. The Treaty of Vasvár ................................................................................... 94 C. The Code of Uyvar Province ....................................................................... 99 D. Ottoman Administrative Units in the Uyvar Province .............................. 103 E. A Document Related to the Affairs in the Ottoman-Habsburg Frontier ... 104 vii F. A Map of the Uyvar Province .................................................................. 107 G. The Governors of Uyvar Province ............................................................ 109 H. Geographical Names ................................................................................. 111 viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Before discussing a particular Ottoman campaign and the peculiarities of frontier life in an Ottoman province in the seventeenth century, it is appropriate first to have a close look at tendencies in modern scholarship with regard to the evaluation of the given period. Seventeenth-century Ottoman history is a relatively understudied period in historical inquiries. According to Linda T. Darling, an Ottoman historian who focuses on fiscal and military problems of the empire in the given century, there are two reasons for this neglect; one is related with the paradigm of the “Ottoman stagnation and decline” and the other is with the unpopularity of particular sultans in the period. It is indeed true that many historians have employed the “decline” paradigm for long years as a simplistic approach to the centuries after the reign of Sultan Suleiman I (r. 1520-1566) during which the Ottoman Empire reputedly enjoyed its “golden” age. As Darling rightly argued, this approach - as other collectivist approaches - does not give us a satisfactory explanation for the peculiar political, military, financial, socio-cultural, and intellectual problems of the empire. 1 Moreover, it hinders any attempts to compare elements in imperial structures in the early modern history. Thanks to the efforts of the revisionist historians, 1 however, modern historians now have enough empirical data and alternative paradigms that allow a critical evaluation of the “declinist” literature. Halil Đnalcık and Linda T. Darling, for instance, showed us that the Ottoman financial institutions were in consolidation and transformation in the seventeenth century, not in a state of decline in the real sense of the word. 2 In addition, Jonathan Grant, a scholar of Ottoman military technology who studied the capacity of the Ottoman weaponry and naval