Sir Henry Lello was the English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Warden of the Fleet Prison, and Keeper of the Palace of Westminster. He was involved in peace negotiations with the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, as well as with the Venetian and French ambassadors regarding the trading activities in the Levant.
Lello went to Constantinople as an attache to the English Embassy to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire, but originally as secretary to Edward Barton. In 1597 he took his place as ambassador. During his tenure, he wrote letters to the Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil, about the actions of the Persian ambassador while in Constantinople, and the relationship between the Sultan and the Tsar of Russia. [2]
As ambassador he was less popular in the court than his predecessors William Harborne and Sir Edward Barton and was less comfortable also, at one point stating that he was shocked by the extent of the violence and intrigue in the court of Sultan Mehmed III and his mother Safiye Sultan, [3] and in 1607 complaining that bribery was so widespread that the economy was now driven by the level of corruption and that neither religious or civil law had any place in it. [4]
He began his term as ambassador by arranging the donation of an elaborate organ-clock commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I and built by organ-maker Thomas Dallam. [5] The gift was intended to outshine overtures being made to the Sultan by Germany, France and other European nations in pursuit of trading rights in Ottoman territory. He was among the ambassadors who negotiated with the princes of Moldavia to gain trading privileges for English merchants. [6]
He was on good terms with Agostino Nani, the Venetian ambassador, during a time when English pirates in the Levant disturbed the activities of the French and Venetian shipping companies. [7] In 1598, he assisted in the negotiations between the Sultan and Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor of the House of Habsburg. [8]
Sultan Mehmed III requested Lello to write to Prince Michael the Brave, starting negotiations and advising him to send a tribute, hoping to start an era of peace with the Habsburgs. [9] He was then sent to meet the prince, and to gather and communicate informations for the Emperor. [10] [11] [12] [13] Prince Michael, born in 1558, was the ruler of Transylvania, and the successor to Wallachia, a territory previously ruled by Vlad Dracula until his death in 1477. [9] [14]
At the time, the roads in these territories were dangerous for the merchants, as they were permanent fights between the Ottomans and Romanians. [14] But with the recent victories on the battlefield by Prince Michael the Brave, the English became afraid of losing influence in the region, which would have changed the tax advantages they had been granted by the Ottomans for the commercial roads to India. [14]
Lello had been previously involved with prince Stephen the Great, whom he had helped gaining the throne of Moldavia with Queen Elizabeth Tudor, before being put in jail by the Ottomans. [14] Toward the end of Lello's tenure, King James I of England replaced Elizabeth I and his views on Anglo-Ottoman diplomatic relations were different, not having much of an interest in securing peace between the Habsburgs and the Sultan. The relations were also aggravated by the English pirates in the Mediterranean.
He would stay the English ambassador for 10 years, with the main contacts being with the French and Venetian ambassadors, such as Venetian Francesco Contarini of the Contarini family, later Doge of Venice. [15] Others included Nicolò Molin of Palazzo Molin del Cuoridoro and Zorzi Giustinian, whom he met in Venice. [16] [17] He left Constantinople on 24 May 1607 and was knighted by King James I.
Lello was also a member of the Levant Company, and made a fortune trading with the Levant and East India Company, from Constantinople to Venice. [18] His nephew was Governor Edward Hopkins of Connecticut, who married Anne Yale, aunt of Elihu Yale of Yale University, and granddaughter of Chancellor David Yale. [19]
Gentile Bellini was an Italian painter of the school of Venice. He came from Venice's leading family of painters, and at least in the early part of his career was more highly regarded than his younger brother Giovanni Bellini, the reverse of the case today. From 1474 he was the official portrait artist for the Doges of Venice, and as well as his portraits he painted a number of very large subjects with multitudes of figures, especially for the Scuole Grandi of Venice, wealthy confraternities that were very important in Venetian patrician social life.
The Duchy of the Archipelago, also known as Duchy of Naxos or Duchy of the Aegean, was a maritime state created by Venetian interests in the Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean Sea, in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, centered on the islands of Naxos and Paros. It included all the Cyclades. In 1537, it became a tributary of the Ottoman Empire, and was annexed by the Ottomans in 1579; however, Christian rule survived in islands such as Sifnos and Tinos.
Joseph Nasi or Joseph Nasif, known in Portuguese as João Miques, was a Portuguese Sephardi diplomat and administrator, member of the House of Mendes/Benveniste, nephew of Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi, and an influential figure in the Ottoman Empire during the rules of both Sultan Suleiman I and his son Selim II. He was a great benefactor of the Jewish people.
The Levant Company was an English chartered company formed in 1592. Elizabeth I of England approved its initial charter on 11 September 1592 when the Venice Company (1583) and the Turkey Company (1581) merged, because their charters had expired, as she was eager to maintain trade and political alliances with the Ottoman Empire. Its initial charter was good for seven years and was granted to Edward Osborne, Richard Staper, Thomas Smith and William Garrard with the purpose of regulating English trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Levant. The company remained in continuous existence until being superseded in 1825. A member of the company was known as a Turkey Merchant.
A bailo, also spelled baylo was a diplomat who oversaw the affairs of the Republic of Venice in Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and was a permanent fixture in the city around 1454.
A dragoman was an interpreter, translator, and official guide between Turkish-, Arabic-, and Persian-speaking countries and polities of the Middle East and European embassies, consulates, vice-consulates and trading posts. A dragoman had to have a knowledge of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and European languages.
The foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire were characterized by competition with the Persian Empire to the east, Russia to the north, and Austria to the west. The control over European minorities began to collapse after 1800, with Greece being the first to break free, followed by Serbia. Egypt was lost in 1798–1805. In the early 20th century Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bulgarian Declaration of Independence soon followed. The Ottomans lost nearly all their European territory in the First Balkan War (1912–1913). The Ottoman Empire allied itself with the Central Powers in the World War I, and was defeated. During the war, the British successfully mobilized Arab nationalism, and the Ottoman Empire thereby lost its Arab possessions, and itself soon collapsed in the early 1920s.
The Fourth Ottoman–Venetian War, also known as the War of Cyprus was fought between 1570 and 1573. It was waged between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice, the latter joined by the Holy League, a coalition of Christian states formed by the pope which included Spain, the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
The Franco-Ottoman alliance, also known as the Franco-Turkish alliance, was an alliance established in 1536 between Francis I, King of France and Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire. The strategic and sometimes tactical alliance was one of the longest-lasting and most important foreign alliances of France, and was particularly influential during the Italian Wars. The Franco-Ottoman military alliance reached its peak with the Invasion of Corsica of 1553 during the reign of Henry II of France.
The Morea revolt of 1453–1454 was a failed peasant rebellion carried out against the rule of the brothers Thomas and Demetrios Palaiologos, rulers of the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea in the Peloponnese peninsula.
The siege of Corfu in 1537 was led by the Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent, against the Republic of Venice-held island of Corfu. It is part of the Ottoman–Venetian War (1537–1540), one of the numerous Ottoman–Venetian Wars of the period.
The Ottoman–Venetian peace treaty of 1419 was signed between the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Venice, ending a short conflict between the two powers, confirming Venetian possessions in the Aegean Sea and the Balkans, and stipulating the rules of maritime trade between them.
Alvise Gritti was a Venetian politician. He was influential in the Hungarian Kingdom under the reign of King John I of Hungary. He was also a minister of the Ottoman sultan, and regent of Hungary from 1530 to 1534. He was the natural son of Andrea Gritti, the Venetian Bailo of Constantinople during the reign of Sultan Bayezid II, who later became the Doge of Venice in 1523.
The European consuls in the Ottoman Empire began as informal relationships between merchants residing in the Empire and the Sultan. The relationships were defined by the ahdname granted by the Sultan which would stipulate the religious freedom and exemption from the taxes that non-Muslim subjects had to pay. The religious implications of these relationships diminished over time as the commercial aspects took over.
Şehzade Mahmud was an Ottoman prince, the son of sultan Mehmed III and Halime Sultan. He was the grandson of sultan Murad III and Safiye Sultan, the half-brother of the future sultan Ahmed I and the brother of sultan Mustafa I.
The Battle of Gallipoli occurred on 29 May 1416 between the fleets of the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire off the port city of Gallipoli, the main Ottoman naval base. The battle was the main episode of a brief conflict between the two powers, resulting from Ottoman attacks against possessions and shipping of the Venetians and their allies in the Aegean Sea in 1414–1415. The Venetian fleet, under Pietro Loredan, was charged with transporting a Venetian embassy to the Ottoman sultan, but was authorized to attack if the Ottomans refused to negotiate. The subsequent events are known chiefly from a detailed letter written by Loredan after the battle.
The Treaty of Gallipoli, concluded in January or early February 1403, was a peace treaty between Süleyman Çelebi, ruler of the Ottoman territories in the Balkans, and the main Christian regional powers: the Byzantine Empire, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Genoa, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Duchy of Naxos. Concluded in the aftermath of the Battle of Ankara, while Süleyman tried to strengthen his own position in the succession struggle with his brothers, the treaty brought major concessions to the Christian states, especially the Byzantines, who regained lost territories and achieved a position of nominal superiority over the Ottoman ruler. Its provisions were honoured by Süleyman as well as by Mehmed I, the victor of the Ottoman succession struggle, but collapsed after Mehmed's death in 1421.
Bartolomeo Bruti, Barthélemy Bruto or Bartholomeo Brutti was an Albanian postelnic (chamberlain), diplomat, merchant, spy, agent, translator and a multilingual trader, part of the Bruti family from Dulcigno (Ulqin), Venetian Albania. He worked for the Venetians, Philip II of Portugal, Habsburg Spain, the Queen of England, the Principality of Moldavia, Zygmund III Vasa and the Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha to whom he was related. He was the son of a cavalry captain in the Venetian employ. Bartolomeo Bruti married Maria de Pleba, a relative of the imperial Matthias del Faro. Their son, Antonio was born in 1578. In 1573 Bartolomeo Bruti, aged 16, sent a petition to Venice after having been trained in Istanbul to become a giovane de lingo, or a Venetian agent. In 1575 he returned to Rome after having learned the Ottoman-Turkish language. Between 1574 and 1579, he worked for the Spanish on a mission to establish a truce in the Mediterranean between the two great powers Venice and the Ottoman Empire. He also worked as a spy for the Venetians fixing deals with the Ottoman Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha to whom he worked for.
The Portrait of Mehmet II is a painting by the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini, depicting the Ottoman sultan, Mehmet the Conqueror, now in the National Gallery, London. It was painted in 1480 while Bellini was on a diplomatic mission in Constantinople. This painting records the significant economic and diplomatic ties between Venice and the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century. Before this painting, the Ottomans had recently conquered Constantinople; this put the Venetian Republic in a situation where they had no choice but to accept a peace treaty from Mehmet, the conqueror, in 1479. Venice was actively tied with Constantinople through commercial links because of its proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. The importation of raw silk, cotton, illuminated manuscripts, inlaid metalwork, and spices would have ground to a halt without this peace treaty. After a peace treaty was brokered between the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mehmet II decided that he would like an Italian painter to be in residence at his court and paint for him; this task was placed upon Gentile Bellini. At the time, Bellini was a painter of doges, primarily in Venice. Thus, Italy's decision to send Bellini to Istanbul to paint a portrait of Mehmet II was a diplomatic gesture aimed at fostering peace and promoting cooperation between the two nations.
Giovanni Dario was a Venetian official who served multiple times as ambassador of the Republic of Venice. His family hailed from Crete, a Venetian colony at the time; his knowledge of Greek allowed him to serve as interpreter and envoy to Constantinople during the last years of the Byzantine Empire. After the Fall of Constantinople he rose to the position of secretary of the Duke of Crete, and from 1464 entered service with the Signoria of Venice. He was repeatedly sent as ambassador to the court of the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate, most notably helping conclude the First Ottoman–Venetian War in 1479.