What Did an Ottoman Sultan Know about the Russian Empire? Reports about Muṣṭafā Rāsiḫ’s Mission to St. Petersburg (1793/94)

One of the stipulations of the peace treaty of Jassy, which ended the Russo-Ottoman war of 1787–1792, was the exchange of diplomatic missions between St. Petersburg and Istanbul. Thus in January 1793, the Ottoman envoy Muṣṭafā Rāsiḫ Efendi embarked on his journey to the court of Catherine II. When he returned eighteen months later in July 1794, he presented Sultan Selīm III with two reports: one sefāretnāme (embassy report) written by his secretary Seyyid ʿAbdullah that described the delegation’s journey and diplomatic mission, and one ʿarīża (letter), which contained his own observations on Russian politics and society. These two texts are the main sources for the project. Apart from an annotated translation, the principal task is to establish what kind of information they provided to the Ottoman ruler and his counsellors. To this end, the texts have to be analysed within the framework of Ottoman embassy reports of the 18th century and against the backdrop of both Ottoman-Russian relations and the multicultural context in Istanbul at that time. To these Ottoman texts, the project adds the writings in Russian and German of members of the Russian delegation to Istanbul headed by General Mikhail Illarionovič Kutuzov, i.e. letters from the envoy to the empress and leading Russian statesmen and to his family as well as travel accounts by Heinrich Christoph von Reimers and Johann Christoph Struve. These three sets of texts, which have been subjected to little or no research to date, will be read in a comparative perspective and analysed with regard to their narrative strategies.