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526 Mahmut Halef Cevrioğlu

1. Introduction

On a calm summer day around the western shores of the Aegean
Sea in 1633, two English merchant ships faced a very unpleasant
surprise that any European trader was afraid to experience. The Ot-
toman armada at the command of the grand admiral (kaptan-ı derya)
showed up in the horizon while they were trying to load grain on
board. Even though there was no enmity between the Ottomans and
the English, it soon became clear that the Ottoman navy was ap-
proaching with hostile intentions. The English sailors were left with
no choice but to defend themselves despite their undeniable numer-
ical disadvantage.
Traditionally, Ottoman maritime historiography has neglected
dealing with such seemingly insignificant happenings. Rather, it fo-
cused either on macro-perspective evaluations of the empire’s naval
organisation (like the shipyard) or on the full-scale military clashes
in the Mediterranean, such as the Battle of Lepanto (in 1571) . None-
1
theless, the study of minor events or of developments regarded as
less worthy of attention by the historiography also has as much to
offer us regarding the institutional mechanism of the empire’s mari-
time organisation . Defeats and setbacks might be more telling re-
2
garding the commanding staff or technological development of any
military establishment .
3
And studying Ottoman maritime developments is all the more ur-
gent, considering that even the Ottoman military history of the era of
Suleyman the Magnificent (the rather popular period of the early
modern Ottoman Empire) mostly focused «on the sultan’s endeav-
ours in central Europe: Ottoman infantry, cavalry, and artillery» .
4

1 For the Ottoman navy in general, see C. Imber, The Navy of Suleyman the
Magnificent, in C. Imber (ed.), Studies in Ottoman History and Law, The Isis Press,
Istanbul, 1996, pp. 1-70; C. Isom-Verhaaren. The Sultan’s Fleet: Seafarers of the
Ottoman Empire. I.B. Tauris, London, 2022; İ. Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Teşkilatı:
XVII. Yüzyılda Tersane-i Amire, Türk Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, 1992; H.S. Taba-
koğlu, Akdeniz’de Savaş: Osmanlı-İspanya Mücadelesi (1560-1574), Kronik Kitap,
Istanbul, 2019.
2 A similar call has already been made by Jan Glete in his introductory chapter:
J. Glete (ed.), Naval History 1500-1680, Routledge, London & New York, 2016.
3 Imber’s detailed study on the Ottoman navy’s recuperation after the Battle of
Lepanto is a very good exposition of the dynamics of the naval organisation, C.
Imber, The Reconstruction of the Ottoman Fleet after the Battle of Lepanto, 1571-
1572, in C. Imber (ed.), Studies in Ottoman History and Law, The Isis Press, Istan-
bul, 1996, pp. 85-102.
4 A. Tzavaras, Two Perceptions of Süleyman’s ‘Magnificent’ Navy during the Later
Italian Wars, «War & Society», XLII, 2 (2023), pp. 123-139, in particular 127-128.

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