The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It - Course Information

~ INTRODUCTION ~ 21
the style to which they were accustomed and any messenger bearing a missive
from the sultan or grand vizier could be assured of a highly respectful reception.
69 Thus if the ‘movement’ inherent in the present study can at all be
described in a few words, it would be best to say that we journey from Istanbul to
the margins of empire, but ultimately return to our starting point.
However, our understanding of borders and frontiers, as lines that can be
drawn on a map, at least in the sixteenth century did not correspond to what educated
Ottomans would have meant by their own term of serhad. In consonance
with the victories of rulers such as Mehmed II (r. 1451–81/855–86) and Süleyman
the Magnificent, or even the conquest of Cyprus by Lala Mustafa Paşa on
behalf of Selim II (r. 1566–74/973–82), the serhad was perceived as advancing
ever further into the Darülharb. When truces were negotiated, which according to
the stipulations of Islamic religious law had to be strictly temporary, it was usually
the possession of individual fortresses that was considered crucial, rather
than the course of a line on the map. 70 Recent research, though, has demonstrated
that ‘line borders’ were occasionally negotiated in the sixteenth and perhaps even
in the fifteenth century. 71 In the Ottoman–Polish frontier zone in the Ukraine
such ‘line borders’ were agreed upon several times in the 1600s/1009–1111. But
the fact that the sınurnames documenting such agreements have rarely survived
from the period before the seventeenth century, and that the oldest items have
come to light not in Ottoman but in Polish archives, may indicate that the administration
in Istanbul did not take these ‘line borders’ very seriously. Probably they
were regarded as temporary and soon to be superseded.
The mechanism for establishing such ‘line borders’ was the same in the early
1600s/after 1008 as that which was to become typical for the late seventeenth
century and beyond. An Ottoman official of reasonably high rank came together
with a Polish or Habsburg military man of appropriate status, and the two people
and their respective suites had to travel through often sparsely inhabited and difficult
territories, ensuring that ‘landmarks’ were erected if no natural features
readily presented themselves. However, such agreements did not mean that
incursions into the realm of ‘the other’ were no longer to take place. To the contrary,
quite a few truces or ‘peace agreements’ stipulated that small-scale border
violations by either side would not involve the resumption of war. Officially
drawn ‘line borders’ notwithstanding, throughout our period the Ottoman frontiers
were still somewhat flexible by our standards.
~ ‘Placing’ our topic in time
As to the years to be covered, they correspond to the period in which the Ottoman
Empire can be said to have achieved a kind of ‘stable state’. Ours story
begins in the early 1540s/after 946, when the situation in Hungary had been
finalized for the next 150 years, as the defunct kingdom of Matthias Corvinus