Maria Pia Pedani

In the Modern Age from the 16th to the 18th c. international trade between Venice and Istanbul was not exclusively in Venetian hands. Ottoman ships sailed the Mediterranean and the Adriatic and foreign merchants used to buy and sell goods on the Rialto market and to frequent Dalmatian ports.  Having so many contacts with Europeans, Ottoman merchants too began to become acquainted with the other’s legal institutions. They began to appoint agents or even consuls to represents themselves, to go to notaries instead of kadı to make wills or to sign proxies, to go to Venetian law courts to support their rights in cases of quarrels or inheritances and, last but not the least, also to take out an insurance to protect their goods or ships from the accidents that could happen at sea.
Using Venetian documents kept in the Venetian State Archives this paper aims to present some example of deeds of this kind made by Ottoman Muslim subjects.

In the Middle Ages the city of Venice had commercial relations with some Muslim countries. Venetian merchants who trade in the East were accompanied and protected by consuls and ambassadors sent by the central government. However sometimes, above all when international problems arose, even Islamic rulers sent their diplomatic envoys to Venice. On the basis of the documents kept in the Venetian State Archives it is possible to discover which sovereigns sent their men to Venice and why. They were, for instance, the Mamluk sultans of Egypt (1465 and 1476), Uzun Hasan, emir of the Ak Kuyunlu (1470-1475), the Tatar khan Ahmed (1476) and, above all, the Ottoman rulers (from 1384 onwards) together with some of their provincial governors (beylerbeyi). Venetians received these diplomats in the best way, prepared flats and organized feasts for them, besides political meeting, but they were also very careful about this kind of persons. In that period, in Europe, it was easy to meet swindlers who pretended to be ambassadors sent by far-off and exotic rulers. Some of them, as for instance friar Ludovico da Bologna (1460), succeeded in faking even kings and popes. Venetians, who had mixed with Muslims for centuries, could not be easily deceived and even Ludovico’s adventure found its inevitable conclusion just in Venice.

From the middle of the 15th c. until the middle of the 17th c. Ottoman ruling class was formed above all by slaves of the sultan. Young boys, either captured during wars and raids in foreign lands or levied as a tax on the Christian families in the Balkan region, were brought up to become faithful servants of the state. They were called kapıkulu, the slaves of the Imperial Gate and some of them had a Venetian origin.
Venetian subjects were either captured along the common border which divided the Stato da Mar of the Most Serene Republic (Dalmatia, Albania and some Greek places) from the Ottoman Empire or taken prisoners during wars and piratical raids. Most of them spent their lives in a painful slavery; others were rescued by means of money by their relatives or by the state, but some obtained important offices in the Ottoman administration. For instance Giovanni Maria Angiolello from Vicenza was enslaved during the siege of Negroponte and became treasurer of Mehmed II; on 20 March 1501 a young boy was taken by an Ottoman ship near the island of Santa Maura and on 27 June 1523 he became great vizier of Süleyman the Magnificent with the name of Pargalı Ibrahim pasha; two brothers belonging to the Venetian citizen Michiel family were captured in 1559, they converted to Islam, assumed the names of Cafer and Gazanfer and became hasodabaşı and kapıağası. Other Venetian slaves worked in the Ottoman arsenal. Venetian galleys were famous in the Mediterranean Sea and the workers who could build and steer them were valuable. Some of them had been captured by Maghrib reises and made a career in the Ottoman navy as Venedikli Hasan pasha (Andrea Celeste) who became kapudanpaşa (1588-1581).
In the 16th c. so many contacts existed between these converts and their Venetian relatives that common people often thought that it was enough to have a member of the family who was slave in Ottoman lands to become rich. Some of these persons were right and clearly increased their income thanks to their Muslim relatives, as Venedikli Hasan’s sister Camilla or Ibrahim pasha’s father and brothers. On the contrary, others were disappointed. Some extraordinary lives apart, not all the Venetians who were slaves in Ottoman lands could work their ways to the top.

The frontier is a zone that divides two states fighting against each other, but when the war finishes and peace arrives the rulers of the two countries can agree to create a borderline to divide their lands. The aim of this book is to study the frontier and the border between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire from the 15th c., when the Ottomans arrived in Greece and the Balkans, to the 18th c., when the Most Serene Republic disappeared. It begins studying the words used to define these concepts and it proceeds with the idea of the frontier and the society of a frontier zone. Then it describes how a borderline could be established between Venetian and Ottoman lands and how people lived in such a zone. The idea of the sea as both a frontier and a border zone is also investigated. It ends studying the persons who used to cross the Ottoman-Venetian border and the marks used to recognize peoples and things belonging to each country.
This book is the English translation of Dalla Frontiera al Confine, Rome 2002.

For many centuries Venice was the main point of contact and exchange between Europe and the Orient, between Christianity and the vast Muslim world bordering on the Mediterranean. From the eighth century until the fall of the Most Serene Republic in 1797, this book tells the story of how the relationship between the Venetian state and the Arab and Turkish world unfolded, with its commerce, its pilgrimages and crusades, its conflicts as well as its partnerships, the misadventures of slaves and converts. Among the major players the reader will find ambassadors with their pageantry, dragomans and consuls, merchants with their warehouses, sailors and slaves, pirates and spies. All these people and merchandise coming and going, over many centuries, fostered an environment featuring contiguity, familiarity, and relationships among different, and not necessarily hostile, worlds.

The aim of this paper is to study the presence of Muslim merchants in Venice in the Modern Age with a special focus on the maritime insurances they made to protect their goods. First of all we must stress the fact that, in the 16th and 17th c., the Ottomans who traded in Venice were not alone but could make reference to a real commercial network. Moreover, to regulate their business they could go to kadıs, before leaving their country, but also, later, to Venetian notaries. Notarial deeds give us information on shipping partnerships, family companies, grandees involved in international trade and on companies of merchants both in Istanbul and Venice. The oldest witness of an insurance made by an Ottoman Muslim dates back to 1559: it was made by the agent of the great admiral Piyale pasha, the money was paid in Ancona but it was made by Venetian insurers. Other documents dating back to the following period show that Ottoman merchants were more and more involved in insurances and that, in the 18th c., to ensure goods became quite common when they decided to go to Venice.
In his book about business partnership Murat Çizakça (A Comparative Evolution of Business Partnership. The Islamic World and Europe, with Specific Reference to the Ottoman Archives, Brill, Leiden, 1996) states: “In the Ottoman case, it can be presumed that an effective maritime insurance did not exist. Certainly, not a single document has been found to indicate the contrary.” Documents still kept in the Venetian State Archives tell us that Ottomans could use Venetian insurers and also agree to make insurances in front of a kadı.
Ancient historiographical theories say that in the Modern Age Ottoman Muslims were not interested in international trade and that they left it completely in Christian and Jewish hands, but documents tell us a completely different story, a story of contacts, exchanges, and even confidence and friendship.
(paper presented to EBHA - Ancona 2018 but not delivered because I could not attend to the conference)