14h30-16h30 > New perspectives on the Ottoman-Safavid conflicts : Writings on the war by soldiers, spies, friars and travellers (late 16th - early 17th centuries)

New perspectives on the Ottoman-Safavid conflicts: Writings on the war by soldiers, spies, friars, and travellers (late 16th-early 17th centuries) 

mer 12 juil 23
14h30-16h30
Déméter 047

Résumé :

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran fought a series of wars for control of the frontier provinces of the Caucasus and Arabian Iraq. Following Ismā‘īl I’s crushing defeat at Chāldirān at the hands of Selīm I (1514), and the signature of the Treaty of Amasya between Süleymān I and Ṭahmāsp I (1555), the late 16th and early 17th centuries saw a series of three conflicts in short succession (15781590, 1603-1618, and 1623-1639). The war only ended with the signature of the Treaty of Qaṣr-i Shīrīn in 1639, enacting terms for peace and a longer-lasting border between the two states. 

The present panel will examine the three conflicts of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, notably the 1578-1590 war, with the objective of providing new perspectives based on original sources. Although these wars have been extensively chronicled by both Ottoman and Safavid court historians, and subsequently discussed in secondary literature, we endeavour to shift focus by relying on hitherto littlestudied texts written by soldiers, spies, friars and travellers, in order to develop novel insights and research questions on the broader conflict between the two states. As such, this panel is conceived in the framework of the ‘Reading Sources in Area Studies’ program developed at CeRMI (Paris) and IREMAM (Aix-enProvence) since 2021, which intends to make a broader case for the use of non-courtly chronicles to write a history of Turco-Iranian encounters, connections and conflicts. 

Convenor:
Sacha Alsancakli, Inalco / CeRMI

Lukas Rybar, Comenius University, Bratislava
Searching for an alliance: Habsburgs, Rurikids, and the Third Ottoman-Safavid War (1578-1590)

Davide Trentacoste, The Haifa Center for Mediterranean History
Safavid news and Florentine archives: The Medici eye on the Ottoman-Safavid war of 1578-1590 

Werner Gaboreau, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle / CeRMI
Connected perspectives in writing the Ottoman-Safavid wars in 17th-century Iran and Europe: Faithful European copies of Iranian chronicles, or mutatis mutandis adaptations?

 Sacha Alsancakli, Inalco / CeRMI
Ebūbekir b. ‘Abdullāh’s ghazavātnāme of the Shirvan campaign (1578-1579): An example of ‘anti-war’ Ottoman discourse?