One document from the correspondence of hetman Branicki and Ottoman commanders of Khotyn

Abstract

During Russian–Turkish wars, Khotyn, being a boundary fortress, was almost always grasped by the Russian army. Just after the fortress capture, Russian armies took out its archives. It was connected, first, with the valuable prospecting information contained in the correspondence among the Turkish authorities of Moldova, and second, because the correspondence between Polish Great Hetman and sultans of the Ottoman Empire was also conducted through Khotyn. From papers of the commandant it was possible to take documents and data which could have a diplomatic value and which could be used, for example, in solving the Polish question. Besides, according to messages of Turkish sources, part of the grasped manuscripts was sold to Jewish merchants for the purpose of getting profit. The Ottoman archives captured during Russian–Turkish wars were regularly taken out to Russia where they were stored in archives. Unfortunately, there was no special research of these documents. Therefore, these archives and the documents presented to them are an important but almost unused source for studying the Russian–Turkish and international relations of the 18th century. A considerable part of these documents consists of archives of commanders of captured Ottoman fortresses, for example, the archive of the Khotyn commander Iljas Kolchak-pasha, captured in 1738 by the Russian army. Another considerable part of the Ottoman correspondence with the possessors of the European and Muslim countries was probably stored in regional museums. Especially, part of unpublished and unknown correspondence of hetman Yan Klemens Branicki was preserved in the Ethnographical Museum of the Rostov the Great region. Basically, the correspondence is presented by letters of the economic content, on some aspects of relations between Poland and the Ottoman Empire. It is not known how these letters got to the stores of the Rostov museum, because earlier all correspondence of Branicki had been considered to be stored in the department of manuscripts of the Russian National Library in St.-Petersburg.
The purpose of the present work is reading, translating and commenting on of one of the unpublished letters of the pasha of Khotyn to the hetman Branicki, voivode of Krakow.