OTTOMAN-POLISH DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY BY KRZYSZTOF WAWRZYNIAK THE INSTITUTE OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES OF BILKENT UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY BILKENT UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY ANKARA, JUNE 2003 ABSTRACT Ottoman-Polish Relations in the Sixteenth Century. Wawrzyniak, Krzysztof. M.A., Department of History. Supervisor: Asst. Prof. Oktay Özel. The Ottoman Empire and Poland-Lithuania remained direct neighbors from the late Middle Ages until the end of eighteenth century. Long coexistence of both states led to development of rich and diverse forms of contacts on various levels. The sixteenth century was marked by both continuity and change in the bilateral contacts. The overall peaceful political and diplomatic cooperation during the reign of the last Jagiellonians evolved into active competition by the end of the sixteenth century. The Ottoman statesmen tried to influence results of first royal elections and to secure continuity of the balance of power in Central Europe. This policy became most successful during the reign of Stephan Bathory. The reign of Bathory’s successor, Sigismund III Vasa became a step towards a century of military conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Unlike the political relations, trade and other economic activities remained stable. The thesis will present a critical approach towards existing historiography as such and it will reexamine major questions concerning the Ottoman-Polish relations in the sixteenth century. The Ottoman attempts to influence the royal elections in Poland-Lithuania and the border activities of the Cossacks, the Tatars and the border lords will be analyzed, in order to verify whether they influenced the deterioration of bilateral political and diplomatic issues. Practical dimensions of everyday Ottoman- Polish contacts together with analysis of major reasons of changes in relations will be the focal point of this study. Key Words: Ottoman Empire, Poland, Lithuania, Diplomacy, Trade iii ÖZET Onaltıncı Yüzyılda Osmanlı-Leh İlişkileri. Wawrzyniak, Krzysztof. Yüksek Lisans, Tarih Bölümü. Tez Yöneticisi: Yrd. Doç. Oktay Özel. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, Ortaçağın son dönemlerinden onsekizinci yüzyıla kadar, Lehistan ile komşuydu. Bu uzun dönem boyunca, iki devlet arasında, çeşitli düzeylerde yoğun bir alışveriş yaşandı. Onaltıncı yüzyıl, bu ilişkinin hem değişimi hem de sürekliliği açısından önemli bir yüzyıldır. Bu yüzyılda, son Jagiellonianların dönemindeki barışçı politik ve diplomatik atmosfer yerini aktif bir rekabete bıraktı. Osmanlı devletadamları, ilk kraliyet seçimlerinin sonucunu etkilemeye ve Orta Avrupa’daki güç dengelerini korumaya çalıştılar. Bu politika, özellikle Stephan Bathory’nin döneminde (1576-1586) başarılı olmuştu. Ancak, Bathory’den sonra gelen III. Sigismund Vasa döneminde (1587-1632) Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ile Lehistan-Litvanya Birliği arasında bir yüzyıl süren askeri uyuşmazlıklar başgösterdi. Politik ilişkilerin tersine, ticaret ve diğer ekonomik faaliyetlerde bir değişim görülmedi. Bu tez, konuyla ilgili olarak yazılmış tarihi eserleri eleştirel bir açıdan incelemekte ve onaltıncı yüzyıl Osmanlı-Lehistan ilişkileriyle ilgili önemli soruları yeniden ele almaktadır. Osmanlıların, Lehistan kraliyet seçimlerini etkileme çabaları, Kazakların, Tatarların ve sınır boylarında soyluların sınırlardaki faaliyetleri incelenmiş, bunların politik ve diplomatik ilişkilerin kötüleşmesinde oynadıkları rolü tartışılmıştır. Bu bağlamda, Osmanlı-Lehistan ilişkilerinin gündelik hayattaki boyutları ve geçirdiği değişimler bu çalışmanın esas konusunu teşkil etmektedir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, Lehistan, Litvanya, Diplomasi, Ticaret iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Oktay Özel for his patience and constant support in preparation of this thesis. His invaluable guidance and comments have strengthened my motivation, not only for completing my thesis, but also for persisting with my efforts to study the Ottoman history. I would also like to thank Prof. Halil İnalcık, whose advice and important hints and ideas helped me understand better history and gave me firm basis for my research. In addition, I owe special thanks to all the professors at the department of history, who made my studies in Bilkent University remarkable experience. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . iii ÖZET . . . . . . . . . . iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . vi TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . . . . . 1-36 I. Subject and Sources . . . . . . 1 II. Poland-Lithuania at the Beginning of the Early Modern Period: An Overview of Socio-political Conditions . . . . 10 III. The Ottoman-Polish Encounter: The Initial Contacts . . 17 CHAPTER TWO: DEVELOPMENT OF OTTOMAN-POLISH RELATIONS DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY . . . 37 I. Period of Stability (1548-1572) . . . . . 37 II. Diplomacy and Power Politics (1572-1595) . . . 46 CHAPTER THREE: ASPECTS OF OTTOMAN-POLISH RELATIONS 68 I. The Rulers, the Envoys and Practical Diplomacy . . 68 II. Politics on the Borderland: Tatars, Cossacks and the Voivodes 85 III. A World Beyond Borders: Economy and Trade . . 92 CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . 104 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . 109 APPENDICES . . . . . . . . 115 vi I. List of the Ottoman Sultans and the Polish Kings in fifteenth and sixteenth centuries . . . . . . . 115 II. A map of Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the 16th century. . . . . 116 III. Facsimiles of Selected Documents . . . . 117 1. AKW 70/233 part 1. 2. AKW 70/233 part 2. 3. AKW 70/233 – English translation of the Polish document 4. AKW 71/279 5. AKW 70/232 6. AKW 70/232. English translation of the Polish document. 7. MD XXIX: 151 8. MD LVIII: 506, 507, 508 9. MD LXII: 423. vii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION I. Subject and Sources Despite the fact that Poland-Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire shared important political, economic and military interest, and the scale of bilateral contacts was immense for several centuries, the topic has been researched to much smaller degree than it deserves. Especially, the sixteenth century is still much neglected. Moreover, apparently none of Turkish historians has ever used Polish archives, whereas the only Polish historian who has ever used the Ottoman archive in Istanbul on a regular basis is Dariusz Kołodziejczyk. Surprisingly, major difficulty of this kind of research is not the linguistic side, because many Ottoman documents preserved in Polish archives were already published and analyzed well before the Second World War by such famous orientalists as Jan Reychman and Ananiasz Zajączkowski. One would suspect that difficult access to the archives in Istanbul until recent years and totalitarian political system in Poland until 1989 were major obstacles in the development of research and closer collaboration of historians in this field. There exists only several general works dealing with Polish-Ottoman issues. In Turkish historiography, the classical work Osmanlı Tarihi by İsmail Hakkı 1 Uzunçarşılı is practically the only study that covers the whole period of Ottoman- Polish contacts until the partitions of Poland-Lithuania by the end of the 18th century. Major advantage of Uzunçarşılı’s work is the author’s attempt to present chronological development of events between Poland-Lithuania and the Ottoman State with taking into consideration the role of neighboring and vassal states and general political context of a given period. The study focuses mostly on political aspects of relations and no other spheres of contacts were introduced. Despite the fact that Uzunçarşılı did not have access to European sources and publications, which is one of major disadvantages of his study, his book is a perfect reference work, and the amount of Ottoman works consulted is very impressive. İsmail Hami Danişmend’s İzahlı Osmanlı Tarihi Kronolojisi is also a valuable and in many cases indispensable reference work in which Ottoman political and social events are presented chronologically. Another important, although somewhat old-fashioned work is Joseph von Hammer’s Geschichte des osmanischen Reichs, in which Polish- Lithuanian issues are presented quite often. Historia Turcji [History of Turkey] by Reychman also covers the entire Ottoman history, but it does not deal specifically with Ottoman-Polish relations; development of events is presented according to Marxist methodology and many aspects are already out of date. The same could be said about Historia dyplomacji polskiej [History of Polish Diplomacy]. This monumental work focuses on development of diplomatic relations and political priorities of all Polish state formations, from the Piast principality and kingdom, through the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, until modern times. Relations with the Ottomans are given a lot of attention, but the book was prepared rather carelessly 2 and there are some important errors.1 Major advantage of the book, is the extremely rich set of European primary sources consulted; one should perhaps use it as a kind of archival guidebook. A popular book by Pajewski Buńczuk i koncerz. Z dziejów wojen polsko-tureckich [From the History of Polish –Turkish Wars] is valuable for military conflicts of the seventeenth century, but it treats earlier events very briefly. Its most interesting aspect is a number of detailed descriptions of battles, based upon contemporary primary sources. Since this study is written in a “crusading” manner, it should be approached critically by those dealing with seventeenth century Ottoman-Polish wars. Halil İnalcık’s The Ottoman Empire. The Classical Age 1300-1600 remains one of the most important works dealing with the 16th century Ottoman-foreign relations in general. The author analyzes the role of Poland-Lithuania in a less detailed way than Uzunçarşılı, but puts it into broader socio-economic and political perspective, presenting the Ottoman rule in the Balkans and the Ottoman policies towards the European neighbors of the Ottoman Empire as a search for balance of power. This idea is discussed further in relevant chapters. Halil İnalcık’s most recent work A Social and Economic History of the Ottoman Empire also provides important details on the relations between the Porte and Poland-Lithuania, predominantly about their economic dimension. Dariusz Kołodziejczyk follows İnalcık’s ideas in Ottoman-Polish Relations, where he tries to correlate diplomatic relations between the two states, from the beginning until the partitions of Poland-Lithuania, with the development of ‘ahidname. Kołodziejczyk used sources from many different archives, including the Ottoman archive in Istanbul but he focused predominantly on 1 For example, the authors claim the Ottoman documents sent to Poland were written in Arabic, which of course is a serious mistake (Vol. I, p. 765). 3 ‘ahidnames and used other sources, like relevant mühimme registers, very scarcely. The only sixteenth-century registers used by Kołodziejczyk are the mühimmes number 7, 31, 68 and 69. In addition, Kołodziejczyk focuses mostly on the political and theoretical mechanisms of diplomatic relations and does not discuss practical functioning of diplomatic issues in everyday contacts. Since full texts and the transcriptions of almost all ‘ahidnames granted to the Polish kings are given, the work is one of the most valuable critical source editions for research of bilateral contacts. Short study of relations between the two states can also be found in İslâm Asnsiklopedisi and the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the latter having Poland as a separate item. However, sixteenth century was not given sufficient attention. Existing general works reshaped numerous theories concerning the long- lasting Polish-Ottoman neighborhood, but there is still need for research, which would utilize sources from both sides on the one hand and be general in content on the other. However, it seems that without a number of articles and books concerning specific topics preparation of more general comparative and analytical works would be a difficult task, mostly due to extensive primary sources. Specific works focused on detailed issues are quite numerous, but majority of them is devoted to Polish- Ottoman military history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition, in most cases the aforementioned source limitation narrows potential comparative perspective. The present study is limited to the 16th century and therefore research devoted to other periods is not presented. Very rich bibliography of existing works on the topic can be found in Kołodziejczyk’s Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic Relations and in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (the former is much more detailed and up to date). 4