r/ottomans

The Ottomans freed millions of Southeast European serfs, but nobody gives them credit.

Here is my take after reading especially Bulgarian scholars' work on this subject:

When discussing the abolition of serfdom in Europe, historians typically focus on Western Europe or the Russian Empire. And historiography frequently evaluates the Ottoman Empire through the disproportionately negative prism of 19th-century Balkan nationalisms.

These national narratives framed the entire Ottoman era as a regressive dark age to justify modern state-building, obscuring significant socioeconomic shifts. Consequently, few acknowledge that a massive structural shift occurred centuries earlier in the region. When the Ottoman Empire conquered Southeastern Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, the state systematically dismantled existing feudal regimes and abolished the legal status of serfdom.

Prior to the Ottoman conquests, peasants in Byzantine, Serbian and Bulgarian territories lived as serfs. They belonged directly to the local aristocracy. These lords extracted heavy labor obligations and maintained absolute legal jurisdiction over the peasants on their estates. The Ottoman administration implemented the "timar" system to consolidate central authority and neutralize this local nobility. The state confiscated aristocratic landholdings and converted them into state property.

This transition made traditional serfdom structurally impossible. Peasants became tenants of the state rather than the personal property of a local lord. The state assigned cavalrymen to collect specific agricultural taxes in exchange for military service. Crucially, these cavalrymen held no judicial authority and could not demand arbitrary labor. If a dispute arose, the peasant appealed to an Ottoman state judge ("kadi"), entirely bypassing the landholder.

The immediate socioeconomic benefits of this transition generated tangible support from the rural population. During the initial phases of the Ottoman expansion, the Balkan peasantry often refused to join their feudal overlords in resisting the conquest. In several instances, peasants actively cooperated with the advancing Ottoman forces or initiated local uprisings against their Latin and Orthodox nobility to accelerate the collapse of the feudal order. The central administration's strict policy of protecting the rural workforce from local exploitation at least partly explains the speed of the Ottoman advance and provides the foundational reason the system survived in the region for centuries.

Some twentieth-century historians categorized this system as a form of military-agrarian feudalism. They argued that the Ottoman state merely replaced the local lord as the primary exploiter in the Balkans. Furthermore, the Ottomans restricted peasant movement to ensure agricultural continuity. If a peasant abandoned their farm for three consecutive years, the Ottoman state levied a severe financial penalty.

However, prominent Ottoman historians reject the broad feudal label. They demonstrate that the penalty for leaving land functioned as a breach of contract fine rather than proof of personal bondage. The strict centralization, the absence of aristocratic legal immunity and the standardized protections afforded to peasants distinguish the Ottoman agrarian regime from European feudalism. By integrating the Balkans into the timar system, the Ottoman administration effectively replaced the arbitrary rule of local lords with a bureaucratic tenancy framework.

For those who are interested can check the work of Vera Mutafchieva, Halil Inalcik and Maria Todorova.

What do you think?

The First Medal: bronze medal, around 1460 by Pietro da Milano

The Second Medal: 1450-60 from Pisanello's workshop. Location: The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

In the late 15th century, a child named Fatjon was born into a Christian family in Vlorë, located within the borders of present-day Albania. As Ottoman devshirme officials (turnacıbaşılar) traveled through the Balkans, they selected children who demonstrated high intelligence, strong physical attributes, and sharp perception. One child was taken from every 40 families. Fitting these criteria, Fatjon was taken from his family at a young age and brought to the capital, Istanbul.

​Like all devshirmes, he was initially placed with a Turkish family in Anatolia. Working with this family of farmers in Tekirdağ, he learned Turkish and adopted the Islamic faith and culture. Once his intelligence and capability were recognized, he was selected directly for the palace school, the Enderun, rather than the military barracks. At the Enderun, he received rigorous training in administration, diplomacy, military arts, and literature. After completing his palace education, he joined the Kapıkulu corps. Thanks to his military talent, he rose through the ranks rapidly. Proving himself in artillery, Fatjon began serving Sultan Selim I as an artilleryman in the Ottoman army.

​During the reign of Sultan Selim I, his success in the Battle of Chaldiran (1514) and the Egyptian campaigns earned him the titles of Janissary Agha and Commander of the Artillery Corps (Topçu Ağası). In the Battles of Marj Dabiq and Ridaniya—where the Mamluk Sultanate was eliminated—he commanded the Janissaries, and his accomplishments there led to his appointment as the Governor of Damascus and subsequently the Beylerbey of Anatolia (Chief Administrator of Anatolia). With the ascension of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to the throne, he was appointed Beylerbey of Rumelia. In the Battle of Mohács (1526), he played a critical role as the commander of the right wing.

​After serving for many years as a Vizier of the Imperial Council (Kubbealtı veziri), he was elevated to the position of Grand Vizier (Veziriazam) in 1536 following the execution of Pargalı İbrahim Pasha, Sultan Suleiman’s closest confidant and grand vizier. During his tenure as Grand Vizier, he led the Corfu Expedition and the Moldavian (Kara Boğdan) Campaign. In 1539, he contracted the plague that swept through Istanbul and passed away while still in office.

​Just like his executed predecessor Pargalı İbrahim, who was a Grand Vizier of devshirme origin and the son of a fisherman, the same applied to the incoming "Ayaz Mehmed Pasha." He was no longer Fatjon, but Mehmed, having embraced this name and chosen Islam.

Throughout history, many empires have risen and fallen. Some left their mark through culture, others through strength, intellect, or wealth. From the Roman Empire to the Abbasids, and from the Abbasids to the Mongol Empire, numerous states held sway. However, I do not believe there was any empire operating on quite the same scale as the Ottoman Empire, which fought against powerful and modern states simultaneously. The Roman Empire, with the exception of Egypt, won most of its victories against slaves, barbarians, or commanders like Hannibal who were stripped of proper support and relying solely on their own limited resources.

​The Mongol Empire was undeniably effective; in fact, it altered the global order largely for the worse. Yet, it was the Muslim Turks who filled the power vacuum created by the Mongols, establishing a vast sphere of influence stretching from India to Vienna.

​What I am curious about is this: Fighting well-equipped and formidable states throughout its 622-year existence, facing coalitions of at least 3 to 4 nations in nearly every conflict, and holding its own against four modern powers (the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and Venice) during the Holy League War from 1683 until its defeat in 1699—was the Ottoman Empire truly the most sophisticated military and administrative power in history? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the Conquest of Trebizond. In tribute to that day.

The claim that Mehmed II was bisexual is nowadays repeated online almost as a basic biographical fact. Yet when looking at where this claim actually comes from, the evidence is surprisingly weak. There is no Ottoman source identifying Mehmed as having had a sexual relationship with men, and most of the argument is built on a few Greek anecdotes and modern literal readings of Ottoman poetry.

The most famous example is Radu.

Chalkokondyles, a Greek historian, alleges in Histories 9.82 a sexual encounter between Mehmed and Radu and later calls Radu Mehmed’s lover. But Chalkokondyles gives no named eyewitness or informant for this extremely private story.

This is important because Anthony Kaldellis’ detailed study of Chalkokondyles’ sources concludes that he relied mostly on oral information, and several of these informations are clearly false.

The clearest example is Süleyman Paşa. Süleyman died in 1356/57, before his father, Orhan Gazi. Chalkokondyles nevertheless has Süleyman alive when Orhan dies, makes him Orhan’s successor before Murad I, and even connects him to the Battle of Maritsa in 1371, which is considered by Kaldellis’ as pure fiction. He explains that Chalkokondyles sometimes could not correctly coordinate the information he had received, and even misplaced events by decades.

These points alone demonstrate serious problems with the reliability of this anti-Ottoman historian, bur we also possess Ottoman material concerning exactly the same Wallachian affair.

Tursun Beg, for example, served in the Ottoman administration, entered Mahmud Paşa’s service, and personally participated in Mehmed’s Wallachian campaign. His work covers the Wallachian expedition, and the Ottoman historical tradition in general discusses Vlad, Radu, and the struggle over Wallachia in considerable detail. Yet no independent Ottoman corroboration of Chalkokondyles’ sexual story is found in these works.

And Radu is not the only piece of evidence normally used. Another story comes from Doukas, who claims that after the conquest Sultan Mehmed, supposedly drunk, demanded the young son of Loukas Notaras for sexual purposes and had Notaras executed after he refused, and this story has an even more serious problem, Mehmet Kalpaklı and Walter Andrews point out that Doukas’ account is not found in the contemporary accounts of the other Greeks who witnessed the conquest firsthand. They also note that the story closely resembles the much older Christian legend of "Saint" Pelagius: a "beautiful" Christian youth supposedly killed by the Muslim ruler ʿAbd Al-Rahman III after refusing his sexual advances. They argue that Doukas’ tale likely owes more to the "Saint" Pelagius story and to a long tradition of portraying Muslims as morally inferior than to what actually occurred during the conquest. They refer to it themselves as “Doukas’s fiction.”

Even more strikingly, Mehmed II is the Sultan who introduced the practice of eating separately from his officials, and no Ottoman primary source mentions Mehmed II as an alcoholic.

There is another quotation that circulates online and is repeatedly presented as if Kritovoulos himself wrote that Mehmed was “sensual rather than acquisitive” and that George Sphrantzes’ fifteen-year-old son was killed after rejecting Mehmed’s advances,there's a problem here as well, the frequently copied English wording comes from René Guerdan’s 1956 secondary work, "Byzantium: Its Triumphs and Tragedy". It is not itself a quotation from Kritovoulos’ History of Mehmed the Conqueror, Guerdan later invokes Kritovoulos in the surrounding discussion, which appears to have contributed to the quotation being repeatedly attributed to Kritovoulos online.

So already three of the supposed pillars look rather different when examined closely.

Then there is Avnî’s poetry, probably the most common attempt to give the accusation an “Ottoman source.” Mehmed wrote poetry under the mahlas Avnî. Some verses speak about beautiful beloveds, Christians, Galata, wine, and similar imagery, and these are sometimes lifted out of divan poetry and presented almost like pages from Mehmed’s private diary, but one of the famous Persian verses used in these discussions is demonstrably a nazire, a poetic response to Hafez.

Selim Sırrı Kuru shows that Mehmed takes Hafez’s famous verse about giving Samarqand and Bukhara for the beauty of the “Shirazi Turk” and changes only a handful of words: the cities become Istanbul and Galata, and the beloved becomes a Frankish “infidel.” Kuru specifically explains that the ghazal is not a realistic description, Mehmed is entering into poetic competition with Hafez through the established conventions of the genre.

Ekrem Buğra Ekinci debunk even more the claims, discussing specifically the attempts to use Avnî’s poetry as evidence of homosexuality, he argues that the poem cannot be understood without the language of Tasawwuf and says that, in this reading, the beloved is neither male nor non-Muslim. Words involving wine, unbelief, and captivity are part of the symbolic language of classical Sufi poetry that musn't be read literally.

There is finally the religious context, which is also strangely absent from many of these discussions.

Mehmed was educated by major ulema, among them Molla Gürânî, who was specifically his teacher while he was a prince. Molla Hüsrev became one of the central jurists of Mehmed’s reign and helped prepare the curriculum of the Sahn-ı Semân medreses with the Sultan and other leading scholars. Ottoman sources even transmit Mehmed’s description of Hüsrev as “the Abu Hanifa of his age.”

Hüsrev’s Gurer and Dürerü’l-hükkâm became extraordinarily important works of Ottoman Hanafi jurisprudence.

And Ottoman Hanafi law did not consider livâta (sodomy) permissible. Mustafa Avcı’s study of Ottoman Law shows that it was treated as prohibited and punishable; the Hanafi disagreement concerned its precise juridical classification and punishment, not whether sodomy was halal.

The anti-Ottoman label “bisexual Mehmed the Conqueror ” tells us about how western writers have combined and interpreted these stories to suit the meaning they want.

Sources :

-Laonikos Chalkokondyles, The Histories, IX.82, trans. Anthony Kaldellis.

-Anthony Kaldellis, “The Greek Sources of Laonikos Chalkokondyles’ Histories,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 52 (2012).

-Tursun Beg, Târîh-i Ebü’l-Feth.

-Halil İnalcık & Rhoads Murphey, The History of Mehmed the Conqueror by Tursun Beg.

-Doukas, Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks, trans. Harry J. Magoulias.

-Walter G. Andrews & Mehmet Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds.

Selim Sırrı Kuru, “İki Şehrin Şiiri: Gazelde İstanbul ve Galata İkilisi,” YILLIK 2 (2020).

-Ekrem Buğra Ekinci, “Unnatural Love Affairs or Homosexuality in Ottoman Society.”Mustafa Avcı, “Osmanlı Hukukunda Livatanın Cezası.”TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: “Mehmed II,” “Molla Gürânî,” “Molla Hüsrev.”

The Turkish Süper Lig returns today for the 2026-2027 season. While the Süper Lig was created well after the Ottoman period, many of the most historic and popular football teams in Turkey and across former Ottoman lands trace their roots back to a growing interest in athletics and competition in the late 19th and 20th centuries. This post is in appreciation of football and the Süper Lig. Those wishing to learn more should check out the recent episode of the Ottoman History Podcast with Murat Yıldız, author of The Ottoman World of Sports.

Participating in a gymnastic club was more than health and community; in the Ottoman Empire, it was also a mark of modernity and rebellion. Much of civil society under the reign of Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909) was heavily restricted or illegal, football included. Sports clubs had to conduct their activities in secret, else they faced a knock on the door from the secret police. The proverbial ball got rolling with the 1908 revolution, which changed everything. In the Ottoman Empire, exercise and health suddenly became a symbol of civilization: competition opportunities to promote your group and prove its quite literal strength, individual athletes new icons of their communities. Teams comprising Turks, Greeks, Armenians, English, or a mixture of many different ethnic players competed in the Istanbul Football League. How these teams and players thought about their identity and relationship to the Ottoman Empire, and their own ethnic communities, is a fascinating study in Yıldız’ monograph.

The Istanbul Football League actually survived the collapse of the empire and continued on for decades. Teams like Beşiktaş, Galatasaray, and Fenerbahçe—still the three biggest clubs in the nation today—all competed in the Istanbul Football League. Fenerbahçe was the most successful club in the league's history, winning the league 16 times. However, Galatasaray would win more league trophies during the Ottoman period, from the league’s inception in 1904 until its end in 1922. Beşiktaş, though founded earlier than its two rivals, would never win an Istanbul Football League title during the Ottoman era. 

Likely, at least for international fans in 2026, Galatasaray is the highest-profile club in the Süper Lig, as it will once again compete in the UEFA Champions League. The team was also an early symbol of international football success in the Ottoman Empire. The club was founded in 1905 and is connected to the Galatasaray High School. At a time when elite secondary schools in Istanbul were European enterprises, Galatasaray, operated by the Ottoman Ministry of Education, was the poster child of the empire’s modernization efforts. It should come as no surprise that Turkish patriotism was an important part of the high school football team. In the team’s charter, its aim was “To play… like the Englishmen… and to beat the non-Turkish teams.”
 In April of 1914, Galatasaray, consisting mostly of Turkish players except for two “German denizens,” played a friendly match against the Romanian national team and won 4-2, to great celebration across Istanbul, with fans chanting “long live the Galatasaray players.” 

Galatasaray’s rivalry with its fellow Ottoman-legacy team, Fenerbahçe, is still fierce today. Fenerbahçe was founded by Turks who enviously watched English expats of Kadıköy play matches against each other on a pitch known as the Priest’s Field (Papazın Çayırı). The players originally wanted to call themselves Moda FC, but an English club already used that name, so they called themselves Fenerbahçe, after the area’s lighthouse. The team gained prominence in the 1910s, even attracting interest in a couple of Ottoman princes: notably Osman Fuad and Ömer Faruk. One of Fenerbahçe’s most celebrated matches was a 1923 match against a squad of Istanbul’s British occupation force. Soon to evacuate Istanbul after the Çanak Crisis, General Charles Harington was desperate to display a final victory against the Turks, if it couldn’t be on the battlefield, perhaps on the derby. Fenerbahçe took Harington’s challenge and won the match 2-1.

Turkish teams like Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe came about after other minority groups already established their clubs. Greeks of Istanbul and Izmir founded their clubs in the 1890s, and even their own sports league: the Pan-Constantinopolitan Games. Clio Sports Club is now known as Beyoğlu SK while its original teammates founded PAOK FC, one of Greece’s top football clubs, after the population exchange. Armenians had a couple teams, most famously Araks FC, and Beşiktaş’ origins was a sports club for Circassian refugees. All these diverse teams played each other on the Priest’s Field, itself becoming a symbol of empire and its cosmopolitanism. Today the pitch is home to just Fenerbahçe, with the name of Şükrü Saraçoğlu Stadium. Unfortunately, back-to-back wars and toxic-nationalism would result in ethnic teams outlawed, star athletes fed to crucibles of violence, and separate tight-knit squads between new borders.

There’s a lot to say about how football spread across the Ottoman Empire, but that’s for a later date. Anyways, if you support a Süper Lig team, we wish your team good luck this season. We hope this post helps you connect with Ottoman history in a fun way.  

In an issue of the Turkish magazine Aydede from 1922, different factions within Turkish politics were symbolically represented through the types of headgear they wore. In a series of illustrations titled “The Language of Headgear” (Serpuşların Dili), five different political ideas were represented by five types of headgear. The illustrations have been colorized using AI (not by me). From @tarihteyit

From left to right:

Sosyalist (Socialist),

İtilaf (Entente),

Milli (National/Nationalist),

Bîtaraf/Tarafsız (Neutral),

İttihad (Unionist).

"I am the servant of Allah and the sultan of this world. By Allah's grace, I am at the head of the Ummah of Muhammad. I am Suleiman, in whose name the khutbah is read in Mecca and Medina. I am the shah in Baghdad, the caesar in Byzantine realms, the sultan in Egypt; the sultan who dispatches his fleets to the Mediterranean, Maghreb, and India.

​I am the sultan who took the Hungarian crown and throne and granted them to a servant. Voivode Petru revolted, but the hooves of my horse reduced him to dust; and I conquered Moldavia." (Suleiman The Magnificent)

After being defeated by Rome in the Second Punic War and facing political pressure in Carthage, Hannibal fled his homeland, taking refuge first in the Seleucid Empire and later in the Kingdom of Bithynia. King Prusias of Bithynia granted Hannibal protection and used him as a military advisor. However, the Roman Senate tracked Hannibal down and exerted heavy diplomatic pressure on Prusias, demanding the famous commander's surrender. Realizing that Roman soldiers had surrounded his house in Bithynia (present-day Kocaeli/Gebze, "right next to Istanbul") and that all escape routes were blocked, Hannibal chose to drink the poison he had carried in his ring for years rather than be paraded in public or tortured at the hands of his enemy.

According to ancient sources, his last words before dying are rumored to be:

​"Let us relieve the Romans of their great anxiety, since they do not have the patience to wait for an old man's death."

​Centuries after this death, Constantinople became the capital of Rome, and the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror brought an end to the Roman Empire right near the place where Hannibal died.

Over 300 mosques were built during the c. 200-year Ottoman occupation in Hungary (1521-1718). These are pictures from 2 of the active Ottoman-era mosques (Yakovalı Hasan Paşa Mosque and Malkocs Bej Mosque).

Osmanlıca yazmayı öğrenmek isteyenler için. Fakat sadece Türkçe yazım kuralları var, Arapça-Farsça kaideler ayrı öğrenilmesi gerekir.

Mughal Emperror Humayun Shah:

"To the elevated presence of the Caliph of the Prophet, the Shadow of God upon the earth, the Sovereign of the two continents and the two seas, Sultan Suleiman Khan...

He is the one who exalts the banner of Islam, the most righteous of all sovereigns upon the earth, and the firmest in faith among all khans and kings. He is the very pillar of justice and equity. May Allah, who has appointed him as His caliph on earth, make his reign eternal and his sovereignty endure until the Day of Judgment.

O Great Sovereign, who sits upon the throne of grandeur! It is our sincere desire that the bonds of friendship and brotherhood between our two great empires remain eternal. We acknowledge with profound respect your victories that have elevated the word of God and your justice that encompasses the world. We send this missive as a token of our enduring loyalty and shared purpose in the path of the True Faith."

England Queen Elizabeth I:

"To the most sublime and powerful ruler of the world, the protector and sole sovereign of the Islamic faith... As the Queen of England, I offer our friendship and beg for your protection so that our subjects may trade safely within your territories."

"The King of Spain is a monument of arrogance who disturbs the peace not only of our realm but of the entire world. Since you are the refuge of all sovereigns on earth, supporting us with your fleet to put this arrogant king in his place would deal a great blow to that corrupt (Catholic) branch of Christianity."

France King François I:

"To the Great Sultan and Magnificent Khagan, ruler and monarch of many lands in the inhabited world, and refuge of all the oppressed;

​It is sincerely submitted that: when you launch an attack upon Ferdinand, King of Hungary, we too, with your aid and grace, shall break free from imprisonment, attack Charles, King of Spain, and take our revenge.

​You who are the supreme King of Kings; if you kindly grant your grace to deal with him, let there be no doubt that henceforth I shall be your loyal and grateful servant."

King Sigismund I of Poland:

"To the most august and powerful sovereign and lord, by the grace of God, ruler of Constantinople, Asia, Europe, Persia, Arabia, Syria, and Egypt, the Most Great Emperor, Sultan Suleiman Shah.

We extend our greetings and peace to our most beloved friend and neighbor. To the most august and powerful sovereign and lord, our most beloved friend and neighbor"

Safavid Shah İsmail:

"To His Most Just and Glorious Majesty, a sovereign of the stature of Alexander and Feridun;

By the twists of fate and the workings of fortune, an unwanted and undesirable hostility and war arose between us. Through a moment of negligence and error, we came face to face; you emerged victorious and triumphant, while we suffered calamity.

Greatness is shown through forgiveness and mercy. It befits sovereigns endowed with generosity and benevolence not to seek revenge, but to show compassion to those in distress. I humbly ask that you lift the veil cast over us by the mistakes and negligence of the past, and restore once more the bonds of friendship and brotherhood between us."

Ozbek Khan Abdullah II:

"To His Majesty, Sultan Murad Khan, the Refuge of Islam and Muslims, Sovereign of the World;

​It is an obligation for Sunni monarchs to unite in order to lift the grief weighing upon the Muslims and to revive the true faith. The Qizilbash faction sows discord between us, blocks the pilgrimage routes, and inflicts suffering upon the Sunni populace.

​You, who possess the throne of the Caliphate; let us move from the East as you advance from the West, and deal with these heretics together. By joining our forces across the Caspian Sea and Khorasan, let us elevate the banner of Islam everywhere."

Portugal King Joao III:

​"To His Majesty, the Great and Sublime Sovereign, Sultan Suleiman;

​We desire to conclude a peace and armistice with your Sovereign Realm for the safety of our subjects on sea and land, and for the tranquility of the trade routes in India and the Eastern seas.

​The clashes taking place between the navies of the two realms inflict great damage upon merchants and towns. We respectfully ask for Your Highness’s mercy and grace to release the captives held by both sides, to grant freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, and to enable our merchants to trade in safety.

​Should you accept this offer of friendship, commercial relations beneficial to both great realms will be established, and the bloodshed will cease."

Ahmad al-Mansur, Saadi Sultan of Morocco:

"To His Majesty, Sultan Murad Khan, Refuge of Islam and Caliph of Rûm;

​The great victory we have won against the Portuguese Infidels was made possible through the grace of Almighty God and the spiritual and military support granted to us by your Office of the Caliphate. The army of the infidels has been routed and their king defeated.

​This great victory belongs not only to us, but to the entire Islamic world and to You, our Supreme Sovereign. From the lands of the Western Maghreb, we offer our loyalty and gratitude to Your Royal Highness, praying that the banners of Sunnah may always be victorious."

Archduke of Austria and future Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand:

"To His Majesty, the Supreme and Awesome Sovereign of the World, Sultan Suleiman;

​In order to end the war and strife between us, and to save our realms and people from ruin, we take refuge at the gate of Your Royal Highness.

​We leave our claim over Hungary to the will of our Supreme Sovereign. We pledge to live in peace with King John (Janos Zapolya) appointed by you, to accept the borders determined by Your Majesty, and to pay the annual tribute as a sign of our loyalty to the Ottoman State.

We pray that you accept us as your child and do not withhold the shadow of your justice and mercy from us"

Sources:​Münşeâtü's-Selâtîn (Feridun Ahmed Bey), Fransa Ulusal Kütüphanesi (Bibliothèque Nationale de France - Paris), Avusturya Devlet Arşivi (Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv - Viyana), Nâme-i Hümâyun Defterleri, ​The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (Richard Hakluyt, 1589-1600)

I haven't included those whom I am with less to no knowledge about