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The history of a “primary source”: The making of Tûghî's chronicle on the regicide of Osman II*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2009

Baki Tezcan*
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis

Abstract

A short chronicle by a former janissary called Tûghî on the regicide of the Ottoman Sultan Osman II in 1622 had a definitive impact on seventeenth-century Ottoman historiography in terms of the way in which this regicide was recounted. This study examines the formation of Tûghî's chronicle and shows how within the course of the year following the regicide, Tûghî's initial attitude, which recognized the collective responsibility of the military caste (kul) in the murder of Osman, evolved into a claim of their innocence. The chronicle of Tûghî is extant in successive editions of his own. A careful examination of these editions makes it possible to follow the evolution of Tûghî's narrative on the regicide in response to the historical developments in its immediate aftermath and thus witness both the evolution of a “primary source” and the gradual political sophistication of a janissary.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2009

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Footnotes

*

Previous versions of this study were presented in Konya (1999), Leiden (2002) and Washington (2004). Acknowledgement is due to the American Research Institute in Turkey for a post-doctoral research fellowship funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in the academic year 2001–02. I would like to thank Nezihi Aykut for drawing my attention to the relationship between the chronicles of Tûghî and Solakzâde. I owe the idea of interpreting a historical text within its immediate temporal context to Rifaʿat Abou-El-Haj, whose relentless criticism of my graduate work led me to think in different ways.

References

1 For a summary of the events, see Piterberg, Gabriel, An Ottoman Tragedy: History and Historiography at Play (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 21–8Google Scholar; and Vatin, Nicolas and Veinstein, Gilles, Le Sérail ébranlé: Essai sur les morts, dépositions et avènements des sultans ottomans XIVe–XIXe siècle ([Paris]: Fayard, 2003), 6063Google Scholar, 221–40.

2 Tezcan, Baki, “The 1622 military rebellion in Istanbul: a historiographical journey”, International Journal of Turkish Studies 8, 2002, 2543Google Scholar.

3 Piterberg, An Ottoman Tragedy; Gabriel Piterberg, “A study of Ottoman historiography in the seventeenth century”, DPhil thesis (University of Oxford, 1992); and Piterberg, Gabriel, “Speech acts and written texts: a rereading of a seventeenth-century historiographic episode”, Poetics Today 14/2, Summer 1993, 387417CrossRefGoogle Scholar. References to Piterberg will be to his book, An Ottoman Tragedy.

4 There are two indications suggesting that this is the case. First, Abdullah is the standard name given to new Muslims' fathers retrospectively. Second, Tûghî refers to himself as a servant of the sultan for two generations (kulı oglı kulıyum pâdişâhın), suggesting that his father, too, was a member of the military caste. See the Cambridge University Library, Dd. 11.18 (hereafter C), f. 53b; and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, HO 74 (hereafter V), f. 60a.

5 For the Jalâlîs, see Griswold, William J., The Great Anatolian Rebellion, 1000–1020/1591–1611 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1983)Google Scholar.

6 The factual information on the life of Tûghî is derived from his own work; see V, f. 60a–b. For a more accessible source, see Nezihi Aykut, “Hüseyin Tûgî”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi (hereafter İA2), vol. 19, 15–6.

7 See Andrews, Walter G., Poetry's Voice, Society's Song: Ottoman Lyric Poetry (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Kurnaz, Cemal, Türküden Gazele: Halk ve Divan Şiirinin Müşterekleri Üzerine Bir Deneme (Ankara: Akçağ, 1997)Google Scholar, for alternative perspectives on the study of Ottoman poetry.

8 Öztelli, Cahit, “Osmanlı Tarihine Adı Karışan Saz Şairi Koroğlu”, Türkoloji Dergisi 6/1, 1974, 121–36, at p. 125Google Scholar.

9 Kâtib Çelebi, Fezleke (Istanbul, 1286–87), vol. 2, 23; Na'îmâ, Ta'rîh-i Na'îmâ, 6 vols (Istanbul, 1281–83), vol. 2, p. 231; Öztelli, Cahit, “Âşık Nev'î”, Türk Dili 6/63, 1956, 147–50Google Scholar; İsen, Mustafa, “Genç Osman için yazılan bir ağıt ve bir mersiye”, Türk Kültürü 32/369, 1994, 13–21Google Scholar.

10 İzzettin Koyunoğlu Kütüphanesi (Konya), ms. 13316 (hereafter K), f. 21a; C., f. 33a–b; Bibliothèque nationale de France, supp. turc 871 (hereafter Deval), ff. 35a–b; V. f. 25a; Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden, or. 917 (hereafter L), ff. 96b–97a has some variants that must be copyist mistakes; M. A. Danon (ed. and tr.), “Contributions à l'histoire des sultans Osman II et Mouçtafâ I”, Journal Asiatique 11ème Série, 14, 1919, 69–139, 243–310 (hereafter Danon), at pp. 278–9, has the pen name Nev'î, about which see the orthographic explanation below; Bibliothèque nationale de France, turc 227 (hereafter Galland), f. 30a, has the fourth and seventh quatrains missing.

11 Öztelli, “Âşık Nev'î”, 150; Öztelli, “Osmanlı Tarihine Adı Karışan Saz Şairi Koroğlu”, 125.

12 Putting aside less significant differences, the three manuscripts, which are: Sertoğlu, Mithat (ed.), “Tuği Tarihi”, Belleten 11, 1947, 489514Google Scholar (hereafter Sertoğlu), pp. 504–05; Fahir İz (ed.), “Eski Düzyazının Gelişimi: XVII. yüzyılda halk dili ile yazılmış bir tarih kitabı; Hüseyin Tûgî, Vak'a-i Sultan Osman Han”, Türk Dili Araştırmaları Yıllığı – Belleten, 1967, 119–64 (hereafter Dresden/İz), pp. 140–41; and Beyazıt Kütüphanesi, Veliyüddin Efendi, 1963 (hereafter Beyazıt), f. 49a, have the fifth quatrain missing, and they all have kula instead of bize at the beginning of the third line in the sixth quatrain. Kâtib Çelebi, vol. 2, 23, and hence Na'îmâ, vol. 2, p. 231, must have used a source that is similar to these last three because neither of them has the fifth quatrain, and they both have kula instead of bize; there are two more corruptions in these two chronicles: rûz instead of devr at the beginning of the second line of the sixth quatrain, and ey dil instead of Tûgî at the beginning of the first line of the last quatrain. While the former does not change the meaning, the latter conceals the pen name of the author by substituting “Tûghî!” with “oh [my] heart!”

13 Öztelli, “Âşık Nev'î”, 149–50.

14 “Monlâ Hüseyin, meddâh-ı ocak”; V., f. 60b.

15 See, for instance, V., f. 60b, where he refers to himself as a faqîr, which, among other things, is used to refer to a Sufi dervish; he also uses the opposition between the overt (zâhir) and covert (bâtın) meanings of things, which has strong Sufi connotations, see K., f. 21b.

16 See, for instance, K., ff. 22a–b, which includes several references to Iranian and Islamic traditions.

17 Danon, 295–6; V., ff. 60b–61a.

18 Nutku, Özdemir, Meddahlık ve Meddah Hikayeleri (n.p.: İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, c. 1976), 55Google Scholar.

19 For gh, and who would be entitled to carry one, see Kepeci, Kâmil, Tarih Lûgati (İstanbul: İskit, 1952), 372–3Google Scholar; and Pakalın, Mehmet Zeki, Tarih Deyimleri ve Terimleri Sözlüğü (İstanbul: Milli Eğitim, 1946), vol. 3, 522–4Google Scholar; for the attire of the solaks, see Uzunçarşılı, İsmail Hakkı, Osmanlı Devleti Teşkilâtından Kapukulu Ocakları: I. Acemi Ocağı ve Yeniçeri Ocağı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1943), 218–26Google Scholar.

20 Although I could find no extant references to a meddâh of the janissary corps elsewhere, one of the meddâhs of the imperial cavalry corps in the seventeenth century is well known; see Nutku, Meddahlık ve Meddah Hikayeleri, plate III.

21 Compare, for instance, Danon, p. 283, with V., ff. 29b–30a; or Deval, f. 71b–72a, with V., ff. 50a–52a.

22 Piterberg reads Tûghî's chronicle first as a text that “was meant to be read aloud to gatherings of troops”. He also discusses the traces of orality in Tûghî's text; see Piterberg, 74–7.

23 C., f. 53b; L., ff. 71b–72a, 110b; Dresden/İz, p. 122. The copy date of K. is 1763, 141 years after the chronicle's date of composition. The many notes taken on it, such as the one on f. 1b, suggest that it circulated among the janissaries for several years afterwards.

24 For a more detailed outline of the above, including a detailed citation of the relevant literature, see my “Tarih ile tarihyazımı ilişkisi ekseninden ‘Tûgî Tarihi’ metinleri üzerinde bir deneme”, in Uluslararası Kuruluşunun 700. Yıl Dönümünde Bütün Yönleriyle Osmanlı Devleti Kongresi, 7–9 Nisan 1999 – Bildiriler, edited by Alâaddin Aköz et al. (Konya: Selçuk Üniversitesi, 2000), 663–75, at pp. 664–70; see also the appendix of my “Searching for Osman: a reassessment of the deposition of the Ottoman Sultan Osman II (1618–1622)”, Ph.D. dissertation (Princeton University, 2001), 268–95. One should add five more references to the sources cited in these two studies: Schmidt, Jan, Catalogue of Turkish Manuscripts in the Library of Leiden University and Other Collections in the Netherlands, vol. 1 (Leiden: Leiden University Library, 2000), 329–31Google Scholar, describes the Leiden ms. Or. 917/2; Hasan Bey-zâde Paşa, Ahmed, Hasan Bey-zâde Târîhi, ed. Aykut, Şevki Nezihi, 3 vols (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2004), vol. 1, pp. dxivdxvGoogle Scholar, discusses one of the pseudo-Tûghî manuscripts; İsmet Parmaksızoğlu, “Onyedinci yüzyıl Rumeli olayları ile ilgili özel tarihler ve Osekli İbrahim Efendinin tarihçesi”, VIII. Türk Tarih Kongresi (Ankara: 11–15 Ekim 1976): Kongreye sunulan bildiriler, 3 vols (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1979–83), vol. 2, 1075–94, at p. 1076, underlines the stylistic difference between the text of Hasanbegzâde and that of pseudo-Tûghî; Dār al-kutub al-qawmiyya (Cairo), ms. 168 ta'rīkh turkī Talʿat, includes another Hasanbegzâde text followed by pseudo-Tûghî; and İsmail Hami Danişmend, İzahlı Osmanlı Tarihi Kronolojisi, second edition, 6 vols (İstanbul: Türkiye Yayınevi, 1971–72), vol. 6, 282–308, provides a romanized version of the Tûghî text in the Danon ms. Nezihi Aykut apparently produced a critical edition of Tûghî's chronicle for publication, see Aykut, “Hüseyin Tûgî”, 16. This must be Aykut's Habilitationsschrift of 1988 which, to the best of my knowledge, is not accessible in any public library in Turkey.

25 There is a passing reference to things taking place during the Eid, suggesting that Tûghî actually composed this version of his text at least a few days later; yet he chose to end the formal narrative with the coming of the Eid; see K., ff. 32a–b, 33a–b.

26 The earliest literary use of the expression “dreadful event” (vâkı'a-i hâ'ile) with reference to the regicide of Osman II that I could find is by Mehmed bin Mehmed (d. 1640), Ta'rîh, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Lala İsmail Efendi 300, f. 10b. Kâtib Çelebi was going to adopt this expression with a slight modification, naming the event vak'a-i hâ'ile-i ‘osmâniye, which gained widespread acceptance since the widely read chronicle of Na'îmâ followed Kâtib Çelebi's usage; see Kâtib Çelebi, vol. 2, 9; Na'îmâ, vol. 2, 208.

27 K., ff. 1b–2a; the phrase “and it is the piece (makâle) [in which] the Sultan of the martyrs, Sultan Osman Khan suffers a ‘sudden calamity’ (vâkı'a) after descending from the throne of the sultanate”, which one finds before the invocation, must be a later addition to this text which is a late-eighteenth-century copy; compare Danon, 254; L., f. 71b. Unfortunately, C. is missing a folio at its beginning and thus one cannot compare this particular section of the introduction.

28 The Turkish story of Joseph, by Hamdî (late fifteenth century) seems to have been the most popular, with some 129 identified manuscripts today; see Zehra Öztürk, “Hamdullah Hamdi”, İA2, vol. 15, 452–4. For other occurrences of “Sultân Mustafa Hân-ı Yûsuf-cemâl” in Tûghî's text, see K., ff. 14b, 27a; for alternatives such as “Şâh-ı Yûsuf-serîr”, “pâdişâh-ı Yûsuf-nizâm”, “Yûsuf gibi” [part of a verse in a eulogy], “pâdişâh-ı Yûsuf-sıfât”, see K., ff. 10b, 12a, 21a, 32a; see also below.

29 K., f. 10a.

30 K., f. 11a.

31 K., ff. 17a–b. I chose to read “çeşdeci ” as opposed to “çesteci ”, which is the spelling in the text.

32 See, for instance, K., ff. 12a, 28b, 29b, 30a; and C., f. 53b [missing in K.].

33 K., f. 12b.

34 K., ff. 13b, 15a, 18b.

35 K., ff. 29b, 30a–b; my thanks are due to Jocelyn Sharlet for suggesting the shepherd–sheep/ruler–subject analogy.

36 K., ff. 32b–33a; compare V., f. 35b.

37 K., ff. 33a–b.

38 K., ff. 27a, 33b.

39 Mehmed Hâlisî's Beşâretnâme, or the “Book of [announcement of] the Good News”, which is another contemporary work produced during the second reign of Mustafa (1622–23), represents the deposition in very similar terms; see my “Zafernâme müellifi Hâlisî'nin bilinmeyen bir eseri münâsebetiyle”, Osmanlı Araştırmaları/The Journal of Ottoman Studies 19, 1999, 83–98, at pp. 84–6, and the first part of “The multiple faces of the One: the invocation section of Ottoman literary introductions as a locus for the central argument of the text”, Middle Eastern Literatures, 12/1, 2009.

40 Compare K., ff. 5a, 32a–b, with V., ff. 4a, 35b.

41 Deval, ff. 1b–2b; the quoted verse is on f. 2a.

42 K., f. 16b; also C., ff. 25b–26a; L., f. 91a–b, is missing the last three sentences; and D., p. 274, simply states that the soldiers asked for Ayas Agha to be killed.

43 Deval, ff. 27b–28b.

44 K., f. 19a–b; C., ff. 30a–31a; L., f. 94a; and Danon, p. 276, with some insignificant variants.

45 Deval, ff. 32a–33a; the phrase “ahlaksız” in Tezcan, “Tarih ile tarihyazımı ilişkisi ekseninden ‘Tûgî Tarihi’”, p. 673, has to be deleted.

46 K., f. 20b; see also, C., f. 32b, L., f. 95b, and Danon, p. 278. The phrase “hakkına vâsıl eylediler” could be read both ways.

47 Deval, 35a.

48 Compare K., f. 16a, and Danon, p. 274, with Deval, ff. 26b–27a.

49 Deval, ff. 39b–40a; compare with the first and second versions, K., f. 24a; Danon, 280.

50 Although it is difficult to say when exactly Abaza Pasha became active, news relating to him began to appear in Tûghî's chronicle at the end of Zûlhijje 1031, late October 1622; see Deval, ff. 61a–62a, 65b–66b, 67a–69a, 72b. For the “Abaza rebellion”, see Piterberg, Gabriel, “The alleged rebellion of Abaza Mehmed Paşa: historiography and the Ottoman state in the seventeenth century”, International Journal of Turkish Studies 8, 2002, 1324Google Scholar.

51 See the poem, apparently written by a supporter of Abaza, in which the anonymous poet gives voice to Abaza's determination to avenge himself on the janissaries; Danon, 308–10.

52 See, Deval, ff. 69a–72a.

53 Compare Deval, ff. 71b–72a, with V., ff. 50a–52a.

54 V., f. 54a.

55 Dresden/İz, p. 141; Beyazıt, f. 49b; Sertoğlu, p. 505. Kâtib Çelebi reproduces this point only to respond to it by claiming that Osman had bad fortune from the day of his enthronement; Na'îmâ elaborates on Kâtib Çelebi's response by adding further astrological arguments relating to Osman's bad fortune; see Kâtib Çelebi, vol. 2, 24; Na'îmâ, vol. 2, 233–4.

56 See Dār al-kutub al-misriyya (Cairo), ms. 168 ta'rīkh turkī Talʿat, ff. 363a–364b; for a summary of the story, see Piterberg, pp. 101–2. Piterberg is, however, mistaken in attributing the authorship to Hasanbegzâde.

57 The anonymous author of the Tûghî derivative text mentions their names; see Dresden/İz, p. 145; see also Öztelli “Osmanlı Tarihine Adı Karışan Saz Şairi Koroğlu”, 122–3, 125.

58 I am planning to follow the trajectory of this evolution more thoroughly in a monograph tentatively entitled II. Osman'ın Gençleştirilmesi: Uygulamalı bir tarihyazımı çalışması, which will include, among other things, critical editions of selected Tûghî texts.

59 Pocock, J. G. A., “The politics of historiography”, Historical Research 78, 2005, 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 1, 4; Kafadar, Cemal, “Janissaries and other riffraff of Ottoman Istanbul: rebels without a cause?” in Tezcan, Baki and Barbir, Karl K. (eds), Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World: A Volume of Essays in Honor of Norman Itzkowitz (Madison: University of Wisconsin Center for Turkish Studies, 2007), 113–34Google Scholar.