A. C. S. Peacock

The frontiers of the Ottoman world

PART ONE: FRONTIER FORTIFICATIONS PART TWO: THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE FRONTIER PART THREE: FRONTIER SOCIETY: RULERS, RULED AND REVOLT PART FOUR: THE ECONOMY OF THE FRONTIER

Suakin: A Northeast African Port in the Ottoman Empire

Capital of the Ottoman province of Habeş and a major entrepôt for trade between the African interior and the Hijaz, the Indian Ocean, and Egypt, Suakin’s apogee largely coincided with its direct rule by the Ottomans between the early to mid sixteenth century and the early nineteenth century. Although a number of short studies of the history of Suakin have been written, these have rarely referred to the pertinent Ottoman language sources. Older scholarship thus tended to assume the port was merely a remote Ottoman outpost, cut off from its African hinterland, while research that has given more prominence to the role of Suakin’s Ḥaḍāriba elite in the life of the city has paid less attention to the Ottoman context in which they operated. In this essay, I offer an overview of Suakin’s development under Ottoman rule drawing on the Ottoman materials. These of course have their own perils, for the Ottoman archival documents largely consist of reports to or orders from Istanbul, usually concerning the appointment of officials, the military situation, and requests for reinforcements. Trade is rarely prominent in the documents, as none of the Ottoman financial records of the port or province have come to light. Literary sources, in the form of reports of revolt in Suakin in 1655 and the traveler Evliya Çelebi’s account of his visit some two decades later, shed more light on social and economic history, at least for the seventeenth century. The Ottoman evidence, scant though it may be compared to that surviving for the Mediterranean world, is our prime source for the history of Suakin.

Three Arabic letters from North Sumatra of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

ABSTRACT This article examines three Arabic documents, one from the Sultanate of Samudera-Pasai dated 1516, and two from the Sultanate of Aceh, dated 1602 and 1603, written in the name of Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah (r.1589–1604). The Samudera-Pasai document represents the earliest surviving manuscript in the Arabic script from Southeast Asia, while the second and third letters are some of the earliest documents that have come down to us from the Aceh sultanate. Despite their historical importance, these documents have not previously been adequately published. This article presents an analysis from a diplomatic, stylistic and philological point of view, comparing them with Malay and Middle Eastern epistolary traditions and examining the significance of the use of Arabic. It also considers the light they shed on diplomatic practice in early modern North Sumatra. An edition and modern English translation of the documents are presented in an appendix, along with a contemporary Portuguese translation of the Pasai letter and the translation by the English Arabist William Bedwell (1561–1632) of the Aceh letter of 1602.

The Ottomans and the Funj sultanate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

This article examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman sources for the Funj sultanate that ruled the Gezira and Nile Valley regions of the modern Sudan. It also aims to elucidate the relationship between the Ottoman empire and the Funj sultanate. In the first part of the article, the sixteenth-century Ottoman sources, largely documents from the Ottoman archives in Istanbul, are translated and analysed. In the second part, two seventeenth-century Ottoman accounts of the Funj are examined: that by the famous Ottoman traveller Evliya Celebi, and that by the geographer Abu Bekr el-Dimaski. The text of the relevant passage from Dimaskis work is provided alongside a translation. The article also examines evidence for religious links between the Ottomans and the Funj.

CHAPTER VIII: Writing history: The Acehnese embassy to Istanbul, 1849-1852

In this chapter, the author considers an especially significant collection of documents from the mid-nineteenth century, written in connection with Acehnese efforts to convince the Ottomans to provide both diplomatic and military support against the Dutch, whose encroachment over Sumatra was presenting an evergreater risk to Acehnese independence. Ottoman archival documents from Istanbul discussed in the chapter underlines the supreme importance of the Ottoman connection from the Acehnese perspective. The Ottoman response, examined in the chapter, suggests that these strategies met a measure of success in persuading at least some in Istanbul of the justice of the Acehnese cause, even if the geopolitical realities of the Ottomans? weak position vis-a-vis colonial powers meant that Istanbul could reply only cautiously. Mansur Syah?s Arabic letter is humble in tone, but reflects the completely different epistolary etiquette then current in the Ottoman empire for writing in Arabic to an overlord. Keywords: Acehnese independence; Istanbul; Mansur Syah; Ottoman empire; Sumatra

Sinop : A Frontier City in Seljuq and Mongol Anatolia

This article considers the history of Sinop in the first century of Muslim rule, from 1214 to the early fourteenth century, when the city was ruled successively by the Seljuq, Pervaneid and Candarid dynasties. During this period, the Seljuqs constantly vied with Christian Trebizond for control of the city despite both sides being nominally Mongol vassals from the mid-thirteenth century. In the first part of this article, the political history of the city is examined and some significant errors in the chronology are corrected. This is followed by an examination of three formative elements in Sinop’s history in the period: its defences, its trade and Muslim-Christian relations there. The article uses epigraphic evidence from Sinop that has not been considered by previous scholarship in addition to Arabic and Persian chronicles.

Jeddah and the India Trade in the Sixteenth Century: Arabian Contexts and Imperial Policy

This article argues that despite the advent of Ottoman rule and the encroachment of the Portuguese, the commercial system of the sixteenth century Red Sea, in particular the trade in spices brought from India, was characterised by continuities with Mamluk practice. Further, it emphasises the importance of local politics, especially the role of the Sharifs of Mecca, and rivalries between individual Red Sea ports as factors in determining the nature of trade routes. Despite Ottoman dominance of the entire Red Sea littoral, Istanbul’s ability to impose its will on this so-called “Ottoman lake” was in fact very limited.

The Age of the Seljuqs

Seljuq studies have seen something of a boom in recent years, and the current volume, the latest in a series covering the history of Iran from antiquity based on conferences held at the School of O...