Plural Pasts

Power, Identity and the Ottoman Sieges of Nagykanizsa Castle

Claire Norton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317079590
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la Renaissance européenne

Through a study of a variety of Ottoman and modern Turkish accounts of the Ottoman-Habsburg sieges of Nagykanizsa Castle (1600-01) including official documents, correspondence, histories, and more literary genres such as gazavatnames [campaign narratives], Plural Pasts explores Ottoman literacy practices. By considering the diverse roles that the various accounts served – construction of identities, forging of diplomatic alliances and legitimization of political ideologies and geo-political imaginations – it explores the cultural and socio-political significance the various accounts had for different audiences. In addition, it interweaves theoretical reflection with textual analysis. Using the sieges of Nagykanizsa as a case study, it offers a sophisticated contribution to ongoing historiographical arguments: namely, how historians construct hierarchies of primary sources and judge some to be more truthful, or more valuable, than others; how texts are assigned to particular genres based on perceived epistemological status – as story or history, fact or fiction; and the circular role that historians and their histories play in constructing, reflecting and reinforcing cultural and political imaginaries.

1
The authority of eyewitness accounts reconsidered

For political or military historians wishing to provide a definitive, accurate description of particular early modern Ottoman events, be they political incidents, revolutions or military campaigns, the accounts of eyewitness administrator-historians in combination with documentary sources, that is official state-produced texts, such as tax registers, daybooks, reports, treaties, official rescripts and correspondence, play a fundamental role. Representationalist or reconstructionist historians such as Marwick often implicitly suggest that there is a qualitative and maybe even an epistemological distinction between documents of record or state-produced documents and other texts or sources.¹ The latter, they argue, are largely free from interpretation, are far less subjective and thus are more appropriate historical sources. While the discussions surrounding postmodernist approaches to history writing have caused many historians to acknowledge that all texts have a degree of subjectivity, some historians continue to implicitly operate with a hierarchy of sources where documents of record are still given a privileged status and are seen as more reliable, less subjective and thus more likely to ‘get the story straight’ by providing a more accurate picture of the past.²

As I noted in the introduction, Piterberg has identified two main ways in which scholars approach the work of Ottoman historians: they either take the historian and his (and it is generally his in the context of Ottoman history) work as the object of their investigation, or they seek to evaluate the degree of reliability of the history with a view to subsequently extracting all useful documentary information should the history be deemed sufficiently accurate and free from an unacceptable degree of contaminating bias or partisanship.³ Such an approach is evidenced in a comment in the Encyclopaedia of Islam’s entry on Ottoman historian Hasan Beyzade. In discussing Hasan Beyzade’s history of the Ottoman Empire, the authors comment that, “it remains to be investigated whether a complete edition of the work is required or whether its essential information is in fact already available through these published texts.”⁴ For these historians the value of early modern Ottoman histories lies exclusively in the information they can provide about events. The interpretative framing of these events, the way in which the historians used their sources, the intricacies of Ottoman historical intertextuality, the evidence these accounts provide of Ottoman sociocultural, political and ideological perspectives and what they tell us about Ottoman literacy strategies are not considered as important. However, I am not interested in establishing which of the accounts of the sieges is the most accurate or which corresponds most closely to what really happened, largely because, as I argued in the introduction, I do not think this is epistemologically an achievable goal. Instead I want to foreground the rhetorical: how and why particular participants in events surrounding the sieges may have chosen to narrate events in the ways they did. In doing so, I intend to demonstrate the positioned nature of all sources and argue that eyewitness accounts and state documents are no less subjective by virtue of their genre nor as a result of the predisposition or location of the author.

Three Ottoman historian-administrators were present on the Nagykanizsa campaigns, and they subsequently wrote some of the earliest narratives of the 1600 and 1601 Nagykanizsa sieges included in their more general histories of the Ottoman Empire. They were Hasan Beyzade (d. 1636–1637), Abdülkadir Topçularkatibi and Ibrahim Peçevi (1572–1650). For different reasons, the histories of all three have been held in high regard by modern historians and judged as particularly useful primary sources. Through an analysis of their accounts I will make explicit “the fictions of factual representation” and illustrate the manner in which ‘factual’ documents such as histories, decrees and correspondence share the same narrative and rhetorical strategies common to all literary writing.⁵ By so doing I will demonstrate how the interests of the historian-administrator authors, the politico-cultural contexts in which they wrote and their concerns about the intended and implied audiences of their texts all worked to influence the perspectives from which they narrated the sieges.

Hasan Beyzade worked for most of his career in the service of the imperial council as a civil servant. He was the secretary for a number of high-ranking officials, gradually rising through the scribal-administrative ranks. He participated in a number of campaigns during the Long War (1593–1606) between the Habsburgs and Ottomans in his capacity as secretary to various grand viziers and commanders. In 1599 he was appointed bas¸-tezkereci [chief secretary] and then temporary re’is ül-küttab [minister of foreign affairs] during the 1600 siege of Nagykanizsa.⁶ Following the siege of Nagykanizsa he held a number of positions in the financial administration, including deputy of the director of the main registry of revenues, director of the registry of landed property and director of financial administration [defterdar] in various provinces and regions of the empire, such as Anatolia.⁷ He wrote a two-volume history of the Ottoman Empire, considered to be the earliest seventeenth-century example of the Tarih-i Al-i Osman [history of the house of Osman] genre and a key reference for many later histories, including those by Katib Çelebi and Naima, which are considered to be authoritative histories in Ottoman studies.⁸ His other works include a political treatise, a mecmu’a [compendium of writings] and the Nagykanizsa fethnames sent to Queen Elizabeth and the doge of Venice that will be analysed in Chapter 2.⁹ His history is divided into two volumes: the first is titled the Telhis-i Tacü’t-tevarih [Summary of the Crown of History] and is an abbreviated version of Hoca Sadüddin Efendi’s (d. 1008/1599) Tacü’t-tevarih [The Crown of History]; the second volume is titled Zeyl-i tacü’t-tevarih [Addendum to the Crown of History] and is often described as a more original work encompassing the period from the reign of Süleyman I (1520–1566) to that of Murad IV (1623–1640). Although the first part of the second volume is a synthesis of information provided by other Ottoman historians and an account written by Hasan Beyzade’s father who was also re’is ül-küttab [minister of foreign affairs], the second section, concerning events dating from the reign of Mehmed III (1595–1603), is largely based on the author’s personal observations, particularly his accounts of the military campaigns that he participated in.¹⁰

Abdülkadir Topçularkatibi was a secretary to the imperial army, and was present at the first siege of Nagykanizsa but was not involved with the subsequent defence as he was accompanying the grand vizier and the imperial army at the siege of Szekesfehérvár (İstolni Belgrad/Stuhlweissenburg). The only source we have for biographical information about Topçularkatibi is his work.¹¹ He was born in the last third of the sixteenth century and died sometime after March 1644.¹² He was a muster master of the artillery and was present on numerous campaigns including the Erevan campaign against the Persians and the Ottoman-Habsburg Long War, including the 1600 siege and capture of Nagykanizsa castle.¹³ As part of his various duties, he describes procuring provisions, delivering payrolls, supervising the production of munitions and the evacuation of weapons stock. Following the capture of Nagykanizsa castle, he says he registered the munitions and cannons that were found in the castle.¹⁴ Topçularkatibi’s experience and expertise is evident throughout his history in the detail with which he discusses not only the equipment of the Ottoman army but also the weapons used and their deployment. His history, which exists in two manuscripts, does not have a definitive title, although it is conventionally known as Tevarih âl-i Osman [History of the House of Osman].¹⁵ The majority of the work is a description of military campaigns that the author participated in, although he also provides information on key political and administrative events, appointment changes, court events such as weddings and celebrations and events happening in Istanbul. It was an important source for later Ottoman historians including Naima. Köhbach argues that Topçularkatibi’s style of writing clearly shows he lacked a higher literary education and notes that Topçularkatibi himself acknowledged the stylistic and linguistic defects of his work yet argued that it was still valuable on account of his being an eyewitness to many of the events he narrates.¹⁶

Ibrahim Peçevi, a native of Pécs, in Hungary (Peçuy/Fünfkirchen), came from a family who had a long tradition of military service in Bosnia. In 1593 he joined the imperial army and participated in a number of campaigns during the Long War. After the war he was employed in the provincial financial administration, was appointed tahrir [land census] recorder in a variety of Rumelian sancaks then clerk to the grand vizier Kuyucu Murad Pasha (1607–11). Over the next few decades he served in a variety of positions including defterdar [treasurer] of the Ottoman administrative regions of Diyarbakır, Tokat, Tuna [the Danube], Temes¸ var and Anatolia. He also served as beylerbeyi [governor] of the province of Rakka.¹⁷ After retiring in 1641 he moved back to Hungary and wrote a history of the Ottoman Empire, Tarih-i Peçevi [The History of Peçevi]. As with Hasan Beyzade, his work is a combination of information taken from what would today be described as secondary and primary sources, and oral testimony. Although his account uses the histories of Ottoman historians such as Celalzade Mustafa, Ramazanzade, Mustafa Ali and Hasan Beyzade for events that occurred in his lifetime, he also relies on his own experience as a state official and eyewitness to events. Unsurprisingly his work is particularly detailed with regard to events on the Hungarian and Bosnian marches where he was able to supplement material from various sources and his own experiences with that from his family and local acquaintances.¹⁸ Peçevi also used accounts written by Hungarian historians including Kaspar Heltai and N. V. Istvánffy; they were apparently read to him in Hungarian, and he subsequently translated them into Ottoman Turkish.¹⁹

It is worth noting at this point that the complex interdependency of Ottoman histories as well as the, often un-cited, incorporation of earlier historical works by Ottoman historians should not be viewed as plagiarism, evidence of unoriginality, residual orality or the result of a stunted literacy. Instead it should be understood as a device or means to legitimise and situate the work into an existing system of knowledge. Berkenkotter and Hudin have demonstrated that twenty-first century academic quotation and citation practices function as integration procedures in that they present academic activity as a cumulative, rational enterprise that builds on accepted wisdom yet constantly seeks new knowledge.²⁰ Citation practices therefore diachronically and teleologically connect a work to a specific field, or body of existing and accepted work, thereby legitimising and contextualising it as new knowledge. For example, in modern historical writing citations set the knowledge of a specific manuscript, tax register or event within, or against, the field of Ottoman history foremost and then within the broader background of the genre of history and the scope of the humanities. However, Ottoman legitimisation and incorporation praxis were different. Ottoman scholars and writers, in particular those writing about the past within the Ottoman genre of history, authorised and integrated their work through the specific inclusion of precedents, the incorporation of previous works and the diffuse use of a shared vocabulary, common patterns of argumentation and shared knowledge schemas rather than through explicit citation practices. The large-scale incorporation of other authors’ work was thus employed to both synchronically and diachronically situate or integrate a work into an existing system or network of knowledge and thus to ultimately legitimise it.²¹ Murphey in his study of Ottoman historical writing notes that it was expected Ottoman historical practice for historians writing about events before their lifetimes to defer to and use the testimony of earlier historians. This does not mean that the genre of Ottoman history was derivative or that historians lacked the ability or interest in writing interpretative history. Rather, the focus of creative history writing was limited to events of their own time.²²

At the end of this chapter I will consider the account of the siege provided in the telhis [report] written by the grand vizier Yemis¸ çi Hasan Pasha, which was intended to communicate events that occurred during the autumn and winter of 1601 on the Ottoman-Habsburg marches, particularly the defence of Nagykanizsa castle.²³ I will argue that despite being an official state report by an eyewitness in the area, the apparently transparent language and objective facts in the grand vizier’s letter are instead complex rhetorical strategies intended to fulfil a specific politico-textual function and encourage a pa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Note on spellings and transliteration
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The authority of eyewitness accounts reconsidered
• 2 Fethnames: not just literary bombast
• 3 The gazavatnames: erasing oral residue and correcting scribal error
• 4 The gazavatnames: rewriting the exemplar – individual scripta
• 5 Writers reading: reading the Gazavat-i Tiryaki Hasan Paşa with Katib Çelebi and Naima
• 6 Nationalism and the reinvention of early modern identities
• Conclusion: making the sieges of Nagykanizsa morally defensible
• Bibliography
• Index