Krími tatár követjárások a bécsi udvarban 1598-1682
Crimean Tartar envoys to the Court in Vienna, 1598-1682

Summary/Abstract: Crimean Tartar diplomacy maintained connections with a number of European and Asian powers during the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The main destinations of Tartar diplomatic missions as documented by archival sources included Russia, Poland, the Cossacks in the Ukraine, Sweden, Denmark, Brandenburg, the Holy Roman Empire, Transylvania, Georgia, and Persia. The motives of the diplomatic opening by the Crimean Tartars towards Central and Western Europe were completely different from those that underlay their activities in Eastern Europe. While the connections with Russia, Poland, Sweden were determined by the common interests of the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire, the diplomatic contacts maintained between the Giray dynasty and the Hapsburgs for nearly a century sometimes had covert anti-Ottoman features as well. The years between 1598 and 1682 saw more than thirty Tartar diplomatic missions in Vienna and/or Prague. Within this period, the diplomatic connections between the Crimean Tartars and the Hapsburgs can be dicided in three phases. The initial phases is closely connected with the events of the Fifteen Years' War. The first contact was made through the mediation of the ruling Prince of Transylvania and the Voivode of Wallachia, allies of Emperor Rudolph II, in order to negotiate a peace between the Sultan and the Emperor as well as to initiate joint action against the transgressions of the Ottoman Souzerain. In the middle of the seventeenth century relations between the courts of Vienna and Bakhciseray were revitalized during the reign of Mehmed Giray IV. This can be explained by the Northern war, in which imperial diplomacy and the Tartar Khan jointly supported Poland against the alliance of Sweden and Transylvania. In the last phase Tartar envoys were annually sent to Vienna. Various economic records as well as export licences (Passbrief ) suggest that these missions had economic rather than political motives. It is possible to reconstruct, with the help of archival sources, the route of the envoys, their accommodations in Vienna, the imperial audiences as well as the value of the gifts brought and received by them. The paper is concluded by a provisional list of envoys.

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