What did an Ottoman Sultan know about the Russian Empire? The Report of Mustafa Rasih's (d. 1804/05) Mission to St. Petersburg (1792-1794)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stephan Conermann
• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 298672076

The here presented project wants to investigate for the first time a sefaret-name about an official embassy to the court of the Russian empress Katharina II (reigned 1762-96) which the Ottoman chancellor Mustafa Rasih (died 1804/05) conducted on behalf of Sultan Selim III. (reigned 1789-1807) from the end of 1792 until February 1794. The project aims at (1) philologically analyzing the document (edition and translation) and (2) answering the question how much information the Ottoman power elite could gather from it. This requires (3) an embedding of the report into the history of the sefaret-names during the 18th century against the backdrop of the Ottoman-Russian relations. Last, but not least, (4) the text has to be linked with the contemporary multicultural society (keywords: Phanariots, reformers, European emissaries) in Istanbul.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants