Global Crisis

by Parker, Geoffrey

  19. Peçevi Tarihi, II, 464; Roe, A true and faithfull relation, n.p., adding that if Osman's plan to create a military counterweight to the Janissaries and sipahis ‘had taken effect, what events it might have produced by a civil war is not easy to judge’.

  20. Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni di ambasciatori veneti, 557–8, Giorgio Giustinian (1627). Mustafa returned to the ‘cage’ and died there in 1639.

  21. Pecevi Tarihi, 385; Topcular Katibi Abdulkadir, 944–6, 985; Hasan Beyzade Tarihi, 375. I thank Jane Hathaway for drawing to my attention the floods that partially destroyed the Kaaba in 1630.

  22. Ibrahim, Al-Azmat, appendix 11; Numarali Mühimme Defteri (H. 1040/1630–1631), entry 356. Grove and Conterio, ‘The climate of Crete’, 236, record a ‘very severe’ drought in winter and spring 1630.

  23. Numarali Mühimme Defteri (H 1040/1630–1631), analysis of contents by Günhan Börekci. By contrast, the register for 1617–18 (also published) records less than half the number of entries in all three categories.

  24. Setton, Venice, 43 n. 14, quoting Sir Peter Wyche. See also Grehan, ‘Smoking’. I thank Günhan Börekci for pointing out to me the coincidence between the Personal Rule of Murad (1632–40) and Charles I (1629–40).

  25. Katib Çelebi, The balance of truth, 135–6 (from Katib Çelebi's autobiography, referring to a day in 1627–8). It is important to remember that, since the Kadizadeli movement failed to gain its objectives, most surviving sources on it come from its later critics (including Katib Çelebi).

  26. Details in Zilfi, Politics of piety, 138–9, 146, 192 (quotation). Zilfi, ‘The Kadizadelis’, 253–5, lists the movement's 21-point programme. The underwear/spoon example comes from Tarih-i Naima VI, 226; the summary of practices condemned by the Kadizadelis from ibid., 219–20, and Çelebi, Balance, 97–100 and 110–23. I thank John Curry for these references.

  27. Rycaut, The present state, part II, 128–31 on the Kadizadelis and 135–40 on the Sufis. For Rycaut's background, and its probable effect on his view of Ottoman affairs, see Darling, ‘Ottoman politics through British eyes’; nevertheless Ottoman sources often corroborate Rycaut (see Terzioğlu, ‘Sufi and dissident’, 205, for an example).

  28. Kâtib Çelebi, Balance of Truth, 43–4.

  29. On the extreme weather of 1640–2, see Topçular Katibi Abdülkadir, 1,145, 1,156, 1,164, 1,173; D'Arrigo, Cullen and Touchan, ‘Tree rings’; Odorico, Conseils, 163–81; White, The climate, 205–6; and pp. 4–5 above.

  30. See Unat, ‘Sadrazam Kemankeş’, on the memorandum; and Uluçay, ‘Sultan İbrahim’, on the Sultan's administrative activity. Howard, ‘Ottoman historiography’, 64, notes that Koçi Beg composed one version of his Risâle (Treatise of Advice) for Murad and another for Ibrahim, and that he wrote the second in a notably simpler style, perhaps indicating real or perceived learning difficulties in the new sultan (I owe this point to Colin Imber).

  31. See EI, s.v. ‘Husayn Djindji Khodja’. Other data from Mantran, L'histoire, 237–9. Kunt, The sultan's servants, 70–5, showed that over half the provincial governors appointed between 1632 and 1641 remained in office for less than a year and only 10 per cent served for two years or more – a far faster turnover than before.

  32. Setton, Venice, 121 n. 25, letter to Giovanni Soranzo, 1 Mar. 1645.

  33. Dujčev, Avvisi, 111, Martino di Turra to the Pope, Ragusa, 12 Aug. 1647, forwarding information received from ‘our friend in Constantinople’ – probably Soranzo, the Venetian resident whom the sultan had placed under house arrest when war broke out.

  34. Dujčev, Avvisi, 110–11, Turra to the Pope, Ragusa, 12 Aug 1647; Brennan, The travel diary of Robert Bargrave, 83.

  35. Costin, Letopiseţul Ţărîi Moldovei, 196–7 (my thanks to Mircea Platon for finding and translating this item); Brennan, The travel diary, 135.

  36. Kâtib Çelebi, Fezleke, II, 326; Dujčev, Avvisi, 120–1, Turra to the Pope, Ragusa, 9 July 1648, forwarding information sent from Istanbul on 12 June; Setton, Venice, 151 n 30, quoting Mormori, Guerra di Candia. Monconys, Journal, I, 49, letter from Istanbul, 24 Aug. 1648, also described the violence of the earthquake.

  37. Monconys, Journal, I, 54, letter from Istanbul, 24 Aug. 1648, notes the Chief Mufti's legal consultation.

  38. Emecan, ‘İbrâhim’, 280, narrates the deposition (see the fuller version, based on Tarih-i Na'ima, in Vatin and Veinstein, Le sérail, 243–7); Monconys, Journal, I, 54, letter from Istanbul, 24 Aug. 1648.

  39. Monconys, Journal, I, 60, letter from Istanbul, 24 Aug. 1648.

  40. Brennan, The travel, 87. Finkel, Osman's dream, 235–40, makes sense of impossibly confused events.

  41. Behrnauer, ‘Hâgî Chalfa's Dustûru'l-'amel’, 125–32, a German translation of Kâtib Çelebi, ‘The rule of action for the rectification of defects’ (19 Mar 1653). See also the English summary in Lewis, Islam in history, 207–11. Erol Özvar has calculated Ottoman state income in 1648–9 at 89 tonnes of silver and expenditure at 154 tonnes, with corresponding figures in 1650 of 149 and 192 tonnes, and in 1652–3 of 145 and 215: Özvar, ‘Fiscal crisis’.

  42. Kunt, ‘The Köprülü years’, 20, citing Tarih-i Na'ima, and 31. On the other hand, in 1653 and 1656 the Ottomans rejected two Mughal requests for a declaration of war against Iran; see ch. 13 above.

  43. Kâtib Çelebi, Balance of truth, 28–9.

  44. Rolamb, ‘Relation’, 699. The Swedish envoy wrote of conditions ‘at my arrival’ in Istanbul, namely May 1657. Presumably the sultan's position six months before had been even more hazardous.

  45. Zilfi, ‘Kadizadelis’, 252.

  46. Kunt, ‘The Köprülü years’, 65.

  47. Kunt, ‘The Köprülü years’, 76, quoting the history of Mehmed Halife, one of the pages chosen to recite the Qur'an. Kunt also notes that since both the emperor and his Vizier were named Mehmed, the exercise was particularly appropriate for rallying public support for their cause.

  48. Kunt, ‘The Köprülü years’, 100–15 (messianic claims on p. 109); White, The climate, 214, on the extreme weather of 1657–9.

  49. Kunt, ‘The Köprülü years’, 119–20, quoting from Tarih-i Na'ima.

  50. On Romania, see Nicoară, Sentimentul, I, 37–8, quoting the chronicle of Radu Popescu and a sale contract by Gavril Niţă, 1660 (and other similar ones); on Transylvania, see Cernovodeanu and Binder, Cavalerii Apocalipsului, 90, quoting the Journal of Mihail Teleki, Chancellor of Transylvania, for 1661 (my thanks to Mircea Platon for both the references, and the translations). See also the data in White, The climate, 214–15.

  51. Details from Terzioğlu, ‘Sufi and dissident’, 205–6; and Baer, ‘Death in the hippodrome’, 80.

  52. Anti-Semitic interpretations recorded by Baer, ‘The Great Fire’, 172–3, also noting the simultaneous elimination of other non-Muslims from the area. He notes that ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the capital began ‘about a year after the fire’, but does not connect that delay with the transfer of power from Köprülü Mehmed to his son.

  53. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 88, quoting the Zohar, a key text of the Kabbalah, and explaining how it was made to show ‘1648’ as the year of the Apocalypse. Idel, ‘Differing conceptions’, provides a brilliant discussion of the ‘unwillingness to adhere to the same answers that had been valid only a short time before’ that led to the vision of Sabbatai and others. Menassah ben Israel, Esperança de Israel (Amsterdam, 1650; also published that same year in Hebrew, Portuguese, Latin and English).

  54. Israel, ‘Menasseh ben Israel’, 390–2, expertly analyzes the first three disasters of 1645–8 but omits the fourth. On Philip IV's 1647 bankruptcy and anti-Jewish policies, see ch. 9.

  55. Scholem, Sabbatai, 136, quoting a letter of Rabbi Solomon Laniado in 1669, relating his meeting with Shabbatai four years before. On Shabbatai as a ‘fool’, see ibid., 125–38, and Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets, 1–2, 118–19 (as Goldish remarks, ‘Shabbatai Zvi was a strange man in a strange age’). My thanks to Professor Goldish and to Benzion Chinn for helping me underst
and the ‘Sabbatean phenomenon’. On Izmir's Jewish community – perhaps 2,000 out of a total population of 40,000 by 1648 – see Eldem, The Ottoman city, 98–102.

  56. Goldish, Sabbatean Prophets, 2–3, notes that Shabbatai's preferred language was Spanish, and that the 1659 Izmir edition of Esperança de Israel appeared in that language.

  57. Goldish, Sabbatean Prophets, 108, 119–20, quoting Leyb ben Oyzer, Beschraybung fun Shabsai Zvi, who based his account on interviews with those who ‘ate and drank’ with Shabbatai. On the networks that spread the word of Shabbatai, see ch. 18 above.

  58. Goldish, Sabbatean Prophets, 102–5, quoting Thomas Coenen (a Dutch minister residing in Izmir at the time), Ydele verwachtinge der Joden getoont in den persoon van Sabethai Zevi (Amsterdam, 1669).

  59. Pepys, Diary, VII, 47 (entry for 19 Feb. 1666 OS). Pepys added ‘certainly this year of 1666 will be a year of great action, but what the consequence of it will be, God knows’.

  60. Maier and Waugh, ‘“The blowing of the Messiah's trumpet”’, document the tsar's interest and the importance of Christian as well as Jewish reports in spreading Shabbatai's claims. Benzion Chinn reminds me that Shabbatai's father was a purchasing agent for English merchants in Izmir.

  61. Scholem, Sabbatai, 427–33, lists the ‘kings’ to whom Shabbatai gave a biblical name (King David, King Hezekiah, and so on). Hathaway, ‘The Mawza’ exile’, links the Yemen rebellion of 1665–6 with Shabbatai.

  62. Scholem, Sabbatai, 435, quoting a letter written by Fr. La Croix. The ‘fall of the Crescent’ was not an idle threat at this time: four sultans in living memory had been deposed – Mustafa in 1617 and again in 1623, and his nephews Osman in 1622 and Ibrahim in 1648.

  63. The verdict of Scholem, Sabbatai, ix.

  64. Finkel, Osman's dream, 276–7, offers two description of this gala. Kolodziejczyk, Ottoman-Polish diplomatic relations, prints the treaties of these years. Özvar, ‘Fiscal crisis’, calculated that the Ottoman treasury in 1670–1 received the equivalent of 147 tonnes of silver and spent 143 tonnes.

  65. White, The climate, 215–22, provides an excellent summary of these harsh conditions after 1675.

  66. Finkel, Osman's dream, 284, records the Grand Vizier's decision to reject the advice of the Chief Mufti and on p. 288 his similar rejection of a dream predicting disaster if he attacked the Habsburgs.

  67. Xoplaki, ‘Variability’, 596–8, summarizes the extreme weather in the Balkans in the later seventeenth century.

  68. Hathaway, A tale, 88–9, 181–2, 185–6, 190–1; and Hathaway, ‘The Evlād-i ‘Arab’.

  69. Luterbacher and Xoplaki, ‘500-Year Winter Temperature’, especially graph at p. 140; Silahdar Tarihi, II, 263–4 (I thank Jane Hathaway both for this reference and for the translation); and Faroqhi, ‘A natural disaster’.

  Chapter 8 The ‘lamentations of Germany’ and its Neighbours, 1618–88

  1. I thank Katherine Becker and Leif Torkelsen for help with some German and Scandinavian sources; and Derek Croxton, Christopher Friedrichs and Paul Lockhart for valuable critiques of this chapter.

  2. Von Krusenstjern and Medick, Zwischen Alltag und Katastrophe, 34 (order of catastrophes as listed); Koenigsberger, ‘The European Civil War’ (1971).

  3. The geography of the Holy Roman Empire is extremely complex. Besides the territories named, northern Italy and (until 1648) the Swiss cantons and the Low Countries also owed nominal obedience to the emperor, but he rarely exercised direct power there (the war over Mantua, an imperial fief, in 1628–31, was an exception). Conversely, although after 1564 the emperors also ruled Hungary and Moravia, but they did not form part of the empire.

  4. Dollinger, ‘Kurfürst Maximilian’, 298–9, Maximilian to his father (who had just abdicated), 21 June 1598.

  5. MacHardy, ‘The rise of absolutism’, 436.

  6. Polyxena Lobković quoted by Polišenský, The Thirty Years' War, 94; Landsteiner, ‘Crisis of wine production’, 326–7, shows unprecedented oscillation in yields during 1617–21.

  7. Zillhardt, ‘Zeytregister’, 93.

  8. Magen, Reichsgräfliche Politik in Franken, 190, statement of Hohenlohe's chancellor, June 1619.

  9. Gindely, Geschichte, II, 164, Count Solms, Frederick's representative in Frankfurt, to his master, 28 Aug. 1619; Lee, Dudley Carleton, 270–1, letter of 18 Sep. 1619.

  10. Weiss, ‘Die Vorgeschichte’, 468, Frederick to Elizabeth, his wife, 19 Aug. 1619.

  11. Reade, Sidelights, I, 388, Sir Edward Conway to Secretary of State Naunton, Nov. 1620.

  12. Wilson, Thirty Years' War, 353 (see 351–61 on the ‘law of the conqueror’).

  13. Warde, ‘Subsistence’, 303, quoting J. Ginschopff, Cronica (1630); Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, 59, quoting Münzbeschikung der Kipper und Wipper (1621); Stránský, Respublica Bohemiae (1634), 495–6, quoted page 35 above. Langer, Thirty Years' War, 31–2 and 49, notes the rebellions. See also the broadsheets and commentary in Paas et al., Kipper and Wipper. ‘Kippen’ means ‘to tilt’ and ‘Wippen’ means both ‘to wag’ (like scales) and ‘to torture’, so Kipper- und Wipperzeit is rhyming slang (like ‘hurley-burley’ or ‘pell-mell’).

  14. Supple, Commercial crisis, 75–6, 79 and 93, quoting Edward Misselden's pamphlet, Free trade, 1622.

  15. Turbolo, Copia, 6.

  16. Stouppe, La religion des Hollandois, 96–8 (the author was a Swiss Protestant officer garrisoned in Utrecht in 1673); Van der Woude and Mentink, ‘La population’.

  17. AGS Estado, 2327/168, consulta of the council of state, 12 June 1621.

  18. Lockhart, Denmark, 55, quoting the earl of Leicester in 1632; other details from Ladewig Petersen, ‘Conspicuous consumption’, 64–5.

  19. Mann, Wallenstein, 369, quoting the Bavarian council of war.

  20. Jespersen, ‘Slaget’, 89, quoting Christian's holograph Skrivekalender: ‘Sloges med Fjenden og mistede Slaget.’

  21. Ernstberger, Hans de Witte, 166, Wallenstein to the imperial treasurer, 28 Jan. 1626. For more on military finance in the Thirty Years War, see ch. 2 above.

  22. Zillhardt, ‘Zeytregister’, 117; further details in Pfister, Klimageschichte der Schweiz, 40–1, 118–22, 140; idem, ‘Weeping in the snow’, 33 and 50; and idem, Wetternachhersage, 194–8. Theibault, German villages, 184, notes that in Hessen-Kassel, ‘Between 1626 and 1634. no year passed without some frost, drought, hail or blight to affect one of the crops’; while Garnier, ‘Grapevine’, 710, quotes a report from the French Jura region that ‘the frost began at the end of November 1626 and continued until May [1627]’.

  23. Behringer, ‘Weather, hunger and fear’, 11–12, on witch trials; and Bell, ‘The Little Ice Age’, 12–15, on ‘der Wein Jud’; von Krusenstjern, ‘“Gott der allmechtig”’, on the ‘peccatological’ explanations of Germans concerning bad weather at this time.

  24. Der Oberösterreichische Bauernkrieg, 70–1, lists those executed, and at pp. 72–3 records the order extending the Emigrationstermin until Apr. 1628 on account of the appalling weather. Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, 83–4, prints two rebel broadsheets.

  25. Robisheaux, Rural society, 210.

  26. Bireley, Religion and politics, 54, Ferdinand's instructions to his representative at a meeting of the Electors at Mühlhausen, 4 Oct. 1627.

  27. Urban, ‘Druck’. Over one hundred copies of the edict survive in various forms: a remarkable number. Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, 91–8, prints the text in English.

  28. Mann, Wallenstein, 700, Wallenstein to Oberst San Julian.

  29. Bireley, Religion and politics, 125: eyewitness account of Kaspar Schoppe. Maximilian later argued that Lamormaini and other theologians had convinced him and other Catholic princes that God would grant their cause victory if they upheld the Edict but would punish them if they made concessions to the Protestants, as they proposed: see Albrecht, Auswärtige Politik, 379–81.

  30. Symcox, War, diplomacy and imperialism, 102–13, prints an English version of Gustavus's Declaration of Ju
ne 1630; Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, 99–103, prints his July manifesto.

  31. O'Connell, ‘A cause célèbre’, 84, Louis to Brûlart, 22 Oct. 1630.

  32. Suvanto, Wallenstein, 72, Questenberg to Wallenstein, 23 Apr. 1631 (‘Jizt haists Helff, helff, und non est qui exaudiat’).

  33. Mortimer, Eyewitness accounts, 64–7 (Anna Wolff from Schwabach) and 21–3 (Pastor Johannes Schleyss of Gerstetten and Sebastian Bürster near Überlingen, which was besieged by the Swedes in 1632 and 1634. The city still holds an annual ‘Sweden procession’ to celebrate its deliverance).

  34. Robisheaux, Rural society, 223.

  35. Sreenavisan, Peasants of Ottobeuren, 282–6, quoting local parish registers; Mortimer, Eyewitness accounts, 78–9, quoting Raph, a town clerk near Stuttgart.

  36. Vincent, Lamentations, 26, 33. My thanks to Jill Bepler for help in identifying the author of this work.

  37. Theibault, German villages, 186 (frozen corn) and 184–5 (yield ratios); Peters, Ein Söldnerleben, 166; Theibault, ‘The rhetoric’, 283 (entry in the parish registers kept by Ludolf); Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, 205–12, Diary of Abbot Maurus Friesenegger of Andechs. Several writers in Bohemia also recorded heavy frosts in August and September 1641, in May and June 1642, and in May 1643: Brázdil, ‘Meteorological records’, 104–5.

  38. Heberle, ‘Zeytregister’, 225; all other quotes from Mortimer, Eyewitness accounts, 172. Theibault, German villages, 125, makes the point that, before the war, homicide was rare, making the contrast once it began even more stark.

  39. Mortimer, Eyewitness accounts, 178, quoting Thiele, writing in 1641.

  40. Bireley, Religion and politics, 214–17 (quoting Ludwig Crasius, S. J. in 1635).