An Ottoman envoy in Paris: Süleyman Ağa’s mission to the court of Louis XIV, 1669

Abstract

In 1669, Sultan Mehmed IV dispatched Süleyman Ağa as emissary to King Louis XIV of France. Coming at the end of a decade which saw a series of military confrontations between France and the Ottoman Empire, the mission was an attempt to resolve the crisis in the traditional Franco-Ottoman entente. If the thinking behind this diplomatic mission is reasonably clear, the precise role of Süleyman Ağa was anything but. While the French expected an ambassador and made preparations to receive him accordingly, the Ottoman envoy’s status was in fact far more limited. This article investigates the problems encountered as Ottoman and French diplomatic protocol clashed, and the ways in which the French government attempted to resolve these problems. The episode reflects many of the difficulties in conducting Ottoman-European diplomacy in the seventeenth century. But it also underlines the ability of the French and Ottoman governments to remain reasonably pragmatic in

the name of higher political imperatives.