Jean-Baptiste Hilair - Yeni Camii and the Port of İstanbul (1789)
Osman flees Vienna and reaches freedom, with success and suffering on the other side.
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Sources:
Osman Aga of Timisoara. Prisoner of the Infidels. Edited, translated, and introduced by Giancarlo Casale. University of California Press, 2021.
Olin, Timothy. The Banat of Temesvar: Borderland Colonization in the Habsburg Monarchy. Stanford University Press, 2025.
Yaycıoğlu, Ali. "On the Ottoman Arguments during the Congress of Karlowitz (1699)," in Territorial Imaginaries: Beyond the Sovereign Map, edited by Kären Wigen. University of Chicago Press, 2025.
Script:
In January of 1699, a treaty was agreed among the Ottoman Empire, Venice, Poland, and the Habsburg Empire, with Russia also to sign on in the months that followed, their negotiations building toward the following year’s Treaty of Constantinople. In 1699’s Treaty of Karlowitz, territories were settled and acknowledged, and fortresses and prisoners were exchanged. The Venetians, as usual, seem to have done pretty well out of the whole thing.
In Osman of Timisoara’s narrative, it is noted that “After long and arduous negotiations an agreement was struck and peace was established between the two sides. I myself,” wrote Osman, “saw the courier from Petrovaradin [a place we’ll be hearing more about today] who passed before the walls of Vienna blowing his horn in order to announce the glad tidings.”
In Osman’s telling, those tidings understandably sparked a surge of enthusiasm among his fellow captive Muslims, and among some no longer quite in that category for having converted in captivity. They rushed to plan their way back home, some of them working through the aid of a certain cardinal, others through organized prisoner exchanges, and “still others by,” quote, “whatever opportunity happened to present itself, all assembling into groups and beginning to depart.” As Osman writes, he also was eager to leave, also wanting to find that way back home. He had never stopped wanting it.
It must have felt to the Timisoaran as if train after train were rolling out of the figurative station, and still he didn’t have a ticket, or wagon after wagon I suppose he would have been more likely to say. Group after group pulled away, and Osman wrote of wracking his brain over what his own strategy should be to do the same. That cardinal had a group headed to the front for exchange soon, a tempting prospect, but one which Osman had to quickly rule out. The cardinal was likely to reject him out of consideration for his “master and lady,” and then there was every chance they’d hear about it, hindering any further attempt on his part. Meanwhile, his ally in all of this, that unsavoury steward who we heard about last time, informed him that there was no chance the master and lady would give him permission to go, for they would, quote, “feel [his] loss too deeply,” selfish certainly, even wildly so, but there it was. Whatever their shortcomings, Osman would have to find another way.
First, he found a companion who would go with him, a young man named Mehmed Sipahi. Originally from Strumica in today’s North Macedonia, Mehmed could speak some French, Italian, and German, and was accompanied by his wife, a fellow Muslim captive, along with their young daughter. Mehmed had been captured at Budapest and was a feigned convert to Christianity, and there’s an interesting difference of wording and sympathy here between how Osman describes his new companion and the way he refers to the many others who’d “converted to idolatry” and now looked to escape, though it's something one would probably have to read in the original to really get a full sense for.
Long a solitary figure in the narrative, so far as one could tell, Osman now found himself in a party of four and one that was soon to expand. As quiet as he was surely trying to keep his preparations for departure, someone was clearly talking about it, for he was soon confronted by a Muslim woman of the same Vienna household who was desperate not to be left behind. Osman was initially uncertain, but it was soon agreed that she would pretend to be his wife, while the others would pose as the couple’s servants.
They had their team now, and the beginnings of a plan, and they began to prepare for the trip ahead. Today, we will make that trip with them, and we will reach the end of our story.
Hello, and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, the history podcast that tends to follow the travellers of that world, and a history podcast with a Patreon, at patreon.com/humancircus, where the listening is a little earlier, a little more often, and without any ads. Thank you to all Patreon supporters, whether current or past, and thank you all for your patience, as this series trickles along. It’s been an August of antibiotics, and x-rays, and blood tests, and I’m very much looking forward to putting the month behind me. May September be a better one.
But for now, and without further looking ahead, let’s get back to the story, back, for one last time, to the story of Osman of Timisoara.
Last time out, we shadowed our Osman during his time in Vienna, a time of pastry chef apprenticeship, street brawls, and questionable ethics. This time, we shall see him leave that city, and as you just heard, it was going to have to be without permission but with the company of his quote/unquote “wife,” along with Mehmed and his little family. It was also going to have to take papers, resources, and access to a boat, and for some of this, the aid of the steward was going to be crucial.
The man was motivated to finally see Osman on his way, and he dutifully drew up the necessary paperwork for him, a travel document identifying Osman as a Christian convert with permission to travel unhindered to Budapest and Serbian Petrovaradin, where he was to take up residence. Official seals, accessible to Osman and the steward, were soon added, and the whole thing was finished off with the count’s signature, reproduced by Osman after he had practised tracing it out over glass. The overall effect, he judged, was “completely convincing.”
Papers sorted, supplies needed to be seen to, and the first thing Osman mentions here is the wine. It was “four big bottles of the best Tokay wine, as well as some Tyrolese wine and a few other wines from the master’s cellar,” all acquired with the steward’s assistance. There were, Hungarian and Italian fluids aside, “plenty of things to eat, a set of bedding, and an assortment of the finest weapons, including a pair of excellent pistols, a flintlock, and a high-quality carbine.” There was also a spare set of clothes, beyond which Osman wore long black hair, “a Genoese linen vest with white stripes, trousers, thin stockings and matching shoes, and a blue broadcloth cape.” He looked, I can only assume, very dapper, but more importantly than that, he would write, “I,” quote, “looked like an ordinary military officer and no one would have ever supposed from my appearance that I was a Muslim.”
All the arrangements having been made, this “ordinary military officer,” along with his wife, his servants, his weapons, and his wine, had a place aboard a merchant vessel carrying supplies downriver for the army, for a fare of two gold pieces. Remaining in Vienna, the steward had Osman’s keys, and instructions for what to say once someone asked where he’d. I don’t know, he was to tell them. He left me the keys, like he always does when he goes anywhere. I checked the storerooms and all was in order, so I didn’t see any reason to send anyone after him. Osman told the steward he’d write to him, if they encountered any obstacle, a letter that I’m certain the steward had very little interest in receiving.
The journey began on the 35th day of Lent, Osman says, that April 15th of 1699 not quite agreeing with some of the other dates he gave, but sometimes that was how it went.
Osman’s escape attempt was going to be a bit of a slow burn. This was not exactly what you’d call a dash for freedom. It was more like a casual stroll toward the store exit, everything about your appearance screaming that you were absolutely not carrying any shoplifted goods. Basically the first thing he tells us about it is how he shared that good wine with the owner of the vessel and a few other passengers, after which that owner was increasingly respectful toward them.
Budapest was the first stop of note, the way there mostly marked by Osman’s impatience leading him to rush ahead in a smaller fishing boat and, quote, “nearly capsiz[ing] and d[ying] a hundred times before finally reaching [the city].” Though you could see how he’d have a hard time waiting, it seemed a very unnecessary risk, and as it turned out, he really needn’t have hurried.
Budapest is a fair ways away from Vienna, one would have thought, hardly just next door even with modern travel, but it seems that it was still uncomfortably close, still a place where people might recognize and betray Osman and the others. They spent the first night at a tavern outside the city walls, and then, as the larger boat arrived with plans to stick around another five to ten days, at a “guest house run by an old widow,” an old widow who would start to get quite suspicious when they kept to themselves on Easter Sunday. “What kind of Christians are you?” she asked, and did not seem at all satisfied with Osman’s explanation that they were actually Lutherans.
Osman didn’t entirely hide himself around the house, keeping out of sight. He seems to have enjoyed the city’s famous bathhouses, which left him feeling restored, but as they prepared for their next leg, to Baja in Hungary, all that bathhouse relaxation was jolted away in an instant. There was an officer with an interpreter and 10-15 soldiers, announcing that a group of disguised Muslims who had escaped from Vienna were known to be aboard the ship. Like the 20 or so merchants on board, Osman and the others remained seated, pretending that none of this had anything to do with them, but by process of elimination, and a certain lack of fairness, they would be dragged before a general where Osman’s forged papers would do the heavy lifting in staving off disaster.
A relatively pleasant conversation later, and they were going be marching right back out of the general’s office, fresh travel documents to see them through to Petrovaradin in hand, and a curious group of, quote, “troublemaking converts … [and] Armenian and Greek turncoats,” watching as Osman passed, “mouths agape,” he would say of them, “and practically dying with envy.” The local informants having done their worst, Osman was free to stroll about the city at ease and to make some last purchases, among them “a whole lamb, stuffed and roasted,” which again underlines that our fugitive was making his escape with at least some level of comfort, as he again tried to look the part of an innocent man.
The way ahead would show just how closely travellers of the time, one of heightened security and suspicion, were being monitored. At their next stop, it wasn’t going to take the treacherous actions of any converts, informants, or turncoats to see them brought in to the local authorities. It would simply be ordered as a matter of course. Hearing that the authority in question was a man who actually knew him very well, which was awkward, Osman sent the others on to present themselves, their papers, and the story that he himself was far too ill from travel to make the appointment, all of which was accepted. Meanwhile, as they were doing that, he was scouting out someone in town who would arrange for a cart to help them bypass Petrovaradin among the busy market-season traffic.
This was a moment of pretty substantial risk and vulnerability for the travellers. Clearly, authorities and opportunists in the region were on the alert for unauthorized travellers such as themselves, and in this context, Osman was asking after an Armenian known to help people like him, was dropping in on the man unannounced, talking around the issue, and at some point needing to just drop the facade to reveal his situation and his need, along with his weakness. Of course, that risk was a shared one, including not just Osman and the Armenian but also the cartdriver the man connected them with, someone who set his own price and was running his own rather severe risks.
When the cart took them toward Futog on the near side of Petrovaradin, it was meant to do so at night, to set them on a boat across the river and see them on toward Syrmia. When the cart actually carried them, Osman was fully expecting it to pause and wait for the cover of darkness before entering town, but it didn’t. Osman was shocked and dismayed as the driver ploughed ahead in the full light of midday, rolling right into Futog itself despite their objections. What did he think he was doing, they demanded, but the driver answered that he was simply afraid, of the general in Petrovaradin, and of being impaled on a sharp stake, which was fair enough. Osman and the others were unceremoniously deposited with their luggage in front of his home and left to scramble for a guesthouse in the most casual manner they could manage under the circumstances.
Sometimes, the danger on the road was really within their own control, like when Osman carelessly allowed himself to be overheard conversing in Turkish at the guesthouse by someone who knew exactly what he was saying. Sometimes though, it was entirely out of their hands, a matter of dismal timing as much as anything else. There’d been a large number of Muslim fugitives on the cusp of being captured who had just then slipped away by boat, putting the general on high alert and setting his resolve against allowing anything of the sort to happen again. There’d also been orders from the war council in Vienna to the effect that no one was to be allowed to pass, whether with travel documents or otherwise, until authorities in Vienna had been consulted and the travellers’ identities verified. In the face of all this, Osman’s forged papers were useless, and he was compelled to write to the steward and to share what he’d written with the local general.
“...I ask, in keeping with my master’s earlier instructions,” went the letter, “that you communicate to him my current situation, such that he, in his infinite compassion, might see fit to come to the aid of his poor servant and from his manifest nobility might write a letter of recommendation addressed to the general here, such that he should no longer doubt me or vex me with accusations that I am no more than an escaped captive.”
The letter’s contents were enough to ease the general’s suspicions for the moment, and Osman was confident enough that the steward wouldn’t share it with anyone, but the general’s assurances that they’d have their reply within a few weeks were less reassuring. The general knew Osman’s master’s family. There was every chance he might also write to them directly, and what then? Those few weeks would have to be their timeline to find a way out of town. But of course, that would be no easy task.
Osman grumbled darkly about certain converts—a Fatima of Belgrade in particular, who he had incredibly harsh words for—and how they denounced the travellers at every turn. He found no shortage of offers to help, of hints and proposals about getting them out of town, but he despaired of finding anyone he could actually trust. He wrote of, quote, “Serbian, Greek, and Armenian infidels” who’d find him in a secluded place and how he’d mostly send them away with dirty looks or German dismissals but would sometimes talk to them.
There was one Serbian corporal who he spoke with quite a bit, sharing food and reaching agreement for transport, but after Osman had given him the agreed deposit, nothing happened. The plan didn’t go ahead, and Osman simply never heard from him. He eventually found him drinking the money away in a tavern, while the boat the man was supposed to purchase for their escape sat unmoved where it had been. Osman knew he’d been scammed but could do little about it, little but trust that, quote, “rather than receiving his just deserts from [Osman’s] hand, [the man] would taste bitter fruit in the afterlife.” It was around this time that the bodies of a group of escapees were fished out of the river, their hired guides having slit their bellies open for valuables before dumping them in the water. There were worse things in life than having to watch someone guzzle wine on your money.
When a way out was finally offered, just when that couple of weeks was trickling down to nothing, it came from a companion of the treacherous wine guzzler, a hard pill to swallow, I’m sure, and a difficult man to put your trust in. But Osman did, parting with a few more gold coins and likely feeling very little hope as he did so. That very same night, there was a whisper at their window. Osman and the others readied themselves in the dark and crept out past the innkeeper, the other guests, and a ferocious dog, all of them sleeping. Not even Osman tumbling into a well slowed them up too much as they made their way aboard a small skiff, sure to drown them all in any kind of wind.
They would have to hope for gentle weather as they travelled on, and we will have to wait just a moment, for this quick break, before we join them for the final leg.
…
“Now come,” wrote Osman, “and see how we made it to Sremski Karlovci.” It was a rare turn to directly address the reader as he ushered us toward that Serbian town where the Treaty of Karlowitz had been negotiated, and where, interestingly, there had been fundamental disagreement over how to proceed in settling borders, based on the maps prepared in advance by the Austrian and Venetian missions, as they desired, or based on in-person visits to assess local conditions, as the Ottomans argued for.
Past the guardhouses on the riverside, Osman and his people went, the guards’ shouted questions answered from the boat with the word for fishermen. Over the waters in which the winds had them certain they would drown, until they made it safely ashore. In a pair of local huts, concealed beneath floorboards until the following night, when they would travel by wagon. Osman refused to hide in the reeds or the woods in the meantime.
As their wagon ride got going, there were one or two more little setbacks, small moments that seemed, in retrospect, almost an indication that things were going badly astray. There was Osman getting aboard, money for their guides in his mouth so he could use his hands in climbing up, but as he opened his mouth to call out that they were ready, the coins simply fell out and time was wasted in searching for them on the dark ground. They never did actually find them, but he did have more. There was also the streambed just 30 paces along from where they started, where one of the bridles broke and needed fixing.
For all the delays, they were making progress, and they were now getting incredibly close to their goal. Around one in the morning, they reached a village from which they could see the markings of the new frontier. Soon after that their driver let them know that they could relax. “You are now inside Muslim territory,” he told them. “From now on you have nothing to fear!” And Osman and the others celebrated, overjoyed as they offered praise to God for having brought them safely to their destination. But they were still on the road. It was still a little fearful to look up as they rested beneath the rising sun, and see five or six wagons approaching. “Those people coming toward us,” Osman said to the driver, “who could they be?” It was not the sort of question you wanted to hear in that scenario.
At first, they were reassured by their driver’s words that it didn’t matter who it was, as nobody was a threat to them anymore. Then they were further heartened by the sight of white turbans on some of the men. But as they got closer, there was aggressive shouting. Angry voices identified them as fugitives and grasping hands yanked them from their wagon and stripped them of their weapons.
What they seem to have encountered was a kind of mixed patrol, or perhaps just a mixed group of people all travelling in the same direction. There were indeed Muslims among them—Osman refers to them as former soldiers—but also Serbian haiduks, and the former watched, shrugging that this was a dirty business but they couldn’t get involved, while the latter secured Osman and the others, tying them up and turning their cart back around, back toward the frontier and back toward Petrovaradin. It must have been excruciating.
Having thought that they had finally made good on their escape, they were now being brought right back toward the general, this time with no chance of arguing or letter-writing their way out of trouble, their true identity and intentions now fully found out and revealed for all to see. But there were few entirely immutable enemies in this conflict. Nearly everything, it seemed, was negotiable.
One of their captors had ransomed himself from someone on the Ottoman side and was now trying to earn the money to pay that ransom off. Another of them was now recognizable as a man who’d actually approached Osman in Petrovaradin only about 10 days earlier, offering his help in smuggling them out—he now told the escapees they’d only needed to have waited a few days for that help and they wouldn’t have been in all this trouble. Of course, they hadn’t exactly been able to wait.
But what good did all of this do the haiduks, who now crossed the frontier and searched them down to their undershirts, somehow missing the 60 gold pieces Osman had sewn into his. What good did it do them to rob the escapees of their property and to take them back to the general? Once Ali Pasha in Belgrade heard that all of this had happened on the wrong side of the border, and he surely would, then he would make his complaints to the general and the haiduks would just be arrested and punished anyways, with everything they had taken then taken away. If they just drove Osman and the others where they’d been going in the first place, then haiduks could keep their plunder plus a fee on top of that. There was much discussion among the haiduks, but the offer made too much sense to be turned down. The wagon was turned around again, and the journey to freedom, again interrupted, was resumed. There would be threats from mercenaries on the road, at right around the same spot where the haiduks had seized them, but this time Osman and the others made it through.
It was a Friday around lunchtime when they arrived in Belgrade, the city having been recaptured since the Ottomans had lost it earlier in this story. There would be other complications there—Osman having no intention of fulfilling the payment terms of that last agreement with the haiduks and being eager to appeal for his lost possessions to be returned to him—but our traveller was safely past the worst of the trouble. He had and the others had finally reached freedom, and nobody, no converts or mercenaries, no traitors, haiduks, or generals would be dragging them back. Not this time. Osman’s long period of captivity, of marches, starvation, and pastry apprenticeship—some elements of which had been worse than others—was finally over.
In the period that followed, Mehmed and his wife, their daughter, and the woman who had pretended to be married to Osman on the journey, were all headed on to Rumelia, a large region composed of the Ottoman Balkans, with Sofia, Bulgaria, at their administrative centre. If you’re thinking you haven’t heard much about these people during this episode, it’s because Osman doesn’t tell us much. He’ll maybe say, here or there, that the others were all a-panic over some setback and wondered how he himself might remain so calm through it all, but that’s about it.
As for Osman himself, he was at last headed back toward Timisoara, and, like Mehmed, carried a letter from the pasha in Belgrade, recommending that his old post be returned to him or that some other, similar, position be found. A long time had passed, and a great deal had changed in the place where he’d been born and raised. “...when I arrived,” wrote Osman, “almost none of my family and loved ones were left there.” His older brother had died just the year before, leaving a daughter of about seven. His younger brother had died another year or two earlier, at the Battle of Zenta. Some 11 years had passed since he’d ridden off with a delivery of money to Lipova.
Still, there were many in town who knew and could vouch for him, and between them and the pasha’s letter, Osman had no trouble finding income. There was the immediate position and pay of a barracks chief, and due to his knowledge of languages, there was soon also an offer to serve the local pasha. He would turn that offer down, thinking it shameful for someone like him, who had been born of that place, to enter the pasha’s service as a dependent, but it would still indicate the way ahead. Whenever there were visiting Austrians, it was to be Osman who was called upon to help with translation, and so he settled into this new career, first on a kind of ad hoc basis and then in an official salaried position.
For the next 17 years, Osman worked as translator with a series of 11 pashas, putting words to page for written correspondence or taking part in diplomacy or negotiations at home in Timisoara or abroad in, quote, “Transylvania, Arad, Szeged, Petrovaradin, and other places all over the map.” And you might wonder, hearing again of Petrovaradin, whether Osman felt comfortable in places like that, places where he might wonder whether or not he was safe, where no matter his official status, could he have truly felt that his hard-won freedom was secure? Apparently, he did.
“Not once,” he would write, “was I greeted with a harsh word or a sour look from any of [the Habsburg generals]. … I genuinely enjoyed [their] company, respected them, and treated them with goodwill. In return,” he concluded, “I received all manner of gifts from them, and in this way friendship and good neighbourliness was established between us, as it should be.”
Even when he went back to Petrovaradin and dealt with the very general who he had, by necessity, lied to, offered false documents, and escaped from, the mood was still good. They’d exchanged official letters before, Osman notes, but when they actually met, years after the escape, the general greeted him with a laugh from afar and taking his hand said, “Welcome! You are most welcome! Can it really be nine years since we last saw each other? It seems like only months, or days! Praise God, what a handsome beard you’ve grown, it suits you!” And so on, and so forth, in that fashion. It was all very warm, very pleasant, and must have come as some relief for someone who’d once feared the arrival of a letter that would have had the general’s men at the door and had needed to sneak away in the middle of the night.
As for the dispute at hand, negotiated by that point over 16 difficult months, it was settled not long after, with Osman claiming a key role and honours earned. He wrote that in order to fully cover those negotiations, he would need to write a whole other book on the topic, and indeed he did. After that he was sent to Bosnia to deal with the matter of some French ships that had been seized. Professionally, life seems to have been good, including his translation work and the revenues of a Serbian town to the southwest, and not only professionally.
Years, as you heard, had passed, and our Osman had married. His mother wasn’t around any more, so he’d sought the help of a paternal aunt in finding someone appropriate, the niece of the Timisoaran regimental commander. They had three daughters together, and then five sons.
Osman spent 17 years in Timisoara, and by his own accounting became quite rich. He writes of believing that all his troubles were but creatures of the past, and life would have nothing left to offer him but the enjoyment of its fruits, but, quote “this is never the case for anyone in this faithless world, and I was soon to face the same destiny as the kings of old recorded in the history books who in their time say, ‘The world is mine!’ but then vanish without a trace.”
As Muhammed had said, mused Osman, there were three types of affliction, and no believer could escape them: affliction of illness, affliction of poverty, and affliction of loss of station. All must face at least one, but Osman was soon to face all three.
The amiable discussions he had been part of between Habsburg and Ottoman would not hold, and conflict would return. The Habsburgs had settled their issues with Hungarian rebellion in 1711 and the War of Spanish Succession had concluded in 1714, leaving space for renewed hostilities with the Ottomans, who had themselves been preparing, rebuilding the fortress at Timisoara and reopening the gunpowder production there. 1716 saw a massive defeat for the Ottomans at Petrovaradin, and that same year’s Siege of Timisoara, which ended in the surrender of his birthplace, destroyed Osman’s property and, though he doesn’t specify the injury, impaired his sight in the process. Then, in the 1717 siege and capture of Belgrade, his wife and most of his children, along with nine or ten other relatives, were all killed in an explosion at the munitions depot that resulted in some 3,000 deaths. “In a moment they were all gone,” lamented Osman, “and with them what wealth I had left.” The Ottoman losses of those years would be confirmed by a treaty in 1718.
In time, Osman would remarry and have three sons, two of whom were still alive as he wrote along with a son from his first marriage and a daughter who lived in Istanbul. As for Osman, he too at time of writing, was living there. “By God’s command,” he writes near the end, “I have ended up here, in the imperial capital, where I scratch out a living, and spend my days preparing for death. Often, I think of the wisdom of the Prophet Muhammed, who said, ‘This world is the prison of the believers, and the paradise of the unbelievers.’ Truly, it is so. All I can do is try to be satisfied with my lot, and to pass what is left of my life with as much forbearance and serenity as I can.”
“Completed by the poor and humble translator, Osman Agha of Timisoara,” he concluded his text, “in the Tophane neighbourhood of Istanbul, [May 18th, 1724].”
That text does not seem to have had any kind of immediate impact on the world around him. As far as one can tell, it went unreferenced throughout the rest of that century and existed only in that one manuscript, now held by the British Library. Sometimes that’s all it takes, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for example, and though Osman’s story hasn’t quite reached that level of popular impact and I don’t know that a feature film will be ever forthcoming, I do hope that you've enjoyed it. I’ll be back again soon with another one.