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The English Capitulation of 1580: A Review Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

V. L. Ménage
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Extract

The late Professor Paul Wittek (1894–1978) had an oddly ambivalent attitude towards England. From 1940 until his death he left London only rarely, for short visits to the continent, where (we understood) he would declare that England was the only place to live; but once back across the Channel he would, in conversation and in his seminars, resume his criticisms, ranging from the British Government's unwisdom in promoting the dismantlement of the AustroHungarian and the Ottoman Empires to the irrationalities of the English language. The first research which he undertook after coming to (what was to be) his adopted country was the critical study of seventeen Turkish documents, dating from 1553 to 1594, preserved, in English or Latin translation, in the two editions (1589/1590 and 1598–1600) of Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations … of the English Nation. In 1940 he found in the Bodleian Library some original Turkish documents belonging to this early stage of Anglo-Turkish relations, and over the next wartime years prepared a monograph covering the period 1553–1588, that is, from the isolated ‘safeconduct or priviledge’ granted by Siileyman in Aleppo to Anthony Jenkinson to the return from Istanbul of the first resident ambassador William Harborne.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 1980 , pp. 373 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

Notes

1 Wittek, P., ‘The Turkish Documents in Hakluyt's ‘Voyages’’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 19, 57 (for 11 1942; publ. 1943), 121–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 It should, I think, be put on record that these began at 3 P.M., when Wittek was fresh from breakfast, and continued until ten, when the porters came to lock up (another index, in Wittek's view, of the frivolous English attItude to scholarship, in that the place did not stay open all night) – except when they were resumed at Schmidt's restaurant until the waiters had pointedly stacked most of the chairs.

3 Listed in Turcica, IX, I (1977), 260–261.Google Scholar

4 Skilliter, S. A., William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 1578 –1582: A Documentary Study of the First Anglo-Ottoman Relations (Oxford University Press, for the British Academy, London, 1977). Pp. XXIV, 292; 8 plates.Google Scholar

5 Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XLII, I (1979), 152,Google Scholar referring to the text published by Moritz, B., as ‘Ein Firman des Sultans Selim I. für die Venezianer vom Jahre 1517’, in Festschrift Eduard Sachau (Berlin 1915), pp. 422–443,Google Scholar and translated, with further commentary, by Hartmann, M., in Orientalische Studien Fritz Hommel … gewidmet (Leipzig, 1917–1918), II, 201–222.Google Scholar

6 Cited by von Hammer, J., Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (Pest, 1828–1835), II, 669.Google Scholar

7 Ferīdūn, , Munsha'āt al-sal¯tīn, second edition, Istanbul 1274–1275/1858, 1, 491.Google Scholar

8 Gökbilgin, M. T., ‘Venedik Devlet Arşivindeki Türkçe belgeler kolleksiyonu …’, in Belgeler, 5–8, 9–12 (1968–1971), 50–54,Google Scholar no. 130. The Turkish texts of three further capitulations/treaties are published here: 1482, as no. 127, pp. 39–42; 1513, as no. 129, pp. 47–50; and 1521, as no. 128, pp. 42–46. The treaty of 1540 is the first document in Gökbilgin's, earlier article in Belgeler, 1, 2 (1964).Google Scholar

9 Belgeler, V-VI1I, 47–50, and plates after p. 144.

10 Skilliter, , William Harborne … tabulation at p. 91 and discussion at pp. 99–102.Google Scholar

11 1446: Babinger, F. and Dolger, F., ‘Mehmed's II. frühester Staatsvertrag (1446)’, in Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 15 (1949), 225–258;Google Scholar 1430: published by lorga, N., in Revue del'Orient Latin. 6 (1898), 88–91;Google Scholar 1419: ibid., IV (1896), 610–614.

12 The change to Turkish comes in at the end of the fifteenth century. The ‘original’ of the treaty of 1479 was still in Greek (Miklosich, F. and Müller, J., Ada et diplomata graeca… Vol. 3 [henceforth: MM], pp. 295–298).Google Scholar The Greek text of the renewal of 1482 is preserved in the Liber Commemorialium (MM, pp. 313–317); the Turkish text has now been published (Belgeler, V-VIII, 39–42) after the ‘original’ nişān headed by the tuġra (but I suspect that this text is in fact a translation from the Greek). In March 1499 the Venetian envoy Zanchani procured a treaty drawn up in ‘Latin’, but was warned by the long-resident merchant Andrea Gritti that a document not written in Turkish would not be held binding (Hammer, , GOR, 2, 3, 5–317;Google ScholarFisher, S. N., The Foreign Relations of Turkey, 1481–1512 (Urbana, 1948), pp. 62–63);Google Scholar the Venetians regarded this as a ruse: ‘ut magis Venetos eluderet, foedus quidem cum Zancanio renovavit; sed foederis capita latinis scripta literis ei dedit. Est autem in eorum legibus, ut quae suae linguae verbis scripta non sunt, ea praestan non sir necesse’ (Bembo, P., in Del''isgorici delle case Veneziane … II [Venice, 1718] p. 138).Google Scholar The three-year truce with Hungary of 1498 was written in Slavonic (ćiorović, V., in Zeitschrft den Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschafr, 90 (= NF XV) [1936], 52–59);Google Scholar but of the seven-year truce of 1503 there exist both a Latin text (Hammer, , GOR, 2, 616–620)Google Scholar in the name of the King and a Turkish nişān (facsimile published by Gökbilgin, M. T., in Belleren, 22, 87 [1958], after p. 390); here too the Turkish reads as a translation, from (?)Latin.Google Scholar

13 Seven of the eleven articles in the treaty of 1446 end with a sentence binding the Sultan or the Doge to perform what the other party has undertaken in the main provision. In the later and more detailed texts in Turkish most of the first articles promise reciprocity, in the words Hemçünān ben dahi … or the like. Each clause in the treaty with Naples of 1498 (Hammer, , GOR, 2, 605–607) ends ‘el lo simile promete…’.Google Scholar

14 MM, between pp. 76 and 224.

15 Babinger, and Dölger, (cited in n. II), pp. 235 and 254.Google Scholar The sentiment is still prominent in 1482: 1 [Bāyezīd II’ too have seen that to make peace with them promotes the good order of the affairs of the realm: indeed in this world there is nothing superior to friendship and amity (dostluk ye mahabbet)’ (Belgeler, V-VIII, 39; cf. MM, p. 313).Google Scholar

16 Belgeler, 1, 2 (1964), 121: yüce āstānuna 'arż-i 'ubūdiyet ü ülās eyleyüb, and cf. later the phrases istid'ā-yi 'ināyet-i pādişāhī eyleyüb and mezīd-i merhamet-i husrevānem. Further on the bana of the 1521 text (p. 43, I, 9) has become cenāb-i hilāfet-me ābuma (p. 123, 11.7–8). 1 relegate to a foot note the suggest25;on in the adopt-on of this condescending language we might postulate the influence of Abu'l-Su'ūd: as Kadī' asker of Rūmeli (1537–1545) he had a place in the Divan and may have cast an eye over the 1540 text.Google Scholar

17 See the ‘sevgendādme’ published by.Uzunçarşth, İ H., in Belleren, 1, 1 (1937), 120,Google Scholar and now in the complete text of the Manāhij al-inshā', published by Şinasi, Tekin (Roxbury, Mass., 1971), p. 23.Google Scholar

18 E.g., the treaty of 1337 with Ibrāhīm Beg of Menteşe (Elizabeth, A. Zachariadou, ‘Sept traités inédits…’, in Studi Preottomani e Ottomani [Naples, 1976], at pp. 232–233, and information kindly communicated by letter).Google Scholar

19 MM, p. 119, etc.

20 Hammer, , GOR, 2, 608,Google Scholar and Dennis, G. T., ‘The Byzantine-Turkish Treaty of 1403’ in Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 33 (1967), at p. 78.Google Scholar

21 There is no agreement among the commentators on the total number of the prophets, the figures ranging from 1,000 to 224,000 (Wensinck, A. J., The Muslim Creed [Cambridge, 1932], p. 204 and cf. p. 267).Google Scholar The precise number 124,000 appears in a hadīth cited by T. P. Hughes (A Dictionary of Islam, s.v. Prophet) after the Mishkāt al-masbīh. This number seems to have been popularly current in Turkey: it appears in an anecdote relating to Mehmed II (Süheyl Ünver, A.,İlim ye sanar bakimindan Fatih devri notlari [Istanbul, 1948], p. 124)Google Scholar and in a lengthy invocation recorded among the Tahtacls (Riza, Yetişen, in Türk Folklor Ararşttmalart, 316 (11 1975), 7490).Google Scholar

22 Hammer, , GOR, 2, 620.Google Scholar The oath in the Turkish version of this treaty is slightly aberrant, reading (loc. cit. in note 12, plate XI, lines 3–4): ibtidā'en yen göki yaradan ye yüz yigirmi dört biηn peyġamberle bizüm peyġambenimiz hahret-i Muhammed Mustfāayt… gönderen ye mecmū' kitāblari gökden indüren ulu Alldhuη 'ahametine /ve babam rūhuna /ve o ġlancuklarim başina /ve yürüdügüm yoluma / ve kuşanduġum kilica / and içerin-ki … Here ‘all the books’ take the place of the normal yedi mushaf, usually interpreted (following Hammer, , GOR, 1,677),Google Scholar not very persuasively, as meaning the ‘seven canonical readings’ of the Kur'ān: but this wording shows clearly that the ‘books’ are the ‘revealed scriptures’, normally reckoned to number four: Kur'ān, Tawrāt, Zabūr, lnjil. In the Venetian/Byzantine truces the oath is taken on ‘the holy gospels (plural) of God’, and it crossed my mind that if Injīl is interpreted as ‘the four gospels’ the revealed books could be counted as seven. Against this, however, is the appearance of the term yedi mushaf in a poem of Yunus Emre (ed. Gölpinarli, A. [Istanbul, 1971], p. 271 and editor's note at p. 454).Google Scholar

23 Notices er Extraits, Xl (1827), 60,Google Scholar and cf., Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr, Recherches sur les acres … (Munich, 1967), pp. 241–243.Google Scholar

24 Fisher, , Foreign Relations of Turkey, pp. 81–87.Google Scholar

25 Summarized by Fisher, , p. 83Google Scholar n. 128, after Marino, Sanuto, Diarii, 5, 42–47; barbarous Greek text (translated from Turkish) in MM, pp. 344–350.Google Scholar

26 Fisher, , p. 86, referring to Sanuto, V, 454; original Greek text in MM, pp. 355–356.Google Scholar

27 There seems to be no record of the formal taking of an oath by either side on the well-documented occasions of the conclusion of peace between Selim II and Maximilian II in 1567 (Hammer, , GOR. 3, 514–517 and 767–775)Google Scholar or of the granting of the first Dutch capitulation in 1612 (De Groot, A. H., The Ottoman Empire and the Dutch Republic [Leiden and Istanbul, 1978], pp. 117–120 and 127–129).Google Scholar The documents renewing the Hispano-Ottoman truce of 1581 (Skilliter, S. A., in Iran and islam [Edinburgh, 1971], pp. 491–515) are remarkably casual in form.Google Scholar

28 Text in Peçevī, , Ta'rīh (Istanbul, 1283/1866), I, 486–87;Google Scholar also in Düzdağ, M. E., Seyhülislám Ebussuûd Efendi fervalari işig;inda 16. asir Türk hayat, (Istanbul, 1972), no. 478.Google Scholar

29 I cannot read into the farwā the interpretation advanced by Hammer, (GOR, 3, 567): Das angebliche Recht Selim's auf Cypern's Besitz grundete sich also laut dieses Fetwa auf die frühere Oberherrschaft …’.Google Scholar

30 Heyd, U., Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law (Oxford, 1973), pp. 191–192: Duuml;zdağ, no. 422.Google Scholar

31 MM, p. 349; Fisher, , p. 84, article 25.Google Scholar

32 Belgeler, V–VIII, 49.Google Scholar

33 MM, p. 296; MM, p. 315=Belgeler, V-VIII, 41.Google Scholar

34 MM, pp. 347–348, 349; Fisher, , pp. 83–84, articles 15 and 24.Google Scholar

35 , MM, p. 355;Google ScholarFisher, , p. 86.Google Scholar

36 The word has a narrower sense than Dr Skilliter's ‘profession’; Meninski defines rencber as ‘mercator’.

37 Belgeler, V-VIII, 49.Google Scholar

38 Belgeler, 1, 2, p. 126,Google Scholar and especially Lehmann, W., Der Friedensverirag zwischen Venedig und der Türkei vom 2. Oktober 1540 (Stuttgart, 1936), pp. 37–38Google Scholar and note (h): the Venetians had sought a period of five years. The draft Franco-Ottoman treaty of 1535–1536 had envisaged that no Frenchman should be subjected to jizya, or to any of the imposts and corvées imposed on the ra'āyā, before he had been resident for ten years (Charrière, E., Négocialions …, Vol. I [Paris, 1848], p. 293); is it merely coincidence that ten years is the maximum permissible duration of a hudna?.Google Scholar

39 Why does the article trouble to specify ‘married or unmarried’? That a merchant might be accompanied by his Venetian wife cannot be relevant: the point must be that he might, while in Ottoman territory, marry a dhimmī woman. Even so, there is no real problem: the Seyhulislām 'Abdullāh Efendi (in office 1718–1730) ruled that whereas a harbī woman (‘musta'mina’) marrying a dhimmī herself became dhimmī, in the converse case a musra'min, by marrying a dhimmī woman, did not make himself dhimmī (Krüger, H., Fetlva und Siyar [Wiesbaden, 1978], PP. 64 and 113),Google Scholar and in this he was merely following the doctrine of lbrāhīm al-Halabī(trans. Mevhūfati [Istanbul, 1308], I, 350). All the same, the fact that a foreign resident might be married to a local woman did become an issue in 1613–1614 (see below; De, Groot, Ottoman Empire and the Dutch Republic, p. 139).Google Scholar

40 Ferīdūn 2, II, 493.

41 De, Groot, Ottoman Empire and the Dutch Republic, p. 241.Google Scholar

42 Thus he lent his authority (Düzdag, no. 456) to the myth that Constantinople had not been taken by force of arms: he discouraged embarrassing questions on fines and torture and the punishment of officials (Heyd, U., in BSOAS, 32, 1 [1969], 50); and some of his rulings reveal an uneasy awareness of the discrepancy between the ‘law’ and current practice (e.g., Düzdag, nos. 37–38, i88, 216–217, 665, 835, 838, 972–976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 De, Groot, pp. 132–133, 138–140, 155–157.Google Scholar

44 Hammer, , GOR. 4, p. 481, note (g).Google Scholar

45 Krüger, , Fetwa und Siyar, pp. 136–139.Google Scholar

46 De, Groot, p. 256.Google Scholar