Problems of History of the Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

According to the Ottoman state system daily expenses of the foreign envoys sent to the Ottoman Empire theoretically were covered according to some rules by the Ottoman government with the name of “tayinat” until the abolition of the this practice in 1794. A certain amount of the daily expenses of the Ottoman envoys in return were paid by the host states. Amount of allowances and variety and quality of supplies varied also according to the “status” of each country. A foreign envoy could receive allowances only during the first 6 months of their residence in the Ottoman capital, but there were some exceptional cases where governments prolonged the duration of receiving allowances. Based on the research in the (BOA) Ottoman archives we can also analyze some tayinat changes which were paid to Polish envoys.My paper investigates that Ottoman authorities paid these allowances according to which principles, and searches answers of these questions: Were the purposes or missions of Polish envoys in visiting the Ottoman lands influenced their allowance? What changed, if any, if an envoy was replaced with another one; if his rank was changed? Were they happy with their allowances from the Ottoman government? Were tayinat payments of Polish envoys low when we compare with the envoys of the other countries? While trying to answer all of these questions this paper exhibits and implicit connection between “allowances/tayinat” and bilateral relations of the Ottoman Empire with Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth.My research made extensive use of documents from the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives (Hatt-i Humayun, Cevdet, Ali Emiri and İbnul Emin collections, Ottoman financial registers, tayinat lists, and financial book registers in Istanbul.