Page 10 - mediterranea 57

10 Evrim Türkçelik

Halil Pasha (d. 1603), who held the post of kapudan pasha be-
tween 1595 and 1598, is perhaps one of the least-known grand admi-
rals in the Ottoman Mediterranean history. Apart from a recent gen-
eral analysis of his professional biography in the Ottoman Empire ,
1
his career as the grand admiral of the Ottoman navy remains largely
unstudied and neglected to this day. This is in fact not surprising
given the fact that Halil Pasha lacked a distinguished and lengthy mar-
itime career and the Ottoman naval power was far from its former level
during his period of grand admiralty. Historiographical attention has
rendered him so insignificant that Braudel, for instance, never men-
tions his name, although he provides a detailed account of Halil Pa-
sha’s one and only campaign in the Mediterranean in 1596 . Interest-
2
ingly, collective biography books written on Ottoman kapudan pashas
give imprecise information on Halil Pasha’s appointment and dismis-
sal by putting the main emphasis on the absence of any “noteworthy”
achievements in his time . Even recent studies on Ottoman admirals
3
only mention him in relation to his replacement of and by a relatively
more famous grand admiral, Cigalazade Sinan Pasha (Scipione Ci-
cala) . Despite the brevity of his office as grand admiral and the scar-
4
city of his activities in the Mediterranean, Halil Pasha does not deserve
to be relegated to oblivion in the historiography of the Ottoman Medi-
terranean. In fact, what makes his career as grand admiral worthy of
historical analysis is its brevity and inactivity. The aim of this article
is to provide a contextualized historical assessment of his short pos-
session of the office of kapudan pasha in the broader framework of the
reigns of Murad III and Mehmed III, when certain structural changes
were taking place in the configuration of power in terms of the reas-
sertion of sultan’s absolute authority and the increase in factionalism
and favouritism among the Ottoman ruling elite. Besides the fact that
Halil Pasha’s rise in the Ottoman administration was linked to all
these changes, I specifically argue that his career as the grand admiral

1 E. Türkçelik, Damad Halil Paşa (ö. 1603):‘Mutedil’ Bir Osmanlı Paşasının Hayatı ve
Kariyeri, «Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli Üniversitesi SBE Dergisi», 12:3 (2022), pp. 1638-
1652.
2 F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II,
University of California Press, London, 1995, vol. II, pp. 1230-1231.
3 “Zamânında şâyeste-i tahrîr fütûhât vücûd-pezîr olmamışdır (In his time, there did
not come into existence any conquest worthy of being recorded)”. Ş. Mehmed Said,
Tuhfe-i Mustafâviyye fî Beyân-ı Kapûdânân-ı Devlet-i Aliyye, ed. D. Adlığ, Efe Akademi,
Istanbul, 2020, pp. 95-96; K. Mehmed Hafid Efendi, Sefînetü’l-Vüzerâ, ed. İ. Par-
maksızoğlu, Şirketi Mürettibiye Basımevi, Istanbul, 1952, p. 24; M. İzzet Bey, Harîta-i
Kapûdânân-ı Deryâ, ed. C. Sağlam, Türkiye Yazma Eserler Kurumu Başkanlığı, Istan-
bul, 2021, p. 104.
4 C. Isom-Verhaaren, The Sultan's Fleet: Seafarers of the Ottoman Empire, I.B. Tauris,
London, 2022, p. 150.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XX - Aprile 2023
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)