10

The empire unravels

EARLY IN FEBRUARY 1684 alarming reports from Belgrade reached the court at Edirne: the commander on the Hungarian front, Tekirdağlı Bekri Mustafa Pasha, informed Sultan Mehmed IV that the Christian states had entered into an alliance against the Ottomans. Muscovy, he wrote, was planning an attack on the Crimea, while the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth hoped to regain Podolia and seize Wallachia; Venice would mount attacks in Bosnia, against Crete in the Mediterranean, and against the coast of Rumeli and the islands of the archipelago in the Aegean; Sweden, France, Spain, England, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, Genoa and the Papacy were also party to the alliance. The Ottoman statesmen gathered at Edirne expressed their fear of warfare on many fronts at once, deciding that a commander must be assigned to each theatre while the Sultan or the grand vezir, Kara İbrahim Pasha, remained behind to oversee preparations for the campaigns ahead. Tekirdağlı Bekri Mustafa himself was in poor health, and the governor of Diyarbakır, Şeytan-Melek (‘Devil-Angel’) İbrahim Pasha, was ordered to Buda in his place.¹ The signatories to the Holy League concluded in March 1684 were the Austrian Habsburgs, Poland-Lithuania, Venice and the Papacy, and the signing of an armistice between France and Austria in the summer of 1684² boded still worse, but the following year peace between the Ottomans and the French was renewed,³ removing the possibility of French participation.

With Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha dead, the next prominent scion of the Köprülü household was the second son of Köprülü Mehmed, Fazıl Ahmed Pasha’s brother Fazıl Mustafa Pasha. He had been present with Fazıl Ahmed at the conclusion of the siege of Iraklion and had been appointed seventh vezir on Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa’s recommendation, but having been entrusted by the Sultan with guarding the Queen-mother and the young princes, had taken little further part in military campaigns. The close relationship with the Sultan this implied won him further favour, but a tide of anti-Köprülü feeling followed the Vienna defeat, Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa’s death and the appointment of Kara İbrahim Pasha as grand vezir in his place, and in it Fazıl Mustafa lost the important post of governor of the northern Black Sea province of Özi awarded him before his brother-in-law lost his head. This frontier command went to the new grand vezir’s accomplice, Sarı Süleyman, who became a pasha, and Fazıl Mustafa was deprived of active involvement in the next, dangerous stage of the war.4

The incompetence of the anti-Köprülü faction which now came to power brought disaster upon the Ottomans. In the course of their retreat from Vienna they lost Esztergom on the Danube north of Buda, which they had held since 1543 apart from a ten-year period when it was in Habsburg hands. During 1684 there were significant Habsburg advances into Hungary: Visegrád and Vác, two key strongholds near Esztergom, fell to them and, leaving Buda under siege, the Austrians routed an Ottoman force a day’s march south of the city. In 1685 the Ottomans retook Vác, but an attempt to retake Esztergom came to nothing and the province of Uyvar – won but twenty years previously by Fazıl Ahmed Pasha – was lost. There was great rejoicing in the West.⁵ Venice was also active in these years: its forces besieged and took Santa Maura, Preveza and Pylos on the Ionian coast of Greece, plus a number of other fortresses, and also Ottoman strongholds in Dalmatia.⁶

Sarı Süleyman Pasha was recalled to Edirne after the 1685 campaigning season and soon named grand vezir in place of Kara İbrahim Pasha, deemed to have neglected his task of overseeing the logistic demands of the army. The Sultan gave Kara İbrahim the permission he sought to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Places, but the gossip among his enemies suggested that his real intention was to raise an illicit army in Anatolia: his estate was seized, and he was exiled to Rhodes.⁷ The rumour-mongering was of interest to the government for reports were again reaching Istanbul of unrest and brigandage among the Anatolian militia, some of whom were sacking towns and villages – when efforts to quell their disorder failed, the authorities decided that the only solution was to mobilize them for campaign.⁸

As war began to take its toll, the government contemplated the losses in men and matériel, and the accompanying drain on the treasury. Early in 1686 a war council attended by high-ranking clerics, military officers and statesmen was held in the presence of the Sultan. The prevailing sentiment was that so critical a campaign now required the presence of either the Sultan or the Grand Vezir at the front; if the Grand Vezir was in command, there was no need for the Sultan to remain in Edirne, and he should therefore return to Istanbul, to spare the people of the area the unwarranted financial burden of the court’s continued presence. Mehmed IV reached Istanbul in April to find famine in his capital – and indeed, similar conditions prevailed over much of the empire, in part thanks to the disruption brought about by the war. Prices of basic foodstuffs had risen drastically and in some parts of Anatolia people were reduced to eating roots and walnut husks. To mark the return of the court to the capital after so many years, the Sultan visited the shrine of Ayyub Ansari at the head of the Golden Horn. Thereafter, eschewing the confinement of Topkapı Palace, he chose to spend his time relaxing in the parklands along the Bosporus.9

Thus it was that Sarı Süleyman Pasha was appointed to lead the army to the Hungarian front, and orders were sent out to mobilize once more. Mehmed received the Grand Vezir in special audience, and presented him with the sacred standard of the Prophet, commending it and the Grand Vezir and his army to God’s keeping. In a break with precedent the mantle of the Prophet – supposedly brought to Istanbul earlier than the sacred standard, following Sultan Selim I’s conquest of Egypt in 1517¹⁰ – was opened out as if to invoke the power of this sacred relic. According to Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Agha, who was employed in the palace at the time and would certainly have heard about the ceremony if he had not actually witnessed it, all present were reduced to tears by the affecting scene.¹¹

The 1686 campaigning season was critical for Ottoman fortunes. On 2 September the city of Buda, held since 1526 when Sultan Süleyman I conquered a large part of Hungary, fell to the besieging Habsburg army. The province of Buda had stood for almost 150 years on the Ottoman–Habsburg frontier; unlike Vienna, the city of Buda was an Ottoman city, and its loss was a considerable psychological as well as military blow. The Ottoman hold on Hungary crumbled as one fortress after another fell. When winter came and the Ottomans retired to quarters in Belgrade, the Austrians were also able to install their garrisons in some of the castles of Transylvania.¹²

The scale of the defeats suffered in 1686 was such that, for the first time ever, the Ottoman Empire sought to initiate peace negotiations with its enemies, but approaches on the part of Grand Vezir Sarı Süleyman Pasha prompted by the fall of Buda failed to elicit any interest. The previous year the commander on the Hungarian front, Şeytan-Melek İbrahim Pasha, had sent peace overtures to the Habsburg commander Charles of Lorraine after the fall of Nové Zámky, without consulting the government in Istanbul: he received no answer but his independent action was discovered and he was executed. Preparations for the 1687 campaigning season were put in hand during the winter, but before the army set out Sarı Süleyman wrote again, this time to Emperor Leopold I himself. No longer supplicants, the Habsburgs now showed themselves capable of as much preoccupation with diplomatic niceties as the Ottomans, objecting that such letters were of no value unless they were written by the Sultan to the Emperor; furthermore, for a letter to be taken into serious consideration, it must be countersigned by the Grand Vezir and other senior government members. Such protocol was one thing; but the members of the Holy League, having pledged themselves to conclude no separate peace with the Ottomans, now placed an insuperable hurdle in the path of further negotiations: demands for the return of Podolia to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and of Crete to Venice, and Ottoman withdrawal from Hungary in favour of the Habsburgs. It was learnt in Venice that Ottoman hopes of an alliance with Iran had been dashed by the Shah; he refrained from attacking the Ottomans in the east while they were engaged in Europe, but vowed that he would retake Baghdad once the war with the Christians was over.13

The war had depleted the treasury, and the overriding concern of the high command was to find sufficient cash to pay the troops, albeit in arrears, for they well knew the trouble an unpaid soldiery could cause. In 1686 a new ‘war contributions tax’ was imposed upon the clerical establishment, hitherto exempt from such exactions; although notionally a loan, to be repaid when conditions allowed, it prompted vociferous complaints. A senior cleric who voiced the fears of his fellows that the money would be spent on the construction of further pleasure palaces like that at Edirne was exiled to Cyprus for his temerity in challenging the Sultan’s decree; nevertheless, the tax was transferred to the shoulders of the townspeople of the empire and collected, at least in Istanbul, under the watchful eye of armed guards before being taken to the mansion of the Grand Vezir’s proxy – where most of it disappeared. Nevertheless, the urgent need for funds prompted even members of the royal family to contribute to the war effort from the income of their estates. Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Agha was a witness to the tense negotiations over the war contributions tax, and recorded how the extraordinary harshness of that winter added to the misery – people could not leave their houses for fifty days because of the cold, and he himself, when rowing on the Golden Horn, had to break the ice with an oar as he went.¹⁴

The Grand Vezir was still in Belgrade when news came that the forces of the Holy League were attacking Osijek, the bridgehead on the Drava that was the historical link with the rest of Hungary. The League’s forces were repulsed and the Ottomans pursued their retreat northwards, but Sarı Süleyman Pasha proved a poor general, and on 12 August 1687 south of Mohács, scene of Sultan Süleyman’s decisive victory against the Hungarian king in 1526, his army suffered a costly defeat. News from other fronts was similarly disastrous: the Peloponnese was lost to the Venetian navy under the command of Francesco Morosini, defender of Candia in 1669, who in September blew up the roof of the Parthenon in Athens when trying to evict its Ottoman garrison.15 Furthermore, the Tatar Khan did not himself join the campaign that year, pleading that Jan Sobieski had entered into a pact with Muscovy with the intention of jointly attacking Crimea.¹⁶ Sobieski’s son besieged Kamenets in 1687 but the arrival of an Ottoman–Tatar relief army scattered his forces.¹⁷

After their defeat near Mohács Sarı Süleyman Pasha and his army retreated south along the Danube towards Belgrade, reaching Petrovaradin on 27 August. Here they paused, and the Grand Vezir attempted revenge by sending a force back to attack an enemy position eight hours away to the north, but a tremendous storm broke as the troops were crossing the bridge over the wide, fast river, and the vanguard was stranded on the sodden northern bank with no food and no protection against the elements – an incident that proved to be the spark which ignited, with terrible consequences, the simmering discontent within the ranks. They returned over the bridge in disarray; the Grand Vezir attempted to appease them, but the soldiers demanded that he hand over the symbols of his office: the seal he held as grand vezir and the sacred standard of the Prophet entrusted to him by the Sultan.¹⁸

Sarı Süleyman Pasha fled: he gathered up the sacred standard and took boat down the river in the direction of Belgrade. A large gathering of troops in his tent united in blaming him in his absence for all the ills which had befallen them both individually and collectively and, as the rebellious Anatolian pashas earlier in the century might have done, they put forward their own candidate to command the army on its return to Istanbul, the elderly and experienced governor of Aleppo and son-in-law of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, Siyavuş Pasha. The mutineers prepared a report to submit to the Sultan in which they complained of the many broken promises made to the army over the past two seasons – provisions promised but supplied in insufficient amounts, pay and financial rewards for military success pledged but not forthcoming. They also recorded their anger that once they had crossed the bridge Sarı Süleyman ordered them to be given twelve days’ worth of supplies and march instead to distant Eger from Petrovaradin, rather than confronting the enemy only a few hours north; this, they said, was the last straw and, lacking any protection against the terrible rain, they had refused to obey.¹⁹ When he fled Sarı Süleyman Pasha was accompanied to Belgrade by some high-ranking statesmen including Tekirdağlı Bekri Mustafa Pasha, who was once again janissary commander-in-chief, but most subsequently decided to return to the army at Petrovaradin. One of those who continued with him from Belgrade downstream to Ruse and then overland towards Istanbul was the chief treasurer of the empire, Seyyid Mustafa Pasha.20

With a war to fight on three fronts and a major military revolt on his hands, Sultan Mehmed IV commanded Siyavuş Pasha to see to the empire’s defences as a matter of the utmost urgency. He ordered the army to winter quarters in Belgrade and forbade the return of any troops to Istanbul. The soldiers, outraged, hardened their terms, demanding the execution of Sarı Süleyman Pasha and the appointment of Siyavuş Pasha as grand vezir in his place; they also refused to remain in Belgrade. Retired officers in Istanbul of whom the Sultan asked advice recommended purging the upper echelons of the army. First of all, they said, a new grand vezir must be appointed, and Tekirdağlı Bekri Mustafa Pasha should be replaced, along with all officers commanding military units at the front; arrears in pay must also be settled. Before a decision could be made on whether this was the best policy for ending the revolt, however, further letters arrived from the rebels demanding Sarı Süleyman’s execution. The Sultan ordered the seal of office of the grand vezir and the sacred standard of the Prophet to be taken to Siyavuş Pasha forthwith, and they were presented to him at Niš as he was on his way back to Istanbul with the mutinous army.²¹

Among the leaders of the mutiny were officers of the sultan’s infantry and cavalry regiments; allied with them were militia commanders from Anatolia. Their anger was not assuaged by the change of grand vezir, and at Niš they surrounded the tent of Siyavuş Pasha while he was holding an audience; they demanded the head of Seyyid Mustafa Pasha, whom they held responsible for not paying them and, when Siyavuş Pasha sent his men to try to quiet them, they fired at his tent. Siyavuş Pasha told Seyyid Mustafa that he himself had no authority over these armed men, and that Seyyid Mustafa must plead with them instead. When he went outside to do so, he was cut to pieces. Siyavuş Pasha narrowly escaped with his life, but other senior members of the government present at the audience were all murdered.²²

One Receb Pasha had been appointed Sarı Süleyman Pasha’s proxy in Istanbul while he was at the front; the office was a reward to a partisan and fellow Bosnian for his part in despatching Sarı Süleyman’s predecessor, Kara İbrahim Pasha. Receb Pasha had designs on the grand vezirate himself, and wanted to see Mehmed IV’s eldest son, Prince Mustafa, now 23, on the throne. For the first time since the death of Ahmed I in 1617 the Sultan had both sons and brothers available as possible successors; forecasting that the arrival of the mutinous army in Istanbul would bring chaos, Receb Pasha suggested to Sheikhulislam Ankaravi Mehmed Efendi that, since it might well be the intention of the rebels to depose the Sultan and enthrone his brother Prince Süleyman in his place, it would be wise to pre-empt them by making Mustafa sultan forthwith. Perhaps the Sheikhulislam preferred the nearly middle-aged Süleyman, because he refused to give a juridical opinion sanctioning the proposed act of treason. Receb Pasha tried to have him removed, but this was to over-step his authority, and when it was reported to the Sultan he ordered the apprehension of both the disgraced Grand Vezir and his intriguing proxy. The anti-Köprülü faction was in disarray. Sultan Mehmed sent to the Dardanelles for his trusted ally Fazıl Mustafa Pasha, who had been exiled there from court: his word carried more weight than the Sultan’s with the military, and Mehmed appointed him proxy to the Grand Vezir in Receb Pasha’s place. Faced by the imminent arrival of the army in the capital, the Sultan acted as decisively as he could, hoping that this would pacify the troops and bring an end to the dangerous disorder.23

Receb Pasha fled, evading capture for the present. It was not long before Sarı Süleyman was found hiding in disguise in parkland far up the Bosporus, and executed; his head was sent to the troops on their way back from Hungary, to pacify them. It reached the new grand vezir Siyavuş Pasha and the army at Plovdiv, where they were camped after marching from Niš, on 17 October 1687. In the Grand Vezir’s tent the Sultan’s accompanying letter was read out to the assembled officers: they could see Sarı Süleyman’s head for themselves, he wrote; Receb Pasha was being sought day and night, and faced execution when he was apprehended. He promised that pay and supplies would be provided in full, and every effort made to rectify the injustices the army had suffered at the hands of Sarı Süleyman. But, the Sultan’s letter went on, it was not right that the soldiers should come to Istanbul when there was war on every hand: they must winter in Plovdiv and Sofia while additional troops were being mobilized and new financial resources found for continuing the war. But the troops were not satisfied – they found nothing new in what the Sultan had to say. They wanted further undertakings concerning the repair of captured fortresses and the pay and conditions of their garrisons. Notably, they also demanded that the Sultan should give up his habitual hunting. The mutineers were in an ugly mood: they cut the ropes of the Grand Vezir’s tent, and sent the imperial standards forward to the next way-station along the road to Istanbul.²⁴

The leader of the army rebels was an Anatolian, Yeğen (‘Nephew’) Osman, who had served on the Hungarian front under Şeytan-Melek İbrahim Pasha; when Şeytan-Melek İbrahim was executed for the loss of the province of Uyvar in 1685, Yeğen Osman had fled back eastwards with a large body of discontented soldiers who proceeded to sack town and countryside across central Anatolia. As in earlier times, the state tried to buy his co-operation, and appointed him commander of the Anatolian militia. He had forged them into an active unit on the Hungarian front, at a time when scarcity of effective military manpower was a pressing concern. Thus it was that the award of state office had set him up to play a central role in the tumultuous events of these years.25

On 18 October the army left Plovdiv and eight days later reached Edirne. Yeğen Osman – now a pasha – advised his fellows that they should stop there rather than march on Istanbul; Grand Vezir Siyavuş Pasha concurred, but opposition came from the sultan’s regiments, the janissaries among them, who insisted on continuing to Istanbul to force a showdown. Their menacing tone won Yeğen Osman over: it was clear that only the deposition of the Sultan would satisfy his militia and those who marched with them.²⁶ On the first day of the new Islamic year, a written demand for the deposition of Mehmed IV reached Istanbul from the sultan’s regiments. Fazıl Mustafa Pasha had already been informed by the Grand Vezir of the troops’ demand, and the Sultan had agreed to make way in favour of his son Prince Mustafa.²⁷ He called a meeting in the mosque of Ayasofya,²⁸ where the highest legal authorities of the empire and the commanders of the sultan’s regiments gathered with other statesmen and notables of the city to hear the demands of the advancing army read out to them. The assembly decided, however, that Sultan Mehmed IV should abdicate in favour of his brother Süleyman. Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Agha was serving as a page in the privy chamber at the time and, as he put it, ‘witnessed the truth of it all’:

The Chief Black Eunuch went to that part [of Topkapı Palace] known as the Boxwood [Apartment] where Prince Süleyman Khan was confined, and invited him to leave [his quarters] whereupon, supposing that he was to be done away with, the Prince became seized with fright and refused to come out. ‘Your majesty, my Sultan, fear not! By God, I swear I intend you no harm. All the imperial ministers and doctors of theology and your military servants have chosen you as the [next] sultan and are awaiting the honour of your presence. We are at your command.’ His heart still in a state of unease, the Prince replied, weeping, ‘If my removal [i.e. execution] has been ordered, tell me, so that I may perform my prayers in the prescribed form prior to the order being carried out. I have been confined for forty years – ever since I was a child. Rather than dying [a thousand deaths] each [and every] day, it is preferable to die [once] at the earliest instant. . .’

Again placing a kiss on the Prince’s foot, the imperial officer responded, ‘God forbid, do not say such things, I beg you: it is not a death but rather a throne which has been set up for you.’ [When the Chief Black Eunuch stated that all the Prince’s servants would attend him], the Prince’s companion by his side, his younger brother Ahmed, offered reassurance, saying, ‘By your leave, do not be afraid, the Agha [i.e. the Chief Black Eunuch] always tells the truth.’ Upon this, the Prince emerged from the apartment. Since [he] was dressed in a robe of red satin and his feet encased in a pair of short, heavy riding boots – having had nothing to wear for years except clothes of the very meanest and poorest sort – the Agha had one of his own robes brought, a dark bluish-brown broadcloth lined with sable, [which he] draped over [Prince Süleyman’s] satin robe, and [then], giving his arm to the Prince, conducted him with reverence and deference to the Pavilion of Felicity of the Privy Chamber and seated him on a throne by the pool. The Swordbearer and the pages of the Privy Chamber now came forward and, as he advanced in their company toward the imperial Audience Hall, the Prince inquired, ‘Are you going to stop by the Lion House,* [all enveloped in] darkness, and execute me there?’ ‘Oh, my Lord’, [the Swordbearer] answered, ‘how can you suggest such a thing? God forbid, may it be known that your removal [from the Boxwood Apartment] was in order that you should ascend the throne. See, your servant, the Chief White Eunuch, along with the imperial messenger, is coming from the Privy Apartments to meet you.’ The Chief White Eunuch extended his salutations [to the Prince] and, putting his arm through the Prince’s left arm escorted him to the imperial audience hall and seated him [on the throne]. In accordance with ancient custom, the sacred turban of the Prophet Joseph, [kept safe] in the Imperial Treasury,^† was brought forth and placed on the exalted head [of the Prince] and adorned with three bejewelled plumes, trailing downwards. The point to which the sun had risen was but one-and-a-half spear-lengths high: it was three o’clock.

[Prince Süleyman] ascended the imperial throne. . . and the first in line to swear allegiance was the Registrar of the Descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, followed by the [Grand Vezir’s] Proxy and the Chancellor and the chief justices of the provinces of Rumeli and Anadolu and, subsequently, the Sheikhulislam [i.e. Debbağzade (‘Son of the Tanner’) Mehmed Efendi, who had succeeded Ankaravi Mehmed Efendi] with various doctors of theology, and the senior officers of the militia and the sultan’s regiments and the rebels [sic], as well as the head of the Palace Doorkeepers and the chief officer of the Bearers of the Imperial Flask – all swore their allegiance to the Sultan. [In turn,] the Sultan extended his salutations to the [assembled body in the] imperial Audience Hall and then honoured the Pavilion of the Privy Chamber by his presence, where he was seated on a throne at the pool. Now, the servants of the treasury and the commissariat and the campaign also came to swear their allegiance. The Chief Black Eunuch, Ali Agha, came bearing an imperial rescript ordering the confinement of [the new Sultan’s] brother Ahmed Khan, the deposed Sultan [i.e. Mehmed IV], and the two princes. . . Mustafa Khan and. . . Ahmed Khan [i.e. Mehmed IV’s sons]; the three were raised up and detained in the Boxwood Apartment. A secret concealed from the inmates of the court and the residents of the city [of Istanbul], the imperial writ was presented to Sultan Mehmed Khan, who said, ‘I bow my head to God’s wish. Once imprisoned are we then to be executed?’ The Agha replied, ‘God forbid, your Majesty! May that day never come. The order refers only to your being confined.’ That same day, the palace heralds delivered the propitious news to the Queen-mother and were granted an untold number of gifts, and the public crier proclaimed to the city the glad tidings of the imperial accession; and the Friday sermon was orated in the name of the newly-enthroned sultan and the coinage now bore his name.29

Neither Mehmed IV nor his sons had previously spent much time in the palace. For most of his reign he had kept his court in Edirne, and when in Istanbul had preferred the pavilions in the royal parks to the gloom of Topkapı Palace. Mehmed must have been permitted to leave the capital after his deposition, however, because he died in 1692 in Edirne; he was buried in the tomb of his mother Turhan Sultan near her mosque in the commercial quarter of Istanbul.³⁰

Mehmed’s removal met the demands of the rebellious troops. Yeğen Osman Pasha remained outside the city with the militia units, and the Grand Vezir entered Istanbul with the sultan’s regiments and all the bureaucrats who had accompanied the campaign to oversee its administration. On 14 November, however, once the janissaries were gathered at their parade ground and the sultan’s cavalrymen in the Hippodrome, they voiced new demands, calling for Receb Pasha, who had evaded arrest for a month before being found in Çatalca in Thrace and imprisoned, to be handed over to them. Four days later, it was decided to pay them nine months’ arrears of salary in the hope that this would persuade them to return to barracks, but as the cavalrymen were being paid, word came from the janissary parade ground that the janissaries refused to accept their pay unless they also received the accession donative customary when a new sultan came to the throne: the cavalrymen joined in the protest and soon the city was in uproar. Having no ready cash at their disposal, and desperate to calm the unrest, the beleaguered authorities were forced to award whatever entitlements to tax-farming rights the ringleaders desired. Yeğen Osman Pasha was appointed governor of the province of Rumeli to discourage him from entering the city, the money needed to meet the accession donative for the thousands of troops entitled to it – at least 90,000, by Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Pasha’s reckoning, of whom some 70,000 were janissaries and around 5,000 were cavalrymen – was scraped together from the remittances of some of the eastern provinces, and Receb Pasha was executed, but nothing seemed to mollify the troops.31

Twenty days after he was led from the obscurity of the palace, Sultan Süleyman II was girded with the sword in the now traditional ceremony at Eyüp, then made his processional entry into Istanbul through the Edirne Gate of the city, symbolically taking possession of his empire. Still the rebellion continued. Grand Vezir Siyavuş Pasha ordered the dismissal of the commander-in-chief of the janissaries and the appointment of another in his place, but news that the ringleader of the rebel janissaries had been murdered further incited both janissaries and cavalry, and in revenge they killed their new commanding officer. Knowing the Grand Vezir to be incapable of any bold move, they sought another scapegoat for their many dissatisfactions, and found him in the person of Fazıl Mustafa Pasha, whom they accused of orchestrating attempts to restore order; Siyavuş Pasha agreed that his proxy should be sent back to the defence of the Dardanelles. The rebels failed to intimidate Sheikhulislam Debbağzade Mehmed Efendi into giving a juridical opinion in favour of Fazıl Mustafa’s execution, but managed to bring about the Sheikhulislam’s dismissal. The new appointee as sheikhulislam was Es-seyyid Feyzullah Efendi, a descendant of the Prophet and pupil of Vani Efendi, who had swiftly worked his way up the clerical hierarchy.³²

The long and dangerous military rebellion was reaching its climax. Mutinous troops and a mob eager to profit from the chance to riot and loot besieged the palace of Siyavuş Pasha as he met there with Feyzullah Efendi and others, stoning its walls and firing their muskets. The pressure was too much for Feyzullah Efendi who slipped outside bearing the Grand Vezir’s seal which he turned over to the leader of the mutiny. Some hours later the mob managed to break into the aged Grand Vezir’s palace; when he saw to his disgust that some of the rioters were entering his harem, and that he himself was unable to escape their fury, he tried to bar the door separating the harem from the public apartments – but was murdered where he stood. The rioters stole whatever they could carry and, designating the women of the harem as ‘war booty’, carried them off too.³³

The people of Istanbul reacted in different ways to the chaos. After a shop in the Old Bazaar was looted, other tradesmen barricaded their doors. When one shopkeeper raised a piece of white cloth on the tip of a pole and called on all true Muslims to rally, a rumour spread throughout the city and its suburbs that the sacred standard of the Prophet had been brought out of the palace. Gradually a crowd gathered at Topkapı Palace: the sacred standard was paraded on the walls, and the people demanded to be delivered from the anarchy of the mutinous troops. A number of the rebel leaders were lynched by the crowd outside the palace, and others who made their way there to join their fellows met with the same fate. A new grand vezir was appointed, the chancellor İsmail Pasha, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha’s successor as grand vezir’s proxy when he returned to the Dardanelles; Sheikhulislam Feyzullah Efendi and other leading clerics who had played a shabby part in the rebellion were replaced.34 Thus ended, in mid-April 1688, the mutiny which had begun on the Danube early in September 1687. The rebels had entered the city in November 1687: after five long months of terror, a new sultan was on the throne and public order was finally restored.

Far away in Hungary, the war continued. Once the Ottoman field army had marched back to Istanbul, the beleaguered garrison troops were left behind to cope with the forces of the Holy League. During the winter of 1687 and in the first months of 1688 the Habsburgs made gains along the weakly-defended border, including Eger which the Ottomans had held since 1596. They also scored notable successes on the Bosnian front further to the west: there, mobilization of local Ottoman troops to support the garrisoned positions was not a success, for they proved only too ready to flee at the first sign of danger, and very many took refuge with the Austrians.³⁵

In Istanbul, the crisis of the winter months had caused preparations for the 1688 campaign to be neglected. Grand Vezir İsmail Pasha did not take command of the army in Hungary; instead Yeğen Osman Pasha, always unpredictable, was charged with trying to turn back the tide of Habsburg success – by remaining encamped outside the walls of Istanbul with his men, he had escaped direct implication in the violent events that took place over the winter. His appointment of his own men to a number of military posts was not wholly successful: they seem to have found it difficult to abandon their old habits, for reports continued to reach Istanbul of their harassment of a peasantry whom the demands of so many years of war had left starving and impoverished. Yeğen Osman was apparently either unable or unwilling to discipline his men; the call went out for a general mobilization against them, and he was dismissed as commander on the Hungarian front.³⁶

Grand Vezir İsmail Pasha held office for only two months before falling victim to infighting at court. He was replaced on 2 May 1688 by the former commander-in-chief of the janissaries and commander on the Hungarian front after the failure of the Vienna campaign, Tekirdağlı Bekri Mustafa Pasha, now recovered from his earlier ill health. Tekirdağlı Bekri Mustafa had initially deserted the Ottoman camp at Petrovaradin with Sarı Süleyman Pasha when the mutiny first began, then returned, and had thereafter spent the months of that troubled winter away from Istanbul, at the Dardanelles fortresses.37 With the aim of depriving the Austrians – and foes on other fronts – of the opportunity to face an Ottoman army that was ill-prepared to meet them, Tekirdağlı Bekri Mustafa set urgent preparations in hand.

The Ottoman war effort was in disarray: with the campaigning season of 1688 well advanced and little prospect of peace, there was no time for the government to devise a well-considered solution to the pressing shortage of military manpower to fight along a wide front. As in the recent revolt which had seen the field army defy orders and march en masse from the front to Istanbul, the numerous occasions on which the sultan’s regiments had seemed to threaten the very survival of the prevailing order as they plunged Istanbul into tumult for weeks on end demonstrated the complete breakdown of military discipline. Moreover, the system of awarding land-grants to provincial cavalrymen on condition that they appear on campaign with their retinues no longer met even the defensive needs of the empire – indeed, for all practical purposes, the institution had long since lapsed. It seemed the best hope of ensuring that enough men were available was to again concentrate the energies of Yeğen Osman Pasha and his followers on the borders of the empire, even though their depredations on the countryside and its inhabitants suggested a reluctance to abandon their old ways. The general mobilization against them was therefore countermanded, and they were reintegrated into the fabric of the state with the award of provincial governorships and sub-governorships, on condition that they appear on campaign with men under their command. Recalcitrant individuals had traditionally been incorporated into the state apparatus as a means of refocusing their loyalties; the novelty now lay in the scale of the state’s reliance on these unruly troops as the backbone of the army. To attempt to defend the empire with an unreliable force whose members owed their first allegiance to their leaders rather than to the Sultan was clearly to court further disaster. The murder by Ottoman garrison troops of the commanders of the fortresses of Iraklion, Kamenets and Timişoara between 1687 and 1689 was yet more evidence of the central authorities’ loss of control.³⁸

Finding money for the campaign was proving as much of a problem as finding men to fight it. The treasury was empty, so gold and silver plate was melted down in a desperate effort to raise funds for the army.³⁹ During the seventeenth century the Ottomans had struggled to obtain enough silver for the minting of their own coins, so had allowed the silver coinage of various European states and that of newly-conquered territories to circulate freely within the empire. Supplies of copper were more readily available, but for reasons as yet unexplained the Ottomans had all but ceased the minting of copper coinage from the late 1630s. From 1688, in the aftermath of the rebellion of the winter months, copper coinage was again minted and issued in large quantities to enable the state to pay Sultan Süleyman’s accession bonus and satisfy the demands of salaried employees, notably the troops of the sultan’s regiments, as well as pay for the continuing war; it was easily counterfeited, however, and not always acceptable to the merchants from whom the state obtained supplies needed to provision both Istanbul and the army, and the practice was abandoned in 1691.40

The seriousness of the situation was not lost on Süleyman II and his statesmen. In June 1688, however, the ambassador of the United Provinces to the Ottoman court sought an audience with the Grand Vezir and informed him that Emperor Leopold and his allies were inclined to peace. This offer of mediation as a way to bring an end to the war was prompted by the desire of William of Orange (soon to be William III of England, Scotland and Ireland) to see the Austrian troops presently engaged in Hungary freed for service in the Rhineland and the Palatinate in support of the alliance he was beginning to put together against Louis XIV of France. News of this move also reached Istanbul by way of the military commander at Belgrade and, despite his promise on his accession that he intended to lead his army in person to win back the territories his forebears had conquered at such cost,⁴¹ Süleyman decided to send envoys to remind the Emperor of the friendship between their fathers – Ferdinand III and Murad IV, during whose reigns earlier in the century there had been peace between Habsburgs and Ottomans. It was usual to send letters announcing the accession of a new sultan to fellow monarchs, and on this occasion they went to the Mughal Sultan Aurangzeb, and to Iran, Özbekistan, Yemen, France, England and the United Provinces; and on 11 July 1688 a high-ranking chancery official, one Zülfikar Efendi, set out for Vienna, carrying Süleyman’s letter to Emperor Leopold, at the head of a peace-seeking delegation which included the Chief Dragoman – literally, the ‘Chief Interpreter’, but in reality the principal intermediary between the sultan and foreign rulers – the Ottoman Greek Alexander İskerletzade, known in the West as Mavrocordato.⁴²

But these peace overtures did not end the war, and preparations continued apace. In the absence of a firm hand to direct the war effort, the suppression of the military rebellion and the enthronement of a new sultan did nothing to improve the performance of the Ottoman army on the Hungarian front where the Ottoman presence was by now reduced to a tenuous hold on a few minor forts. The most devastating blow to the Ottomans in 1688 was the loss of Belgrade, which fell to the Habsburg army on 8 September after a month’s siege. Yeğen Osman Pasha made no attempt to put up any real defence against the attackers but allowed his men to loot the city’s bazaars instead of fighting, and retreated with them well behind the front line to the safety of Niš, leaving the defence of Belgrade to the governor of Rumeli. The Habsburg army under Maximilian Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, easily overcame Imre Thököly and some Ottoman troops in a battle outside the city. Belgrade’s resistance for as long as a month was remarkable, since it was inadequately garrisoned and there was no expectation of relief – Zülfikar Efendi and his delegation happened to reach the Habsburg camp as the siege ended: his assessment was that although their weaponry was impressive, the Habsburg troops were in a parlous condition and ready to withdraw once they had secured the defence of their territory.43 For more than a century and a half this strategically vital fortress had been the inviolable forward base from which military operations against the Habsburgs had been conducted; once it was lost, the road to Istanbul was open. The inhabitants of Belgrade fled down the Danube to escape the advancing Habsburg forces – as did the garrisons of Ottoman-held forts along the river.⁴⁴ By October Zülfikar Efendi and Mavrocordato had been arrested and were being held outside Vienna.⁴⁵

Yeğen Osman was responsible for allowing the Habsburgs to advance so effortlessly into the Ottoman heartland, yet following the loss of Belgrade he was confirmed as commander-in-chief of the imperilled front for the next season. No other experienced commanders were available, and none who identified closely with the central government could be sure of the loyalty of their men. When the frontiers of the empire were so severely threatened, Yeğen Osman appeared to offer the only solution. Orders went out for the enlistment of Muslim men fit to fight; participation in the forthcoming campaign was also proclaimed to be the duty of non-combatants who, as tax-payers, would provide the wherewithal that would enable the campaign to proceed, and advance payment of certain taxes was demanded – an unprecedented measure adopted in a bid to fill the coffers of the state.⁴⁶

Despite Yeğen Osman Pasha’s position as the lynch-pin of Ottoman strategy in Hungary, the renewed sense of momentum engendered by the preparations to resist the Austrians encouraged Ottoman statesmen to hope that he could be outflanked. The most senior officials, from the Grand Vezir to Sheikhulislam Debbağzade Mehmed Efendi (who had been reappointed following Feyzullah Efendi’s dismissal) and the commanders of the sultan’s regiments, were united in the view that if Yeğen Osman and his associates were taken out of circulation, victory would follow. The government was also determined to weaken his status as a charismatic figurehead for the discontented by revoking his authority as militia leader. Within a few months he was stripped of his rank, and the companies of irregulars which had been formed as long ago as the beginning of the century to provide essential manpower for the wars against Iran and Austria then being fought were abolished. While the fighting capabilities of these men were still needed, by forcing them to enrol in companies untainted by association with rebellion, the government hoped to undermine the attractions of opposition to the state.47 A juridical opinion sanctioned the hunting down of any rebellious elements – which now included Yeğen Osman – and orders to this effect were sent to Ottoman provincial governors in Rumeli and Anatolia. In particular, the route between Anatolia and Rumeli by way of the Dardanelles was strongly fortified to resist any rebel forces that might try to cross over with the intention of marching on Istanbul, as had happened in the past when there was provincial unrest. The part played by Yeğen Osman and his followers in neglecting the defence of the Hungarian frontier was matched in Anatolia by the all-too-familiar acts of brigandage, hold-ups on the roads and pillaging of countryside and town.⁴⁸

Following the fall of Belgrade, Yeğen Osman Pasha had passed the winter in Sofia; in the spring, finding that the call to arms against him severely limited his freedom of movement, he fled west towards Albania. Near Peć he and thirteen of his followers were killed by local people in whose house they had been made welcome as guests. Two of his closest allies fled in disguise to Egypt, but were caught when they arrived and returned to Edirne for execution. Similar fates awaited others who fled towards Iran but were apprehended when they reached Erzurum, and executed.⁴⁹ The Ottoman government had at last managed to get the better of rebels who were seriously hindering the smooth running of vital military operations essential to success in the war against the Holy League.

The course of the war was now affected by events far outside the Ottoman lands. The chances of a successful outcome to the delicate peace negotiations initiated by William III depended on the ever-changing fortunes of any one of the parties or potential parties to the conflict. Shortly after the notable Austrian victory at Belgrade, Louis XIV of France, in defiance of the truce of 1684 whereby he had pledged a 20-year peace with Emperor Leopold, invaded the Palatinate. The renewal of war against France in western Europe from October 1688 – known variously as the War of the League of Augsburg, the War of the Grand Alliance, the Nine Years’ War, or King William’s War – diverted Habsburg resources from the struggle against the Ottomans, as they found themselves having to fight determined enemies on two far-separated fronts.⁵⁰

On 10 April 1689 the Sultan’s tents were pitched in the Edirne plain. Zülfikar Efendi’s peace talks having made little progress, Süleyman II was in a position to keep his vow and earn himself the title of ‘Gazi’ by leading that year’s campaign. The state coffers were somewhat replenished, draconian orders had been promulgated for mobilization, Yeğen Osman Pasha and his cohorts had been defeated and the unrest in Anatolia suppressed; the Sultan’s presence on campaign was intended to suggest a new-found confidence in the ability of the empire to survive, but it was also a desperate measure aimed at salvaging honour and territory in the face of looming disaster. The Sultan accompanied the army as far as Sofia where the governor, Arab Receb Pasha, was appointed commander-in-chief in succession to Yeğen Osman Pasha.51 It was rare if not unprecedented for an Arab to rise so high; this prejudice against Arabs was expressed by Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Pasha in his chronicle of these years, where he referred slightingly to Receb Pasha’s origins but noted, nevertheless, that he was renowned for his courage. The problem, in Defterdar Sarı Mehmed’s opinion, was that at the very time when a wise and capable commander-in-chief was urgently needed, the office went to someone who did not have good relations with the troops, failed to consult them before acting, and did not reflect on the consequences of his chosen course of action.⁵²

As the events of 1689 unfolded, the fanfare attending the Sultan’s ‘participation’ in the campaign was insufficient to mask the fact that, despite the Habsburgs being occupied elsewhere, the defensive situation in the Balkans was becoming worse than it had ever been. A new western coalition against the French – comprising Austria, England and the United Provinces – was signed on 12 May; with King William’s decisive emergence onto the stage of European politics, this ‘Grand Alliance’ superseded the defensive League of Augsburg of 1686 between Emperor Leopold and a number of German princes. Zülfikar Efendi required new instructions to meet the changed circumstances, and sent an envoy to Edirne for the purpose.⁵³ The Ottomans were now inclined to accept Habsburg conditions for peace, and Zülfikar Efendi was instructed to try to persuade the Emperor to return to Belgrade, and agree a new Habsburg–Ottoman border at the Sava–Danube line. Mindful of the Holy League’s determination that none of its participants should agree a separate peace, the Ottomans were also prepared to concede Venice’s conquests on the Ionian coast and in Dalmatia, and the Commonwealth’s demand for the levelling of the fortress of Kamenets. However, in September 1689 the new French ambassador to the Sultan’s court, Marquis Castagnères de Châteauneuf, energetically sabotaged any possibility of agreement between the Ottomans and the Holy League by proposing an Ottoman–French alliance,⁵⁴ and the window of opportunity for peace was again slammed shut as the Ottomans saw a chance of recovering their position.

Meanwhile, the new commander-in-chief marched northwards with the army. As they approached Belgrade late in August, news came that there were enemy troops ahead; Arab Receb Pasha ordered his men to pursue them but they turned, and the pursuers found themselves under fire at night, immobilized in an oak forest, and unable to fight – they fled back along the road to Niš, leaving their heavy equipment behind. Arab Receb was unable either to co-ordinate the manoeuvres of his troops, to gather useful military intelligence, or even to impose discipline on his soldiers – they refused to regroup at Niš, and began to march back to Sofia to present their grievances to the grand vezir, Tekirdağlı Bekri Mustafa Pasha. In a final blow, in late September, Niš was then lost to a Habsburg force which took advantage of the Ottomans’ failure to secure a bridge over the raging river Nišava.55 The debacle at Niš accelerated the mass migration of Muslims southwards through the Balkans and into Anatolia⁵⁶ which had begun with the fall of Belgrade in 1688, and was now exacerbating the internal displacement of population already brought about by war and rebellion.

The fall of Niš brought Arab Receb Pasha’s execution. With Belgrade protected by their new forward base the Austrians were able to take several Ottoman forts on the Danube, as far west as Petrovaradin. Opening a new front in Wallachia, where they met with little resistance, they advanced towards Bucharest until they were driven out by the forces of the voyvode Constantin Brâncoveanu. The Sultan’s advisers recommended that he withdraw from Sofia to Plovdiv and thence to Edirne. Incited thereto, apparently, by the local Orthodox peasantry, Habsburg forces raided through Ottoman lands as far south as the towns of Skopje and Kyustendil in Macedonia. Just as Balkan Muslims sought safety in retreat into the Sultan’s realms, the Orthodox sought refuge behind Austrian lines. The disloyal part played by these Christian subjects in failing to safeguard fortified positions was a matter of real concern to the Ottoman government.⁵⁷

On 25 October 1689 the clerical hierarchy met in consultation and concluded that Fazıl Mustafa Pasha – by this time serving in Chios – must be recalled and appointed grand vezir.⁵⁸ At the time of the rebellion which precipitated Mehmed IV’s deposition, Sheikhulislam Debbağzade Mehmed Efendi had demonstrated his partiality for Fazıl Mustafa by refusing to issue a juridical opinion sanctioning his execution – like his brother Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, Fazıl Mustafa had, after all, been a cleric before transferring to a career in the military-administrative elite.⁵⁹ When civil disorder threatened to tear the empire apart in 1656 senior statesmen had turned to a Köprülü to save the Ottoman domains, and so it was unanimously agreed now as they gathered in audience in the Sultan’s tent at Edirne.⁶⁰ For once the change of grand vezir went smoothly – Tekirdağlı Bekri Mustafa Pasha had served the empire well on the Habsburg front, and was allowed to retire to his estates. But unlike Tekirdağlı Bekri Mustafa, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha was not tempted by the peace the Dutch and English were trying to broker, and instead made preparations for the campaigning season ahead, which he intended should reverse Ottoman fortunes in the war.

Like his father Köprülü Mehmed Pasha before him, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha adopted stern measures when he came to power, removing from office or ordering the execution of any state officials of the previous regime who were deemed inadequate to the demands of the new, and installing his own appointees in their place. Command of the army on the Austrian front was awarded to the janissary commander-in-chief Koca Mahmud Agha, in the hope that he would encourage and inspire his own men to rediscover their legendary fighting potential. In a style reminiscent of earlier, more disciplined times the corps was subjected to a strict roll-call, and the names of dead janissaries were removed from the rolls to prevent their fellows collecting their salary in their stead.61 With the aim of more effective and efficient mobilization, other corps were also re-registered and their whereabouts established; troops were called up from Egypt and other North African provinces, and naval levies were ordered to ready the fleet to resist Venice. As in the previous year, a general mobilization of the Muslim population was proclaimed.⁶²

A radical solution adopted to meet the manpower requirements of the army in the 1690 campaigning season was the conscription of settled and nomadic tribesmen from Anatolia and Rumeli. Five thousand men were raised from the Turcoman and Kurdish tribes of south-east Anatolia, their appearance for duty on the Austrian front being assured by the device of naming a guarantor who was to be held financially responsible if they failed to arrive at the mustering grounds at Edirne. In Rumeli a different approach was employed: nomadic tribesmen were required to participate in return for exemption from certain taxes to which they were normally subject.⁶³ The tribal populations of the Balkan provinces had served as auxiliaries in early times, and were accorded a role as fighting men from the reign of Mehmed II; now they were to be fashioned into more formal units and known as ‘Sons of the Conquerors’, an inspiring reminder of the role their forefathers had played in the Ottoman settlement of the Balkans.⁶⁴

The Ottomans enjoyed an unfamiliar taste of success in 1690. The most forward of the fortresses held by the Austrians – Pirot, south-east of Niš on the road to Sofia – was retaken after a three-day siege.⁶⁵ Although Niš was better able to resist it too was retaken in September, thanks to the mining skill of the janissaries and other forces, and the arrival of a relief army. The defenders bargained to be allowed to leave for Belgrade, rather than face the usual penalty of death for their refusal to surrender, and the Ottomans accepted their excuse – that although they had received a document from the attacking Ottomans, they could find no one who could read it and therefore did not know that it was the customary offer of safe-conduct.66

The road up the valley of the Nišava – secured by the fortresses of Pirot and Niš – was one approach to Belgrade from the Ottoman headlands; the other was the Danube valley, guarded by its line of strongholds. Here Vidin was retaken, then Smederevo and Golubac further west, and at the start of October 1690 a large army comprising the sultan’s regiments, provincial cavalry troops, musketeers from Egypt, Tatars, and others arrived before Belgrade. The surrounding land was levelled and the fortress was besieged from both the Danube and the Sava side. On the seventh day the defenders’ armoury was blown up and burned, and on 8 October the castle was retaken. Heavy rains and winter weather subsequently forced the Grand Vezir and his main army to abandon their efforts to move north and west along the Danube to join the governor of Bosnia in besieging Osijek, west of the Drava–Danube confluence, and that siege was therefore raised.⁶⁷ The help of French engineers and gunners – taken off French ships docked in Istanbul – in repairing Belgrade was Châteauneuf’s particularly cost-effective means of bolstering the recent rapproachement between France and the Ottoman Empire;⁶⁸ local people evicted from the island in the Danube below the fortress were impressed as labourers.⁶⁹ The one significant loss for the Ottomans during 1690 was the fortress of Nagykanizsa, south of Lake Balaton in Hungary, the ‘key to Germany’ as it had once been known.⁷⁰

Having assured himself that the front-line positions were well fortified and supplied and that preparations for the forthcoming season’s campaigning had been taken in hand, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha returned to Istanbul after the reconquest of Belgrade. Campaigning by local troops continued over the winter: in Bosnia Austrian mortars taken from Belgrade and other castles were used to effect, and the fortress of Knin was besieged and taken; on the Adriatic, the Venetian navy arrived too late to relieve Vlorë.⁷¹

After the disastrous campaigning season of 1689, when Arab Receb Pasha’s incompetent generalship caused mutiny among the troops, the victories of 1690 were sweet indeed, and it seemed natural to ascribe them to the presence of a Köprülü at the head of government. Even while giving his attention to military matters, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha had overseen many reforms in the administration of the empire, some in response to the exigencies of the moment but others intended to have far-reaching effects. One of his first actions as grand vezir was to repeal the tax on the production by the non-Muslim population of wine and other alcoholic drinks (such as the anise-based arak) introduced in 1688 as a means of raising ready cash.72 When serving as a provincial governor in the Aegean, far from the fevered activity on the beleaguered military frontier, Fazıl Mustafa had been able to observe events with greater detachment than if he had been a member of the inner circle of government and party to the infighting and crisis mentality of his peers. He saw that the wine tax, in striking directly at the livelihood of the peasants of the Aegean, inclined them to collaborate with the enemy; now instead of raising money by taxing production he attempted to ban consumption, so that alcoholic drinks produced inside the empire had to be exported – and subjected to an export duty – thus continuing to provide revenue for the treasury.⁷³ Production of tobacco had been legalized in 1646, and by the 1690s the crop was grown across the empire where climatic conditions permitted; unlike wine, both production and export of tobacco were taxed.⁷⁴ Coffee, which came into the empire from the former Ottoman province of Yemen, via Egypt, was another item which was frowned upon but had potential for generating customs revenues: its import was first taxed in Süleyman II’s reign and, to provide still greater income for the treasury, a further tax was levied on its sale.⁷⁵

In addition to hastily-conceived measures to meet the most immediate needs of the campaigning season of 1690, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha tackled a problem the Ottoman government had faced periodically in the course of the seventeenth century – the resettlement of people who had deserted their lands, usually as a consequence of war or brigandage; the government acted with persistence, in some cases still intent on forcing them to return to their homes after forty years away.⁷⁶ Landless peasants too had been offered inducements to settle abandoned lands but this policy was only partially successful.⁷⁷ Fazıl Mustafa focused what he intended should be more effective settlement schemes on two specific groups: the nomadic tribal population – which the government hoped to settle permanently – and the Christians of the empire.

The settlement of traditionally nomadic tribes had been part and parcel of the Ottoman conquests of earlier times but had long been abandoned as the period of irresistible expansion was superseded by the need for a more defensive posture. Now, in ‘the reopening of ruined and unowned places to agriculture through the [forced] settlement of tribes’⁷⁸ far from the front line, Fazıl Mustafa adapted an old policy to meet present needs. From early 1691 orders went out for the permanent settlement of Kurdish and Turcoman tribes of Anatolia and further east who traditionally moved their flocks between lowland and mountain pastures, and therefore had some experience of settled life once their seasonal migration had taken place. The tribes were exempted from extraordinary taxation in return for giving up their migratory habits and restoring the agricultural potential of the area to which they were assigned, while shepherds only – rather than the whole tribe – accompanied the herds to their summer pastures.79

Over the next years tribes were forcibly moved to such areas as the Euphrates bend in the Urfa–Harran area, the area between Adana and İskenderun, between Ankara and Tokat in the bend of the Kızılırmak river, and the area between Isparta and Denizli in south-west Anatolia.⁸⁰ A number of central Anatolian tribes accused of murder and pillage were moved to Cyprus, and to Raqqa in Syria where they were expected to act as a first line of defence against Bedouin attack:⁸¹ the Ottoman state had no use for the Bedouin, considering them little better than unbelievers because they attacked the caravan routes and particularly that of the pilgrimage to Mecca. The project was not a success: tribal opposition manifested itself in rebellion, notably in 1697,⁸² and as fast as lands were settled, they were again abandoned. Not only was permanent residence in one location insupportable for people used to the freedoms and rhythms of seasonal migration, but scant thought appears to have been given to the practicalities – in some locations identified for resettlement the climate was too harsh, the water supply insufficient, or the soil unsuitable for year-round agriculture.⁸³ In short, this was an ill-conceived plan which did not achieve its aims, and the failure of such draconian intervention in the life of the tribes illustrated the acuity of those who in the mid-sixteenth century had sternly admonished officials charged with surveying the tribes of Baghdad to respect their traditional rights.⁸⁴

The resettlement of Christian populations who had fled their villages was more simply achieved. Permission to establish and repair churches was in the gift of the state authorities, and one of the incentives to resettlement offered by Fazıl Mustafa Pasha was a swift and positive response to such requests from Anatolia and Rumeli.⁸⁵ This was not the first occasion when the Ottoman authorities looked favourably on the desire of the Christians of the empire to rebuild their churches – nor would it be the last; although more research is needed to clarify this matter, it is clear that it was fairly routine for such requests to be granted in times of war or rebellion, when populations were forced to flee for their lives.⁸⁶ The government hoped that, with their churches repaired, Christian communities could be re-established and agriculture again made productive – and taxable.

A law introduced in 1688 and first implemented in 1691 altered the basis on which the poll-tax paid by the non-Muslims of the empire was calculated. Traditionally, the tax had been levied on individual adult males, but could also be assessed collectively on villages or towns, and rates varied from place to place depending on the productivity of the community. Collective assessment had gradually replaced individual assessment, and although the rates were revised from time to time, inevitably revision lagged behind reality, and shared responsibility for a tax last assessed in more populous or prosperous times could place an exorbitant burden on communities depleted by war; it was certainly significant in exacerbating the disaffection of Ottoman Christian peasants in the Balkans and causing them to flee the empire for Habsburg-controlled territory. The western Black Sea port of Varna, for instance, had lost one-third of its pre-war non-Muslim population of some 1,300 households, and had a new survey not been carried out in 1685, those remaining would still have been required to pay the amount originally levied on these 1,300 households – though tax collectors might find themselves unable in practice to extract dues from stricken communities.87

Finding tax collection ever more difficult, the Ottoman government decided in 1688 upon reform of the system. Fazıl Mustafa Pasha energetically implemented the reform when he came to power, and from 1691 the poll-tax was once more assessed on individual adult males rather than on the community as a whole; it was levied according to the tax-payer’s means, and the rates were standardized across the empire. Changing to a new system in the middle of a war must have caused confusion and cannot have been achieved very smoothly, and the problem was compounded by the fact that while those liable for this tax wanted – understandably – to pay it in whatever coinage was to hand, it had been decreed that only Ottoman gold coins and pure silver coins would be accepted. Abuses in assessment and collection of the new tax were of course prevalent, but adjustments to its operation were made over subsequent years and it continued to furnish an important percentage of treasury revenue.⁸⁸ More effective assessment gradually followed the reform, enabling the state to raise more money from its Christian and Jewish subjects. This was justifiable in the sense that the physical burden of defending the realm was shouldered by the male Muslim population, and while they suffered and died, it seemed equitable that non-Muslims should play a more significant part financially in the defence of Ottoman lands.

In 1691 Fazıl Mustafa Pasha departed for the front with a certain amount of anxiety – Sultan Süleyman II was ill with dropsy, and not expected to survive the month. However, he had had his cousin Amcazade Hüseyin Pasha appointed as his proxy, and the recent discovery of a plot among senior clerics to depose Süleyman and put Mehmed IV on the throne again89 should have eased his mind. Furthermore, before he left Edirne on 15 June he had presided at a meeting of high-ranking statesmen who agreed that Süleyman’s middle-aged brother Ahmed had the qualifications to succeed, and that neither Mehmed – whom they said had brought nothing but ruin upon the empire during his forty-year reign – nor Mehmed’s sons, Mustafa and Ahmed – who during their father’s reign had, they opined, learnt to ‘ride with him like unbridled lions, to eat and drink with him and to make war and music’ – should be considered.⁹⁰

Fazıl Mustafa Pasha was only a week out of Edirne when Süleyman II died there and the senior Ahmed – who like Süleyman had spent decades in confinement – was girded with the sword and proclaimed sultan in a ceremony in the Edirne mosque of Çelebi Sultan Mehmed [I], more commonly known as the Eski Cami, the ‘Old mosque’.⁹¹ The final campaign season of Süleyman’s reign promised well for the future; Fazıl Mustafa seemed to be leading a reversal of Ottoman fortunes after the bleak years since the siege of Vienna. Süleyman’s administrative achievements have been overshadowed by the resoluteness and military successes of his grand vezir, but the overhauling of the Ottoman administration during this long period of war was their common project,⁹² and the late Sultan’s most lasting monument – the more than 1,100-page-long chronicle of the events of his short reign that he commissioned, regrettably still unpublished – survives as evidence of his attention to detail and involvement in government.⁹³

The Habsburgs now sought to regain Belgrade, and Fazıl Mustafa Pasha planned a rapid response to cut them off before they could reach the fortress. The Tatars had not yet arrived to join the main body of his army, but against his better judgement he decided that his men must go forward alone – or miss their opportunity. In a field battle on 19 August 1691 at Slankamen on the Danube north of Belgrade, the Ottoman army was routed and Fazıl Mustafa Pasha was killed by a stray bullet. His men retreated in disorder to Belgrade, leaving behind their artillery and the army treasury. The death of Fazıl Mustafa on the battlefield threatened a breakdown in military discipline as had occurred after the fall of Belgrade in 1688, and as they had then, many of his troops fled back towards Sofia from the front, their numbers swollen with brigands and bandits as they went.⁹⁴

The choice of the military men and clerics at the front to fill Fazıl Mustafa Pasha’s post as commander-in-chief, temporarily at least, was Koca (‘Great’) Halil Pasha, lately in command against the Venetians in the Peloponnese and Dalmatia.⁹⁵ The new grand vezir, however, was the undistinguished second vezir, Arabacı (‘Cartwright’, also known as Kadı, ‘Judge’, or Koca) Ali Pasha. At a meeting of the imperial council in Edirne, the Chief Justice of Rumeli proposed that Arabacı Ali should go immediately to Belgrade to oversee preparations for the 1692 campaign. He agreed reluctantly, but it would have taken three or four months for him to get there and his departure was delayed by the onset of winter; Edirne was instead decreed winter quarters for the army and the base of operations.96

A new sultan and a new grand vezir brought changes. Fazıl Mustafa Pasha had been determined to win the war rather than seek peace – although briefly it had seemed that he was receptive to the idea that peace talks might be held in Belgrade⁹⁷ – but Arabacı Ali Pasha had no desire to command the army and could tacitly accept the loss of Hungary. As Ottoman presence there weakened, so Ottoman suzerainty over Transylvania had become ever more nominal, and in 1686 – the year the Ottomans lost Buda – the Transylvanian estates made known their wish to place the state under Habsburg protection if religious freedom was respected and Michael Apafi was allowed to remain as prince; in March 1688, these terms became reality.⁹⁸ Following Apafi’s death in April 1690 the estates nominated his son as his successor, but the Ottomans tried to place Imre Thököly – who had consistently given them military support during the war – on the throne. In dividing the attentions of the Habsburgs this move contributed to Ottoman successes during 1690, but in 1691 Thököly was driven out by a Habsburg army and by the end of that year, so disastrous for the Ottomans, Transylvania perforce accepted Habsburg suzerainty once more. Transylvania’s slide towards the Habsburgs opened up a new front for the Ottomans to defend when they had few resources to spare.

Whatever success the Ottomans enjoyed against the Habsburgs during these years was in large measure due to the leadership of Fazıl Mustafa Pasha, as well as to the fact that the intensification of the war against France in western Europe was diverting Habsburg troops from the east. Nevertheless, this coincidental combination of a favourable international situation and a capable grand vezir enabled the Ottomans to imagine that at last they might have a chance of winning the war; on the other hand, had Fazıl Mustafa been less hawkish, that same war, which cost the Ottomans so dear, might have ended many years sooner.

A period of uncertainty followed the death of Fazıl Mustafa Pasha, and by early 1692 many new military and administrative appointments had been made, a shuffling of offices that reflected the intense power struggle taking place in government circles – among the victims were Grand Vezir Arabacı Ali Pasha who was exiled to Rhodes, his estate confiscated, and Amcazade Hüseyin Pasha, who was posted to the Dardanelles. The Austrian forward base on the Danube front was now at Petrovaradin, only a few stages from Belgrade, and it was clear to the Ottoman high command that no advance northwards was feasible at present, but that their efforts must be concentrated on holding the Danube line. In November, after the decision was taken not to further repair and improve the fortress of Belgrade at that time, the army moved back to Edirne.99

Anglo-Dutch efforts at mediation continued meanwhile, and shortly before the Ottoman army marched south, William III’s Dutch envoy to the Habsburg court, Coenraad Van Heemskerck – who was temporarily appointed as the King’s ‘English’ envoy to the Sultan’s court alongside the Dutch envoy there, Jacobus Colyer – travelled from Vienna to Belgrade to present to Mavrocordato Austrian peace proposals made on behalf of itself and its allies. Onerous in terms of territorial concessions, these proved unacceptable to the Ottoman side, but Van Heemskerck was ordered to Edirne where he arrived early in December. He was denied an audience with the Grand Vezir until the return from England of Lord Paget, formerly William’s English envoy to Vienna, now transferred to the Porte, upon whose arrival in Edirne in February 1693 a fierce battle for precedence took place. The chance of peace receded further when it became apparent that the language of the Austrian terms was far from clear. After some weeks of further wrangling between the two envoys, and with hopes of an audience raised then as quickly dashed, Paget, Van Heemskerck and Colyer were eventually summoned before the Sultan’s vezirs and senior army officers on 24 March 1693 where, to their surprise, the proposals for peace with Austria Van Heemskerck had presented to Mavrocordato in Belgrade some months earlier – based on the principle known as uti possidetis, briefly, that each party should keep what it held at the time of the negotiations – were read out to torment them; this piece of theatre demonstrated that the Ottomans had, by now, no thoughts of peace.¹⁰⁰ Paget reported of a meeting he had with the Grand Vezir’s proxy in Edirne:

By the discourse I had with this Person, I perceived he knew not what was meant by Uti possidetis, nor what a Mediation was, or how a Mediator could be usefull, so that I judged they had never before heard the proposition with any regard.¹⁰¹

Despite further efforts on the part of the envoys, it was evident that there was little more they could do at that time to satisfy King William’s urgent desire to see an end to the war. The dispute over matters of precedence between Van Heemskerck (who returned home in April 1694) and Paget – envoys representing different states who were both servants of the same master – clearly contributed to the failure of peace negotiations.¹⁰²

During the winter of 1692–3 Austrian troops threatened the last remaining Ottoman strongholds in the principality of Transylvania, and operations in 1693 were therefore switched to that front. As a new grand vezir, Bozoklu Mustafa Pasha, led his army from Edirne to Ruse and crossed over the Danube into Wallachia to combine with the Tatar army, news arrived that a large Austrian force was besieging Belgrade. Having discussed the dilemma the Ottoman high command decided that the army could not both defend Transylvania and relieve Belgrade; priority was given to Belgrade, and the troops, including the Tatars, moved back westwards along the Danube, their cannon travelling by river. News of the Ottoman advance caused the Austrians to raise the siege; the poorly-secured fortress had suffered badly in the bombardment, damage that had to be made good at once for fear of further attack, but there was comfort to be drawn from the Tatar pursuit of the Austrian army as it returned to Petrovaradin, when much booty and numbers of prisoners were taken. In early September 1694 the Ottoman army was encamped before Petrovaradin with yet another grand vezir – Sürmeli (‘He with kohl-lined eyes’) Ali Pasha – at its head. The troops dug in and besieged this impregnable riverside fortress for 22 days, until the Danube burst its banks and filled their trenches with water, when they gave up and withdrew to Belgrade. The struggle for these two important strongholds had reached stalemate. As the contemporary chronicler Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Pasha acknowledged, the Habsburgs, although weakened, were still a force to be reckoned with.103

Sultan Ahmed II was 48 years old when he emerged into public life to succeed his brother Süleyman in 1691. He died on 7 February 1695 in Istanbul and was buried in the mausoleum built by his grandfather, Sultan Ahmed I – 36 members of the dynasty rest there to this day. His successor Mustafa II, son of Mehmed IV ‘the Hunter’, was some thirty years old and had led a freer and less cloistered life than his two uncles, Süleyman and Ahmed. Although he had spent the twelve years since his father’s deposition in seclusion in Edirne, it was a less oppressive confinement than he would have endured in Topkapı Palace, and before that he had accompanied his father on campaign. Like his predecessors, he too saw the sultan’s presence at the head of the imperial army as the key to victory, and in his first proclamation announced that, like his forebear Süleyman I, he would lead his troops on campaign in person. For three days his statesmen debated the matter, concluding that although the cost of the Sultan’s participation would be high, it would surely be effective in turning the tide of the war to Ottoman advantage.¹⁰⁴

In contrast to the qualified fervour displayed by his uncles, when Mustafa II declared that he would lead his army on campaign he meant exactly that. On 1 July 1695 he left Edirne, reaching Belgrade on 9 August. With him were Sheikhulislam Feyzullah Efendi, once his tutor, and reappointed to head the clerical hierarchy soon after Mustafa’s accession, and the incumbent grand vezir, Elmas (‘Diamond’) Mehmed Pasha, who had been elevated to office from a ceremonial position in the chancery. A council of war was convened at Belgrade to consider whether to besiege Petrovaradin again or to head north towards Timişoara and attempt to retake some of the Transylvanian fortresses in the area which had fallen into Habsburg hands. The Austrians were using one, Lipova, to the north-east of Timişoara, as a forward base for an attack on this key Ottoman stronghold. The reinforcement and resupply of Timişoara was a constant preoccupation of the Ottoman commanders on this front, as Austrian armies came and went from their bases further west, and it was eventually decided that, if they could retake Lipova, the Austrian supplies of food and matériel would be theirs.105

Sultan Mustafa inspected Belgrade’s fortress and fortifications incognito, and found them in better repair than he had expected.¹⁰⁶ The addition of more bastions and an increased garrison improved its defences before the army moved off. Lipova was successfully recaptured, and the considerable quantity of supplies held there was transferred to Timişoara. As winter approached, the Sultan and his army travelled south through Wallachia to cross the Danube at Nikopol, where Mustafa was reunited with his harem, which had retreated here from Belgrade for fear of an Austrian attack. For the first time in years Mustafa wintered in Istanbul rather than Edirne, for the purpose of overseeing more closely the preparations for the 1696 campaign season.¹⁰⁷

The Sultan’s presence at the front seemed indeed to have assured success, and the next year promised even greater victory according to Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Agha. At Sultan Mustafa’s instruction he wrote a chronicle to celebrate his reign – hubristically the Sultan called it the ‘Book of Victory’ – and in it he recorded a miraculous discovery made in the Sultan’s private treasury in January 1696: a valuable sword, and with it a bronze plate explaining its provenance, inscribed on one side in characters which were either ‘Suryani’ or Hebrew and on the other in Arabic. According to the inscription on the plate, the sword was made by King David and with it he had slain Goliath; it had passed through the hands of Jesus and ultimately to the Mamluks of Egypt (and reached Istanbul, we may surmise, following Selim I’s conquest of the Mamluk lands in 1516–17). The discovery of the sword was held to be God’s work, a manifestation of divine approval indicating that Sultan Mustafa would accomplish great deeds. Hereafter, vowed the Sultan, he would wear this sword on campaign as a talisman.^*108

Despite the miraculous sword, the campaign of 1696 was inconclusive and unsatisfying. Sultan Mustafa intended to march his army towards Belgrade, but news that the Austrians were besieging Timişoara caused him to change his plans and head north over the Danube instead to relieve that fortress.109 On campaign for the third time in 1697, Mustafa reached Belgrade from Edirne late in the summer, on 10 August, when serious differences of opinion arose as to what the season’s aim should be. Opposing factions put forward their arguments: either consolidate their position in Transylvania, or move up the Danube to attack Habsburg-held Petrovaradin. Understandably, perhaps, the warden of the fortress of Timişoara strongly recommended the first option,¹¹⁰ while the warden of the fortress of Belgrade, Amcazade Hüseyin Pasha, argued for Petrovaradin. Over the last years, in the naval war against the Holy League that paralleled the war on land, Amcazade Hüseyin had scored a number of notable successes against the Venetians in the Aegean;¹¹¹ now he argued persuasively against a campaign in Transylvania. The late summer rains, he asserted, would turn the marshy terrain to mud and make hauling the ordnance difficult, and several bridges would have to be built. He reminded the assembly of the disaster on the Rába in 1664, when his cousin Fazıl Ahmed Pasha had died in the confusion of trying to get his troops across the river.¹¹² Even if they were unable to take Petrovaradin they could leave it under siege; and unless Petrovaradin was wrested from the Habsburgs, it would be impossible for the Ottomans to make further conquests. His advice was ignored, and the army moved towards Transylvania.¹¹³

Elmas Mehmed Pasha opted to head for Timişoara. He was an unpopular man and greatly distrusted by Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Agha, who in his account of Mustafa II’s exploits accused him of deliberately misleading the Sultan over the previous two years by exaggerating the size of the army, claiming that it numbered 104,000 fighting men when in fact the number of effectives was closer to 50,000.¹¹⁴ At first it seemed that Amcazade Hüseyin Pasha’s views had been overcautious, for the Ottoman army succeeded in crossing three rivers without serious mishap, routing an Austrian force on the Tisza and taking the castle of Titel which they demolished for lack of troops to garrison it.¹¹⁵ Sultan Mustafa then crossed the Tisza safely to the Timişoara bank – but part of the army under the command of the Grand Vezir was attacked from the rear before they could follow. Austrian troops under Prince Eugene of Savoy – often recognized as the greatest general ever to serve the Habsburgs – destroyed the bridge at Senta which the Grand Vezir’s forces could have used; in a vicious battle, Elmas Mehmed and many of the most senior figures in the Ottoman military-administrative establishment were killed. Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Agha, who had crossed the river in the Sultan’s party, chronicled his master’s horror as he watched from the further bank, not yet aware of the scale of the disaster.116

When Sultan Mustafa ordered the men that remained to secure the bridge, they fled and hid in the reeds. Taking only what they could carry on horseback, the Sultan and those few with him, who included his mentor Sheikhulislam Feyzullah Efendi, set off for the safety of Timişoara: without pausing to rest along the way, they reached it two days later. The imperial tent had been left on the battlefield, but the sacred standard and the mantle of the Prophet were safe. Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Agha mourned a chest full of his own possessions, lost in the mêlée.¹¹⁷

Thus the Ottomans paid the price for ignoring Amcazade Hüseyin Pasha’s advice. Having remained behind to protect Belgrade from enemy attack, he was now appointed grand vezir in place of Elmas Mehmed Pasha. In a changed international context, the battle at Senta proved to be the catalyst for peace after fourteen years of war, the struggle between the Grand Alliance and France which had occupied Habsburg troops in the west having ended in 1697, leaving Austria free once again to deploy all its forces against the Ottomans. The peace negotiations which had waxed and waned fitfully since Zülfikar Efendi’s arrival in Vienna in 1688 – where he had stayed for four years, some of that under arrest, before returning home – were finally brought to a conclusion as the members of the Holy League, well aware that the death of the sickly Charles II of Spain might at any moment plunge them again into conflict with France, strove to secure Austria’s eastern frontier and free the Habsburg troops in case action against Louis XIV was to be renewed.

The complexities of the relationships between the European states themselves and between them and the Ottoman Empire at the end of the seventeenth century were reflected in the peace negotiations. Amcazade Hüseyin Pasha had not been inclined to peace when he became grand vezir following the rout at Senta, and well knew that military inactivity would be interpreted as a lack of resolve and thus weaken Ottoman bargaining power in the negotiations being mooted, so Sultan Mustafa ordered preparations for the campaign of 1698 to proceed as usual while he waited in Edirne. Amcazade Hüseyin, meanwhile, set out with the army for the frontier at Belgrade, and had reached Sofia when the Emperor’s envoys arrived at Sofia with the written proofs of the peace proposals which the Ottomans had demanded. William III’s English and Dutch envoys at the Sultan’s court, Lord Paget and Jacobus Colyer, travelled to Belgrade ahead of the army with the Ottoman envoys, the chancellor Rami (‘Archer’) Mehmed Efendi and the chief dragoman Alexander İskerletzade (Mavrocordato). Meanwhile hostilities continued: the Tatar army arrived from the northeast, successfully harassing Austrian positions and raiding into Poland.118

The mediating envoys and their entourages were waiting at Belgrade when the Grand Vezir arrived with the army. The very location for the peace talks was a matter for dispute: the Ottomans declared themselves unable to accept the Austrian invitation to meet on conquered Hungarian territory, while the Austrians refused to accept a meeting on Ottoman soil. A compromise was found in the village of Sremski Karlovci (Karlowitz), situated on the Danube between the two empires’ respective forward positions of Petrovaradin and Belgrade – significantly, perhaps, it was much closer to Petrovaradin than to Belgrade. Dwellings and stables to house the delegations were hastily constructed, and the two Ottoman envoys, together with Paget and Colyer and an escort of 2,000 troops, arrived there on 20 October 1698. With winter approaching, meanwhile, the Grand Vezir led his army back towards Istanbul, leaving the negotiators to hammer out the peace.¹¹⁹

The Ottomans had not at first thought to make peace with all members of the Holy League, only with Austria, but at Paget’s insistence agreed to do so.¹²⁰ The talks eventually involved nine principals – two Ottoman, two Austrian, one Polish, one Muscovite, one Venetian, one Dutch and one English – and their entourages. Every day for four months the delegations met in the richly-adorned Ottoman tent. The time-wasting tactics of the Muscovite and Venetian envoys in particular caused the Ottoman envoys much frustration, but even so small a matter as the physical appearance of the documents submitted by their erstwhile adversaries could breed disgust. The accreditation of Rami Mehmed Efendi as Ottoman representative in the peace talks took the form of a single large sheet of paper bearing the Sultan’s cypher enhanced with gold, inside a silver envelope contained in a brocade purse wrapped in a heavy napkin, which was handed over to the Habsburg ambassador with great ceremony. The corresponding Austrian document was by contrast a few scrappy pieces of paper sealed with ordinary wax.¹²¹

The provisions of the Treaty of Karlowitz left the Ottomans deprived for ever of much of the European territory they had until recently called their own. The principle underlying the negotiations was uti possidetis, so that it was the exceptions to this principle requested by the various parties that remained to be agreed. The Ottomans concluded separate treaties with each of their adversaries. To Austria they conceded Hungary and Transylvania, with the exception of the Banat, a wedge of territory lying between the Tisza, Tamiš, Danube and Mureş rivers that included the fortress of Timişoara, the defence of which had been such a heavy logistic burden.122

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s foremost aim in joining the Holy League had been to regain Podolia, the province lost to the Ottomans in 1672. A number of attempts to recapture the strong fortress of Kamenets made during the course of the war had been frustrated thanks in large measure to the support provided the Ottomans by the Tatar troops of the Crimean khans and their frequent raids across the land around the fortress and into the Commonwealth itself. In contrast to Austria and its great territorial gains at the expense of the Ottomans, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had made none and had, moreover, suffered greatly. By the terms of the treaty between the Ottomans and the Commonwealth the principle of uti possidetis was modified and Podolia was to be returned to the Commonwealth in exchange for an undertaking not to interfere in Moldavia.¹²³

The Ottoman fleet had been stretched to the utmost against Venice during the years of the war. The fortress of Euboea on the island of the same name had withstood a Venetian siege in 1688,¹²⁴ and although in 1691 the Venetian captain-general Domenico Mocenigo had expressed the opinion that defence of the Peloponnese – where, he said, the Ottoman navy was unlikely to appear in the foreseeable future – was a more realistic aim than attempting to regain Crete and the Aegean islands,¹²⁵ Chania on Crete was besieged by an allied fleet in 1692 when the garrison on the island of Gramvousa (which had remained Venetian after 1669) surrendered to the Ottomans. Reinforcements were sent from the Cretan mainland and the siege was raised.¹²⁶ The Venetians had considered an attack on Chios in 1691 and the island was briefly in their hands in the winter of 1694–5, until it was won back by a fleet under the command of Amcazade Hüseyin Pasha.¹²⁷ Bozcaada and Lesbos were subjected to unsuccessful Venetian attacks in 1697 and 1698 respectively,¹²⁸ and along the Ottoman–Venetian frontier in Dalmatia forts were besieged and changed hands regularly during these years. Austrian troops pressing hard from the north and north-west on occasion forced Ottoman Bosnia to defend itself on two fronts. By the Treaty of Karlowitz the Venetians were confirmed in their possession of the Peloponnese and their Dalmatian strongholds.¹²⁹

Muscovy’s late accession to the Holy League in 1686 had signalled a change in its generally non-belligerent policy towards the Ottoman Empire. In the same year it had resolved by treaty with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the problems which had been setting them against one another, in particular confirming Muscovy’s 1667 suzerainty over Left Bank Ukraine – and Kyiv, which had initially been conceded by the Commonwealth for only two years. One of the undertakings Muscovy had given in return in this so-called Treaty of Eternal Peace was to wage war on the Crimea,130 whose Tatar population was an unpredictable menace for both parties. Muscovy’s overriding aims were to put an end to their raids for ever, and establish indisputable control in Right Bank Ukraine: in 1687, Muscovy provoked a war with the Tatars with an inflammatory demand for the cession of the Crimean peninsula, the resettlement of the Tatar population in Anatolia, and a payment of two million gold pieces. The ensuing military expedition, under the command of Prince Vasily Golitsyn, was followed by another in 1689: both foundered ignominiously in the logistical problems of unfamiliar terrain as the Tatars burned the steppe, denying supplies to the Muscovite troops.¹³¹

Peter the Great had become co-tsar in 1682, at the age of ten, sharing the throne with his feeble-minded elder half-brother Ivan. In 1689 the regency of his half-sister Sophia was overthrown, as a consequence in part of the failure of her favourite, Golitsyn, in the Crimea. In 1695 Peter led a two-month siege of the Ottoman fort of Azov at the mouth of the river Don; it failed, but in 1696 he returned, having spent the intervening winter months hiring foreign engineers and other experts and building a fleet to prevent the Ottoman Black Sea fleet from relieving Azov.¹³² This time he succeeded. Tsar Peter entered the Karlowitz negotiations unwillingly, feeling more than capable of continuing to fight; but from a position of strength derived from their prior agreement with Austria the Ottomans were able at least to some extent to dictate terms. A two-year truce was agreed at Karlowitz with a lasting peace to be negotiated at a later date.¹³³ By 1700 Peter’s focus had switched from the south of his domains to the north; in order to pursue the ‘Great Northern War’ against Sweden¹³⁴ he now sought peace with the Ottomans and a treaty was duly agreed.¹³⁵ Signed between equals, it overturned the diplomatic hierarchy whereby the Ottoman sultan had viewed the Tsar of Muscovy as his subordinate, and signified that Muscovy was now a major power, one Ottoman diplomacy could ill afford to ignore. For the first time, a Muscovite ambassador resided permanently in Istanbul.

The Ottoman Empire of 1699 was a very different place from that of 1683. If a treaty-dictated loss of territory was the most visible sign of change, the manner of its happening heralded a new era in Ottoman diplomacy. In the accords agreed at Karlowitz all parties declared their respect for the concept of territorial integrity: the Ottoman–Habsburg treaty was to last for 25 years, those with the Commonwealth and with Venice indefinitely, and that agreed with Muscovy in 1700 for 30 years.¹³⁶ This indicated rather more than a mere lull in a notionally permanent state of war with a non-Muslim power, and this intention to adhere to the emerging tenets of international law was an incongruous undertaking for a state for which the ideal of continuous warfare was one of its ideological foundations. Guided by the principle that ‘peace was the continuation of war by other means’,137 Ottoman negotiators sought to justify their concessions as being within the ambit of ‘holy war’, on the grounds that in view of the overwhelming coalition ranged against it, it was beneficial for the state to seek peace at this juncture. The provisions of the treaties were to be carried out according to a strict timetable: the garrison troops at Kamenets, for instance, were notified by sultanic edict that they should evacuate the castle by May 1699 – some four months only after agreement was reached at Karlowitz; by late summer they had been reassigned elsewhere.¹³⁸

The physical demarcation of borders between the Ottomans and their neighbours had a long history. A Polish member of a border-marking party describes how his Ottoman colleagues went about their business in 1680, during the minor border changes made as a result of the treaty of 1676 between the Ottoman Empire and the Commonwealth:

When it came to raising a mound, the Turks, using spades attached to their saddles, in the twinkling of an eye raised a mound of turf after digging around a big oak trunk [that was] in the middle. Then, after finishing the job their superiors climbed on top of it and ululated like dogs with their faces turned up, praising God that they had conquered so much with the sword.

The Ottomans, said the Polish official, set a wooden pile in the shape of a turbaned head atop each mound while the Poles used a cross.¹³⁹

The Habsburg general and polymath Count Luigi Marsigli, a native of Bologna, who had spent a decade mapping the Balkans, advised the Habsburg delegation to the Karlowitz conference and was appointed by Emperor Leopold to head the boundary commission. Thanks to Marsigli’s obsession and skill as a cartographer and geographer, the border demarcations after Karlowitz incorporated topographical features in addition to man-made mounds, to a greater extent than had hitherto been the case.¹⁴⁰ From the Ottoman side, the report of the governor of the northern Black Sea province of Özi, the Ottoman official responsible for fixing the border with the Commonwealth after 1699, gives an insight into how the system worked:

Then we set out for the place where the river Jahorlyk [a tributary of the Dniester] rises, and mounds were raised on two sides opposite each other in fitting and suitable places; while raising the boundary marker. . . we reached the source of the said river; then, two great mounds facing each other were again raised by the two sides; then, following the main valley of the Jahorlyk, boundary mounds were raised by the two sides in fitting and suitable places in the manner described; near the place called ‘Pitchfork’ where the aforementioned Jahorlyk ends there is a bifurcation on the right side of the valley. . . Then, after following the said valley for an hour we crossed the ‘Nomad track’ at the source of the river Kujal’nyk [where] a large [hill called] ‘Lamb Hill’ is situated; as there is no hill similar to this one in this neighbourhood, it has been reckoned as a boundary marker.141

As the new borders were established, groups of peasants affected by them were resettled further behind the Ottoman frontier, to avoid any risk of harassment from the other side and, it was hoped, to counter the depopulation that had blighted whole areas during the war years. The Karlowitz treaty imposed a curb on the sort of raiding that had persisted as a way of life for many groups since the early days of the Ottoman Empire. In the northern steppe borderlands of the empire the Tatars, in particular, had long furnished a large part of their livelihood by prolonged forays into the Commonwealth and Muscovy. Earlier truces between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire had called in vain for each state to restrain the raiding activity of its client Cossacks and Tatars; Ottoman determination to adhere to the letter of the accords in 1699 imposed a more final constraint, and central government directives that the Tatars desist from raiding activity provoked open revolt in Crimea. The khan of the time renounced his status as an Ottoman vassal and, in the usual response to such insubordination, a more compliant khan was installed. Tatar methods of warfare had hitherto been viewed as an asset available to support Ottoman military aspirations; in the new post-Karlowitz world they were seen as a liability.¹⁴²

The negotiations at Karlowitz cast a long shadow in the matter of the Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere: from the vantage point of the nineteenth century, a time when the status of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire had become an issue in great power politics and one of the principal constituents of ‘the Eastern Question’, it was possible to identify them as a pretext for the intervention of the Christian powers in the internal politics of the empire. With the place of non-Muslims in the state a matter of legal regulation, the Ottoman attitude towards the Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere had long been pragmatic; their seizure was justified by casuistry and, where it was plausible, on the grounds that they had formerly been Muslim sites. Two, however, remained inviolate – the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem. These were of such particular significance for the Christian world that the Ottomans were careful not to interfere with them.¹⁴³

The contest for jurisdiction over these two sites had therefore never lain between the Ottoman authorities and their Christian subjects, but between Latin Christians – specifically the Franciscan Order – and Orthodox Christians. The Franciscans were traditionally the guardians of most of the shrines attached to both the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Nativity, but once Ottoman conquest had reunited the four patriarchates of the ancient Byzantine Church – Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria – under one ruler, the Orthodox Church had sought to revive its rights over the Holy Sites. They won some support from Sultan Murad IV in 1637 and were awarded the most important by Mehmed IV in 1675, but following the debacle of the 1683 siege of Vienna, the Ottoman authorities established a commission to enquire into the guardianship of the Holy Sites in a bid to win French support against the Holy League. Although no change was made at the time, in 1690 Fazıl Mustafa Pasha, hoping to secure French backing as he prepared to retake Belgrade from the Austrians, restored the Franciscan pre-eminence. By intervening at this time at the behest of a foreign power to bestow guardianship on one group rather than another, the Ottomans unwittingly established a principle of admitting outside interference in what had hitherto been a domestic matter, opening the door for claims on behalf of their coreligionists by other European powers.144

The Ottoman negotiators at Karlowitz were however able to refuse the Muscovite envoy’s demand for the restoration of the Orthodox Church to the pre-eminence it had enjoyed in the Holy Sites between 1675 and 1690. To have conceded would have been even more dangerous, as a recent study makes plain:

. . . whereas the Catholic powers intervened. . . on behalf of their own subjects [resident in the Ottoman Empire], the Russian opposition to the Catholic church and support for the Greek Orthodox interest in these sanctuaries concerned a. . . church, the vast majority of whose adherents were still Ottoman subjects.¹⁴⁵

The beheading of the companions of Johann Schiltberger, captured by the Ottomans on the crusade that culminated in the battle of Nicopolis (Nikopol) in 1396. Schiltberger was spared on account of his youth

First third of an endowment charter for a dervish lodge established by Sultan Orhan. The tuğra, or ‘imperial signature’, at the top reads ‘Orhan, son of Osman’. Dated 1324 and written in Persian, this is the earliest surviving Ottoman document

An Ottoman official and his assistant register Balkan Christian boys selected for the youth-levy. The official takes a tax to cover the price of the boys’ new red clothes and the cost of transport from their home, while the assistant records their village, district and province, parentage, date of birth and physical appearance. Miniature, mid-sixteenth-century

Bayezid I held in a cage following his capture by Tamerlane at the battle of Ankara, 1402. Panel from a cycle of ceiling paintings at Schloss Eggenberg, Graz (once close to the Ottoman-Habsburg border), 1670

Equestrian statue of Emperor Justinian that stood outside Hagia Sophia in Byzantine times. The nine-metre-high statue was set atop a thirty-metre column until pulled down by Mehmed II soon after his conquest of Constantinople. Drawing by Cyriacus of Ancona and Giovanni Dario, 1430s

View over the Covered Bazaar taken from the Beyazit fire tower; the inner core of the bazaar was built by Mehmed II in the early 1460s. On the left is the mid-eighteenth-century Nuruosmaniye mosque, and in the distance the Sultanahmet mosque

The Tiled pavilion in the outer gardens of Topkapı Palace, completed in 1472–3. The pavilion was built in the Timurid style by craftsmen brought to Istanbul following Mehmed II’s defeat of the Karamanid dynasty

Portrait of Mehmed II, dated 1481; it is closely related to a medal of the Sultan by the Venetian artist Constanza da Ferrara

The Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers receives Cem Sultan on his arrival on Rhodes, 29 July 1482

The Castle of Bourganeuf where Cem Sultan was held in 1484 and 1486–8; the letter B indicates the tower where he was imprisoned. The appearance of the castle is little different today from how it looked in this mid-eighteenth-century drawing

Süleyman I wearing the helmet-crown commissioned for him by Grand Vezir İbrahim Pasha. Venetian woodcut, c.1532

The coffin of Grand Vezir İbrahim Pasha (who was executed in 1536) being carried out of Topkapı Palace to be borne away in a waiting caique. Miniature, 1587–8

The sacred shrine at Mecca. Miniature illustrating an early sixteenth-century Persian verse text describing the stations of the pilgrimage and other holy places. The text was illustrated for the first time in this copy made for Süleyman I, c.1540

Mihrimah Sultan, daughter of Süleyman I and Hürrem Sultan, and wife of Rüstem Pasha. An inscription in the top left-hand corner dates the portrait to 1541

Underglaze-painted İznik tile from a decorative panel. Dating from c.1570–80, the tile’s colour scheme is blue, black, turquoise-green and red

Detail from a miniature showing three Kızılbaş being presented with caftans on giving up the red bonnets symbolizing their ‘heretical’ status. The miniature, painted c.1583, comes from a manuscript recounting the festivities held in the Hippodrome in 1582 to celebrate the circumcision of the future Mehmed III

The Selimiye, the mosque of Selim II in Edirne. Built by Sinan in the late 1560s, this is considered the architect’s greatest work. The photograph is by Istanbul photographers Pascal Sébah and Policarpe Joaillier whose studio operated between 1888 and 1908

A couple apprehended by janissaries as their wine cools in a stream. Miniature, early 1600s

Murad IV setting out on the Baghdad campaign of 1638. The Sultan is dressed as an Arab warrior, in a gesture of homage to the Prophet Muhammad’s cavalry. Miniature, mid-seventeenth-century

The Venetian bailo in Istanbul, Giovanni Soranzo, and his delegation, are led away in chains to imprisonment following Venice’s refusal to cede Crete. This happened in 1649, four years after the start of the Ottoman-Venetian war for the island. Miniature, mid-seventeenth-century

The New mosque built by Turhan Sultan in the port district of Istanbul in the mid-1660s. The domed structure on the right of the mosque is the Egyptian (Spice) market

The Chief Black Eunuch. This drawing was commissioned by Sir Paul Rycaut, English consul at İzmir, to illustrate his The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, first published in 1666

The strangulation of Grand Vezir Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha following the Ottoman rout at Vienna in 1683. The legend (omitted here) describes the scene: Kara Mustafa reads the Sultan’s order as an agha waits to execute him; another agha positions the small square for the Grand Vezir to pray; a crimson velvet bag lies ready to receive his head

‘Le fameux croissant du Turc partage entre l’Imperialiste, le Polonois et le Venitien’. The powers ranged against the Ottomans at the start of the 1683–99 war dream of dividing the empire. Battle scenes in the top left and right corners depict the fall of Buda to the Habsburgs, and of Napoli de Romania (Nafplio) to the Venetians, both in 1686. An accompanying note indicates that this scene was drawn in 1686 or 1687

Three sons of Ahmed III being escorted to their circumcision feast in 1720. The Chief Black Eunuch Beşir Agha leads the way as they cross the third court of Topkapı Palace, past the Hall of Petitions and Ahmed III’s library. Miniature, c.1721

Tulip varieties ‘That increases the Pleasure of Ahmed Efendi’s Banquet’ and ‘Source of Joy’. From an album of fifty tulip paintings prepared at court around 1725

Detail of the monumental fountain built by Ahmed III outside Topkapı Palace, 1728–9. The photograph was taken around 1880 by the Swedish photographer Guillaume Berggren

Patrona Halil and fellow rebels painted by Jean-Baptiste Vanmour (d. 1737), an artist of Flemish extraction who was a long-time resident of Istanbul. In the background is the gate of the first court of Topkapı Palace

Detail from a scroll illustrating the route of the water supply from outside the city to Topkapı Palace (shown here). Buildings fed by branches off the main supply are indicated by name. The 1098 cm-long scroll records repairs and upgrading of the water system. Miniature dated 1748

An Ottoman and a Russian official discuss the Dardanelles. This scene was engraved in Germany at the time of the Ottoman-Russian wars of the second half of the eighteenth century, when control of the Straits was a burning issue. The legend (omitted here) reads:

The Dardanelles, or the Fortresses that are the keys to Constantinople

The Turk: There, insolent Russian, are the insurmountable locks by which the Turk holds the passage to the Divan [imperial council, i.e. Istanbul]. You see, from a distance four volcanoes [i.e. fortresses]. Be fearful of them, lest their gullets spew death on your miserable fleet.

The Russian: Haughty Turk! If one day my sails shall carry me within reach of those walls you call insurmountable, then will it be my fate that neither the mighty position of those fortresses nor your oriental threats shall suffice to keep us from punishing you for your ambition and cruelty

Mehmed Ali Pasha of Egypt. Frontispiece to an album of lithographs from sketches made in the early 1840s by Sir David Wilkie during his visit to the Ottoman Empire

Sultan Abdülmecid in uniform at the time of the Crimean War. He wears the decoration known as ‘The Blazing Decoration of our Lord, His Imperial Majesty’

Interior view of Ayasofya, restored by the Swiss architects the Fossati brothers on the orders of Sultan Abdülmecid in 1847–9. The restoration was recorded in an album of lithographs based on Fossati drawings

Reverse of a medal issued by Sultan Abdülaziz. Commissioned in 1866, it was presented to people working to ease the plight of cholera victims. One of the trees being sheltered by the oak is a palm, intended to signify the Arab provinces of the empire. The legend reads: ‘The lineage of Osman, the highest of trees’

Ottoman military cadets, c.1900. The photograph is by the Armenian Ottoman Abdullah Frères, court photographers to Sultans Abdülaziz and Abdülhamid II

 

The palanquin symbolizing the Sultan’s presence and bearing his gifts emerges from Dolmabahçe Palace during the festivities accompanying the departure of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The gifts were formerly sent overland by camel caravan, from around 1870 by steamship, and after 1890 by train. The ceremony was performed for the last time in 1919 following an interval during the First World War. The photograph may be by Sébah and Joaillier

Kaiser Wilhelm II being rowed on the Bosporus in autumn 1917, when he visited Istanbul and the battlefields of the Dardanelles. The Kaiser is seated on the port side, next to a naval officer who may be Admiral von Rebeur-Paschwitz, successor to Admiral Suchon as commander of the Ottoman fleet

Once internal revolt was suppressed, the appointment of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha to the grand vezirate in 1656 brought stability abroad and at home. During the six years that he was in office he took over the reins of power, and in matters of state Sultan Mehmed IV and his mother were content to defer to him. This pattern continued during his son Fazıl Ahmed Pasha’s tenure between 1661 and 1676, when ministers were united in their goals and remained in office for many years. Although he held office for less than two years, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha made significant fiscal and other changes with the aim of winning the war for the Ottomans, but too many of the other grand vezirs who held office after Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha’s Vienna fiasco of 1683 were not military men at all, while even those who were capable of conducting a campaign found themselves unable to cope with the serious disciplinary problems endemic in the empire’s fighting forces.

Ottoman resources were stretched to the limit between 1683 and 1699 as the army tried to defend frontiers far-distant from Edirne and Istanbul. The struggle to finance and man the war effort overrode all other considerations during the final years of the seventeenth century, and thus masked the profound changes that had been taking place since mid-century. After the dominance of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha and his sons, and particularly after the deposition of Mehmed IV in 1687, sultans engaged themselves more closely in the day-to-day running of the empire and enjoyed at least the illusion of ruling as well as reigning, supporting the complex bureaucratic reforms undertaken during the war years. These, although initiated in response to pressing needs, in the long term often had a significant effect on the apportionment of rights and responsibilities in Ottoman society. Effective military leadership may have been lacking during much of the war, but high-ranking bureaucrats demonstrated a considerable will to find workable solutions to the financial problems besetting the state.

One change which set the pattern for the future was the ending by the final years of the century, of the traditional exemption from taxation of charitable endowments.146 The ‘war contributions tax’ which had been introduced in 1686 was levied throughout the war, after which it lapsed – until the next one. A controversial tax that was initially intended to be a ‘one-off’ demand for loans from those with accumulated wealth was soon levied on the foundations of the Sultan and leading statesmen in particular, and began with time and the chronic insolvency of the treasury to take on the character of a wealth tax from which even the highest in the land were not exempt.¹⁴⁷ The rich and powerful had always made contributions to the common good – whether loans by vezirs to meet temporary shortfalls in military salaries,¹⁴⁸ or Turhan Sultan’s underwriting of the costs of fortifying the Dardanelles during the Cretan War – and as the century progressed private wealth was increasingly appropriated for public ends. Individuals would henceforth be asked more regularly for substantial contributions to the public purse: particularly common during the latter years of the 1683–99 war was the confiscation for the treasury of the estates of disgraced statesmen, and this trend would continue.¹⁴⁹ Another form of taxation for war was the obligation to raise troops, and in 1696, for instance, three Ottoman statesmen, including the eldest son of Fazıl Mustafa Pasha, Köprülüzade Numan Bey, were each required to provide five hundred infantry at their own expense.¹⁵⁰

The reform which over time proved to have the greatest effect on Ottoman society, by expanding the number of the super-rich, was the introduction of life-term tax-farming – the long-term transfer into private hands of this particular source of state income. Previously entitlements to farm taxes had been resubmitted for auction every three years, thus in theory allowing different individuals and groups a turn and thereby ensuring that none became too wealthy and influential. Life-term tax-farming was introduced by a decree of 10 January 1695; the government had become dissatisfied with the prevailing system, recognizing that tax-farmers tended to take the short-term view, making no investment in their ‘resource’, with the result that peasants had to borrow to pay for seed and other necessities and became so indebted to moneylenders that they could no longer work the fields from whose produce the treasury derived taxes. Moreover, the exorbitant demands of tax-farmers sometimes caused villagers to flee, further exacerbating the all-too-familiar problem of abandoned, depopulated lands.151

The successful bidder for a life-term tax-farm enjoyed greater security than the previous system had offered. The capital sum he paid the treasury at auction to acquire his asset was equivalent to between two and eight times its anticipated annual net profit, and the treasury thus benefited each time a life-term tax-farm was auctioned – in effect, a form of internal borrowing by the state from those who had wealth to invest which was a great help in meeting the critical shortfall of state income during the war.¹⁵² It took time for the system to become firmly established, however, and its effects only gradually became apparent. Life-term tax-farming was first applied in some provinces of south-east Anatolia and the Arab provinces¹⁵³ before being extended elsewhere, and the choice of these predominantly Muslim provinces for its introduction served to spread the burden of taxation more equitably through the empire; the reformed poll-tax, for example, another of the state’s main sources of income, fell mainly on the Christian population – which was the majority in the Balkans – and west and central Anatolia.¹⁵⁴

The desperate years of war showed that neither the loyalty to the dynasty of the ruling class nor the loyalty of the notables of outlying provinces to the central state could be taken for granted. The new tax-farming system introduced in these years altered the basis of access to the bounty of the state; anyone powerful enough to challenge the Ottoman dynasty for power could now be neutralized, at least for a while, by offering them the possibility of inclusion in the ruling establishment as state patrimony was dispersed ever wider.

Although the Köprülü were among the most prominent beneficiaries of the new tax arrangements, even before the introduction of life-term tax-farming they had accumulated enough wealth to establish generous charitable endowments which brought them a prestige to match that of the Ottoman dynasty. Between the reign of Ahmed I and the mid-eighteenth century the Ottoman house withdrew from its earlier prominence as a patron of impressive mosque complexes proclaiming its might, and only three or four large mosques were built by its members. The beneficence of the Köprülü was more apparent, and Istanbul no longer the preferred location. In 1658–9, for instance, Köprülü Mehmed Pasha raised a fortress at the mouth of the gulf protecting the Aegean city of İzmir, to safeguard the port from Venetian attack during the ongoing Cretan war; İzmir had developed from a village in the sixteenth century into a cosmopolitan commercial centre for the export of the agricultural products of the west Anatolian interior to Europe, and with this castle the authorities could more effectively monitor the trading vessels from which customs dues were collected. Fazıl Ahmed Pasha was interested in stimulating commerce as well as collecting taxes, both in the new provinces he conquered for the empire and closer to home: during the 1670s he sponsored the building of the infrastructure needed to turn İzmir into a booming entrepôt – a market, a caravansaray, public baths and a vast customs house; he also built an aqueduct to bring water to the city and paved its main thoroughfares.155

Beyond the requirement that charitable endowments should be directed to pious ends, the stipulations concerning their management were often loose and left much to the discretion of those responsible for running them. Moreover, the requirement that the property or money endowed be alienated was only observed in the breach, and over the years cash ‘leaked’ from foundations back into the hands of grandee households such as the Köprülü, enabling them to protect their great wealth from confiscation, and to pass it on to their heirs.¹⁵⁶ One measure of their power was the fact that during 38 out of the 47 years following Köprülü Mehmed Pasha’s appointment to the office in 1656 the grand vezirate was held by members of his or his relatives’ households.¹⁵⁷ The subject awaits further research, but there is evidence that in the late seventeenth century households less prominent than the Köprülü also endowed charitable foundations both in Istanbul and across the empire for the purpose of perpetuating their control of financial assets – since such foundations were supposedly exempt from tax.¹⁵⁸ The growing trend for sons to inherit their fathers’ appointments in the central administration and as provincial governors enabled minor households, having attained the first rung on the ladder of power, to consolidate their position and rise in prominence.¹⁵⁹

The picture of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha handed down to posterity has been strongly influenced by the chronicle of Mustafa Naima, whose partisanship is beguiling. However, it must be remembered that Naima’s patron was another Köprülü, Amcazade Hüseyin Pasha, who appointed him to the post of official historian when he became grand vezir in 1697, and that his History was commissioned some forty years after Köprülü Mehmed came to power. Naima represents Köprülü Mehmed’s acceptance of the grand vezirate as a ‘contract’ between Sultan and Grand Vezir whereby Köprülü Mehmed dictated various conditions to the eight-year-old Mehmed IV when he accepted the post. First of all, he wanted absolute authority in matters of state, even over the will of the Sultan; second, he would decide all state appointments; third, his decisions were not to be limited in scope by the opinions of other statesmen; and fourth, any who tried to undermine him were to be ignored.160 This picture of the circumstances of Köprülü Mehmed’s appointment to the grand vezirate – embellished with details not found in any of the contemporary accounts on which it is supposedly based – is considered an invention by modern historians who see it as approximating the situation prevailing when Naima was writing, at the turn of the seventeenth to eighteenth century, and the interests of his patron after decades of Köprülü dominance. Monarchy had become institutionalized and depersonalized and the Ottoman dynasty per se was of little real importance by then,¹⁶¹ the sultan scarcely more than a symbolic node, a primus inter pares at the heart of the system of power and wealth that began to develop over the next century. Having survived the war of 1683–99 and the subsequent loss of territory enshrined in the Karlowitz treaty, the empire recovered, albeit painfully, as it adapted to meet new circumstances.

* The Lion House was a former Byzantine church located outside the palace grounds to the south of Ayasofya, in the cellar of which the Ottoman sultans kept wild animals.

† Joseph’s turban may still be seen in the collection of Holy Relics housed in Topkapı Palace.

* Both the copper plate and the sword are displayed in the collection of Holy Relics housed in Topkapı Palace; I have been unable to ascertain whether the inscription referred to by Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Agha is in Hebrew or Syriac, or whether a translation of it exists.