Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa

Ottoman grand vizier (1676-1683)

• Born: 1634 or 1635
• Birthplace: Merzifon, Ottoman Empire (now in Turkey)
• Died: December 25, 1683
• Place of death: Belgrade, Serbia (now in Serbia and Montenegro)

Heir to two previous reform-minded Köprülü grand viziers, Kara Mustafa Paşa failed to take Vienna in an infamous 1683 battle, which led to the loss of major European provinces for the Ottomans and to the empire’s further decline.

Early Life

The date of birth and even the origins of Kara Mustafa Paşa (ka-RAH-mew-stah-FAH-pah-SHAH) are uncertain. One tradition maintains that he was the son of a cavalryman killed during Sultan Murad IV’s siege of Baghdad in 1638 and that, following the father’s death, the son was admitted into the household of the future grand vizier Köprülü Mehmed Paşa (d. 1661), who had been his father’s friend.

Another tradition holds that Kara Mustafa was the son of a cavalryman from Merzifon and that his father presented him to Mehmed Paşa as an içoghlan (page) and then rose steadily in the pasha’s household. A third tradition links Kara Mustafa to the vicinity of Trabzon, where Mehmed Paşa was governor (c. 1656-1661).

All of these traditions link him to Mehmed Paşa and attribute his rise to Köprülü family patronage. When Mehmed Paşa became grand vizier in 1656, Kara Mustafa’s fortunes rose with those of his patron, and in 1658, campaigning beside Mehmed Paşa in Transylvania, Kara Mustafa was sent to the sultan, Mehmed IV , to announce the capture of the important fortress of Jenö. Shortly afterward, he was taken into the sultan’s service, and in 1660, he was appointed beylerbey (governor) of Silistria. A year later, he performed the important task of arranging the transfer of the valide sultan (queen mother) from Edirne to Constantinople. Subsequently, he rose to the rank of vizier (minister of state) and was appointed vali (governor) of Diyarbakır.

Köprülü Mehmed Paşa’s eldest son, Fazıl Ahmed Paşa (1635-1676), replaced Mehmed Paşa as grand vizier after his death in 1661. Sustained by Köprülü’s good will, Kara Mustafa was appointed kapudan-i derya (grand admiral).

When, in 1663, Ahmed Paşa set off to campaign in Hungary, Kara Mustafa stayed behind and was appointed kaymakan (deputy vizier), an office that gave him direct access to the sultan. After Ahmed Paşa, returning from Hungary, captured Candia, Kara Mustafa carried the news of the island’s fall to the sultan. In 1672, Ahmed Paşa invaded Podolia in southeastern Poland, and Kara Mustafa participated in the sieges of Chocim and Kamieniec-Podolski. He personally captured the fortress of Buczacz and was the chief Ottoman plenipotentiary in the peace negotiations that followed. Podolia became an Ottoman province (the last territorial addition to the empire), and the western Ukraine became an Ottoman protectorate.

Although Kara Mustafa was an Anatolian Turk and the Köprülüs were Albanians, Kara Mustafa and Ahmed Paşa must have been very close: They are described as foster brothers, and later Kara Mustafa married one of Ahmed Paşa’s sisters. He also was high in the sultan’s favor, however, and in 1675, he was betrothed to the sultan’s daughter. Thus, as he approached his early forties, he had a reputation as an ambitious administrator and an experienced soldier. He was also known for his extreme hostility toward Europeans in Constantinople. The Venetian bailo (consul) described him as corrupt, cruel, and unjust, presumably in contrast to his suave brother-in-law.

Life’s work

Near the end of 1676, Kara Mustafa was appointed grand vizier following the death of Ahmed Paşa. Succeeding his father-in-law and brother-in-law as the third Köprülü (by adoption) to guide the empire, he was exceptionally well placed to continue their work.

His immediate concern was Podolia, which had been ceded by Poland in the Treaty of Żórawno(1676). The security of this new acquisition depended upon support from the sultan’s vassal, the Crimean khan Selim Giray I (r. 1671-1678, 1684-1691), with whom the grand vizier was soon on bad terms. Kara Mustafa also needed the support of the hetman (chieftain or leader) of the Ukrainian Cossacks, Petro Doroshenko, an exceptionally able leader who had come to power in 1666 and ruled until 1698.

A year later, Poland and Muscovy had in effect partitioned the Ukraine between them (Treaty of Andrusovo, 1667), a disaster for Cossack aspirations, thus forcing Doroshenko into the arms of the sultan, whom he recognized as suzerain. By 1668, he was hetman of both the Dnieper River Left-Bank and Right-Bank Cossacks, but his ties to Constantinople provoked both Polish and Muscovite enmity.

More dependent than ever on the Ottomans, in 1672, Doroshenko was forced to bring 12,000 Cossacks to support the 100,000 Ottoman troops with which Ahmed Paşa invaded Podolia. Alliance with the Muslim infidels destroyed Doroshenko’s credibility with his Cossacks. In 1675-1676, Muscovy contrived an uprising of the Left-Bank Cossacks, and the denouement that followed led to Doroshenko’s deposition and exile. This was the position facing Kara Mustafa, who was forced in 1677 to appoint, as hetman of the Right-Bank Cossacks, Yurii Khmelnytsky, the inept son of the famous Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky (c. 1595-1657).

During 1677 and 1678, Kara Mustafa campaigned against the Muscovites, and, in August of 1678, he took and dismantled the Cossack stronghold of Chyhryn, beginning the construction of new forts on the Bug and the Dnieper Rivers in 1679. A fourth season’s campaigning in 1680 proved inconclusive, however, leading to the Treaty of Bakchisaray, or Baghchesaray (1681), brokered by the Crimean khan. Thereby, the Right Bank remained under Ottoman suzerainty, while the Left Bank became a Muscovite dependency. The hapless Khmelnytsky was executed in 1685.

Kara Mustafa returned to Constantinople and, prompted by French diplomats, turned to Hungarian affairs. The twenty-year truce negotiated at Vasvár (1664) was due for renewal, but the grand vizier declined to renegotiate. Both his predecessors had earned laurels in Hungary, and he intended to do the same. In Transylvania, the prince, Michael Apaffy, an Ottoman vassal, had proved ineffective, and Constantinople suspected that he would be disloyal if it served his interests. He needed replacing. Across the frontier, in Habsburg-controlled Hungary, Kara Mustafa saw excellent prospects. In recent years, Emperor Leopold I , in his capacity as Hungarian king, had fiercely harassed his Protestant subjects and the independent-minded Hungarian magnates, who had reacted with conspiracy and rebellion, giving Leopold an excuse to abrogate the Hungarian constitution in 1673. Hungarian resistance was then to take the form of irregular bands known as kuruc—ruthless freebooters comparable to the hajduks of the time of Hungarian national leader and prince of Transylvania István Bocskay—under a daring young leader, Count Imre Thököly, who by 1678 was raiding into Hungarian territory from Transylvania, and receiving modest French and Polish subsidies.

Kara Mustafa saw in Thököly an ideal instrument for his ambitions, and the grand vizier granted him the title of prince of Hungary. Initially, it was to support Thököly that Kara Mustafa began to plan a great expedition into Hungary, rumored to have Gyor and Komárom as its objectives. However, at some point, Kara Mustafa raised his sights, and the goal became Vienna. Süleyman the Magnificent, greatest of sultans, had failed to take Vienna in 1529. Now, Kara Mustafa would lead a jihad, a holy war, against the capital of the infidel emperor, and by his triumph outshine even Süleyman.

The great expedition was mobilized in the spring of 1683, commanded by Kara Mustafa: 100,000 Ottoman troops, including the crack Janissary regiments, to be joined by Thököly, with his kuruc forces, and Selim Giray, with his highly mobile Tatar cavalry. The outcome is well known to many. Leopold and his court abandoned Vienna, which was closely invested from July to September 12, 1683, when the city was relieved by the Polish king, John III Sobieski , and his German allies. Kara Mustafa made serious mistakes, holding back his cavalry from intercepting the advancing Poles and quarreling with the Crimean khan, who withdrew in disgust. The rout that followed proved an overwhelming disaster for the Ottomans.

Kara Mustafa may not have seen his defeat as so apocalyptic an event as did Christendom. Much of his army was intact, and he fell back on Buda, convinced that, with the sultan’s support, he would renew the assault in the following spring. Here, he received ceremonial robes of honor and a bejeweled sword, traditional gifts of sultanic approbation, sent by Mehmed IV. By November 18, 1683, he was in winter quarters in Belgrade with a substantial part of the army, but his enemies had poisoned the sultan’s mind against him, and on December 13, his death warrant was drawn up in Edirne and dispatched to Belgrade, where the grand vizier was strangled on December 25, 1683. His head, brought to the sultan, was subsequently interred beneath a tombstone in Edirne’s Sariça Pasha mosque.

Significance

Until the denouement at Vienna, Kara Mustafa Paşa enjoyed the reputation of an able and energetic administrator in the Köprülü tradition, which earned him the highest office in the empire. Ostentatious and arrogant in his public persona, he was known as a pious Muslim who established religious foundations in Constantinople, Galata, Edirne, and his birthplace of Merzifon. Yet the assault on Vienna was a huge blunder. He clearly overestimated the extent of the military revival achieved by his two predecessors, and he underestimated recent European advances in military technology. His failure led directly to the loss of Hungary and Transylvania, the Morea, and Podolia, confirmed in the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699. By his recklessness, he accelerated Ottoman decline, which no subsequent Köprülü grand viziers could reverse.

Bibliography

Barker, Thomas W. Double Eagle and Crescent. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1967. A well-written, detailed account of the siege of Vienna in 1683, presenting an account of not only the military but also the diplomatic and political aspects of the siege.

Kurat, A. N. “The Ottoman Empire Under Mehmed IV.” In The New Cambridge Modern History. Vol. 4. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1961. An excellent overview of the empire during the time of Mehmed IV.

Murphey, Rhoads. Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999. A useful work that examines seventeenth century Ottoman military campaigning.

Stoye, John. Siege of Vienna. London: Collins, 1964. A scholarly narrative that explores the siege.

Turnbull, Stephen. The Ottoman Empire, 1326-1699. New York: Routledge, 2004. A history of Ottoman rule, imperial expansion, and military tactics that focuses especially on Ottoman battles against European powers and on control of the Balkans. Includes illustrations, maps, index.

Wheatcroft, Andrew. Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam. New York: Random House, 2004. Examines the continuing religious conflicts between the Christian West and the Islamic Middle East.