Ebūbekir b. ‘Abdullāh’s ghazavātnāme of the Shirvan campaign (1578-1579): An example of ‘anti-war’ Ottoman discourse?
Résumé
The beginnings of the 1578-1590 Ottoman-Safavid war were marked by important Ottoman successes on the Caucasian front, as the Sultan’s army dealt several devastating blows to the Safavids and quickly conquered Tbilisi and the province of Shirvan. Despite minor setbacks in the winter, the early campaign of Shirvan is thus presented, in chronicles like Muṣṭafā ‘Alī’s Nuṣretnāme (c. 1584), as an all-around success. There is, however, another aspect to this story in the perspective of rank-and-file soldiers, voiceless yet primary actors of the glorious battles depicted in the Nuṣretnāme and many other texts. The present communication is concerned with the war memoirs of one such soldier, the Tevārīḫ-i ‘Osmān Paşa, composed in Turkish in 1582 by Ebūbekir b. ‘Abdullāh, a cavalryman in the Ottoman army.
In Ebūbekir’s story, heroics are quickly brushed aside; rather, the reader is constantly reminded of the terrible cost paid by soldiers and confronted with tragic depictions of the horrors of war. As a window into the mindset of an Ottoman veteran of the Safavid conflict, Ebūbekir’s text thus represents an original and important source worthy of discussion. In this paper, I will present the Tevārīḫ and examine it as a possible example of ‘anti-war’ Ottoman discourse; I will then discuss how such a discourse might tie in with crucial developments in the Empire at the turn of the 17th century.