Workshop on the Cross-Confessional Diplomacy and Diplomatic Mediators in the Early Modern Mediterranean”
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“Workshop on the Cross-confessional Diplomacy and Diplomatic Mediators in the Early Modern Mediterranean” Central European University, Budapest (Thursday 24 May - Saturday 27 May 2012) On the Agents and Information Networks of Diplomacy in Istanbul in the Early Seventeenth Century ***Rough Draft*** Günhan Börekçi (İstanbul Şehir University) NOTE TO THE PARTICIPANTS: This is really a rough draft. I tried to tailor some relevant stories and problems together; as such there might be some flaws in my narration, clarity and endnotes. Overall, this is a preliminary study that I would like to turn into a full feasible research later. Thus I look forward to hearing your comments and thoughts. Also please note that I leave talking about Ottoman archival documents that crucially complement the Venetian sources utilized here, to my workshop presentation. That is why there are no concluding remarks at the end. Early modern ambassadors, who were resident at a foreign sovereign’s capital, often found themselves acting outside the public, institutional domains of diplomacy as they had to rely on different, more personal networks of local informants, bureaucrats, courtiers and power brokers in order to successfully carry out their given missions or assigned tasks. Considering those European ambassadors serving in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul in the early 1600s, a period which many scholars today consider the beginning of a long era of “crisis and change” in the dynastic, political, socio-economic, military and administrative structures of the early modern Ottoman Empire, being a foreign diplomatic agent no doubt required more effort and vigilance as well as better calculated actions for his mission or actions could be easily jeopardized due to unexpected turn of events in daily practical politics. That is to say, given that the sultan’s royal court was divided by increased factionalism during this period, political struggles and personal rivalry among the Ottoman ruling elite kept frequently altering the positions and power of those Ottoman viziers, palace officials, courtiers and any other local agent on whom the European ambassadors frequently 1 relied for information and mediation. For instance, in such highly fluid and faction- ridden political environment, some of the critical informants and mediators could be suddenly dismissed from office or a new faction could come to dominate the imperial government after eliminating the members of the former faction for good. Moreover, it should be noted that the Ottoman rulers of this era, namely, Mehmed III (r. 1595-1603) and Ahmed I (r. 1603-17) and Osman II (1618-1622), repositioned themselves in practical politics vis-à-vis alternative foci of power and networks of patronage, and they tried to project power in the context of a factional politics that was intertwined with the exigencies of prolonged wars and incessant military rebellions. In effect, these sultans followed their predecessor Murad III’s (r. 1574-1595) example and employed new ruling strategies in order to impose their sovereign authority on the business of rule, an end which they achieved, with varying degrees of success, mainly through the mediation of their royal favorites and the court factions led by them.1 Hence, in the early seventeenth century (as well as in later decades), all the resident European ambassadors in Istanbul were repeatedly forced to cultivate new, reliable official and personal relations with the Ottoman palace and government circles, particularly with the members of the sultan’s court faction led by his royal favorite, while they closely followed the course of events unfolding in the capital in such a crisis and transformation period. This study aims to illustrate these daily aspects and problems of the early modern European diplomacy with the sultan’s court and his power agents in Istanbul by narrating a series of interrelated events as a case study. My main contention is that we need to closely investigate the changing realities, dynamics and actors of the Ottoman royal court and imperial politics in early seventeenth-century Istanbul in order to better understand how the European ambassadors functioned as diplomatic agents in an age of global crisis that hit and transformed all the empires in the world in multiple ways. However, this is easier said than done as this crucial era in Ottoman imperial history still awaits to be rewritten in more details with fresh sources and questions. For instance, we lack detailed “maps” of the personal networks of those agents who once took important roles in the cross-confessional diplomacy during the period in question, let alone their biographies; we do not have a well-established 1 On these problems, see my, “Factions and Favorites at the Courts of Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603-17) and His Immediate Predecessors,” Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation (Ohio State University, 2010). 2 chronology of events while we have yet to know power and diplomatic relations that went on at a daily basis in the Ottoman capital, etc. In this context, my discussion would also underline the indispensible value of the Venetian archival sources (esp. the dispacci) for such a study of Ottoman politics and cross-confessional diplomacy and diplomatic mediators in Istanbul. Case Study: 2 I hope the following would help demonstrate (in no particular order): 1) in what ways a new sultan’s reign affected the Venetian bailo as a diplomat in Istanbul; 2) how the Ottoman royal favorites and the under-aged sultan’s regents intervened in diplomatic negotiations; 3) the complexities of the 17th-century Ottoman court politics; and 4) the critical importance of the dispacci in filling the gaps in our current knowledge about contemporary political-diplomatic events and agents. On December 28, 1603, Francesco Contarini, the Venetian bailo resident in Istanbul, witnessed a highly significant event in contemporary Ottoman politics, which would also mark the beginning of a new episode in his diplomatic and personal relations with the sultan’s court and his chief power brokers. That day, he watched Yavuz Ali Pasha, the newly appointed grand vizier by Ahmed I, entering the Ottoman capital with an elaborate ceremonial procession. Surprisingly enough, only until a week ago, Ali Pasha was still acting as the governor of Egypt with no real prospect of becoming a grand vizier. The pasha had left Cairo for Istanbul on September 13, 1603, in order to deliver Egypt’s annual tribute, which for the previous two years could not be sent to the capital because of the Celâli turmoil in Anatolia. According to Baki Tezcan’s calculations, the tribute amounted to 1,200,000 gold ducats, approximately £450,000 at the time, which is equivalent to the total revenue of James I, the King of England and Scotland in 1617. Ali Pasha took the land route via Damascus, accompanied by some 4,000 soldiers, as well as fifteen cannons.3 Yet, his mission became more and more crucial along the way as some truly unexpected events took place at the heart of 2 I am grateful to my colleague Dr. Maurizio Arfaioli for his research assistance at the Venetian State Archives (ASVe) and for providing the transliterations of the Italian dispatches utilized here. I also thank my friend Dr. John Hunt for helping me with English translations from Italian. Any shortcomings in these passages are solely mine. 3 Baki Tezcan, “The Question of Regency in the Ottoman Dynasty: The Case of the Early Reign of Ahmed I,” Archivum Ottomanicum 25 (2008), pp. 185-198, at pp. 192-93. 3 the empire one after each, immediately reshaping the political arena of Istanbul in which European ambassadors had been undertaking their diplomatic missions. First, in October 1603, Grand Vizier Yemişci Hasan Pasha, who had enjoyed quite dictatorial powers after he managed to quiet a bloody sipahi (imperial cavalry) rebellion against the sultan’s court back in January-February, was dismissed and then executed upon the orders of Sultan Mehmed III. After removing Hasan Pasha, however, Sultan Mehmed could not find a suitable candidate and accordingly did not appoint anybody to the grand vizierate for months to come.4 Contarini, as arguably the most vigilant contemporary observer of Ottoman court politics, wrote about this pressing problem at the helm of the Ottoman imperial government in a dispatch dated December 20, 1603. He noted that Kasım Pasha, who had recently been promoted to the office of deputy grand vizier, was the only candidate willing to assume the vacant office: Thus Kasım Pasha, most dependent on the Queen [i.e., Safiye Sultan] with her favor, aspires and agitates greatly in order to obtain this honor. [However], everything remains more than ever uncertain and I believe that […] the well-founded judgment will [soon] regulate this election.5 Then, coincidentally enough, on that night of December 20, 1603, Sultan Mehmed suddenly died from a heart attack at the age of thirty-seven and the following morning his thirteen-year-old son Prince Ahmed ascended the throne with an impromptu ceremony. As I argued elsewhere, Ahmed’s enthronement was actually an expected outcome after the execution of his elder brother, Prince Mahmud, in June 1603. Immediately after this tragic event, he was presented as the heir apparent by being occasionally exposed to public view during the last months of his father’s reign, 4 Although the majority of contemporary Ottoman chronicles claim that Ali Pasha was appointed to the grand vizierate by Mehmed III around the time of Yemişci Hasan Pasha’s execution in October 1603, there is credible evidence that the sultan did not, in fact, fill the post. See below and Börekçi, “Factions and Favorites,” p. 131-133. Also see Tezcan, “The Question of Regency,” p. 191, who notes that such a long delay in appointing a new grand vizier was not unprecedented in Ottoman history: In 1580, after the death of the grand vizier Semiz Ahmed Pasha, Murad III refused for over three months to name a replacement, eventually appointing Koca Sinan Pasha.