The commercial travels of Martin Gruneweg (1562-after 1615) Introducing the first-person account of a commercial employee moving between Lviv and Istanbul in the years before and after 1600, the present paper focuses on the conduct of trade and caravan life as a personal experience. Ottoman historians have not often used this text, although it is available in a careful twenty-first century edition. Likely, they have hesitated because Martin Gruneweg’s description of his Ottoman experiences – visiting Istanbul several times, he has left a detailed record of his adventures on the road -- is only part of an extensive autobiography: the story includes lengthy episodes that have nothing to do with Ottoman history. Presumably, Gruneweg’s language, early modern German with its – to present-day eyes -- rather forbidding spelling, has not facilitated matters either. On the other hand, Gruneweg’s experiences in the service of an Armenian trader resident in Lviv/Lvov are most valuable for the historian of commerce, because the connection Istanbul-Lviv, by means of the commercial cum military road known to Ottomans as the sağ kol, was a significant source of silver coin for the Ottoman economy. On the return trip moreover, the caravan carried luxury goods including Mediterranean fruits, and these items are of interest as in recent years, there have been several studies of Ottoman luxuries in demand among the wealthier sectors of the Polish population. In addition, commercial historians will find Gruneweg’s description of his relations with his employer and the other Armenians in the caravan of considerable interest. After all, most travel accounts from the late 1500s and early 1600s are the work of scholars and/or embassy personnel, and commercial employees have left very few testimonies. Gruneweg has provided a generally sympathetic outsider’s view of Armenian merchants: these people had no links to New Julfa and the Iranian silk trade, favored topics among early modernists. In their own line of business however, these merchants were very successful. For scholars concerned with commercial organization, Gruneweg’s remarks on the role of the Armenian caravan leaders (kervan basis) repay a close study: to these merchant notables, the sultans had accorded semi-consular authority over the members of the caravan, as long as the latter was on the road. Thus, the commercial sections of Gruneweg’s travelogue help the historian to ‘flesh out’ the bare outlines of a little known but important aspect of Ottoman links with Eastern Europe.

In 1558, three Muslims left their homes in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and set out on hajj. The journey of these “Lipka Tatars” south to Mecca and Medina, some four-thousand kilometers as the crow flies, took them first to the Ottoman capital in Istanbul where they were approached by Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha, who asked them to create an account of the history and condition of the Muslim community in “Lehistan”, or Poland-Lithuania, for Sultan Süleymân I (r. 1520-1566). The resulting work, the Risâle-i Tatar-i Leh, was composed with the help of the Ottoman Ulema and is a rare and invaluable account of Christian Europe’s largest integrated Muslim population in a thoroughly Ottoman context. In it, we learn how members of Süleymân’s court envisioned Polish-Lithuanian Muslims as a branch of the Islamic ecumene, the local legal status Muslims in the dâr al-harb, their patrimony and social hierarchies, details regarding the religious practices of Muslims in the region, and the responsibilities of the Ottoman Sultan as the Khādim al-Haramayn al-Şarifayn (protector of the Mecca and Medina) vis-á-vis Muslims living permanently outside the lands of the dâr al-Islâm. Because the Risâle-i Tatar-i Leh was produced in the Ottoman court, it was also a tool for legitimizing the sultan’s claim to the caliphate and provided justification for future expansion north into the land of the kâfirs. Adopting the conceptual view of a deep and permeable borderlands where the ethnic and religious diversity of the Ottoman Empire can be seen to stretch unbroken to the similarly diverse lands of neighboring Poland-Lithuania, new continuities in pre-modern Muslim European experiences emerge. While the encounter described in the Risâle-i Tatar-i Leh has no known equal in the historical record, it shows that the Muslim communities as distant and seemingly disparate as Istanbul and the northern reaches of Lithuania were not far from one another’s thoughts. The Lipka Tatar/Ottoman Ulema co-authorship of the text allowed for novel comparisons of sacral architecture, religious education and training, linguistic practice, ethno-racial identity, and the Weltanschauung of two communities rooted in different and distant portions of the deep Abrahamic borderlands. These comparisons show us the breadth of religious practices in the early modern Islamic world and the modes by which distant Muslim communities employed their own knowledge of history, identity, and religious practice to forge reinforce new bonds of fraternity.

In 1678, Thomas Smith (1638-1710), an Oxonian scholar who became a member of the Royal Society later in life, published Remarks upon the Manners, Religion and Government of the Turks; together with a Survey of the Seven Churches of Asia, as they now lye in their ruines: and a brief Description of Constantinople (London, Printed for Moses Pitt). In the 1680s and 1690s, moreover, this author followed up his book with an account of his travels to Istanbul and Bursa in the Philosophical Transactions (No. 152 [1683], 155 [1684], and 230 [1695]) of the Royal Society. In his travelogues, Smith presented himself as an antiquarian and classical scholar who attempted to locate the remnants of the principal buildings of ancient Greece and Rome and, where possible transcribe their inscriptions. Besides, however, Smith, who for about three years (1668-1670) had served as chaplain to Sir Daniel Harvey, English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1668 to 1672, proved himself as a keen observer of the Ottoman government, society, and culture. His travels and a relatively long stay in the Ottoman capital helped him to collect the first-hand material he later used in his publications. Given the limits of seventeenth-century sources, the accounts of Thomas Smith offer new data and insights on the political, social, and cultural fabric of the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, his work allows researchers access to an “outsider” perspective, which they can compare and contrast with other available sources. For from Smith’s pen, we possess not just various studies on historical events including the Ottoman siege of Candia, the conflict between the Kadızadelis and Sivasis, and the earthquakes in Istanbul and Anatolia in 1668 and 1669, but also notes on Ottoman understandings of, and approaches to, the sciences and geographical discoveries of the period. At times adhering to stereotypical assumptions, the little-known travel accounts of Smith are of interest if we want to find out what an English scholar and religious figure observed in the Ottoman Empire, how he interpreted what he saw, and what he found worth publishing in a scientific journal of the early modern period.

In the aftermath of the Passarowitz Treaty of 1718, the governments in Istanbul and Vienna exchanged embassies that delivered the ratified versions of the treaty to their respective former opponents. Two travelogues recorded the journeys of the Austrian ambassador Damian Hugo von Virmont and the Ottoman ambassador Dayezade İbrahim Paşa. The Austrian travelogue, which was significantly longer and more detailed than its Ottoman counterpart, was the work of Virmont’s secretary Cornelius von den Driesch, while the author of the Ottoman travelogue remains unknown. When comparing the reception and treatment of the two embassies in Vienna and Istanbul with earlier ambassadorial exchanges between the two empires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a modification in Habsburg-Ottoman diplomatic modes is unmistakable. In dramatic contrast to the uneasy and irritable diplomatic encounters of -- in particular -- the pre-Carlowitz years, the new diplomatic normal between the two states was courtesy and hospitality. In Vienna, the transition must have resulted from the realization that Ottoman invasions were now unlikely. In Istanbul, a reconciliatory diplomatic posture toward Austria probably was due to the recent territorial losses and the sultan’s acquiescence to a complete parity with his erstwhile opponent. When we situate the travelogues within the broader historical evolution of early modern Habsburg-Ottoman diplomacy, the day-to-day routines of Virmont and Dayezade Ibrahim in the two imperial capitals confirm these conclusions. This presentation is part of an ongoing larger research project that meshes the micro-historical details of Habsburg and Ottoman diplomatic sources in a macro-historical narrative of exchanges and encounters between the two empires during the early modern era.