Historical Context of the Ottoman–Safavid War and Ottoman Sources on the War

The precise causes for the Ottoman–Safavid war of 1578–90 are the subject of some debate, with increasing tensions on both sides in the decades after the peace of Amasya in 1555 that concluded the hostilities between Sultan Süleyman and Shah Tahmasp.Footnote ² The most immediate causes, according to Ottoman sources, were the consequence of Sultan Murād III (r.1574–95/982–1003) and key members of his court seeking to exploit the instability of Safavid Iran in the 1570s. After the death of Shah Tahmasp in 1576, the short reign of Ismail II followed, who was then succeeded by Mohammed Khodabanda (r. 1578–87/985–95).Footnote ³ The Ottomans had some reason to believe that the campaign would bear fruit in local vassals and potential territory, as the Sunnis of Shirvan rebelled against Safavid authority in 1576–77 and Muscovy had emerged in the 1560s as a competitor along the Ottoman northern frontier, making control of the Caucasus all the more important.Footnote ⁴ The region was important in maintaining Ottoman dominance over the Black Sea and its trade connections, working in tandem with their vassal, the Crimean Khanate. The Crimean khans had a great deal of latitude in dealing with Caucasian polities on behalf of the Ottoman dynasty.Footnote ⁵

The course of the conflict had a profound effect on the Ottoman economy and structure of the military, with the monetary and human cost exacting a major toll on both the state and society. Unforeseen by the Ottoman leadership in 1578, the conflict inaugurated nearly four decades of expensive and difficult wars. Although the Ottomans scored some significant victories, most notably conquering Tabriz in 1585 and holding it until 1603, much of the conflict was inconclusive. After concluding peace with the Safavids in 1590, the empire was implicated in a war with the Habsburgs and their allies in 1591 that persisted until 1606. Shah Abbas then fought the Ottomans from 1603 to 1612 and again from 1616 to 1618. The social and economic consequences of the 1578–90 conflict were immense: the revenues of treasuries of eastern provinces like Aleppo and Damascus were already dwindling by 1582–83, and the central treasury was on the verge of bankruptcy by 1590. Occupation of the Caucasus did not yield new revenues, but created more expenses for the state. The size of the military forces, also paid by state funds, expanded to meet the need for more troops. Ottoman society far removed from the location of the fighting also was affected, because troops were taken away from law enforcement duties in the provinces, leading to an increase in banditry and other crime. Government officials also had a hand in abusing Ottoman subjects in search of revenue or other property.Footnote ⁶ Much of the literature reflecting on the crisis of the Ottoman political order, such as that written by Gelibolulu Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī, or those further afield from the conflict like Ḥaṣan Ḳāfī al-Aḳḥisari in Bosnia, were influenced by the dramatic consequences of the conflict.Footnote ⁷

Despite this grim picture, or perhaps because of it, the 1578 campaign is notable for the number of documents and narrative sources that survive, in part because of Murād III’s intense interest in literature. The most notable of the chroniclers was the bureaucrat, poet, and historian Gelibolulu Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī, who composed several works that dealt with the Caucasus campaign. His Nuṣretnāme (Book of Victory) details the campaign, and is probably the most well-known of the texts about the expedition in contemporary historical literature.Footnote ⁸ His other work, Nuṣḥatüʾs-selāṭīn (Counsel for Sultans) used the events of 1578–79 as material for his criticism of commander Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha’s decisions.Footnote ⁹ A companion of Ali and fellow participant on the campaign, Asafi Dal Meḥmed Çelebi, composed his own account of the operation titled Şecāʿatnāme (Book of Valor) in verse. One of the manuscripts of the text also is richly illustrated, giving an indication of the demand for ġazāvatnāme-style texts (holy war chronicles) in the late sixteenth century.Footnote ¹⁰ The cases of Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī and Asafi Dal Meḥmed provide examples of the role patronage played in the composition of war narratives. Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī was supported by Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha, and Asafi by Özdemiroğlu ʿOsmān Pasha. The Nuṣretnāme of ʿĀlī and the Şecāʿatnāme of Dal Meḥmed Çelebi logically support their respective patrons. In the case of the latter, Özdemiroğlu ʿOsmān Pasha awarded the author with governorships in the Crimea and Shirvan.Footnote ¹¹

In addition to these sources, there are others as well. A verse work, titled Manẓūme-yi Fetḥ-i Şīrvān ve Temür Ḳapı ve ‘Osmān Paşa’nın Cenk ittüğüdür (Verses of the Conquest of Shirvan and Demirkapı and the Battles of ʿOsmān Pasha) is attributed to the poet who wrote under the name of Adlī.Footnote ¹² Another important text from the perspective of a soldier is the Şarḳ Seferleri (Eastern Campaigns), also known under the title Tārīḫ-i ‘Osmān Paşa (History of Osman Pasha) of Ebūbekir b. ‘Abdullāh, a more vernacular work compared to those of Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī and Dal Meḥmed Çelebi.Footnote ¹³ The historical narratives created during the Shirvan campaign demonstrate a range of literary styles, authorial perspectives, and patronage networks. The works about the imperial circumcision festival just five years later in 1582 demonstrate the same array of approaches to writing history, with historical writing acting as a kind of meta-genre to express ideal human behavior, political organization, and dynastic legitimacy.Footnote ¹⁴ Within the corpus of narrative sources, the Tevārīḫ-i Futūḥ-i Şīrvān is somewhat between the courtly works of ʿĀlī and Dāl Meḥmed Çelebi and the soldier’s account of Ebūbekir b. ʿAbdullāh. Stylistically it does not have the same level of educated diction and syntax as Muṣṭafā ‘Ālī and Dāl Meḥmed’s works, nor does it have the direct, vernacular style of Ebūbekir b. ‘Abdullāh. Likewise, the content of the Tevārīḫ-i focuses on Ottoman leaders, not common soldiers, and does not display a firm grasp of battlefield tactics or organization. These works demonstrate the rather ambiguous boundaries of genre between a tārīḫ (history) and a ġāzāvātnāme (chronicle of a holy war). It is not clear if the original title of text under consideration was Tevārīḫ-i Futuḥ-i Şirvan. Ebūbekir b. ʿAbdullāh considered his chronicle ġāzāvātnāme, but one copy titles his narrative as Tārīḫ-i ʿOsmān Paşa. To be certain, there are genre conventions for the holy war chronicle: often the focus is on a sultan’s life, or that of a vizier, and the work discusses only one campaign or a specific battle.Footnote ¹⁵ This article will not attempt to probe the precise boundaries of tārīḥ versus ġāzāvātnāme in the case of the Tevārīḥ-i Futuḥ-i Şirvan, owing to the uncertainties of authorship, the origins of the text, and the fluidity of style in Ottoman historical writing. The text has the features of a ġāzāvātnāme despite its title, which will be considered. Nevertheless, these broader questions about the boundaries of literary conventions and genre are certainly an avenue for further research.

Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha, Factionalism, and Military Command in the Reign of Murād III

The narrative of the Tevārīḫ-i Futūḥ-i Şīrvān is notable at the beginning for its description of the launching of the campaign and what it omits compared to other works. In the narrative presented the sultan decides to launch the campaign and Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha is immediately selected to be the serdār (commander-in-chief) of the campaign after receiving advice from Murād III. The author of the text emphasizes the role of Lala Muṣṭafā as a successful and renowned commander, introducing him as: “Being appointed the commanding general (ser-‘asker), the victory-marked conqueror of Cyprus, the brave vizier Muṣṭafā Pasha.”Footnote ¹⁶ The focus of the author is immediately on the relationship between serdār and sultan, without description of the more contentious decision-making process that determined who was to command the campaign. Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha and his bitter rival, Koca Sinān Pasha (d. 1596/1004), were initially considered to lead two armies, one in the Caucasus led by the former, and a second army in the south concentrated in Iraq.Footnote ¹⁷ Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī later lamented the failure of the two-front strategy in his 1581 Nuṣḥatü’s-selāṭīn (Counsel for Sultans) .Footnote ¹⁸ It is also notable that in the opening folios of the Tevārīḫ Koca Sinān Pasha is not mentioned at all, and even Grand Vizier Ṣoḳullu Meḥmed Pasha is mentioned only once. The features of the narrative suggest that the author was well informed about the activities of Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha himself, but perhaps not privy to the inner workings of the Ottoman imperial council, or sought to minimize other actors intentionally.

The presentation of Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha in the Tevārīḫ also serves the agenda of the anti-Ṣoḳullu members of the imperial council, for whom the war was an opportunity to displace the influence of Meḥmed Pasha Ṣoḳullu and his extensive family network from dominating the Ottoman state. Although Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha himself was related to the Ṣoḳullu family, he had turned on the grand vizier and his allies, and the anti-Ṣoḳullu group believed at this stage a victory against the Safavids on an imperial military campaign would achieve their goals.Footnote ¹⁹ The silences and perhaps omissions of the Tevārīḫ suggest that the work may have been a part of the trend to improve the reputation of Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha and minimize the role of others in leadership positions. It also highlights a different approach to the war chronicle genre in the Ottoman Empire, as after the death of Süleyman in 1566 viziers commanded imperial military campaigns almost exclusively until Meḥmed III’s Eger campaign in 1596. As the viziers were now the primary military leaders, they were the obvious focus of historical military narratives instead of the sultans. The disputes and rivalries between viziers now also could play out in the realm of these chronicles, as implied by the text of the Tevārīḫ.

The author of Tevārīḫ recounts some details about the commander and aspects of camp life as the Ottoman army set out, but specifically the high command, and these scenes in the narrative provide some clues about the author’s closeness to Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha. The three weeks the serdār spent in Üsküdar appeared to have been interpreted by Murād III as lingering, based on an incident recounted in the Tevārīḫ. The chronicle states that the Ottoman army camped on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus for twenty-four days, and the sultan had to order the commander to begin the march east with a gift of finely made clothes.Footnote ²⁰ Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī wrote about such gifts as an unnecessary expense for the army, based on the cost of the materials required to make them.Footnote ²¹ The Tevārīḫ author also provides a description of the military camp in Üsküdar, but one that appears to exclude the ordinary soldiers and focuses on Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha, as would be expected in a grandee-oriented chronicle. At the staging area on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus, there was feasting, prayer, and recitation of the Qurʿan: one day in the camp, “more than one hundred meals of regal food were prepared, and afterward reciters read the glorious Qurʾan with pleasant voices like musical nightingales and there was prayer for the continuation of the state and the Sultan of Islam.”Footnote ²² In contrast, the memoir of Ebūbekir b. ‘Abdullāh does not mention these officers’ gatherings or entertainments at all, highlighting the difference between a scribal or bureaucratic officer and the perceptions of a soldier.Footnote ²³

The author stresses the positive leadership qualities of Lala Muṣṭāfā Pasha early in the campaign, yet without serious concern for those of lower ranks among the leadership, not to mention common soldiers. The emphasis on the leader instead of the troops themselves is consistent with the features of the sultanic- or vizierial-oriented military chronicle, in which the commander is supposed to be an exemplary figure. The army left Üsküdar and moved through Anatolia to reach the final mustering camp in Erzurum, with the anonymous chronicler emphasizing the good qualities of Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha. One of these decisions, later maligned by Muṣṭafā Ali in Nuṣḥatü’s-selāṭīn, was to detach the janissaries from the main force and send them on a different route to Erzurum so that the main road was not overcrowded with soldiers.Footnote ²⁴ The author describes the gathering of the timar forces and regional governors-general and the customary pişkeş (gifts for a superior) given by the regional commanders to Lala Muṣṭafā Paşa. After a tremendous rainstorm, the officers also took part in a great feast at Kütahya hosted by the serdār, another example of a positive quality of the commander described by the anonymous chronicler. The Tevārīḫ’s author also introduces another important figure, the beylerbey (rendered in the text with the Perso-Arabic equivalent, emirü’ʾl-ümera) of Anatolia, Caʿfer Pasha, who is named explicitly, whereas the lower ranking sancāḳbey of Bursa is not named.Footnote ²⁵ Again, the chronicler appears to be chiefly concerned with high-ranking individuals among the Ottoman military leadership and their overall well-being. It is not clear if, for example, the feast after the rainstorm was provided to all of the army or just the most senior officers, and the Tevārīḫ author’s lack of focus on lower-ranking, provincial unit commanders, such as a sancāḳbey, suggests a limited knowledge of these figures, or more probably that they were not relevant to the aims of the author. The narrative suggests that proper Ottoman military leadership, at least according to the author of the text, did not require excessive attention to the needs of common soldiers. Relationships between the serdār and the beylerbeys and some sancāḳbeys (military commander subordinate to a beylerbey) were prioritized instead. These narrative features are not surprising given the stylistic tendencies of Ottoman military chronicles and serve as an example of the scribal or bureaucratic perspective of a campaign. The author describes the ideal relationship between commander and subordinate: troops and lower-ranking leaders were to organize themselves according to the authority of the serdār.

The relationships presented in the chronicle reflect the alignments of the Ottoman grandees leading the campaign, illustrating that the military campaign served the purposes of the palace factions in the mind of the Tevārīḫ’s author more than conquests of the Safavids. The description of the army at Erzurum, the final gathering place for the Ottoman army before they set off across the frontier, provides information about military camp conditions and the ceremonies around the officers. Erzurum is also where the other main protagonist of the chronicle, Özdemiroğlu ʿOsmān Pasha, is introduced:

The author gives ʿOsmān Pasha the most attention of all the commanders that muster with the rest of the army at the Erzurum camp, as the others are simply referred to by their name and the name of the group of troops they command. Although the Tevārīḫ is concerned with the activities of the senior officers, the narrative of Ebūbekir b. ‘Abdullāh is more focused on aspects of greater concern to a regular soldier: “But when we arrived at Erzurum, there were no soldiers gathered. At once, the Palace Cavalry (ḳapıḳulu] and janissaries arrived, and because the soldiers were appointed to the victory-marked campaign, all gathered as was required.”Footnote ²⁷ Ebūbekir here is focused on the arrival of troops rather than individual commanders. He also wrote about the scene of the army gathered in more concrete terms: “The plains of Erzurum were embellished from the tents of a colorful sort, the ornamented canopies, and the large and small tents, so much so that the wilderness and endless valley were embellished with the kind of color of a flower in bloom in springtime.”Footnote ²⁸ Comparison of the Tevārīḫ with the writing of Ebūbekir b. ‘Abdullāh shows two different purposes for writing a history of the campaign: one, probably a scribal, nonmilitary author, intends to establish the reputation of patrons or potential patrons who might advance his own reputation, whereas the other, originating from a cavalryman, illuminates the experience of the ordinary troops. Technical military matters are avoided by the Tevārīḫ’s author; other sources describe the numbers of troops and their types in greater detail.Footnote ²⁹ Instead, the anonymous chronicler generally remarks that “It was said that we had not seen such a gathering since the Campaign of the Two Iraqs.”Footnote ³⁰ The line provides another indication of the author’s perspective, less focused on technical military matters and more on linking the current campaign to the idealized reign of Süleyman, whose Iraq campaigns took place from 1532 to 1555.

In the section titled “The Defeat of Imām Ḳulī Ḫan and Toḳmāk Sultan and the Submission of the Princes of Georgia,” the chronicle shapes the narrative of the actual fighting to demonstrate Lala Muṣṭāfā Pasha’s qualities as a leader.Footnote ³¹ The army marched out from Erzurum and camped at Hasan Kalesi, near the present-day city of Pasinler, where intraelite rivalries manifested during the campaign. Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha and the commanders agreed that the army would quarter a garrison at the fortress, and Meḥmed Pasha, beylerbey of Sivas, was to command it. The chronicler openly states that this Meḥmed Pasha was the younger brother of Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha’s rival, Koca Sinan Pasha, and the remark is the first mention of Koca Sinān Pasha in the text despite his fairly prominent role in the government during this period.Footnote ³² The two had been opposed during the succession struggle between Selīm II (r.1566–74/974–82) and his brother Bayezid and in disputes over the organization and command of the Ottoman troops during the revolt in Yemen in 1569 to 1571.Footnote ³³ Based on this decision and its framing in the Tevārīḫ, it appears that Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha placed Meḥmed Pasha in a rear area garrison to limit his participation in the campaign and by extension limit the material or social benefits Meḥmed Pasha and Koca Sinān Pasha could gain from it. Conflicts between military leaders during the invasion are a recurring theme in the Tevārīḫ, and the anonymous author’s selections and omissions suggest his perspective, which favors Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha and later Özdemiroğlu ʿOsmān Pasha.

The chronicle relates how Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha and the Ottoman army conducted diplomacy with Georgian princes during the campaign, trying to win over the region’s principalities in opposition to Safavid Iran. The chronicler denigrates the Georgians, exemplified by this embassy:

The author refers to Georgians consistently as dogs, despite the Ottoman need to make alliances with the Georgian princely states to achieve their strategic goals in the Caucasus. Georgian rulers sought to maximize their own interests at the expense of either the Ottoman or Safavid empires and were flexible in matters of religion to achieve their goals. During the invasion of Timur, the Jaqeli dynasty allied with the conqueror and possibly adopted Islam as a means of survival.Footnote ³⁵ The same patterns occurred among the different Georgian polities in the 1578 campaign, and despite their military importance to the Ottomans the Tevārīḫ’s author derided them, placing them in a clear second-class position to the invading army. The anonymous author wrote about the embassy described above:

Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha was able to assert Ottoman rule over the Georgians, although, as the history of the Georgians in sixteenth century and the campaign would show, rulers of Georgian polities sought to preserve their independence or maximize potential benefits under either Ottoman or Safavid rule. For a potential Ottoman readership in the eighteenth century, the account communicates the importance of securing these allies in the region but at the same time depicts them as lesser and untrustworthy..

The first battle of the campaign took place in the area around Lake Çıldır, and the chronicle uses the opportunity to again highlight the leadership of Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha over that of the officers under his command. The army camped near the lake in northeast Anatolia, placing a castle there under siege. The forward guard for the besieging army was led by Dervish Pasha of Diyarbakir, with the Safavid commanders of the Ganja and Yerevan meeting Dervish Pasha’s troops.Footnote ³⁷ The Tevārīḫ openly characterizes the officer’s actions as foolhardy and wasteful of men: “Upon entering combat, together with the soldiers of Diyarbakir and emirs of the Kurds, Dervish Pasha having a flash of being the sole vanquisher on the battlefield, followed his own opinions and immediately prepared and arranged the soldiers into battle lines without informing or asking the opinion of the commander of the army of Islam.”Footnote ³⁸ The anonymous chronicler emphasizes the importance of following proper command and consulting the serdār, and then uses the battle that ensued to show that Dervish Pasha’s actions were not brave but simply foolish, with the greater Safavid numbers giving them an advantage. Dervish Pasha’s attack resulted in the deaths of the majority of the Kurdish commanders, according to the Tevārīḫ, with the remark that “From among the fief holders and timar possessors and other heroic men, [they] all drank from the sherbet of martyrdom.”Footnote ³⁹ The depiction of the engagement suggests that the author of the text was probably a participant on the campaign, or at least had reliable informants to construct his narrative. It also shows that the author used failures like this to provide indirect advice, with the lesson being that an officer should consult his commander, in this case the author’s favored leader Lālā Muṣṭafā Pasha, before entering into an attack.

The narration of the routing of Dervish Pasha also can be read as reflecting the anti-Ṣoḳullu perspective of the author, although the text does not openly identify individuals as members of the family. Dervish Pasha was a Ṣoḳullu and younger brother to Ṣoḳullu Ferhad Pasha, the sancākbey of Bosnia. According to Ibrahim Peçevi, Dervish Pasha had a reputation for courage, and was not only a skilled horseman but capable of training others to ride effectively as well.Footnote ⁴⁰ The anonymous author of the Tevārīḫ specifically remarks that in addition to being reckless, Dervish Pasha fell from his horse in combat.Footnote ⁴¹ In contrast to the hot-headed Dervish Pasha, Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha is again portrayed as a stable and disciplined leader, not overreacting to the presence of the enemy: “His eminence the commander did not move and did not appear moved.”Footnote ⁴² At this point in the battle, Özdemiroğlu ʿOsmān Pasha was given orders to meet the Safavid force in combat, and the anonymous chronicler depicts him as a hunting lion launching into combat who breaks through the Safavid lines. Ultimately the Ottomans achieved their first major victory of the campaign.Footnote ⁴³

The chronicle demonstrates Ottoman efforts at expansion and claiming territory on the frontier with the Safavids. After the battle at Lake Çıldır, the Ottoman army made the Georgian kingdom of Samtskhe a vassal of the empire. The troops of the Ottoman army were organized in a ceremonial formation to awe and intimidate the two princes that approached Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha. The anonymous chronicler also notes a pile of Safavid heads used to shock the potential vassals, the two princes in the embassy, Manuchar II Jaqeli and his brother Qvarqvare IV.Footnote ⁴⁴ The writer describes in some detail the ceremony, emphasizing the gifts given to the princes by Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha and showing that the commander was able to create vassals for the empire.Footnote ⁴⁵ Following the capitulation of Samtskhe, the anonymous author quotes a letter sent by Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha to the Safavid governor Toḳmāḳ Ḫan that stated, “Let there be no doubt, if it pleases God most high there will be conquest of Shirvan, devastation of Iran, and plunder of Khorasan.”Footnote ⁴⁶ The Tevārīḫ’s author was not aware, or did not include, another letter from Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha to Toḳmāk Ḫan that was an encoded message promising the Safavid commander governorship of Azerbaijan if he defected to the Ottoman side.Footnote ⁴⁷ Both the Tevārīḫ and Muṣṭafā Ali’s chronicle of the campaign illustrate Ottoman strategy in the region against the Safavids, based on securing local vassals like the Kurdish emirs, such as Sharaf Khān Bidlīsī and the Georgians, and enticing Safavid frontier governors to defect. The narrative sources show that the Ottomans desired expansion in their traditional way, based on creating vassals and establishing permanent garrisons. The style of the Tevārīḫ centers these efforts during the 1578 campaign in the leadership of the serdār. Ottoman expansion and legitimacy were manifestedin the presence and under the command of Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha. In the campaigns of earlier Ottoman rulers, the person of the sultan at the head of the army was the symbol of power and imperial legitimacy to defeated enemies and would-be vassals. With the eclipse of personal command of the army in favor of the viziers, the Tevārīḫ and texts like it allowed these viziers to give accounts of their military leadership and project an image that advanced their careers and legacy.

The march of the Ottoman army to Tbilisi in the Tevārīḫ displays some notable features. It continues with the theme of Georgian submission to Ottoman rule. The description also provides further evidence that the anonymous chronicler was a participant in the campaign. Prince Manuchahr offered to the Ottoman army auxiliary troops as support and pathfinders for the imperial army through the mountains.Footnote ⁴⁸ The chronicler goes on to describe the difficult journey to Tbilisi, showing at least some concern for the conditions of the troops.Footnote ⁴⁹ Despite the author’s hostile attitude toward the Georgians, he indirectly shows that local forces were essential for guiding the Ottoman army through the unfamiliar and arduous landscape. The army arrived at Tbilisi on August 24, 1578, and took over the city without major fighting, as the Safavid-appointed governor Davud Ḫan had fled the advancing army.Footnote ⁵⁰ The Tevārīḫ author also mentions one aspect of the city’s capture absent from other narratives, in which Ottoman troops killed Safavid and Georgian troops attempting to hide. Then the imperial army is portrayed as restoring order to the city after killing some lingering Safavid-aligned troops.Footnote ⁵¹

The Ottoman army prepared to enter Azerbaijan after subduing the region controlled by Aleksandre Ḫan, who controlled the area between Tbilisi and Yerevan.Footnote ⁵² The Tevārīḫ also describes the family ties between the Georgian notables and the Safavid dynasty, including Aleksandre Han’s father who was brother-in-law to Shah Tahmasp. Georgians formed an influential interest group within the Safavid court.Footnote ⁵³ Georgia and its inhabitants play a major role in the Tevārīḫ, as do the negotiations between the Georgians and Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha. The anonymous chronicler was attentive to the details of Tbilisi and some information about Georgians and Georgian notables, but at the same time used typical Ottoman insults to place them beneath the conquerors. Nevertheless they were vital to the empire’s ambitions in region. Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha himself carried out the traditional pattern of Ottoman conquest during the march through Georgia by making these negotiations and at the same time establishing garrisons of troops. Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha followed the directive given to him by the sultan in a dispatch dated September 12, 1578, and recorded in the mühīmme defteri (register of important affairs).Footnote ⁵⁴

Even in extreme circumstances that threatened the well-being and effectiveness of the Ottoman troops, the Tevārīḫ’s author did not approve of dissent from common soldiers, consistent with a scribal mentality that advocated for unwavering loyalty to the serdār and respect for his decisions, which the author consistently presents as correct. A pivotal moment within the army took place during the march to enter Azerbaijan, when they needed to reach the city of Eres after crossing the Kura river, which “spilled over without end,” causing many deaths. Only some of the Ottoman army could swim, and the soldiers began to protest advancing further into enemy territory. It also was nearing winter, and the army had to prepare for winter quarters. The anonymous chronicler shows that Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha was a careful, judicious commander and made sure there was sufficient grain for the coming winter. The chronicler refers to the rebelliousness of the janissaries and the ḳapıḳulu (palace troops), and states that the common soldiers were frustrated at the course of action.Footnote ⁵⁵ Ebūbekir b. ʿAbdullāh’s narrative states more directly that the serdār had to raise his voice against the soldiers, and that for the army to continue he and the senior commanders agreed to increase the pay of the janissaries and ḳapıḳulu.Footnote ⁵⁶ Ebūbekir b. ʿAbdullāh depicted the difficulty and uncertainties of leadership in the campaign. In contrast, the Tevārīḫ, demonstrates a tendency toward inflexibility and disinclination to question authority. Ebūbekir, who actually served as a combatant, openly depicted the problems of the serdār’s leadership. The Tevārīḫ narrative further used literary tropes similar to late sixteenth-century mirrors-for-princes works that never criticized the sultans directly, but rather those courtiers and government officials around them.

The Ottoman army pushed on to Shirvan and reached the city of Eres, where they were able to resupply themselves and continue the campaign.Footnote ⁵⁷ The Sunni notables of the city met the Ottoman army as a liberating force and found the Safavid authorities had abandoned the city already, as had happened in Tbilisi.Footnote ⁵⁸ Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha had the army camp at Eres twenty-two days and garrisoned troops and artillery there.Footnote ⁵⁹ The narrative of Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha’s campaign serves as a kind of mirror-for-generals text while also relating military details, although with less precision than some of the other sources. There is a strong concern for proper authority within the Ottoman army, describing how a commander must be followed and noting the consequences of not seeking or deviating from the orders of the serdār. Insofar as the author of the Tevārīḫ shows concern for the ordinary soldiers, or even some of the lower-ranking beylerbeys or sancāḳbeys, it is couched in terms of the proper leadership of Lala Muṣṭafa Pasha, as someone who attended to matters of supply and pay in the army as the ideal commander should. Even by the standards of the Ottoman ideology of the circle of justice—that is, a hierarchical society in which every class has its role and relationship to authority—the author of the Tevārīḫ appears imbalanced. The judgment of Lala Muṣṭāfā Pasha and by extension whomever is appointed serdār must be followed.

The depictions of Lala Muṣtafā fit the objective of making him an exemplary protagonist, but the results of the campaign were not a triumph, a fact that was well known among Ottoman authors at the time. Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī wrote that he “became aware of all [Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha’s] circumstances, of his praiseworthy qualities as well as his misdeeds.”Footnote ⁶⁰ The bureaucrat further wrote about Lala Muṣṭafa’s unchecked ambition: “In the first year he should have contented himself with the conquest of Tiflis, should have directed all his efforts toward the pacification of Georgia, should have been satisfied with the blow dealt to the Red-Heads in the plain of [Çıldır].”Footnote ⁶¹ These problems are either set aside by the Tevārīḫ’s author or were simply not commented upon, while the work served to depict, in panegyric fashion, the role and activities of the serdār.

The Command of Özdemiroğlu ʿOsmān Pasha

The Tevārīḫ narrative shifts focus to the command and exploits of Özdemiroğlu ʿOsmān Pasha and the return of the main Ottoman force to Erzurum under Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha, who turned back to Erzurum on October 6, 1578.Footnote ⁶² Like Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha, ʿOsmān Pasha is given panegyrical treatment. These sections of the narrative also contain geographic and ethnographic information about Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus. Ebūbekir b. ‘Abdullāh’s narrative provides useful contrasts to the account of the Tevārīḫ’s author, especially as the winter of 1578–79 forced the remaining Ottoman troops into an uncertain position. Many commanders did not wish to remain in the field. Ebūbekir b. ‘Abdullāh relates that the Ottomans were aware, perhaps painfully, that the Safavid armies would exploit the departure of the main force to isolate and pick off their garrisons.Footnote ⁶³ The highly partisan perspective of the chronicle’s author is hardly surprising if the genre features of a ġāzānāme are considered: memorializing the campaign and its leader are the most important drivers. The scribal author has only limited criticisms of officials, and does not extend these to the serdār. The contrasts between the Tevārīḫ and Ebūbekir b. ʿAbdullāh are heightened, as the latter is willing to describe the hardships of the campaign in a way that critiques leadership, whereas the Tevārīḫ describes difficulties as deviation from the authority of the commander.

ʿOsmān Pasha made strategic decisions, based on traditional Ottoman methods of maintaining garrisons while also negotiating with local rulers. The Tevārīḫ narrative presents the making of local allies as the initiative of ʿOsmān Pasha, but the chronicles of Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī and the documentary evidence show that the Ottoman state had been corresponding with Caucasus rulers all along, because the region’s remoteness and political situation did not permit immediate direct integration into the imperial provincial system.Footnote ⁶⁴ The writer perhaps did not have access either directly or through personal contacts to diplomatic decisions, or simply chose to omit the information in favor of promoting both Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha and Özdemiroğlu ʿOsmān Pasha. He writes that Shirvan became an Ottoman province and ʿOsmān Pasha took over the city of Derbent, a strategically important city that would allow the Ottomans to exert control over the Caucasus and Iran.. The region also was ruled by the Shamkhalate of Tarku, the Kaytak Principality, and the khanate of the Avars.Footnote ⁶⁵ The chronicler appears to have been with the army in the field for this stage of the campaign but not privy to high-level military decisions. Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī’s Nuṣretnāme does not cover ʿOsmān Pasha’s period of command, because he returned with the main Ottoman force to Erzurum for the winter. His companion Dal Çelebi remained in the field.Footnote ⁶⁶ The Tevārīḫ’s author was committed to portraying a positive, assured vision of the main Ottoman commanders in a somewhat propagandistic fashion, now emphasizing the leadership of ʿOsmān Pasha.

There are clear lessons for a future Ottoman military leader or government administrator about the Caucasus beyond Georgia, with securing local clients or vassals being of paramount importance. The narrative structure emphasizes the personal diplomacy of Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha in acquiring local vassals. the main Ottoman army marched back to Anatolia, where the Sunni Turkic groups of Shirvan, the shamkhal (ruler or lord) of Dagestan, and Circassian groups cooperate with the Ottoman force. The Tevārīḫ describes the successful meeting between the shamkhal of Dagestan and Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha, at which the Ottomans gave gifts to their new local clients. After the negotiations the march back to Erzurum lasted twenty-eight days due to harsh winter weather. Afterward, attention is returned to the activities of ʿOsmān Pasha.Footnote ⁶⁷ In contrast with the Georgians, the Dagestanis are portrayed more favorably and do not require displays of force to bring them under imperial control.

The Ottomans ultimately lost Shamakhi, because although the imperial army under ʿOsmān Pasha was able to defeat the siege of the local Shirvan emirs, another Safavid army was able to organize an attack on the city. ʿĀdil Gīrāy and the Crimean troops conducted raids and plundered the baggage train of Eres Han, but the Crimean prince was inattentive to his other duties and busied himself with drinking.Footnote ⁶⁸ The Safavid army under the command of Ḥamza Mīrzā, one of the shah’s sons, moved into Azerbaijan, marching on Shamakhi, where the two forces fought in the streets of the city, and the usual Ottoman advantages in musketry and artillery could not defeat the Safavid army. ʿOsmān Pasha was a disciplined commander in the face of difficult odds, and the Crimean prince is shown to be careless and unreliable.Footnote ⁶⁹ The Tatar troops performed poorly and ʿĀdil Gīrāy is shown to be an undisciplined commander, who despite being sent for by ʿOsmān Pasha was so drunk as to be unable to stand; the narrative once again emphasizes the conduct of leadership. Much of the army seemed to desert, and the victorious Safavids captured the Tatar commander.Footnote ⁷⁰ The loss of Shamakhi is depicted differently in the history of the war by Minadoi, who shows ʿOsmān Pasha to be unaware of the state of the Tatar army, attempting a conditional surrender to the Safavid army that allowed him to escape the city and make it back to Derbent. The Safavids plundered Shamakhi as a reprisal for previously surrendering to the Ottomans.Footnote ⁷¹

ʿOsmān Pasha was able to keep at least some of the Ottoman army in the field despite the Safavid counteroffensive, returning to Derbent. The Safavids apparently considered besieging the city, but winter conditions made such an effort impractical.Footnote ⁷² The conditions in Derbent were difficult for the army, and life in the occupied city was desperate. The army suffered from hunger. The soldiers “became accustomed to the eyes and faces of the peasants in Derbent, and five to ten at a time of the hungry and naked started coming to find food. They gave a sword worth two or three thousand aḳçe (silver coin) for a bushel of barley or two or three pieces of bread; for the price of one hundred gold [coins] or one useful horse they took three or four poğaça (biscuits).”Footnote ⁷³ The winter conditions were also such that “many of them went down for the night and when they rose in the morning their hands and feet had fallen off.”Footnote ⁷⁴ Although the chronicler describes the suffering of the army due to starvation and winter conditions, he never implicates the leadership of ʿOsmān Pasha or any other commanding military figure for not planning ahead or not returning to Anatolia with the rest of the army. The hardships are simply something that has occurred as part of the campaign and something the army must endure. Emphasizing ʿOsmān Pasha’s leadership at Derbent despite the problems encountered by the army would solidify him as another worthy, anti-Ṣoḳullu figure like Lala Muṣṭafā.

ʿOsmān Pasha and the army were able to survive the winter, and in October 1579 the Crimean khan Ġazī Ġiray I came with his troops to meet ʿOsmān Pasha.Footnote ⁷⁵ The Crimean Tatars during this period intensified their military support for the Ottoman Empire, shifting their attention away from their own northern steppe frontier.Footnote ⁷⁶ ʿOsmān Pasha also negotiated with groups living near Mount Elbrus, depicted as bandits and criminals who harassed the Ottoman army.Footnote ⁷⁷ ʿOsmān Pasha and the Ottoman–Tatar army also had to fight a confederation of Caucasian peoples of Ṭabarṣarān, Kaytāks, and Kipchaks.Footnote ⁷⁸ After fighting this group, the Ottoman army under ʿOsmān Pasha returned to Derbent, with further raids and a battle with a Safavid army, and then the narrative moves on to the rebuilding of Kars fortress by Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha and the relief of the Ottoman garrison at Tbilisi.Footnote ⁷⁹ The last operation described in the text is a successful attack on Safavid Yerevan led by the Sivas governor-general Caʿfer Pasha, which took place on October 4, 1579.Footnote ⁸⁰

The Tevārīḫ as a Source of Military History and Regional Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century

The copyist’s colophon at the end of the text, written in Arabic, states that he finished the work on August 2, 1723, at the time of the collapse of the Safavid dynasty and renewed imperial competition in Iran and the Caucasus. When looking at these events, there are parallels between the situation of the Caucasus in 1578 and those of the early eighteenth century. With the elimination of Safavid power by the Ghilzai Pashtuns of Afghanistan in 1722, Russia and the Ottomans were positioned to exploit the unstable political situation. The Russian Empire sought to move into the Caucasus as the empire had solidified its western frontier and military reputation following victory in the Great Northern War in 1721. The Ottoman Empire responded to this with diplomacy in 1722 and 1723. Beginning in October 1722, the Ottoman state sent an envoy to Russia stating their claims to the Caucasus region. By 1723, the Ottomans had created a protectorate in Shirvan and occupied Tbilisi to prevent Russian movement into the region. At the end of August 1723, the Ottomans began an invasion of Iran proper, gaining territory and leading to negotiations with Russia the following year.Footnote ⁸¹ The date of the Tevārīḫ manuscript is therefore quite remarkable, with its content covering a conflict in the Caucasus from nearly a century and a half previously. The Ottoman Empire at this time clearly had renewed interests in the region after competition between the empire and the Safavid dynasty led to no large-scale war with Safavid Iran after 1639. The places occupied by the Ottomans prior to the completion of the manuscript also were occupied during the 1578 campaign. It is possible that an early eighteenth century military readership would be interested in a text like the Tevārīḫ-i Futuḥ-i Şirvān because it dealt with a geopolitical situation much like what was unfolding at the time. The constraints on an army operating in the region would not have changed much, if at all, given that armies of both the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries were subject to the same challenges of logistics and occupying a diverse territory. Further study is needed to properly contextualize the relationship between Ottoman military discourse and historical writing in the early eighteenth century, but it is nonetheless notable that an eighteenth-century copyist would take interest in a sixteenth-century text. A campaign history might serve as a source of military lessons as well as geographic and ethnographic knowledge about a region that the Ottoman state became implicated in again after over a century of disengagement. It should be emphasized, however, that this attempt to understand the conditions under which the Tevārīḫ was copied is speculative. Although the Tevārīḫ-i Futuḥ-i Şirvān does not provide dramatic new insights into the 1578 Ottoman campaign in the Caucasus, as a narrative it both demonstrates the late sixteenth-century experience of warfare for the empire and acts as a source of military, geographic, and ethnographic knowledge for an eighteenth-century audience. The chronicle of the campaign shows Ottoman attitudes toward military command, giving the commander-in-chief preeminence over decision-making and describing personal bravery by soldiers as a misguided effort that wastes lives and resources—highlighting hierarchy above other considerations. The common soldier, or even the more privileged janissaries and palace cavalrymen, were not treated with a great deal of empathy or support, often, it seemed, to the detriment of the war effort. On the one hand, the Tevārīḫ reflects common tropes in Ottoman military chronicle writing, yet at the same the Caucasus campaign was so difficult that authors such as Muṣṭafa ʿĀlī, himself a bureaucrat, commented about it at length in his Counsel for Sultans. Ebūbekir b. ʿAbdullāh’s chronicle is perhaps an outlier in its vernacular style but presents the terrible conditions troops endured and poor decisions by leadership. The Tevārīḫ’s sixteenth-century context makes Lala Muṣṭafā Pasha and Özdemiroğlu ʿOsmān Pasha the exemplars of a political faction that tried to displace the influence of the Ṣoḳullu family, although this conflict would subside after Ṣoḳullu Meḥmed Pasha and the two commanders had all died, by 1585. Outside of the factional conflict, the narrative serves as a form of exemplar literature regarding how an Ottoman military commander was to lead and how one was to be led. Ottoman historical writing in the late sixteenth century reflected a range of uses for both reader and writer, serving as a meta-genre that addressed a variety of possible concerns aside from the simple recounting of events.