Kara Mustafa Pasha

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Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa (17th century painting)

Kara Mustafa Pasha (born 1634 / in Marinca 35 Merzifon , eyalet Sivas;. Died 25. December 1683 in Belgrade ) was under the reign of Sultan Mehmed IV. Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and commander in the Second Siege of Vienna at the beginning of the Great Turkish War .

Life - political and military career

Kara Mustafa was a son of Sipahi Oruç Bey. After the death of his father, he became a protégé of the Grand Vizier Mehmed Köprülü Pascha , grew up with Mehmed's son Ahmed Köprülü and married his sister. He became Beylerbey (provincial governor) on February 22, 1660 , a year later vizier. Under his brother-in-law, the Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü Pascha, he became Kapudan Pascha (Grand Admiral) of the Turkish fleet on December 23, 1661 . In April 1663 he became Kaymakam (deputy of the Grand Vizier) for several years and after the death of Ahmed Köprülü on November 6, 1676 himself Grand Vizier.

“Handfeste” ( Tughra- like signature) Kara Mustafas at the request to surrender to Vienna

In 1668, he commanded at the siege of the occupied by the Venetians city Candia on the island of Crete some of the troops . In 1672 he successfully led a campaign against Poland-Lithuania in the wake of the sultan , which in 1676 finally confirmed the territorial annexations of the Ottomans from the preliminary peace of Buczacz in the Waffenurawno armistice . The war (1676-1681) in the field of Saporogerkosaken in the Ukraine against the pro-Russian Cossacks from the Hetmanat (left bank Ukraine, an area east of the Dnieper ) and the Tsardom of Russia ran ultimately unsuccessful, though Kara Mustafa was able to achieve a military success. During the siege of the Cossack city of Tschyhyryn in 1678, he took the city and at the same time fought off a relief army under the Russian prince Grigori Romodanowski . He believed he could repeat this before Vienna. The further advance northward, however, was a failure.

In 1678 the Hungarians rose up under the magnate Imre Thököly in the Kuruc uprising against the rule of the Habsburgs and asked the Ottomans for help. Kara Mustafa pledged his support. He hoped to conquer the territories of the Kingdom of Hungary , which had passed to the Habsburgs in 1526, and possibly to rule there as local ruler. After the quick conquest of Hungary, he set himself the goal of taking the Habsburg capital Vienna - without the permission of the sultan. After the Turkish troops overran Burgenland and Lower Austria , he began to siege and storm the city. However, he failed to bring enough heavy artillery to bombard the well-developed city fortifications. So the defenders under the command of Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg were able to keep the city until the arrival of the Polish-German relief army under the Polish King Jan III. Sobieski and Karl of Lorraine hold. Kara Mustafa did not try to relocate the relief army across the Danube, and he also failed to occupy the Kahlenberg in time. The relief army was able to attack the siege troops from there and put them to flight. In doing so, his ambitious plan was thwarted - in part by his own tactical mistakes.

Execution and burial

On December 25, 1683 (according to the Islamic calendar the 6th  Muharram of the year 1095 after the Hijra ) Kara Mustafa was strangled with a silk cord in Belgrade because of the lost battle on Kahlenberg on the orders of Sultan Mehmed IV .

Kara Mustafa's protégé and Kaymakam, Kara Ibrahim Pascha, supported by the chief harem guard , the black eunuch Jusuf Ağa and by Sarı (“the yellow”) Süleyman Ağa, the İmrahor (Grand Stable Master), successfully schemed with the Sultan to overthrow him and his office to be taken as Grand Vizier. The master of ceremonies of the high gate (his person is historically incomprehensible, but it is assumed that it is the one Ahmed whose son Mehmed was nicknamed Teşrifatizade , in German "son of the master of ceremonies") writes in his diary of the siege:

“The Grand Vizier Mustafa Pascha had already spread out the prayer rug for the midday prayer […] when he saw the Janissary Agha and the Chamberlain and the Court Marshal approaching behind him, […] 'What's up?' Asked the Grand Vizier and him The Chamberlain replied: 'Our illustrious Padishah is asking you for the imperial seal entrusted to you and the holy flag and the key to the Kaaba.' [...]

Then he asked: 'Am I destined to die?' - 'Of course, it must be!' Replied the Chamberlain. [...] And now that the executioners came in and got their ropes ready, he lifted his beard with his own hands and submitted to doom with the words: 'Put the noose on me properly!' The executioners put the noose on him, tightened twice or three times and then he had given up his ghost. "

Leaflet with mockery on Kara Mustafa around 1683

That Kara Mustafa the imperial seal as a sign of the dignity of the grand vizier, the holy flag (Turkish sancak-ı şerîf , a flag cloth with a piece of the banner of Muhammad sewn into it) and the key to the Kaaba as a sign of dignity of the Ser'asker (the commander in chief the field army ), emphasizes its unconditional demotion . Kara Mustafa's wish that his body be covered with dust and that he could die a martyr was granted. To do this, his prayer rug was removed and the strangled man could fall on the dusty floor. The body was stripped and washed. The skull was peeled off and the stuffed skin of the head and face was sent to the Sultan as evidence to Edirne and then buried there. The trunk and skull (cranium) received their grave in Belgrade. This grave is lost.

According to a certificate of authenticity ( "Authentik" ) from Vienna Cardinal Leopold Karl Graf Kollonitsch from 1696, grave robbers removed Kara Mustafa's skull from the burial place outside of a mosque that was converted into a church in 1688. Kollonitsch certified that the skull had fallen into the hands of the Jesuits who looked after the church and had been sent to him by them in Vienna. Kollonitsch handed the skull over to the civil armory , for which he issued the certificate of authenticity from 1696. The skull came from the armory to the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna (now the Wien Museum ), where it was exhibited until 1975. In 2006 he was examined using scientific methods and, for reasons of piety, buried ecumenically in Vienna. Whether this skull from the Wien Museum actually came from Belgrade and could belong to Kara Mustafa, however, can neither be proven nor refuted. Turkish scientists take the position that the entire head of Kara Mustafa was separated from the trunk in Belgrade, sent to Edirne and buried there. Therefore, the skull initially kept in Vienna and later buried could not come from Kara Mustafa. The trunk was transferred to Istanbul and buried at the Kara Mustafa Pascha Medrese.

character

Occidental historians (such as Zygmunt Abrahamowicz from Cracow or Abraham a Sancta Clara ) report Kara Mustafa's greed, boastfulness and incompetence. He behaved with arrogance towards foreign ambassadors, from whom he extorted high bribes - "gifts" -. Even the Ottoman reporters were not favored by him after the military catastrophe, for example the author of the story of Silihdar , the sultan's weapon-bearer, Silâhdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Ağa . But he is also described as friendly, dignified, strictly religious, hardworking and conscientious in his office and brave in battle, even if sometimes irascible, alcoholic and cruel towards the unbelievers .

Kara Mustafas Foundations

Kara Mustafa made several foundations, including in Istanbul, Galata, Edirne, Jeddah and Merzifon.

In his hometown of Merzifon he donated a Külliye built between 1666 and 1678/79 , which includes a mosque , a library, a primary school, a stone-built inn , a covered bazaar , shops, a fountain and two baths . The building complex around the Kara Mustafa Pascha mosque belonging to the Istanbul Foundation was only completed in 1690 after Kara Mustafa's death by his eldest son Yusuf Bey.

literature

  • Bertrand Michael Buchmann: Austria and the Ottoman Empire. A bilateral story. WUV University Press, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-85114-479-1 .
  • Richard Franz Kreutel / Karl Teply (ed.): Kara Mustafa in front of Vienna 1683 from the perspective of Turkish sources. Translated and explained by Richard F. Kreutel. Strongly increased edition taken care of by Karl Teply. Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1982 (first edition appeared 1955), ISBN 3-222-11435-8 (= Ottoman historians ).
  • Hedda Reindl-Kiel: The Must-Haves of a Grand Vizier. Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha's Luxury Assets. In: Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes , Vol. 106 (2016), pp. 179–221 (English).
  • Stephan Vajda: The siege. Report on the Turkish year 1683. Orac Pietsch, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-85368-921-3 .
  • Robert Waissenberger , Historical Museum of the City of Vienna (ed.): The Turks before Vienna. Europe and the decision on the Danube 1683. Residence, Salzburg / Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-7017-0312-4 .
  • Simon Winchester: Skulls: Alan Dudley's fascinating skull collection . Torch bearer, Cologne 2013, p. 224, ISBN 978-3-7716-4531-1 .

Web links

Commons : Kara Mustafa Pasha  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stephan Vajda: The siege. Report on the year of the Turks 1683. Verlag Orac Pietsch, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-85368-921-3 , p. 28.
  2. ^ A b Richard Franz Kreutel (translator): Kara Mustafa before Vienna. The Turkish diary of the siege of Vienna in 1683, written by the master of ceremonies of the Sublime Porte. From the series of Ottoman historians. Verlag Styria, Graz-Wien-Cologne 1955, first edition, p. 189.
  3. ↑ a b Bertrand Michael Buchmann: Austria and the Ottoman Empire. A bilateral story. WUV Universitätsverlag, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-85114-479-1 , p. 136
  4. ↑ Zygmunt Abrahamowicz: Kara Mustafa Pascha . In: Historical Museum of the City of Vienna, Robert Waissenberger (editor): The Turks before Vienna. Europe and the decision on the Danube 1683. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg / Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-7017-0312-4 , p. 249.
  5. ^ Richard Franz Kreutel (translator): Kara Mustafa before Vienna. The Turkish diary of the siege of Vienna in 1683, written by the master of ceremonies of the Sublime Porte. From the series of Ottoman historians. Verlag Styria, Graz-Wien-Cologne 1955, first edition, pp. 20, 121–123, 132, 185.
  6. ↑ a b c Richard Franz Kreutel: The skull of Kara Mustafa Pascha . In: Yearbook of the Association for the History of the City of Vienna . Volume 32/33 (1976/9177), pp. 63-77.
  7. ↑ Note from the Institute for Architecture and Art History, Building Research and Monument Preservation ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed September 11, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / baugeschichte.tuwien.ac.at
  8. ↑ Nizameddin Berin Taşan: Merzifonlu Mustafa Paşa'nın Mezarı ve Viyana Müzesindeki Kafatası . In: Zeki Dilek (ed.): Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa Uluslararası Sempozyumu . Merzifon 2001, pp. 287-295.
  9. ↑ Zygmunt Abrahamowicz: Kara Mustafa Pascha. In: Historical Museum of the City of Vienna, Robert Waissenberger (editor): The Turks before Vienna. Europe and the decision on the Danube 1683. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg-Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-7017-0312-4 , pp. 241-250.
  10. ↑ Werner Welzig : Appeal for what? . In: Historical Museum of the City of Vienna, Robert Waissenberger (editor): The Turks before Vienna. Europe and the decision on the Danube in 1683. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg / Vienna 182, ISBN 3-7017-0312-4 , p. 190.
  11. ↑ Silihdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Ağa: History of the Silihdar. in Silihdar Tarihi. Istanbul 1928, 2 volumes, in: Richard Franz Kreutel: Kara Mustafa before Vienna. The Turkish diary of the siege of Vienna in 1683, written by the master of ceremonies of the Sublime Porte. From the series Ottoman Writers. Verlag Styria, Graz-Vienna-Cologne 1955, first edition, pp. 135-169.
  12. ^ Stephan Vajda: The siege. Report on the year of the Turks in 1683. Orac Pietsch publishing house, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-85368-921-3 , p, 27.
  13. ^ CJ Heywood: Kara Mustafa Paşa . In: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition . Leiden 1954-2004
  14. ↑ Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa Külliyesi . In: İslâm Ansiklopedisi . Vol. 29, p. 252. Online. Retrieved December 28, 2016
predecessor Office successor
Köprülü Fâzıl Ahmed Pasha Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire
October 19, 1676 to December 25, 1683 		Kara İbrahim Pasha
personal data
SURNAME Kara Mustafa Pasha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire
DATE OF BIRTH between 1626 and 1636
PLACE OF BIRTH at Merzifon
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1683
Place of death Belgrade