The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It - Course Information

186 ~ THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE WORLD AROUND IT ~
to the Ottoman sultan under whatever circumstances, while information about
the Safavid court certainly was provided, but did not form the major topic of his
description.
~ Lying abroad for the good of one’s sovereign: obscuring Ottoman
intentions in early eighteenth-century Iran
As the account of a later envoy to Iran – a ‘real’ one this time – we may cite
Ahmed Dürri Efendi, who in 1721/1133–4 was accredited to the last Safavid
shah of Iran. Due to the loss of his capital I fahān to the Afghan invaders of his
territory, Shah usayn, who died the following year, had been obliged to transfer
his seat to Tehran. 21 At this time, Ahmed III’s grand vizier Damad Ibrahim Paşa
was planning to use the opportunity to occupy the western provinces of Iran, and
this involved coming to an agreement with the equally expansionist Russian tsar
Peter the Great. But at the same time, Ibrahim Paşa thought that it would be useful
to both impress the shah with the sultan’s power, and present the Ottoman
Empire to the embattled Safavid dignitaries as a friendly state. Only in 1724/
1136–7, after Shah usayn’s death, were Ottoman expansionist intentions, which
had long been suspected, to become completely obvious to the Iranian court. 22
Ahmed Dürri Efendi, the ambassador chosen for this mission, had filled a
variety of distinguished but not top-level scribal positions. For the occasion, he
was given the status of an orta elçi (middle-level ambassador) and the ceremonial
rank of a şıkk-ı sani defterdarı (finance director). He originated from the
frontier town of Van and was fluent in Persian; probably this skill was one of the
reasons why he had been selected in the first place. In order to emphasize the
prestige of the Ottoman sultan at the Safavid court, Dürri Efendi told his readers
that he was received with great pomp, the Vizier Rustam Khan meeting him at a
distance from Tehran with a cortège of 3,000 men. 23 To further stress the respect
that he had been shown, Dürri Efendi reported that the shah sent food from his
own kitchen; but the ambassador availed himself of this courtesy for only a short
period. Presumably it would have been a gesture of grave disrespect if Dürri
Efendi had refused to accept any food at all. But at the same time it would not
have done to create the impression that the envoy was dependent on the bounty
of the court to which he had been dispatched. To maintain reciprocity, Dürri
Efendi further distributed money and silk cloth among the court officials who
had been sent to serve him.
At the Ottoman ambassador’s first reception, the dignitary whom Ahmed
Dürri describes as the ‘Grand Vizier of the Persians’, immediately entered in
medias res, and attempted to find out which provinces the Ottomans planned to
annex. By contrast the ambassador, in a long speech which appears as a verbatim
citation, claimed that the frontier khan who had warned the Safavid court of
Ottoman aggressive intentions had been completely misinformed. 24
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