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Contro ogni previsione: uno scontro navale nel Mediterraneo moderno... 533

although the last word duly always belonged to the admiral while mak-
ing decisions. Palace-trained Piyale Pasha (d. 1578), for example,
made his successful place in the annals of history thanks to his naval
mentor of corsair origin, Turgud Reis.
21
Decades later, the situation was still more or less the same, and
political appointees kept holding the office. Cafer Pasha was an Otto-
man palace official from Ohrid (Macedonia) and took office as the ad-
miral-in-chief of the Ottoman navy during the summer of 1632.
Thanks probably to his proximity to the ruling sultan at the time (Mu-
rad IV, r. 1623-1640), he was promoted from the palace service as the
chief gardener (bostancıbaşı) to the admiralty of the imperial navy in
1632, suggesting that his naval experience was at best very limited .
22
And the Venetian resident representative in Istanbul (bailo) at the
time, Giovanni Cappello, frowned on the phenomenon that a chief gar-
dener, whose mere former connection to navigation was rowing the
small imperial excursion boats now and then in the Bosphorus, be-
come appointed to the command of the seas «without any imaginable
preceding experience» . To be sure, Cafer Pasha’s deficiency in mari-
23
time knowledge did not stand out as a problem, as it was already the
case with many other grand admirals preceding him, such as Damad
Halil Pasha (1595-1598), Topal Recep Pasha (1623-1626) and Hasan
Pasha (1626-1630) . One particular comment regarding Cafer Pasha
24
was, however, that he disliked naval campaigns .
25
Cafer Pasha was invested with this office amidst the upheavals of
Sultan Murad IV’s entrenchment of personal power in 1632. When
26

21 C. Isom-Verhaaren. The Sultan’s Fleet, pp. 116-119.
22 M. Yıldız. Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilâtında Bostancı Ocağı, PhD Dissertation, Mar-
mara Üniversitesi, 2008, p. 341; Mehmed İzzet Bey, Harîta-i Kapudânân-ı Deryâ:
Osmanlı Kaptanıderyaları (1352-1853), edited by Cemil Sağlam and Göker İnan,
Türkiye Yazma Eserler Kurumu Başkanlığı, Istanbul, 2021, p. 110.
23 G. Cappello, Relazione di Costantinopoli del Bailo Giovanni Cappello, 1634, in
N. Barozzi and G. Berchet (edited by), Relazioni degli Ambasciatori e Baili Veneti a
Costantinopoli, vol. I, parte II, Naratovich, Venezia, 1873, pp. 5-68, on page 21: «e
dopo questo servizio [Bostangi Bassi] sovente viene eletto Capitan Bassà; cosi
senza precedente immaginabile esperienza della navigazione passa dall’uso del
remo al commando del mar».
24 E. Türkçelik, Meritocracy, Factionalism and Ottoman Grand Admirals in the
Context of Mediterranean Politics. in Rubén González Cuerva and Alexander Koller
(eds.) A Europe of Courts, a Europe of Factions: Political Groups at Early Modern Cen-
tres of Power (1550-1700), Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2017, pp. 88-108, especially p. 95.
25 G. Cappello, Relazione, p. 43. As a matter of fact, Cafer Pasha shared nu-
merous similarities with Damad Halil Pasha, see E. Türkçelik, The “Reluctant” Ad-
miral: Damad Halil Pasha and the Ottoman Navy (1595-1598), «Mediterranea – ri-
cerche storiche», 20, n. 57, (2023), pp. 9-34.
26 B. Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire. Political and Social Transformation in
the Early Modern World, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010, p. 213.

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