Download PDF | Dariusz Kolodziejczyk - Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic Relations (15th-18th Century)_ An Annotated Edition of 'Ahdnames and Other Documents-Brill (2022).
830 Pages
PREFACE
The present work actually belongs to a bygone period in Ottoman historiography. In the present era of brilliant studies on prosopography, material culture and the intellectual and spiritual life of our ancestors, a study of international diplomatic relations provided with the apparatus of a typical "nineteenth-century" source edition seems completely obsolete. The more one studies Ottoman history, however, the more one realizes how valid still is the motto of Leopold Ranke "wie es eigentlich gewesen."
This fact led Colin Imber to introduce his recent study on Ottoman origins with a provocative motto from The Adventures qf Sherlock Holmes, stating that "it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data .... " 1 Meticulous studies by Lajos Fekete, Tayyib Gokbilgin, Halil lnalClk, Mubahat Kutiikoglu, JosefMatuz, and Victor Menage have tremendously enriched our knowledge about the functioning of the Ottoman chancery and the function and composition of the most typical documents. Nevertheless, an extensive list of questions concerning even the most basic historical facts still awaits a response by the modern historian. One of the most successful enterprises realized in the recent years is the pioneer study by Hans Theunissen, which is devoted to OttomanVenetian diplomatic relations from their initiation up to 1640. This study demonstrates that even an apparently well documented and thoroughly researched historical topic required the serious revision of numerous errors and misinterpretations. 2 Ottoman-Polish diplomatic relations, the object of this study, have been the subject of much less investigation than the Venetian ones. Nevertheless, a number of individual issues have already been studied by French, German, Rumanian, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Polish historians, of whom we might note here only Zygmunt Abrahamowicz and Jan Reychman. 3
The present study provides a detailed analysis of the various types of Ottoman and Polish instruments of peace, a chronological survey of the armistices, treaties and demarcations given against the general background of Polish-Ottoman political relations, and a full edition of the documents preserved in the original or in copies in various European collections. Those documents preserved in the original are published here in facsimile as well. Many thanks should be addressed to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which enabled the author to undertake research in Germany and Turkey and supported its publication. A research stay in Paris was made possible by the French Government, while research trips in Poland and Ukraine were given financial support by the author's home institution-the Institute of History at Warsaw University.
The author would like to express his gratitude to Suraiya Faroqui, Pal Fodor, Michal Kulecki, Hans Georg Majer, Victor Ostapchuk, lhor Skocylas, Jaroslaw Stolicki, Hans Theunissen, Nicolas Vatin, Gilles Veinstein, Hubert Wajs and numerous other teachers, colleagues, and staff members of various archives and libraries who contributed to this study by their advice, comments, and other kinds of assistance. Special thanks are due to Benedetto Bravo for his help in deciphering and interpreting the documents in Italian, to Joanna Blazej and Barbara Brzuska for their help in deciphering and interpreting the most difficult sections in Latin, and to Jurij Loza for drawing excellent maps. Any remaining mistakes are entirely the author's responsibility. The author would like to express his gratitude to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation .for the financial assistance which enabled the publication qf this book. Many thanks go to the Director qf the Main Archives qf Early Acts [AGAD] in Warsaw and to the Trustees qf the Czartoryski Library in Cracow .for their kind permission to reproduce the documents held in the aforementioned collections.
A NOTE ON PLACENAMES AND FOREIGN TERMS
The problem of a satisfactory solution in rendering East European terms and placenames in a work in English may constitute a serious headache to every author. To the mixture of languages spoken in the area covered by this study-including Polish, Ukrainian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Hungarian, Slovak and Germanone must also acknowledge political changes, the most recent of which occurred a few years ago. Foreign terms are in general given in italics (e.g., brylerbryi and starosta), with the exception of a few important historical terms adopted in English, such as hetman, hospodar, agha and pasha. As far as placenames are concerned, modern boundaries were honored as long as the ethnic composition of a given territory or city has not changed radically since the period described. Therefore, with regard to places situated in the modern Ukraine, Ukrainian fomis have been preferred to Polish (thus: Zvanec', not Zwaniec; Bucac, not Buczacz), with the exception of a few important administrative centers, where Polish culture has played a dominant role (thus: Lw6w, not L'viv; Kamieniec Podolski, not Kam'janec' Podil's'kyj). For the seventeenth-century Baltic city of Danzig (Pol. Gdansk), the German form was preferred, as its ethnic and cultural identity was predominantly German until 1945. Likewise, important Ottoman centers, today in the Ukraine or in the Republic of Moldova (Moldavia) are referred to by their Turkish names (thus: Akkerman, not Bel'horod Dnistrovs'kyj; Bender, not Tighina). The Hungarian name Temesvar, adopted by the Ottomans (Tur. Temqvar), was preferred to the modern Rumanian Timi§oara. The integrity of historical terms has also been preserved. While one speaks today of "the battle of Austerlitz" (not of Slavkov), such terms as the "Treaty of Karlowitz," the "Treaty of Buczacz," or the "Truce of Zurawno" appear in this book along with purely geographical denominations: Sremski Karlovci, Bucac, and Zuravno. The Polish title "wqjewoda braclawski" was rendered as "the palatine of Bradaw" (not of Braclav). The term "Crown" refers to the Kingdom of Poland, as opposed to its coequal in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
In a few cases, English equivalents, such as Cracow, Kiev, Dnieper, Dniester, Podolia, and Volhynia are given instead of the local names. The geographical and ethnic terms appearing in the documents published in this volume, including those written in the Arabic alphabet, are listed in the Glossary qf geographical and ethnic terms at the end of this work.
INTRODUCTION
Mutual perceptions At the opening of the previous century a young Polish orientalist translated the portions of Ottoman chronicles that pertained to Ottoman-Polish relations.' To his great disappointment, the place assigned to Poland by Ottoman historiographers was much more limited than expected. This imbalance in mutual perceptions is true even today. The "Turkish threat" played a prominent role in Polish internal propaganda, beginning with the battle of Varna of 1444. Along with Hotin (1621, 1673) and Vienna (1683), Varna served to mold the Polish self-image as a Christian and European state, antemurale Christianitatis. Numerous pamphlets of antiTurkish sentiment were published in Poland in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The perception of the "Turk" in Polish noble culture aroused interest even among nonPolish scholars.2
The perceived image of the "Turk" was highly ambivalent. Fear and disgust were often mixed with fascination. The Poles criticized Ottoman "paganism" and tyranny, but admired its wealth, power, and order. Oriental dress and armour were adopted by Polish nobles, who were often described on their visits to Italy as being dressed alta moda barbaresca. The Polish relationship with the Orient is reflected in its poetry, novels, and historiography. 3 Paradoxically and contrary to the nineteenth-century tradition, mutual wars occupy a strikingly brief section in Polish-Ottoman history, which consisted of remarkably long periods of peace, covering the whole of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and a significant portion of the fifteenth and even of the seventeenth, the "mythical" century. The importance of Polish-Turkish relations in the Polish tradition scarcely corresponds to the place of Poland in the Ottoman and Turkish collective memory. Ismail Hakki Uzun<;ar§Ih noted that no other foreign state sent envoys to the Porte as often as the Polish kings. 4 Unfortunately, this statement has failed to stimulate Turkish historians to undertake serious research on their mutual relations. While numerous Polish scholars can be justly criticized for not using Ottoman sources in their studies, at least they used the monumental work by Joseph von Hammer, based itself on Ottoman sources. On the Turkish side the situation is much worse. Even the monograph by Kemal Beydilli, invaluable for the student of Polish-Ottoman relations in the sixteenth century, almost completely ignores Polish sources.
This lack of interest concerning its northern neighbor is partially explicable. Unlike Austria, Russia, Venice, and mediaeval Hungary, Poland never formed a serious threat to Ottoman existence. Apart from the seventeenth-century wars, their mutual relations were mostly peaceful. Furthermore, the republican system of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was unable to attract Ottoman statesmen. Even if the Ottomans adopted certain elements of Western civilizatioi-1, they preferred to do so directly from the West, and not from its East European periphery. Only in the nineteenth century the fate of Poland prompted deeper reflection on the part of Ottoman statesmen. At that time Polish and Hungarian political refugees also began to play a tremendous role in the modernization of the Ottoman state. The troublesome borderland: Moldavians, Cossacks, Tatars, Nogays When traveling from Poland to Turkey today, even the shortest route will lead through at least three other countries-Ukraine, Rumania, and Bulgaria. One of the most common sins of state-oriented scholars is the neglect of the role of "nonhistorical" nations. It should be stressed here that the history of Polish-Ottoman political relations belongs to the common heritage of the Poles and Turks, but also that of the Rumanians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Tatars, and other nations whose ancestors formed the ethno-religious mosaic of the greater political entities: the Ottoman empire and the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.
Some of these nations managed-at least temporarily-to form semi-independent political centers with ties to Istanbul, Warsaw, Vienna, or Moscow. Among the most important are the principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania, the Crimean khanate, the Ukrainian Cossack hetmanate, and the Nogay horde, who were especially active in Budjak in the first half of the seventeenth century. The Nogay bey, Kantemir, notorious for his raids into Poland, was courted by the Porte to keep the Crimean khan in check, and played an important political role in the 1620s. 6 Often accused of plotting and treachery, the leaders of these smaller centers simply represented a completely different perspective from their counterparts in Warsaw and Istanbul. The East-European steppe can provide the scholar with an explanation of the numerous failures suffered by the great powers of those times. The Polish march to the Black Sea was halted in the fifteenth century by the Moldavian prince, Stephan the Great, and then, in the seventeenth century, by the Cossack leaders-Bohdan Xmel'nyc'kyj and Petro Dorosenko. The Ottoman expedition against Muscovy in 1569 was paralysed by the Crimean khan, Devlet Giray, who feared the loss of his independence. The reconciliatory policy of Istanbul and Warsaw was challenged in the seventeenth century by a notorious "private" war between the Cossacks and the Tatars, being only in theory "obedient subjects" of the king and of the sultan. The reconciliatory efforts by Warsaw and Istanbul brought the Soviet Ukrainian historian, Noj Rasba, to the conclusion that the Polish-Ottoman peace was reached and maintained mostly through the suppression of emancipation movements in the Rumanian principalities and Ukraine. 7 Though somewhat extreme, this hypothesis may be fairly supported by such facts as the common Polish-Ottoman pacification of Moldavia and Wallachia in the 1590s and the proposal for a common antiCossack action in the 1630s. Whatever the particular reasons may have been, the long tradition of Polish-Ottoman diplomatic relations, which cover a period of almost four centuries between 1414 and 1795, provides a good example of the mostly peaceful coexistence of two states representing different civilizations and religions in the late mediaeval and early modern periods.
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