‘Sultan’s Absolute Deputy’
GraViz: The Ottoman Grand Vizierate 1560s to 1760s
GraViz is a three-year project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, P 36216). GraViz is designed to explore the institutional evolution of the Ottoman office of the grand vizier, based on a micro-analysis of the linguistic features of grand vizieral correspondence with the Habsburg court during the early modern period, roughly from the 1560s to the 1760s.
Focusing on the tenures and correspondence of six grand viziers—Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (1565–1579), Köprülü Mehmed Pasha (1656–1661), Köprülü Ahmed Pasha (1661–1676), Kara Mustafa Pasha (1676–1683), Nevşehirli (Damad) Ibrahim Pasha (1718–1730), and Koca Ragıb Pasha (1757–1763)—GraViz examines the significance and central role of the grand vizier in maintaining the Ottoman Empire’s diplomatic relations with Vienna. Employing the documentary evidence from correspondence with the Habsburg court, preserved in original and copied forms mainly at the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, we particularly examine the long-term transformations in the office’s handling of diplomatic communication from the 1560s to the 1760s.
GraViz is the initial stage of a planned broader project that aims to investigate on a Eurasian scale the relationship between the evolution of international relations and the corresponding modifications in diplomatic language at the level of chief ministers. In preparation for future phases of this exploration, our current goal in GraViz is to trace within the framework of Ottoman-Habsburg relations the causal links between the recalibrations in the Habsburg-Ottoman power balance from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century and adjustments in the mutual diplomatic language of the two courts during that period.
GraViz seeks an answer to the following question: Could a diachronic comparative analysis of the language, jargon, vocabulary, and other stylistic elements in the grand vizierial correspondence with the Habsburg statesmen—including the Grand Chamberlain (Obersthofmeister), the War Council President, and the emperor—during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries reveal new insights into the evolution of the office of the grand vizier during this period? Furthermore, do such modifications in verbal communication reflect broader transformations in the balance of power between the two empires?
These questions can only be answered through rigorous textual analysis, which requires transcription and translation. Combining classical paleographical transliteration methods with modern digital humanities tools, GraViz transcribes and translates into English the correspondence of the six aforementioned grand viziers with the Viennese court.
The principal coordinator of the GraViz project is Yasir Yılmaz. The editing team consists of Dr. Nilab Saeedi and Michael Vogelsberger, MA. Stephan Kurz and Dimitra Grigoriou oversee the digital implementation. GraViz is a sister project of QhoD, and all digital editions of the project will be published as open-access on the QhoD webpage. The project is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
For further information on the theoretical framework of the Ottoman grand vizierate and the broader ideas that inspired the GraViz project, you may refer to the following article:
Yılmaz, Yasir. “‘From Theory to Practice’ Origins of the Ottoman Grand Vizierate and the Köprülü Restoration: A New Research Framework for the Office of the Grand Vizier.” Review of Middle East Studies 57, no. 1 (2023): 7–42. (https://doi.org/10.1017/rms.2024.19).