The author examines 17th-century Habsburg–Ottoman diplomacy, with a focus on the frontier. This work centres on the life and work of a so-called renegade, who was born Alexander Fischer in Vienna but later converted to Islam, serving successive viziers in Buda as Hüseyn Chiaus, while learning Hungarian. Between 1629 and 1660, he was employed as a spy by Habsburg diplomats and frontier officials, by the dignitaries of the Kingdom of Hungary (under the pseudonym Hans Caspar), and occasionally by the princes of Transylvania. He wrote dozens of reports (in both German and Hungarian), which are published in the second half of this volume. These sources are of great importance for the study of the Habsburg–Ottoman frontier as they provide pieces of information, for instance about the court dignitaries of the Vizier of Buda or about the Ottoman delegations sent by the Sublime Porte to the viziers, which cannot be retrieved from other sources. In addition, Hans Caspar’s reports are a valuable contribution to the research on renegades as the information they contain enriches the current state of research from several aspects.
In 1634 the Ottoman Emperor, Murad IV (r. 1623–1640), decided to lead a campaign against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He wanted to request military support from the Prince of Transylvania, György Rákóczi I (r. 1630–1648), but the prince tried to avoid it, because at that time he had been struggling with his political enemies, who endangered his rule in Transylvania. In the same year, the Habsburgs sent an ambassador (Johann Rudolf von Puchheim) to Constantinople, who tried to dissuade the Sublime Porte from leading a military campaign against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The idea of that mediation came from the former Vizier of Buda and at that time, the commander of the Ottoman army, Pasha Murteza, because he did not want this war either. Prince Rákóczi, Puchheim, Trzebiński (Aleksander, the Polish envoy) and Murteza all wanted to stall for time in relation to that campaign. In this article, the author investigates the aims and the problem-solving strategies of the Habsburg, the Transylvanian, the Polish and also the Ottoman elite in that situation. The war against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not take place in the end, because Murad IV began a campaign against the Safavid Empire.
HABSBURG-OTTOMAN COMMUNICATION IN THE MID-17TH CENTURY 120 21 Ocak 1652 tarihinde mektupların Konstantinopolis'e varışıyla bu manevra başarıya ulaştı. Sonuç olarak, bu çalışma Habsburg-Osmanlı diplomasisinin karmaşıklığını, zayıf noktalarını ve özellikle de Budin Paşası'nın rolünü tasvir etmektedir. Bu hadise aynı zamanda bir ulak kaybetmenin Habsburg ve Osmanlı İmparatorlukları arasındaki bilgi akışında kayda değer kesintilere yol açtığı gerçeğini de yansıtmaktadır.
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