Fluent Essays

After thoroughly going over the given reading materials, (including the videos linked), include the following in the assignment. Required length, 2 pages double spaced, font size 12. a. How do the geological and physical conditions of the Venetian lagoon characterize the parameters of building and artistic practices in Venice? b. Discuss how Venice’s strategic location is reflected on major architectural standings in the city and overall urban space. c. Please consider the diverse resident communities in Venice and the unique urban atmosphere created through the interaction among different cultures. d. Use the image included in this module 3 syllabus to describe more on the convergence of politics, diplomatic relations and trade. Please have in mind that “a city” could be an effective analytic lens when understanding a society or a culture. _day.9_venetian.news.network.pdf _day.10_mercantile.mediterranean.pdf _day.11_1_howard.venetian.architecture.pdf arth115.module.3.docx _day.9_venetian.news.network___copy.pdf _day.11_1_howard.venetian.architecture___copy.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Brill Chapter Title: The Venetian News Network in the Early Sixteenth Century: The Battle of Chaldiran Chapter Author(s): Chiara Palazzo Book Title: News Networks in Early Modern Europe Book Editor(s): Joad Raymond, Noah Moxham Published by: Brill. (2016) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h1ng.44 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Brill is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to News Networks in Early Modern Europe This content downloaded from 128.226.136.66 on Mon, 30 Dec 2019 06:07:08 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms chapter 37 The Venetian News Network in the Early Sixteenth Century: The Battle of Chaldiran Chiara Palazzo On 23 August 1514, after a long march across Turkey, the Ottoman army of Selim I finally encountered the Persian troops of Shah Ismail on the plain of Chaldiran, north-east of Lake Van, in present day northwestern Iran. It was the culmination of a great military campaign, successfully conducted by Selim: in Chaldiran, with the decisive support of the artillery, the Ottomans were able to defeat their enemy, opening their way to Tabriz.1 Selim took Tabriz, though he later left the city and did not pursue his conquest of the Persian territories further; nevertheless, he prostrated Ismail’s military power and established a border between Turkey and Iran that remains almost unchanged to this day.2 The celebration of this triumph stands out in the copious poems on the life and deeds of Selim, yet the significance of Chaldiran was not so clear and simple to western observers in 1514.3 For a couple of months nothing was known in the West of what had happened, until, at the end of October, the news began to spread, initially in Venice and Rome, and then across Europe. Reconstructing the complex transit of information (and sometimes misinformation) regarding these events, what was said and unsaid, guessed or invented, divulged or covered up, allows us to investigate 1 On Chaldiran see Michael J. McCaffrey, ‘Čālderān’ Encyclopaedia Iranica, [1990] [13/10/13]. For a broader background Jean-Louis Bacqué–Grammont, ‘L’apogée de l’Empire ottoman: les événements (1512–1606)’, in Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, ed. Robert Mantran (Paris: Fayard, 1989), pp. 141–5. A detailed reconstruction of the battle can also be found in Mirella Galletti, ‘Un dipinto della battaglia di Cialdiran in Sicilia’, Rivista Internazionale di studi afroasiatici, 2 (2005), pp. 23–44. 2 The harsh condition of the region and the rebellion of the Janissaries forced Selim to come back. But, as McCaffrey points out, ‘the campaign … was a success in that it curtailed for the moment the Safavid role in Anatolia and resulted in the Ottoman occupation of Diyarbakır and the subjugation of the Du’l–Qadr principality’. McCaffrey, ‘Čālderān’. 3 See Ahmet Uğur, The Reign of Sultan Selīm in the Light of the Selīm–nāme Literature (Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1985). See also the anonymous Italian poem discovered by Lippi in the Biblioteca Comunale of Treviso: Emilio Lippi, ‘1517: l’ottava al servizio del sultano’, Quaderni Veneti, 34 (2001), pp. 49–88, and ‘Per dominar il mondo al mondo nato. Vita e gesta di Selim I Sultano’, Quaderni Veneti, 42 (2006), pp. 37–115. © CHIARA PALAZZO, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004277199_038 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNoncommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0) License. This content downloaded from 128.226.136.66 on Mon, 30 Dec 2019 06:07:08 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 850 Palazzo the workings of the Venetian news network: one of the most complex and sophisticated European networks in the early sixteenth century. In Rome the pope was certainly concerned about a possible Ottoman victory over Persia; the kingdom of Hungary was an interested observer too, owing to the closeness of its borders to the Turkish territories. But the Republic of Venice, because of its role in the early modern period as a bridge between East and proves to be the most useful observation point when investigating the circulation of this kind of news in the West: in the sixteenth century, information from the Levant coming through Venetian channels was highly regarded and requested by ambassadors and merchants all over Europe, and the diplomats of many courts, in spite of access to their own networks, often turned to Venice to validate news from the East before judging it reliable.4 Therefore, looking towards the Levant from the lagoon and starting from the battle of Chaldiran, we can reconstruct how foreign news moved through the Venetian Mediterranean network, how it travelled from the East through alternative routes, and how the information collected was then disseminated within Europe. Moreover, operations within the Venetian network at this time reveal a system where the communications infrastructure was in transit—thanks to the development of the postal network—and the language and practice of diplomacy in all the principal European courts was becoming standardised.5 This dynamic leads to further considerations: the circulation of news implies contacts, awareness of different realities, geographical and cultural refe­rence points, the development of the collective imagination. One may wonder what kind of perception the Venetian public had of distant geographical and political realities such as Ismail’s Persia, an East that was even more remote than Constantinople, and perceived as even further away than it actually was, due to lack of information. Where and how could news be gathered 4 On Venice as an information centre see Peter Burke, ‘Early Modern Venice as a center of Information and Communication’, in Venice Reconsidered. The History and Civilization of an Italian City–State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin, Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), pp. 389–419. On Venice’s bridging role, see Hans J. Kissling, ‘Venezia come centro di informazioni sui Turchi’, in Venezia centro di mediazione tra Oriente e Occidente (secoli xv–xvi), Aspetti, problemi, vol. 1, ed. Hans Georg Beck, Manoussos Manoussacas, Agostino Pertusi (Florence: Olschki, 1977), pp. 97–109; R. Mantran, ‘Venise centre d’informations sur le Turcs’, also in Venezia centro, pp. 111– 16. For a broader background see Maria Pia Pedani, Venezia porta d’Oriente (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010). 5 On mail services see Wolfgang Behringer, ‘Communication Revolutions: a Historiographical Concept’, German History, 24 (2006), pp. 333–74. On the expansion of the network of resident ambassadors see Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1955), pp. 51–76. This content downloaded from 128.226.136.66 on Mon, 30 Dec 2019 06:07:08 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Venetian News Network in the Early Sixteenth Century 851 about these places? How long did it take to reach its destination? What did the public in squares and marketplaces actually come to know? And through which channels and media? The available sources allow us to observe how an item of Eastern news could circulate widely and how fascinating accounts of distant conflicts could become available, in Venice or in Rome, to anyone who bought a cheap pamphlet or even stopped to listen to verses recited by a ciarlatano or charlatan. In 1514 the Roman diarist Sebastiano di Branca Tedallini wrote “Nello mese di agosto venne la nova in Roma come lo gran Turcho è gito a campo allo granne soffì in Persia e feceno fatto d’arme insieme; lo gran Turco fu rotto et morsero delle persone cento trenta milia et dello detto soffì morsero delle persone trenta overo quaranta milia” (“In August we have news in Rome that the Great Turk had declared war on the Great Sofi in Persia and they fought; the Great Turk was routed and 130,000 of his men died as well as 30,000 or even 40,000 of the Sofi’s army”).6 At first glance, these lines seem to allude to the battle of Chaldiran, except that they reverse the final outcome, attributing the victory and destruction of the enemy to Ismail (known as ‘the Sofi’ in western Europe). Is this a misunderstanding? It would have been impossible for Tedallini in Rome to hear real-time news of something that happened almost at the other end of the world. The combat reported by Tedallini was not that pitched battle and indeed probably never took place. In all likelihood the diarist was reporting an unreliable account that had reached Rome on 3 August, one of many that circulated in the West during the Ottoman advance across Persian territory, announcing what Christian Europe wanted to hear: a great victory over the Turks.7 That such an item was recorded, and turned out to be unfounded, is not particularly surprising. It is more significant, however, that Tedallini did not write a word about the later news of Chaldiran, though in Rome the fact did have resonance, eliciting comments, opposing opinions and interpretations. The absence of any reference to Chaldiran and to the actual conclusion of the Ottoman campaign is to some extent owing to the concise form of the diary; nevertheless, we will see that the peculiar routes and channels through which 6 Sebastiano di Branca Tedallini, Diario Romano, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. 23, pt. 3, ed. Paolo Piccolomini (Bologna: S. Lapi, 1911), p. 353. 7 Piccolomini, who edited Tedallini’s diary, relates the Roman record with a passage of Sanudo’s Venetian diary where a letter from Rome, dated 3 August, carried the news of 15,000 Turkish knights killed by the Persian troops, a piece of news that Tedallini reported ‘greatly exaggerated’. See Tedallini, Diario Romano, p. 275 and Marin Sanudo, I diarii, 58 vols. (Venezia: F. Visentini, 1879–1902), 18: 426. This content downloaded from 128.226.136.66 on Mon, 30 Dec 2019 06:07:08 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 852 Palazzo news of the battle spread to the West managed substantially to complicate the understanding and interpretation of the event for the public in European cities.8 While Rome called for the Ottoman defeat, even distorting and exaggerating the successes of the Persian army, another Italian city closely monitored the development of the Ottoman campaign as no other court in Europe could. In the months leading up to Chaldiran, the Republic of Venice regularly received detailed accounts from the bailo in Constantinople, Niccolò Giustinian. He transmitted reports from his dragomanno Alì Bey, who was following the Turkish army; furthermore, he collected more news conversing with Ottoman pashas and using his network of informers both inside and outside Court.9 On several occasions the Republic could also rely on reports from Donado Da Lezze, podestà of Rovigo and a great expert on Levantine affairs. Thanks to his correspondence with the Armenian bishop in Cyprus, he was well informed about the developments of the political situation in the East and, with the help of a native of Vicenza, who had great experience of the territories the Ottoman army was now crossing, he was able to comment on the news and predict the Turk’s next move.10 In spite of this complex of information channels, initially Venice could not have anything other than an approximate and contradictory picture of the decisive events in the campaign. A considerable stream of news reached Venice 8 9 10 Even in the East, however, the interpretation of this battle was not entirely unambiguous. Until the intervention of the Ottoman artillery the tide seemed to favour the Persians, who defeated the Ottoman left wing and attacked the centre, where Selim and his Janissaries were positioned. This phase of the combat was represented a century later, among the military glories of the Safavid Empire, in the frescoes of the Chehel Sotoun Palace in Isfahan (Iran), the new capital of the Empire. See Ingeborg Luschey-Schmeisser, ‘Čehel Sotūn, Isfahan’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, [26/10/13]. Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASVe), Capi del Consiglio dei Dieci (ccx), Lettere ambasciatori, busta 1, fos. 34–43. See Sanudo, Diarii, 19: 56–61, 118–19, 221–3. Da Lezze’s political career in the Venetian Stato da Mar and the Levant provided him with a deep knowledge of the Islamic world and an extensive network of relationships. See Giuseppe Gullino, ‘Da Lezze, Donato’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani [1985] [26/10/13]. The other man, who was in contact with Da Lezze, was Zuan Maria Anzolello. He had been taken captive by the Turks during the siege of Negroponte (1470) and had taken part in Muhammad ii’s campaign against Uzun Hasan, shah of Persia (1472– 4). See Franz Babinger, ‘Angiolello (Degli Angiolelli), Giovanni Maria’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani [1961] [13/10/13]. This content downloaded from 128.226.136.66 on Mon, 30 Dec 2019 06:07:08 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Venetian News Network in the Early Sixteenth Century 853 during the months following the battle. However, the multiplicity of reports and their conflicting interpretations created an intricate and complicated tangle of rumours and writings spreading from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. Though Venetian diplomatic documents from the first half of the sixteenth century are incomplete, we do possess consistent documentary evidence regarding Chaldiran.11 Thanks to the diary of the Venetian nobleman Marin Sanudo, we have been able to recover part of the official correspondence between the Venetian representatives and the Senate (often with reports attached) and fill in the large gaps in the Archive. Many dispatches were transcribed either entirely or partially, together with extracts from merchant and private letters. Sanudo noted the arrival and departure date of each letter and sometimes provided some details about its route. His comments also indirectly recorded some oral accounts: conversations and rumours circulating in the city.12 This heterogeneous collection of supporting material provides quite a complete picture of the news directed towards Venice, of the speed at which it travelled and the hubs through which it passed. References in the letters allow us to follow the multiple streams of information originating from the event itself and to see how, at each hub, news items were gradually enriched, reelaborated and channeled on to the next point. By this means we can obtain a schematic map of routes and times. Furthermore we can understand something of the convergence of these information channels and analyse the public’s reception and consumption of news, the perception of both the political class and the ordinary people on the street. Nevertheless, what can be derived from the documents recorded by Sanudo and the few remaining dispatches held in the Archives still raises significant questions. We find many different versions of events which disagree in many respects, and sometimes even on the crucial point of who actually won the battle. Indeed, while some sources report a Turkish triumph, others instead declare the Sofi victorious and suggest that Selim was trying to distort the real outcome of the battle by sending out messengers and couriers to celebrate a 11 12 In 1574 and 1577 extensive fires damaged the Doge’s Palace and the chancellery where part of the official documents were stored. The dispatches of the Venetian ambassadors and representatives to the Senate produced in the first half of that century were almost entirely lost. Maria Francesca Tiepolo, ‘Venezia’ in Guida generale degli Archivi di Stato Italiani [1975] [26/10/13]. On the structure of Sanudo’s Diarii see Christiane Neerfeld, “Historia per forma di Diaria”. La cronachistica veneziana contemporanea a cavallo tra il Quattro e il Cinquecento (Venice: Istituto Venezia di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2006), pp. 34–46. This content downloaded from 128.226.136.66 on Mon, 30 Dec 2019 06:07:08 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 854 Palazzo false victory and spread false reports. The uncertainty persisted, in spite of the accumulation of information during the following months, and the impatience of those courts which usually depended on Venice for information regarding the East can clearly be perceived in official correspondence.13 Focusing on the documents concerning the last part of Selim’s campaign (from July to December 1514) we can see that the news pouring into the network came from more than 30 different and widely dispersed observation points. They make up a branched web that spans across the Mediterranean basin, from the coasts of Syria and Egypt to Sicily, while also encompassing the Dalmatian coast and a few European cities such as Buda and Rome. The distribution and density of these outposts are fundamental: they characterise the network in different ways, enlarging or limiting the range of an item of news, affecting speed, completeness and reliability. Constantinople played the key role in channelling the principal information flow: 22\% of the news we can draw from available documents today come from there, first and foremost the Venetian bailo’s dispatches.14 His letters followed three routes, often used concurrently: to ensure that his mail would arrive safely and on time, the bailo would entrust copies of the same letter to different couriers who then followed different itineraries.15 The first of these routes passed through Edirne, the valley of the Maritsa river, touching Filippopoli (Plovdiv) and Skopje, and then crossed the Plain of Kosovo to Pristina. From here the most difficult and impenetrable part of the route started, through Montenegro and the Albanian Alps directed towards Ragusa (Dubrovnik). The second route, to Corfu—another major hub of the Venetian network—passed through Rodosto (Tekirdag), Kavala, Thessaloniki, and Ioannina. The mail then reached Venice by sea, often making one or more stops at Ragusa or another port along the Dalmatian coast. More mail usually arrived at these coastal cities from the inland areas: this sometimes included the correspondence of the Venetian ambassador in Buda. Yet another possi­ bility was to land in Otranto or Trani and follow the route to Venice via Naples 13 14 15 See e.g. the dispatches from Rome: ASVe, ccx, Lettere ambasciatori, busta 21, fos. 245, 249, 259, 261. On the diplomatic role of the Venetian bailo in Constantinople see Eric Dursteler, ‘The Bailo in Constantinople: Crisis and Career in Venice’s Early Modern Diplomatic Corps’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 16 (2001), pp. 1–25, and Carla Coco and Flora Manzonetto, Baili Veneziani alla Sublime Porta. Storia e caratteristiche dell’ambasciata veneta a Costantinopoli (Venice: Stamperia de Venezia, 1985). Luciano De Zanche, ‘Tra Costantinopoli e Venezia. ... Purchase answer to see full attachment