GraViz source description
The Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (HHStA) and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB, Austrian National Library) in Vienna are home to a significant collection of Ottoman Turkish correspondence exchanged between the Habsburg court and six Ottoman grand viziers: Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (in office: 1565 – 1579), Köprülü Mehmed Pasha (in office: 1656 – 1661), Köprülü Ahmed Pasha (in office: 1661 – 1676), Kara Mustafa Pasha (in office: 1676 – 1683), Nevşehirli Damad İbrahim Pasha (in office: 1718 – 1730), and Koca Mehmed Ragıb Pasha (in office: 1757 – 1763). The collection under consideration here comprises 70 Ottoman Turkish letters, with 49 originals and 21 copies. The correspondences are primarily preserved within the Türkische Urkunden, Turcica, and Orientalische Handschriften collections of the HHStA. Letters housed at the ÖNB are cataloged within various münşeʾāts (collections of letters). Furthermore, a total of fifteen grand vizieral letters have been preserved in the archives of the Cumhurbaşkanlığı Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı (the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey, Directorate of State Archives), which are commonly referred to as BOA. All the letters from BOA are recorded in the mühimme defterleri (registers of important affairs) and they are copies. Most of the original versions of the letters from the HHStA contain a pençe, the grand vizieral seal which was the distinguishing marker of a grand vizieral letter. While reminiscent of a sultanic tughra in form, a pençe was always inscribed on the right-hand-side margin of a letter, unlike the tughra which was always placed on the top of a sultanic letter.
The original letters written in Ottoman Turkish and sent to Vienna are a small fraction of the HHStA’s large collection of grand vizieral correspondence. In the Türkische Urkunden and Turcica collections, there are Latin, German, and Italian copies of the letters once exchanged between the office of the grand vizier and the Viennese statesmen, including the emperors and high-ranking official at the Hofburg. These documents contain both translations of Ottoman letters in any of the three languages and copies of letters sent from the Habsburg court to Constantinople. Due to the challenges of preparing a multi-lingual editing project that involves paleographical transcriptions and English translations, the GraViz team decided to publish only German and Latin documents.
In contrast to the translations of Ottoman letters dispatched from Constantinople to Vienna, relatively few clean copies of letters sent from Vienna to Constantinople have survived. The GraViz editions are based primarily on these so-called drafts preserved at the HHStA. In total, the Latin and German documents amount to 143 unique documents, of which 96 are translations of Ottoman letters and 47 are copies of letters sent by the Viennese court to the grand viziers in Constantinople.
Sokollu Mehmet Pasha and the Habsburgs
The HHStA preserves a significant collection of correspondence in Ottoman Turkish between Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (in office: 1565-1579) and two Habsburg emperors, Maximilian II (r. 1564-1576) and Rudolf II (r. 1576-1611). The present collection comprises 16 original letters sent by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha to the Habsburg court. Of these, 13 letters bear the pençe (grand vizier’s seal), while three contain an imżā (signature). One of the letters contains a nāme kulağı (an enclosure summarizing the recipient or contents), while another one has a ḥāşiye (marginal note). Five of these letters were written on long scrolls. In addition, there are two letters sent by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha to Vienna that are kept in the BOA archives. These letters, recorded inside the mühimme defterleri, are copies and, therefore, do not contain a pençe or an imżā. As part of the first phase of the GraViz project, these 18 Ottoman letters from the time of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha have been transcribed and translated into English.
Complementing these original letters, the HHStA contains a substantial volume of German and Latin letters exchanged between Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and Maximilian II and Rudolf II. As part of the first phase of the project, we prepared 48 of these letters for publication. Most of these are translations of the letters dispatched by Sokollu to the Habsburg court, with some lacking an original version. To give readers an insight into how Ottoman Turkish texts were translated by Habsburg interpreters to German and Latin in the sixteenth century, we edited letters that have Ottoman originals in the archive, but in some cases the Ottoman originals were lost. These translations were typically written on sheets of paper or on scrolls. Unfortunately, there exists only a few letters written by Habsburg officials or the emperors and addressed to the grand vizier in Constantinople. We edited in the project these few extant copies to showcase the mutual dimension of the correspondence between the two courts.
The GraViz team thanks to the director of the HHStA, Thomas Just, and archivist Katrin Kininger for their assistance in accessing the documents. We also thank the Turkish Directorate of State Archives for their cooperation.
Köprülü Mehmed Pasha and the Habsburgs
More to come
Köprülü Ahmed Pasha and the Habsburgs
More to come
Kara Mustafa Pasha and the Habsburgs
More to come
Nevşehirli Damad İbrahim Pasha and the Habsburgs
More to come
Koca Mehmed Ragıb Pasha and the Habsburgs
More to come
Note upon the initial publication in early 2025: Information specific to the grand vizierial correspondence not yet described above will be made available along with the respective editorial work.