From Rıdvan Ağa to Süleyman Bey (1634-1774): The Traces of the Ottoman Delegations in the Austrian State Archive

Abstract

With the inclusion of Buda in 1541 as a province of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottomans and the Austrian Habsburgs became neighbors and after the Peace of Zsitvatorok (1606) the diplomatic traffic between the two powers increased. Among the basic sources for studying the Ottoman-Habsburg diplomatic relations from their beginnings at the end of the XVth century are the Austrian State Archives. Besides the politically important documents, there are also numerous documents that shed light on the increasing number of accommodations of various Ottoman delegations who stayed in Vienna as guests (XVIIᵗʰ-XVIIIᵗʰ centuries). Until the Treaty of Sistova (1791) that ended the Ottoman-Habsburg military confrontations definitely, approximately ninety Ottoman legations were sent to Vienna. In the present study, the focus is on the delegations sent between the years 1634 to 1774 and on the question of how and where they were accommodated by the Habsburg institutions as well as who was their responsible host. In this paper, an endeavor is made to conduct a study of Ottoman-Habsburg diplomatic history by combining the data revealed so far with information from some pertinent documents of the Austrian State Archives.