Narrating the Dragoman’s Self in the Veneto-Ottoman Balkans, c. 1550–1650 036723369X, 9780367233693

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Assassination of grand dragoman Giovanni Antonio Grillo. BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971, 38r. ©Giancarlo Costa/ Bridgeman Images.

“A timely, deeply researched, and beautifully written work that boldly stakes out new ground between the fields of translation studies, the history of empires, and archival studies (among many others). Part historical monograph and part personal memoir, this ‘genre-bending’ work puts a usually invisible actor—the early modern translator—at the centre of its story, making the convincing case that such figures are the creators rather than the passive bystanders of history.” Giancarlo Casale, European University Institute Florence “Stefan Hanß is one of the most imaginative and productive scholars working in Mediterranean studies today. His microbiography of the Venetian dragoman Genesino Salvago is the first detailed study of one of these critical linguistic and cultural intermediaries, and it opens a fascinating window into the dynamic world of the early modern Mediterranean. It is a welcome and important contribution that will be of great interest and value to both students and scholars.” Eric Dursteler, Brigham Young University “Through an in-depth historical contextualization and masterful storytelling, Stefan Hanß takes his reader on an exciting road trip with the dragoman Genesino Salvago. The result is a unique view of the people and places in Southeastern Europe which shaped, and were shaped by, Ottoman-Venetian relations in the seventeenth century.” Aslı Niyazioğlu, Oxford University “This is a meticulously researched and lovingly crafted study of Genesino Salvago, an Ottoman-born interpreter working in the Venetian imperial service. It offers a sensitive investigation of Genesino the man and a compelling reconstruction of the world in which he lived. Along the way, it raises important questions about loyalty, selfhood, and history writing. It is a must-read for anyone interested in travel and translation in the early modern Mediterranean.” Helen Pfeifer, Cambridge University “Stefan Hanß has written a compelling study of a dragoman’s wide web of familial and professional ties across varied temporalities, geographies, languages, and jurisdictions. His historical and literary exploration of selfhood, mobility, and translation across the Ottoman-Venetian borderlands brims with insight. This microhistorical study offers an exciting model for other scholars who seek to overcome the limitations of taciturn imperial archives and their power-laden structures of knowledge and erasure.” Natalie Rothman, University of Toronto

Narrating the Dragoman’s Self in the Veneto-Ottoman Balkans, c. 1550–1650

This microhistory of the Salvagos—an Istanbul family of Venetian interpreters and spies travelling the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mediterranean—is a remarkable feat of the historian’s craft of storytelling. With his father having been killed by secret order of Venice and his nephew to be publicly assassinated by Ottoman authorities, Genesino Salvago and his brothers started writing self-narratives. When crossing the borders of words and worlds, the Salvagos’ self-narratives helped navigate at times beneficial, other times unsettling entanglements of empire, family, and translation. The discovery of an autobiographical text with rich information on Southeastern Europe, edited here for the first time, is the starting point of this extraordinary microbiography of a family’s intense struggle for manoeuvring a changing world disrupted by competition, betrayal, and colonialism. This volume recovers the Venetian life stories of Ottoman subjects and the crucial role of translation in negotiating a shared but fragile Mediterranean. Stefan Hanß examines an interpreter’s translational practices of the self and recovers the wider Mediterranean significance of the early modern Balkan contact zone. Offering a novel conversation between translation studies, Mediterranean studies, and the history of life-writing, this volume argues that dragomans’ practices of translation, border-crossing, and mobility were key to their experiences and performances of the self. This book is an indispensable reading for the history of the early modern Mediterranean, self-narratives, Venice, the Ottoman Empire, and Southeastern Europe, as well as the history of translation. Hanß presents a truly fascinating narrative, a microhistory full of insights and rich perspectives. Stefan Hanß is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at The University of Manchester and the winner of a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award and a Philip Leverhulme Prize. From September 2023, Hanß will also serve as Deputy Director and Scientific Lead of the John Rylands Research Institute. He has published widely on global history, material culture, and Mediterranean studies, more recently with a focus on hair and featherwork. Hanß is the author of two monographs on the Battle of Lepanto and the editor of Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500–1800) (2014), The Habsburg Mediterranean, 1500–1800 (2021), Scribal Practice and Global Cultures of Colophons, 1400–1700 (2022), and In-Between Textiles, 1400–1800: Weaving Subjectivities and Encounters (2023).

Life Narratives of the Ottoman Realm Individual and Empire in the Near East Series Editors: Christoph Herzog, Institute for Turkish Studies, Universität Bamberg, Germany Richard Wittmann, Orient-Institut Istanbul, Turkey Advisory Board Evangelia Balta, National Hellenic Research Foundation, Greece Kemal Beydilli, Istanbul 29 Mayis University, Turkey Nathalie Clayer, CETOBac/EHESS, France Edhem Eldem, Boğaziçi University, Turkey Benjamin Fortna, University of Arizona, USA Rachel Goshgarian, Lafayette College, USA Cemal Kafadar, Harvard University, USA Ilham Makdisi, Northeastern University, USA Yaron Ben Naeh, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Johann Strauss, Université Marc Bloch, France Claudia Ulbrich, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Jay Winter, Yale University, USA As a consequence of the political developments following World War I, the Ottoman Empire has been treated by a great number of historians above all as an intrinsic part of Turkish national history. Although the academic community has recognized that the Ottoman Empire was, in fact, multiethnic and multicultural, this recognition has too rarely been translated into scholarly practice. This is due in large part to the fragmentation of Ottoman studies into various academic disciplines that only infrequently communicate with one another: as examples, Turkish-language literature predominantly produced by Muslims is treated by Turkish Literature experts and Turkologists in the West; Ottoman Ladino literature falls within the purview of Romance studies; the empire’s Greeks are studied within the field of Byzantine and Hellenic studies; and so on. This publication series aims to bring all of these perspectives together in a historically specific and responsible way by providing a key publication platform for scholars aiming to study the narrative sources of a vast geographic region, stretching, at times, from Bosnia to the Yemen, in its full complexity as a multilingual and multiethnic Empire.

Narrating the Dragoman’s Self in the Veneto-Ottoman Balkans, c. 1550–1650 Stefan Hanß

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Stefan Hanß The right of Stefan Hanß to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hanß, Stefan, author. Title: Narrating the Dragoman’s self in the Veneto-Ottoman Balkans, c. 1550–1650 / Stefan Hanß. Description: New York: Routledge, 2023. | Series: Life narratives of the Ottoman realm | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022050705 (print) | LCCN 2022050706 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367233693 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032469515 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429279539 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Dragoman–Turkey–Biography. | Salvagos family. | Salvago, Genesino. | Balkan Peninsula–History. | Mediterranean Region–History Classification: LCC DR438.5.H36 2023 (print) | LCC DR438.5 (ebook) | DDC 956.1/015—dc23/eng/20221109 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050705 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050706 ISBN: 978-0-367-23369-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-46951-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-27953-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

This book has been generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust’s Philip Leverhulme Prize.

For Amalia and Beatriz —this is your book on spies— Bärbel, Carsten, Gerhard, and Gertraut for sharing the everyday adventures of translation In liebevoller Erinnerung an Marianne, Günter, Ilka, Erich und Frieda my family ABC

Contents

List of Illustrations Note on Languages List of Abbreviations Map of Genesino Salvago’s Balkan Journey Select Family Tree of the Salvagos Acknowledgements A Mediterranean Microhistory: Translation, Self, and Storytelling in the Early Modern Imperial Balkans

xiii xvii xix xxi xxii xxv

1

The Bridge over the Drina 23 1 A Familiar Thesaurus: Interpreting Empires

28

Klis, Croatia, August 19, 2017, 8 am 65 2 Translation, Space, and Mobility: The Balkan Travels of Genesino Salvago

70

On (Dis)Connections 105 3 The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self: Commerce, Espionage, and War

108

Genesino Salvago’s “I Poem” 191

xii Contents

4 The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer: Visibility, Authorship, and the Self in the Seventeenth-Century Contact Zone

194

Study of Perspective 259 Translation, Family, Espionage: Interpreting Early Modern Imperial Interpreters

264

Jtinerario del Viaggio da Costantinopoli sino à Spalato, e Traù, fatto da me Genesino Saluagho Dragomanno (1618) 271 Bibliography Index

285 315

Illustrations



Assassination of grand dragoman Giovanni Antonio Grillo. BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971, 38r. ©Giancarlo Costa/ Bridgeman Images 1 Map of Genesino Salvago’s Balkan journey (1618). ©Alejandra Galmés Alba 2 Select family tree of the Salvagos with the main protagonist of this book, Genesino Salvago (*). ©Stefan Hanß 3 Reading and writing at the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, on the terrace of the Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017 4 Francesco Contarini, doge of Venice (1623–4). Seventeenth-century sculpture by an unknown maker, white marble, 76.2  cm. ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 32.100.156 5 Dragomans brokered Veneto-Ottoman politics, as on this occasion, when the sultan’s cohort grants Venetian bailo Giovanni Soranzo an audience (1649). The dragoman is singled out, wearing a fur-lined cap and a striking orange tunic. Also the Salvago dragomans were situated amidst a world of imperial exchange. BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971 (1660s). ©bpk/DeAgostini/New Picture Library/A. Dagli Orti 6 Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Bridge in Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017 7 A seventeenth-century depiction of the Venetian diplomatic residence, owned by Genesino Salvago and the place of his employment, with language students in the lower floor (c. 1660). ©The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, GE, VAse-1782, 48r. Photograph by Alexey Pakhomov, as published in E. Natalie Rothman, The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021) 8 Assassination of then-grand dragoman Giovanni Antonio Grillo, the nephew of Genesino Salvago, in 1649 (as depicted in the early 1660s). BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971, 38r. ©Giancarlo Costa/Bridgeman Images

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xiv Illustrations 9 The Ottoman fortress of Klis and its surrounding streets, which Genesino visited on May 11, 1618.  Half a century later, after the siege of the fortress, Venetians rebuilt some of these roads. They remain largely in shape until today. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017 10 The Latin Bridge in Sarajevo in its modern shape. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017 11 In albums produced in the Venetian bailate of Istanbul which were used for didactic purposes, Ottoman bridges are shown as sites of architectural perfection, as well as in-between and liminal spaces of encounter, passage, transition, opposition, and potential change. BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971 (1660s). ©bpk/DeAgostini/New Picture Library/A. Dagli Orti 12 A seventeenth-century Venetian depiction portrays the interior of an Ottoman caravanserai as a lively space of encounter and exchange, prayer and storytelling, cohabitation and conversation, sociability, tobacco consumption, as well as secret information gathering. Note the lying man on the right, pretending to sleep while peeping through the blanket to overhear some of the conversation of his unwary neighbours (c. 1660). BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971 (1660s). ©Giancarlo Costa/ Bridgeman Images 13 Sixteenth-century fountains in Sarajevo with restorations. Left: in the courtyard of the Gazi Husrev Beg Mosque. Right: outside the Gazi Husrev Beg Mosque. ©Stefan Hanß, August 2017 14 Panorama view of the landscape of Split today, seen from the platform of the castle of Klis, the final stopover on Ottoman territory described in Genesino’s travelogue prior to entering Venetian territory. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017 15 A seventeenth-century map of the Veneto-Ottoman border between Klis and Split, commissioned by Venetian authorities, crafts the fiction of a clearly demarcated frontier. ASV, Senato, Dispacci, Dispacci dei rettori, Dalmazia, filza 60, disegno 2.  Above: total view. Below: detail. ©Archivio di Stato di Venezia 16 Venetian map of the adjoining domains of Ottoman Klis and Venetian Split. Giovanni Camocio, Isole famose porti, fortezze, e terre maritime sottoposte alla Ser.ma Sig.ria di Venetia, ad altri Principi Christiani, et al Sig.or Turco (…) (Venice: Libraria del segno di S. Marco, 1574). ©Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation

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Illustrations  xv 17

An Ottoman horse market, depicted in a Venetian diplomatic album. BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971 (1660s). ©Giancarlo Costa/Bridgeman Images 98 18 Genesino generated knowledge that filled a largely blank spot in the Venetian imperial imaginary: the Balkan inland. Giuseppe Rosaccio, Viaggio da Venetia, a Costantinopoli per Marre, e per Terra, et insieme quello di Terra Santa. Cioe Citta, Castelli, Porti, Golfi, Isole, Monti, Fiumi, e Mari, Opera vtile, à Mercanti, Marinari, et à Studiosi di Geografia (Venice: Franco, 1598). ©Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation 100 19 On a market in Sarajevo. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017 105 20 Contemporary Venetian cartography mapped the Adriatic Sea as the “Gulf or Sea of Venice.” Ptolemy, La Geografia (…), translated by Girolamo Ruscelli (Venice: Valgrisi, 1561). ©Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Rar. 1459 115 21 Murano glass beads (0.4–0.9  mm) excavated from the Gnalić shipwreck, a trading galley that belonged to Genesino’s uncle (1583). Biograd na Moru, Zavičajni Muzej Biograd na Moru, inv. no. G250.  ©Ivana Asić 119 22 The petition of 51 Muslim merchants demanding Venice to restitute their commodities lost during the Split incident, 1617.  ©Archivio di Stato, Venice, Documenti turchi, n. 1210 123 23 Top: Morića han in Sarajevo, a mid-sixteenth-century guesthouse of Gazi Husrev Beg’s vaqf that survived largely in its seventeenth-century appearance. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017.  Below: Preserved in its eighteenth-century shape, Svrzo’s house gives an idea of the setting of domestic sociability in high-class households in Ottoman Sarajevo. 134 ©Stefan Hanß, 2017 24 Italian-Ottoman language manual from Sarajevo containing verbs and wordings.  ©Gazi Husrev-Begova Biblioteka, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, R-5538, Turkče-­italiyanča luġatī (‫ )تركجه اطالينجه لغتي‬137 25 First page of a letter in cipher from the marquis of Bedmar, issued in Venice on March 31, 1618, containing information on the involvement of the bailo in negotiations regarding Ottoman claims for restitution. The writing was deciphered by the Spanish royal secretary Antonio de Aróstegui y Zazo. Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), Estado, Venecia e Islas Jónicas, leg. 1930, #82, Venice, March 31, 1618.  ©España. Ministerio de Cultura. Archivo 167 General de Simancas, AGS,EST,LEG,1930,82

xvi Illustrations 26

Grand dragoman Marc’antonio Borisi hanged by Ottoman authorities in 1620.  BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971 (1660s), 30r. ©bpk/DeAgostini/New Picture Library/A. Dagli Orti 168 27 Contemporary Venetian costume albums presented the uskoks as “a very ferocious, risqué, and terrible nation subject to prince Charles of Austria.” Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo libri due (Venice: Zenaro, 1590). ©Universitäts- und 171 Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf, H 32 28 Natalis Bertolini, Cristoforo Tarsia (1618–78). Oil painting, 150 × 95 cm. ©Pokrajinski Muzei Koper/Koper 196 Regional Museum, PMK 3131 29 Natalis Bertolini, Marco Tarsia (c. 1624–50). Oil painting, 150 × 95 cm. ©Pokrajinski Muzei Koper/Koper Regional 197 Museum, PMK 3128 30 Sebastiano Bombelli (presumably), Gian Rinaldo Carli (1646–1722). Oil painting, 120 × 95 cm, 1679.  ©Zavičajni muzej Poreštine/Poreč Regional Museum, ZMP 1676.  Photo: R. Kosinožić 198 31 Apodemic knowledge scheme. Nathan Chyträus, VARIORUM IN EUROPA ITINERUM DELICIÆ (…) (s.l.: Christophorum Corvinum, 1606). ©Bayerische 221 Staatsbibliothek Munich, L.eleg.m.200 32 Belgrade in Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia Vniversale (…) (Cologne: Arnoldo Byrckmanno, 1575). ©Bayerische 222 Staatsbibliothek Munich, Res/2 Geo.u.62 33 Venetian cartography depicted Trogir as a city with a largely vacant surrounding. Giovanni Camocio, Isole famose porti, fortezze, e terre maritime sottoposte alla Ser.ma Sig.ria di Venetia, ad altri Principi Christiani, et al Sig.or Turco (…) (Venice: Libraria del segno di S. Marco, 1574). ©Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation 241 34 Dalmatian subjects as depicted in the Venetian gaze. Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo libri due (Venice: Zenaro, 1590). ©Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf, H 32 247 35 Ai Weiwei (b. 1957): Study of Perspective—San Marco, 1995-2003.  New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Gelatin silver print, 15 5/16 × 23 1/4” (38.9  × 59 cm). Acquired through the generosity of the Photography Council Fund and the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art. Acc. n.: 356.2008.  ©2022.  Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. ©Photo SCALA, Florence 262

Note on Languages

The Mediterranean is as multilingual a space as the texts on which this monograph leans. While Genesino Salvago’s self-narrative is presented ­ faithfully at the end of this book, all other quotations are given in translation. These translations are mine if not otherwise noted. I have carefully modernised antiquated and uncommon spellings, such nuouo as nuovo and considerationi as considerazioni. Ottoman titles are spelt in their most common English or Turkish form, such as pasha or hacı. Names, too, are standardised. Venetian archival references to “Andrea Ferlettich” and “Matthio Clissanin,” for example, have been changed to Andrija Frletić and Matija Klišanin while clearly misrendered early modern spellings, like “Nasunovich” or “Rucich,” have been altered to Nasunović and Ručić. Verbatim spellings are referenced in italics.

Abbreviations

Archives AGS Archivo General de Simancas, Spain ASV Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Venice, Italy BMC Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice, Italy DAD Državni Arhiv u Dubrovniku, Dubrovnik, Croatia DAZD Državni Arhiv u Zadru, Zadar, Croatia GHBB Gazi Husrev-Begova Biblioteka, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina TNA The National Archives Kew, London, United Kingdom

Sources BAC Bailo a Costantinopoli (ASV) CSMII Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia, seconda serie (ASV) DT Documenti turchi (ASV) ESTNap Estado, Nápoles, Virreinato (AGS) ESTVen Estado, Venecia e Islas Jónicas (AGS) GBSAfrica Sacerdoti, Alberto, ed. “Africa overo Barbarìa”: relazione al doge di Venezia sulle reggenze di Algeri e di Tunisi del Dragomanno Gio. Batta Salvago (1625). Padua: CEDAM, 1937 GBSDalmatia Salvago, Giovanni Battista. “Revisti Dalmati confini.” In Commissiones et relationes venetae: Mletačka uputstva i izvještaji, edited by Grga Novak, vol. 7, 17–37. Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 1972 GSItinerario Salvago, Genesino. Jtinerario del Viaggio da Costantinopoli sino à Spalato, e Traù, fatto da me Genesino Saluagho Dragomanno (1618), TNA, PRO 30/25/18, fasc. 13, 173r–8r SDC Senato, Dispacci, Dispacci degli ambasciatori e residenti, Costantinopoli (ASV) SDD Senato, Dispacci, Dispacci dei rettori, Dalmazia (ASV)

xx Abbreviations SDelC Senato, Deliberazioni, Costantinopoli (ASV) SDelM Senato, Deliberazioni, Mar (ASV) SDM Senato, Dispacci, Dispacci degli ambasciatori e residenti, Milano (ASV) SDN Senato, Dispacci, Dispacci degli ambasciatori e residenti, Napoli (ASV) SDS Senato, Dispacci, Dispacci degli ambasciatori e residenti, Spagna (ASV) XDelSeg Consiglio di dieci, Deliberazioni, secrete (ASV)

Others MV more veneto

Figure 1  Map of Genesino Salvago’s Balkan journey (1618). ©Alejandra Galmés Alba.

Map of Genesino Salvago’s Balkan Journey  xxi

Figure 2  Select family tree of the Salvagos with the main protagonist of this book, Genesino Salvago (*). ©Stefan Hanß.

xxii  Select Family Tree of the Salvagos

  xxiii

Figure 3  Reading and writing at the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, on the terrace of the Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017.

Acknowledgements

The unconditional support of wonderful and inspiring people as well as various institutions was key for writing this book. A generous fellowship of the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani allowed for vast archival research to be carried out in Venice and Southeastern Europe (Figure 3). The Centro welcomed me with a warm and inspiring environment. Marita Liebermann gave eye-opening feedback on translation studies, bridges, and the dragoman’s travels, and Petra Schaefer commented on the significance of Kulturmittler and provided generous support, as did Michaela Böhringer and Simonetta Polo. The Centro’s support for both academics and artists was a much appreciated, empowering experience in writing this book. Writing the actual monograph, then, would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Leverhulme Trust. The Philip Leverhulme Prize provided me with a substantial buyout, considerable liberties, and the time to write this book. I am also extremely grateful to colleagues who took the time to read and discuss the monograph with me and to provide support whenever needed. Giancarlo Casale, Georg Christ, Beatriz Marín-Aguilera, Aslı Niyazioğlu, Natalie Rothman, and Claudia Ulbrich all generously shared their insights and comments on the manuscript; Marina Inì kindly commented on Genesino Salvago’s travelogue, double-checked my transcription, and shared her enthusiasm for the project; Cristian Luca was available to discuss archival findings about the Salvagos’ family connections; and Mirko Sardelić as well as Nella Lonza helped when I had questions about findings in Croatian archives. Writing this book during a global pandemic was a tremendous challenge, not the least because of limited access to source materials. My warm thanks go to David Neuhäuser, who scanned hundreds of pages to grant me access to materials in Berlin; Eric Dursteler, who ensured that I had access to a rare Yugoslavian edition of Venetian sources; Alexander Koller, who did not hesitate to help by scanning an edited source in Rome; and Natalie Rothman, who shared photographs of two Venetian archival documents. Agustín Sánchez Marchán and Vanesa Pérez Sánchez deserve special thanks for scanning altogether 9,879 pages of documents held in the Archivo General de Simancas. I could not have written this book

xxvi Acknowledgements without their support, and the expertise and kindness that other archivists, in particular Andrea Pelizza in Venice, were willing to share. Archival encounters are crucial for my work and I thank all the archivists and librarians who made my journeys so enjoyable. This monograph also echoes my biographical trajectories as an academic. It was such a privilege to have been supervised, as a PhD student, by Claudia Ulbrich at the Freie Universität Berlin, who introduced me to inspiring conversations about self-narratives early on in my career. The DFG-funded research group Selbstzeugnisse in transkultureller Perspektive established a vibrant environment of thought-provoking exchange and I vividly remember mesmerising conversations about self-narratives and microhistory with Claudia Ulbrich, Gabriele Jancke, and Hans Medick, as well as Michaela Hohkamp, Claudia Jarzebowski, and Rebekka von Mallinckrodt. During these years, I also learned from Reinhard Bernbeck. His classes brimmed with insights, energy, and critical theoretical approaches, and his publications gave me the courage to write this book the way I did. I then joined an inspiring environment of intellectual brilliance, exchange, energy, and friendship at the University of Cambridge and St John’s College; and also here, conversations about microhistory continued. My very special thanks go to Ulinka Rublack, Mary Laven, and Helen Pfeifer for their generous support and friendship throughout these years, and for encouraging me to continue my research on the Salvagos. Also in Manchester, I could not wish for better colleagues—Sasha Handley, Rachel Winchcombe, Edward Wouk, Georg Christ, Stephen Mossman, Ethan Menchinger, and Talia Zajac in particular, to name only a few, as well as The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, the home of thrilling collections and a powerhouse of innovative research, have made this place an intellectual home. Furthermore, the members of The Bodies, Emotions and Material Culture Collective promote thriving methodological debates. Guyda Armstrong, moreover, kindly shared unpublished, forthcoming work. Over the years, also the COST Action People in Motion: Entangled Histories of Displacement across the Mediterranean (1492–1923) (PIMo CA18140) has provided a plethora of opportunities to discuss my work with like-minded scholars and I am grateful to Giovanni Tarantino for such opportunities. Seeing this book endorsed by researchers whose publications I admire is another very exciting and humbling experience. I wish to thank Giancarlo Casale, Eric Dursteler, Aslı Niyazioğlu, Helen Pfeifer, and Natalie Rothman for their very kind words. This book has been largely written with Maria Pia Pedani in mind—she welcomed me wholeheartedly as an undergraduate student in Venice ages ago, and still when I started writing this book, we discussed the Salvagos at her home. I wish she could see the product of such years-long support. Richard Wittmann has supported my research on Genesino from early on and I thank him and Christoph Herzog—the editors of this series—as well as Michael Greenwood and the entire Routledge team for their input and

Acknowledgements  xxvii guidance. The manuscript also benefited from the copyediting of Jason S. Ganesan, whom I thank for his fantastic work; and Alejandra Galmés Alba did the amazing and beautiful map. My thanks go also to all those involved in conversations about image permissions. Although I made my best efforts to clear all the image copyrights, copyrights holders are invited to get in touch where it has not been possible to trace them. My most profound thanks go to my family, to Bärbel, Carsten, Gerhard, Marianne, Günter, and Gertraut, as well as Ilka, Erich, and Frieda, for their unconditional love and support throughout all these years. I just wish that all were still here to see this book. No words would do justice to the ways they have risen me: full of love, friendship, and optimism. Also my Spanish family supported me whenever possible, giving me precious time to write. The most beautiful change in life has happened with Amalia entering the world—nobody could have made the time writing this book more fun and more meaningful. Yet, my deepest thanks go to Beatriz, for making this life so beautiful, for her wit, and for being the companion that she is. You encouraged me from the very beginning to write the book and to write it in the way I wished it to be written. You lend ears, insights, and support, from the beginning to the end. This book is for you: “spies!”

A Mediterranean Microhistory Translation, Self, and Storytelling in the Early Modern Imperial Balkans

In late March 1618, the capital of the Ottoman Empire was brimming with rumours and uncertainties. The residents of Istanbul were curious to learn more about what the future would bring. Just a month after 14-year-old Osman II had seized power in a coup d’état, an Ottoman Catholic in his late fifties, walking with a limp from a life-long disability, was busy preparing to leave Istanbul for a lengthy journey. Over the coming months, he was to travel what contemporaries called Rumelia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, and the Gulf of Venice—what today is Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia—to finally arrive in Venice, only to return to Istanbul, again, a few months later (Figure 1). After an arduous journey through the Balkans—upon arrival in Split, “one of the commercial capitals of the Mediterranean,” and the neighbouring city of Trogir—the man put pen to paper to chronicle his experiences in a travel account.1 This manuscript, loaded with biographical significance and rich with information on the Balkans, was buried in the vast expanse of archival documentation, unknown to historians. The traveller dedicated his report to one of the most powerful men of Venice, 62-year-old Francesco Contarini, who was to be made doge just five years later (Figure 4). During this man’s Balkan journey, two doges died. Worse still, war was threatening to plunge the entire continent into decades of devastation. This traveller’s name was Genesino Salvago. He was a subject of the Ottoman sultan, serving, by this time, almost four decades as a diplomatic interpreter—a dragoman—for Venice. This monograph is the story of Genesino, the interpreter, traveller, and spy.2 This book takes Genesino’s travelogue as a starting point for a deeper contextualisation of this travelling interpreter’s life and the ways he understood his own place in a changing world when navigating the challenges he encountered. This is the unknown and unsettling story of a man and his family who try to make a living in between two of the most powerful empires of the early modern Mediterranean. As a republic, Venice was entrenched in the wider imperial politics of the Mediterranean Sea and nurtured itself distinctly imperial cultures, especially regarding its Levantine “maritime state” (stato da mar). In such contexts, Genesino and his family were acting as “men of empire,” or “agents of empire,” brokering overlapping

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-1

2  A Mediterranean Microhistory

Figure 4  Francesco Contarini, doge of Venice (1623–4). Seventeenth-century sculpture by an unknown maker, white marble, 76.2  cm. ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 32.100.156.

moments of encounter and exchange, conflict, and coexistence.3 As “key actors in negotiations,” the Salvagos shaped the history of the early modern Mediterranean; and they also tried to balance the repercussions of imperial

A Mediterranean Microhistory  3 politics on this family of long-serving Venetian diplomatic interpreters.4 What follows is a story of diplomacy, commerce, war, espionage, trust and betrayal, glory, decline, and survival, and the crucial role of translation in negotiating this “shared world” of fragile connections.5 “The balance of history, unstable as it is at the best of times, hinges on different interpretations of words,” as Anna Aslanyan points out. The activities of the Salvago dragomans were key to the negotiating, brokering, and shaping of empires in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mediterranean.6 Yet, such imperial entanglements also affected this family’s own history. This book is also the story of a travelling Veneto-Ottoman interpreter whose father had been killed by secret order of Venice on suspicion of corruption and disloyalty, and whose nephew was to be publicly assassinated by Ottoman authorities a few decades later. It is the story of an early modern family of interpreters, translating in Venetian imperial service in the Ottoman capital and across the Balkans, Italy, the Near East, and North Africa. For the Salvago dragomans, brokering languages and empires meant channelling a family’s life and fortune. The manuscript account of Genesino’s Southeastern European ­journey opens a window onto the everyday professional world of dragomans. Writing about his journey as much as about himself, this self-narrative, edited for the very first time in the annex of this book, allows for a deep reconstruction of this dragoman’s experiences and understandings of translation and travel. Counting no more than six pages, densely scribbled with notes regarding the dragoman’s experiences on the road, this autobiographical text is of only short nature yet vast in terms of content covered. When being meticulously contextualised with materials from archives across the Mediterranean, Genesino’s travelogue takes us to a staggering road trip through the metropolises and landscapes of Southeastern Europe. The manuscript brims with rare information on life in caravanserais in Ottoman Europe; Southeastern European towns and villages, as well as the habits, hopes, and struggles of their inhabitants; infrastructures of travels; and the wider economic and political repercussions of Mediterranean imperial interactions in the Balkan contact zone. This book presents a thorough reconstruction of Genesino’s journey, while reassessing the politics of the dragoman’s self-narrative, as well as the experiences and politics of border-crossing and border-making. As a road dragoman, Genesino’s job was to be on the move. He travelled Southeastern Europe by secret order of the highest Venetian diplomatic residents in the Ottoman Empire with the mission to gather practical information about largely uncharted inland territory. Genesino’s intelligence, as we shall see, was to shape the agenda of the new Venetian ambassador in Istanbul, Contarini, as much as the future of generations of Salvago dragomans to come. Moreover, the dragoman had to collate news on the harshest rivals of Venice—Ragusa, Naples, and Spain in particular—as well as rumours about merchant communities in Sofia, Sarajevo, and Belgrade, and information on their ambivalent stand on Venetian mercantile politics. During such

4  A Mediterranean Microhistory a journey, the Salvago ­dragoman was representing Venice. Though he was a subject of the Ottoman sultan, such travels immersed Genesino in a deeply contested world of Venetian imperial politics. The Balkan journey, this book shows, merged the ­dragoman’s world of oral interpretation, ­written translation, diplomatic negotiation, and travels with the risks of espionage. This book introduces readers to the professional world of the Salvago dragomans and the high drama such a story entails: it includes executions, assassination attempts, dangerous espionage, high treason, fierce competition, and the insecurities of living a life across empires. This microbiographical study of key protagonists of early modern Mediterranean diplomacy unravels the deeds of the Salvagos, a family of translators, interpreters, and spies—such imperial agents, I show, were the intermeshing gears that kept the machinery of Venetian diplomacy and empire working. Above all, I examine an early modern Mediterranean interpreter’s translational practices of the self. Translation, I argue, must be considered an auto/biographical practice shaped by and itself shaping the interpreter’s “social self”—here understood as the Salvago interpreters’ attempts “to shape their identity in dialogue with different groups, institutional demands, threatening circumstances such as illness or warfare, available self-images, their bodily experience, different types of objects, or other symbolically invested parts of their experience.”7 For dragomans, this book shows, translation was key to their understanding, experience, and performance of the self. In fact, it was through translation that Ottoman subjects like the Salvagos “documented the [Venetian] empire and their own lives within it.”8 Examining translation as a cultural, social, and autobiographical practice matters when charting this translator’s notion of the self. For imperial interpreters like Genesino, I argue, translation was deeply anchored, embedded, and invested in their lives. Reconstructing this embeddedness, the present volume examines the entanglement of translation and the self in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mediterranean, a space interwoven by a vibrant plurality of languages and similarly active communities of imperial agents.9 In particular, I explore the key role of the family, the household, the notion of imperial service, as well as of mobility in general, and the Balkan journey in particular, in shaping the dragoman’s notion of the self. In this sense, this monograph recovers “a life lived in and through translation.”10 By establishing a novel conversation between translation studies, early modern history, and the history of life-writing, I reconsider an Ottoman subject’s Venetian self-narrative, foregrounding the rich linguistic and cultural variety of notions of the self, and self-narratives, in the Ottoman world. Most importantly, this is a microhistory which leads readers to a zoomed-in narrative kaleidoscope of the life of an early modern dragoman. This is not to add Genesino to a growing list of heroes of microhistorical studies—Domenico Scandella or Menocchio, Martin Guerre, Giovan Battista Chiesa, Leo Africanus, or Katharina Kepler, among many others—but to make a statement on the very nature of this book, which

A Mediterranean Microhistory  5 shares a set of key convictions that characterise microhistorical research.11 This volume is shaped by in-depth archival research and contextualisation, and sensitivity to the richness, complexity, conflicts, contradictions, and limits of the archival record. I also share microhistorians’ prime interest in historical experience and their reflective stand on what Marc Bloch has aptly termed “the historian’s craft.”12 The author’s role in crafting narratives about past lives, and making this explicit, has shaped the way this book is written. Besides delving into archives, I loan from Natalie Zemon Davis experimentation with narratives when problematising archival gaps through thorough archival contextualisation, “held tightly in check by the voices of the past.”13 This monograph’s narrative functions itself as an analysis, as it serves to reveal multiple perspectives involved in writing and researching self-narratives.14 This microhistory, furthermore, shares a critical approach to coarse-cut master narratives—in the case of this volume, the rather static and peripheral place that has been allocated, far too often, for the Balkans in studies of early modern Veneto-Ottoman contacts.15 Finally, this volume’s focus on locating Genesino within a dense web of family relations also echoes microhistorians’ conviction that family analysis reveals otherwise overlooked insights into the “production of the self.”16 This approach is of particular significance for the present study, since in the early modern Mediterranean “travel and mobility often involved entire kin-groups.”17 Also the Salvago family’s dragomans translated in Aleppo, Algiers, Belgrade, Istanbul, Sarajevo, Split, and Venice, among many other places. Their profession encompassed mobility between words and worlds, and when traversing the early modern Mediterranean, usually in company of other members of the Venetian diplomatic household in Istanbul, these interpreters’ sense of the self was firmly anchored in the overlapping world of family, empire, and translation. Seen under the microhistorical lens, the story of Genesino becomes a Mediterranean microhistory. To map this dragoman’s notion of the self, I deploy what Eric Dursteler has called a “microbiographical” approach.18 Since the early modern self manifests in its wider social relationships, as Davis, Gabriele Jancke, and Claudia Ulbrich have shown, microhistory focuses on what Edoardo Grendi calls “the overall organisation of social relations,” thus the social fabric that anchored Genesino’s experience of life and translation. Situating the “field of interpersonal relationships” within “a micro-area,” in my understanding, is one of the most powerful and most honest ways to do justice to the “complexity of the reality” in the past.19 The present book contributes to this debate by introducing a focus on the practice and experience of translation as a form of “thinking about possible relations to the world,” and doing so on a micro-scale.20 It is Genesino’s world of translation, I argue, that shaped the “boundaries of the self” of the imperial interpreter.21 In other words, since “the ‘I’ has no story of its own that is not also the story of a relation—or set of relations—to a set of norms,” as Judith Butler once put it, translation was the binding agent and kit forging such relations in

6  A Mediterranean Microhistory Genesino’s world.22 For exactly that reason, this monograph presents a thorough reconstruction of the dragoman’s practices, experiences, and understandings of translation, situating this mobile imperial protagonist at the very centre of the thick circuits of interpretation, diplomacy, news, and espionage across the early modern Mediterranean. Genesino’s life, journeys, and translations, if seen through a microhistorical lens, uncover what Erin Maglaque aptly calls “Venice’s intimate empire”—in the case of the Salvago dragomans, the intimate, at times beneficial, other times troublesome entanglements of empire, translation, and family, and the Venetian life stories of such Ottoman subjects.23 This study brings to centre-stage a Balkan self-narrative in the examination of a Veneto-Ottoman dragoman’s notion of the self. Hence, this volume also contributes to important recent studies that recover the wider Mediterranean significance of early modern contact zones in Southeastern Europe.24 Despite Fernand Braudel’s call to put the Balkan Mountains first in Mediterranean studies, research on the early modern Balkans maintained an often fragmented approach mirroring national narratives, language barriers, and a disturbingly blatant ethnic focus.25 “The Balkans,” as Maria Todorova aptly put it, “have been described as the ‘other’ of Europe,” resulting in a largely “frozen image” characterised by often coarse-cut “reductionism and stereotyping.”26 Still today, it is rare that the early modern Balkan Peninsula is addressed in terms of its astonishing diversity and vibrancy, and Anglophone discourse grants only limited visibility to the pathbreaking research conducted by Southeastern European historians on the significance of the Balkans for Mediterranean history.27 “Mountains come first,” Braudel claimed, also because of the importance of transhumant life in the early modern Mediterranean. This observation matters especially for this book’s case in point since the rhythmicity of transhumance and life in the early modern Balkans echoes translators’ recent theoretical approaches to consider “translation as transhumance,” as a form of nomadism, a rhythmic back and forth that affects the interpreter’s very own sense of the self and its wider relations.28 Balkan experiences also shaped the notion of the self of metropolitan Istanbul dragomans, provoking a whole generation of Salvago dragomans to articulate and position the self within the complex imperial entanglements of the early seventeenth-century Mediterranean. When travelling the Balkan Peninsula, as we shall see, three Salvago brothers acted as secret spies in Venetian service. Genesino’s younger brothers, Giuliano and Giovanni Battista, spied on Habsburg and Ottoman authorities in the region in 1616 and 1626, while his nephew was spying on an Ottoman diplomatic envoy on his journey along the Dalmatian coast in 1618. Travelling the Balkans at the same time, also Genesino, by then the oldest member of the family, conducted secret espionage in Ottoman Belgrade and gathered valuable information in Sarajevo, and engaged in sabotage activities directed against one of the most powerful economic competitors of Venice in the region, the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). Travelling the Balkans

A Mediterranean Microhistory  7 thus provoked the Salvago dragomans to situate themselves within the ­polyphonal orchestra of imperial rivalry.29 Translating a visit of Belgrade, the crossing of Bosnian bridges, the sight of Croatian landscapes, or his mingling with consuls and merchants in Sarajevo and many other incidents of his 1618 travels through Southeastern Europe into a self-narrative was key in Genesino’s wider agenda of articulating imperial subjecthood in ­writing. The dragoman wished to make such narratives about the self count within the multi-layered and often unpredictable politics of situating the dragoman’s service in-between, thus, within both the overlapping realm of Venice and the Ottoman Empire. For the dragoman’s self, the Balkan contact zone was a provocative place. These regions invited reflections upon the self and held wider repercussions for subjects in Istanbul and Venice, and their understanding of subjectivity and subjecthood. Yet, the early modern Balkans still feature far too often in area studies, instead of occupying a central place in studies of the early modern Mediterranean, evoking instead the idea of a periphery squeezed in in-between empires—in turn, provoking the notion of a unified area which is considered as being rather subject to than itself shaping the history of empires. Too many studies on the early modern Balkans remain exclusively anchored in perspectives centred on Istanbul and Venice, establishing an imperial lens that often shades local diversity and agency. As Todorova has pointed out, the Balkans have been alternatively labelled as “the east of the west” or “the west of the east,” and rarely addressed in their own terms and heterogeneity.30 Contrary to this approach, the present book builds on a recent interest in mobile individuals and their local encounters as a means of questioning such widely established narratives.31 This microbiographical approach shifts perspectives away from the Balkans as a periphery singled out by crisis and the absence of empire.32 Instead, the Balkans travelled by Genesino must be considered a “neuralgic” space to imperial rule and notions of subjecthood, a vivid “‘middle ground,’ a place where people, commodities, ideas and cultures met in a rather more accepting and multi-layered atmosphere and which therefore contributed significantly to wider cultural exchanges.”33 As this monograph shows, it is the dragoman’s mobility, interpretations, translations, and self-narratives which contributed to shaping the Balkan Peninsula as a vibrant transimperial space and integrated region, anchored in and itself shaping Mediterranean history. The dragoman’s experience of travelling Southeastern Europe was not exclusively shaped by conditions on the ground or the imperial framework of life in-between Venice and Istanbul. Events in Naples and Madrid likewise played a crucial role for the dragoman’s Balkan travels, and Balkan events themselves shaped central and western Mediterranean history. Seen in Mediterranean terms, Genesino’s Balkans were affected by and itself acting upon the Mediterranean, defining motivations, experiences, and the wider agenda of the imperial interpreter too.

8  A Mediterranean Microhistory In recovering the manifold ways the imperial Balkans shaped the i­ nterpreter’s self, this volume shifts focus from singling out such subjects as situated in-between Venetian and Ottoman Empires towards situating them in the wider Mediterranean world.34 Recovering the dragoman’s familial and professional webs reveals Genesino’s role as an “active member of a network of trade, diplomacy, and knowledge” spanning the Mediterranean.35 As a Mediterranean microhistory of Salvago interpreters, this book contributes to recent research on early modern dragomans that has shown the importance of everyday vernacular diplomacy.36 I expand on a set of inspiring studies; Natalie Rothman, in particular, calls researchers to “focus on how trans-imperial subjects operated as members of multiple social formations and on how in their sustained interactions across linguistic, religious, and political lines they helped shape—and were in turned shaped by—shifting imperial boundaries.”37 This has shown the astonishing extent to which dragomans brokered Mediterranean empires and European knowledge about the Ottoman world.38 Noel Malcolm, meanwhile, exemplifies the manifold ways that an Albanian family of Veneto-Ottoman dragomans was involved in key political events of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean.39 Maria Pia Pedani and Cristian Luca presented meticulous archival research revealing Venetian dragoman’s expansive family networks, as well as their economic standing, commercial enterprises, and artistic patronage.40 The Salvagos, however, feature only sporadically into this historiography. A few individuals of this family are singled out—Genesino’s father Mateca and his brother Giovanni Battista in particular—yet, an overall perspective of this family’s wider relations, motivations, and agendas remains missing. Likewise, the Salvago dragomans’ self-narratives are either unstudied or seen in isolation even though, as I will argue, such texts established a wider assemblage that helped the performance of the dragoman’s self. A microhistory of the Salvago dragomans, and Genesino’s perspectives in particular, is needed despite the pivotal role of this family in channelling Veneto-Ottoman diplomacy (Figure 5).41 This monograph’s combined focus on the imperial Balkans, Mediterranean mobility, and the translator-interpreter’s notion of and writing about the self lends a new interpretation to debates on early modern dragomans. To fully grasp such “trans-imperial subjects,” I argue, it is key to examine their mobility as well as their behaviours and activities while travelling to imperial contact zones like the Balkans.42 Instead of situating dragomans exclusively in the contexts of either Venice or Istanbul, this approach draws attention to the significance of mobility and translation in negotiating the interpreter’s notion of the self. “These ‘in-between spaces’,” as Homi K. Bhabha puts it, “provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself.”43 The experience of mobility, thus, is key for interpreting dragomans’ notion of the self, and so it is to map these interpreters’ activities within the wider

A Mediterranean Microhistory  9

Figure 5  Dragomans brokered Veneto-Ottoman politics, as on this occasion, when the sultan’s cohort grants Venetian bailo Giovanni Soranzo an audience (1649). The dragoman is singled out, wearing a fur-lined cap and a striking orange tunic. Also the Salvago dragomans were situated amidst a world of imperial exchange. BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971 (1660s). ©bpk/DeAgostini/ New Picture Library/A. Dagli Orti.

imperial topography of the early modern Mediterranean. In contrast to earlier studies on dragomans, this book has thus a stronger focus on practices of mobility and writing. This focus casts a new light on Veneto-Ottoman dragomans as not exclusively situated between two empires, but rather mobile agents shaping “transimperial space” across the Mediterranean as “a place where representatives of empires negotiated territory and status.”44 As travelling agents of empire, mobility was key in shaping the Salvago dragomans’ deeds and world. When earlier research focused on the Salvagos as either residents of Istanbul or servants of Venice, or as situated in-between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, the present study takes their various Mediterranean journeys as a starting point to further reflect on itineraries and the broader significance of travels for these translator-interpreters’ lives. Although the Salvagos lived in Istanbul, these dragomans’ world was shaped by their travels to Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Syria; to Algiers and Venice; to Serbia, the Adriatic, and other parts of the Mediterranean. The dragoman’s self, as this microhistory of Genesino shows, was anchored in wider Mediterranean contexts and the creative potential that such spaces, and mobility in general, offered to the literary articulation of the translator’s

10  A Mediterranean Microhistory self. In his writings, Genesino, the Ottoman subject, never doubts his Venetianness; yet, the very fact that he makes a strategic use of writing to stress this again and again shows the extent to which he felt obliged to thematise the self in ways denying the cultural in-betweenness and framing mobility to instead focus on anchoring the self within the Venetian imperial apparatus. Self-narratives like the Balkan travelogue, as we shall see, were pivotal in the production of the dragoman’s self. Since “language-learning is also a translation of the self,” as John Gallagher notes to describe another early modern case of linguistic competence, the writing of self-narratives helped translators to make this explicit and to position their very own interpretations of the interpreter’s work and world.45 In fact, the dragoman’s self was as flexible as his names. Depending on contexts, Genesino Salvago was called Giannettino, Gionnizzeri, or, in Ottoman, Cenazin. Ottoman documents could also render the name as Ǧenaze, Ǧenazi, or Zaneimo. In Venetian dialect, he was also addressed as Zenesin, Zenesino, or Tenesin.46 I use Genesino Salvago throughout this book since this is how he twice signed his Balkan travelogue, once on the title page and another time at the very end of the manuscript; yet on another occasion, he also calls himself Giannettin or Giannettino—“little Genesino”—as he was known in other archival documents.47 I like to think of this name as echoing the ways he was introduced into Venetian diplomatic service by his father, Mateca, himself an eminent figure in Venetian imperial translation. To continue using this name after decades can itself be considered a statement of his self-anchoredness in cross-generational familial belonging. This is mirrored in similar cases. Genesino’s nephew, Giovanni Antonio Grillo, was widely known as Antonaki—Greek for “little Antonio(s)”—which brings to the fore the dragomans’ sense of the self as centred in the family.48 In a world shaped by multilingualism, the Veneto-Ottoman interpreter’s self could flexibly bend towards one position or another depending on contexts and relations; yet, it never loses the core reference to the family. This goes beyond the idea of an individual’s static, disciplined, and ego-centred self-fashioning, and focuses instead on fluid, moulding, adaptive, and contextual—in sum, translational—performances of the self.49 In my analysis of the Salvago dragomans’ self-narratives, I focus on their “doing person,” or the ways in which writing about the self helped them practise certain notions of subjectivity in contexts of wider social relations. My approach to the study of early modern self-narratives is inspired by Ulbrich and Jancke, who argue that focusing on the particular contexts in which writing about the self takes place (Schreibsituation) matters for ­disentangling “the narrating I” (schreibendes Ich) and “the narrative I” (­beschriebenes Ich) when examining such texts as “autobiographical acts” within wider social contexts.50 For this monograph, this brings important shifts in perspective. It leads away from considering the dragomans’ self-narratives as textual products and draws attention to their contribution to the production

A Mediterranean Microhistory  11 of the self. While previous studies point out that self-narratives allowed ­ ragomans to pride themselves in front of Venetian authorities, thus focusd ing on dragomans’ acts of deliberate self-fashioning, this volume focuses on the challenges and conflicts that shaped the making, positioning, and reception of such texts.51 The focus on self-narratives thus also avoids the widespread glorification of imperial interpreters as cultural go-betweens. Instead, this book highlights the hard labour, investments, deprivations, unpredictability, and loss that went into the dragomans’ translatory performances of writing about the self in a contested imperial world.52 This monograph singles out the hardships, threats, perils, and uncertainties that encouraged Salvago dragomans to compose self-narratives alongside translations. Writing autobiographical texts like the Balkan travelogue, I show, shaped these translator-interpreters’ visibility in the highly political terrain of Venetian bureaucracy; and it did so at a crucial moment of transition when Venice increasingly bypassed established Salvago dragomans in favour of other interpreting families. Following Ulbrich’s and Jancke’s methodological lead also allows an in-depth reading of Genesino’s travelogue as a Balkan, Venetian, and Ottoman self-narrative merging different traditions, genres, concepts, and languages to write about the self. This volume thus builds on the recent interest in Ottoman life-writing and corroborates, in Cemal Kafadar’s words, the agenda of “introducing a new personal dimension to Ottoman social and cultural history,” while also examining Italian-language self-narratives as “Ottoman life stories.”53 Kafadar’s seminal article on a seventeenth-century dervish’s self-narrative has proven pivotal in the shaping of the field of studies on Ottoman life-writings. More recent editorial projects, conferences, workshops, and a special section on Ottoman self-narratives published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, as well as the research of Selim Karahasanoğlu, Richard Wittmann, R. Aslıhan Aksoy-Sheridan, and A. Tunç Şen, among many others, have granted writings about the self a new prominence in the field of Ottoman studies.54 “We are yet to explore,” Aslı Niyazioğlu explains, “what the Ottomans themselves chose to tell about their own lives and those of others as it is often through life stories that they revealed their intellectual world.”55 Reading the writings of dragomans in such a way means to situate these texts within the wider social contexts that shaped the production of the narrative self. The sense of the self of at least some Ottoman subjects, this book shows, was deeply anchored in Italianate storytelling. Yet another shift in perspective results from Ulbrich’s and Jancke’s emphasis on the significance of the household for the production and articulation of the early modern self, as well as the writing, reception, and survival of early modern self-narratives. The “house” (casa), a term used by Genesino for his family, and his “family” ( famiglia), a term that he applies to address the personnel cosmos of the Venetian diplomatic residence in Istanbul, are, I will argue, the most crucial references of his “social self.”

12  A Mediterranean Microhistory Family and its resulting familiarity shaped the dragoman’s concepts of the self and anchored the language used by such language experts to translate and to write a story about themselves.56 Storytelling is another key concept of this volume. When the Salvago dragomans translated, both orally and in writing, they engaged in storytelling. The power of storytelling relies on what Walter Benjamin calls the ­storyteller’s “ability to exchange experiences,” “to relate […] life.”57 This very ability was core to the profession of dragomans. A speech or text works as a translation if the interpreter-translator is skilled in storytelling—the crafting of words to relate experiences.58 This specific narrative mode, I  argue, constitutes the dragoman’s social self, while the deep familiarity with storytelling shaped Genesino’s approach to self-narratives. In a text, “the self does not exist,” as Jacques Derrida states, “it is given by writing.”59 It is Salvago’s specific writing practices and the translatory practice of storytelling in particular, this monograph shows, that shapes the dragoman’s narrative self. Storytelling, thus, must be considered “a quintessentially social activity,” states Joan W. Scott, insofar as it constitutes the self within relationships, and as it is a cultural practice invested into life—in Genesino’s case, the life of translation.60 The entanglement of storytelling, translation, and life, I argue, forged the dragoman’s self-narratives. Benjamin’s famous dictum that “translation is a mode” therefore also invites reflections on storytelling as the modus operandi of the translating and interpreting dragoman, who crafts words when translating contexts of experiences to relate life itself.61 This book examines the extent to which translation affected the dragomans’ storytelling about the self, and the extent to which storytelling itself shaped their approaches to narrating subjectivity and subjecthood. As a social activity, storytelling is a “historical practice” and thus has a history, just like the self.62 This approach shifts our understanding of the place of interpreters in history. Translators themselves have provided ample proof that interpreters are not passive bystanders of history; they made history.63 What is rarely discussed, though, is how translation itself shaped what it meant to live in history. To have a heightened sensitivity for the power of words to craft relations also shaped the dragomans’ ways to narrate the self. Storytelling is at the core of this book’s analysis of early modern dragomans’ self-narratives; yet, it is also key to grant visibility to the self in historical writing. When writing about Genesino’s storytelling about the self, I  tell myself a story yet traditionally historians would avoid making this storytelling explicit as such. Concealing the self’s involvement in the crafting of history has been, and unfortunately continues to be, widely associated with the unreflected juxtaposition of notions of subjectivity and the narrative fiction of objectivity. This interpretative stance itself conceals that an apparently self-effacing academic text remains first and foremost a narrative story that, though it avoids making the subject narrator explicit, is produced by the writer. “When we produce a text,” archaeologists and anthropologists argue, “we always create at the same time the subject who

A Mediterranean Microhistory  13 relates the text—the narrator—and we set this figure willingly or not apart from ­ourselves, the authors.”64 In this book, I embrace this approach since it allows me to make exactly this relationship explicit through writing. Allowing storytelling’s power to be used not only to craft relations but to conceptualise, problematise, and probe itself how we “relate […] life,” in Benjamin’s words, is a core intention of this volume that helps, I argue, to broaden our scope in examining the dragoman’s self-narrative.65 For this monograph holds true what Doris Bachmann-Medick has observed for cultural studies more generally, that is that “translation acts as a category that inspires cultural studies to self-reflexively expand the pillars of its own research practice.”66 I have inserted a second narrative stream, written in italics, into this book—a flow of words that allows for more meandering explorations than straightforward argument-focused academic writing; that allows to problematise and to put into perspective rather than to present clear-cut results, to question rather than to provide answers, and to make my mode of enquiry visible as part of the narrative—to make the writing self explicit in the narrative as such. The “‘I’ is a method,” as Kate Briggs argues in her translation of Roland Barthes, “to expand and vary of what it is possible to speak, and in what manner.”67 I adapt this stance throughout the volume, arguing that this insight holds true for Genesino’s self-narrative as well as for this book. Applying this method does not serve to speculate about Genesino but to make explicit and reflect upon the role of myself in telling this story. To me, storytelling is both historical practice and historiographical enquiry. That is to say, a focus on early modern storytelling as a practice shaping the dragoman’s narrative self has an impact on the craft of the historian, or what Davis calls “the historian’s compact with the past.”68 “For the historian to ignore the stories themselves—their form and content— is to deny agency to historical subjects,” as Scott points out, “to overlook the choices they made and the ways they found to explain their actions to themselves and others.”69 Yet, historians’ writings and the conventions of academic writing, grounded in the discipline’s own history of exclusion, do not always lend themselves towards a narrative form that “considers voice to be the way people construct agency.”70 Worse, “the attempted de-personalization of the scientific writing self produces an auctorial, omniscient writing style” which “comes at a high price,” as Reinhard Bernbeck observes: “A narrator who was a priori supposed to be male, dominant, white, and truth-seeking,” and, one might add, whose notion of the self was often firmly anchored in the contemporary fiction of individualism. More than ever, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians therefore “insist on including author experience” to reconsider the politics of what Alan Klima calls “the realist frame.”71 “There are other possible starting places than the earnest realism of anthropological discourse as a method of critical thought,” Klima states, and “this can start with nothing less than recognizing writing as writing.”72 Furthermore, in translation studies, creative writing takes an

14  A Mediterranean Microhistory increasingly prominent place in theory and practice.73 Historians, in turn, will recall the studies of Hayden White, who most aptly revealed the politics of historians’ narratives that are anything but “a neutral discursive form”; or the most recent, brilliantly reflective work by Martha Hodes on childhood memory, emotions, and writing practices.74 In my understanding, microhistorians have made the most honest, radical, and thought-provoking call for “recognizing the literary features of documents of the past and of our own historical writings.” According to Davis: history is simultaneously a form of literature; a mode of inquiry and proof, about whose fruits we have an obligation to fellow historians, to dead subjects of the past, and to readers of the future; and an arena for struggles of power and collaboration.75 Acknowledging narratives of the past as such, then, helps us reflect on how historical writing itself negotiates the ways we relate to past experiences and how we translate life.76 Microhistorians’ most recent methodological achievements in reflective research and writing practices—namely Hans Medick’s conceptual advances in “episodic, documentary m ­ icrohistory”— encouraged further contextualisation of Genesino’s episodic storytelling with the Salvagos’ other life-writings and the wider Venetian colonial archive, and for such research to be set in relation with my own narrative episodes to recover a fuller, multi-storied early modern Mediterranean.77 For the historian of the early modern Mediterranean in particular, this approach will resonate with the recent focus on narratives and “vignettes.”78 I suggest a working mode in response to anthropologist Michael Herzfeld’s call to study the Mediterranean in ways that “enclose researchers and researched in a common frame of analysis.”79 After all, it was one of the founding doyens of Mediterranean studies, Braudel, who most famously stated: “had it not been for my imprisonment [during World War II], I would surely have written quite a different book [about the sixteenth-century Mediterranean].”80 In response, I consider this volume’s narrative insertions as a means to problematise how we relate experiences, in Benjamin’s terms, through storytelling; and to make the self visible in historical writing. We ourselves are part of the stories that we tell about the past, and the ways in which we do this impacts the insights we might gain and the relations we might draw, see, or miss.81 This approach, I would say, is the most radical honesty I can bring to this book. Researching the Salvagos has taken years of my life, so this book, whether I want it or not, is itself a form of life-writing. When writing his Balkan travelogue, Genesino deployed his life-long experience as a travelling interpreter in Venetian imperial service. Building on a lifetime of translation, this self-narrative reveals what translation was, meant, and did in a dragoman’s cultural universe. In Genesino’s lifetime,

A Mediterranean Microhistory  15 European humanists cultivated an ever-richer interest in language variety. Dictionaries were composed, grammars written, and language learning had become itself a crucial tool in biblical scholarship, literary criticism, and the recovery of ancient texts. Translations, too, became the subject of theoretical reflections. Above all, translators debated about the suitability of wordto-word or sense-to-sense translations. Two decades after Genesino had finished writing his travelogue, for instance, Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt, in the publication of his French translation of Tacitus, reflected on the differences of a translator being “a slave” or “a companion” to the author, arguing the case that “I might have allowed myself more freedom” than readers would encounter in “ordinary translations” that “are either dead and listless or confused and muddled, without any order or charm.” As with many contemporaries, this translator argued for a balance between “scrupulousness” and “the fear of being unfaithful” when facing a community of learned men hunting for mistakes in printed translations. Still, the early modern period was generally characterised by a rather pragmatic, experimental, and creative approach to translations. Though such humanist interest also led to the revaluation of linguistic fieldwork, Ottoman diplomatic interpreters employed by foreign consulates and embassies in Istanbul were to enter such discourses on language and translation only decades later, first during the second half of the seventeenth century, when composing printed dictionaries and grammars, for instance—when the Salvago family had already lost its significance among the Venetian diplomatic corps of interpreters. For the generations of Salvago interpreters discussed in this book, translation activities forged, established, and reiterated a professional group with overlapping and competing interests in a world shaped by everyday multilingualism. These dragomans formed a community of practice; thus, their doing of translation was deeply anchored in the imperial Mediterranean world they inhabited, and it shaped the ways they understood their very own place within it.82 Contrary to the widespread understanding of translation as a “‘selfless’ art”—an activity that urges the translator to quasi erase their own voice and presence in the text, merging instead completely into the author’s self like a hollow gramophone—I understand interpretation as a rewording and translation as a rewriting activity that helps carve out a space for the self. Translation, I argue, can be a means to create relations, an opportunity to position the self.83 Translation studies began recovering the creative authorial position of translators, arguing that their “personal experiences—­ emotions, motivations, attitudes, associations—are not only allowable in the formation of a working [translation], they are indispensable.”84 Yet, it is only very recently that translators themselves argued that their theoretical approach is invested in life and thus affects their notion of the self. In truly inspiring work, Mireille Gansel and Kate Briggs discuss how translators reflect on life, recalling that the practice of translation fuels interpreters’ sense of the self. You are not simply an interpreter but you become one. It is

16  A Mediterranean Microhistory life that informs translations and vice versa. Translation can be “a great life-structuring […] project,” and it surely was so for the Salvago dragomans. “My own translation experience,” the translators write, is “the live memory of my efforts and failed efforts.”85 Building on the work of Gansel and Briggs, I conceptualise dragomans’ translations as life-centred practices. Translation is a practice that shapes oneself as much as one’s relations with the world; a practice that makes up the world; a practice of enquiring, relating, positioning; a form of bringing over, bridging across and into, of drawing relations, and making them alive; a way to make storytelling work in different contexts; a way to contextualise itself, oneself. The interpreter-translator’s sense of the self, thus, differs for it is grounded in different forms of experiences of the lived wor(l)d. Thus, to historicise early modern dragomans’ self-narratives, it is key to historicise translation as a practice invested into life. In other words, interpreters and translators write and live differently because of what they are doing. For that reason, this book reconsiders Genesino’s lived experience to examine the dragoman’s narrative self. Specific ways of translating shaped the Salvagos’ sense of self, and its links with and evolution through writing. Genesino would have been accustomed to stumble over words, to consider their moulding character when crafting narratives. “Translation as a way of practising of an extant work at the level of the sentence: of working on and at it, of working it out.” “Me: the translator,” Kate Briggs writes, “testing out […] before being set back into relation,” again and again, “but then again.”86 This “mode” of translation, to merge the words of Benjamin with Gansel, characterises it as “continual re-examination.”87 This everyday experience of translation as rewriting and interpretation as rewording also shaped the dragoman’s approach to self-narratives. A life of translation, then, provides “the conditions of new writing possibility that translation opens up.”88 Translation, thus, could itself be a form of life-writing. This microhistory is anchored in years-long archival research. I unearthed a plethora of sometimes understudied, sometimes unknown sources in archives in Bosnia, Croatia, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Readers of this book will also encounter a large variety of genres touching on the dayto-day business of politics and diplomacy in the early modern Mediterranean, among them administrative reports, authorities’ dispatches and instructions, diplomats’ interim and end-of-mission reports, as well as letters, political and religious treatises, newsletters, and espionage reports, at times written in cipher. Actual translations, dictionaries, and language-learning materials are of similar importance throughout this book. I also use visual albums produced in the seventeenth-century Venetian diplomatic residence in Istanbul. As show and tell manuals, such albums provided instructions to incoming ambassadors and language trainees, introducing them to the world of Veneto-Ottoman diplomacy. Hence, such images chronicle situations familiar to Salvago dragomans, as well as some of the key events in the lives of the Salvagos.89 Petitionary letters, complaints, and Ottoman as

A Mediterranean Microhistory  17 well as Venetian juridical sources hold a particularly prominent place in the following narrative, alongside travelogues, maps, wills, inventories, and prints touching on different topics related to the Ottoman Empire. Such primary sources concern mostly Ottoman Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Serbia, as well as the Adriatic, its Venetian and Ottoman possessions, Ragusa, and the Ottoman heartlands, Istanbul in particular, as well as Venice. Naples, Milan, Spain, France, and the Holy Roman Empire also feature prominently in this book, alongside sources touching upon Ottoman Greece and Syria, as well as North Africa. This portfolio of sources complements, enriches, and contextualises the Balkan travelogue that Genesino, upon his arrival in Venice in 1618, p ­ resented to ambassador Francesco Contarini. The manuscript stayed in family possession for at least 200 years, when Rawdon Lubbock Brown, e­ ditor of the Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs existing in the Archives of Venice and Northern Italy and who had been living in Venice since 1833, bought Genesino’s manuscript together with various other manuscripts from the Tiepolo-Contarini collection. Upon his death in 1883, Brown bequeathed the travelogue together with hundreds of Venetian manuscripts to the British Public Record Office. Brown had already commissioned Genesino’s report to be bound together with a copy of Venetian resident ambassador Lorenzo Bernardo’s journey to Istanbul conducted via Albania in 1591.90 The transmission of this document, hence, does not allow for conclusions about the self-narrative’s original assemblage, particularly, whether the dragoman had presented the travelogue together with other manuscripts that served Contarini as preparatory materials for his time in Istanbul, as was customary. Moreover, Genesino’s brother, Giovanni Battista, is known to have compiled such files on similar occasions, containing copies and translations of Venetian and Ottoman materials touching on the most important affairs that newly appointed Venetian diplomats had to deal with upon their arrival in Istanbul.91 Notwithstanding such restraints, the rich archival documentation across the Mediterranean allows for a uniquely dense reading of Genesino’s Balkan travelogue, acknowledging the multiple perspectives involved in the production of the dragoman’s narrative self. This book presents the first in-depth, contextualised discussion of this hitherto unknown self-narrative. Each chapter of this monograph provides a different perspective on Genesino’s narrative self. Chapter 1 situates his professional life, translatory practices, and diplomatic persona within his family life. For historicising translation as translating, I situate Salvago’s life with regard to this cultural practice. Doing translation, I show, anchored his self in a community of practice that was lived and passed on over generations. Salvago’s notion of the self was shaped by “the family that has gone and is to come,” and the familiarity and sense of belonging that this going and coming bred.92 Chapter 2 focuses on the narrative techniques of Genesino’s Balkan travelogue. Based on early modern theories of translation, I explore the

18  A Mediterranean Microhistory relationship between translation, mobility, and space in his self-narrative. The close nexus between linguistic and spatial mobility in early modern understandings of translation, I will argue, turned the travelogue into a prime narrative arena to shape the Veneto-Ottoman interpreter-translator’s self as a mobile imperial agent, skilled in the production of knowledge useful to Venetian politics. Chapter 3 then anchors Genesino’s journey through Southeastern Europe in a wider setting of Mediterranean politics, diplomacy, and commerce. The interpreter’s attunement to the politics of multipositionality, this chapter shows, equipped him to relate the Balkan journey towards broader Mediterranean contexts. In other words, the translator’s practice of acknowledging, assessing, and appropriating other positions situated him in a Mediterranean-wide web of competing interpretations over events in the Balkans. At the very same time, it equipped dragomans to gather information and engage in espionage. Chapter 4, finally, focuses on the dragoman’s authorial position as reflecting on the changing social world of the seventeenth-century Venetian corps of diplomatic interpreters in Istanbul. Whenever more newcomers contested the Salvagos’ elevated position among the dragomans, self-narratives like the Balkan travelogue became a tool to grant their authors a greater visibility than translations would usually allow for. I introduce various concepts from translation studies, most prominently the translator’s invisibility, as well as the notion of the Venetian colonial archive to discuss the politics of the dragoman’s self-narratives, and more specifically, the troublesome links between early modern notions of translation, authorship, and the self. At the same time, this chapter conceptualises the Salvagos’ early seventeenth-century life-writings as a textual assemblage that helped position, stage, and elaborate a family-centred notion of the self that they hoped would shape the future of their family business. Together, these chapters tell the unknown story of the Salvagos’ efforts and challenges in battling, brokering, and shaping imperial interests across the Mediterranean—the troublesome yet fascinating story of the dragoman’s self as situated within a life of translation, recovered through the in-depth study of a hitherto unknown self-narrative.

Notes 1 Freijdenberg, “Venetian Jews,” 56 (quote on Split); GSItinerario; ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 3, March 26, 1618, fol. 20r f., 22r; ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 1r, July 9, 1611; Tezcan, Second Ottoman Empire. 2 GSItinerario; Benzoni, “Contarini.” 3 I align here with inspiring recent studies that show that Venice’s republicanism cannot be understood in opposition to a vibrant imperial culture. Like other “men of empire,” to adapt a term coined by Monique O’Connell, the Salvago dragomans shaped what Venice’s imperial culture meant. O’Connell, Men of Empire; Malcolm, Agents of Empire; Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople; Rothman, Brokering Empire; Arbel, “Venice’s Maritime Empire”; Maglaque, Venice’s Intimate Empire. Cf. Christ, “Settling Accounts,” 321; Christ, “Filippo di Malerbi”; Christ, “Venetian Consul”; Van Gelder and Krstić,

A Mediterranean Microhistory  19 “Cross-Confessional Diplomacy.” On the importance of inter-imperial rivalry, see Subrahmanyan, Connected History, 94–107. For a recent summary of the debate on Venice’s “cultures of empire,” see Christ and Morche, Cultures of Empires. 4 Gürkan, “Mediating Boundaries,” 112. 5 Greene, Shared World; Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople; Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore; Pedani, Venezia porta d’Oriente. 6 Aslanyan, Dancing on Ropes, 2. 7 Fulbrook and Rublack, “In Relation,” 270. 8 I adapt here Maglaque, Venice’s Intimate Empire, 5. 9 Dursteler, “Speaking in Tongues”; Malcolm, Agents of Empire; Gallagher, Learning Languages. 10 Elkin, “Foreword,” vii. 11 Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms; Davis, Return of Martin Guerre; Levi, Inheriting Power; Davis, Trickster Travels; Rublack, The Astronomer and the Witch. 12 Bloch, The Historian’s Craft. 13 Davis, Return of Martin Guerre, 5. 14 Ulbrich, Shulamit and Margarete, 282. 15 Medick, Laichingen. 16 Sabean, “Production of the Self”; Sabean, Kinship in Neckarhausen; Medick, Laichingen. 17 De Vivo, “Crossroads Region,” 436. 18 Dursteler, Renegade Women, 117. Cf. Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much”; Levi, “Uses of Biography.” 19 Grendi, “Micro-analisi,” 506, 509, 511. On the early modern self and social relations, see Jancke and Ulbrich, “From the Individual to the Person”; Davis, “Boundaries and the Sense of Self”; Fulbrook and Rublack, “In Relation.” 20 Ghaly, “Cultural Theory,” 53. 21 Davis, “Boundaries and the Sense of Self.” 22 Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, 8. 23 Maglaque, Venice’s Intimate Empire, 7. 24 Helmedach, Das osmanische Europa; Ortalli and Schmitt, Balcani occidentali; Israel and Schmitt, Venezia e Dalmazia; Ivetic, Storia dell’Adriatico, chapter 4; Dursteler, “Habsburgs, Ottomans and Venetians”; Michels, Habsburg Empire under Siege; Pálffy, Hungary between two Empires. 25 Braudel, Mediterranean, I, 25; Adanır and Faroqhi, The Ottomans and the Balkans. Cf. Helmedach, Das osmanische Europa; Schmitt, The Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans; Schmitt, Was ist Balkanforschung? With a much later focus, and a focus on nation-state building, Snyder and Younger, The Balkans as Europe. 26 Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 3, 7. 27 Not all such research can be listed here, of course, but I wish to stress that reading the works of Maria Baramova, Neven Budak, Aleksandar Fotić, Gábor Kármán, Lovro Kunčević, Cristian Luca, Vesna Miović, Gizella Nemeth, Adriano Papo, Alexandre Popović, Drago Roksandić, and Maria Todorova, among many others, has been of crucial importance for writing the present book. 28 Braudel, Mediterranean, I, 25; Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 66f. 29 Cf. Baramova, Boykov, and Parvev, Social Networking; Wasiucionek, Ottomans and Eastern Europe. 30 Skopotea, I Disi tis Anatolis, 97f., quoted in Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 18. Cf. Lowry, The Shaping of the Ottoman Balkans; Khoury, “Ottoman Centre”; Antov, Ottoman “Wild West”; Drace-Francis, “Travel Writing,” 192; Barzman, Limits of Identity.

20  A Mediterranean Microhistory 31 Rohdewald, Conermann, and Fuess, Transottomanica; Hershenzon, Captive Sea, 4, 14, 186; Dursteler, Renegade Women; Kármán, A Seventeenth-Century Odyssey. Cf. Riedler, “Orta Kol”; Sander, “Mobilität”; Klein, Wagner, and Vlachopoulou, Transottoman Biographies. 32 Todorova, Scaling the Balkans, 4. The Balkans had just overcome a decades-long series of wars, ‘The Long Turkish War’ (1593–1606) and ‘The Uskok War’ (1615–7): Tracy, Balkan Wars, 307–66; Niederkorn, Der “Lange Türkenkrieg.” Older historiography refers to this period often rather simplistically as the “time of troubles.” McNeill, Europe’s Steppe Frontier, 53. 33 Majer, “Südosteuropa,” 11 (“neuralgic”); Norton, “Blurring the Boundaries,” 7 (“middle ground”). 34 Dursteler, “Speaking in Tongues,” 77. 35 Bevilacqua, “A Dragoman and a Scholar,” 249. 36 For surveys, see Gürkan, “Mediating Boundaries”; Van Gelder and Krstić, “Cross-Confessional Diplomacy.” 37 Rothman, Brokering Empire, 7. 38 Rothman, Brokering Empire; Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans”; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, esp.  3; Lucchetta, “Sui dragomanni.” On dragomans in other contexts, see Bevilacqua, “A Dragoman and a Scholar”; Cziráki, “Language Students”; Cunningham, “Dragomans”; De Testa and Gautier, “Drogmans”; Dupont-Ferrier, “Les jeunes de langues”; Gilbert, Good Faith; Hitzel, Enfants de langue; Pechlivanos, “Dragoman der Osmanen.” 39 Malcolm, Agents of Empire. 40 Pedani, “Interpreter Michele Membrè”; Luca, “Bailaggio veneto”; Luca, “Notes.” 41 Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 145, 158; Luca, “Bailaggio Veneto”; Rothman, “Self-Fashioning”; Rothman, Brokering Empire, 180, 183; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 46, 54, 66–9, 76, 80–112, 196–202; Malcolm, Agents of Empire, 367. 42 Rothman, Brokering Empires. “Trans-imperial subjects” here in the Latin sense of the term, as across, over, beyond, or through imperial cultures. 43 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 1f. 44 Brummett, Mapping the Ottomans, 88, 90. On imperial agents, see also O’Connell, Men of Empire; Malcolm, Agents of Empire; Rothman, Brokering Empires; Christ, “Settling Accounts,” 321. On the stato da mar, Arbel, “Venice’s Maritime Empire.” 45 Gallagher, Learning Languages, 152. Cf. Pechlivanos, “Dragoman der Osmanen.” 46 ASV, DT, no.  431, 433; Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 417; Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni, XIV, 392; Pedani, Inventory, 90; Mumcu, Venedik Baylosu’nun Defterleri, 99, 412. 47 GSItinerario, title page, 173r, 178r. 48 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 24, January 10, 1617 (MV), 271r. 49 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning. 50 Hartmann and Jancke, “Roupens Erinnerungen,” 37 (“doing person”); Jancke, Autobiographie als soziale Praxis; Jancke, “Persons,” 346–77; Jancke, Ulbrich, and Watson, “Autobiographical Acts,” 119–24. On my emphasis on the notion of the self, see also Giovanni Levi’s discussion of Marcel Mauss: Levi, “Uses of Biography,” 63. 51 Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans,” 783f. 52 On the widespread glorification of dragomans as go-betweens, see for e­ xample Burke, “Renaissance Translator”; Krstić, “Of Translation”; Zecevic, “Translating Ottoman Justice,” 389. In general, Davis, Trickster Travels. 53 Kafadar, “Self and Others,” 149f.; Niyazioğlu, Dreams and Lives, 1 (“Ottoman life stories”).

A Mediterranean Microhistory  21 54 Besides the Routledge book series Life Narratives of the Ottoman Realm: Individual and Empire in the Near East, edited by Christoph Herzog and Richard Wittmann, see Aksoy-Sheridan, “Nostalgia”; Alam and Subrahmanyam, “On Self and Empire”; Binbaş, “Autobiographies”; Çörekçi, “Dream Diary”; Faroqhi, “Aziz Nesin”; Herzog and Wittman, Istanbul; Karahasanoğlu, “Learning from Past Mistakes”; Karahasanoğlu, “Ottoman Ego-Documents”; Şen, “Emotional Universe”; Wittmann, “Cabinetmaking.” Cf. Murphey, “Forms of Differentiation”; Terzioğlu, “Man in the Image of God”; Elger, Many Ways of Speaking; Malhotra and Lambert-Hurley, Speaking of the Self. 55 Niyazioğlu, Dreams and Lives, 1. 56 Jancke and Ulbrich, “From the Individual to the Person”; Ulbrich, “Family and House Books”; Fulbrook and Rublack, “In Relation.” 57 Benjamin, Illuminations, 82, 107. 58 Briggs, This Little Art, 22, 30; Lefevere, Translation. 59 Quoting Derrida, “Madness,” 347—“The self does not exist, it is not present to itself […]. There is not a constituted subject that engages itself at a given moment in writing for some reason or another. It is given by writing.”—Klima, Ethnography #9, 27 concludes “that the writer does not preexist the text.” 60 Scott, “Storytelling,” 205. 61 Benjamin, Illuminations, 71 (quote), 106f. 62 Scott, “Storytelling,” 206. 63 Aslanyan, Dancing on Ropes. 64 Bernbeck, “Imaginations,” 258. 65 Benjamin, Illuminations, 107. 66 Bachmann-Medick, “Transnational Study,” 31. 67 Briggs, This Little Art, 114; Barthes, Preparation of the Novel, 23. 68 Davis, “Narrative,” 163. 69 Scott, “Storytelling,” 205. 70 Scott, “Storytelling,” 207. Cf. Hausen, “Nicht-Einheit.” 71 Bernbeck, “Imaginations,” 258f.; Klima, Ethnography #9, 5. Cf. Bernbeck, “Past as Fact and Fiction”; Bernbeck, “La Jalousie”; Joyce, Languages; Bernbeck, Materielle Spuren; Jancke and Ulbrich, “From the Individual to the Person”; as well as the new writing formats explored in recent issues of Current Anthropology. 72 Klima, Ethnography #9, 17. 73 Perteghella and Loffredo, Translation and Creativity. 74 White, Content, ix; Hodes, “As If I Wasn’t There.” 75 Davis, “Narrative,” 163. 76 Ginzburg, Threads and Traces; Ulbrich, Shulamit and Margarete, 282; Medick, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg, 11–22; Roper, “Bush”; Moran, “Scattering”; Joyce, My Father’s House. 77 Medick, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg, 14; Medick, “Unterkunft im Schatten des Krieges.” 78 Goffman, Ottoman Empire, xv; Dursteler, Renegade Women. 79 Herzfeld, “Practical Mediterraneanism,” 52. 80 Braudel, “Testimony,” 453. 81 Behar, “Dare We Say ‘I’?” 82 D’Ablancourt, “Prefaces,” 32. Cf. Bevilacqua, The Republic of Arabic Letters; Burke, “Cultures of Translation”; Considine, Dictionaries; Hamilton, Du Ryer; Hayes, Translation; Grafton and Weinberg, Isaac Casaubon; Hanß, “Ottoman Language Learning”; Kłagisz and Rusek-Kowalska, “The Dragoman and the Scholar”; and Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 140–82, 211–40, who rightly draws attention to the earlier significance of Ottoman literati in such contexts. 83 Briggs, This Little Art, 63 (quote), 73; Lefevere, Translation; Pym, Method; D’Hulst, Essais.

22  A Mediterranean Microhistory 84 Robinson, Translator’s Turn, 260. Cf. Eco, Experiences; Grossman, Why Translation Matters. 85 Briggs, This Little Art, 90, 243. Cf. Aslanyan, Dancing on Ropes, 3; Gansel, Translation as Transhumance. 86 Briggs, This Little Art, 53, 124, 140, 180. Cf. Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 4; Briggs, This Little Art, 119. 87 Benjamin, Illuminations, 71; Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 36. 88 Briggs, This Little Art, 163. 89 What survives today in two collections—the Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice, and the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg—has most likely been one single album. The latter’s provenance has always been obscure. It was in the private collection of General Friedrich von Boetticher in 1910 but we do not know how it entered this collection. German orientalist Franz Taeschner purchased the album and borrowed it, in 1937, to the State Museum of Berlin. It disappeared during the Second World War, “removed by Soviet soldiers in 1945.” Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 286; BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971; The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, GE, VAse-1782; Taeschner, ­Alt-Stambuler Hof- und Volksleben; Rothman, “Visualizing.” On the cross-­ cultural circulation of such imagery, see Bevilacqua and Pfeifer, “Turquerie.” 90 TNA, PRO 30/25/18, fasc. 13, 145r–72v; Atkinson, “Catalogue,” 358. My thanks to Gillian Kirby (TNA) for her remarks. 91 ASV, DT, no.  1472–3, 1487, 1497–1500, 1505–7/a–b, 1522–55; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 404, 407–11; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 198–202. 92 Joyce, My Father’s House, 1.

The Bridge over the Drina

Figure 6  Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Bridge in Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017.

The bridge crossing the Drina River in Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a monument of both history and literature (Figure 6). Immortalised by the Serbo-Croat novel The Bridge over the Drina from Nobel Prize-winning author Ivo Andrić, this bridge epitomises the centuries-long Ottoman heritage of the Balkans. Besides Andrić’s characters, the Veneto-Ottoman ­interpreter Genesino Salvago, the main protagonist of the present volume, crossed this very same bridge. “From Goražde one comes to Višegrad,” he wrote, “a village

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-2

24  The Bridge over the Drina with a caravanserai, and one passes the Drina River via a bridge; the street is decently good.”1 On this bridge, historical experiences and historical ­narratives blur in unsettling ways. Commissioned by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, the famous sixteenth-century grand vizier who had been abducted as a boy in a nearby village, the bridge materialises the dense web of religious solidarity, cross-cultural belonging, imperial patronage, and courtly careers that tied the Ottoman Balkans together with the empire’s capital, as well as the selves that merged in between.2 However, it was not just Sokollu Mehmed Pasha who built the bridge: other hands, unnamed, fixed stone to stone, and many who remain anonymous in the historical record used this bridge over time. An Ottoman commemorative plaque, in the words of Andrić and his translator, Lovett Edwards, addresses travellers to this day. See how Mehmed Pasha, the greatest among the wise and great of his time, Mindful of the testament of his heart, by his care and toil Has built a bridge over the River Drina. Over this water, deep and swift-flowing. His predecessors had not been able to put up anything. I pray that by the Mercy of Allah this bridge will be firm And that its existence will be passed in happiness And that it will never know sorrow. For in his lifetime he poured out gold and silver for his bequest And no man can say that fortune has been wasted Which has been spent to such an end. Badi, who has seen this, when the bridge was completed gave this tarih. “May Allah bless this building, this wonderful and beautiful bridge.”3 Just as this verse contains layers of voices—Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, Badi, Andrić, Edwards, and mine as the author of this text—the history of this bridge is composed of complex layers. Andrić saw the significance and substance of its existence […] in its permanence. […] In the changes and the quick burgeoning of human generations, it  remained as unchanged as the waters that flowed beneath it. It too grew old, n­ aturally, but on a scale of time that was much greater not only than the span of human experience but also than the passing of a whole series of generations, so that its ageing could not be seen by human eye. Its life, though mortal in itself, resembled eternity for its end could not be perceived.4 This symbolic perception of the monument resonates with a wider contemporary rejection of the history of events, what Fernand Braudel calls “surface disturbances” around the time Andrić wrote about the Drina bridge: “crests

The Bridge over the Drina  25 of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs.” Writing about h­ istory, both Braudel and Andrić, the first as a prisoner of war and the ­second as a secluded author, processed the flood of events and insecurities of the Second World War by writing about the “almost imperceptible” rhythms of the past: the deep sea and a centuries-old monument.5 But Andrić’s idea of the permanent bridge is misleading, as the military conflicts of the late twentieth-century Balkans have taught us. Another plaque, hardly visible, reminds visitors leaning over the railing that the bridge had been destroyed to different degrees several times throughout the century. An elderly man, his face marked by the traces of decades, sees me taking pictures of the bridge—not just of the beautiful Ottoman inscription that attracts the attention of so many tourists but also of the modern-day plaque commemorating destruction, loss, suffering, and pain, chiselling the mistaken violent paths of history into stone and memory. He is excited, but above all grateful, to see me noticing and recording the only piece of writing that traces a history of rupture—quite different to Andrić’s idea of the “permanence” and “eternity” of this bridge. And yet, “between the life of the townsmen and that bridge,” as Andrić and Edwards state, still exists “a centuries-old bond. Their fates were so intertwined that they could not be imagined separately and could not be told separately.”6 This plaque commemorates a history of vulnerability and instability that remains today largely silenced in the presence of this bridge’s monumentality; wounds present in the lives of people, like this old man. Thousands of Muslim Bosniak residents of the city were killed, hundreds burnt alive, countless women raped, and bodies—living and dead—thrown from the bridge into the Drina during acts of “ethnic cleansing” conducted by Serbs in Višegrad in 1992.7 The bridge is more than just a passive bystander. As a symbol of connection and separation alike, it became the stage of negotiating cross-cultural coexistence. It has been argued that Andrić’s fictional but lively description of the impalement of a Serb resisting Ottoman rule, famous across Southeastern Europe, fuelled similar war crimes conducted during the Balkan Wars.8 The bridge over the Drina problematises what it means to think about this monument’s relationship to people and the past; to life and history; to lives, relationships, and stories. It poses questions about history, authenticity, ­narratives, and historical presence; about continuity and discontinuity; ­survival and change; “the quintessence of time,” as literary researchers called Andrić’s narrative engagement with “the effects of the passing of time.”9 A long time ago, in 1618, Genesino crossed this very same bridge—or did he only write about crossing it?—and yet he did not cross this actual bridge since it has been rebuilt many times since. How many lives did (not) traverse these riverbanks over the centuries? The bridge poses questions of the everyday life that makes history and who claims history as such. Questions about an empire’s past as shaped by a multitude of lives and languages, how such a past turns into history, and how we, as historians, narrate such a past through lives—in the case of this book, the past life of a person who did not think of me crossing that same

26  The Bridge over the Drina and yet very different bridge, and who surely did not think of me as a reader of his writings, let alone as a writer of his life, a writer that brings to life his life anew, and surely somehow different. Me, a writer, who thinks about this man from the past, Genesino—a translating interpreter whose contours as an author faded away in the archives of time and books of history—as an interpreting writer. Writing about this bridge helps me reflect on what it means to narrate the past through lives and selves, what it means to write history myself, as well as the effects of history on people’s sense of self. In other words, this volume is both a book about a writing translator and the translatability of past experiences through writing. As a multi-language novel, translated into a variety of languages, The Bridge over the Drina negotiates the effects of what translation theory calls “untranslatability,” or the limits of translating words and lives, in the past and present.10 The bridge therefore sparks broader reflections on what constitutes the existence and limits of connections and disconnections, coexistence and separation, in and with the past. In the words of translator Mark Ritter, Georg Simmel claims that “the bridge becomes an aesthetic value insofar as it accomplishes the connection between what is separated not only in reality and in order to fulfil practical goals, but in making it directly visible.”11 Anchored in the translatability of spatial experience and vision, Simmel thus claims that bridges encompass both elements of connection and separation. The bridge over the Drina, too, connects and separates at the same time: as it connects the separating riverbanks, it manifests disconnection itself. And yet, the seventeenth-century Veneto-Ottoman interpreter’s walk over this Balkan bridge can also be understood as a metaphor for what Marita Liebermann calls “maybe the most important bridge-building activity of humanity”: translation bridges boundaries.12 “Translation,” as one modern translator put it, is “a hand reaching from one shore to another where there is no bridge.” At the same time, however, it is “a bridge, bombed so many times, mended and rebuilt so many times.” Exactly because of this cross-cultural interpreter’s everyday embeddedness in both connections and disconnections, writing about bridges helped Genesino situate himself within the ties of relationships that bound and marked the boundaries of his self when bridging empires. “If translation is building a bridge between two foreign shores,” says translator Mireille Gansel in the words of her own translator, Ros Schwartz, “I realised […] how important it is for each one of the piles to be firmly anchored.”13 It is this insight, I would argue, that should prompt us to further reflect on the complex relationships between translating and writing when interpreting this interpreter’s selfhood, as well as the question of how experiences of life relate to the broader negotiation of connections and separations in the early modern Mediterranean, as well as through the historian’s writing processes itself. As such, this volume charts the relationship between history, storytelling, and the self; it recovers the self in history, and in historical writing.

The Bridge over the Drina  27

Notes 1 GSItinerario, 177r. 2 Kunt, “Solidarity.” 3 Andrić, Bridge, 68. 4 Andrić, Bridge, 71. 5 Braudel, Mediterranean, I, 20f. Cf. Braudel, “Testimony.” 6 Andrić, Bridge, 21. 7 Amnesty International, “Bosnia and Herzegovina”; Lamb, Our Bodies, 155–91. 8 Boose, “Crossing the River Drina,” 81f. 9 Moravcevich, “Andrić,” 313. 10 Stojanović, “Significanti ‘intraducibili’”; Stoffel and Utting, “Non-Native Speech.” 11 Translated by Mark Ritter, Simmel, “Bridge,” 6. 12 Liebermann, “Wahrheit der Brücke,” 12. 13 Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 29, 53, 55.

1 A Familiar Thesaurus Interpreting Empires

There are five of us children. We live in different cities now, some of us abroad, and we do not write to one another much. When we meet, we can be indifferent and aloof. But one word, one phrase is enough, one of those ancient phrases, heard and repeated an infinite number of times in our childhood. We have only to say, Non siamo venuti a Bergamo per fare campagna, or De cosa spussa l’acido solfidrico for us to pick up in a moment our old intimacy and our childhood and youth, linked indissolubly with these words and phrases. One of them would make us ­recognize each other, in the darkness of a cave or among a million people. These phrases are our Latin, the vocabulary of our days gone by, our Egyptian hieroglyphics or Babylonian symbols. They are the evidence of a vital nucleus which has ceased to exist but which survives in its texts salvaged from the fury of the waters and the corrosion of time. These phrases are the foundation of our family unity which will persist as long as we are in this world and which is recreated in the most diverse places on earth when one of us says, Egregio signor Lipmann, and suddenly my father’s impatient voice rings in our ears, Finitela con questa storia! l’ho sentita già tante di quelle volte! Natalia Ginzburg, Family Sayings, translated by D. M. Low (New York: Arcade, 1989), 23f.

The Salvagos’ lessico famigliare In early modern times, the writing, perception, and survival of self-­ narratives  were firmly anchored in the social unit of the household. Household transitions like births, marriages, or deaths, as well as shifts in life circumstances, often provided the occasion to reflect upon life, to put pen to paper to write about the self and to pass on knowledge about life, most commonly to a new generation.1 Therefore, this monograph starts with a thorough reconstruction of the cross-generational domestic world of the Salvagos to situate Genesino’s words, his writing self, within its broader social contexts. Borrowing from Natalia Ginzburg’s Lessico famigliare, here

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-3

A Familiar Thesaurus  29 understood both as a “familiar” thesaurus and as such “pertaining to a family,” this chapter examines the close ties between language, t­ ranslation, and family unity in the life and work of Genesino Salvago.2 In conceptual terms, Ginzburg’s Lessico famigliare allows me to read early modern sources differently: with a finer attunement to the ways translation, writing, and wording negotiate group cultures; with a focus on social and family relations, crafted through the interpreter’s choice of words. For this dragoman, I argue, interpretation in Venetian imperial service was both a familiar and a family enterprise. Language use and the practice of translating were deeply anchored in the life of this family, which gave birth to a variety of interpreters. Translation united the five Salvago siblings who lived, at times, in one household in Istanbul, at other times, however, scattered across the Mediterranean with Genesino and his brothers working as interpreters in the Balkans, the Maghreb, Syria, or Venice. This family handed down translation—as concept, practice, and experience—from generation to generation, creating a resource to live with and a form of living that mattered for the Salvagos’ notion of the self and the family members’ understanding of their own place within the Venetian community of early modern Istanbul, and beyond. The power of translation to shape intimacy among and beyond the members of this interpreting family crafted the Salvagos’ “intimate empire.” Their “concerns about family shaped their experience of the empire” as “a physical setting for the personal triumphs and tragedies of their imperial careers and families.”3 This chapter explores such stories of shining success and fatal failure among the Salvago family members asking, as Natalie Rothman once put it, “how certain assumptions about […] subjecthood were engendered by Venetian and Ottoman elite kinship and household structures, and how associated roles were inhabited and manipulated by people who were ­familiar with—indeed, familiars of—both.”4 This chapter starts with situating the Salvagos in the world of Mediterranean multilingualism and VenetoOttoman diplomacy. I will then discuss the extent to which Genesino’s professional activities of translation shaped his notion of the self as firmly anchored in cross-generational, imperial service. The discussion moves then on towards the unexpected death of his father, Mateca, and the wider consequences for the family’s life trajectories. For Genesino and his siblings, as in Ginzburg’s Lessico famigliare, the father holds a key role in how the story of their lives unfolds. The close entanglement of translation and family unity in Genesino’s mindset and everyday life, I argue, affected both his business of translation and his notion of the self. Language use, cultural positioning, familiarity, and solidarity merged in Genesino’s lived world of translation, a world in which language was the pulse of this family’s life. As an auto/ biographical practice, I argue, translation was at the centre of the Salvagos’ notion of family belonging and familiarity, inviting and shaping the dragoman’s reflections about the self.

30  A Familiar Thesaurus

Interpreters in the World of Veneto-Ottoman Diplomacy The Salvago family lived amid the vivid everyday multilingualism of early modern Istanbul, and Galata/Pera in particular; a “crossroads region,” as Filippo de Vivo puts it, thick with dynamic exchanges and encounters that mediated the blurring contacts resulting from “the crossroads of trade among Asia and Europe, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean.”5 As a former Genoese colony, this quarter was widely settled by European subjects. “In ethnic and religious terms, the district of Galata was the most colorful and diverse among Istanbul’s city quarters” and was shaped by the coexistence of a “kaleidoscope of languages and dialects” that shaped the everyday life of its inhabitants.6 The Salvagos experienced the city’s multireligious and multicultural world first-hand as being “characterized by coexistence rather than conflict.”7 Genesino’s family was of Genoese origin. His ancestors had settled in Byzantine Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade (1202–4) and established a fortune in Levantine commerce over the coming centuries. In the fifteenth century, the Salvagos held a prominent position in the alum trade between Genoa and Anatolia. As owners of many mines in Anatolia and Greece, the Salvagos belonged to the selected circle of a few privileged Genoese families that “dominated the alum trade to west.”8 In Genesino’s lifetime, the Salvagos drew on their ancestors’ economic success and held various houses in the quarter. Centuries of life in Galata, however, had reshaped the family’s sense of belonging. As so many Galata-born interpreters in Venetian diplomatic service, the Salvagos were, in the words of a contemporary Venetian observer, “Greeks, of Genoese origins.”9 Such families had built distinct Levantine identities, an identificatory mélange that drew on a repository of Greek, Italian, and Ottoman elements of life that shaped the family’s sense of belonging. The Salvagos were Christian subjects of the Ottoman sultan—they lived in a Latin rite Levantine community, “Frankish,” as Ottoman observers called it, where networking was of crucial significance to mould what Natalie Zemon Davis calls the “boundaries and the sense of self.”10 Parish communities, too, held a strong place in the shaping of subjectivity, so the churches of San Pietro and San Francesco in Galata, whose priests the Salvagos called in moments of approaching death, would have been an important reference in this family’s everyday notion of belonging.11 Genesino witnessed a world in which identities were to be built, made relevant, and claimed, again and again; merging, flowing, and blurring into overlapping and at times contested imperial landscapes—“a context,” as Eric Dursteler states, “in which multilingualism was the norm.”12 As an expert in languages, Genesino had a fine sensitivity for how language mattered to create and pass on a sense of belonging; and how such a lessico famigliare could be transformed itself through translation. Ginzburg, who

A Familiar Thesaurus  31 herself cherished translating French into Italian knowing “that while I’m doing it I’m missing so much,” stated once: I have a feeling that Lessico famigliare, or Family Sayings, is not well translated [into English], however. This may have to do with the fact that some of it is in dialect and dialect is really impossible to translate adequately.13 In the above translation of D. M. Low, I therefore replaced some wordings with Ginzburg’s original rendering of the fatherly expressions of Giuseppe Levi.14 For members of such a language-based family, words clearly matter and their translation, one might say, even more. As this chapter shows, the Salvagos knew about the power of language to negotiate the different layers of identification in their environment and the extent to which the translation of words could shape family belonging and familiarity. Most importantly, the Salvagos’ cultural belonging was anchored in the firmly established world of Veneto-Ottoman diplomacy. Maria Pia Pedani identified at least 176 Ottoman diplomatic missions to Venice between 1384 and 1762. The Venetian diplomatic world of Istanbul was shaped by a ­similar vibrancy. The so-called bailate (bailaggio), the Venetian diplomatic residence in Istanbul, “functioned as the focal point of the nation” and for the Salvagos (Figure 7). The residence gave home to the most important diplomatic agents of Venice: the local diplomatic residents (baili), which were appointed for a period of office covering several years, as well as the Republic of Venice’s ambassadors (ambasciatori), envoys sent to the Ottoman capital on special occasions like peace negotiations or the ascension of a new sultan.15 In sum, the bailate housed 50 to 100 household ­members, among them majordomos, secretaries, cooks, servants, janissaries, guests, couriers, physicians, barbers, painters, and, of course, the interpreters (dragomanni). Baili and ambassadors oversaw a complex hierarchy of agents serving as translators. The grand dragoman (dragomanno grande) translated on the most important occasions like the sultan’s imperial council meetings (divan-ı hümayun), dur­ iplomatic affairs. ing audiences with high-ranking pashas, or in significant d Everyday mercantile business was handled by small dragomans (dragomanni piccolo, also called protogeri delle navi), who offered their services to Venetian merchants active in Ottoman domains. The so-called road dragoman (dragomanno da strada), the office held by Genesino, accompanied Venetian diplomats on their journeys or travelled on their behalf.16 These interpreters, thus, belonged to a wider household community that constituted a social unit called famiglia, a crucial reference for these serving subjects’ sense of self. “All these [subjects] physically resided with the bailo in the complex,” with married dragomans like the Salvagos, who would live with their family in their own household (casa), being a rare exception of this rule. Nevertheless, the bailate’s famiglia remained a key identification

32  A Familiar Thesaurus in the Salvagos’ matrix of selfhood, especially since the building complex of the bailate was owned by the Salvago family.17 Upon ambassador Jacopo Soranzo’s arrival in Istanbul in 1575, “the vigna of dragoman Mateca” ­welcomed the ambassadorial entourage with a banquet for “more than 400 people.”18 As a landlord of the Venetian ambassadorial residence, the centre of the bailate’s social life, Genesino himself purchased a neighbouring garden worth 75,000 akçe from a certain Hacı Yusuf to expand the complex providing home to an increasing number of members of the famiglia between 1596 and 1601. In 1627, Genesino’s brother, Giovanni Battista, had taken over as a landlord, then arguing with the bailo about who was in charge of paying for repairs at the house. In the 1670s, their cousin Caterina even threatened to rent the building to Muslim tenants to pressure the bailo to pay for renovation works.19 The Salvagos’ status as the owners of the bailo’s residence, thus, established a deeply entrenched, multi-directional, and at times conflicting relationship. Such complex hierarchies and straddling dependencies covering the realm of servitude, loyalty, and economics shaped the social

Figure 7  A seventeenth-century depiction of the Venetian diplomatic residence, owned by Genesino Salvago and the place of his employment, with language students in the lower floor (c. 1660). ©The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, GE, VAse-1782, 48r. Photograph by Alexey Pakhomov, as published in E. Natalie Rothman, The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021).

A Familiar Thesaurus  33 fabric of the Salvago dragomans’ notion of self, as well as the ways in which family members were embedded in the world of the bailate. The Salvagos’ translation services helped them negotiate the ­balance between, and unity of, famiglia and casa. Interpreters were thus a crucial part of the bailate’s social unit, the ­famiglia, and key in facilitating Venetian diplomatic activities in Istanbul. Their expertise in linguistic and cultural translation negotiated VenetoOttoman diplomatic familiarity. The dragomans’ “interpretive work,” Natalie Rothman points out, “was crucial in procuring for foreign diplomats a current store of knowledge about Ottoman politics and society.”20 Early modern contemporaries agreed that even the very possibility of engaging in meaningful exchange depended on the interpreters’ presence. For instance, in November 1617, a few months before Genesino departed for the Balkans, the Ottoman grand vizier sent a messenger (çavuş) to the bailate calling the bailo to immediately attend an audience. Then serving Almorò Nani, terrified about the unexpected arrival of the clearly angry visitor, sought ways to gain a few additional hours to investigate the reasons behind the visit. “I considered it good to let some time pass,” Nani wrote in a letter sent to Venice, “to understand the real reason for which he [the grand vizier] was looking for me.” To prepare himself for the audience, the bailo won some time by informing the çavuş “that the dragoman was not in the house and that he will come in an hour.”21 On such occasions, interpreters like Genesino carried the weight of empires on their shoulders. As Venetian ambassador Carlo Ruzzini wrote, upon the dragomans’ actions rested, at times, the success or failure of entire missions. He talks about the dragoman’s “ear that listens; the eye that sees; the hand that gives; the soul that acts; and on which the life and carnage of every business can depend.”22 This points to the dragoman’s significance in acting on behalf of Venice. On journeys or while attending audiences or council meetings, dragomans effectively substituted baili as Venetian diplomatic representatives.23 However, the ambassador’s sentence also points to the encompassing nature of the everyday business of the interpreter. Finding the right words mattered, of course, but listening, seeing, envisaging the conversational other’s positions, thoughts, and feelings, as well as engaging in symbolic communication, such as when attending audiences, presenting gifts, or bringing forward Venetian issues in the sultan’s council, were of similar importance. As doge Marcantonio Memmo noted in 1612, six years before Genesino embarked on his journey through Southeastern Europe, it is of such importance to have faithful and valuable people in Constantinople, upon whom our baili can thus rely in interpreting at the divan, where the true strength of words is needed, as well as in all other most important businesses.24

34  A Familiar Thesaurus Some ambassadors to Istanbul, like Antonio Tiepolo, were therefore ­concerned that dragomans would fail to translate not just the bailo’s words but also his mode of addressing topics. If the bailo’s manner of speech is lost in translation, the dragoman’s interpretation “weakens the argument” of Venetian diplomats.25 Other residents like Agostino Nani, Venetian bailo in Istanbul from 1600 to 1603, expressed doubts about the quality of the bailate’s highest dragomans—especially if the origin of a translator, Ragusa in this particular case, sparked Venetian diplomats’ concerns about a dragoman’s loyalty.26 As intermediaries often situated in both the Ottoman and Venetian imperial realm, dragomans could easily be confronted with “distrust and ambiguity” since “their social status remained ambiguous.”27 As translators are considered to stand in for another speaker’s words, thoughts, and reputation, the nature of their profession further intensified the precarity of the dragoman’s status.28 As Ottoman subjects in Venetian diplomatic service, the Salvagos had to battle with resentments and scepticism more or less openly throughout their career.

The Salvago Dragoman Dynasty Over the course of the sixteenth century, the Salvago family had become an indispensable element in the workings of the massive but fine-tuned VenetoOttoman diplomatic machinery. The Salvagos served over generations as the baili’s interpreters and had thus acquired knowledge that was passed on along the family, from father to son. Genesino’s grandfather, Genesino (the Elder), started serving as the bailate’s translator as early as in the 1520s. Three decades later, in 1553, bailo Bernardo Navagero recalled that Genesino the Elder had been dealing with “the most important matters at various times.”29 Already in 1540, bailo Alvise Badoer granted Genesino the Elder a prominent place in the negotiations of the peace treatise ending a three-year-long Veneto-Ottoman War. The dragoman was sent with the document to Venice and he also served testimony when the bailo handed out financial gifts resulting from such negotiations a year later.30 In 1552, the bailo sent Genesino the Elder to Edirne to request the sultan’s confirmation that Venice had presented its tributary payments for Zakynthos.31 Writing one year later, in 1553, Navagero emphasised that he could always count on Genesino doing his professional duties in ways “that I could not have desired them being carried out more diligently.” Genesino the Elder had attended almost all divan meetings throughout the entire time of Navagero’s period in office, usually held for around half a day, several times a week, and the bailo lauded Genesino’s versatility in negotiations, especially when vividly defending Venice’s positions in disputes over borders. Compared to his ­colleagues—grand dragoman Francesco di Negroponte, who was of Genoese origin, and the newly appointed Pasquale Navon—Genesino made a much more experienced impression in dealing with difficult issues. Baili therefore regularly trusted Genesino with tasks that went beyond the

A Familiar Thesaurus  35 ­ordinary ­activities of a small dragoman. In this role, Genesino the Elder was, above all, in charge of dealing with commercial issues involving Venetian merchants and ships abroad.32 Yet, Genesino was “very good with the great ones” in the Ottoman Empire, “especially with Rüstem Pasha,” Sultan Suleiman’s influential grand vizier, because Genesino the Elder “is by nature comfortable with the customs of the Turks.” In 1553, bailo Navagero was astonished to see the ease with which Genesino the Elder was conversing with the sultan’s son-in-law. Genesino approached Rüstem Pasha “without respectful address, and he laughs with him.”33 In fact, Genesino “proceeds with [such] great dexterity in his negotiations” that bailo Domenico Trevisano, writing in 1554, was seriously concerned about a possible illness of the dragoman. If Genesino would not be available, “the bailo wouldn’t know what he had to do.”34 Only a decade later, on February 27, 1566, Genesino the Elder’s son, Mateca, was appointed road dragoman. His regular duty was to accompany baili on their journeys, as well as to conduct travels on behalf of Venetian diplomats.35 Over the coming years in service, Mateca assembled a rather impressive portfolio of success. In 1570, he was even sent to Venice to accompany the Ottoman envoy demanding Venice to hand Cyprus over to the Ottomans. At the outbreak of the War of Cyprus, a time when members of the bailate were imprisoned in Istanbul, Venice held Mateca in high enough esteem to negotiate the republic’s most serious matters, including the exchange of high-ranking prisoners. Still in 1593, Mateca was orchestrating negotiations between the prince of Wallachia and Venetian subjects residing in Istanbul.36 Mateca stood in for Venetian interests in a no less vocal manner than his father did: “He defended them emphatically,” bailo Navagero wrote about Genesino the Elder.37 Also Mateca responded with resoluteness when being pressured by an Ottoman provincial governor into the delivery of high monetary gifts during an audience in 1573, replying that it was customary to present textiles instead. “If some baili complained that Ottoman subjects made timid and complacent dragomans,” Rothman concludes, “Salvago’s dealing with the governor implies quite the opposite.”38 In fact, one might wonder whether Mateca’s risky firmness in acting as a spokesperson of Venetian interests may itself be anchored in the interpreter’s understanding of translatory practice as a form of risk-taking. “To translate,” Mireille Gansel states on her experience of rendering East German poetry into French, in the words of her translator Ros Schwartz, “I needed much more than a dictionary; I had to take the risk of reaching out and questioning, of confronting the poet’s very different reality.”39 Various interpreters, in fact, have described translation as “risk-taking,” in a sense of both “taking syntactical and semantic risks” and “risking going beyond the literal meanings of the words” when trying “to make it intelligible […]; to make it work.”40 Interpreters are constantly faced with the necessity of making decisions, often risky ones. As Anna Aslanyan

36  A Familiar Thesaurus states, “the nature of the job […] means that interventions are hard to avoid.”41 The resolute interventions of Genesino the Elder and Mateca in favour of Venice in front of some of the highest Ottoman officials, one might say, were born out of their approach to venture risky translations—understood here in terms of words, points of views, and possible consequences. Mateca passed on his approach, knowledge, experience, and versatility to his son, Genesino, who first joined the Venetian imperial service as a trainee around 1580.42 Genesino would have been about 20 years old and hence would have been about 30 when bailo Lorenzo Bernardo composed an intimate portrait of the former in 1590. “Zenesin, son of Mateca Salvago, […] is a lively character; he knows the Turkish, Greek, and Frankish language and will therefore do very well [as a dragoman].”43 Two years later, Bernardo concluded that Genesino “does not have any other goal in life than being a road dragoman, like his father.”44 Mateca, it seems, was an important role model for his son, not the least because of his leading role in passing on knowledge about the Ottoman language in general and Veneto-Ottoman translation in particular. According to Bernardo, Genesino had a very good understanding of the Ottoman language which “he has learnt from father and the country.” The bailo, here, gestures to the Salvagos’ juridical status as Christian subjects of the Ottoman sultan (dhimmi). As such, the family paid special taxes to have their religious status and rights confirmed. Living in Ottoman Istanbul meant of course that Genesino, to adapt Bernardo’s phrasing, was to learn Ottoman “naturally.”45 However, neither Ottoman nor Italian was the mother tongue of this Ottoman-Catholic subject in Venetian service. At home, the Salvagos spoke a rather peculiar mixture of Greek and Italian; Galata-based slang; Venetian dialect with long-forgotten Genoese shades; and some elements of Lingua Franca—“the famous Mediterranean mixed language, a simplified hybrid Romance pidgin with significant borrowings from several regional languages.” They used some Ottoman words, but of the Turkic variant spoken on the streets of Istanbul, not the vocabulary of the high Ottoman language used in official bureaucratic contexts.46 This furnished family members with a rather distinct domestic language, different, to some extent, from the language spoken in their urban environment; an oral culture that interwove the family and established familiarity. The unity of the Salvagos provided Genesino with a “hugely rich and versatile palette […], where so many languages intersected.”47 This language repertoire was as varied as the Salvagos’ cultural backgrounds, a Levantine conglomerate with highly affective resonances, situating the family in the Galata world, and calling to mind what Ginzburg calls “our old intimacy.” It was “the evidence of a vital nucleus” of a family experienced in and experiencing itself through translation, the shifting of words through the webs of languages. “These phrases are the foundation of family unity which,” Ginzburg states, “will persist as long as we are in this world.”48 The Salvagos’ lessico

A Familiar Thesaurus  37 famigliare linked the family members across generations and across space, when travelling in faraway distances as road dragomans. The family’s thesaurus was highly flexible, leaning one way or another depending on the situation. This provided Genesino with space required to situate the self towards different speech communities, to manoeuvre through interpretation. Later, Genesino would draw extensively on this very same, familiar mixture that shaped the rhythms and experiences of domestic life, and that would have been introduced to him as his parental language—the language with which he first experienced the world, thought his first thoughts, and first reflected on himself. It was the language that enabled recognising his family members immediately, as well as the members of the wider community of Venetians residing in Galata. As bailo Bernardo testifies, Mateca must have held a pivotal role in instructing Genesino in the Ottoman language on the one hand and in translating itself on the other.49 This familial context of learning, practising, and sociability turned interpreting into a family matter. By giving his firstborn the same name as his father, Mateca was underscoring the importance of lineage—Genesino’s name encompassed the pride of the Salvagos’ past, and Mateca’s hopes for its future. After learning his first Ottoman words, Genesino would have heard Mateca reading out aloud Ottoman writings. Genesino encountered a variety of letters of different contexts, perhaps even from the Venetian embassy itself. Most likely, Genesino attended classes at one of the Latin rite religious institutions of Galata, such as the local Franciscan and Dominican schools near the churches of Sant’Anna and San Giorgio, or the popular Jesuit institutions.50 Mateca must have also told stories about the bailate’s personnel and encounters to introduce young Genesino into the workings of diplomatic hierarchies, as well as the peculiarities of some of the characters involved in such business. Mateca would have surely taken his son to the streets to hear others speak, and allow him to present his own attempts at translating Ottoman words into Italian. The aspiring Genesino would have soon recognised the difference between the Turkic variants spoken on the streets of Galata and the Ottoman “imperial language” used in official documentation.51 As a member of the metropolitan elite, Salvago dragomans would have taken pride in mastering this refined language comprising Turkic, Arabic, and Persian elements, the prominence of which depended on the specific contexts of language use. As a dragoman-in-training, adolescent Genesino learned more than just Ottoman vocabulary and grammar, he was also introduced to speech habits, genre conventions, and appropriate behaviour and gesturing. Mateca offered Genesino both intellectual and emotional apprenticeships, fuelling the business of translation with the affective world of family life.52 From a young age, Mateca would have advanced Genesino’s understanding of the differences of everyday and diplomatic translations—the different contexts in which they might take place and the different consequences this might bear. Mateca instructed Genesino in everything that he deemed significant

38  A Familiar Thesaurus in the contexts of professional interpretation: how to translate correctly or to find working transmissions of words in a different language; how to do so quickly; which risks to take, and which not to, when transferring into new meanings; to read both ornate Ottoman calligraphy and hastily scribbled notes; to read situations and the motivations of others; to evaluate when the interpreter might lose control over risks taken in translation; to commit and learn from mistakes in a variety of contexts; and to hone his translations over and over again. By communicating translation along the family, the father had become a model to learn from, as bailo Bernardo observed: a role model in terms of translatory practices and behaviour as an interpreter, as well as building a life by translating in the contested terrain of imperial interpretation. In short, Mateca taught Genesino how to live for, with, and through translation.53 To do justice to his role model would not have always been easy to Genesino, as bailo Bernardo’s report reveals: The worst is, though, that I doubt he will be able at all to serve as a road dragoman because he has an indisposition in one leg contracted from birth; which [the leg] will be crippled soon, and he has already begun to go on crutches despite the recent improvement resulting from having discontinued the acqua del legno at my times [during the bailo’s period in office].54 The bailo was wrong in his assessment, however. Genesino indeed proceeded to the office of a road dragoman and travelled widely in this later capacity, though surely neither without difficulty, nor without being underestimated. Bernardo’s mistaken assessment testifies, again, to Genesino’s outstanding commitment to the Salvago tradition of translation. The fact that he progressed in his career in spite of his disability shows how firmly he not only wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps but to take responsibility, as the eldest son, for his own brothers getting a chance to also join the interpreting service. Being the hinge for the successful transmission from one generation of diplomatic interpreters to the next so early on, Genesino would have carried the burden of responsibility within a family’s universe of lived translation. Familiarity with the Ottoman language thus united the Salvagos. But what did it actually mean to learn translation in such a manner? Growing up in a German-speaking Jewish family in Budapest, Gansel remembers her father reading letters to her. “Tonight, I am going to translate to you,” he said, introducing her to what translation is and what it does. “I recall listening to the silences while Father struggled to find the right word or sentence construction, sometimes stopping short and correcting himself. Mysterious gaps, tenuous bridges.” In a different world, Genesino would have listened to his father’s silences when learning to translate, to take a stop and think, even though things might seem apparent; to test, think again; and to transfer

A Familiar Thesaurus  39 words from one context to another by remaking their familiarity. To adapt Aharon Appelfeld’s famous dictum—in Gansel’s paraphrasis, “It  was not the language of the Germans but that of my mother”—for Salvago, Italian was not (exclusively) the language of the Venetians, but that of his father and his family members in the interpreting service, a second language embedded into the emotional world of this family. Every day he was in service, Genesino remade a family centred language that had “no land or borders,” “punctuated by exiles, and passed down through the generations.” It was a language that constituted the wider nucleus of the family unit, “that supra-national, cross-border language in which he had grown up.” If the family lived through and in translation, interpretation was to become the family’s lived language. As dragomans, the Salvagos celebrated, lived, and remade “a language that we would always share”: a lessico famigliare. Like Gansel, the Salvago family’s “geography is one of both exile and belonging,” anchored in a language “without a territory and without borders and with multiple affiliations.”55

The Family Business of Translation Translation was the family business. By accumulating practices, knowledge, and resources, the Salvagos belonged to a small circle of families that managed to establish themselves as what Francesca Lucchetta calls “dragoman dynasties.”56 In recent years, historians have recovered the complex kinship networks of the dragomanate’s ruling families, among them Venetian colonial subjects from Albania (the Brutis and Borisis) and Koper (the Carlis and Tarsias), as well as Ottoman subjects like the Navon and Salvago families.57 The Salvago dragoman dynasty spanned several generations and encompassed a variety of protagonists within Genesino’s own generation. Mateca’s second and third sons, Giuliano and Giovanni Battista, joined their brother Genesino at the Venetian dragomanate. During Genesino’s 1618 journey through the Balkans, Giuliano’s expertise in the “Turkish and Greek language, as well as in several other languages” was already acknowledged.58 Giovanni Battista was proficient in “Greek, Italian, Turkish, and Latin.”59 Another brother, Benetto—named after an ancestor, alum merchant Benedetto—is mentioned in Venetian archival documents as having received a stipendio of the bailate in October 1600, indicating that he might have begun but not completed his training.60 As will be discussed below, both Giuliano and Giovanni Battista were embarking onto impressive careers as road dragomans active in Bosnia, Dalmatia, North Africa, and Syria. What united them when in distant places across the Mediterranean was the Salvagos’ shared engagement with language, their lessico famigliare. As a family business, dragoman dynasties could generate tidy profits. Even at the beginning of his diplomatic career as a language trainee, the young Genesino was already well-off—at least enough to loan 6,510 akçe to a certain Marco Antonio Silvestrini in December 1589 and remain waiting

40  A Familiar Thesaurus to be repaid a year and a half later. Mateca and his brother-in-law, Odoardo da Gagliano, also received a steady income from renting accommodations to the bailate’s grand dragoman Steffano Giovani, the Salvago dragomans’ direct superior, in the early 1590s. Besides letting to the bailate for decades, Mateca also rented to the French ambassador in the 1570s. Furthermore, being members of the diplomatic household provided the Salvagos with additional sales opportunities and semi-legitime sources of income. In 1600, for instance, the bailo came to notice that medicine disappeared regularly from the storage piles of the bailate’s physician, Appolonio Zietto, who confirmed that some members of the famiglia had taken such medicine, without any signs of illness, to sell them to others. Zietto speaks in general ­ embers who are on the payroll of Venice but singles out dragomans of m for having engaged in such dubious sales practices. In the future, the bailo decreed, “medicine cannot be given to others than those of our famiglia and our successors and to the dragomans and their servants alone.” By making translation a business and the centre of the family’s activities, it became a pillar of the family’s wealth.61 Access to wealth and power, unsurprisingly, fuelled an atmosphere of competition. In 1612, six years before Genesino set off for his journey through Southeastern Europe, a total of seven interpreters worked at the Venetian diplomatic residence in Istanbul, courting the bailo for attention and praise. Bailo Simone Contarini provided Venice with a detailed report about the dense atmosphere of collaboration and competition. Grand dragoman Marc’antonio Borisi, who was appointed when his predecessor’s loyalty had been questioned, was the highest language official, an “honourable subject” whose faith, benevolence, valour, and intelligence were praised by the bailo. Borisi’s proficiency in spoken and written languages was flawless, and the bailo considered his service as indispensable to all Venetian ambassadors, granting the republic considerable advantage in political negotiations and everyday diplomatic duties.62 Compared to Borisi’s outstanding command of the language, Simone Contarini agreed with the assessment of former bailo Agostino Nani that all “the other dragomans” provided work of only “good quality.”63 Ambrosio Grillo was the second dragoman in the diplomatic household. Despite Ambrosio’s experience, the bailo wondered how long the dragoman could continue due to the latter’s age and discomforts. The third dragoman, Simon Nicolicchi, had fallen from grace; he was “a very bad dragoman,” Simone Contarini reported to Venice, accusing Nicolicchi of working “more with the ears than with the tongue.” The dragoman was said to have subverted the bailo’s negotiations with “many dishonesties,” and Contarini was also not amused about the ongoing disagreements and malevolence between Nicolicchi and Borisi. Noticing their mutual animosity, the bailo felt obliged to take a stance on behalf of Borisi, especially since both dragomans presented him with at times contradictory evaluations. Instead of translating what he was told to say, the bailo complained, Nicolicchi was negotiating

A Familiar Thesaurus  41 on his own behalf. The dragoman even borrowed the ­considerable sum of 500 zecchini in the bailo’s name under the pretence that the diplomat wished to buy a new “big palace.” Instead, Nicolicchi took the money and escaped the bailate.64 Following this incident, numerous shopkeepers enforced their claims against the bailo, as juridical documents reveal. In April 1611, for instance, store owners Felice Bestici and Francesco Spiera appeared at the bailate to demand the payment of Nicolicchi’s debts within a month. Otherwise, the merchants would sell some of the personal belongings that the dragoman had left in their store. A few months later, Bestici and Spiera indeed sold six camlets (zambellotti, or cloths made of goat or camel wool, at times blended with silk or cotton) worth 8,700 akçe that originally had belonged to Nicolicchi.65 Road dragoman Genesino is listed as the fourth of seven dragomans in Simone Contarini’s 1612 report. The bailo confirmed that Genesino “engages gladly” with his work and does some duties at the residence, though only occasionally. In the bailo’s not very flattering assessment, Genesino “abounds more in willingness than in knowing.” At the time, Genesino’s younger brother Giuliano was outperforming him. In the bailo’s words, Giuliano “is a man of a wider chest” who will always deliver “good service.” The sixth dragoman was Tommaso Navon, who was mainly involved in the everyday business of the residence and in keeping track of the registers of ships and merchandise. Barnabà Bruti, the seventh dragoman, was considered “a man of good ingenuity” who has “the most desirable parts of a good dragoman.”66 The bailo’s report sheds light on a large variety of characters whose careers ultimately depended on his assessment of their skills, characters, loyalty, and the outcomes of their previous missions. His personal opinion mattered and he seemed to be fond of the Salvago brothers, although clearly holding Giuliano in higher regard than Genesino. However, Simone Contarini was less fond of promoting their careers. Instead, he lauded Borisi and focused on creating an environment for Bruti to prosper. The bailo instructed Bruti to follow the more experienced Borisi to advance the former’s translation skills. Contarini also regretted the recent death of an eighth dragoman, Giulio Ansonio: “a great loss […] because in the foundations of the Turkish language, in writing, as well as in the presence and in every activity of his, he succeeded admirably, and one could have expected an excellent service.” During his period in office from 1608 to 1612, Simone Contarini seemingly favoured the promotion of other dragomans over the progress of the rather well-established Salvagos.67 To better secure access to resources and influence in an environment of competing dragoman families, the Salvagos strategically invested into “kinshipping.” Mirroring practices established in the Venetian patriciate, dragoman marriages established support networks, widened participation, accumulated cultural capital, and increased chances of career advancement.68 The Salvagos made a strategic use of marriages to renegotiate the

42  A Familiar Thesaurus setting of the casa, as constituted by blood relations, within the bailate’s wider famiglia. The mobility of words manifested not just in translation but also negotiated and expanded the familial boundaries of the dragoman’s self. Here, translators did not only take other positions into account by making them understandable, but literally incorporated and embodied them as such. As translation was a means to make a living for the Salvagos, the family itself could become a means to improve the standing of these interpreters. As apprentice, Genesino had started a liaison that granted him access to rumours circulating in Istanbul barbershops and pharmacies— hubs of informal communication and knowledge exchange that enriched the aspiring dragoman’s networks. The affair was thus understood as transgressive by Venetian authorities.69 Genesino’s sister, Ameda, then married the older, experienced, and well-respected dragoman Ambrosio Grillo, himself the son of former interpreter Giacomo di Pera. When Ameda died in 1611, the dragoman brothers Genesino, Giuliano, and Giovanni Battista joined Ambrosio to ask the bailate to hand out the personal belongings that Ameda had left in the bailate’s chancery. The commodities were sold by Ambrosio’s son Antonio and Giovanni Battista—the two youngest members of this impressive squad of dragomans. The proceeds were used to cover outstanding payments and the costs of the funeral, with the rest split among the Grillo and Salvago families.70 As Ameda’s marriage exemplifies, there was a conscious establishment of ties between these two strong families of Galata-born interpreters. Her death also illustrates the close relationship between Venetian and French ambassadorial interpreters. When she died, two of her brothers were not in Istanbul. Genesino was on his travels in the Balkans and Venice. As a precaution, Genesino had appointed Olivier Olivieri, the dragoman of the French ambassador, as his legal spokesperson during his absence. Olivieri was then left to take care of important business, such as processing Ameda’s inheritance. Giuliano, meanwhile, was in Aleppo at the time of Ameda’s death. He too had appointed a dragoman of the Olivieri family, Carlo, as his legal spokesperson.71 Such acts testify to networks of interfamilial support between the Olivieris and Salvagos, an alliance carefully established and maintained over decades. Mateca was already the owner of a house on the premises of the French embassy which he rented to both French ambassadors and visiting Venetian representatives in the 1570s.72 In later years, Ameda’s son, Giovanni Antonio Grillo, born in 1588, was to marry another member of this French dragoman dynasty, Soprana Caterina Olivieri, who had previously also been the widow of grand dragoman Borisi.73 Ties between Venetian and French dragoman families, in fact, became so close that Giovanni Olivieri, the son of Giuliano’s spokesperson Carlo, entered the Venetian dragomanate. Giovanni’s son Antonio, born in 1655, then received training as a dragoman at the bailate.74 The Olivieri and Salvago dynasties of Galata-based dragomans, thus, constituted a community of practice which was anchored in the shared world of neighbourhood, profession, and

A Familiar Thesaurus  43 religion. It was maintained by conscious investments in mutual support and overlapping dependencies. Commonalities, grounded in shared experiences and practices, constituted a code of honour and networks of support that transcended the different political and national backgrounds of their diplomatic overlords. Such marital networking was an investment into mutual bonds of loyalty, solidarity, and support, both within and beyond the bailate. A few years later, Giuliano returned the favour to the Olivieris in a diplomatic clash between the Ottoman Empire and France. In late 1617, just a few months before Genesino was to depart for Bosnia, Grand Vizier Damat Halil Pasha called for grand dragoman Borisi to interpret a conversation that he was about to have with the French ambassador. Officially, the grand vizier’s personal dragoman was not available; given the further unfolding of events, however, this can also be read as the grand vizier’s strategic means to spread news and threaten the Venetian ambassador and interpreter in case of any future diplomatic trespasses involving Venice. Rumour had it that the French ambassador Achille Harlay de Sancy was supporting a fugitive slave. Damat Halil Pasha arrested the French grand dragoman and interrogated then the entire household of the embassy. In the meantime, Harlay de Sancy hoped to convince the grand vizier to change his mind and asked the Venetian bailo whether Giuliano could help. The bailo agreed, and Giuliano jumped in, negotiating on behalf of Harlay de Sancy to motivate for the release of the French dragoman. This favour clearly resulted from the close contacts that the Salvago and Olivieri families had nurtured over years. Trying to “save his honour” and liberate his dragoman, Harlay de Sancy finally confirmed “that he had participated, if only a little bit, to the escape of the said slave.” Harlay de Sancy and Giuliano seemed to have hoped that this mediated confession would soothe tensions. Harlay de Sancy asked Damat Halil Pasha, via Giuliano, for the French dragoman to be released since by “not having the dragoman, he did neither know how to negotiate nor how to speak.” The dragoman was to be released in early December 1617, followed by the secretary and the remaining number of household members—the embassy’s majordomo, the cook, a servant, and further three dragomans that had been arrested by the Ottoman official. Having heard about the torture of the secretary after his release, Harlay de Sancy immediately left Istanbul for Marseille. “Some say in order to accompany the çavuş” that Ottoman officials had sent abroad, the bailo wrote to Venice; others thought he simply saved his life and reputation.75 Translation, thus, could manifest and expand the boundaries of the Salvago family unit. Early modern cultural appreciation of reciprocal gift-giving itself could turn the exchange of words into a gift-like means to craft social relationships and situate the self within mutual bonds.76 Translating created relationships, interactions that established dependencies, networks of trust, and mutual support. When Borisi wished to see a debtor’s outstanding payments in 1612, a year after Ameda’s death, he

44  A Familiar Thesaurus chose fellow dragomans Genesino and Bruti to serve as witnesses. In times of peril, the dragomanate offered a trans-familial structure to situate and safeguard families against upcoming risks, like the spread of the plague, dangerous travels abroad, or serious diplomatic conflicts. On November 20, 1600, Genesino appeared in front of the bailo’s secretary to ensure that, in case of his death, his October salary would be paid to Giuliano. Genesino’s November salary, however, shall be paid to dragoman Ambrosio Grillo, Genesino’s brother-in-law. Another brother, Benetto, also declared that his October salary shall be passed on to Genesino in case of his sudden death. Borisi, too, confirmed that his October salary shall be paid to the dragoman Simon di Piero. These documents do not specify the reasons behind such declarations but it could be that the Salvagos and Grillos were responding to the raging plague.77 The exchange of words and thoughts through translation, as a ritualised exchange grounded in trust, situated the dragoman’s self within a wider, like-minded community of practice. Because of this “culture of trust,” relationships had to be chosen wisely among dragomans. When Gaspar Graziani, voivode of Moldavia and a former dragoman himself, announced his plans to marry Borisi’s daughter in 1619, Venetian diplomats were deeply concerned about this marriage resulting in a future breach of secrecy. Venice was therefore relieved to hear that Borisi advocated against the union, even after the grand vizier’s intervention in favour of Graziani. The Venetian doge himself emphasised that such a marriage would have undermined “the reputation, [which Borisi had] acquired with the handling of the most serious businesses of the Republic [of Venice] at this Sublime Porte.” Venice was clearly concerned about potentially conflicting interests of their well-informed dragomans.78 Interpreters like the Salvagos used their period in office to firmly s­ ituate themselves in the wider social fabric of Venetian diplomacy—social acts that constitute the interpreter’s self. Dragomans knew how to translate their cultural capital, accumulated and made relevant through the translation of words, into a family’s success. Borisi, for instance, used his position of power to strategically position relatives in diplomatic service. His brother Bernardo was appointed consul of Gallipoli in January 1614. However, dragomans were not the only members of the famiglia that made the bailate a vibrant hub to anchor kinship-building and career advancement. Baili themselves, as Dursteler shows, considered their period in office an important milestone in a Venetian nobleman’s cursus honorum. Gathering information about Ottoman affairs was a crucial means to network both in Istanbul and back home in Venice, and to make a good impression when commending oneself for a future political career. To some extent, therefore, the bailate’s universe provided a model to network for the wider famiglia. For instance, Giovanni Carlo Scaramelli, a secretary at the bailate in the 1590s, ensured that Venice appointed his son, Francesco, as a new language trainee. The networking of dragomans was linked to the career ambitions of the baili, who relied

A Familiar Thesaurus  45 massively on dragomans to do their job well. If baili failed, it would also be too easy to blame dragomans. Translation, as a family business, was entangled with the successes and failures of the dragomans’ families.79

A Microcosm of Imperial Self-Fashioning Translating anchored the Salvago dragomans in the bailate’s world of professional careers, hierarchies, and dependencies but it also widened their perspectives on the performance of Venetian subjectivity. Such knowledge was key for Ottoman subjects, like the Salvagos, working in Venetian service. At work, dragomans encountered a variety of people and ways of strategically using words to present themselves, as subjects, in front of the Venetian bailate’s diplomatic and legal apparatus. Although oral interpretations did not take up most of their time, Rothman notes, the everyday oral world of imperial interpretation clearly mattered to a dragoman’s sense of self. Through their everyday business as translators, dragomans could know of other people’s points of views, perspectives, and positions. Listening to and translating words enabled dragomans to sense the wider sensitivities of selfhood, as well as how language use translated and mobilised personal positions and ambitions. The Venetian bailate in Istanbul functioned as a juridical space for Venice’s Levantine community and Christian subjects of other foreign nations (nazioni) residing in or visiting the Ottoman world. The Salvagos’ linguistic expertise and cultural sophistication in manoeuvring this complex bureaucratic institution made them highly sought-after experts who both facilitated and witnessed the everyday realities of imperial self-fashioning.80 The range of everyday legal cases negotiated at the bailate involving Genesino in 1593 alone indicates the variety of characters he would have encountered. Along with his father, Genesino often served as witness at the bailate’s court, for example, when Ottoman and Venetian subjects codified their business exchange in front of the bailo’s secretary prior to embarking on journeys to Crete and Venice. Genesino was also a witness serving in a Ragusan’s maritime business arrangements with subjects in Naples. In the same year, “Genesino of Mateca Salvago”—phrasing that points towards the wide acceptance of the dragoman’s cross-generational sense of self in juridical contexts—served as a witness and “dragoman from Turkish to Franco” in a case presented on behalf of the prince of Wallachia with regard to Venetian subjects residing in Istanbul. Genesino listened, translated, testified, and collected information. In his role as the bailate’s interpreter, Genesino translated promises and witnessed a culture of trust-making, and would have been able to sense the pulse of Veneto-Ottoman commercial entrepreneurship. Listening to hopes and plans, the Salvago dragomans learned to sense a climate of opportunities as manifested in the power of words. Being confronted with stories of success and failure brought in front of the bailo, Mateca and Genesino were able to know a wide variety

46  A Familiar Thesaurus of people and contexts across the Levant, and developed nuanced skills in analysing behaviours and interactions.81 Translatory practice could therefore turn into a platform to create ­networks, relationships, and dependencies, as well as to facilitate the staging of imperial subjecthood itself. Due to the varied nature of the dragoman’s everyday business at the bailate, Genesino became deeply immersed in the commercial and personal networks of Levantine businesses. In June 1593, he was a witness in the mediation process between a Portuguese Sephardic diamond cutter working in Istanbul and his apprentice, who accused each other of causing damage with low-quality work. Genesino was also networking with Jewish Levantine communities when bearing witness to the agreements of rabbis in Venetian Crete, who presented their cases to the bailo. A few months later, Genesino served again as a witness in a case presented by rabbi Cain Bassan, who was trading camlets between Istanbul and Venice, with Venetian Jews like Isach Montalbot and Salvador Belforte as business partners. Alongside such commercial legal arrangements, Genesino also acted as a witness in Venetian subjects’ inheritance disputes and to the executorship of the last wills of Venetians dying in Istanbul. All these examples, from a single year, demonstrate that the Salvago dragomans were widely considered to be trustworthy witnesses who facilitated access to juridical expertise and justice. The Salvagos’ ability to understand and translate other positions was as appreciated as their cross-generational service in diplomatic translation, which made them an embodiment of the bailate’s institutional memory.82 This was a microcosm of Venetian imperial subjects’ self-fashioning at work—to witness how the presentation of words to the Venetian imperial and juridical administration mattered to the negotiation of one’s own case. As  translators, Salvago dragomans saw, on an almost daily basis, how wording shaped Venetian selves and imperial subjectivities. A  witness’ role was to memorise legal agreements and to testify to and give account of them in case of future doubts. To negotiate, testify, and document one’s case in front of the bailate’s secretary, as Borisi put it, was to ensure that one’s relationship “would be henceforth ad futuram registered in the memory of the chancery of his most excellent lordship [Venice].”83 The Salvagos’ services as witnesses were highly sought-after for at least three reasons. First, as interpreters, they knew how to position themselves in other’s perspectives, which evoked empathy and trust. Second, the Salvagos’ expertise in manoeuvring the bailate’s complex juridical universe made it easier for others to present their cases. And third, the Salvagos’ long-term and cross-generational employment at the bailate ensured the longevity of the memory of these legal agreements. The Salvagos’ presence at such cases lent them further institutional weight and generated additional trust among the participants for facilitating institutionally accepted forms of communication across languages and across time. Some Venetian residents of Istanbul even expressed their gratitude towards the Salvagos on their

A Familiar Thesaurus  47 deathbeds, for instance, when bequeathing some of their money to Mateca to pay for their requiems and to distribute among the poor.84 In their role as witnesses, the dragomans had to remember. Over the years, Genesino had archived an impressive mental register of constellations of imperial subjecthood—things to do and to avoid in a Salvago’s own self-fashioning. Most likely, the Salvagos kept such information also in a rich family archive that is lost today. The notes stored in the dragomans’ household—perhaps diaries, writing calendars, account books, further travelogues, and booklets containing information on business transactions, noteworthy diplomatic encounters, copied translations, and instructions regarding interpretation and translation—would have provided generations of Salvago dragomans with crucial knowledge and resources to work with. In his service, Genesino saw the ups and downs of Venetian imperial subjects first-hand, and he witnessed how important it was to carefully craft and situate oneself within wider social networks. Genesino witnessed, and he learned how to behave within, as well as to shape, a laboratory of presenting the self in ways beneficial to negotiate one’s own as well as one’s family’s life. The Salvagos found familiarity with imperial subjecthood mirrored in Ottoman contexts. As a dragoman, Genesino was familiar with the behaviours of various interpreters active in Ottoman service. Sultan ­ Suleiman, in particular, had assembled a cohort of interpreters (divan tercümanları), mostly of Hungarian, German, Polish, or Greek origin, who translated Ottoman, Arabic, Persian, and various European languages on behalf of the Ottoman court—such as at the divan-ı hümayun, during audiences, in official correspondences, or when travelling on the sultan’s behalf as envoys. Like Venetian road dragomans, these Ottoman interpreters could accompany the sultan on travels and negotiate with diplomatic residents in Istanbul. They were paid with money, land, and titles. Some interpreters of Hungarian origin are also known to have acted as tax collectors in Ottoman Hungary; others received honorary titles like subaşı, müteferrika, silahdar, or beg.85 The Salvago dragomans were meeting such interpreters regularly during the sultan’s council but also when attending the pasha’s audiences. Here, the pasha was accompanied by his own secretary and his own dragoman.86 As in Venice, Ottoman authorities had concerns about their translators who nurtured contact with other empires and received their gifts and information. Also “the Ottomans harboured doubts about their loyalty,” and the Salvagos witnessed how such Ottoman interpreters dealt with concerns that were all too familiar to the family.87 At the kadi’s court, too, interpreters (mahkeme tercümanları) negotiated between Ottoman juridical authorities and the non-Muslim population. The Salvagos would have also dealt with these interpreters, for instance, when being involved in the distribution of goods of a deceased Venetian subject that had not issued a will.88 When travelling abroad, Salvago road dragomans may have also encountered Ottoman interpreters active at councils and courts abroad, such as in the Balkans, where such translators managed a variety of languages

48  A Familiar Thesaurus across the Ottoman Empire. In the capital, language variety mattered in contexts of Ottoman jurisdiction. The imperial chancery issued documents not only in Ottoman but also in Greek, Slavic, Italian, Latin, and at times even German.89 In the Ottoman realm, language and interpretation had become significant cultural practices to negotiate links between imperial subjecthood, state power, and empire formation. The Salvagos became familiar with the repertoire of staging imperial subjecthood when encountering Ottoman interpreters at work.90 Their embeddedness in the social cosmos of the hellenised world of Galata would have increased when even more Greek subjects, Istanbul Phanariots in particular, were appointed as Ottoman interpreters during the seventeenth century.91 When writing self-narratives, thus, the Salvagos could rely on their experiences of witnessing other Ottoman or Venetian subjects’ self-fashioning.

Institutional Familiarity: Language Learning and Career Planning The Salvago dragomans lived with various imperial institutions related to translation. It was through translation that they made these institutions work to their benefit. In 1551, Venice launched a new five-year training programme, with a payment of 50 ducats per annum, for young Venetian citizens to gain proficiency in Ottoman at the bailate in Istanbul. Bailo Navagero had suggested this precisely because of his concerns that a non-Venetian interpreter—like any of the Salvagos—would “take the liberty to report whatever he likes” when translating the “words of efficacy and full of dignity” spoken by a bailo or ambassador. These “language lads” (giovani di lingua), as they were called, were thus an administrative response to the Venetian authorities’ concerns about the trustworthiness of Ottoman subjects like the Salvagos.92 Familiarity with such newly established institutions was key to the Salvagos. As masters in kinshipping and networking, dragomans knew how to situate themselves within the wider social fabric of the bailate. Soon, the Salvagos learned how to make such new institutional frameworks work for the purposes of their own family. The adolescent Venetians sent to Istanbul, with “good hope” of mastering Ottoman posed no serious competition to language experts like the Salvagos, who benefited from knowledge accumulated over generations, and from having grown up in the multilingual dynamism of Galata. In addition, quite a number of these Venetian language trainees converted to Islam and started a new life in Istanbul. Despite growing institutional efforts to bypass Ottoman subjects like the Salvagos, Venetian diplomacy continued to rely on their expertise and experience.93 Ottoman-subject interpreters, in fact, adapted to this new institutional setting by using it to enter the bailate’s diplomatic service. Genesino himself took the first steps of his career by joining the school of interpretation at the bailate. In 1592, bailo Bernardo expressed his disappointment that

A Familiar Thesaurus  49 Genesino did not use the programme to learn languages other than those that he already knew—Greek and Galata pidgin, Ottoman and its Turkic variants spoken on the streets of Galata, Italian and the Venetian dialect, Lingua Franca, and perhaps to some degree the basic vocabulary of other Levantine speech communities. This suggests that Genesino, who had a wide portfolio of language skills due to his father’s training and upbringing in Istanbul, faced different expectations compared to other Venetian language students. Still, the Salvagos made strategic use of this new institution for the sake of the family, as did many others. The second son of grand dragoman Borisi, Pietro, also joined the training programme. Venice hoped that Pietro, after eight years of studying Ottoman as a giovane di lingua, would serve the republic as faithfully as his father and uncle did. Borisi’s first son had also started training in 1614 but dropped out soon afterwards. Thus, the Salvagos were not the only dragomans who made strategic use of the bailate’s language training programme to grant the next generation the best possible chance at a career in Venetian imperial service.94 In 1612, Simone Contarini described the giovani di lingua as a dense criss-crossing web of competition between the next generation of the most important dragoman dynasties. The bailo reported on the qualities of six language students, five of whom had relatives that served as the bailate’s translators. Antonio Giovanni Grillo, Genesino’s nephew, was described by the bailo as a polyglot, “valiant, faithful, and good servant.” The bailo considered Giovanni Battista, Genesino’s brother, to have “good ingenuity and much benevolence.” Giovanni Battista was deemed a subject with “great modesty” that “serves the baili [well] in many things.” Cristoforo Bruti, another language student originating from a glorious dragoman dynasty, likewise “shows good talent [ingegno]; he writes and speaks Turkish well,” although the bailo added that he would cut a better figure if better behaved. “Time will have to make him […] a good servant.” Yet another member of the Bruti dynasty, Bartolomeo, is “very quiet but eager to learn.” The scion of another dragoman dynasty, Battista Navon, was described as “a decent person,” from whom to expect “faithful and good service.” The bailo considered Navon somebody who “enjoys the service” and is “assiduous,” though at times rather late with delivering the products of his work. In 1612, six years before Genesino’s departure to the Balkans, the bailate’s cadre of young imperial interpreters was almost exclusively populated by the aspiring sons of well-established dragoman families. Competition was fierce and it seems that Giovanni Battista struggled to keep pace with the others—blaming his late enrolment to the programme for his relative lack of progress.95 Still, these interpreters had learned to capitalise on their institutional familiarity with the bailate, turning the institution into an advantage for their families. In short, dragoman dynasties like the Salvagos had managed to take over an institution that was intended to subvert their own casa’s status within the famiglia of the bailate, even after Venice had lowered entry

50  A Familiar Thesaurus criteria for Venetian citizens. By 1684, bailo Giambattista Donado reported that all 13 giovani di lingua “are sons either of current or of deceased dragomans.”96 This was not just a school in language training but a school in making a career at the bailate and to secure the influence and prosperity of one’s family over generations. The Salvagos were among the first to notice and capitalise on this.

The Assassination of Mateca Salvago The lives and the business of the Salvagos were changed irrevocably on November 15, 1593. On that day, the Council of Ten, Venice’s highest governing committee, sentenced Genesino’s father Mateca to death. The newly elected bailo, Marco Venier, had to invent a pretence for the dragoman to travel to Ragusa. The council ordered the assassination to be carried out “in great confidentiality,” and stressed that Venier should make sure to find a trustworthy and discreet assassin—with no doubt to fall upon Venice and no suspicion raised about the circumstances of the dragoman’s death. The assassination, it was agreed, should give the impression of an unexpected and sudden death “as it can easily result from travelling, especially if such journeys take place in mountains and valleys in a period of cold and ice.” “To covertly bereave this villain of his life,” as the council said in the secret minutes of the meeting, was a matter of “utmost importance.” If Mateca refused to travel to Ragusa, the council granted the bailo permission to carry out the assassination in the quickest, most appropriate manner possible. The bailo was allowed to spend up to 200 zecchini to do so. The death sentence was read to Venier prior to his departure and the verdict was handed out to him in cipher. The newly appointed bailo confirmed that he would carry out the orders as instructed.97 Years-long secret debates had preceded Mateca’s death sentence. By 1592, bailo Bernardo had already complained about the unreliability of the dragoman. At least once a month when being called to serve the bailo, Mateca was unavailable. Bernardo characterised Mateca’s service as “not good” in general, and without providing further details, portrayed the dragoman as a disturbance to the “tranquility” of his period in office and as a threat to Venetian interests.98 In the months prior, Mateca increasingly acted as a spokesperson of Ottoman clients. In May 1591, for instance, the dragoman stepped in as an attorney of the sultan’s çavuş Seyyid Abdi b. Seyyed Ahmed, known among Istanbul contemporaries as “the emir of the camlets,” to collect the Ottoman messenger’s money from creditors in Venice. Mateca also supported janissary Ahmed b. Abdullah in his search for Crisvan, the janissary’s fugitive Russian slave who now stayed in Venice. Just a few days later, Mateca acted as the legal spokesperson of Istanbul citizen Abdi Çavuş Emir b. Emir Ahmed in a dispute at the bailate about missing payments, supporting the merchant’s request for Venice to restitute goods raided by uskoks in the Adriatic Sea.99 The dragoman’s behaviour

A Familiar Thesaurus  51 must have raised the bailo’s suspicions. To Bernardo, it must have appeared as if Mateca was increasingly prioritising Ottoman over Venetian interests. Indeed, the bailo complained to Venice about Mateca’s “very close involvement in dealings at the Ottoman court, from which he cannot be turned aside, and his careless and malicious talk.”100 The bailo also spoke about the dragoman’s behaviour as an “insult” towards Venice, as a correspondence of Bernardo’s predecessor, Girolamo Lippomano, also shows.101 But Bernardo was referencing a highly ambiguous figure. When Venice had started to plan Mateca’s assassination, Lippomano, who had been secretly accused of revealing Venetian state secrets to the Spaniards during his time at the bailate, was ordered back to Venice and “killed himself (or was killed, some alleged) as his ship sailed into sight of Venice.”102 The republic was not prudish in dealing with suspected traitors. The bailo’s accusations against Mateca, the Ottoman subject and Venetian translator, fit too well within the general anxieties of contemporary Venetian statecraft. “Translation,” as Lawrence Venuti states, “provokes the fear of inauthenticity, distortion, contamination.” This is especially true of Venice, where in the course of the early modern period, Elizabeth Horodowich shows, the imperial apparatus increasingly linked language purity with obedience, loyalty, and subjecthood.103 Following the bailo’s reports from Istanbul, the Venetian council issued a letter to the new diplomatic representative on June 3, 1592 for further details, especially about Mateca’s business practices. The council reiterated rumours that the dragoman carried out business in his own interest and to the detriment of Venice. The news did not come as a complete surprise and confirmed previous accusations presented by Venetian ambassador Andrea Badoer in 1574. At the time, Mateca was temporarily suspended and his salary was cut.104 Nearly 20 years later, the council remembered the accusations and believed that it had collected sufficient evidence of the dragoman’s dubious practices. “We considered various ways,” the council’s letter reads, to “liberate” Venice from the “malignance of this man.” The council thought of commissioning an order for Mateca to travel either to Crete, officially requesting his support for the Venetian diplomatic representative on the island, or directly to Venice, alongside the sitting bailo, to avoid raising the dragoman’s suspicions. And if Mateca refused the order, he would be sacked. Another option was to poison Mateca during lunch or dinner at the Venetian diplomatic residence in Istanbul, the building complex he rented to Venice’s diplomats and their famiglia. The council’s discussion about possible ways to murder the dragoman may well have been informed by a report sent by Paolo Contarini in 1583, when Mateca was said to have an unnamed illness that may eventually “lead him to death.” If the use of poison could cause similar symptoms, would the Salvagos be suspicious? The council requested sitting bailo Matteo Zane’s opinion on this “most secretive” matter, but that he send his response in cipher. It took Zane several months to reflect on the question, seemingly indicating hesitation on

52  A Familiar Thesaurus his part. Zane carefully observed cultural loyalties—noticing, for instance, that Ottomans considered the Greeks residing Istanbul “natural enemies” of the Latin rite community of Galata. As hellenised Catholics, Salvagos embodied both categories, as well as a certain conceptual in-betweenness. And thus, Mateca did not fit the clear-cut category of a diplomatic newcomer arriving from Venice. Zane’s reply on October 15, 1592 convinced the Council of Ten to sentence Mateca to death for treason. On January 14, 1593, they began to carefully prepare for the assassination, which was now to fall within Venier’s period in office.105

Mateca’s Death and the Salvago Family Contrary to the Council of Ten’s plans from November 1593, Mateca did not die when travelling the icy mountain paths on his way to Ragusa, but months later, on October 14, 1594, at the Salvago family home in Istanbul. The dragoman had issued his last will the very same night in the presence of bailo Venier—to whom, as mentioned above, the council had suggested poisoning during dinner. Mateca’s last will, hastily issued at night, seems to confirm the use of poison. As Mateca lay dying, Venier ordered the will to be read aloud by Agostino Dolce, the bailate’s secretary and notary, in the presence of Genesino, as well as Mateca’s wife and father-in-law, Theodora and Dominico Panzano. A certain Valerio, son of Domenico di Palmi da Lodi, and Christofolo, son of a Cypriot called Piero, acted as witnesses. Dominican friar Eustachio Fontana as well as priest and general inquisitor Antonio Giustiniano had rushed from San Pietro and San Francesco in Galata to administer the last ointment.106 Mateca’s last will testifies to his notion of the self as inextricably linked with the Salvago family, its Latin rite religious identity, and its imperial service as Venetian interpreters. Mateca’s last will is also a testimony to the family’s embeddedness in the Veneto-Levantine environment of Istanbul and the business of translation. Mateca bequeathed the family vineyard, located near the house and a bakery, as well as a jewel, a memory of their recent wedding, to his wife Theodora. She was also given all domestic items, the silverware, the household’s female slave, and 3,000 akçe. Theodora was granted the right to stay and live in the house until her death, when the vineyard, house, and all mobile and immobile goods were to be split among Mateca’s three dragoman sons, Genesino, Giuliano, and Giovanni Battista. Some silverware was still with the bailo and had to be returned to Genesino and his brothers. Mateca manumitted two of the family’s slaves on the occasion of his death, but all remaining slaves—the exact number is not specified—were to serve his sons. Another 3,000 akçe was given to the Church of San Pietro to sing requiems, and the Salvago family would also provide the churches of San Pietro and San Francesco with wine annually. To be used during the Communion, a key site of the production of the early modern self, as David Sabean has pointed out, this act of charity would have

A Familiar Thesaurus  53 served the performative perpetuation of the Salvagos’ sense of community. Mateca’s sons were to oversee the sale of their father’s clothes and had to distribute the money to his sisters. A gilded sword, which Mateca stored “at the feet of my bed,” was handed down to Genesino. The sword materialised Mateca’s status and honour and seems to have been passed down for generations among the Salvagos. Worn close to the body and stored near the conjugal bed, the artefact was loaded with meanings of family lineage and unity and, at the same time, embodied the family’s Veneto-Ottoman in-betweenness, since it closely resembled an Ottoman scimitar without actually being one. Mateca made his eldest son and recipient of the sword, Genesino, the new head of the family.107 Mateca’s strong sense of lineage is also mirrored in the framing of the last will. The document starts with the first wish he expressed on his deathbed, which was to be buried at the same place as his father, Genesino the Elder. Mateca decided to end his will by nominating his eldest son as the new head of the family, and in charge of his younger dragoman brothers. For this reason, Mateca presented one very final wish to Venice. He asked Venier to send a petition to the Council of Ten, asking for Genesino to be offered an additional payment “for the merits of myself and of my father, who we have served [Venice] the entire time of our life.” These words do not lack irony—it addressed the very council that questioned his loyalty and commissioned his murder to be carried out by the very person to whom Mateca expressed this last wish. Was Mateca suspicious about the sudden cause of his death? Did the dragoman guess or maybe even know of the circumstances of his death? Did Mateca wish to see his achievements and innocence written down in the Venetian administrative archive; his perspective chronicled in the republic’s institutional memory? Did he suspect that Venice might expand its distrust to his eldest son for whom he now put in a good word, erasing any shadow that may possibly be cast on the family?108 My reading of the archival documentation certainly allows for this interpretation. Mateca refused to travel to Ragusa and Crete, the places Venetian authorities had chosen for him to die, or at least he avoided “accidents” arranged to cover his assassination. Instead, he died in his own home surrounded by his family members and the highest representatives of the embassy that he had served his entire life; a life in translation transcending casa and famiglia. It took Venice almost a year to assassinate Mateca, despite it being a matter of utmost urgency. Does this point to Mateca being cautious? Moreover, the dragoman behaved suspiciously in the days leading up to his assassination. Mateca had appeared in front of the bailo’s notary to sort out his finances. He still owed Agostino dal Ponte 300 zecchini, which he requested to be paid out of his next salary “to nullify and cut off any claims which could be made in whatever time and by whatever person in this or a similar matter.” It was noted explicitly that this notary procedure would prevent the Salvago family property to become subject to attachment in the future. Among the witnesses was Steffano Giovani, Venice’s

54  A Familiar Thesaurus grand dragoman in Istanbul and Mateca’s direct superior—an office that had already been held by Steffano’s father, Giacomo di Pera, who worked closely with Genesino the Elder. Another of di Pera’s sons, Ambrosio Grillo, was also married to Mateca’s daughter by that time.109 Mateca clearly relied on the professional and cross-generational networks of his translating business to ensure that his son’s colleagues, and Venice, knew that any future financial claims against the family resulting from his debts would be unlawful.110 For decades, Mateca had seen Venetian subjects using the bailate’s juridical power to sort their lives, especially in moments of imminent death; now he did so himself. It almost seems as if Mateca knew, or at least suspected, that the wishes of Venice could no longer be avoided. If so, a lifetime in service would have also made him experienced enough to know the potential danger of Venice condemning his entire family. This was not without reason, as the wording in Mateca’s death sentence suggests—the council was outraged about the fact that somebody, “who, together with his father and children, has had so many benefits, can be and is indeed so unfaithful and ungrateful.”111 This was a secret order but Mateca was a man trained in translating secrecies, managing networks of trust, and sensing other people’s positions and perspectives, especially those of Venetian authorities; he was a man with a particular sensitivity for words and the worlds they mean. With their decades-long experience in and cross-generational knowledge of diplomacy, Mateca was too clever not to know, and to leave a trace of him knowing. He was, after all, a translator—an expert who knows how and when not to speak. It would fit the Salvagos’ cross-generational understanding of their translating business if Mateca considered divulging his suspicions to Genesino, the future head of the casa. In the early modern household, knowledge was often passed on as exemplary stories over generations. If Mateca wished his son to avoid similar mistakes, the story of the father, whose end was now inevitable, would have been an exemplum to learn from. If passed from one generation to the next, such “life stories,” here understood in a wider sense than the written self-narrative, functioned as a resource.112 The tragic end of Mateca’s story, if passed on, would equip future generations of Salvago dragomans to behave differently, avoid trouble, and succeed in their agendas. Giovanni Antonio Grillo too seemingly learned from his grandfather’s transgressions and did not leave any doubt over his loyalty to Venice. In fact, he even ran massive espionage activities feeding Venice with information on Moldavia, as will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. Once Grillo’s activities were disclosed, the grand vizier ordered him killed in 1649 (Figure 8).113 If doubts on the dragoman’s loyalty towards Venice had caused Mateca’s assassination, absolute loyalty could also prove fatal. Genesino, therefore, would have known what it meant to raise suspicions about any knowledge of the secret murder of his father: his very own death sentence. In this way, the silence of archival documents might itself be telling.

A Familiar Thesaurus  55

Figure 8   Assassination of then-grand dragoman Giovanni Antonio Grillo, the nephew of Genesino Salvago, in 1649 (as depicted in the early 1660s). BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971, 38r. ©Giancarlo Costa/Bridgeman Images.

56  A Familiar Thesaurus Certainly, there would have been clues for Genesino to pick up on. The bailo surely distanced himself from the family to avoid casting a poor light on his own diplomatic persona. Genesino would have noticed the bailo avoiding the Salvagos and favouring other interpreters instead, like Steffano Giovani or Pasqua Navon. Giovani was even granted the unusually high advance payment of two years’ salary around the time.114 Mateca and Genesino would also have noticed the cooling of the bailo’s tone and amicability, besides the bailate’s massive investments into young translators and language students. In summer 1592, two baili, Zane and Bernardo, campaigned for Borisi to be financially rewarded for his services as a translator. Venice then decided to bump up Borisi’s annual salary of 50 ducats by 12 ducats a month—in addition to covering expenses for a personal servant.115 In his final report, Bernardo praised Borisi “for many years in a dragoman’s service with complete faith and with the greatest assiduity and diligence, and to the complete satisfaction of all our baili.” Borisi received another substantial pay raise, from 194 ducats to 250 ducats per annum, just a few months after Mateca’s death.116 In the months leading to Mateca’s assassination, also Barnabà Bruti and Girolamo Alberti, direct competitors of the Salvago dragomans, were commissioned even more work.117 Vicko Ptiković from Kotor, an experienced Serbo-Croatian interpreter working as a road dragoman for the bailate, was now granted a patent for interpreting “not only for the lingua schiava, but also Turkish,” especially since he had gained the bailo’s trust by accompanying and safeguarding “our cararavan” at “day and night.”118 This permit effectively curtailed Genesino’s ambitions and it would not have escaped his attention that Venetian authorities were investing unusually high sums of money on giovani di lingua—like Venetians Giovanni Mutio, 19, and Carlo Fasuol, 20, who were studying Ottoman, as well as Pasqual Dabri, a nephew of dragoman Cristoforo Bruti. Also the 18-year-old nephew of secretary Gabriel Cavazza, also called Gabriel, was chosen to “be sent to Constantinople for learning the Turkish language for being able to use it later in service of our Signoria [Venice] in the profession of a dragoman.” Gabriel was to join the other language students in the bailo’s residence, and the Venetian salary was supposed to cover the costs for a language teacher and textbooks. To Genesino, it must have seemed as if Venice was consciously bypassing the established Salvago dragomans.119 All of this was happening just as Genesino’s career was taking off. On the bailo’s behalf, Genesino had recently mediated Ottoman compensation claims against Zuanne da Spalato, the Venetian consul at Gallipoli, following the sinking of the Martinenga. Situated between the Aegean Sea and the Dardanelles, Gallipoli was a strategically important transhipment point, and settling the conflict quickly was of utmost importance to avoid wider disturbances in Veneto-Ottoman commerce, especially since janissaries were among those interested in financial compensation.

A Familiar Thesaurus  57 Venice ­acknowledged Genesino’s service and doubled his annual salary to 100  ­ducats. At the same time, Genesino managed to ensure that his family would benefit from the incident—his uncle was appointed by Venice to transport the merchandise  purchased to compensate the losses from the wreckage of the Martinenga.120 Three months later, in May 1593, worrisome news arrived at the bailate in Istanbul. An incident of unknown nature had occurred to Vettor Soranzo when embarking upon a journey from Thessaloniki to Chios. In  Thessaloniki, rumours spread that Soranzo might have been enslaved or died. Upon receiving the news, the bailo decided “to send immediately an express messenger [persona espresso] with a çavuş” to investigate the situation. Genesino was chosen to head to Thessaloniki to locate and, if ­necessary, free Soranzo. The money for this was to be taken from Soranzo’s own business. His commercial agents, too, were willing to pay what was at hand at their soonest convenience.121 A few months later, yet another incident occurred near Durrës that required Genesino’s involvement. The Venetian galley Gradeniga had been seized by North African corsairs, and now entered the harbour of Durrës. Onboard were several high-ranking Venetians, among them the governor of Šibenik who had been enslaved together with his two sons. Aspiring dragoman Genesino excelled in these negotiations, which included dealing with Ottoman imperial agents like Mustafa Çavuş from Vlorë. After settling the dispute, Genesino was also appointed to accompany the newly elected Venetian ambassador to Istanbul.122 These successes finally convinced Venice to allow Genesino to officially follow in Mateca’s footsteps, over a year after the assassination. Genesino was appointed Mateca’s successor as a road dragoman, with an annual salary of 110 ducats. However, Venice decided to unevenly distribute the laurels from his most recent mission. Ambrosio Grillo, who had been appointed to accompany Genesino, was formally elected the bailate’s new dragoman “with the obligation to work in everything that will be needed at our and our successors’ discretion in the service of a dragoman, without any distinction be it for official business or for the specifics of the merchants, larger and smaller ships, in as well as outside of the divan and, finally, in every place for whatever occasion” for the impressive annual salary of 150 zecchini. Thereafter, it was Grillo, not Genesino, who was selected “for the most important business pertaining to the Most Serene Republic [Venice].”123 Mateca’s assassination shattered the tediously constructed equilibrium between translation and family unity, and it was hard not to notice the harsh but unspoken Venetian policy shift away from the Salvagos. Although Genesino’s first journeys were followed by a short-term pay raise and appointment as road dragoman, this was followed by a long standstill. The Salvagos tried to minimise the impact of this on the family. The marriage of Ameda to Ambrosio in particular consolidated the Salvagos’ status

58  A Familiar Thesaurus within the social fabric of the bailate and the community of Galata-based ­dragomans. Furthermore, Ambrosio’s brother Francesco was a wealthy merchant who specialised in Veneto-Ottoman commerce. “As prototypical intermediaries networking was everything” for the Salvagos, who used kinshipping to compensate for the turbulences the family experienced after Mateca’s assassination.124 It would take until June 1600 for Venice to recognise Genesino’s “fruitful and good service,” as well as “his faith and his high intelligence,” by bumping up his salary from 56 to 150 zecchini per annum. Nevertheless, the Venetian policy shift following Mateca’s assassination had long-lasting financial consequences for the family. By March 1602, Genesino had already accumulated considerable debt and owed money to Ambrosio Grillo. Only a month later, Giuliano is on record as owing Francesco Marini another 100 zecchini. In front of the bailo’s secretary and his brothers as bailers, Giuliano declared his future salary to be debited with that amount, or to pay the debt if the new bailo disagreed with the arrangement. Giuliano also asked dragoman Tommaso Navon to be paid half of his annual salary in advance, surely to cover further outstanding debts. Financial constraints were not the only consequences the Salvagos faced.125 After Mateca’s assassination, Genesino’s career ambitions were restricted. He remained road dragoman for the rest of his life, not progressing upwards within the bailate’s fine-tuned hierarchy. The position of the road dragoman, in fact, removed Genesino as well as his younger brothers from Istanbul for extended periods of time, and thus also reduced their involvement in key diplomatic matters negotiated in the bailate or the divan. Furthermore, it limited the Salvagos’ ability to interfere in sensitive courtly intrigue.126 Simone Contarini observed in 1612 that Genesino only occasionally served the bailate, which almost gives the impression of him showing no ambition to progress further within the dragomanate. Tellingly, no children of the three Salvago brothers entered the dragomanate in the next generation.127 But others did make a career. In 1603, for instance, doge Marino Grimano made Borisi grand dragoman. Genesino was older and had served the bailate longer, so there is good reason to assume that he accepted Borisi’s appointment through gritted teeth.128 Genesino, and perhaps also his brothers, would have noticed something amiss, but were surely too experienced to leave any trace of this in the archival record. The silences in-between the words of their father, who introduced them to the practice of translation, had now become “a gulf of silence, for want of a common language” among the family—the void, to adapt Gansel’s phrase, “buried beneath the thick layer of the non-communicated, the non-communicable.”129 With Mateca’s death, the Salvagos’ lessico famigliare came to a standstill; there was a halt to the unquestioned unity between interpretation, service, and family in the flows of words and history. Mateca’s assassination would have cast doubt onto the Salvagos’ balance between diplomatic interpretation and family unity. It was an experience

A Familiar Thesaurus  59 that reshaped Genesino’s approach to translation. He was more cautious than ever, less forward pressing, and he remained in the background of diplomatic service. Genesino would go on to consciously craft and maintain the image that Venice had of him—a diplomatic, faithful imperial interpreter— in self-narratives, such as the travelogue of his journey across the Balkans in 1618, which will be discussed in depth in the following chapter. Genesino’s response, it seems, was a conscious shift towards focusing on the presentation of the self: by framing himself as a loyal servant of Venice, and by writing about himself in self-narratives. Genesino grew into a generation of Salvago dragomans, for whom the unity between translation, family, and imperial service had lost its obvious character as an indisputable reality. This generation of the Salvagos had to work and write to uphold this unity. Translating the self into the archival record of Venice, then, became an imperative.

Notes 1 Jancke and Ulbrich, “From the Individual to the Person”; Studt, “Hausund Familienbücher”; Ulbrich, “Family and House Books”; Grubb, Family Memoirs. 2 Hughes, “Families,” 157; Prosperi, “Il linguaggio della tribù.” 3 Maglaque, Venice’s Intimate Empire, 6f. 4 Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans,” 775. 5 De Vivo, “Crossroads Regions”; Zarinebaf, Mediterranean Encounters, 1. 6 Wittmann, “Masters of ‘Officialese’,” 36f. Cf. Robert, Istanbul, 44–7; Csató et al., “Linguistic Landscape.” 7 Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 6. 8 Fleet, European and Islamic Trade, 81 (quote), 91, 105. Another Sorleone Salva(i)go is mentioned in ibid., 110, 170. On the family’s involvement in the Fourth Crusade, see Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 80. 9 Bertele, Il palazzo degli ambasciatori, 141. 10 Zarinebaf, Mediterranean Encounters, 1 (“Frankish”); Davis, “Boundaries and the Sense of Self.” Cf. Bertele, Il palazzo degli ambasciatori, 123; Tagliaferri, “Being Levantines.” 11 ASV, BAC, b. 269, reg. 382, fol. 8r–10r, last will of Mateca Salvago, Pera, October  13, 1594; Wheeler, “Neighbourhoods,” 31–3; Dursteler, “Education and Identity.” To my knowledge, these churches’ sixteenth-century baptismal records did not survive. Such sources would have otherwise provided insights into the Salvagos’ use of baptisms to shape the family’s networks. 12 Dursteler, “Speaking in Tongues,” 77. 13 Boyers, “Interview with Natalia Ginzburg,” 13. 14 Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare, 20. With this decision, I follow Gudas and McPhee, “Humor.” 15 Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 26 (quote); Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore; Dursteler, “Bailo”; Pedani, “Bailo”; Hanß, “Baili.” 16 Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 23–40; Coco and Manzonetto, Baili, 107; Masters, “Dragoman”; Speelman-Özkan and Speelman-Özkan, “Dragomanni,” 54. 17 Bertele, Il palazzo degli ambasciatori, 93; Lucchetta, “Sui dragomanni,” 215; Mumcu, Venedik Baylosu’nun Defterleri, 18; Pedani, “Una piccola Venezia,” 30–2. 18 Soranzo, Diario, 61.

60  A Familiar Thesaurus 19 Rothman, “Self-Fashioning,” 126; Pedani, “Una piccola Venezia,” 30f.; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 67. 20 Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans,” 772. 21 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 9, November 9, 1617, 121r. 22 Quote in Coco and Manzonetto, Baili, 107. Cf. Hanß, “Udienza und Divan-ı Hümayun.” 23 Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans,” 783. 24 ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, fol. 165r f., June 4, 1613. 25 Aslanyan, Dancing on Ropes, 82. 26 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 44. 27 Gürçağlar, “Representations,” 241f. Cf. Gürkan, “His Bailo’s Kapudan.” 28 Briggs, This Little Art, 37. 29 Albèri, Relazioni, III/1, 104. 30 ASV, DT, no. 190, 426, 431; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 49f., 118f. 31 ASV, DT, no. 689; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 174. 32 Albèri, Relazioni, III/1, 103f. (quote), 180. 33 Quote after Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans,” 785. 34 Albèri, Relazioni, III/1, 181. 35 ASV, BAC, b. 269, 168v, January 10, 1595 (MV); Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 413. 36 Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore, 96; Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni, XIV, 161, 163; ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 380, 28r f., February 16, 1592 (MV). 37 Albèri, Relazioni, III/1, 103f. 38 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 76; Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans,” 785. 39 Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 31. 40 Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 36, 81, 96; Aslanyan, Dancing on Ropes, 6. 41 Aslanyan, Dancing on Ropes, 2. 42 A 1611 document states that Genesino was 31 years in service as a dragoman. ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 1r, July 9, 1611. 43 Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni, XIV, 392. 44 Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 417. 45 Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 417. Cf. Masters, “Dhimmi.” 46 Dursteler, “Speaking in Tongues,” 67 (quote); Bertele, Il palazzo degli ambasciatori, 141; Dursteler, “Education and Identity,” 291; Rothman, “SelfFashioning,” 126; Csató et al., “Linguistic Landscape,” 3; Kahane, Kahane, and Tietze, Lingua Franca. 47 Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 14. 48 Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare, 20; Tagliaferri, “Being Levantines.” 49 Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 417. On other dragomans providing their sons with domestic language lessons, see Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 36f. 50 Dursteler, “Education and Identity,” 294–6. 51 Csató et al., “Linguistic Landscape,” 3 (quote); Ferguson, Proper Order of Things. 52 Maglaque, Venice’s Intimate Empire, 30–6, 32 (quote). 53 Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 417. On the importance of mistakes in a translator’s formation process, see Briggs, This Little Art, 86. 54 Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 417. 55 Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 3, 8, 6f., 18, as well as 101, 104; Ginzburg, Family Sayings, 23f. 56 Lucchetta, “Sui dragomanni,” 215; Coco and Manzonetto, Baili, 109. 57 Coco and Manzonetto, Baili, 107f.; Lucchetta, “Sui dragomanni,” 215; Yerasimos, “Istrian Dragomans”; Gardina, “Alla Turca”; Luca, “Bailaggio veneto”; Speelman-Özkan and Speelman-Özkan, “Dragomanni,” 54, 63, 66f.; Noel Malcolm, Agents of Empire; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 29 et al.

A Familiar Thesaurus  61 143r, v

58 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, June 8, 1619. 59 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 218 , September 29, 1619. 60 ASV, BAC, b. 272, vol. 387, 48r f., November  20, 1600; Fleet, European and Islamic Trade, 81 (quote), 91, 105, 136. 61 ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 379, 4v f., June  25, 1591; ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 380, 14v f., January 28, 1592 (MV); ASV, BAC, b. 272, vol. 387, 26v, October 21, 1600 (­“medicine cannot be given to others […]”); Pedani, La dimora della pace, 168. Cf. Lucchetta, “Il medico del bailaggio”; Masters, “Dragoman.” 62 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 44; 250 (quote). 63 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 44. In 1611, Borisi was serving as grand dragoman ASV, BAC, b. 277, protocollo of bailo Simone Contarini, 105v, November 5, 1611. 64 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 250–3, here 250f. 65 ASV, BAC, b. 277, protocollo of bailo Simone Contarini, 36r f., April 20, 1611; 69r, August 9, 1611. On camlets, Jacoby, “Camlet Manufacture”; Arbel, “Jews in International Trade,” 84. 66 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 251f. 67 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 250–3, 252. 68 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 49–79; Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans.” 69 This case will be discussed in more depth in Natalie Rothman’s forthcoming work. Cf. Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans,” 779; De Vivo, “Pharmacies.” 70 ASV, BAC, b. 277, protocollo of bailo Simone Contarini, May  13, 1611. Thus far, the name of Giovanni Antonio Grillo’s mother has been unknown, Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 119f. 71 ASV, BAC, b. 277, protocollo of bailo Simone Contarini, May 13, 1611. 72 Bertele, Il palazzo degli ambasciatori, 93; Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni, XIV, 168. 73 Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 120, 123f., though Ameda has not been identified as Grillo’s mother thus far. 74 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 34. 75 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no.  18, December  8, 1617, 204r–8v, 208r f. (quote); no.  22, December 26, 1617, 242v; no. 28, December 10, 1617, 229r; ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 11, May 10, 1618, 111v. On dragomans’ role in the networks of the French embassy, see Vogel, “‘Cy-devant secrétaire de l’ambassade’,” 155f. 76 Davis, Gift. 77 ASV, BAC, b. 272, vol. 387, 48r f., November 20, 1600; ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 100v–1v, October 24, 1612; Varlik, Plague. 78 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 133v f., April 6, 1619 (quote). On the grand vizier’s intervention, see ASV, SDC, filza 87, March 10, 1619, 72v. I borrow my phrasing from Pedani, “Culture of Trust.” 79 ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 228v f., January  10, 1613 (MV); Dursteler, “Bailo.” On Scaramelli, see ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 1v f., August 2, 1611. For Giovanni Carlo’s interaction with dragomans during his time in office, see ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 54v, November 22, 1590. 80 Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans,” 783. A similar argument has been made for Ottoman scribes specialised in the drafting of petitions for the imperial council, Wittmann, “Masters of ‘Officialese’.” On the bailate’s jurisdiction, Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople. 81 ASV, BAC, b.  268, vol.  380, 28r–9r, February  16 and 19, 1592 (MV); 49v f., September 15, 1593. In April 1595, Genesino served as testimony for debts to be paid by a citizen from Naxos. ASV, DT, no. 1082; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 277. 82 ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 380, 17v f., June 14, 1593; 47v–9r, August 30, September 3, and September 5, 1593; 60r, November 4, 1593.

62  A Familiar Thesaurus 83 ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 100v, October 24, 1612. 84 ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 381, 46r, September 27, 1592. 85 Matuz, “ Pfortendolmetscher,” 26–60; Bozkurt and Şakiroğlu, “Tercüman”; Veinstein, “Ottoman Administration.” 86 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 9, November 9, 1617, 122r. 87 Miović, “Dragomano,” 90. 88 Çiçek, “Interpreters of the Court”; Hanß, “Baili,” 39. 89 Veinstein, “L’administration ottoman.” 90 Ferguson, Proper Order of Things. 91 Csató et al., “Linguistic Landscape,” 16. 92 Albèri, Relazioni, III/1, 103. Cf. Lucchetta, “La scuola”; Lucchetta, “Lo studio.” 93 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 44. On converting language ­students, see Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore, 42; Preto, Venezia e i Turchi, 103. 94 Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 417; ASV, SDelM, filza 218, August 4, 1618. 95 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 252f. 96 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 430. 97 ASV, XDelSeg, reg. 13, 114v–5v, November 12 and 15, 1593. 98 Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 413f. 99 Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore, 19 (“the emir of the camlets”); Pedani, Inventory, 10f. Janissary Ahmed b. Abdullah and Abdi Çavuş Emir b. Emir Ahmed acted as each other’s testimony in the respective procedure regarding the nomination of Mateca. 100 Quoted from Malcolm, Agents of Empire, 367. 101 Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 414. 102 Durstler, “Bailo,” 15. Cf. Pillinini, “Bernardo”; Preto, I servizi segreti, 76–8. 103 Venuti, Scandals of Translation, 31 (quote); Horodowich, Language and Statecraft. This is in contrast to everyday plurilingualism in Renaissance Venice, Cortelazzo, Venezia, 27–58. 104 Lamansky, Secrets d’Etat, 102–5. 105 ASV, XDelSeg, reg.  13, 95r f., June  3, 1592; 114v, 12  November 1593; Albèri, Relazioni, III/3, 247, 388. 106 ASV, BAC, b. 269, reg. 382, 8r–10r, last will of Mateca Salvago, October 13, 1594. On Mateca’s self as situated in the wider Catholic and Venetian community of Galata, cf. Bamji, “Catholic Life Cycle.” 107 ASV, BAC, b. 269, reg. 382, 8r–10r, last will of Mateca Salvago, October 13, 1594; Bhabha, Location of Culture, 122, 127; Sabean, “Production of the Self.” 108 ASV, BAC, b. 269, reg. 382, fol. 8r–10r, last will of Mateca Salvago, October 13, 1594. 109 ASV, BAC, b. 269, 12r–3r, September 24, 1594. Cf. ASV, BAC, b. 277, protocollo of bailo Simone Contarini, May 13, 1611; ASV, XDelSeg, reg. 13, 95r f., June 3, 1592; 114v–5v, November 12 and 15, 1593. 110 ASV, BAC, b. 269, reg. 382, 12r–3r, September 24, 1594. 111 ASV, XDelSeg, reg. 13, 95r, June 3, 1592. 112 Niyazioğlu, Dreams and Lives, 1 (quote); Jancke and Ulbrich, “From the Individual to the Person”; Jancke and Schläppi, Ökonomie sozialer Beziehungen; Studt, “Haus- und Familienbücher.” 113 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 67. A more detailed discussion follows in Chapter 3. 114 ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 89r f., February 15, 1590 (MV). On these dragomans, see also ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 34v, 46v f., October 22, 1590. 115 ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 381, 52v–4r, July 25, 1592. 116 ASV, BAC, b. 269, 41v f., 1594. 117 ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 380, 17 Ramadan 999 AH/July 1, 1591 (sic); half-moon during Shawwal 1000 AH/c. August 1, 1592; ASV, BAC, b. 269, 1r, July 24, 1594.

A Familiar Thesaurus  63 r

118 ASV, BAC, b. 269, 17 , March 7, 1594 (quote). On Ptiković’s earlier service as street dragoman for Lorenzo Bernardo, see ASV, BAC, b.  267, vol.  379, 4r f., June 22, 1591. 119 ASV, BAC, b. 269, 1r, October 23, 1593 (quote); 6r, February 15, 1593 (MV); ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 381, 51v f., June 25, 1592; 69v, April 1593; 128v–9r, December 13, 1593. 120 ASV, BAC, b. 269, 9r–12r, February 25, 1593 (MV)–March 1, 1594; ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 381, 150v, January 26, 1593 (MV). For Genesino’s pay raise, see ASV, BAC, b. 269, 52v, August 25, 1594. 121 ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 381, 75r, May 27, 1593. 122 ASV, BAC, b. 269, 168r f., January 10, 1595 (MV). 123 ASV, BAC, b. 269, 154v f., November 1, 1595; 168r f., January 10, 1595 (MV); 210v, June 8, 1596. 124 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 50 (quote); Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 119. 125 ASV, BAC, b. 272, vol. 387, 1r, June 16, 1600 (quotes); 206r, March 1, 1602; 217r, April 2, 1602; 217v, April 4, 1602. 126 I thank Natalie Rothman for drawing my attention to this point. 127 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 251f. I have not come across documents that mention children of Genesino and Giovanni Battista; however, Giuliano had at least one child. ASV, SDelC, filza 14, March 30, 1619. 128 Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 113f. 129 Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 15f.

Klis, Croatia, August 19, 2017, 8 am

I arrive at the former Ottoman castle of Klis, now a set of ruins partly grown over by vegetation and impressively located on the peak of a mountain site with a straight view to both the Balkan inlands and the Adriatic coast. To Genesino Salvago, this was the last castle on Ottoman soil on his lengthy journey, a short stopover before continuing his travels down an impressive valley leading to the Mediterranean Sea, entering what was Venetian territory in 1618. The castle features a magnificent view over what has been the seventeenth-century VenetoOttoman imperial border zone. The Dalmatian hinterlands behind me, and the Adriatic coast in front of me—and worlds in between, worlds that in-between protagonists, like the Salvagos, inhabited and furnished (Figure 14, p. 87). But it was me who stood amidst all this. Travelling large parts of Genesino’s journey 400 years later was a fundamental decision. It shaped the ways I conducted research and how this research has impacted the ways I have written this book. Above all, it made me think about what we are doing, as historians, and how historical fieldwork benefits from broader methodological reflections, most prominently those developed by anthropologists reflecting on the nature and problems of fieldwork. Much has been written about “archive fever” and “the allure of the archives,” in short, historians’ affective relationship with historical documentation, the “eerie intimacy” growing amid the moment of encounter in the field of historical research.1 “Finding out and writing about people,” Jill Lepore states, “is a tricky work. It is necessary to balance intimacy with distance while at the same time being inquisitive to the point of invasiveness. Getting too close to your subject is a major danger, but not getting to know her well enough is just as likely.”2 I am guilty of many of this. Having travelled hundreds of archives and libraries in my life, I know too well what “archive fever” is, or at least what it means to me. In the process of writing this book, family members and friends caught me speaking about Genesino as “my interpreter” and “my spy,” or, even worse, the Salvagos as “my family” when addressing the subject and content of my book. And I am also convinced that more documents await to be discovered in Mediterranean archives and that such sources will shed further light on this family. Writing these paragraphs allows me to lay bare what Lepore calls the historian’s balancing act.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-4

66  Klis, Croatia, August 19, 2017, 8 am The decision to travel along parts of Genesino’s journey led me to more than archives. It put my mind into a state of reflection on historical observation as taking place in an epistemic space that is shaped by interaction, ­participation, and unfolding relationships, a field that requires self-analysis throughout. Such thinking relates historians’ research with discussions about “participant ­observation,” and all its chances and challenges that anthropologists have rightly detailed.3 Such observations should not be too unfamiliar among historians of the early modern Mediterranean, especially when calling to mind Fernand Braudel’s excitement about visiting the archives in Dubrovnik. No history of the early modern Mediterranean could be written, he claims, without consulting the archival holdings of Dubrovnik, and gazing the city’s harbour he felt catapulted back in time.4 Rightly so, anthropologists therefore call for a frame of analysis that “enclose[s] researchers and researched.”5 Such considerations prompted me to make the story of how data survives and how such information is collated and processed into a narrative part of the interpretation. It provoked me to think of historical research as more than archive. Doing so poses questions on the epistemics of research and writing, and how both relate, here understood in the sense of Walter Benjamin.6 If we consider fieldwork a “relational process,” then enquiring our own position and the conditions of research encourages reflections on how we relate, as ­historians, through fieldwork itself.7 Such reflections invite historians to uncover difference in perspectives and to take these positions, as well as the notion of difference as such, seriously.8 It draws attention to the conditions of knowledge production itself and the ways writing shapes representation.9 By doing so, it expands the stories we write (about) and the stories we tell—it widens reflections on what Natalie Zemon Davis calls “the historian’s compact with the past,” and what Benjamin understands as storytelling.10 My writing experience was manifold, multi-layered, and interrupted, also since I composed the index of one of my previous monographs on the Battle of Lepanto in a public bus while travelling Bosnian Mountains. In the archives, I transcribed texts and put down notes but my notes soon expanded the realm of archives and stretched towards the actual journey, comprising travels and experiences, which made me think about the writing of travelogues as a cultural practice, a practice that itself has a history, and that is related to different ways of writing and speaking about the self. I stopped penning notes on the journey, however, when my laptop crashed in the archive in Zadar. I went to buy a new one and a large part of the very first and very different draft of this book has been written on a Croatian keyboard after returning from daily visits to the archive, which was then rewritten, again, in the years to come. Like translation itself, writing this book has been a kind of rewriting, and recontextualising, which in itself is, in many regards, at the heart of the historian’s profession.11 The journey was key in writing this book, also since my travels remained unfinished. I travelled from Venice via Zadar, Split, and Dubrovnik to Sarajevo and Belgrade but the global pandemic cancelled my plans to do a second trip, from Istanbul to Sarajevo, where I had planned to finish this book.

Klis, Croatia, August 19, 2017, 8 am  67 Writing large parts of this monograph in Manchester and Cambridge instead, travel notes became crucial again. Taking my notes, transforming them into a new text, and writing about the journey also helped me relate to the materials that are the basis of my research when writing this book under challenging ­circumstances. Writing in times of COVID made me notice how much experiences of travel and archival encounters shape the books that I am writing. This insight has informed the process of researching, thinking, and writing this book, and writing about this helps me bringing to live the experience of research at the time of a global pandemic—experiences crucial for my work as a historian, since they are a way to test the ways we connect and relate. Encounters in the field matter. I used public busses to travel from Venice to Sarajevo, which itself evoked experiences and reflections on pace and landscapes, which made me realise their prominence in Genesino’s travelogue. A  Sarajevo taxi driver changing the licence plate of his car in a backstreet before entering the Republika Srpska caused unsettling reflections on what borders are and what they do. It is how we travel that (un)makes borders. The many experiences during such a journey drew my attention towards the relationship between mobility, writing, and space, as will be discussed in Chapter 2; the cultural variety as well as the different positions, perspectives, and agendas involved in the region, key to Chapter 3; and the region as a space that provokes writing and reflection about the self, as discussed in Chapter 4. Back to Klis, August 19, 2017, 8 am. I had admired the landscape and resonated over past lives and centuries for quite a while already, when the first tourists arrived in a rented car—a United Sikh family. The parents, their two sons, and I started a conversation, and the American family explained, with sparkling eyes, the significance of this castle. It turned out that this was a filming site of Game of Thrones—I honestly had no clue what that was and confusion grew when a pyramid-like construction was mentioned. In return, I laid out the significance of the castle for Veneto-Ottoman border contacts in the early modern period. We exchanged views and perspectives, until the father sighingly concluded that, “even without Game of Thrones, this is a beautiful place.” Further, tourists came to take pictures of what they considered a Hollywood blockbuster world, and I studied the fortress, its buildings, streets, stones, and the pottery excavated for hours before returning to the main square of the mountain village. There, I drank some cold bottled yoghurt that reminded me of a Turkish ayran, waiting for the bus to take me back to nearby Split. I started to think about the different perspectives involved in one world, ­multiple positions that shape the world we live in. As a translator, Genesino was an expert in sensing, interpreting, and negotiating multipositionality, as will be outlined in more depth in Chapter 3. But if translation is a form of contextualisation, isn’t a historian, too, some kind of contextualising, translating interpreter of different experiences in the past?12 I turned to the theoretical writings of translators to reflect on the interpreting historian as a writing translator, and I was captivated by what Mireille Gansel writes, in the words

68  Klis, Croatia, August 19, 2017, 8 am of translator Ros Schwartz, when travelling the Alps to reflect on the writing experiences of Eugenie Goldstein, whose work Gansel was to translate: It was only while I was finishing this translation, while I was staying in that little valley enclosed by a glacier, that I was able to understand the extent to which this language and this body of work had escaped, transgressing all the boundaries being put in place in inter-war Europe. I remember clearly how, one morning as the snows were melting, as I sat at the ancient table beneath the blackened beams, it suddenly dawned on me that the stranger was not the other, it was me. I was the one who had everything to learn, everything to understand, from the other. That was probably my most essential lesson in translation.13 I read this statement again and again, myself captivated, and found so much to resonate with my experience of conducting historical research and I started to read Genesino’s comments on the snow-covered Balkan Mountains anew, sensing a different tone, in a way that strangely related his and my own travels, and their very different experiences, as well as the writing it entailed. By writing this book about Genesino and the wider Salvago family, I came to realise “that I was part of their story too, of what they passed on into history.”14 This is the very starting point to further reflect on the relationality of fieldwork itself.15 Back to Klis, August 19, 2017. A while had passed since I finished my visit of the fortress, waiting on the main square for the bus to bring me back to Split. Meanwhile, the temperature had increased to 36 degrees. This is the moment I met Filip Mihajlović, who told me that no bus would depart for the rest of that day. We walked together for a while until arriving at a bar where we took a seat to drink a coffee. After a while, Filip jumped on his feet and told me to join him running for a bus that I had not have even seen. We took the bus together, changed the vehicle at another station, and finally arrived at the Hrvatsko narodno kazalište, the Croatian National Theatre in Split. There are many reasons for which I am grateful to have met Filip, most importantly our open conversations. He spoke about the complex relationship between the past and present, the extent to which the scarcity of goods has shaped ways of living over a long period of time, and the ways he understands his connection with the past—emphasising, again and again, his own Bosnian-Ottoman ancestry. At times, the past can have a strange Nachleben, to quote Aby Warburg, and I remember noticing a HAJDUK USKOK graffiti that referenced so much more than the local football clubs. I remember most vividly the emphasis with which Filip spoke about his life: “this is the Balkans,” he said, and it is his words that I recall when writing that this book is a Balkan story. What do I mean? Too often, the word has been abused as a label that conceals heterogeneity, difference, and variety, and too often it has been used to legitimise an outsider’s perspective, by people travelling to an area that was considered different, often disconnected.16 But Filip reminds us that the term also functions as a means to put the peninsula, in

Klis, Croatia, August 19, 2017, 8 am  69 all its variety, centre stage in the stories we tell, and in stories about the self. As a Balkan story, this book about a dragoman’s self-narrative has become a microhistory that spans the entire early modern Mediterranean. Genesino’s travelogue is more than the story of an Ottoman subject and his Venetian self-fashioning; it is shaped by the experiences on the ground. Reconstructing such complex contexts helps reflecting on his understanding of the profession of interpretation itself, as detailed in Chapter 2, different early modern Balkan protagonists and agendas involved, as reconstructed in Chapter 3, and a space that mobilised the institutional lives of the Salvagos, as examined in Chapter 4, when ever more Balkan newcomers arrived in the bailate, and when travelling these heterogenous regions caused the dragoman to reflect and write about himself. Recontextualising Genesino’s journey as a Balkan story introduces a whole range of notions into discourses about the connections and ­disconnections of the early modern Mediterranean—translation, multipositionality, heterogeneity, and fragmentation, among many others, complexify our understanding of the dragoman’s world.

Notes 1 Derrida, Archive Fever; Farge, Allure of the Archives; Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much,” 129. 2 Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much,” 129. 3 Schwartz and Green Schwartz, “Problems”; Barley, Innocent Anthropologist; Rosaldo, “The Fieldworker and the Inquisitor”; DeWalt, DeWalt, and Wayland, “Participant Observation.” 4 Braudel, Mediterranean, vol. 2, annex; Maglaque, “Occurrences.” 5 Herzfeld, “Practical Mediterraneanism,” 52. 6 Benjamin, Illuminations, 82, 107. 7 Spencer and Davies, Anthropological Fieldwork. 8 Geertz, “‘From the Native’s Point of View’”; Medick, “‘Missionare im Ruderboot’?”; Blackhawk and Wilner, Indigenous Visions. 9 Clifford and Marcus, Writing Culture; Marcus, “Ethnography Two Decades After Writing Culture.” 10 Davis, “Narrative,” 163; Benjamin, Illuminations, 82, 107. 11 Lefevere, Translation; Bloch, The Historian’s Craft. 12 Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 85; Briggs, This Little Art, 114. 13 Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 105. 14 Joyce, My Father’s House, 2. 15 Spencer and Davies, Anthropological Fieldwork. 16 Bracewell, “Balkan Travel Writing”; Todorova, Imagining the Balkans; Todorova, Scaling the Balkans.

2 Translation, Space, and Mobility The Balkan Travels of Genesino Salvago

[…] confidants [persone confidenti], skilled in matters of transition [pratiche del passaggio], and who also have the intelligence of different languages. A Venetian authority’s definition of the skill set of good VenetoOttoman interpreters. Državni Arhiv u Zadru, Zadar, Croatia (DAZD), 1 (Generalni Providuri), 2 (Provveditore Generale di Dalmazia ed Albania Giustinian Antonio Bellegno, 1617–22), 110r, Kotor, March 1622.

The Self in Motion: Towards an Early Modern Theory of the Interpreter’s Mobile Self This chapter examines the interpreter’s spatial mobility, and thus the ­complex relationship between translation, space, and movement in Genesino Salvago’s Balkan self-narrative. I study the extent to which the dragoman could narrate subjecthood and subjectivity by foregrounding the discussion of experience while journeying imperial spaces in the Balkans. The description of infrastructures, landscapes, and border-crossing, I argue, was a crucial means to uphold the notion of loyalty since it allowed Genesino to convincingly narrate what early modern contemporaries would consider a dragoman’s expertise in “transition” or “crossing” (passaggio). Venetian authorities used this term in 1622, for instance, to specify the most desirable characteristics of the profession (mestiero) when discussing the appointment of an unnamed man as a future Veneto-Ottoman interpreter active in the region of Kotor. Dragomans shall be “confidants [persone confidenti], skilled in matters of transition [pratiche del passaggio], and who also have the intelligence of different languages.”1 Linguistic proficiency, hence, was just one element in a larger portfolio of skills pertaining to the gathering of information, collation and safekeeping of secrets, and, most importantly, experience in matters of passaggio. Venetian authorities defined dragomans as practitioners of translation and transition; accordingly, their successful service was understood in terms of expertise in mobility.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-5

Translation, Space, and Mobility  71 The firm links between notions of self, mobility, and space in Genesino’s Balkan travelogue resonate with Renaissance theories of translation. Then, space was key to the concept of translation, which was defined as both the activity of “transporting” (trasportare) and “transferring” or “translating” (traslatare). As Umberto Eco highlights, early modern semantics of translation encompass both “the passage from transporting something from one place to another” and “translating from one language to another.”2 The leading Italian dictionary during the period of Salvago’s travels, the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, contains a 1623 entry which states that “to translate” (tradurre) has the original meaning of “transplanting” but that it has come to mean also “translate into the vernacular [volgarizzare] or to translate [traslatare].” Another entry defines “to translate” (traslatare) as “to transport [trasportare] from one place to another place,” only to add: “To reduce the writings and the compositions of one language into another one is today also called ‘to translate’ [tradurre].” “Translation” (traslazione), then, is defined in terms of both language and space: Il traslatare, trasportamento. In early modern Italian, therefore, translation was intrinsically linked with notions of space and mobility.3 Spatial mobility, I argue, is key to the interpreter’s understanding of translation. As a road dragoman (dragomanno da strada), Genesino’s main tasks were to accompany Venetian baili or ambassadors on their journeys, as well as to conduct journeys on their behalf. The deep links between language, space, and mobility in the road dragoman’s professional ethos and practice thus trained Genesino to think of the profession of a translator and the practice of translation in terms of spatial mobility. He was constantly on the move. Moving back and forth between places and words shaped the dragoman’s sense of self. To him, motion was central to narrate belonging. In the Balkans, Genesino would have encountered what Fernand Braudel calls “one of the most distinctive characteristics of the [early modern] Mediterranean world”: transhumance.4 Considering “the long, slow movement of the flocks to distant places, in search of the greenest pastures, the low plains in winter and the high valleys in summer” inspires translators to conceptualise “the transhumance routes of translation, the slow and patient crossing of countries, all borders eradicated, the movement of huge flocks of words through all the vernaculars of the umbrella language of poetry,” or, as in the case of Genesino, the umbrella world of Venetian imperial service.5 The road dragoman’s journey resonated with a self in motion—a form of life for making a living. To him, translation was a constant journey, both metaphorically and literally; he did not always take the most direct route, with the journey comprising back-and-forth and sideways movements; as Mireille Gansel says: “Translation is also about taking the byways that lead to distant places.”6 To write about travelling, then, allowed Genesino to show himself as a “translator at work” without writing about translation as such.7 This self-narrative introduces the road dragoman’s “arena of translation”: the road, the street, the experience of encounter when being on the

72  Translation, Space, and Mobility move, the experience of mobility itself.8 By writing a self-narrative in the shape of an itinerary, Genesino foregrounds the kind of fieldwork involved in the profession of a road dragoman at a time when contemporary discourse on linguistic expertise revalued such work.9 His notion of the self was thus grounded in the practice of translation as experienced through motion and mobility. To narrate faithful service, then, recounting a self in motion and mobility in space was crucial. This spatial interpretation is also mirrored in the dragomanate’s own understanding of translation as movement. When commissioning the Italian and Ottoman translation of letters in November 1617, bailo Almorò Nani asked dragomans and dragomans-in-training to “copy them [the letters] in Turkish […] and to transport them [trasportarle] also into our language.” The use of the verb “transport,” here, is indicative of the bailo’s general understanding of such an undertaking. Linguistic translation comprised actual transportation: an act of transferring, moving, carrying words from one language to another. Also the bailo’s grand dragoman considered interpretation in terms of mobility. “The larger the issues,” Genesino’s direct superior said during an audience with the grand mufti (şeyhülislam) in 1617, “the more it beseems to walk in them, step by step [caminar in esse à passo à passo].” The dragoman considered translation as negotiation: a space to walk within, a path to go down, a slow moving back and forth, steps to take from each side of the terrain of words, positions, and meanings, to negotiate a middle ground, a space of encounter. Such phrases testify to these interpreters’ own understanding of translation as movement. Thus, mobility was key to the profession and practice of dragomans, and was particularly so for road dragomans like Genesino.10 As much as Venetian authorities valued dragomans’ expertise in cultural mobility, transition, and crossing, however, it was exactly this mobility of the self that had become a source of suspicion, especially in the case of the Salvagos. In the Venetian imperial gaze, the Salvago dragomans were Christian but Ottoman subjects, versatile and mobile across the two imperial realms. This, to adapt from Homi Bhabha, turned Genesino into a ­“recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite.”11 Since the Venetian imperial discourse helped produce the uncertainties of the dragoman’s cultural positioning, Genesino’s s­elf-narrative aims at the textual erasure of what Bhabha calls the “not quite.” Writing the Balkan self-narrative over two decades after the assassination of his father, Genesino left no doubt as to where his loyalties lay. Shaped by decades of service, the dragoman carefully crafted the interpreter’s persona. Writing about the mobile self, Genesino signalled his loyalty towards Venice so as to allay any possible suspicion. The dragoman had to narrate mobility alongside his embeddedness in the imperial machinery. Detailing the meanings of the early modern concept of passaggio, this chapter explores the ways in which Genesino made use of this wider understanding of an interpreter’s imperial service when narrating the self in

Translation, Space, and Mobility  73 transition through space. The self-narrative’s focus on spatial ­mobility, I  argue, e­nabled the interpreter to showcase his expertise in cultural ­transition. In fact, translating spatial transition, geographical mobility, and proficiency in cultural translation into a text about border-crossing was itself a literary enterprise to express subjecthood. Salvago’s narrative techniques in presenting Balkan imperial sites, landscapes, and travel infrastructures serve as a vehicle to compose a Third Space, sensu Bhabha, that translates passaggio into selfhood. This chapter examines how the dragoman “deploy[s] the cultural hybridity of their borderline conditions to ‘translate’, and therefore reinscribe, the social imaginary of both metropolis and [empire].”12 To study Genesino’s self-narrative about the Balkans as a Third Space allows for a deeper examination of the dragoman’s “desire of recognition,” the itinerary’s use for the interpreter’s “performance of identity as iteration, the re-creation of the self in the world of travel.” As a ­self-narrative, the travelogue helps the dragoman embellish a matrix of identification and “the ­production of an image of identity.”13 A narrative focus on space was key. In doing so, Genesino turned mobility into a narrative arena to shape the self with regard to imperial subjecthood, service, and expertise. The road dragoman made use of practices of translation when conducting diplomatic negotiations and translating geographical mobility into writing. To him, writing about spatial mobility across Southeastern Europe was a vital means to locate the self firmly within the Venetian imperial realm—the point of departure and arrival of this self-­ narrative. When starting the travelogue with his departure from the bailate and ending the text with his arrival in Split and Trogir, Genesino deployed a distinct Venetian lens to imperial topography and firmly anchored the dragoman’s narrative self in the social cosmos of the bailate. Moreover, writing about the actual journey allowed the dragoman to showcase his skills in the production of knowledge that was of use for Venetian political decision-making. As will be discussed in more detail in this chapter, the main purpose of Genesino’s travels was to gather information about a possible future inland journey of the high-ranking Venetian dedicatee of the text, newly appointed ambassador Francesco Contarini. The self-narrative, in this sense, also demonstrated the significance of the service of mobile imperial agents like the Salvagos. By situating the dragoman’s narrative self in contexts of spatial mobility, this chapter builds on literary and spatial studies, critical cultural theory, as well as on historians’ earlier research on “spaces of the self.”14 Moreover, I follow the recent call in translation studies for “a multiscalar approach to transit and translation in early modern Europe.”15 Translations are mediated through travels, Guyda Armstrong has argued, and calls for “a much more decentred, multiple, multilingual, horizontal and, most of all, mobile model of how literary texts actually function and are made in the [early modern] period.” Translation studies hence call for translations to be contextualised “as products of a geographically situated practice”—in the case

74  Translation, Space, and Mobility of Genesino, his Southeastern European encounters and the ­experience of travelling itself.16 Moreover, I build on the above-outlined early m ­ odern theory of translation as spatial mobility to reconsider its impact on ­ Genesino’s notion of a self in motion. This chapter starts by examining his focus on the infrastructure of travelling—streets, bridges, caravanserais, and provisions in particular—before discussing the dragoman’s descriptions of Balkan landscapes. Both served him as a means to situate his work within a narrative plot and to locate himself within the Venetian imperial world. I will then discuss Genesino’s border-crossing in the triangle of Klis, Split, and Trogir to conceptualise his understanding of passaggio. Salvago designed the self-narrative as a resource, as I outline at the end of this chapter, which allowed him to claim expertise as an imperial interpreter crossing the Ottoman Balkans in Venetian imperial service.

Situating the Self: The Infrastructure of Travelling The self-narrative focuses on the practicalities and the infrastructure of travelling. A fine-tuned temporal frame helped Genesino write about spatial mobility. The passing of days structures the report; in fact, the dragoman’s prose is guided by diurnal chronometry. Genesino records days, times, and even the hours that he spent riding on horseback. At times, the muezzin’s call to prayer structures his travelogue. For instance, he arrived in Lüleburgaz during the noon prayer and departed for Plovdiv right before the call for the first morning prayer. Christian feast days, however, are not mentioned. The Catholic dragoman travelled from Sofia to Dragoman on Easter Sunday without attending mass and without making any note of festivities in the text. The narrative flow of time structures the dragoman’s journey. Time situates the author’s self as an onward movement when traversing space, clocking the pace of travel and mobility.17 The duration of Genesino’s day trips differed considerably. In Edirne, he departed an hour before the start of the day, while on other occasions, he times his departure for two or three hours before sunset. Often, he simply states that he starts his trips at dawn. Sometimes, Salvago reached his destinations around noon, but arrived in places like Plovdiv, Ihtiman, Smederevska Palanka, Šabac, and Sarajevo in the afternoon, and in Paraćin at around 10 pm. For the most part, Genesino preferred early departures to end his day trips in the early afternoon, giving him enough time to recover from the demands of travel, and to mingle with locals upon arrival. On April 15, Genesino left Sofia around midnight and arrived in Dragoman at noon. A day later, he left the village at dawn and arrived at his next destination at about 2 pm. Early departures minimised the risk of being ambushed by “bad people” (mala gente), as he terms hajduk brigades. Genesino was very suspicious of these communities of militiamen, which had established looting and plundering economies that subverted Ottoman imperial authority in Southeastern Europe. In his description of hajduks, Genesino speaks

Translation, Space, and Mobility  75 as a member of the Istanbul metropolitan elite who adapts travel routines to avoid such encounters. Early departures also granted Genesino more time to conduct activities at his destinations. For instance, he departed Grocka very early to have more time in Belgrade upon his arrival at 8 am. In general, Genesino tended to stay in larger cities for several nights to grant himself and the horses a rest, and to operate on the ground. The dragoman stayed one day in Plovdiv, Sofia, and Šabac, two and a half days in Edirne, and three days in Belgrade and Sarajevo.18 The semanticisation of space, first and foremost, works via the description of times of travelling. Genesino had plenty of other ways to compose the narrative but opted for this textual strategy to make the journey itself visible. In doing so, the dragoman made the passaggio the main topic of the narrative. Addressing transition and mobility as a field of action enables the author to address his persona as the main protagonist, a truly skilled dragoman who is “practised in matters of transition.”19 This also foregrounds the velocity of the journey. Genesino travelled, on average, a distance of 43 km daily. While the journey between Belgrade and Istanbul would normally take an ambassador between 26 and 30 days without counting breaks, Salvago travelled the same distance in only 22 days, or 26 days if breaks are considered, despite his disability.20 The narrative framing of spatial mobility as velocity has an impact on the pace of the text. The travelogue reads as if its protagonist was in haste, a traveller without time; it documents a journey conducted with determination and without distraction. Time is indeed precious in the interpreter’s world, since translation requires its own time: time to engage with authors’ perspectives and to test out wordings, time “to get interested or invested in” texts. As Kate Briggs highlights, “translation demands a certain, ­un-condensable time with a work and therefore, also, with the questions animating that work, the questions the translator brings to it and the further questions that will inevitably arise from the gestures of translating it.”21 But in Genesino’s world of everyday translations, there was hardly any time. When commissioning the translation of letters from Bosnia in 1617, for example, the bailo consciously distributed the work among several dragomans and language students so that the work could be done “more quickly.” In diplomacy, time mattered and speed was a prime concern among translators and diplomats commissioning such translations. Accordingly, Genesino was constantly on the move—or was it just the impression he wanted to give the Venetian readers of the travelogue? Such a narrative framing allowed the dragoman to foreground his efficiency and what the intended audience—a Venetian nobleman in diplomatic service—would consider to be good service from a dragoman. From the very outset, in fact, bailo Nani had established a temporal frame for Genesino’s journey through the Balkans, and informed Venice not to delay the dragoman’s travels. A year later, in spring 1619, the bailo noted that Genesino’s brother, Giuliano, did not spend a “single hour in idleness” when conducting business as a road dragoman. Facing

76  Translation, Space, and Mobility Venetian authorities’ expectations to use time wisely and in the interest of the ­republic, Genesino’s travelogue evokes the image of a faithful, diligent, efficient servant. Narrating this rush when taking the time to write about the self helped the dragoman to write about his imperial service.22

Journey

Dates (number of days)

Distance (estimate)

Istanbul–Edirne Edirne–Plovdiv Plovdiv–Sofia Sofia–Niš Niš–Belgrade Belgrade–Sarajevo Sarajevo–Trogir Istanbul–Trogir

29 March–3 April (6) 6 April–9 April (4) 11 April–13 April (3) 15 April–18 April (4) 19 April–23 April (5) 26 April–3 May (8) 7 May–11 May (5) 29 March–11 May (35)

240 km 190 km 150 km 180 km 240 km 270 km 260 km 1,530 km

Distance and duration of Genesino Salvago’s journey.

Genesino’s journey slows down considerably in the final stage of the travelogue. The dragoman relied on a well-equipped road network between Istanbul and Belgrade. This had been an important connection since Roman times, and parts of it were still well preserved in the sixteenth century. Ottoman authorities rebuilt these streets, connecting the empire’s capital with the Hungarian province, and providing vital commercial and military connections across Eurasia. The sultan’s troops marched the very same route from Istanbul via Edirne, Sofia, Niš, and Belgrade as many merchants and travellers did—among them Genesino.23 When departing Belgrade for Sarajevo and Split, however, the dragoman encounters challenging travel conditions. Genesino’s report vividly captures the burdens of traversing mountains, explicitly pointing out if roads went uphill steeply, or wound along to precipitous mountain sides. Long descents were equally demanding since they potentially damaged carriages and caused injuries to the mules and horses. On April 16, for instance, Genesino took a road that was for the most part satisfactory, but led uphill and downhill on the final stretch, with its cobbles in bad condition. He infers that carriages could nevertheless use this road. A day later, when departing Bela Palanka, Genesino again went down a “good street” that changed for the worse once entering a rocky landscape, with mountains on the one side and dense forests on the other. In this area, roads looked more like trails. The dragoman considers the infrastructure particularly bad between Belgrade and Sarajevo, regularly lamenting that he had to pass rough mountains with sharp-edged rocks. Genesino, who suffered a disability in his leg from birth, thanked God when going down better roads. He also noted down an alternative route, a road connecting Priština and Niš, which avoided challenging mountain paths. Genesino might have used notes from earlier travels of

Translation, Space, and Mobility  77 generations of Salvago dragomans kept in the family archive to travel with such velocity, as well as to make such an informed suggestion about alternative routes—at least he knew that the infrastructure was well built on this route as it was one of the main trading connections between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik).24 In Genesino’s self-narrative, road networks mattered. These roads traversed the Balkans, connecting the Ottoman and Venetian imperial realms and beyond. Generations of Salvagos had passed some of the streets before Genesino travelled on his ancestors’ footsteps in 1618. The same roads also function as a textual thread leading from one place to another, shaping the unfolding narrative of the dragoman’s itinerary (itinerario) by assembling specific points onto a linear journey, creating a plot to “situate the self” in motion as an evolving character through the narration of space. Roads constituted the veins of Salvago’s travel experience and the pulse to narrate a road dragoman’s self (Figure 9).25 Also bridges feature prominently in Genesino’s autobiographical writing. These served as landmarks signalling the travel route and could significantly impact the travel experience, so the dragoman made sure to comment on their quality and the materials used. He had a clear preference for stone bridges over wooden ones, evidence in his complaint about the state of a wooden bridge over a large river near Niš. After hours or days of marching alongside river banks, the sight of a well-built bridge with nearby lodging houses must have been a rather emotional experience.26 Balkan bridges were Ottoman imperial sites. Often commissioned by high-ranking officials, bridges symbolised imperial connections that tied the empire together and ensured prosperity. Genesino also recounts crossing an impressive sixteenth-century bridge in Višegrad, after which he would allow himself a break to eat in the local caravanserai and to feed the horses. This bridge was commissioned by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha to be built over the Drina River. A majestic architectural complex, the bridge materialised the close ties between the province and the capital, and was maintained by the grand vizier who originated from the region. Solidarity based on ethnic-regional belonging (cins), as Metin Kunt points out, was a guiding principle in Ottoman politics. Such patronage shaped concepts of Ottoman imperial subjecthood and moulded the social self, especially in imperial elite contexts.27 As a member of the Istanbul metropolitan elite, Genesino was well aware of the importance of social networks of patronage. He had met several viziers in his own lifetime and would have remembered his father’s stories about Sokollu Mehmed Pasha. At the very centre of the bridge, a meeting place with stone seats invited travellers to rest for conversations. Perhaps, the dragoman would have carefully listened to rumours and news exchanged on such neuralgic points of imperial storytelling. Located on points of seminal economic or political importance, bridging large, rapid rivers, and set against rough mountain backdrops, Balkan bridges were architectural monuments reminding travellers of the imperial

78  Translation, Space, and Mobility

Figure 9  The Ottoman fortress of Klis and its surrounding streets, which Genesino visited on May 11, 1618.  Half a century later, after the siege of the fortress, Venetians rebuilt some of these roads. They remain largely in shape until today. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017.

Translation, Space, and Mobility  79 power and entangled dynamics of the Ottoman Empire. Their location and c­ onstruction materialised the art of engineering as much as the imperial engine itself. As an imperial agent, Genesino noticed this broader meaning. The dragoman clearly appreciated bridges beyond their practicality, and for their aesthetics. The stone Latin Bridge crossing the Miljacka River in Sarajevo, for instance, is described as a particularly beautiful construction. This was the very same bridge on which Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria would be assassinated centuries later, in June 1914 (Figure 10).28 In fact, the idea that bridges bear a history is a fundamental narrative strategy of Genesino’s self-narrative. In Edirne, he makes note of a bridge that many contemporaries celebrated for its impressive dimensions—the seventeenth-century Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi claimed that three carriages could cross the bridge side by side. He states that the bridge was constructed by stones of the size of elephants and that its arches were as beautiful and perfect as the rainbow. What impressed Genesino most, however, was the story about who actually built the “bridge of Micali”: “This Micali,” Genesino explains, referencing the thirteenth-century Byzantine convert Köse Mihal, a close ally of Sultan Orhan I, “was a Christian person, and when Edirne was taken [by the Ottomans] he turned Turk.”29

Figure 10  The Latin Bridge in Sarajevo in its modern shape. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017.

80  Translation, Space, and Mobility

Figure 11  I n albums produced in the Venetian bailate of Istanbul which were used for didactic purposes, Ottoman bridges are shown as sites of architectural perfection, as well as in-between and liminal spaces of encounter, passage, transition, opposition, and potential change. BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971 (1660s). ©bpk/DeAgostini/New Picture Library/A. Dagli Orti.

As an expert in the careful selection of words, Genesino did not provide such information by chance. This framing is a textual strategy that serves the dragoman’s self-fashioning, using the description of transport infrastructure to create the image of a person who bridges imperial and liminal spaces. Autobiographical writing about architectural monuments like bridges monumentalised the achievements of cultural mediators bridging distant shores. In Genesino’s self-narrative, bridges illustrated what go-betweens like Mihal could achieve in imperial service. By outlining the history of such imperial monuments as an integral element of the self-narrative, Genesino is foregrounding the significance of his own enterprise as an imperial agent bridging empires in the service of Venice. Protagonists like the Salvagos, he implies, are key in the brokering of empire-building. Such narrative framing substitutes the contemporary ritual framework of bridges. In Renaissance Venice, crossing a bridge evoked a physical transition that was considered a potentially dangerous, transformative, liminal moment of the self, just like Mihal’s religious conversion, which was therefore embedded in a versatile ritual landscape thought to avert the dangers of liminal spaces. Some sixteenth-century authors even considered jumping

Translation, Space, and Mobility  81 a river the reason for the sudden change of a person’s sex.30 Also, miniature albums circulating in the seventeenth-century Venetian diplomatic residence in Istanbul instructed members of the bailate to consider bridges as spaces of encounter and transition (Figure 11). Genesino’s description of bridges serves the textual representation of passaggio, a concept that was key to the dragoman’s professional world. Writing about bridges and spatial passage helped this Ottoman subject in Venetian imperial service to communicate expertise in passaggio as a border-crossing interpreter and to situate himself in ways that would circumvent the clear-cut categories of imperial discourse. Genesino’s message is subtle but clear: precisely because of their complex cultural background, the Salvagos were integral to Venetian empire-building.

Locating the Self: Lodgings and Provisions While temporality, infrastructure, and architecture help Genesino situate the self within a storyline—to tell a story about the self in motion—writing about lodgings and provisions allowed him to locate the self in spaces of sociability, to craft the relations of the dragoman’s social self. Genesino’s focus on the infrastructure of travelling, in fact, turns the self-narrative into an invaluable source on caravanserais in Ottoman Southeastern Europe. Genesino travelled along the vibrant commercial routes of the Balkans. Along the empire’s most important economic and pilgrimage routes, caravanserais were found about 30 km away from each other. These complexes stored commodities and provisions, and offered shelter to merchants, pilgrims, and travellers. Often, caravanserais comprised two floors, grouped around a rectangular courtyard with a fountain, sometimes covered by a roof. Shops, workshops, stables, and blacksmiths were located on the ground floor, below the dormitories. By offering shelter at strategic points along the Ottoman Empire’s veins of exchange, caravanserais facilitated the mobility of people, goods, and ideas. They engendered contact and entanglements, as well as economic prosperity and exchange.31 Genesino goes into some detail on caravanserais, highlighting their abundance on the route between Istanbul and Edirne, and commenting on their scarcity when travelling from Edirne onwards (Figure 12). Not by chance, Edirne is portrayed as a turning point in that regard. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Edirne already housed 16 caravanserais. Several decades later, that number increased to more than 100 complexes in its downtown alone.32 On his onward journey, Salvago encountered a very different situation. In bigger cities like Plovdiv, Sofia, Belgrade, and Sarajevo, a larger quantity of caravanserais existed. In more rural settings, however, the dragoman found caravanserais to be poorly equipped. Often, the buildings were smaller, less spacious, and the courtyards lacked sufficient roofing. Many times, caravanserais were built of wood instead of stones.33 Genesino made the history and appearance of such architecture a key element of his self-narrative. Besides providing details on whether caravanserais

82  Translation, Space, and Mobility were old or new, he also provided information on who commissioned these buildings. In Edirne, the dragoman stayed in one of the newest caravanserais in the whole of the Ottoman Empire. In 1609/10, imperial treasurer (defterdar) Ekmekçizade Ahmed Pasha had built a new caravanserai with impressive dimensions, which he presented to Sultan Ahmed I. Evliya Çelebi marvelled at the fortress-like appearance of this caravanserai, which housed 200 hearths, and almost 1,000 horses, 1,000 mules and camels, as well as 100 carriages.34 As for other caravanserais, Genesino made sure to report the names of those who commissioned them, likely obtained from the inscriptions to be found within. As Genesino states, a caravanserai in Paraćin was built by Pargalı İbrahim Pasha. Sokollu Mehmed Pasha had commissioned two caravanserais in Lüleburgaz. In Belgrade, Genesino praised the massive complex built by Yahyapaşa-oğlu Mehmed Pasha. Another large caravanserai in Sofia with a lead roof as well as a caravanserai in Harmanli were built by Çavuş Pasha. Given that Genesino did not even take up quarter in the Harmanli caravanserai but continued on his day journey towards Uzundzhovo, his interest in such complexes exceeds mere pragmatics. This interest allowed him to write about architectural beauty and ingenuity, imperial monumentality, as well as the history of the Ottoman Empire along with its most powerful statesmen, so as to indicate his own knowledge in such matters. In Uzundzhovo, Genesino took note of the impressive size of a caravanserai, and that it was covered by a roof, and because it was protected by a fortress complex built by Koca Sinan Pasha.35 Genesino also admired “a large clock of ancient times” in a caravanserai in Plovdiv, and in the courtyard of a large caravanserai in Pasardschik, another clock from Nagykanizsa. When Bosnian general and Ottoman grand vizier Damad İbrahim Pasha conquered the Hungarian city in 1600, he ordered the clock to be transferred to the Pasardschik caravanserai, which he himself had built. Additionally, Genesino expressed his awe when realising that the big caravanserai in Ihtiman was built by Mihal around 1300.36 Such descriptions of spatial settings establish what researchers call a Balkanist discourse. In Genesino’s case, such textual framing helped fashion the Istanbul dragoman’s metropolitan gaze, locating the self in the imperial infrastructure of sociability as “communal spaces of being and becoming.”37 When traversing vast landscapes, dense woodlands, deserted or a­ ustere areas, arriving at a caravanserai must have been a source of relief for Genesino’s metropolitan sense of self. Towns like Smederevska Palanka maintained a variety of caravanserais but other areas lacked such comforts. In such locations, Genesino felt culturally displaced; and thus writing about caravanserais helped him frame and locate the self in terms of communal spaces. When the dragoman arrived in Popovitsa on April 8, once again, no caravanserai was in sight. The imperial interpreter therefore spent the night in a straw hut provided by resident Bulgarian Christians. Genesino would also spend other restless nights in similar huts at various places along his journey, worrying about the safety of the possessions which the bailo

Translation, Space, and Mobility  83

Figure 12  A seventeenth-century Venetian depiction portrays the interior of an Ottoman caravanserai as a lively space of encounter and exchange, prayer and storytelling, cohabitation and conversation, sociability, tobacco consumption, as well as secret information gathering. Note the lying man on the right, pretending to sleep while peeping through the blanket to overhear some of the conversation of his unwary neighbours (c.  1660). BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971 (1660s). ©Giancarlo Costa/Bridgeman Images.

had provided him. The building’s courtyards were only inadequately fenced with undergrowth and twigs, and the dragoman’s horses and belongings had to be stored in different buildings. Genesino therefore clearly preferred fortress-like caravanserais like the ones in Bela Palanka or Smederevska Palanka that offered a safe shelter and promised to repel potential raids.38 The absence of caravanserais troubled the imperial interpreter’s metropolitan sense of self, calling such situations dangerous. When departing Belgrade, heavy rain prevented Genesino from arriving in Šabac. Instead, he had to stay overnight in a cave as no village was within sight. The cave was rather small and offered shelter for no more than two or three people, meaning that his horses had to be placed in a stable elsewhere. Genesino laments the cost of doing so, suggesting that he paid a substantial sum to inhabitants of more distant villages, peasants, or mobile shepherds around Surčin to safeguard his possessions. The following day, Genesino arrived in Šabac, a fortified town at the Sava River. Though the local caravanserai was

84  Translation, Space, and Mobility only covered with wooden boards, it nevertheless provided a place to rest for an entire day after his previous exertions. He got in contact with merchants trading goods for Istanbul—and wrote about such contacts to highlight the space of self and his sense of belonging. He bought food for himself and fodder for the animals.39 The comments on sourcing provisions in Genesino’s self-narrative p ­ rovide rare and fascinating socioeconomic insights into the Ottoman Balkans. In his report, the dragoman details information on food supply. The caravanserai at Lüleburgaz, for instance, provided guests with warm soup and two pieces of meat and bread each evening. Before the time of Ekmekçizade Ahmed Pasha, Salvago recalls with regret, guests were also given two candles for the evening hours, and bread served with honey in the morning. The caravanserai in Ihtiman, Genesino adds, follows the same principles of hospitality as the complex in Lüleburgaz. But he also complains of many other caravanserais offering poor nourishment at high cost. The dragoman seemingly gives the impression that the further from Istanbul, the worse the food supply. Up until Pasardschik, caravanserais served plenty of food. However, this changed drastically around mid-April. From Ihtiman onwards, groceries became expensive, scarce, and of worse quality. Wine was only served again after Genesino had travelled for another week. Sometimes, he crossed entire areas without water or food, and the caravanserais that provided overnight shelter offered humans and animals only a few things to eat, often at high cost. Food shortage was only avoided in larger towns like Sofia, or fortified caravanserais like Bela Palanka or Smederevska Palanka. In his discussion of an alternative travel route via Priština, Genesino also offers several suggestions on how to avoid food shortages. Between Sarajevo and Niš, such as in Novi Pazar, a larger variety of caravanserais offered decent meals. With food supplies being so crucial and expensive, Genesino meticulously notes where to buy certain kind of food or drinks for a modest price. He also recorded exchange rates in Küçükçekmece, Edirne, Belgrade, and Sarajevo. These explanations make his report not just a rare source of the economic and social history of the Ottoman Balkans but indicate that he had the pragmatic expertise necessary to take care of the self during such a demanding journey. Yet, this information also shapes a narrative of distance, locating the dragoman’s self far away from the imperial metropolis.40 For Genesino, architecture shaped communal spaces that helped locate the traveller’s social self. Caravanserais established exchange between local merchants and traders from faraway lands, craftsmen and travellers, Christians, Jews, and Muslims (Figure 12). In cities, caravanserais were located next to bathing houses, mosques, religious endowments, and fountains. The lead-roofed summer caravanserai that the dragoman visited in Edirne on April 6, for instance, served as a religious site.41 Fountains, too, were religious and communal sites that feature prominently in his ­self-narrative (Figure 13). In Edirne, Genesino visited a city with more than 300 public fountains.42 When taking breaks at fountains on the streets,

Translation, Space, and Mobility  85 marketplaces, and near mosques, Genesino entered socially vibrant spaces. Fountains functioned as spaces of encounter between residents and travellers, men and women, Muslims and Christians, and were locations of circulating news. Evliya Çelebi described Edirne’s fountains as the “paradise’s streams of floating water.” This religious terminology is anchored in the significance of ritual washings for Islamic prayers, as well as the Qur’ānic fountain in paradise (salsabīl), a common reference in inscriptions on Ottoman fountains. Genesino would have read such inscriptions, praising those commissioning fountains—a sabīl/sebīl if the water was distributed by an attendant, or a çeşme if people served themselves—as religious benefactors. Such inscriptions would also invite travellers to take a rest to refresh themselves before continuing along their journey. Reading such lines, the interpreter would have noticed linguistic puns provoking the traveller to rest and reflect on the needs of a self in motion. The Arabic plural of drinking fountains (subul), for instance, signifies “ways,” “roads,” or “paths,” denominating both actual streets and “ways of life.” In the adaptation of “son of the road” (ibn al-sabīl), such wording could also signify “traveller.”43 Due to the interpreter’s familiarity with such semantics, f­ountains ­provided the ­language-proficient road dragoman with an opportunity to reflect on his own journey and the self in motion. As places of contact and

Figure 13  Sixteenth-century fountains in Sarajevo with restorations. Left: in the courtyard of the Gazi Husrev Beg Mosque. Right: outside the Gazi Husrev Beg Mosque. ©Stefan Hanß, August 2017.

86  Translation, Space, and Mobility contemplation, they feature prominently in his self-narrative, since writing about ­communal spaces equipped him with narrative means to locate the ­metropolitan self.

The Dragoman’s Passaggio: Traversing Landscapes, Crossing Contact Zones Descriptions of landscapes feature prominently throughout Genesino’s travelogue. Rivers serve as fundamental reference points since many are of considerable size and could only be crossed once a bridge was in sight, sometimes only after days of travelling. Genesino diligently notes the names of the rivers that marked his journey, even informing the reader about their flow directions and velocity. Rivers facilitated the traveller’s orientation, so he even mentions them if he is not aware of their actual names, or if they are rather streams.44 Similarly, Genesino makes explicit references to the physical appearance of landscapes. He mentions rural plains and hills,45 the “famous landscape called Surčin,”46 dense, spacious, and small forests,47 treeless areas,48 rocky mountains,49 bleak and abandoned landscapes,50 deep valleys,51 steep hills and high mountains, some covered with snow.52 Such characteristic landscapes facilitated the traveller’s geographical orientation; yet, they hold a broader textual meaning in his self-narrative. Genesino uses the power of writing to semanticise space. Authors can overwrite spaces with semantic meanings, as Juri Lotman highlights, to dynamise, synthesise, and transform storylines.53 In the dragoman’s self-narrative, the textual representation of landscapes enabled him to establish a Third Space that granted plausibility to his self-fashioning as a loyal Venetian servant. Landscapes functioned as a narrative tool to address and frame his experience of travelling, shaping the notion of the loyal dragoman travelling in imperial service. The flow of rivers, for instance, functioned as a metaphor of movement, underpinning the road dragoman’s emphasis on spatial mobility and streamlining the textual rendering of a self in motion. Salvago clearly marked the landscape (campagna) as a place of transition—a space that needs to be entered, traversed, and passed through (passare).54 In the description of landscapes, thus, the dragoman applies a vocabulary of motion that references his own spatial mobility and professional expertise in passaggio. Writing about panoramic landscape settings allowed Genesino to establish the atmospheres of a self in motion, the atmospherics of transition as characteristic to his main area of expertise and field of operation. As roads and bridges served as textual tools to craft a portrait of an ­imperial agent crossing and bridging empires, Genesino often describes landscapes as obstacles to the success of his service. The forests near Ihtiman, he states, are inhabited by bandits, fraudsters, vagabonds, and outlaws who could jeopardise the success of the imperial traveller’s journey. Genesino also portrayed mountains as a space of peril. During a four-hour descent, for instance, a horse bolted and fell into a river. When passing another

Translation, Space, and Mobility  87 mountain, it snowed heavily. When writing about landscapes, Genesino— who, as noted above, suffered a disability from birth, which was visible to his contemporaries and superiors—could craft the textual atmospherics of a strenuous and challenging journey, addressing the obstacles he was willing to and capable of overcoming in imperial service. Writing about landscapes in that manner was his way of addressing what it meant to traverse distances of over 1,500 km, and altitudes of over 1,400 m, with all the exertions and dangers it encompassed for an elderly interpreter.55 Writing about landscapes allowed Genesino to address the experience of travelling in a particular way, to craft the vision of a committed and hard-working imperial agent, and even to foreground his linguistic proficiency—for instance, when mentioning Ottoman and Bulgarian names of forests and mountains, and including the Italian translations of such terms.56 In particular, Genesino employs textual opposites, juxtaposing mountains with vast tracts of land, scarcely populated areas with vibrant cities like Belgrade and Sarajevo, and the obstacles of nature with imperial infrastructure. He writes about rivers to highlight crossing bridges to overcome such obstacles; he traverses landscapes on streets; and he surpasses high mountains via passes. The contrasting composition of spaces in texts, Lotman argues, helps craft a narrative that turns the self into a hero whose journey becomes the main event of the text.57 Genesino uses this technique to narrate the service of an imperial agent who heroically overcomes spatial distance—“the enemy number one,” as Braudel puts it, of early modern travellers, communication, and intelligence.58 Genesino’s description of the Veneto-Ottoman contact zone in Dalmatia, however, stands in sharp contrast to the earlier narrative emphasis on the challenges and dangers he encountered when travelling the Ottoman Balkans. On May 11, the dragoman departed from the castle of Klis—the last Ottoman stronghold and main settlement of a district (sancak) with about

Figure 14  Panorama view of the landscape of Split today, seen from the platform of the castle of Klis, the final stopover on Ottoman territory described in Genesino’s travelogue prior to entering Venetian territory. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017.

88  Translation, Space, and Mobility 20,000 inhabitants—to enter Venetian territory.59 “After a long descent,” Genesino writes, “I arrived at the castles of the jurisdiction of Split and Trogir,” approaching the town of Trogir the same evening at 9 pm.60 Again, he uses landscape to narrate the atmospherics of the self in motion. In his self-narrative, the Venetian territory of Split and Trogir, marked by border castles, conveys a notion of safety. The emphasis on the descent paints his entry into Venetian imperial space as arrival, denoting the imperial interpreter’s sense of belonging (Figure 14). To the dragoman, the panoramic view from Klis to Split would have been a familiar sight, since this border zone held a prominent place in the Salvagos’ wide-ranging portfolio of travels. Genesino’s grandfather had already travelled to the region in 1545 to help prevent a major diplomatic clash. Genesino the Elder convinced the district governor (sancak-beg) of Klis to send his complaints about local Venetian subjects’ daily raids on Ottoman territory near Zadar, Šibenik, Split, and Trogir to the doge of Venice, instead of to the Ottoman sultan. The dragoman’s negotiation skills helped settle the issue prior to the sultan’s involvement.61 Just a decade later, in 1555, Genesino the Elder was again involved in border negotiations when submitting a letter to Sultan Suleiman, confirming Venice’s commitment to uphold a peaceful coexistence with Ottoman villages near Trogir. The sultan informed the local governor and judge of Klis about the letter presented by the dragoman.62 Four years later, Genesino the Elder travelled again to the region, handing over the sultan’s decree on fishing rights, felling of timber, and wood commerce to the authorities in Šibenik.63 In 1595, a young Genesino followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and departed from Istanbul to Klis.64 It was just a year after Mateca’s assassination—meaning that one of Genesino’s very first journeys as the head of the Salvago dragoman dynasty was to the same region that he would come back to in 1618. By the time Genesino was penning his self-narrative, it was already familial territory to him—not just a contact zone he knew well, but an in-between imperial terrain deeply engrained in the family’s memory of the translation business. This was kept alive through life stories passed from generation to generation, perhaps also through travel notes kept in the family archive, as well as in Venetian and Ottoman documents chronicling the Salvagos conducting the business of translation and empire in the Dalmatian contact zone. Genesino’s deep familiarity with Veneto-Ottoman Dalmatian borderlands also shaped his narrative approach. The dragoman knew the region; as an expert in crossing both languages and borders, he was trained in capitalising on this familiarity to foreground his own expertise in ­passaggio. The emphasis in the self-narrative on the long descent towards Split captures both his relief at the imminent arrival on Venetian imperial soil after nearly six weeks of travelling and the ease with which he crossed the Veneto-Ottoman ­imperial border. Describing it as an easy descent, unlike his ­previous experience of “unruly” Ottoman territory—characterised by

Translation, Space, and Mobility  89 banditry,  disorder,  and natural extremes—helped Genesino establish the epistemics of the imperial interpreter’s self-narrative. Walking, to adapt Michel de Certeau on experiencing Manhattan, helped Genesino establish “the fiction of knowledge” and a sort of “totalizing eye.”65 The textual epistemics of walking allow him to create an all-seeing perspective that Wandersmänner usually hardly achieve. Genesino creates the vision of a panoramic view that puts “things” (cose)—here understood, in the contemporary Italian sense, as the conceptual paradigm of the discursive order of rendering matters pertaining to the Ottoman Empire into a ­narrative—in perspective.66 By foregrounding this panoramic view and the ease of traversing Veneto-Ottoman borders, the descent highlights Genesino’s status as a “practitioner,” “experienced in matters of transition/crossing [­pratiche del passaggio].”67 Such writing techniques allowed him to showcase his expertise as a dragoman when writing about the travelling self. Genesino mastered all the expertise that Venetian colonial authorities in the Adriatic expected from interpreters: he “knows the Turkish language and is experienced in border issues and the Turkish land.”68 “The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language or to the statements uttered,” De Certeau states. “Walking affirms, suspects, tries out, transgresses, respects, etc., the trajectories it ‘speaks’.”69 To write about such ways of walking helped Genesino map the dragoman self, establishing a textual record of his practice, experience, and knowledge. This region was characterised less by sharp Veneto-Ottoman separations than by the everyday realities of transition. In the early seventeenth century, the Venetian colonial territory in Dalmatia formed a line of speckles along the Adriatic coast, with Zadar, Šibenik, Split, Trogir, and Kotor as important centres. A few months after Genesino’s visit to the region, the Venetian governor of Split, Marin Garzoni, noted that the city only had under 4,000 inhabitants, most of whom were impoverished. A harsh plague pandemic had reduced Split’s size notably, with over 3,000 dying in 1614 alone. Ottoman territory began just two miles from Split, with the fortress of Klis just five miles away.70 Of course, the Adriatic Coast formed an important Venetian military stronghold. Its harbours served as a haven during naval campaigns, where ships would be filled with hardtack, supplies, and merchandise.71 However, as one of Garzoni’s predecessors in office, Polo Trivisan, stated in 1605, Split was chronically ill-fortified. Only 720 men were stationed in the three castles located between Split and Trogir, of which only 439 bore arms.72 With the entire Dalmatian hinterland belonging to the Ottoman Empire, trans-border contacts were an everyday reality. “A shared culture characterized by similarity more than difference,” Eric Dursteler observes, “transcended the region’s political and religious dividing lines.”73 As a border zone, the area of Split blurred boundaries of belonging. Even when the flows of exchange paused temporarily, residents knew how to move the wheels of exchange through tools of communication. In 1622, for

90  Translation, Space, and Mobility instance, the archbishop of Split banned Christians who received treatment from Jewish physicians from being buried in the church’s cemetery. One of the many Jews affected by this new legislation was Salomon Thobi, who had not only cured the archbishop himself, but also “his mother and his entire family” on previous occasions. Thobi made use of the different jurisdictional layers of the Venetian colonial regime to claim his case. The archbishop’s papal announcement, Thobi states, contradicted a Venetian law from 1443—a comment that brought the Venetian administration into effect, as the provveditore generale of Dalmatia and Albania soon asked the governor of Split for a statement on the matter.74 The region of Klis, Split, and Trogir was a zone of contact.75 On a daily basis, Garzoni wrote in March 1618—when Genesino was just about to arrive in the city—merchants from across the Ottoman Empire, and Istanbul in particular, crossed into the Venetian territory of Split. The governor emphasised, perhaps too emphatically, the “courtesy […] and love between the subjects of Your Serenity [Venice] and those of the signor turco [the Ottoman sultan], as well as between the principal [Ottoman] ministers and me.”76 Yet, it is true that merchants from the Ottoman Balkans and beyond, including Istanbul, Anatolia, and the Near East, used Split as a vibrant commercial hub to trade goods with Venice. In conducting their business, these merchants relied on brokers (sanseri) speaking “Turkish and other languages.” Ottoman subjects made first contact with such brokers, appointed by Venetian authorities, in cities like Split.77 Levantine Jews trading with Venice were granted free transit rights via Split.78 Ottoman goods filled the city’s storage building complex (lazzaretto), where commodities were counted, checked, weighed, and purified in times of rampant illnesses.79 In such times, border-crossing could be dangerous. In summer 1618, when the plague spread massively across the Ottoman Balkans and Sarajevo in particular, the lazzaretto of Split was “full of things and merchandise coming from Sarajevo,” as local Venetian authorities noted with concern, “all contagious.”80 Genesino had handed out two health passes, issued in Istanbul and Sarajevo, that documented him having not been ill for two years prior to entering the Venetian imperial territory of Split and Trogir.81 Besides merchants and goods, manuscripts also circulated widely. An Ottoman encyclopaedia, that was at the time of Genesino’s journey in the possession of Mustafa b. Hüseyin, passed the very same frontier area some decades later. The manuscript stayed in Split and Trogir for two days until it was transported to Venice. Containing comments on diverse topics such as history, philosophy, astronomy, theology, and medicine, the travelling manuscript reveals the translational significance of the area for the trans-imperial circulation of texts and ideas.82 Furthermore, “cross-border friendship and marriages were commonplace,” and transhumant pastoral communities connected the Ottoman hinterlands with the Venetian coast.83 A few months after Genesino’s sojourn in the area, in September 1618, even members of the English embassy of Istanbul arrived in Trogir.84 The triangle

Translation, Space, and Mobility  91 region of Klis, Split, and Trogir, thus, was a well-connected Mediterranean hub with blurring imperial domains. Border-crossing was a well-established and widespread practice in the region, also because borders as such were notoriously ill-defined. “In contrast to modern visions of well-demarcated, carefully defended political frontiers, the Veneto-Ottoman boundary in Dalmatia was imprecise and entirely porous, in constant flux both geographically and in the minds of the region’s inhabitants.”85 Though border fortresses were impressive imperial claims over territoriality, the actual border was hardly visible as such. Stones assembled in the shape of a pyramid, cross incisions on trees, or boundary stones marked the border. Depending on weather conditions and motivations, however, such marks could easily be overlooked, disregarded, moved, or removed. The zigzagging lines of rivers and mountains provided ambivalent territorial legibility to wandering subjects.86 Everyday conditions on the ground, thus, differed heavily from the defining discourse of the Venetian imperial gaze. Clear dotted lines with precise measurements, as indicated in contemporary maps issued by Venetian authorities, hardly captured realities on the ground (Figure 15). “Because of the porosity of the frontier, a shared culture that transcended the region’s ephemeral political and religious borders persisted.”87 Hence, this contact zone was a space of diffusion and confusion. “Disorder, anarchy and brigandage marked that area,” as Maria Pedani puts it.88 Just prior to Genesino’s arrival, Garzoni stated that “some improvised raids” were taking place in the region.89 The reality of the contact zone of Klis, Split, and Trogir produced a constant mimicry of the official Venetian imperial gaze, resulting in classificatory uncertainties enacted by cultural mobility and transition.90 Genesino, the Ottoman subject in Venetian imperial service, uses the occasion to write about spatial mobility to avoid raising any doubts about his own belonging. The w ­ alking descent into Venetian territory and the ease of crossing i­mperial borders materialised the Venetian imperial notion of the ­dragoman’s self. As border-crossing was a widely practised, everyday routine in the region, Genesino distinguishes his own expertise in passaggio by framing it in imperial terms. He does this by mentioning the Venetian colonial authorities he encountered upon arrival. Within the first hours of entering Venetian territory, Genesino visited the “castles of the jurisdiction of Split and Trogir.” He met the governor of Trogir, Gabriel Morosini, who invited him to continue his journey to nearby Trogir. When narrating this encounter, Genesino names the most important Venetian imperial agents within just a few lines: the resident in Sarajevo, who had equipped the dragoman with a health certificate; Francesco Contarini, newly appointed ambassador to Istanbul; and the governor of Split, Garzoni, who had sent Genesino a letter asking him to travel to Trogir instead. Singling out his interactions with these authorities, as well as his receipt “with much courtesy” by Morosini, helped the dragoman locate himself in the communal space of Venetian imperial governance. With such writing techniques, Genesino was able to foreground his

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Figure 15   A seventeenth-century map of the Veneto-Ottoman border between Klis and Split, commissioned by Venetian authorities, crafts the fiction of a clearly demarcated frontier. ASV, Senato, Dispacci, Dispacci dei rettori, Dalmazia, filza 60, disegno 2.  Above: total view. Below: detail. ©Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

Translation, Space, and Mobility  93 role as an imperial agent. Passaggio, here, is characterised as the experience of arrival, a crossing into imperial space conducted while in imperial service, and as an anchoring of the self and entering into the Venetian imperial realm.91 The dragoman’s acquaintances did not just represent Venetian power but actively engaged in constructing Venetian imperial interpretations of the contact zone as a border. In the month of Genesino’s departure from Istanbul, Morosini informed Venice that he worked hard to ensure “the maintenance of these borders,” building on the secret information networks and channels of communication with local Ottoman officials in Klis that he maintained.92 In May 1618, Morosini’s chancery in Trogir was busy dealing with the problems of Venetian subjects abroad, last wills, and legal disputes, but the governor still found time to meet Genesino for the purpose of intelligence gathering. Morosini also met Mustafa Beg, sancak-beg of Klis who was, via his mother’s lineage, a kin of the Ottoman sultanic dynasty. This was because the governor of Klis had asked neighbouring Trogir for support against opposing political forces, with rumours spreading about an imminent takeover. Morosini was clearly anxious that such a turn of events would destabilise Venetian rule in the region, and the Ottoman governor knew how to play his cards.93 Over the coming weeks, Morosini remained a key player in the negotiation of border relations in the region. From Trogir, the governor soon reported that the local kadi had taken over the government in Klis, sending an envoy to Trogir with gifts. The kadi also informed Morosini’s relative, Piero, the appointed Venetian governor of nearby Šibenik, about the new governor of Klis’ good intentions towards the bailo in Istanbul. In light of the massive number of uprising Ottoman subjects—around 3,000 men had united to fight Mustafa Beg in late May 1618, just a few days after Genesino had finished writing his travelogue—the city walls of Split and fortresses of Šibenik armed up. Mustafa Beg fled to Istanbul, whereas the governor of Bosnia sent 9,000 troops to be stationed in nearby territory.94 Soon, the sultan hastened to send out orders instructing Klis authorities and inhabitants to maintain peaceful contact with Venetians in the border zone. In return, Venice instructed its authorities in Split to negotiate with Ottoman officials in the region to maintain good and quiet contact at the border.95 When Venice appointed another member of the Morosini family, Francesco, as the new governor of Split a year after Genesino’s visit, orders followed for the neighbouring sancak-beg to be presented with precious gifts like velvets, damasks, satins, scarlets, sugar, sweets, and candles.96 Genesino had entered a contested imperial terrain in which Morosini, as will be discussed in the next chapter, also relied on the dragoman’s expertise in espionage. Genesino’s name-dropping also marked this contact zone as imperial terrain. Contrary to the realities on the ground, Venetian iconography maps a largely deserted Ottoman area which, as Cemal Kafadar has pointed out, is itself a claim for imperial domination.97 Empty, unpopulated, and unruly Ottoman spaces, if represented as such in discourse, called out to be

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Figure 16  V  enetian map of the adjoining domains of Ottoman Klis and Venetian Split. Giovanni Camocio, Isole famose porti, fortezze, e terre maritime sottoposte alla Ser.ma Sig.ria di Venetia, ad altri Principi Christiani, et al Sig.or Turco (…) (Venice: Libraria del segno di S.  Marco, 1574). ©Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation.

Translation, Space, and Mobility  95 inhabited, for dominion to be established—especially if juxtaposed, as in Venetian maps, with the well-ordered domains of Split and its surrounding settlements, churches, and fields. Widely copied over decades, such maps give the impression of Venetian territoriality being anchored in the triplex order of citizenship, church, and peasantry and manifested in a firmly established road network—infrastructure that allegedly ends in a void Ottoman territory marked by unruly hills and deserted ruins (Figure 16).98 During the Renaissance, Venetian imperial discourse shaped notions of territoriality, such as when addressing the area’s antiquities. Split poet Marko Marulić, for instance, describes the nearby ruins of Solin (Salona) to claim glorious imperial Roman heritage. As the place of birth of Emperor Diocletian, the antiquities of Solin materialised what Marulić termed “the glory of our ancestors’ soil.”99 Its location on Ottoman soil, just two miles from Split, as the local governor Polo Trivisan pointed out in 1605, was an unsettling experience to the mindset of Venetian imperial governance, humanism, and cartography.100 By contrasting hardly traversable Ottoman mountains with the ease of arrival in Venetian territory, and by singling out Venetian colonial authorities and border castles, also Genesino’s self-narrative adheres to the Venetian imperial gaze on territoriality in the contact zone. Such interpretations mattered since they implicitly presented Genesino as an agent of empire.

The “Most Humble and Most Obliged Servant”: Narrating Professional Expertise and Imperial Service Seen together, these different forms of conveying spatial mobility are strategies to craft a narrative about the dragoman’s faithful imperial service. As an expert in the use of words, Genesino would have reflected carefully on their impact, or what Bhabha calls “the performance of identity as iteration, the re-creation of the self in the world of travel.”101 Narrating spatial mobility was key to Genesino’s efforts to shape the imperial interpreter’s narrative self, also because of the intimate links between the notions of mobility and translation. The everyday business of a travelling interpreter mattered to make tangible his expertise in passaggio. Such textual strategies framed transition.102 The author’s writing strategies can be understood as resulting from the circumstances under which the self-narrative was written: it was far away from the Venetian embassy in Istanbul as well as the lagoon city, a month after Genesino’s departure from the bailate, in Trogir on May 16, that he put pen to paper to write the text in the form that it survived, a scene that was inviting a reflective, retrospective lens upon the author’s vision of mobility. The road dragoman’s constant journeys also established a distance from the bailate and Venice, where the interpreter’s fate in diplomatic service was negotiated. It was here, in Venice and Istanbul, that other d ­ iplomatic officials would assess the success of Genesino’s mission, and by writing a travelogue the dragoman could himself claim interpretative authority over such an assessment. Writing

96  Translation, Space, and Mobility a self-narrative which employs a distinct m ­ etropolitan and imperial gaze helped Genesino re-locate the self within the centres of the Venetian diplomatic world. To do so, Genesino had a wide repertoire of experiences to build upon. Previous travels equipped the dragoman to move through space and to fashion such mobility in terms of professional expertise. Genesino had already travelled to Klis in 1595.103 In 1607, he was sent to Venice to accompany bailo Simone Contarini to Istanbul.104 In March 1611, Genesino was chosen by the same bailo to accompany the latter’s successor, Christoforo Valier, from Venice back to Istanbul. The dragoman travelled together with one of the bailate’s gatekeepers (kapıcı) and another janissary. The Venetian bailo and Ottoman kapudan pasha had issued documents confirming Genesino’s status and detailing the purpose of his journey.105 Upon return to Istanbul, he entered “with great decorum” together with Valier and his “numerous and most honorable famiglia.”106 Subsequently, in 1614, Valier appointed Genesino to travel to Corfu together with Çavuş Hüseyin and two janissaries to meet with the new bailo-in-office, Almorò Nani, and to accompany him on his journey to Istanbul.107 In 1633 and 1636, Genesino’s brother Giovanni Battista accompanied two baili on their journey from Istanbul to Venice.108 Of the Salvagos’ many travels, Genesino’s 1618 journey is unique in that he made his knowledge of travelling count—by showcasing his personal experience and professional expertise in the form of a self-narrative. This is why he does not mention travelling alongside two janissaries and a gatekeeper, choosing instead—save for a few exceptions—the first person singular throughout and thus foregrounding his own persona and achievements.109 In response to the task that he was given, Genesino takes ownership of his achievements in the text, showing himself as capable of exceeding what diplomats had asked him to. The main purpose of the 1618 journey was to gather information on whether the route could be used for the return of newly appointed ambassador Francesco Contarini to Istanbul. Upon his appointment in January 1618, the Venetian senate wanted Contarini to take the overland route via Split. Writing about particular details turned Genesino’s self-narrative into a resource for Contarini, the dedicatee of the travelogue. Details on whether caravanserais were covered with roofs, for instance, mattered if the ambassador was to travel in summer or winter. Since Contarini would be bringing precious gifts to Istanbul, among them six clocks purchased by the Venetian ambassador in France, Genesino’s comments on unsafe shelters helped Venetian authorities consider the risks of the overland journey. Genesino’s meticulous detailing of finances was also crucial. In January 1618, the senate granted the ambassador a monthly salary of 300 ducats, in addition to 1,500 scudi for the “long and costly journey” to Istanbul. In total, 15 horses, a secretary, servant, treasurer, four servants, a physician, as well as the physician’s servant and a barber-surgeon were to accompany Contarini to Istanbul.110

Translation, Space, and Mobility  97 So it was not by chance that Genesino tailored his report for specific travel contexts, such as when he states that 15 horses laden with commodities— the exact number Contarini’s entourage was provided with—may enter the barge to cross the Morava River in Jagodina. Genesino’s information on local exchange rates and travelling costs likewise mattered to ensure the success of the ambassador, who was to be given 300 ducats to purchase horses. In Edirne, Genesino states, there are plenty of carriages alla turchesca, in which three to four persons could sit cross-legged. However, not much space would be left for goods. Two horses are necessary to transport the ­vehicle, but buying these animals in Edirne proved to be difficult. The price of the carriages varied in accordance with the season. In summer, a p ­ ayment of 600  akçe was sufficient to buy a carriage. In September, October, and November, however, the price increased to 800 to 1,000 akçe. Another option was to purchase a carriage with buffaloes, Genesino continues. As buffaloes carry as much as five pack animals, far more goods can be transported this way. The price for the carriage, though, was slightly higher: 800 akçe in summer and 1,200 akçe in autumn. In Plovdiv, the dragoman states, neither horses nor carriages may be purchased but this was not so in Sofia, where plenty of animals and vehicles could be bought with the help of Christians who lead caravans to Istanbul. In Sofia, a carriage run by three horses cost 650 akçe throughout the summer months. In Belgrade and Sarajevo, carriages cost 1,100 to 1,200 akçe. Genesino himself changed carriages and horses at various points along his journey, and diligently recorded the prices when doing so. Between Belgrade and Split, a horse usually cost around 180 akçe, depending on the season and the amount of goods that had to be carried. Between Sarajevo and Novi Pazar, an abundance of horses was available for the slightly cheaper price of 167 akçe. From Sofia onwards, however, this shot up to 240 akçe (Figure 17).111 This financial information put the Venetian administrative machinery into motion since the money provided to Contarini was hardly sufficient to cover the cost of horses, carriages, and equipment throughout the journey. On August 14, 1618, the senators decided to grant Contarini slightly more funds: a one-off payment of 3,000 zecchini, a monthly salary of 400 ducats, special funds of 2,160 ducats for the first six months of Contarini’s period in office, 600 ducats for the purchase of horses, another 30 ducats for the purchase of blankets and furniture, and an additional 1,500 scudi in case more money was needed. In the Venetian machinery of imperial administration, the information presented in Genesino’s self-narrative mattered. It made politics.112 In terms of Venetian imperial policy in the Levant, Genesino’s information was crucial to ensure the success of the ambassador’s mission. Contarini’s appointment was Venice’s key response to unclear political circumstances in the Ottoman Empire. After the death of Sultan Ahmed I, his brother Mustafa I became the new sultan in November 1617, only to be overthrown by his 14-year-old nephew Osman II in February 1618. Venice had

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Figure 17  A  n Ottoman horse market, depicted in a Venetian diplomatic album. BMC, Cod. Cicogna 1971 (1660s). ©Giancarlo Costa/Bridgeman Images.

­ riginally appointed Contarini to congratulate Mustafa I. With the dynastic o ­upheavals, however, the diplomat’s task had widened considerably, touching upon the very core of Veneto-Ottoman politics. In August 1618, Venice sent Contarini to Istanbul to assure the sultan of the ongoing friendship and close relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Venice.113 Contarini prepared himself well for such a task. He asked the bailo to send a copy of the existing peace treatise, translated into Italian by grand dragoman Borisi, Genesino’s direct superior. Genesino’s own travelogue, too, was integral to the months-long preparations of the ambassador, who embarked in Venice for his journey to Istanbul in August 1618. Genesino’s self-narrative thus informed political decision-making. His journey and information gathering in the Balkans was crucial, as the senate put it when addressing Contarini, to protect “the public dignity and preservation of your person.”114 In the appointment certificate, the senate also made it clear that Contarini’s years-long experience in diplomatic service was key to this assignment. In its attempt to confront the instability of its relations with the Ottoman Empire, Venice appointed one of its most experienced career diplomats to provide the security to plan its future Levantine policy. Contarini himself had served as bailo from 1602 till 1604. During that time, Sultan Mehmed III died and Ahmed I acceded to the throne. Thus, Contarini had himself

Translation, Space, and Mobility  99 experienced a change of throne in Istanbul and was familiar with the symbolic behaviour required during his new mission. Directly after his period in office as bailo, Contarini served as the governor of Zadar from 1604 to 1606. In his end-of-mission report, he complained about the lack of military equipment to sufficiently protect the city. He also lamented the unsettled nature of the Dalmatian border, with Venetian territory being near “coarse and barbaric” Ottoman subjects who make it difficult to uphold peace. In addition, Contarini had served as an ambassador in Florence, London, Paris, Rome, and Vienna. In 1615, he was also appointed as the procurator of San Marco, one of the highest offices in Venice.115 Contarini was also well-connected across the Mediterranean. Somewhat akin to the Salvagos’ professional family networks, the Contarinis had established a casa that spanned Mediterranean diplomacy.116 One family member, Simone, served as an ambassador in Spain before being elected as bailo in Istanbul, from 1609 to 1612.117 In 1623, Simone was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Ottoman capital, this time as a special envoy congratulating the new sultan.118 In 1618, another family member, Marc’antonio, served as the governor of Kotor, “the most important center of the postal service between Venice and Istanbul.”119 In the same year, Bernardin Contarini was the Venetian governor of the Dalmatian city of Korčulola.120 Still in 1618, yet another member of the Contarini clan, Nicolò, was one of two Venetian diplomats negotiating a peace treatise with Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at the Spanish court.121 Pietro Contarini served as the Venetian ambassador in Spain from 1620 until 1622.122 Genesino thus travelled and translated for a member of one of the most important Venetian noble families of his time and he dedicated his own self-narrative to one of the most powerful representatives of that family. Contarini’s own experience in diplomatic service made it even more important for the dragoman to carefully craft his own diplomatic persona. Genesino’s self-fashioning targeted a noble family with whom the Salvagos were well acquainted. The dragoman himself had served two members of the Contarini family, Simone and Francesco, during their periods as baili, and he also accompanied them on journeys during previous occasions. For example, Genesino served Simone during his journey to Istanbul in 1607 and would have known that the Contarinis valued a dragoman’s prompt, diligent, and efficient service.123 The self-narrative’s focus on loyalty, efficiency, and service also manifests Genesino’s knowledge about the dedicatee’s expectations. A few years earlier, Giovanni Battista Contarini, Venetian provveditore generale of Dalmatia and Albania, praised VenetoOttoman interpreters for their “benevolence and fidelity,” their proficiency in written and spoken Ottoman, their loyalty, competence, integrity, and skills in information gathering.124 A dragoman’s language proficiency, bailo Agostino Nani and ambassador Francesco Contarini agreed in March 1619, is “that part in a dragoman” that “comes to be the most important [one], and that one which helps one to advance notably in all negotiations.” In

100  Translation, Space, and Mobility light of “the difficulty of this language, there are [only] a few who master [the Ottoman language].” Yet above all, Contarini valued a dragoman’s “virtue and intelligence,” understood in terms of honour, intellectual capacity, ingenuity, and skills in espionage.125 These were the core pillars of Genesino’s own self-fashioning. To craft his diplomatic persona, Genesino’s self-narrative deployed a Venetian imperial lens. The dragoman wrote about the Balkans as distant to Venice and Istanbul to develop an imperial and metropolitan perspective that helped him situate himself at the centre of Venetian power. In doing so, Genesino could carve out a space for the dragoman’s self in imperial service. He could depict himself as a loyal servant whose report generated useful knowledge for Venetian imperial politics—beyond even the imminent departure of Contarini. Venice had for years, in fact, expressed an interest in receiving up-to-date information about “the comfortability of streets, bridges, and accommodations,” like the caravanserais in the Balkans since such information was vital to the maintenance of VenetoOttoman ­commerce.126 Genesino fed Venetian politics with this coveted knowledge. As the maps printed by contemporary Venetians—presented

Figure 18  Genesino generated knowledge that filled a largely blank spot in the Venetian imperial imaginary: the Balkan inland. Giuseppe Rosaccio, Viaggio da Venetia, a Costantinopoli per Marre, e per Terra, et insieme quello di Terra Santa. Cioe Citta, Castelli, Porti, Golfi, Isole, Monti, Fiumi, e Mari, Opera vtile, à Mercanti, Marinari, et à Studiosi di Geografia (Venice: Franco, 1598). ©Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation.

Translation, Space, and Mobility  101 as useful knowledge (opera utile) to merchants, mariners, students, and geographers—illustrate, Venetian topographic knowledge of the Balkans was predominantly centred on Mediterranean coastlines (Figure 18). In his self-narrative, Genesino mapped largely uncharted knowledge. Making such information available to the politics of the Venetian imperial imaginary allowed him to sign the manuscript as “most humble and most obliged servant, forever, Genesino Salvago, dragoman.”127

Notes 1 DAZD, 1: 2, 110r, March 1622. In the context of this letter, intelligenza clearly references the overlapping semantics of knowledge, understanding, wit, intelligence, information, and espionage. I decided to use “intelligence” in the translation to draw the reader’s attention towards such a nexus. 2 Eco, Experiences, 74. 3 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, 886, 892, 893. 4 Braudel, Mediterranean, I, 85. 5 Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 66f. 6 In the translation of Ros Schwartz, Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 62 (quote), 75. 7 Aslanyan, Dancing on Ropes, 6. 8 Briggs, This Little Art, 193. 9 Considine, Dictionaries; Hanß, “Ottoman Language Learning.” 10 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 8, November 9, 1617, 109r f., 111r. 11 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 19, 122 (quote). 12 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 9 (quote), 55. 13 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 12, 64. 14 Bähr, Burschel, and Jancke, Räume des Selbst. 15 Armstrong, “Spatial Early Modern Translation Studies,” 3 (quote); Farahzad and Ehteshami, “Spatial Territories.” 16 Armstrong, “Place and Space.” 17 GSItinerario, 173r f., 174r; Sherman, Telling Time. 18 GSItinerario, 173v–7r. 19 DAZD, 1: 2, 110r, March 1622. 20 Jireček, Heerstrasse, 122. 21 Briggs, This Little Art, 66, 142. 22 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 8, November 9, 1617, 111r (quote); ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 3, March 26, 1618, 20r f., 22r; ASV, SDelC, filza 14, March 30, 1619. 23 Jireček, Heerstrasse; Popović, Von Budapest nach Istanbul. 24 GSItinerario, 174r f., 175v–7r; Jireček, Heerstrasse, 74–6; Babinger and Bosworth, “Raghūsa.” 25 Armstrong, “Spatial Early Modern Translation Studies,” 4; Scott, The Work of Literary Translation, 183 (“Translation and Situating the Self”); Watson, “Spaces of Autobiographical Narrative”; Wallace, Europe: A Literary History. 26 GSItinerario, 173r–4v, 175v, 177r. 27 GSItinerario, 177r; Kunt, “Solidarity,” 235. 28 GSItinerario, 176r; Clark, Sleepwalkers, 367–403. 29 GSItinerario, 173v. Cf. Babinger, “Mīkhāl-Oghlu”; Gökbilgin, “Edirne”; Kreiser, Edirne, 194. 30 Hanß, “Il ponte”; Laqueur, Making Sex, 126–9. 31 Masters, “Caravansary”; Elisséeff, “Khān”; Yavuz, “Anatolian Seljuq Caravanserais”; Faroqhi, Subjects, 29; Hanß, “A Shared Taste?”

102  Translation, Space, and Mobility 32 GSItinerario, 173r f.; Gökbilgin, “Edirne”; Kreiser, Edirne, 156f.; Kuran, “Spatial Study,” 121. 33 GSItinerario, 173v f., 175v. 34 GSItinerario, 173r; Kreiser, Edirne, 156f., 163–5; Çobanoğlu, “Ekmekçizâde Ahmed Paşa Kervansarayi”; Gökbilgin, “Edirne.” 35 GSItinerario, 173r–4v; Fotić, “Yahyapaşa-Oğlu Mehmed Pasha’s Evkaf”; Kiel, “Lüleburgaz”; Trănkova, Georgiev, and Matanov, Ottoman Bulgaria, 82f.; Faroqhi, Subjects, 29. 36 GSItinerario, 173v f.; Parry, “Ibrāhīm Pasha.” 37 Friedman, Mappings, 3. Cf. Watson, “Spaces of Autobiographical Narrative”; Hammond, Debated Lands; Bracewell, “Balkan Travel Writing.” 38 GSItinerario, 173v–4v, 176r f. 39 GSItinerario, 175r f. 40 GSItinerario, 173r f., 174r–7r. 41 GSItinerario, 173v; Masters, “Caravansary”; Elisséeff, “Khān.” 42 Kreiser, Edirne, 62, 133f.; Gökbilgin, “Edirne.” 43 Bosworth and Behrens-Abouseif, “Sabīl”; Kreiser, Edirne, 62, 133f. On fountains as public places in eighteenth-century Istanbul, see Hamadeh, City’s Pleasures. 44 GSItinerario, 173r, 174v–7r. 45 GSItinerario, 173v–4v, 175v f. 46 GSItinerario, 175r. 47 GSItinerario, 173v–4v, 175v. 48 GSItinerario, 174r. 49 GSItinerario, 174r, 175v. 50 GSItinerario, 174r, 175v, 176v. 51 GSItinerario, 174r. 52 GSItinerario, 176r f. 53 Lotman, Structure; Van Baak, Place of Space; Nünning, “Formen und Funktionen.” 54 GSItinerario, 174r, and throughout. 55 GSItinerario, 174r, 176r f. 56 GSItinerario, 173v f., 176v. 57 Lotman, Structure. 58 Braudel, Mediterranean, I, 355. I follow here Braudel’s preference in translation, Parker, Emperor, 653. 59 Dursteler, Renegade Women, 63f.; Popović, “Dalmatia”; Djurdjev, “Bosna.” 60 GSItinerario, 176v. 61 ASV, DT, no. 541; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 142. 62 Pedani, Inventory, 90. 63 ASV, DT, no. 750–6; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 188f. 64 Pedani, Ottoman-Venetian Border, 115 referencing ASV, BAC, b. 250, reg. 331, 12r, 1595. 65 De Certeau, “Spatial Practices,” 232f. 66 Höfert, “Order of Things”; Höfert, Den Feind beschreiben. 67 De Certeau, “Spatial Practices,” 233; DAZD, 1: 2, 110r, March 1622. 68 DAZD, 1: 2, 109r, March 5, 1622. 69 De Certeau, “Spatial Practices,” 235. 70 Novak, Commissiones, VI, 128, 203, 286. 71 DAZD, 1: 1, 4v, February 22, 1616 (MV). 72 Novak, Commissiones, VI, 128. 73 Dursteler, Renegade Women, 36 (quote), 63. Cf. Ivetic and Roksandić, Tolerance; Popović, “Dalmatia.”

Translation, Space, and Mobility  103 r

v

74 DAZD, 1: 1, 544 –59 , March 1622. 75 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 4; Norton, “Blurring the Boundaries.” 76 ASV, SDD, 18, March 12, 1618. 77 ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 1, January 23, 1589 (MV). 78 ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 1, October 28, 1577. 79 Inì, “Materiality.” 80 ASV, SDD, 19, September 22, 1618. 81 GSItinerario, 176v; Bamji, “Health Passes.” 82 GHBB, R-6637, Mullā Yaḥyā b. Pīr ʿAlī b. Naṣū ḥ Nawʿī, Natā’iǧ al-funūn wa maḥāsin al-mutūn (‫)نتا ٔىج الفنون و محاسن المتون‬, 1007/1598; Popara, Catalogue, XVIII, 5f. 83 Dursteler, “Habsburgs, Ottomans and Venetians,” 65 (quote); Luca, “Vlachs/ Morlaks.” 84 ASV, SDD, 19, September 22, 1618. 85 Dursteler, Renegade Women, 36 (quote). Cf. Pedani, Dalla frontiera, 39–55. 86 Pedani, Ottoman-Venetian Border, 55f. 87 Dursteler, “Habsburgs, Ottomans and Venetians,” 66. 88 Pedani, Ottoman-Venetian Border, 34. Cf. Pedani, Dalla frontiera. 89 ASV, SDD, 18, March 12, 1618. 90 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 121–31. 91 GSItinerario, 176v f.; Friedman, Mappings, 3. 92 ASV, SDD, 18, March 19, 1618. 93 DAZD, 18: 86, K81/2; K81/6; ASV, SDD, 18, May 20 and 28, 1618. 94 ASV, SDD, 18, May 28, 1618; June 7–9, 1618; June 25, 1618; August 23, 1618. 95 ASV, SDD, 18, August 23, 1618 (July 6, 1618); ASV, SDelC, 214r, September 3, 1619. Cf. Wright and MacKay, “Serenissima”; Faroqhi, “Handelswege der Adria,” 378–80; Barzman, Limits of Identity, 14. 96 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 219r, October 5, 1619. 97 Kafadar, “Evliya Çelebi in Dalmatia.” 98 Kafadar, “Evliya Çelebi in Dalmatia”; Brummett, Mapping the Ottomans. Rosaccio, Viaggio largely copies the maps of Klis and Split in Camocio, Isole famose. On the significance of citizenship in Venetian Dalmatia, see SanderFaes, Urban Elites; Barzman, Limits of Identity. 99 Lučin, Marulić Reader, 87–9, translated by Živan Filippi. 100 Novak, Commissiones, VI, 128. 101 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 12. 102 Klein, Wagner, and Vlachopoulou, Transottoman Biographies; Kothiyal, “Narratives of Mobility.” 103 Pedani, Ottoman-Venetian Border, 115 referencing ASV, BAC, b. 250, reg. 331, fol. 12r, 1595. 104 Mumcu, Venedik Baylosu’nun Defterleri, 99. 105 ASV, BAC, b. 277, protocollo of bailo Simone Contarini, 33r f., March 26, 1611. 106 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 243. 107 ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 301v, July  7, 1614; Pedani, Ottoman-Venetian Border, 113. 108 Zahirović, Register, 39. 109 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 3, March 26, 1618, 20r f., 22r; GSItinerario, 173r, 176v, et al. 110 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 101v f., January 13, 1617 (MV); 104v, January 27, 1617 (MV); 106r, March 1, 1618; GSItinerario, 173r; Jancke and Schläppi, Ökonomie sozialer Beziehungen. 111 GSItinerario, 174r–8r; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 100v f., January 13, 1617 (MV). 112 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 90r–3r, August 14, 1618; 100v f., January 13, 1617 (MV).

104  Translation, Space, and Mobility 13 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 41r, January 18, 1617 (MV); 90r–3r, August 14, 1618. 1 114 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 90r–3r, August  14, 1618. Cf. ASV, SDelC, reg.  12, 89v, August 4, 1618; Predelli, I libri commemoriali, 150. 115 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 90r–3r, August 14, 1618; Novak, Commissiones, VI, 156–61, here 160f. Cf. Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 7, 45. For Contarini’s period in office as bailo, no final report survives. Pedani, “Elenco,” 38; Benzoni, “Contarini”; Dursteler, “Bailo,” 14, 30. 116 On casa, family, and diplomacy, see the inspiring study of Hernández Sau, “A ‘Global’ Casa.” Such a focus also provides a family centred approach to the overall Venetian inland and overseas territories, as detailed in Ortalli, Schmitt, and Orlando, Commonwealth veneziano. 117 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 8; Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Spagna, I, 277–338. 118 Zahirović, Register, 1f. 119 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 87r, August 4, 1618; Molnár, “Forgotten Bridgehead,” 494 (quote). 120 ASV, SDD, 18, March 6, 1618. 121 Predelli, I libri commemoriali, 145. 122 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Spagna, I, 557–92. 123 Mumcu, Venedik Baylosu’nun Defterleri, 99; Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 251f. 124 DAZD, 1: 1, 313r, Giovanni Battista Contarini, Zadar, May 30, 1606. 125 ASV, SDelM, filza 217, April 24, 1618 (MV), March 15, 1618 (MV), 1r f. 126 ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 1, June 13, 1588 (quote); September 27, 1588. 127 GSItinerario, 178r.

On (Dis)Connections

Figure 19  On a market in Sarajevo. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017.

In a market in Sarajevo, I see some pens made of the bullets that besieged the city between 1992 and 1996, almost four entire years of terror, misery, and suffering. It is disturbing to see such artefacts—a feeling intensified by the strange uniformity of the pens, of which only one breaks out of column (Figure 19).1 War and writing often come together in unsettling terms. As I will discuss in Chapter 3, also Genesino wrote the self-narrative in the face of a series of wars. The journey echoed the recent developments of the Veneto-Austrian War

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-6

106  On (Dis)Connections in Dalmatia that also involved Ottoman and Spanish protagonists, and was in danger of becoming a pan-European conflict until resolved by negotiations in Paris and Madrid. Meanwhile, a new war was dawning. In the next 30 years, the continent was to sink in violence that Genesino could not imagine when writing his travelogue. Moreover, the dragoman’s journey was a direct reaction to the recent Spanish-Neapolitan attack of Venetian ships loaded with Ottoman cargo. The Balkan travels, Chapter 3 will show, situated Genesino within these wider Mediterranean political and economic entanglements. Situating Genesino’s writing within such wider contexts highlights the connectedness of the early modern Mediterranean, a vibrant space of exchange and interactions. Debates about connected histories have in fact influenced studies of the early modern Mediterranean, and vice versa, and brought forth some of the most fascinating scholarship in the field and beyond. Cultural connections have long been the focus of Mediterranean studies to an extent that, in response, historians more recently called on researchers to “re-politicize” ­discussions about early modern encounters, thus, to “mobilize scholarship against rose-coloured narratives of encounter” and initiate a debate on “how exactly connections worked or failed to work in local contexts, and how, in some instances, they paved the way for disconnection […].”2 But don’t the Sarajevo pens call to mind that such a critique introduces, first of all, an artificial juxtaposition between connections and conflicts? The most influential and powerful examples of connected histories certainly never had the intention to whitewash the history of conflicts and conquests, or replace such stories with a romanticised view on exchange. Thoughtfully researched, critically investigated, and reflectively presented connected history, in fact, has not done so. Even the “trickster travels” of Leo Africanus originated in the experience of violence, abduction, and slavery. The call for a (dis)connected history thus could also be read as a plea for a greater awareness of some of the most original theoretical reflections of connected history.3 The present book draws attention to both connections and disconnections, conflicts, contacts, and coexistence, as categories not juxtaposed but entangled, and such that bundle in Genesino’s narrative and shape the dragoman’s work and world. Instead of thinking such categories as oppositions, they appear as interconnected. In fact, war has generated demands for translation throughout history.4 Also in the case of Genesino, it was war that set the interpreter in motion and caused him to write the self-narrative. Moreover, the translator considered himself a protagonist of such wars. As detailed in the next two chapters, the Salvagos negotiated the fate of politics by gathering information on the ground. The entire dragoman family, in fact, was active as spies across the Mediterranean fuelling Venetian channels of political communication with invaluable information that influenced authorities’ decision-making. As agents of empire, the Salvagos’ writings mattered in times of war. As Mona Baker states, “translation is central to the ability of all parties to legitimize their version of events.”5

On (Dis)Connections  107

Notes 1 I think of Durs Grünbein’s poem Sarajevo: Danach, see Grünbein, Aus der Traum (Kartei), 482–507. 2 Biedermann, (Dis)connected Empires, viii, x, 1. 3 Davis, Trickster Travels. Most recently, Subrahmanyam, Connected History. 4 Rafael, “Translation.” 5 Baker, Translation and Conflict, 1.

3 The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self Commerce, Espionage, and War

‫نه وار نه يوق‬ cosa c’è di nuovo ‫اناندرمق‬ far credere century Entries in an Ottoman-Italian dictionary from seventeenth-­ Sarajevo. Gazi Husrev-Begova Biblioteka, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, R-5538, Turkče-italiyanča luġatī (‫لغتي‬‎‫اطالينجه‬‎‫)تركجه‬, 51r, 54r.

Translanguaging and the Dragoman’s Mediterranean Self This chapter situates Genesino Salvago’s Balkan voyage in its wider diplomatic, political, and economic contexts, and it examines the repercussions for the translator’s narrative self. Genesino’s journey, I argue, was anchored in the broader Mediterranean world. His travels took place within a rising climate of war, piracy, espionage, and a pressing crisis of Veneto-Ottoman commerce—developments which led Venice to consider ambassador Francesco Contarini travelling to Istanbul via the Balkan inlands in the first place, and which thus also shaped the reasons, circumstances, and consequences of the dragoman’s journey, as well as the experiences he accrued. As  such, Istanbul, Split, Trogir, and Venice were not the only sites that affected his journey; his Balkan experiences were also deeply affected by events taking place in Naples and Sicily, Ragusa, Madrid, and the Austrian Habsburg lands, to name just a few. This chapter puts the multifaceted, complex, and diverse world of the early seventeenth-century Ottoman Balkans centre-stage to discuss the wider Mediterranean significance of Genesino’s journey. Such an approach contrasts research that, too often, examines the early modern Balkans exclusively through a Venetian or Ottoman lens, casting the region as an imperial periphery.1 This chapter presents the early modern Balkans as a vibrant, multidirectional assemblage of Mediterranean centres.2 During his stay at Sarajevo, for instance, Genesino joined a dynamic Mediterranean

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-7

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  109 hub that negotiated wider Ottoman, Venetian, and Spanish policies. This chapter recovers the Mediterranean significance, dynamism, and the plurality of early modern Southeastern Europe, resituating the Balkan Peninsula as a Mediterranean centre. Genesino travelled cultural sites that were at the core of political processes of positioning translations against ­counter-translations, negotiating the favouring of different interpretations of Mediterranean events. Such interpretative contexts, I argue, shaped this interpreter’s Mediterranean notion of the self. This approach ­broadens our understanding of early modern imperial dragomans as information ­gatherers, brokers, and spies. Translation involves the understanding and positioning of others, and has been described as a practice of “mediation and negotiation, as the transmission of meaning, and a transformation by transference into new contexts.”3 Genesino’s expertise in translation came along with an “inherent awareness of difference,” to adapt the wording of Doris Bachmann-Medick.4 The dragoman’s everyday business was to recontextualise the wordings, meanings, perspectives, and selves of others. “Translators channel a wide variety of Other voices,” in fact, “translation is the sheer play of difference: it constantly makes allusion to difference, dissimulates difference, but by occasionally revealing and often accentuating it, translation becomes the very life of this difference.”5 As a social practice engrained in the interpreter’s experience of life, Genesino’s translations implied a constant relational act of “self-translation.”6 The Salvagos’ appointment as road dragomans, in fact, also required a rather different skill set than that of senior dragomans active in the bailate. For instance, Genesino was expected to be more flexible in responding to shifting local contexts. The dragoman was thus accustomed to a world in which perspectives differed, and in which identifying, articulating, concealing, moulding, and working along as well as against these differences mattered. As a translator in imperial service, Genesino was himself part of an apparatus in which translation had become a tool of cross-cultural understanding as well as a “process wherein the coloniality of power articulated […] difference.”7 As a translator, Genesino knew how differences in understanding were made to matter—and how crucial it was to sense translatory processes in which differences were articulated, as well as the dynamics of power involved in them. Travelling the Balkans in times of a multi-layered military and economic crisis, this interpreter was aware of the politics behind the words that interpreted such conflicts. As an interpreter, Genesino was not merely translating one language into another but interpreting experiences, perspectives, and relations. Through his life in translation, he had become an expert in “translanguaging.” He was practised in “a way of speaking, talking, and thinking in between languages” that resembled, as Walter Mignolo and Freya Schiwy put it, “a form of border thinking.”8 Such a position attuned Genesino to the politics of multipositionality; he had developed a fine sensitivity to sense other p ­erspectives through his everyday business of interpretation(s).

110  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self The dragoman was practised in translating and positioning himself into the ­perspectives of others. This “translanguaging,” I argue, required broader Mediterranean reflections. The dragoman’s self-narrative was grounded in an ability and need to think Mediterranean (dis)connections from different angles. This chapter reconstructs the dense Mediterranean web of positions that informed contemporary events in the Balkans, as well as how the dragoman’s sense of multipositionality shaped his involvement in the making of Mediterranean history.9 First, the military incident at Split which rocked the world of VenetoOttoman commerce a few months prior to Genesino’s journey will be outlined, before moving onto the Salvagos’ own involvement in the profitable trading business across the Balkans. I will then discuss the impact of such events on Ottoman traders, and Bosnian merchants in particular, as well as the consequences of their actions for Veneto-Ottoman imperial politics and the role of dragomans in channelling and shaping such negotiations. After touching on Genesino’s visit to Sarajevo in 1618, this chapter will examine the role of other key Mediterranean players in the politics surrounding the Split incident, namely Spain, Naples, and Ragusa, as well as espionage activities of dragomans like Genesino and his understanding of the VenetoAustrian war concerning sea- and land-raiding communities in the Adriatic. This chapter closes with a discussion of how Genesino’s self-narrative impacted Contarini’s journey to Istanbul.

A Fragile Culture of Trust: Veneto-Ottoman Commerce in the Balkans and the Incident of Split Split was a vibrant hub of Veneto-Ottoman commerce that benefited from the “unprecedented economic development” of the Balkans during the sixteenth century.10 Noticing its increasing economic significance, Venetian authorities established a maritime trading infrastructure with one galley dedicated exclusively to the transport of merchandise between Split and Venice in 1580. Soon afterwards, two ships were commuting between Venice and Split at regular intervals. The Split cargo galleys (galee di mercanzia), traversing the Adriatic Sea under the aegis of Venice, were to become the pulse of the republic’s commercial success. Even when the turnaround of goods was low, merchant galleys crossed the Adriatic six times a year, carrying at least 700,000 reali worth of commodities from Split to Venice each time.11 Jewish merchant Daniele Rodriguez played a crucial role in ­convincing Venetian authorities of Split’s economic potential in the 1570s. In response, Venice issued statutes that encouraged its Jewish population to engage with commercial activities across the Balkans. Both to foster economic connections with Jewish merchants in Venice and to rival the growing Venetian commercial dominance in the Adriatic, sixteenth-century Ottoman authorities settled Sephardic Jews expelled from Iberia in Adriatic Port cities like Vlorë.12 Soon, the so-called scala di Spalato (Split) became

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  111 one of the most significant transshipment points for Balkan inland commerce, with merchant ships arriving from Venice, Ragusa, Lezhë, Vlorë, Herceg Novi, and the Neretva River. In 1590, Venice offered favourable tax regulations to further booster trade via Split, which was now declared a free port. Duties on Ottoman goods traded to Venice via Split were reduced by half, or cut entirely for commodities like soap and rice. Venice also spared arriving Ottoman Jews additional tax payments, with the Bosnian governor officially confirming the favourable conditions and fostering commerce via Split over the coming decades to increase customs revenue. In the 1590s, commerce via Split experienced a boom.13 In the years prior to Genesino’s arrival in the city, Venetian authorities noticed that more and more commodities were being traded via Split. Further investments into the city’s trading infrastructure followed in the 1610s, particularly in the harbour, the quarantine residence for goods and merchants (lazzaretto), and commercial storage facilities. By 1626, a quarter of all port activities of Venice took place in Split.14 As customs regulations and commodity lists show, Venice owed Split’s prosperity to the vibrant Adriatic trade in wool, silks, leather, fabrics, sugar, cheese, rice, mirrors, fake pearls, ginger, pharmaceutics, remedies, soaps, wood from the Taurus Mountains, coffee, tobacco, copper, tin, lead, nails, as well as silk, velvets, corals, and wax. Such dynamic cross-Balkanic commercial exchange turned Split, as well as towns along the wider Venetian Adriatic coast, like Zadar, into thriving hubs that ensured the prosperity of Venice itself.15 Split’s economic vitality was based on what Maria Pedani calls a “­culture of trust.” Interpreters held a vital role in balancing and brokering this ­delicate equilibrium in everyday translations and transactions. To merchants, translators’ language skills and social prestige were crucial to gain permissions, overcome paperwork, and acquire the trust of authorities. When Cafer and Muio, two Ottoman merchants from Ulcinj, wished to conduct trade in Venetian territories in 1621, they approached the “interpreter and expert” Luca d’Allegri from Budva to act as their patron when translating and supporting their petition to the Venetian provveditore generale of Dalmatia and Albania. Dragomans in public service in Venetian Dalmatia, such as in Zadar, translated documents for both Muslim and Christian Ottoman merchants as well as Ottoman authorities from Bosnia, Greece, and Zagreb. These border zone interpreters also drafted the responses of Veneto-Dalmatian authorities regarding commodities, payments, and debts—documents that upheld a precious climate of trust. In regular instances, authorities in Split and Trogir announced that merchants and their merchandise “are safe” under Venetian protection. But in the months before Genesino’s journey, that delicate equilibrium of trust had broken apart.16 In July 1617, the Neapolitan-Spanish fleet captured two Split cargo galleys sailing for Venice with “commodities of much value.” Besides the looting, many galley slaves, oarsmen, and merchants were killed. Zuane da Spalato

112  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self and the Genoese Piero d’Andrea had drowned, while a Frenchman known as Claudio di Francesco was killed by an arquebus during the raid. On the Spanish side, Ottavio Piccolomini was involved in the looting. Piccolomini, in close collaboration with Ragusan informants, had previously captured nine Ottoman galleys and a ship of the beg of Thessaloniki. The Split incident, however, was a hitherto unmatched Venetian defeat that underlined its inability to secure maritime trade routes. Several Spanish galleys were spotted a few days earlier already but the Venetian ships sent out to protect the cargo galleys could not prevent the raid. The Neapolitan fleet had learned about the route of the two cargo galleys, “loaded with goods and merchandise of Turks and Jews,” by accident when looting a Venetian ship near Lesina. Soon, the Neapolitan, Sicilian, and Genoese ships under the command of Giovanni Battista della Rovere, as well as the ships of Pedro TéllezGirón, duke of Osuna and Spanish viceroy of Naples, set sail to chase down the Venetian cargo ships. According to Ragusan information, the Spanish armada counted 33 galleys and 17 galleons, which provided Spain with an overwhelming military advantage. The two Split cargo galleys only had minimal protection. Some sources speak of only one ship accompanying them, while the Spanish fleet had just conquered three minor Venetian ships with arms, munitions, and provisions near Hvar directly before the Split incident. The Venetian defeat was all-encompassing, in military and economic terms. At the Spanish court, rumours soon spread that the looted cargo contained, among others, 2,700 bales of wool and precious silks. Despite bringing the vital Veneto-Ottoman commerce to a near halt, the incident also created a direct threat to Venetian Dalmatia. Split and Trogir, dependent on Ottoman wheat, salt, meat, cheese, and wool supplies, could no longer count on its maritime safety. Venetian territory in the Adriatic Sea, it seemed, was under direct attack by the Spanish viceroyalty of Naples.17 The incident poisoned the climate of trust and was seriously a blow to Veneto-Ottoman prosperity. This was made even more painful by the fact that Venice had only appointed Bartolo Comaro and Lorenzo Morosini to crew six small armed ships to protect the Split cargo galleys. Giustinian Antonio Bellegno, provveditore generale of Dalmatia and Albania, sent two Albanian subjects to Istria to guarantee the safe passage of the cargo ships. Safety, in fact, had been a concern for nearly a decade. The residents of Split who transported Ottoman commodities to Venice had already petitioned to transfer some of their economic activities to the relatively safer Zadar. In 1613, Venice agreed to send four small armed ships to accompany Split cargo galleys. Around 200 Dutchmen and several Dutch ships were already on Venice’s payroll to support the fight against the Spanish-Neapolitan fleet, just several months before the Split incident. At the same time, Venice armed another four galleys and seven smaller ships under the command of Lorenzo Venier to protect the trading route via Split. Upon receiving news of the looting, the Venetian doge and senate hastened to send a reply

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  113 to the Venetian governor of Split: “Infinite was the sorrow felt by us for the sinister accident that happened to the cargo galleys and for the damage that occurred to the merchants.” Senators urged governor Marin Garzoni to reassure Ottoman merchants “that we will not fail to seek compensation for these damages with all our strength and by all possible means.”18 But the timing was bad for Venetian interests. The incident occurred amid a climate of rising tensions. In the areas surrounding Kotor, Ottoman subjects were afraid Venetian and Spanish troops could unite for a joint attack on Ottoman lands. Such rumours spread across Dalmatia within weeks. Venice’s official response to an increasing number of Neapolitan and Sicilian raids—investments into armament—further fuelled suspicion across the Ottoman Levant. The lagoon city rushed out letters to Venetian authorities in Cephalonia, Corfu, Crete, Kythira, and Zakynthos to avoid any suspicion among “nearby Turks.”19 In Istanbul, the bailo was urged to meet with the grand vizier and to assure Ottoman authorities in Bosnia that Venice’s increasing military presence in the Adriatic helped ensure the “security” of Ottoman subjects. The bailo was asked to be “very attentive to everything that could be spoken of,” especially if Split was mentioned. In such a case, the bailo had to reassure Ottoman officials of the “sincere friendship” of Venice. “This is important and very delicate business,” Venice advised the bailo.20 Venetian authorities in Kotor were ordered to present precious clothing, wax, and sugar as gifts to Iskender Pasha, governor of Bosnia, to appease authorities. In Vrana, located near Zadar and Split, mistrust among Ottoman subjects had led to raids against Venetians, which led Venice to order the governor of Zadar to fight back and recapture the horses that had been stolen. “The public peace of those borders” and its “good neighbourhood,” Venice informed the bailo in Istanbul, were at risk.21 Yet, such raids continued in 1618 and 1619—even after the sultan had ordered Milos Čobanović, a Zadar villager who had engaged in such raids, to be punished in a manner that would set an example. The fact that Čobanović was also secretly a spy on the Venetian payroll, who fed Venetian authorities in Zadar with news about Ottoman lands, and who managed a spy network in the region, was particularly unfortunate. The events in Split, it seemed, could be the final straw leading to an escalation of violence. Most alarming was that Mustafa Sardo Beg, a high-ranking Ottoman official from Thessaloniki, had started direct negotiations with the viceroy of Naples—since some Ottoman officials apparently considered Venice no longer capable of solving the conflict. At the same time, the Ottoman arsenal produced even more armed ships to protect cargo galleys from Cairo to Istanbul. In letters sent to the bailo, Venice hastened to reiterate “the shared interests” among Venetians and Ottomans; yet, such rhetoric increasingly appeared hollow.22 “The frequency of the voyage of the cargo galleys,” Garzoni wrote in December 1618, “is surely the only and true foundation of this most

114  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self important business of the scala [Split].” If these galleys could not depart safely and at regular intervals, Split authorities were concerned that Bosnian merchants might transfer their trading routes to Ragusa.23 Immediately after the incident, Venice sent armed galleys to avoid “the commerce [being] interrupted.” The senate considered it of utmost importance to urge representatives in Split, Zadar, and Sarajevo to assure local merchants that the trading route via Split was safe, so as to keep the wheels of Veneto-Ottoman commerce turning.24 In July 1617, the same month of the Split incident, leading Venetian representatives across the Levant—the bailo, general da mar, provveditore dell’armate, and the rettori of Corfu and Zadar—were instructed to be vigilant about Spanish military movements in the Adriatic. Maritime connections between Venice and Otranto, the prospering harbour of Naples, were to be reduced immediately. Venice also increased the number of oarsmen and mariners per cargo galley to 60; one armed galley and four smaller armed ships were henceforth safeguarding the journey of each Split cargo galley. In addition, Venice invested heavily into the armament of ships across the Adriatic. Dalmatian territories worked hand in hand with Venice to secure and militarise maritime routes. In spring 1618, the first navigation season after the Split incident, Venice hastily armed its naval army. In May, when Genesino was travelling Venetian Dalmatia, galleys and manpower arrived from Venice in Zadar to support future confrontations against the Spaniards. Another 2,000 Dutch soldiers were sent to fight for Venice in Istria in the same month. In June, Venice impatiently awaited the arrival of 20 ships from Flanders and England as additional support, and again increased the number of oarsmen on the small ships accompanying Split cargo galleys, this time to 70. Cretan ships were to accompany the merchant galleys of Split from that point onwards, and Venice invested another 100,000 ducats in the armament of ships that were to ensure the future safe passage of cargo galleys.25 Venetian investments into maritime military presence took place in the context of broader Neapolitan strategic investments in the Adriatic. In particular, Naples hoped to build on short maritime routes—only 90 km separated Neapolitan Otranto and Ottoman Vlorë—to establish prospering commerce with the Ottoman Balkans. By 1616, Bosnian merchants had tried to establish Split as a transhipment point for commerce with Naples and Sicily—on the costs of Venice. Bosnian furiers from Sarajevo and Banja Luka had sent a representative (console) to explore trading routes via Split, as an alternative to Ragusa, but Venice denied the request, fearing that this might strengthen the economic power of South Italian port cities at the expense of its own prosperity. Consequently, Venetian authorities harshly restricted merchants’ activities between Split and Ancona, Messina, Naples, and Apulia. A year later, in March 1617, Venice’s diplomatic residents in Naples and Palermo sent news about the viceroy’s decision to arm ships to expand the Neapolitan sphere of influence in the Adriatic. In addition, the ship of the Venetian Pellegrin di Rossi, returning with “cargo of much value”

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  115 from Alexandria, was detained in Brindisi. The viceroy of Naples ordered the removal of commodities belonging to Jewish merchants, which was “vigorously opposed” by the local Venetian resident.26 A few days prior to the Split incident, then, Venetian authorities were shocked to read in the letters of their diplomatic resident in Naples about the “viceroy’s idea to open a scala for Turkish merchants in that reign to destroy ours in Split.” Venice immediately informed the bailo in Istanbul, where such news impacted Veneto-Ottoman diplomacy in general and the deeds of dragomans like Genesino in particular. Speculations of an anti-Ottoman alliance between Naples, Rome, Florence, Malta, and Genoa further increased tensions in the region. Once called the Golfo di Venezia (Figure 20), the Adriatic Sea was no longer a Venetian and Ottoman domain, but a contested imperial space with Spanish, French, Dutch, English involvement, and the presence of local raider communities, the Austrian Habsburgs, and North African corsairs.27 With Venetian ships’ safety no longer guaranteed in the Adriatic, the Split incident prompted Venice to consider alternative travel routes for its ambassadors to Istanbul, and Contarini in particular. Genesino’s travel explorations of a possible inland route across the Balkans are thus also a

Figure 20  Contemporary Venetian cartography mapped the Adriatic Sea as the “Gulf or Sea of Venice.” Ptolemy, La Geografia (…), translated by Girolamo Ruscelli (Venice: Valgrisi, 1561). ©Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Rar. 1459.

116  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self consequence of the Neapolitan military success at Split in 1617. The event defined Venice’s Adriatic and Levantine agenda for years to come, and thus also the negotiations conducted by Contarini and translated by the bailate’s dragomans. In the months following the Split incident—exactly when Genesino travelled the region—the spiral of mistrust seemed to finally culminate in open war, as Garzoni put it. Split increased its own urban armament, also due to an uprising in the Ottoman hinterlands against the sancak-beg of Klis. Garzoni was deeply concerned about the consequences of such military developments for the wider border zone, as well as a possible involvement of the Spaniards. At the same time, Spanish galleys were present across the Adriatic. In Budva, Venetian authorities observed and debated nervously Spanish maritime movements. Still in July 1618, a “large number of hostile ships” were spotted between Split and Šibenik.28 Venetian investments into fostering Ottoman cooperation to counter increasing Spanish influence across the Adriatic Sea were another immediate response to the event at Split. As was often the case, Renaissance European rulers turned to the Ottomans to gain support in solving diplomatic problems across the continent. Venice immediately instructed Dalmatian authorities, such as those in Šibenik, to hand out honorary gifts to nearby sancak-begs. Venice also presented the Ottoman grand admiral (kapudan pasha) with gifts, among them sugar from Zakynthos. In return, Ottoman subjects at the Dalmatian coast supported Venice’s attempts to pin down the circulation of goods stolen at the incident at Split. Khalil Agha from Vrana offered 3,000 infantrymen to support Venice against the Spanish-Neapolitan fleet. Ogras Agha Nasunović, an Ottoman subject from the Cetina River, offered Venice, via its governor in Trogir, 200 horses and a large number of Bosnian men to equip Venice’s growing Adriatic fleet. Moreover, the governor of Šibenik, Piero Morosini, maintained conversations about the conscription of regional Ottoman manpower, especially via a certain “Zuanne Ručić, called ‘The Hungarian’,” who offered Venice 250 infantrymen. Venice conscripted further soldiers in Ottoman Bosnia, especially after the sultan had given his consent to Ottoman authorities in Albania, Croatia, and Herzegovina to provide Venice with military support against Naples. In addition, Venetian senators ordered the bailo in Istanbul to circulate the speeches of a common enemy, Spain that caused severe damage to both Venice and the Ottomans. In front of the Ottoman sultan, the bailo soon spoke—in the dragomans’ words—about Venice being at war with Spain and Naples.29 Across the Mediterranean, the Split incident propelled a wide range of interpretations and positions regarding the event. Due to his own profession, Genesino had his own ways of engaging with this Mediterranean landscape of multipositionality. The dragoman was accustomed to “dealing […] with knowledge, with the mess of different and potential knowledges of the world,” in the words of Kate Briggs. She emphasises a translator’s deep investment in a world characterised by multipositionality. “The timing

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  117 and circumstances of my reading, the books I am reading the book with, the people I am talking to about it, who might make me think differently,” all lead to the fact that, Briggs states, “I am more willing to register and be troubled by the closer, familiar differences than the more distant ones.” Interpreters are invested in acknowledging different positions since translation requires their engagement with different views. Translators rely on what Briggs calls supporting texts: the texts that brace us, the ones we lean on, testing them to see if they’ll support our weight; the texts we always seem to be in conversation with, whether directly or indirectly; the texts that enable us to say or write anything at all.30 Genesino would have been most familiar with administrative and official texts—when then-bailo Francesco Contarini left Istanbul in 1607, the bailate contained journals covering his daily business, copies of dispatches, account books, as well as books documenting gifts and ship cargos.31 The dragoman would have also leaned on language manuals, dictionaries, notebooks, miniature albums that served as didactic tools, books in the Salvago household in Galata, notes of the family’s road dragomans who were active abroad, as well as his own personal notes and translations. Genesino would have also relied on travel literature, which was widespread among Venetians abroad—for instance, those residing in Syria, the place where Genesino’s brother, Giuliano, did most of his work.32 Leaning on such texts, besides his own experiences and the oral conversations conducted over decades in office, Genesino would have crafted his own translations with a variety of documents and translations in mind. Together with the wide range of positions he encountered in and outside the bailate, the dragoman’s professional activities were “lean[ing] on,” in Briggs’ words, an engagement with a wide range of perspectives “as materials to think with.”33 Translation is a way of doing things, of doing texts and languages; it is a way of thinking, and a way of engagement with “materials to think with”; it is also a form of enquiring, a way of “trying to talk in new ways to new people.” The dragoman was considering “all the small contacts translation makes” by taking into account other positions. To make a living from translation meant that Genesino was required to engage with others’ words, ideas, and positions: through translation, Genesino was “performing them as a part of a performance of yourself (investing them with your own subjectivity).” Due to “translation’s necessary process of de- and recontextualization” as being based on the principle of appropriation, the dragoman was thus invested in the webs of different positions. To make his translation work, Genesino first needed to explore another position. Due to the very nature of his profession, a dragoman not only had the need but also “the right to identify-with” perspectives other than that of Venice.34 This has severe repercussions for the contexts discussed in this chapter. The Split incident in July 1617 set free

118  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self manifold interpretative stances that Genesino had to think along and with when travelling the region. Like a library full of books to be translated, the incident offered the road dragoman a Mediterranean full of positions to engage with. Through his work, the interpreter was invested in other positions; the translator’s sense of positionality, thus, was itself distributed.

The Gagliano Connection: The Salvagos’ Embeddedness in Veneto-Ottoman Commerce Officially, the purpose of Genesino’s journey was to investigate possible travel routes for Contarini. But the journey was about so much more: surveying a politically, economically, militarily, and emotionally contested terrain; collecting, assessing, and sharing information; and evaluating different positions within the conflict to negotiate ongoing Veneto-Ottoman politics and exchange. Personal considerations, too, motivated Genesino’s explorations into the dense web of multipositionality surrounding the commercial crisis following the Split incident since the Salvago family was heavily invested in Veneto-Ottoman commerce. As dragomans, the Salvagos had heard a lot about the intricacies of Veneto-Ottoman commerce. Giovanni Battista, for instance, served as a witness when dervish Ali Çelebi presented the case of Ottoman merchant Mehmed Agha in the bailate, whose 84 bales of camlets due for Istanbul were waiting in a Venetian storage room, the key to which was stored by the Venetian interpreter Giacomo de Nores.35 Over decades, the Salvagos had cultivated strong ties with the Balkans. In 1587, Mateca lent money to Zuane de Nicolo from Paštrovići for him to pay ransom for his enslaved sister.36 The Salvagos were also deeply invested in the networks involved in Veneto-Ottoman commerce. Mateca’s second wife and mother of the Salvago dragomans, Caterina, was a member of the wealthy Gagliano family. Mateca’s brother-in-law, Odoardo da Gagliano, was an originally Ragusa-based merchant who had settled in Istanbul in the 1570s, maintaining a massive, prospering commercial network across the Levant. Odoardo owned the Gagliana grossa, a gigantic trading galley that sunk off Gnalić in 1583. The cargo aboard the Gagliana grossa sheds light on the wealth of the Gagliano family: 72 tons of colourful glass beads alone alongside glass vessels, goblets, mirror glasses, window panes, spectacles, ceramics, cloths, fabrics, and 54 m of damask silks—all coveted Venetian commodities in the Ottoman capital (Figure 21). Soon after the disaster, the Gagliano family managed to rebuild their maritime transport business.37 Odoardo’s business ties remained impressive, as the list of debtors testifies. He sued David de Ceres, a Jewish rabbi in Istanbul, for compensation of 315,852 akçe in February 1591. Just four months later, Odoardo was granted all the possessions of Diamantin, Andrea, and Jacomo Ralli. In May 1593, a certain Antonio Paronda was sentenced to pay 26,000 akçe to Odoardo. Caterina provided the Salvagos with “capital and […] business

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Figure 21  Murano glass beads (0.4–0.9  mm) excavated from the Gnalić shipwreck, a trading galley that belonged to Genesino’s uncle (1583). Biograd na Moru, Zavičajni Muzej Biograd na Moru, inv. no. G250.  ©Ivana Asić.

­opportunities,” which “proved immensely important for her son [Genesino] Salvago’s future career.”38 Family relations, however, could be as tumultuous as Mediterranean commerce. In 1591, Mateca and Caterina were in a legal dispute with Odoardo and Domenico da Gagliano over the inheritance of their father Benedetto and their uncle, also named Domenico, who had died without offspring. Mateca acted as his wife’s spokesperson and was clever enough to have this dispute settled at the bailate in Istanbul, where he maintained strong professional and personal networks.39 Mateca was surely aware that Odoardo had fallen into disgrace during a serious dispute with grand dragoman Steffano Giovani, his superior in the complex hierarchy of dragomans at the bailate. Mateca would have known how to use such a fortunate circumstance for the negotiation of his own inheritance dispute. Some months later, Mateca supported Giovani’s request to receive an advance payment of two annual salaries from Venice.40 The dispute between Odoardo and Mateca was formally resolved in the presence of the bailo and dragoman

120  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self Pasqua Navon—the son of dragoman Tomaso Navon and husband to one of Odoardo’s daughters, Isabeta—with the young Genesino present at the proceedings.41 The bailo confirmed that the Gagliano properties in Pera shall be split between Mateca and Odoardo. The Gaglianos had to hand over to Mateca a residence in the quarter of the Church of San Pietro, a vineyard near the village of San Dimitri, and a shop near the new market hall (bedesten). Odoardo was to inherit another house facing the Church of San Pietro, a vineyard strategically located near the Topkapı Sarayı, and another house in the quarter of the Church of San Francesco. The values of these properties were set off against each other and the difference was to be paid by Odoardo over the span of three years. As agreed, none of Mateca and Caterina’s sons was allowed to litigate this verdict, neither via Venetian nor via Ottoman jurisprudence—an important agreement since both the Salvagos and Odoardo were formally Ottoman subjects.42 The value of the properties was estimated by two appointed “neutral” protagonists, Pasqua Navon and Domenico Panzano. However, both were anything but neutral. Pasqua Navon was Odoardo’s grandchild, and like other members of the Navon family, was a dragoman at the bailate who worked closely together with senior colleague Mateca and the Salvago brothers. Galata-based merchant Panzano would have been known to Odoardo, but was also soon to become Mateca’s father-in-law. The marriage of Mateca and Theodora Panzano testifies to the Salvagos’ deep involvement in the world of commerce. In the trial against Odoardo, Mateca clearly knew how to activate his networks for a favourable outcome.43 Odoardo felt unfairly treated and challenged Mateca’s claim for outstanding debts in front of the grand vizier and his çavuş, but to no avail. Odoardo paid Mateca 10,500 akçe in January 1593. Mateca confirmed that the payment was in line with the arrangements made in the Venetian bailate as early as 1588. In May 1593, then, the difference between the estimated values of the properties was paid. Odoardo agreed to pay Mateca 16,000 akçe annually for the next three years and Mateca confirmed that Odoardo could continue to live in the house ­facing the Church of San Pietro for another year rent-free.44 Mateca was successful in claiming his wife’s inheritance—money that was meant to ensure that the next generation of Salvago dragomans were well-off. Other ongoing disputes at the bailate, which cast Odoardo in a bad light, worked in Mateca’s favour. It did not help Odoardo’s case that he refused to pay Zaccaria Rosso, former secretary of bailo Lorenzo Bernardo, who had issued a legal document in the case between Odoardo and Mateca. The scribe expected a payment of one per cent of the case’s value in litigation. When the scribe brought this issue to the bailo’s notice in March 1592, Odoardo was outraged and contended that no payment was due, since to him, the scribe did not produce a legal certificate but “simple writing.” If a payment was due, he continued, then Mateca should be the one to pay since he “has achieved much of a fortune with many of his other stratagems and actions.” This statement illustrates the degree of Odoardo’s frustration over

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  121 the ­versatility with which Mateca activated his professional and family networks across casa and famiglia to the advantage of the Salvagos. Odoardo was sentenced to pay the sum on March 12, 1592. Just six days later, the bailate issued another verdict ordering Odoardo to pay the outstanding 25,000 akçe to Mateca, which Odoardo appealed the following day. In fact, he even brought the case to the Galata kadi courts to renegotiate the results. It took years to reach an official resolution with Caterina and Mateca granted 20 per cent of the possessions.45 As much as Mateca knew how to use his networks at the bailate, not everybody was pleased about getting involved. Bailo Bernardo was clearly outraged that he was dragged into the Salvago family dispute. In 1592, Bernardo complained that Mateca had not attended his service when being called to support him as an interpreter. “He excused himself for a certain quarrel, which he had with his brothers-in-law,” and Mateca soon revealed the financial dimension of the case, asking the bailo for financial support. Bernardo repeatedly handed out substantial sums of money to Mateca, and yet the bailo felt that the dragoman continued to neglect his service. On one journey, Mateca even “made me wait for him,” Bernardo wrote, “and he did not come.” Bernardo travelled instead with Marc’antonio Borisi, “a young man who learns the Turkish language with such valor and prudence that I have been well served.” Recounting this incident upon his return in front of the Venetian senate, Bernardo thanked God for having had “this modest and wise and not less brave dragoman” Borisi serving him, instead of “that mad and frantic mind” Mateca. The overlapping of these events with conversations about Mateca’s assassination, as well as the bailo’s active role in such debates, makes it highly likely that the Salvago-Gagliano inheritance dispute fuelled secret allegations of corruption and disloyalty. Mateca clearly had lost control over what translator Briggs calls “the mess of different and potential knowledges of the world.”46 Thanks to Genesino’s involvement, however, family ties remained strong despite the grave inheritance dispute. As the new head of the casa, Genesino wished to rebuild the Salvagos’ strong alliance with the Gaglianos. Immediately after the death of Mateca, in October 1594, Genesino ordered his uncle Domenico da Gagliano to be paid 360 zecchini. Domenico, who lived in Venice at the time, was suing Mateca on behalf of his brother, Odoardo. Genesino ordered that the compensation be taken from the inheritance of Mateca’s previous father-in-law, Giovanni Bernardo dalla Croce—a gesture that was clearly meant to appease the strained links between the Salvagos and Gaglianos.47 Genesino’s efforts did not go unnoticed. When advising the bailo in matters of Levantine commerce in May 1593, Odoardo was part of a council of ten advisers who suggested appointing Genesino to settle the issue—a brilliant opportunity for the aspiring dragoman to showcase his ingenuity and propel his career.48 Moreover, Genesino and his brothers later took Odoardo’s side when the family business came under attack. In 1600, Giuliano was appointed the representative of Venice, in the absence of the

122  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self bailo, when negotiating with Odoardo the delivery of outstanding merchandise. Odoardo had asked for a period of grace, planning to hand over the commodities a month after the vessel Gagliano’s arrival in Istanbul, or two months after the return of bailo Girolamo Cappello.49 When ­discrepancies arose in the accounts of the Gagliano a few years later, Venetian and Jewish merchants demanded outstanding payments from Odoardo. Another Salvago brother, Benetto, was asked to collect his uncle’s account book. In  the bailate’s chancery, the 46-page manuscript listing the commodities was then checked thoroughly.50 These examples illustrate the Salvagos’ embeddedness in both Veneto-Ottoman diplomacy and commerce, which also shaped Genesino’s Balkan journey following the Split incident. Above all, Genesino’s response to the Salvago-Gagliano inheritance dispute testifies to his ability to work in and think along multiple positions.

The Bosnian Affair When dealing with the consequences of the Split incident and travelling the Balkans, Genesino had to consider, above all, Bosnian mercantile perspectives. Ottoman merchants, whose commodities were looted on their way from Split to Venice, were the main victims of the event. Even though some goods were saved, they suffered massive financial and commercial losses.51 Ottoman merchants moved significant amounts of money in such deals; a certain Hoca Tahsin alone, for instance, travelled with two million akçe to the Italian peninsula when purchasing textiles.52 As such, many Ottoman merchants accumulated serious debts or lost their livelihoods due to the Split incident. Some merchants even suffered injuries and spent over a month in Split to recover.53 Ottoman merchants immediately claimed compensation in letters sent to Venice’s commercial authority, the Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia. A Serbian merchant also approached authorities in Split to be compensated for his losses. Governor Garzoni was willing to offer assistance, at least in terms of helping out with the shortfalls that Ottoman merchants were faced with all of a sudden. The Serbian merchant’s bundles of leather, some of which had been lost during the attack and in the subsequent chaos, were collected and returned. Soon, Venice was overwhelmed by a wave of restitution claims. In July alone, Mümin Çavuş from Istanbul and 51 other Muslim merchants—13 from Sarajevo, six from Livno, five each from Mostar and Istanbul, four each from Edirne and Skopje, three from Sofia, two each from Banja Luka, Elbasan, Foča, Koniç, and “T[e]šne,” and one from Akhisar—claimed compensation from Venice and its bailo (Figure  22). These merchants felt that compensation was Venice’s obligation, especially since the Split cargo galleys had embarked despite circulating news of nearby Spanish ships. Many merchants from Sarajevo had come to Split immediately after news of the incident had spread. The petitioners were supported by the beglerbeg of Bosnia in Sarajevo, as well as the sancak-­ beg of Klis. When Ottoman authorities sent envoys to Split, a­ ccording to

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  123

Figure 22  The petition of 51 Muslim merchants demanding Venice to restitute their commodities lost during the Split incident, 1617. ©Archivio di Stato, Venice, Documenti turchi, n. 1210.

124  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self Ottoman petitioners, Garzoni had grandly announced that Venice would compensate the merchants with five akçe for each single akçe lost. In the following months and years, Ottoman merchants increased pressure on Venice. In May 1619, nearly two years after the incident, Bosnian merchant Hacı Ali, after returning from his pilgrimage from Mecca, put forward his claim for compensation to the Venetian collegio.54 Venice considered Ottoman merchants’ claims for reimbursement “of utmost importance.” However, the Venetian position was ambivalent, especially in light of the possibility of further attacks and the resulting compensation claims. Months after the incident, in March 1618, when Genesino was about to arrive in the region, rumours spread in Split that more Neapolitan galleys, well-equipped with oarsmen and weapons, had crossed the Adriatic to loot more Venetian ships. In Split, there was growing anxiety that cargo galleys were being targeted once again. High-ranking Ottomans in Sarajevo, a certain İbrahim Çelebi in particular, “the most important merchant in Bosnia,” increased pressure on Venetian authorities in Split to safeguard the cargo galleys. In Venice, the senate gave the bailo in Istanbul explicit permission to spend whatever amount necessary to keep Ottoman dissatisfaction to a minimum. Officially, Venice announced that it would do everything possible to recover the goods and redistribute them among their owners. However, Venice and Split refused claims for actual financial compensation. Venice claimed to not be responsible, having protected the cargo with military ships. Instead, it identified Spain, Naples, and its allies—Ragusa in particular—as the main culprits that should compensate Ottoman merchants for their losses. In addition, Venice pointed out that Venetian merchants had accepted similar losses caused by uskok corsairs’ raids on Ottoman soil in the past. To avoid any escalation, Venice confirmed that it would endorse Ottoman claims in diplomatic negotiations with Spanish Habsburgs. In practice, however, Venice’s response was anything but consistent. While most merchants’ claims were refused, a certain Hüseyin Çelebi from Elbasan as well as Ahmed, son of Hacı Oruz, were compensated 1,500 talleri for their losses when escaping the Spanish raid at Split. Venetian authorities in Šibenik reimbursed two-thirds of the amount but Venice also ordered Šibenik to cover the remaining 500 talleri. Local authorities were reluctant to do so, leading Venice to renew the orders in July 1618.55 Dealing with restitution claims was also a full-time job for the bailo in Istanbul. Muslim and Jewish merchants presented their demands in front of the bailo and his dragomans. Bailo Almorò Nani knew that many Bosnian traders had suffered severe losses. During audiences with high-ranking Ottoman officials, among them the military judge (kadıasker), the bailo was confronted with the position that Venice had to compensate all losses occurred during the cargo galleys’ passage between Split and Venice. By October 1617, the kadi of Klis had supported similar claims but Venice contested the legitimacy of these demands. A month later, Sultan Mustafa I and

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  125 grand vizier Mehmed Pasha officially backed the merchants in a letter sent to the doge. If Venice would not do justice in form of compensations, the sultan said, no Muslim merchant would ever again conduct business with Venice. The Venetian resident in Sarajevo, Marc’antonio Velutello, provided the bailo with regular updates about the progress of his very own negotiations with merchants in Sarajevo. With the ascension of Sultan Osman II in February 1618—a month before Genesino left for Bosnia—the bailo expressed his deep concern to Venice about rumours that “Turks from Bosnia […] prepare themselves to come to the Porte demanding from me, as the representative of Your Serenity, the compensation of their losses.”56 Given these developments, Genesino’s journey also served as a means to gather information for the bailo and Venice. In July 1618, about 50 Bosnian merchants arrived in Istanbul to raise the matter to the grand vizier’s çavuş. These were perhaps the same merchants who signed the earlier petition against Venice. Their plan, it seems, was to bring their demands to the heart of Ottoman imperial power, and to build on often well-established patronage networks between Bosnia and the Ottoman capital. If their demands were not heard, the merchants declared that they would return to Istanbul with their women and children to speak directly with the grand vizier. In the year following the Split incident, Ottoman merchants argued their case in front of the highest authorities in Istanbul. In a matter of weeks, the Bosnian merchants had presented their case to the grand vizier, grand mufti (şeyhülislam), the kadıasker, and many others. Outrage increased among these Bosnian merchants when a Jewish spy reported that Venice had already regained 300,000 talleri from the looted goods, but that the bailo was not willing to hand out the money. The matter was even discussed in the empire’s highest council (divan-ı hümayun) in the presence of Bosnian merchants, the bailo, and the highest-ranking officials of the Ottoman Empire. Şeyhülislam Hocazade Esad Efendi issued a legal statement ( fetva) demanding Split governor Garzoni compensate the merchants, which was agreed on in a sentence (hüccet) by the divan. The sancak-beg and kadi of Klis were ordered to personally ensure the implementation of this verdict. Further negotiations took place between the bailo, the grand dragoman, and the şeyhülislam in Istanbul in mid1618. Hocazade Esad Efendi had put considerable pressure on Venice on behalf of his “close friend,” Monla Şerif, who had lost commodities worth 2,000 scudi during the Split incident. In addition, a certain Resul, the agha of the şeyhülislam’s household, made a formal complaint in front of the bailo and his dragoman, Giovanni Battista Salvago, about the mistreatment of some of his business agents. Resul Agha had traded commodities with an annual turnover of 4,000 to 5,000 ducats in Venice for 35 years. This case shows that the Salvagos were involved in such negotiations just as Genesino arrived in Venice after his Balkan journeys. The şeyhülislam’s intervention turned the negotiations into a serious diplomatic matter—he made it clear that he would consider Venice’s response a precedent for similar cases.

126  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self Venice decided to respond benevolently, asking the bailo to pay 1,000 scudi to ease tensions. The bailo also had to assure Hocazade Esad Efendi that the remaining money would be paid soon.57 The moderate response was seemingly a conscious investment by Venetian authorities who considered the şeyhülislam “the most principal minister […] on whose advice, it can be said, depend all resolutions of the government.”58 For that reason, the bailo stressed Veneto-Ottoman commonalities to Hocazade Esad Efendi, for instance, when strategically bringing up “joint subjects” (communi sudditi) suffering from the consequences of the Split incident. Such fine rhetoric had to be captured and conveyed in the dragomans’ translations for Venetian imperial strategies to bear fruit.59 This was especially crucial in light of the ascension of a particularly young sultan, the 14-year-old Osman II. Venice was keen on having a prominent pro-Venetian spokesperson in the adolescent sultan’s environment. And yet, the sultan and grand vizier sent Mustafa Çavuş to Venice to present the claims of Ottoman merchants in March and April 1618. By March, senators had declared that Venice would never agree on financial compensations but that Venice would do everything possible to regain the merchants’ commodities from Naples and Spain. Unsatisfied by this response, the sultan and grand vizier again called on the Venetian doge to act in the interest of the merchants in September 1618.60 When again no action followed, the Bosnian merchants appointed a representative, Hacı Ali, who continued the negotiations on their behalf. Ali was a particularly well-off merchant from Bosnia who had gained “a great fortune” in Veneto-Ottoman commerce.61 Ali now engaged in “long negotiations” with bailo Nani and ambassador Contarini upon his arrival in Istanbul, who relied on information gathered in Bosnia to build their case, including that collected by Genesino. Since Ali had fallen ill, he sent his son Abdullah from Sarajevo to Istanbul to bring letters “written in franco and in turco,” and to send his son with further letters to Venice. While waiting for the official response of the bailo and the sultan in Istanbul, however, Abdullah “was killed with a dagger in the middle of the city by a carrier,” as the bailo said innocently, “without having given him even the slightest cause.” The bailo’s correspondence does not contain any hint of a Venetian involvement in the assassination. For the bailo, however, it was a quite convenient turn of events. Ali became suspicious, and let the bailo know that he would send a letter to inform Venice, in the bailo’s paraphrasis based on an unnamed dragoman’s translation, “that he [Ali] would kill the criminal” and further fight for the reimbursement of the 10,000 ducats lost during the looting of the Split cargo galleys: “he must demand now his son’s blood and his goods together” from Venice. Another son of Ali, İbrahim, handed over this letter to the Venetian collegio in May 1619. At the same time, Ali increased the pressure by sending another 20 or 30 Bosnian merchants to Istanbul to ask the sultan and grand vizier to issue a petition (arz) “for the justice of his cause.” Ali also wanted the bailo to send news “that his son has

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  127 been killed by You”—the bailo—to the sancak-beg of Klis, the beglerbegs of Bosnia and Budva, and to other relevant kadis.62 When traversing Southeastern Europe to explore possible travel routes for Contarini, Genesino would have listened carefully to rumours and news on what came to be known among contemporaries as the Bosnian affair. The events, in fact, would have evoked familiar memories, since Mateca was involved in a similar affair in 1589. Back then, he had translated and presented to the Venetian collegio the official letters of the Ottoman sultan and grand vizier, demanding Venice to restitute Bosnian merchants’ commodities looted during a raid by uskoks from Senj. Many of the merchants were from Sarajevo. Genesino had just recently completed his training programme at the time, making it one of his very first cases he encountered as a dragoman and one of the very last cases in which he saw his father acting as such—surely an important reference point in Genesino’s professional life.63 Decades later, when travelling the Balkans in 1618, he was himself involved in the negotiation of similar restitution claims made by Sarajevo merchants. Gathering and presenting such information to Contarini mattered, since it ensured that the newly appointed ambassador was prepared when arriving in Istanbul, where Bosnian merchants and their spokespeople eagerly awaited his arrival to present their demands. By June 1618, bailo Nani, surely informed by either Genesino or the Venetian resident in Sarajevo, Marc’antonio Velutello, warned Venice that Bosnians tried to lure authorities into convincing Contarini to travel via Sarajevo to Istanbul, apparently in the hope of forcing him to listen to their demands along the way.64 Such information was crucial, and it was not by chance that Genesino, as will be discussed at the end of this chapter, suggested an alternative route. When Contarini finally arrived in Istanbul, bailo Nani was able to present a compromise in the “troublesome and important business with the Bosnians.” The bailo agreed that Venice would reimburse all lost commodities if merchants could prove that their losses were related to the incident in Split. This meant that Venice could show commitment while keeping costs to a minimum.65 In February 1619, however, the sultan and grand vizier confronted Contarini with pending compensations, which the ambassador insisted was not Venice’s responsibility. Just a year later, the Spanish-Neapolitan navy once again looted a Venetian ship with Ottoman merchants’ goods on board who, again, sought compensations from Venice.66

Dragomans Negotiating the Bosnian Affair The bailate’s dragomans played a key role in negotiations surrounding the Split incident. On the one hand, their business of translation equipped them with important subject knowledge. Grand dragoman Borisi, for instance, translated the sultan’s order to maintain peaceful border contacts with Venetians—sent to the beglerbeg, kadis, and aghas of Bosnia and the kadi of Klis. Within a month of its issuing in July 1618, copies of Borisi’s

128  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self t­ranslation circulated in Šibenik and beyond.67 On the other hand, these interpreters’ expertise in linguistic and cultural translation, as well as their skills in exploring other perspectives to bridge different positions and to build working communication on a common ground of compromise, turned their interventions into crucial communication backchannels. At the time of the Split incident, such backchannels were firmly established. Ottoman officials usually approached the bailo’s dragomans with gifts and bribes. Also when seeking their own financial benefits from Venice, Ottoman officials approached the bailate’s grand dragoman first.68 Thanks to such informal channels, Borisi maintained, on behalf of the bailo and Venice, communications with the kapudan pasha about complaints sent from Bosnia. Borisi’s task was to convince the grand admiral that an Ottoman maritime intervention against Spain and Naples would serve the purpose of both Venice and the Ottoman Empire. In fact, grand vizier Damat Halil Pasha would call for Borisi, not the bailo, when discussing delicate matters in an audience. The pasha made it perfectly clear that the Ottoman Empire refused to tolerate any Venetian confrontation with the Ottoman tributary Ragusa following the Split incident. Borisi used all his translatory expertise and experience to navigate the different positions. Translating and appropriating multipositionality, the dragoman developed the Venetian interpretation of events on the basis of an Ottoman point of view when responding: “Although these are called ‘­subjects of the Grand Signor,’ […] [Ragusans] do not deserve this title” as demonstrated by their close alliance with Spain. Borisi pointed out that Ragusans made up Spain’s manpower and that their activities would severely damage Ottoman interests. The dragoman replied, in the bailo’s words, that the Ragusans “do all the evil which Your Majesty [the sultan] could imagine.”69 The grand dragoman was also meeting with other high-ranking officials like the chancellor (nişancı), who further increased pressure on Venice. It would be the city’s duty to ensure the restitution of Bosnian merchants’ goods, the nişancı stated. Likewise, the şeyhülislam called on Borisi to increase pressure on claims for compensation. Forty Bosnian merchants had already attended an audience with Hocazade Esad Efendi in Istanbul in autumn 1617. After Borisi was called to the şeyhülislam, the dragoman reported to the bailo that many merchants were “angry, saying that Your Serenity [Venice] had to pay their losses.” Confronted with such a situation, Borisi advocated taking different positions into account to reach a compromise, or “working […] out,” as Briggs would call this translation-based mode of thinking and doing. To acknowledge multipositionality was thus a dragoman’s first approach to the translation of a difficult problem into a workable solution for both sides.70 The role of interpreters—the Salvago family in particular—in such negotiations can hardly be overestimated. During his journey through the Balkans, Genesino himself acted as an interpreter, information gatherer, and spy in negotiating the politics of the Bosnian affair. In Istanbul, his

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  129 brother Giovanni Battista became involved in the bailo’s negotiation with the şeyhülislam’s interventions on behalf of Bosnian merchants.71 Their nephew, Giovanni Antonio Grillo, played a key role as an interpreter and spy in negotiating the wider imperial repercussions of Ottoman merchants’ claims for compensation. The dragoman had translated important documents regarding the Bosnian affair, such as a letter to Venice in which the grand vizier advocated for the merchants to be compensated. Grillo also accompanied Mustafa Çavuş to Venice, the envoy sent to settle the issue by Mustafa I on occasion of his enthronement in November 1617. In Venice, the çavuş was given an audience in the collegio in early March 1618—ironically, just a few days after Mustafa I had been replaced by his nephew Osman II. Dragoman Giacomo Nores translated on behalf of Venice. During such audiences, letters and friendship announcements were exchanged. Information, assessments, and observations regarding Spanish military activities in the Adriatic Sea, however, were not discussed in the hall—despite the grand vizier clearly stating that the çavuş’ main business was to discuss the compensation of Bosnian merchants and Ragusan accusations against Venice’s Adriatic military activities.72 Such business was again discussed via the diplomatic backchannels of the dragomans, such as when dragoman Nores would accompany Mustafa Çavuş to his accommodation at the Correr residence. The collegio welcomed the bailate’s dragoman Grillo in audiences on March 5 and 6, 1618, just a few weeks before his uncle Genesino’s departure for Venice. Besides presenting letters from Kotor, Grillo reported on Herceg Novi opposing Ragusa, and how such news displeased high-ranking Ottoman officials in Istanbul who favoured the Ragusans.73 Doubtless, Grillo would have also shared valuable information that he had gathered in January and February 1618 when he accompanied Mustafa Çavuş through the Balkans. When Mustafa and Grillo stopped over at a village near Plovdiv, for instance, “a Turk interested in the cargo ships” approached the two and reported about rumours that some of the looted goods should have arrived via Genoa in Venice in the meantime. The news seemed to please the Ottoman envoy, and would have informed his approach towards authorities in Venice.74 In addition, Grillo translated on occasion of the collegio’s audience with the envoy’s steward (kethüda) who wished Venice to provide a definite answer on the Bosnian merchants’ claims. Since Venice was waiting for more recent letters from Istanbul, the collegio refused to do so.75 In dealing with the Bosnian affair, the activities of these dragomans blurred the lines between translation, interpretation, and espionage. Thanks to the “diligent work” of dragoman Grillo, Venice informed the bailo in April 1618—when Genesino was in Belgrade—that Venetian authorities had also managed “to secretly see, and have in translation,” the letters that Mustafa was about to send via Bosnia to the sultan. Venice therefore knew about the Ottoman envoy’s dissatisfaction and his intention to ask the sultan to prolong his mission to improve possible outcomes. Thanks to Grillo’s espionage, Venice knew about the “great prejudice” of Mustafa and could rely

130  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self on the services of another Venetian dragoman, Nores, to convince the envoy not to send such letters and to provide a more favourable report instead. The dragoman’s secret negotiations proved successful after the payment of 200 zecchini to Mustafa’s son.76 On April 24, 1618, Grillo appeared in front of the collegio to report about the previous night’s secret conversations with the çavuş, who told the dragoman: “You know that I have always respected and honored you as a son.” Asking whether Grillo had more information about Venice’s stance on the Bosnian merchants’ claims, the dragoman replied that he had no doubt that Venice would cover the losses. The interpreter could say, informally, what Venice could not agree upon officially.77 Venice therefore commissioned Grillo to also accompany Mustafa on his return journey to Istanbul via Split. The dragoman was given 100 zecchini to buy horses along the way, and another 100 zecchini “with which he can settle some of his debts and make other expenses for his special service.” As a gesture of farewell, Venice also presented the çavuş with the generous sum of 1,000 zecchini and lavish gifts, among them luxury cloths, some of which were for his son.78 Mustafa, however, did not keep his promise to send more favourable reports about Venice to the sultan. Again, a dragoman was key in negotiating this event. “I, Giovanni Antonio Grillo, most devout and obliged servant” of Venice, the dragoman said in his report recounting the dramatic scenes that ensued when he found out about the çavuş’ recent letters on the Bosnian affair, with both tearing papers in front of each other. Grillo reported that the çavuş had some powerful Bosnian opponents in the administration of the Ottoman capital that worked against him. The dragoman concluded that the envoy would do nothing to annoy Bosnian merchants and was worried that Mustafa would continue distributing such letters in Sarajevo or Istanbul.79 Venice was outraged over the çavuş’ “bad nature” and suspected Ragusan intervention: “The Ragusans will try everything to spread the venom of their bad thoughts with his mouth.” Senators asked the bailo to spend another 2,000 talleri to ensure the benevolence of the envoy.80 In May 1618, Mustafa and Grillo were on a stopover in Split when Genesino was in nearby Trogir. The çavuş sent a Jewish merchant to inform Ragusa about his wish to maintain confidential communication with the Ottoman authorities of Sarajevo. Ragusa secretly appointed Tommaso Latinčić as a special envoy to Sarajevo. This was a secret mission, known only to a few Ragusans and local Ottoman authorities. Latinčić had to inform the beglerbeg of Bosnia about the movements of the Neapolitan fleet, and was also arranging a confidential meeting in Sarajevo on behalf of Mustafa. In addition, Latinčić forwarded secret letters of the çavuş to Sarajevo. Mustafa was clearly concerned about possible Venetian interceptions and espionage if he sent the correspondence directly from Split to Sarajevo. He trusted neither the Venetian representative (agente) in Sarajevo, Velutello, nor dragoman Grillo, who was accompanying him. In his correspondence with Ragusa, Mustafa stated explicitly that he was concerned about these two Venetian

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  131 subjects undermining, corroborating, or altering the content of his letters. Venice did not know about Ragusa facilitating secret conversations between the çavuş and Bosnian authorities, nor that he had sent regular reports to Ragusa during his stay in Venice. But Venice did know that their dragomans were among its most powerful imperial agents and spies.81 Upon his arrival in Istanbul in May 1618, Mustafa continued to intervene on behalf of Ragusa and the Bosnian merchants. The Venetian senate’s letters to the sultan and grand vizier were handed out, accusing both Bosnian merchants and Ragusans of lying to Ottoman authorities. The letters also stated that Venetian authorities in Sarajevo or Split did not agree to compensate any goods prior to the incident, Ragusa did not behave in a neutral manner, and that previous agreements did not matter anyway, since the sultan had died in the meantime.82 Immediately, the grand vizier called grand dragoman Borisi to an audience, asking him, when reciting the content of Mustafa’s letter, “if you [Venetians] would be friends or enemies of the Grand Signor [sultan].” Translating on behalf of Venice clearly equipped Borisi, in the grand vizier’s understanding, to speak for the republic; yet, the dragoman also sought to assuage the diplomatic missteps. Borisi emphasised that Venice receives all foreign ambassadors in high esteem, especially those of the Ottoman sultan, but the grand vizier was not convinced: “No, no, […] because the effects demonstrate that you are hardly good friends of the Grand Signor.” Full of resignation, bailo Nani wrote to Venice that “these are indeed words that show a bad attitude towards the republic.”83 The mission of special envoy Contarini thus mattered even more in terms of convincing the sultan otherwise, and so did Genesino’s efforts in preparing Contarini for his stay. Realising the significance of his mission, Grillo submitted a petition asking Venice for additional financial compensation for his services. The dragoman was keen to emphasise his “desire to serve” Venice, and his skills “not only in speaking but also in reading and writing the Turkish language, and in translating every writing from one language into another.” As Grillo knew, a dragoman’s tasks went far beyond language proficiency. Tracing the footsteps of his ancestors, Grillo implicitly referenced his father, dragoman Ambrosio Grillo, as well as the Salvago dragomans via his mother’s ancestry. Grillo noted that he had risked his life in the “most important public events,” especially when accompanying Mustafa on his long and difficult journey. Moreover, he emphasised his involvement in espionage, collecting information about Mustafa’s reports to the sultan, and claimed to have hindered the çavuş from sharing his “very bizarre concepts,” thereby safeguarding the honour of Venice. Grillo also insisted that he kept communication channels with the şeyhülislam and kapudan pasha open. On his return journey via Split and Ragusa, Grillo continued, he gathered information about the movements of the Spanish navy, thereby supporting the negotiations of Velutello in Sarajevo. He added that he wrote himself seven letters to high-ranking Ottoman officials to help Velutello, the bailo,

132  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self and ­provveditore generale Lorenzo Venier circumvent the sultan’s official prohibition of Venice sourcing Bosnian manpower and provisions to fight Spaniards in the Adriatic.84 Venice had in fact asked Velutello to draft Bosnian men for Venetian military service against the Spaniards and uskoks, but such activities were mainly channelled through privateers and local officials. On such occasions, divisions also occurred on the side of Venetian authorities. Split governor Garzoni claimed to have levied 80 Bosnian soldiers himself, but that Velutello would now take all the credit, even though he had promised much higher salaries than originally agreed with Venetian authorities in Split and Zadar. Since the sultan had already forbidden such activities by November 1617, following concerns that Ottoman subjects could get involved in Venetian conflicts with the Austrian Habsburgs, the dragoman’s intervention with Ottoman officials on the ground was crucial. It finally led to the sultan allowing Venice to source Bosnian manpower in the fight against the Spanish-Neapolitan navy.85 In his petition to Venice, Grillo knew how to present himself as dragoman who did much more than translate. He had gathered and brokered information as an interpreter and spy. After the receipt of endorsements by Contarini, as well as baili Almorò and Agostino Nani, Venice granted Grillo, as a “sign of generosity and gratitude” for “such diligent and fruitful service,” an annual pay raise from 120 to 200 zecchini.86

Genesino Salvago in Sarajevo Genesino, who was travelling in Bosnia, Serbia, and Dalmatia, played a crucial role in negotiations on merchants’ claims for restitution following the Split incident. The dragoman was attuned to conditions on the ground when traversing the region. As Grillo’s petition shows, dragomans were involved in a wide spectrum of activities related to political affairs; this allows for a broader contextualisation of Genesino’s own activities that are not explicitly discussed in his travelogue. The self-narrative, after all, was a task-oriented report for one addressee, Contarini, rather than an activities-based report meant for the bailo or senate. Contextualising the contemporary Balkans as a dense and contested web of multipositionality therefore heightens the ­h istorian’s sensitivity for what is (not) written in a genre-bound self-narrative. And yet, Genesino left archival traces of his broader involvement in this conflict, especially as an information broker. His detailed comments on currency rates, for instance, proved invaluable in the evaluation of Bosnian merchants’ financial claims.87 In addition, information previously collated at the bailate would have shaped the dragoman’s travels. Right before Genesino left for Split, the bailo had received news about a certain Hüseyin Beg having confiscated Venetian commodities on the way to Istanbul under the pretence of outstanding debts. The governor of Split and the bailo in

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  133 Istanbul agreed that this was a mere pretence, probably a Ragusan attempt to cast a bad light on Split. For that reason, the bailo renewed negotiations with the sultan about the maintenance of peace in the border zones of Trogir and Zadar, and sent the agreement—surely via Genesino—to both locations.88 The dragoman would have paid particular attention to listening, gathering, and translating Bosnian and Ragusan perspectives into a ­context that might be of advantage for the Venetian bailo. He would have also ­carefully observed and reported on rising conflicts in the Dalmatian border zone that resulted from ongoing, unsuccessful negotiations on compensation for the Bosnian merchants. In May 1618, when Genesino was in the region, Ottoman subjects started raiding the border zone of Šibenik. A few weeks later, hundreds of Ottoman subjects from Klis revolted near Trogir, “to attempt an adjustment of borders.”89 In spring 1619, conflicts between Christians and Muslims led to the assassination of two men near Trogir.90 The first-hand knowledge gathered by the dragoman would have reached the bailate, by way of letters and oral reports presented both to Contarini upon arrival in Venice and to the bailo upon his return to Istanbul. The dragoman’s knowledge and observations collated on the ground, therefore, informed Contarini’s peace negotiations with the sultan. Although Genesino was moving quickly through Southeastern Europe, it was not by chance that he stayed three days each in Belgrade and Sarajevo— the most vital hubs of Veneto-Ottoman commerce along his journey. In his travelogue, he describes these longer stays as a matter of necessity due to the need for a rest or bad weather. But these would have also provided him with a unique opportunity to gather and share information with a variety of protagonists. Sarajevo, for example, was a politically, economically, and culturally thriving town with wide and vibrant networks. Historians described “the spectacular rise of Sarajevo” as “the most important development in the region in the sixteenth century as a whole.”91 After Bosnia had been ­established an official province in 1580, “Sarajevo had [soon] become the main commercial center of all the western Balkans with a population ­estimated at 40,000.”92 In 1660, Evliya Çelebi describes Sarajevo as comprising 400 maḥalles [quarters], including ten Christian ones and two Jewish ones […], 17,000 houses, 77 mosques and 100 mesd̲ ̲jids, a clock tower, numerous medreses and other specialised religious schools, 180 mektebs, 47 tekkes, 110 public fountains, 300 sebīls, 700 wells, 76 flour mills, five ḥammāms, 670 private bathrooms, three caravanserais, 23 k̲ h̲ āns, 1,080 shops, a bedesten, seven bridges over the Miljacka, an Orthodox church, a Catholic church, a synagogue, [and] seven ʿimārets.93 Such urban growth led to the establishment of new metropolitan cultures and elites, many of whom were deeply invested in the trans-imperial

134  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self

Figure 23  T  op: Morića han in Sarajevo, a mid-sixteenth-century guesthouse of Gazi Husrev Beg’s vaqf that survived largely in its seventeenth-century appearance. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017. Below: Preserved in its eighteenth-century shape, Svrzo’s house gives an idea of the setting of domestic sociability in high-class households in Ottoman Sarajevo. ©Stefan Hanß, 2017.

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  135 commerce across the Balkans and beyond. Of the merchants who presented their demands of compensation immediately after the Split incident, most were based in Sarajevo.94 For the secret gathering of information about Bosnian merchants’ ­agendas, plans, motivations, and sentiments, Sarajevo would have been the perfect place for a slightly longer stay. The length of Genesino’s sojourn in the city, in fact, corresponds with the number of days that visitors were allowed to stay for free at the guesthouse (misafirhane) of Gazi Husrev Beg’s endowment (vaqf )—the main hub of the city’s vibrant social and economic life (Figure 23). The guesthouse was located near the political and religious centres of the Ottoman sancak: the central mosque, its religious endowment, the juridical court, and the residence of the sancak-beg. To Genesino, this would have been the perfect place to gather information in secret as an agent in Venetian imperial service. Yet, Genesino clearly did not wish to see this part of his job addressed in a travelogue dedicated to Contarini, who might have shared its contents with other senators when preparing for his journey to Istanbul. The self-narrative is composed very carefully, not just in what he put in and left out, but also what he hinted at. In doing so, Genesino presents the persona of a Venetian imperial agent who knows when and where to reveal or conceal information.95 As an Ottoman subject in Venetian service, Genesino could mingle with crowds. In times of conflict, Salvago dragomans wore Ottoman clothing, a white turban, and a weapon when travelling abroad, with the permission of both the bailo and sultan in Istanbul.96 This sartorial appearance allowed for a safer journey but it also enabled Genesino to better communicate with other Ottoman subjects, particularly Bosnian merchants. Located above the roofs of the bazaar, where commodities and rumours were exchanged, the guesthouse allowed Genesino to have his finger on the pulse of Sarajevo’s commercial life, as well as its wider Veneto-Ottoman ties (Figure 12). Gazi Husrev Beg’s endowment served as “a major lender to Bosnian merchants,” including those affected by the Split incident, and was thus an important place for the dragoman to pick up on news, rumours, agendas, and sentiments.97 Venetian merchants had also established themselves in Sarajevo. For instance, the brothers Marco and Giacobbe Cavagnini ran a flourishing business between Sarajevo, Split, and Venice in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Marco resided in Sarajevo for longer periods of time to benefit from the dynamic caravanserai trade and to establish new networks with merchants in Belgrade and along the Neretva River with towns which were “full of stores.” The Neretva was the most important riverine connection of the Adriatic Sea and the Bosnian inland, and Mostar in particular, where more Venetian merchants ran businesses. Giacobbe, meanwhile, was stationed in Split but also travelled regularly to Venice to organise the transport and sale of products like wool, wax, goats leather, and fabrics.98 Such traders would have been important contact points for Genesino in Sarajevo. The dragoman would not have missed the opportunity to maintain conversations with Venetian and Ottoman merchants,

136  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self both at the bazaar and in their houses. The local coffeehouse was another site of sociability and information gathering.99 In addition, Sarajevo was the home of a thriving Sephardic community with merchants that had established firm contacts with Venice. Sarajevo Jews even appointed special agents residing in Venice and Belgrade.100 Two decades later, Jewish community leaders in Sarejevo and Belgrade discussed the case of a merchant called Kuriel who had engaged in smuggling contraband like silks and cloths. He was also accused of having obscured his financial situation to creditors in Venice. Kuriel sued those spreading such news for slander, with David Franco de Almeda, a son of Kuriel’s main Venetian creditor who was residing in Sarajevo, supporting the merchant’s position.101 In addition to such contacts with the mercantile world of Sarajevo, Genesino also mingled with janissaries.102 Urban life mirrored the multiethnic and multilingual composition of empire and commerce across the Balkans and beyond. As an Ottoman subject of Genoese origin with wide-ranging language skills in service of Venetian diplomacy and politics, Genesino fit well into the vibrant mishmash of the Mediterranean. Local dictionaries provide some insight into the everyday presence and limits of translational practices in early seventeenth-century Sarajevo. The city was a multilingual centre of learning, writing, and piety. Arabic-Persian-Ottoman dictionaries circulated widely for the study of the Quran, the ahadith, grammar, poetry, and prose. Ottoman-Bosnian dictionaries facilitated everyday communication on the streets and in administration.103 One surviving Italian-Ottoman dictionary from late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century Sarajevo illustrates the demand for portable manuals that facilitated ad hoc communication for and with Italian-speaking residents and travellers (Figure 24). This manuscript presents Ottoman vocabulary in alphabetical order, written in large and clear naskh calligraphy for easier learning. Words were vocalised to ensure their correct pronunciation. Empty lines were placed after each entry which were to be filled with Italian translations. The manual contained everyday phrases like “What’s the news?” “How are you?” “Your life shall be long!” “I thank you” “God shall give you prosperity!” and “God shall make your prosperity grow!”—which provided Italian and Bosnian merchants with a basic thesaurus of exchange. It facilitated exchange in various ways—oral, written, or even gestural, such as when pointing to entries— and served as a guide to cut through the messiness of everyday multilingualism. However, this vocabulary of trust, so important for establishing ties that shaped commercial and personal exchange, remained rather static. The Italian or Ottoman reader of this manuscript stopped filling in the gaps even before ending the entries of the first character of the alphabet. In any case, set against this backdrop of a spiralling diplomatic and commercial crisis, this milieu of linguistic exchange and confusion was the stage on which Genesino could deploy his expertise—translation as a form of exploring, interpreting, and manoeuvring multipositionality, such as when asking

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  137

Figure 24  Italian-Ottoman language manual from Sarajevo containing verbs and wordings. ©Gazi Husrev-Begova Biblioteka, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, R-5538, Turkče-­italiyanča luġatī (‫)تركجه اطالينجه لغتي‬.

Italian- or Ottoman-speaking merchants in Sarajevo cosa c’è di nuovo? or ‫“( نه وار نه يوق‬what’s the news?”).104 In Sarajevo, Genesino liaised with a key protagonist in brokering the negotiations over the Bosnian merchants’ claims, Velutello, the Venetian consul of Sarajevo. By 1611, Cesaro Dolfin, the governor of Split at the time, had already urged Venice to appoint an agent in Sarajevo where commodities, people, and news from “Ragusa, […] Persia, Armenia, Syria, Cairo, Alexandria, Ankara, Constantinople, Sofia, Edirne, Thessaloniki, and nearer places” mix. A Venetian consul would help establish a climate of trust among merchants and strengthen the position of Split against Ragusa.105 In spring 1616, doge Giovanni Bembo chose Velutello to start conversations with the beglerbeg of Bosnia, Iskender Pasha, about recent border zone conflicts in Dalmatia, especially attacks against Venetian merchants travelling between Split and Sarajevo. Immediately upon Velutello’s arrival, Iskender Pasha confirmed that such acts would henceforth be harshly punished.106 Over the next few years, Velutello continued brokering Veneto-Ottoman information and politics. In early 1617, for instance, the consul sent reports about an Ottoman messenger carrying letters from the sultan who intended to travel to Venice via Split. Such reports were vital and allowed Venice to intercept Ottoman plans by prompting Split authorities to deal with the

138  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self envoy’s message instead—thereby avoiding Venice having to enter directly into any kind of obligation resulting from the sultan’s claims, which Velutello believed was lacking in “any reasonable foundation.”107 With the military tensions in spring 1617, Venice sent Velutello orders to continue “good intelligence” with Ottoman Bosnian officials in Sarajevo.108 In the coming months, around when Genesino was to arrive in Sarajevo, Velutello negotiated with Iskender Pasha on how to secure the maritime route between Split and Venice. Iskender Pasha signalled his will to ­provide manpower for Venetian galleys to fight the Spanish-Neapolitan navy in the Adriatic. The Bosnian beglerbeg also sent an envoy (ministro turco) to Trogir—where Genesino would enter Venetian territory—to further investigate border issues negotiated in Sarajevo. Additionally, Velutello tried to undermine Neapolitan and Ragusan positions spreading in Iskender Pasha’s environment. The consul repeatedly emphasised the security of the trading route via Split, and also sought to calm Bosnian merchants’ hostilities towards their Venetian counterparts from Split, following endless ­negotiations over compensation.109 Such interventions were crucial at a time when Venice favoured appeasement politics in the Balkans. When an Ottoman subject was killed in Paštrovići in spring 1618, and his compatriots sent letters of complaints to Venetian Kotor, Venice instructed local authorities to investigate the murder without any hesitation, so as to appease Ottoman subjects. Venice also asked Velutello to stay in Sarajevo to manage sentiments across Bosnia, in particular, to tackle the important but difficult issue of the Split incident. Sultan Mustafa I himself had singled out Velutello as a culprit of this event’s diplomatic consequences. It was only after the consul had assured the kadi and mullah of Sarajevo that Venice would compensate any losses resulting from increased Spanish presence in the Adriatic, the sultan wrote, that Ottoman merchants agreed to ship their goods in Split cargo galleys. In the meantime, Venice ordered Velutello “to quell the tumult” among Bosnian merchants in Sarajevo, and to ensure that no doubts lingered as to the continued prosperity of the Veneto-Ottoman trade route via Split. Velutello was paid handsomely for his services—up to 300 ducats on one occasion. In return, the consul regularly informed Venice about the positions of the highest-ranking officials in Ottoman Bosnia.110 Velutello ran a vibrant information network. At the time of Genesino’s travels, when trading routes via Split had become even more insecure, Velutello began sending letters and duplicates via Zadar. In return, Split governor Garzoni regularly sent letters from Split to Sarajevo, both to the consul and to top officials and representatives of the Ottoman merchant community, assuring them that despite circulating rumours, the Adriatic trading route via Split was safe. Velutello was also in correspondence with Ottoman officials in Sarajevo, among them the local head gatekeeper (kapıcıbaşı). Moreover, the Venetian provveditore generale of Dalmatia and Albania was instructed to join forces with the consul. While the latter’s main base was Sarajevo, the admiral was asked to distribute news about a

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  139 Spanish-Ragusan alliance to enforce the militarisation of Veneto-Ottoman borders, and to present Velutello with money and goods to be used as gifts to ensure stabile and benevolent Veneto-Ottoman relationships across the Balkans.111 Velutello became a Venetian diplomatic expert in Southeastern European affairs. Several months after Genesino’s journey, in September 1618, the senate felt safe enough to send fabrics worth 4,000 ducats on cargo galleys via Split to the bailo in Istanbul.112 The same month, the senate also responded to Velutello’s request to leave Sarajevo. As the consul explained, he had done his duty and referenced the increasing spread of the plague in the city. Venice acknowledged Velutello’s “diligent, fruitful, and honourable service,” and reimbursed him for all costs, providing an additional payment of 30 ducats per month of service. Velutello, together with two servants, resumed his previous role of head of the quarantine residence ­( priore del lazzaretto) in Split. But he did not last in this job for long.113 Due to his Bosnian experience in the late 1610s, Venice elected Velutello as a special agent for negotiations with Ottoman Hungary and Transylvania in 1621. Venice wanted him to expand the realm of Veneto-Ottoman commerce, namely by establishing more routinised exchanges between Split or Zadar and Hungarian or Transylvanian merchants. Another goal was to secure military support—weapons, manpower, and knowledge—offered by Johann Georg von Brandenburg-Jägerndorf, Heinrich Matthias von Thurn, and Georg Andreas Freiherr von Hofkirchen, with the support of Flemish merchant-mediator Daniel Nis. Velutello attended audiences with the pasha of Nagykanizsa, presenting rich gifts, and he was soon also involved in the negotiation of an anti-Habsburg alliance with Gabriel Bethlen, prince of Transylvania. Velutello maintained a rich network of informants, agents, spies, and merchants across Southeastern Europe, in Split and Zadar, as well as in Hungarian territory, Buda in particular, but also in Belgrade, Sarajevo, and even in Austrian lands to support his investments into the prosperity of Veneto-Ottoman commerce through flourishing espionage. Together with Ottomans, Hungarians, and others, Velutello worked against Austrian Habsburg interests in the region.114 In 1625, Velutello was sent, again, to the beglerbeg of Bosnia to negotiate an end to attacks against travelling Venetian merchants. Just like seven years earlier, when Genesino stayed in Sarajevo for several days, Velutello welcomed a dragoman of the bailo, this time Genesino’s nephew Grillo to share information he gathered when travelling the Balkans. Grillo reported on Austrian Habsburg interests to increase their influence in the Adriatic and to undermine established commercial exchange between Bosnia and Split.115 Spymaster Velutello’s information network thus relied on the activities of many protagonists, one of whom was Genesino. When the dragoman and consul met in Sarajevo in May 1618, Genesino received a health pass, which allowed him to continue his journey without obstacles as the plague was spreading.116 These two brokers of Veneto-Ottoman affairs would have exchanged information and discussed different positions. Genesino would

140  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self have certainly reported on recent developments in the bailate, on events that occurred during his journey, and on things that he heard across the Balkans. The dragoman’s overnight stays in various caravanserais along the journey would have equipped Genesino, the spy, with important intelligence on the opinions, troubles, and plans of merchants of different regional backgrounds (Figure 12, p. 83). In Belgrade, as Aleksandar Fotić has shown, the caravanserai of Yahyapaşa-oğlu Mehmed Pasha would have granted Genesino access to the most vibrant shopping avenue of the city, “the business and commercial artery of Ottoman Belgrade,” further fuelling the dragoman’s knowledge networks.117 Velutello, on his part, would have shared information pertaining to Genesino’s journey towards Split. He might also have asked Genesino to pass on confidential messages to Venetian authorities in Split and Trogir, to whom the dragoman was about to present letters from the bailo. Moreover, Genesino’s direct connection with the newly appointed Venetian ambassador to Istanbul would have made him an important contact for the consul in Sarajevo. Velutello asked Genesino to inform Contarini that he would make special arrangements if the ambassador intended to stop in Sarajevo on his journey to Istanbul. According to the dragoman, Velutello confirmed that he would negotiate with caravans and cover the costs of horses and transport from Novi Pazar to Sofia—more than half of the journey between Sarajevo and Istanbul.118 However, Genesino seemingly also forwarded warnings to the bailo in Istanbul that Bosnian merchants were trying to convince authorities to let Contarini travel via Sarajevo, hoping to negotiate with the ambassador en route about their claims for compensation.119 In Sarajevo, Genesino and Velutello would have discussed current political affairs, the situation of Venetian merchants in Bosnia and Dalmatia, and Ottoman merchants’ claims for restitution and compensation. They would have exchanged opinions on the Bosnian beglerbeg’s position in the matter, and the perspectives of other high-ranking Ottoman officials in Bosnia and Istanbul. In addition, Venetian authorities were deeply concerned about the possibility of travelling Ottoman envoy Mustafa spreading dangerous rumours among the merchant community in Sarajevo. It was in late April 1618, when travelling the Dalmatian coastline, that Genesino’s nephew, dragoman Grillo, shared such concerns with Venetian authorities.120 Just a few weeks later, Genesino himself secretly gathered information in Sarajevo to share with consuls in Sarajevo, ambassadors in Venice, and diplomats in Istanbul. Genesino clearly belonged to the realm of “confidants” (persone confidenti), as both Veneto-Ottoman interpreters and spies were called in early seventeenth-century Venetian documents.121

Considering Spain The dragoman was thus firmly grounded in a wider network of diplomatic agents across the Balkans and beyond. Naples, and by extension Spain, held

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  141 an important role in Genesino’s approach to this complex diplomatic crisis. When evaluating information regarding the Bosnian affair, Venetian imperial agents had to take into account the positions of Spain and Naples following the Split incident. News about the capture of the two Venetian cargo galleys had reached Naples on the night of July 20, 1617 and were announced to “the entire city” the following morning. The messenger delivering the joyous news even received the considerable sum of 1,000 scudi as a reward. Handwritten newsletters reporting the incident spread quickly. In one newsletter, Genoese captain Giovanni Battista della Rovere reported the “countless Jews and Turks with jewellery and gold” on board the ships, provoking the excitement and imagination of citizens in Naples. “I cannot express the joy that the Spaniards and the crowd made of it, the praises that were given to the duke of Osuna, and the opprobrium of Venice,” said Gasparo Spinelli, the Venetian diplomatic resident in Naples. Thanksgiving services took place, with the Spanish viceroy and duke of Osuna, Pedro Téllez-Girón, generously distributing financial offerings in Spinelli’s words, “he did not donate but threw” the gold coins “in every place,” announcing that it was paid for by Venice. Soon, the idea of selling the loot near Split was floated, with the revenues to be used to finance the Neapolitan fleet. Estimates of the value of the loot varied between 300,000 scudi and a million gold ducats.122 Such responses show the wider Mediterranean repercussions of the Split incident and the significance of Habsburg positions regarding the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Italy. The Venetian ambassador in Spain, Piero Gritti, in particular, held a key role in such negotiations. By early 1617, on the occasion of the detention of another Venetian ship with merchandise from Egypt near Brindisi, Venice had sent special orders to Gritti to demand the vessel’s immediate release. A few months later, Gritti then had to negotiate the Bosnian affair in Iberia, asking King Philip III to restitute all commodities looted during the Spanish-Neapolitan attack near Split. Gritti also addressed the topic with Philip III’s “favourite” (valido), Francisco Gómez de Sandoval, duke of Lerma, who assured him that the monarch wished “to preserve the peace of Christianity.”123 As it turned out, however, the statement was ambiguous. It could relate to both the Veneto-Neapolitan conflict at Split and ongoing peace negotiations, in Paris and Madrid, between Venice and Austria regarding the status of the Adriatic raiding community of the uskoks. In a meeting with the French ambassador and papal nuncios, Spanish secretary Antonio de Aróstegui y Zazo told Gritti to not “confound one business with another one” when he asked for the Split incident to be discussed.124 Spanish diplomacy clearly prioritised the negotiation of what came to be known as the Treaty of Madrid, settling the issue of uskok raids and the wider European politics involved. In instructions sent to the Spanish representative in Venice, the state council made clear the official stance of the Spanish crown: the restitution of goods “is not part of the negotiations until […]

142  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self more intelligence is available.”125 Spain was seemingly delaying Venetian demands to achieve other diplomatic successes in the meantime. From Paris, the Spanish ­negotiator of the treaty noted that Philip III’s promise to restitute the goods and ships to Venice was given verbally, but not in writing.126 Such informal communication, however, was not known to Venetian agents. The duke of Lerma led Gritti to believe that the restitution of the goods was a done deal. On later occasions, however, he gave a different impression. “Now is not the time to deal with such a matter,” the duke stated in September 1617, evading Gritti’s questions on when the restitution would take place.127 Just a few days later, Gritti repeated his request. The duke of Lerma replied after two days and promised to write to the viceroy of Naples for the implementation of steps that would lead to ­restitution.128 The ambassador’s reports on the delaying tactics fuelled mistrust in Venice, where authorities became outraged by the “deviousness” of Spain.129 To Venice, Naples was merely a puppet advancing Spanish interests in Levantine expansion. “I thought about this,” Gritti said as he reflected on the increasing number of Adriatic raids against Venice conducted by Naples, concluding that “no one with a sane mind could ever believe that such actions of the viceroy [of Naples] could take place without the consent from here [Madrid].”130 As news about the Split incident trickled in, however, Gritti noticed Philip III’s strong disapproval. The ambassador tried to increase pressure on the duke of Lerma and secretary Aróstegui to urge the viceroy of Naples to follow instructions and keep his promise on restitution.131 In early October 1617, Philip III sent a letter to the duke of Osuna demanding the full restitution of all commodities looted near Split. “And if anything is missing,” the letter read, “he shall undertake all possible diligence that it will be collected and returned.” To appease Venetians, Aróstegui granted Gritti access to copies of such orders. But Gritti remained sceptical.132 In fact, the order remained without any consequence. The viceroy’s insistence on not following orders from Spain worsened the situation on a daily basis. As Gritti told Venice, “the viceroy of Naples’ bad will and low inclination to peace” were to blame for the delay. This led to Spain reissuing the orders to the viceroy in December 1617. This time, the duke of Osuna was urged to do so quickly, and to use officials to draw up inventories.133 Despite the Spanish monarch agreeing to restitution, Venice remained suspicious. Venice urged its bailo in Istanbul to continue the “serious business of the cargo galleys, overcoming with prudent dexterity the many difficulties which are put forward.”134 To fulfil the orders, the espionage, negotiations, and interpretations of dragomans like Genesino and his extended family proved invaluable. In April 1618, when Genesino was still gathering information on the ground about the Bosnian affair, Spanish representatives began negotiating a peace treaty with the Ottoman sultan that included a settlement of the conflict at Split.135 “With the Turks,” Gritti

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  143 concluded in his final report from 1620, “the Spaniards now have neither peace nor war.”136 Venice knew about the wider Mediterranean dimensions of the Bosnian affair. As Genesino was briefing Contarini for his stay in Istanbul, Venice appointed another member of the Contarini family, Piero, as the new ambassador in Spain. Upon arrival in Madrid, one of the very first issues that he brought up was the restitution of the commodities looted near Split. The cargo galleys were in “a very bad state,” and it was agreed that new inventories were to be sent and restitution take place at earliest convenience to at least save the few goods that had not been sold yet.137 In addition, Piero liaised with the papal nuncios to receive updated information about Neapolitan perspectives on the issue. The papacy was largely benevolent on the Venetian case, and intervened via established communication channels in Madrid, Rome, and Naples in support of Venice. Yet the more imperial agents got involved, the longer negotiations lasted. In his final report in 1621, Piero lamented that the issue of the restitution had not been solved— despite the Spanish court’s years-long and ongoing prompting of Naples. In the meantime, Contarini wrote, “I think that the biggest difficulty is the loss of these goods, and since this business has been so often delayed and prolongated, I no longer know what to think of it.”138 Back in the lagoon city, Veneto-Spanish politics were spiralling out of control. In May 1618, a few days after Genesino finished writing his travelogue in Trogir and as he was about to depart for Venice, authorities discovered an anti-Venetian conspiracy spearheaded by the Spanish ambassador in Venice—Alfonso de la Cueva y Benavides, marquis of Bedmar—in collaboration with the Spanish viceroys of Naples and Milan. Acclaimed author Francisco de Quevedo, the secretary of the duke of Osuna, was present at the Spanish embassy in Venice at that time, and might have helped facilitate the ambassador’s plans to trigger a Neapolitan attack on Venice in the Adriatic Sea, provoked by conspiring Spanish imperial agents in Italy and their attempts to amplify rising anxieties about a joint VenetoFrench military alliance. On May 5, the Spanish ambassador in Venice reported to Madrid on the increasing French influence in Italy, and fake news on the French desire to turn Genoa into a vassal state.139 Yet upon discovery of the conspiracy, Venetians sacked the Spanish embassy, with the widely held belief being, as the marquis of Bedmar wrote in cipher in early June, “that the Spaniards played the main part in the conspiracy.”140 In one of his last letters from Venice, the marquis of Bedmar emphasised that the “Venetians are the main enemies of Your Majesty [of Spain].”141 Though the ambassador continued to run interventions against “the enemies of the House of Austria” from Spanish Milan, these events remained fresh in the minds of Venice. Genesino would have heard the news and followed up with a genuine interest, given his recent trip through the Balkans.142 The dragoman had just travelled along the Adriatic Sea, the stage on which these anti-Venetian events were supposed to unfold. Genesino would also have witnessed some of the consequences of these diplomatic upheavals during his stay in Venice, reading, perhaps, humanist prints defending the legitimacy of Venetian power in the Adriatic

144  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self Sea.143 On October 26, 1618, the doge sang a “Te deum laudamus” and held the Holy Mass in St Mark’s Basilica “to thank God that they have discovered the conspiracy.” In all churches of the city, the fortunate end of the conspiracy was remembered, turning anti-Spanish sentiments into Venetian political doctrine.144 The Split incident also featured prominently in the information and espionage networks of the Spanish ambassador in Venice. On March 3, 1618, the marquis of Bedmar reported on the arrival of Ottoman envoy Mustafa in Venice, together with dragoman Grillo, to negotiate Venetian attitudes towards Ragusa and the pending restitution of looted commodities of Muslim and Jewish merchants at Split. The ambassador was clearly well informed about the content of the sultan’s letters to Venice, which were presented by Mustafa in the presence of “all of those of his [Ottoman] nation who were to be found here [in Venice], which are many.” The audience took place in public and Venetian authorities noticed with displeasure the tone with which some merchants presented their demands for restitution. “In short,” the marquis of Bedmar writes about this “public shame” for the republic, “it has been a very affronting day for Venetians.”145 Even after the çavuş’ departure on May 13, the marquis of Bedmar could rely on his well-situated espionage networks to remain informed about recent developments. The Spanish ambassador even knew about the çavuş’ honorary welcome in Rovinj on July 22, and that he was to stay in nearby Pula for “one or two days” before continuing his journey to Istanbul.146 From 1617 to 1619, the marquis paid close attention to the ongoing debates on restitution. By November 1617, news about Ottoman responses towards the overdue Venetian restitution of goods arrived at the Spanish embassy in Venice. When Philip III sent instructions on restitution to the Spanish ambassador in Venice in December 1617, the marquis of Bedmar delayed responding until early February 1618, only to inform the monarch “that a large quantity of that fortune is missing, which the soldiers had looted when taking the galleys.”147 In March 1618, just before Genesino left Istanbul for Bosnia, the debate on the restitution of Bosnian merchants had led to a serious discord between the bailo and Ottoman dignitaries, as Ragusan-Spanish spies informed the Spanish ambassador in Venice. On March 25, in the week of Genesino’s departure, the very same information brokers informed the marquis of Bedmar about galley movements in Istanbul. The following newsletters sent from Istanbul on April 7 to the Spanish ambassador do not mention the dragoman’s departure either.148 This means that Genesino managed to keep his mission secret, despite evidently strong Spanish espionage networks linking Istanbul and Venice. The news continued to cover the restitution claims resulting from the Split incident. As the marquis was informed, the grand vizier severely insulted the bailo during audiences due to Venice’s refusal to follow up on the merchants’ demands. The marquis proudly reported to Spain that the bailo had to accept “words of little taste,” and tried restoring Venice’s honour by way of gifts so costly that he had to rely on the financial support of the Venetian merchant ­community

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  145 in Istanbul. Such incidents show that, to the marquis of Bedmar at least, Venice’s standing in Ottoman politics was not as strong as it was widely thought to be.149 Over the coming months, the bailo was seen “defending himself with gifts.”150 In the meantime, the marquis of Bedmar gathered further information about the estimated value of the goods looted, which Spanish-Ragusan spies in Istanbul believed to be around 600,000 escudos. News of the Split incident and the issue of restitution continued to connect Istanbul, Venice, and Madrid, until Philip III declared to the Venetian ambassador in Spain that the restitution of all goods was “his royal wish.” Not much could be said against the monarch’s declaration, except that there was not much left to be restituted, as the marquis of Bedmar declared.151 Unsurprisingly, Venetian trust in the goodwill of the Spanish viceroy of Naples was limited. The duke of Osuna was known to be of rather “­restless spirit,” according to the Venetian ambassador in Madrid.152 Urbino’s diplomat Girolamo Frachetta was more explicit when calling the viceroy’s plans as comparable to those of Alexander the Great.153 Soon after the Split incident, the duke of Osuna started his own negotiations with the kapudan pasha regarding the restitution of Ottoman merchants’ commodities. Considering such negotiations empty promises, Venice remained suspicious. The Ottoman envoy to Naples, a certain Suleiman Çavuş, also maintained close contact with the Venetian diplomatic resident in the city and revealed details about the negotiations. But Venice urged its resident to be cautious. An Ottoman with the same name had negotiated with Venice, Istanbul, and Florence beforehand, and did not leave the best impression in terms of confidentiality. Apparently, Naples planned to increase its maritime fleet in the Adriatic Sea, dreaming of taking Ottoman Thessaloniki. Over the coming months, ever more plans of military conquests circulated in Naples. On a daily basis, the diplomatic resident told Venice in December 1618, attacks against the Ottomans were being discussed in the palace of the viceroy: “Now they discuss Algiers, then Albania, and then Cyprus.”154 In April 1618, when Genesino was well into his Balkan journey, the viceroy considered combining military presence in the Adriatic with a naval attack on Algiers and fighting North African corsair activities near Gibraltar. A month later, a Spanish fleet had set sail from Ragusa to attack Venetian possessions at Trieste. Venice, in turn, had hopes that Ottomans would attack Calabria. With increasing frequency, the viceroy received news on the sightings of Venetian military ships across the entire viceroyalty, even in Brindisi. He thus sought to establish a collaboration with Emperor Matthias, offering to march with Spanish-Neapolitan infantrymen to Senj and Trieste. He had also planned to unite Neapolitan, Sicilian, Spanish, Roman, and Florentine galleys in Messina to fight against the Venetian-Dutch-English alliance and against possible Ottoman advances into the Adriatic Sea. In 1618, the popularity of such plans increased, especially in the circles of Cardinal Borja, with the viceroy’s outrage to England and self-fashioning as the true defender of the Catholic faith in letters to Rome. Again, Ragusan

146  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self news about a Veneto-Ottoman agreement confirming mutual military s­ upport in case of a Neapolitan attack, channelled to Naples, fuelled such discussions.155 The Split incident strengthened the viceroy’s standing in Naples and beyond, as reported by the Venetian diplomatic resident in Naples, Gasparo Spinelli. This resulted in an even more complex imperial contest across the Balkans. In Naples, the different political factions would now unite behind the duke of Osuna, according to Spinelli, united by shared anti-Venetian sentiments and the hope of further military successes. Yet, Venice put hopes into the count of Benevento, who informed Philip III that the viceroyalty of Naples was in a bad state of affairs with high criminal rates and, as the count put it, at risk “of some big revolution.”156 In Mediterranean politics, however, the duke of Osuna knew how to use the new balance of power resulting from the Split incident. Immediately, he strengthened relationships with the beg of Thessaloniki. Precious gold cloths helped initiate conversations with the beg’s brother-in-law, the Ottoman kapudan pasha, whom the duke offered high sums of money to establish a closer alliance.157 He also released one of his domestic slaves, an Ottoman çavuş, to initiate contact with the Ottoman fleet and, ultimately, the kapudan pasha, offering the restitution of Ottoman subjects’ commodities from the Split cargo galleys and safe harbour for Ottoman ships in Brindisi.158 The viceroy’s wish was to establish a trading Levantine hub in Brindisi fostering Ottoman-Neapolitan commerce, similar to the Veneto-Ottoman trade via Split. While Neapolitan and Spanish spies sabotaged merchants’ storage facilities and quarantine complexes in Split, the duke had already initiated contact with the Holy Roman emperor to turn Brindisi into a scala franca for the trade with Eastern Mediterranean goods.159 At the same time, Naples planned to establish a fortress and harbour on the Dalmatian or Albanian coast to ensure a safe trading route between Brindisi and the Echinades, thereby weakening the VenetoOttoman commerce via Split. Between the Albanian coast and Brindisi, as a Neapolitan political treatise advertised the project to the Spanish king, it would be possible to traverse the sea within a night. Other plans even involved the Neapolitan conquest of the Echinades.160 Though officially forbidden due to the official state of war between Spain and the Ottoman Empire, Neapolitan merchants operated in Albania declaring themselves as Ragusan subjects.161 In the meantime, the duke sent his former slave to Istanbul to start secret negotiations with the Ottomans, and later also wrote letters to the Emir of Saïda in Algiers. The viceroy used the Ragusans to forward letters to the Ottoman pasha of Bosnia, residing in Sarajevo, to establish a future Neapolitan monopoly in Levantine commerce, mainly in silks, wool, camlets, leather, spices, remedies, and wax.162 To support Neapolitan plans, Spanish Milan sent 4,000 infantrymen despite conducting separate negotiations with Venice regarding the restitution of the goods of the Split cargo galleys.163 Venice, in turn, used diplomatic backchannels with France to increase pressure on Naples. In France, as the Venetian ambassador in

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  147 Madrid reported, the Neapolitan attack near Split was considered “bad and blameful.” Soon, the French monarch also promised in writing to intervene on behalf of Venice with acts, conversations, and prayers to convince the Spanish monarch to restitute Ottoman commodities looted at Split.164 Yet, hopes for a Neapolitan return of the looted goods were scant from early on. On July 29, 1617, the Neapolitan fleet arrived together with the captured cargo galleys, which saw large festivities in Messina. As Spinelli told Venice, the loot was safely transferred to the palace but he was seriously worried about some goods getting sold for cheap or even handed out freely to the viceroy’s many creditors. On August 28, the loot arrived in the harbour of Naples, and displayed to the gathering crowd. To safeguard the treasure, it was announced that trespassers onto the ship would be sentenced to death. However, Spinelli’s worst fears proved to be true. Some of the loot on one of the ships was already missing—artefacts had been sold on the streets of Messina for much less than their actual value. Spinelli remained suspicious of the duke of Osuna’s reassurances, especially since his “need for money is massive.” When confirming the future restitution of the goods via official channels, “it was made public with trumpets in the streets where there are merchants that whoever wishes to buy the things of the Venetians shall go to the castle, because all will be sold.” In September, the goods were made available to local merchants who, as Spinelli reports, “have gone there unwillingly considering it a business that cannot be avoided.” To decrease the viceroy’s debts, all commodities that had gotten wet during the naval incident were sold. When the princess of Stigliano showed some of the Ottoman luxury textiles to the local Venetian diplomat, Spinelli gasped for breath when hearing the low price of the stained yet superb cloth.165 Spinelli’s despair grew. Via Camillo dalla Mara, the Neapolitan tax collector in charge of the loot from the Split cargo galleys, he managed to get access to the inventories. Despite the Neapolitan’s reassurances that he uses all his “diligence […] to conserve them [the goods] without any diminution,” Spinelli feared that even more commodities would be sold in Naples or sent abroad, even to Smyrna or Istanbul. He complained that Spanish ministers speak “with ambiguous words,” like “the oracles of the ancients” did, and he could not “imagine how the things can be kept well, whilst I know for sure that they are distributed every day.” The previous day, for instance, scarlet fabrics originally belonging to a certain İbrahim Agha were sent to the Signora Castellana and Ragusans had sent looted fabrics, musk, civet, and bezoars to the beglerbeg of Bosnia and the duke of Uceda, the son of the duke of Lerma. Similar goods were sold in Naples. “I have at least obtained the inventories,” Spinelli concluded, but feared that there might soon be not much left for restitution. In fact, a lot of the commodities belonging to Muslim and in particular Jewish merchants were sold publicly in early November 1617. The goods of Christian subjects of the sultan remained in Neapolitan custody, in case that later restitution could not be avoided.166

148  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self Equipped with the relevant inventories, Spinelli attended another ­ udience in December 1617, demanding the immediate restitution of the mera chandise. Hopes for success, however, were low. The viceroy had shown “little will to restitute anything,” especially if the commodities had once belonged to Muslims or Jews. The Split cargo galleys were in the port of Naples, “naked […], without a piece of artillery, without tress, and without any oars […]. They have nothing but an anchor and a few old ropes,” Spinelli said. Most of the merchandise had been widely distributed in the meantime. Some of the goods had been sent to Ragusa and, from there, to the beglerbeg of ­ erchants,” Bosnia. Others were given to court favourites in Naples, “sold to m or can be “seen in the shops of these tailors” in Naples. The most precious items, jewellery in particular, were sent to Spain.167 Two galleys of Ottavio Piccolomini left Naples with gifts for the Spanish court—altogether “more than fifteen caskets of silk fabrics” that were looted at Split, mostly damasks, scarlet cloths, and fabrics made of gold threads. “Ambassador Gritti,” Spinelli wrote in absolute frustration, referencing the Venetian ambassador in Spain, “perhaps will have an opportunity to see them [these goods] also at that court [in Madrid] upon Ottavio Piccolomini’s arrival.”168 In light of such developments, Spinelli tried to trace the distributed goods. To avoid any suspicion, he paid Armenian merchants in Naples to report on the quantity and the kind of commodities that left the warehouses in the fortress, where the loot was stored. Spies were also paid to acquire the names of those who were purchasing the goods. Merchants Felice Edolfi, Francesco de Robessi, and Luca de Mari had bought gold fabrics and woollen cloths for 20,000 ducats, 12,000 ducats, and 6,000 ducats, respectively. Scarlet fabrics belonging to a certain Lutfi Çavuş and Salah Agha, as well as a bulk of silk fabrics and the goods of Memi Çavuş and İbrahim Kapıcı, however, remained in the fortress. Armenian informants also reported that several commodities belonging to Christian Ottoman merchants were also being kept there. Some of the goods, however, had already been offered to a French merchant.169 Spinelli continued to fight for restitution for months. In August 1618, the Venetian resident urged the viceroy, again, to hand over the remaining commodities, emphasising that this is “in accord with the good and holy mind of His Majesty [of Spain].”170 By July 1619, the viceroy’s auditor general was still objecting to the restitution, without providing any reason why.171 The Split incident of July 1617 thus shaped the wider Mediterranean politics of the months and years to come. The attack on the cargo galleys enacted a vibrant and complex network of Venetian imperial protagonists across the entire Mediterranean, from Istanbul to Madrid, to battle over the consequences of this Adriatic event. Genesino, gathering information, facilitating the movement of news and diplomats, and connecting Venice and Istanbul while travelling Bosnia and Dalmatia, was one such agent, considering and dealing with the consequences of the Mediterranean imperial ambitions of Naples as “the Spanish gate to the Balkans.”172

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  149

Considering Ragusa Another key player in this Mediterranean web of commerce and crisis was the Republic of Ragusa. Vesna Miović and other historians have highlighted the republic’s ambiguous status as a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire and yet a widely independent, flourishing protagonist in Levantine commerce. Genesino was well aware of this. His own matrilinear kin, the Gaglianos, originated from Ragusa.173 Historians have described Ragusa as “both outside the [Ottoman] empire and within,” a phrasing that could likewise be employed to the Salvago dragomans in the wider politics of the early modern Mediterranean.174 Ragusa “continued to be a vital link for traffic between the Ottoman dominions and Italy,” especially in trading textiles, salt, and leather with Ancona, Florence, and Naples.175 Soon after the Split incident, Ottoman merchants informed Venice about the “evil operations of the Ragusans,” and thereby confirmed Venice’s understanding of Ragusa’s “complicity with the Spaniards.”176 Venice accused Ragusa of having passed on information on the whereabouts of the Split cargo ­galleys to the Spanish-Neapolitan fleet—an involvement that Venice considered an attempt to destroy the commercial monopoly of Split across the Balkans. Venice was also well aware of the fact that Ragusa provided the Neapolitan fleet with commodities, ships, and mariners by early 1617. When Dutch ships sailing in support of Venice hunted down the Spanish armada in May 1617, Spain’s navy found safe harbour in the port of Ragusa.177 After the Split incident, when a Venetian envoy bearing letters from the governor was welcomed in Ragusa, the republic issued a letter emphasising “our ancient devotion and appreciation towards you,” referring to Venice.178 Still, Ragusa continued to observe the maritime movements of the Venetian fleet across the Adriatic with deep suspicion, reporting on them to the Ragusan consul in Naples, Piero Francesco de Stai. This was intended to manifest “this republic’s very devoted interest towards the crown of Spain, Your Excellency [the viceroy of Naples], since we are concerned about the […] bad attitude which the Venetians demonstrate towards us on every occasion.”179 In addition, Stai presented the viceroy with rich gifts to strengthen Ragusa-Spanish diplomatic ties.180 Following clashes with Venetian galleys in the Adriatic—namely in the Ragusan harbour of Santa Croce (Gruž), as well as the looting of smaller ships near Ragusan fortifications by Venice in autumn 1617, a retaliation for the Split incident—Ragusa sent envoys to Lorenzo Venier, provveditore generale of the Venetian fleet. The republic made peace and the restitution of looted Ragusan commodities a precondition for “the continuity of the ancient devotion and our observance” towards Venice.181 Ragusa, thus, positioned its own claims of Venetian restitutions against similar claims made against Naples and Ragusa by Venice. To increase the efficacy of networking abroad, Ragusa shared news and letters widely among its ambassadors and consuls in Venice, Istanbul, and Naples.182

150  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self By foregrounding Venetian attacks in the months following the Split i­ ncident, Ragusa managed to define the diplomatic agenda in Istanbul. The republic supported Bosnian merchants’ claims for restitution. Jewish merchants, for instance, presented the case of their losses of fabrics and leather to Ragusan ambassadors in Istanbul, who rejected such demands—“since we have not done anything.”183 In September 1617, Ragusan authorities anxiously instructed their diplomatic residents in Istanbul not to comply with Jewish merchants’ demands, since this might have “a thousand harmful consequences.”184 The republic’s official position on the events of Split was simple and powerful. By the end of July 1617, Ragusa instructed its diplomatic representative in Sarajevo “that we are very innocent in this by being neutral with everyone.”185 Not by chance, Venice asked Velutello “to observe and oppose” any Ragusan attempts to influence the beglerbeg of Bosnia’s understanding of the incident.186 Still, such neutrality came at a cost—such as increasing tensions among Ragusan merchant communities in Belgrade, as well as between Ragusan merchants in Sofia and Ottoman subjects in Plovdiv.187 By juxtaposing Bosnian and Venetian demands with its own accusations against Venice, Ragusa packed Ottoman diplomatic channels with information and complaints that increasingly defined the agenda of the bailo and its dragomans in Istanbul. An increasing number of audiences discussed Ragusan complaints of Venetian invasions. Ragusa even convinced the sultan to send a çavuş to Kotor to further investigate such accusations. In November 1617, the sultan and grand vizier followed up on Ragusan information about the Venetian looting of a fortress in October 1617. Venice had also stopped a ship belonging to Pietro Paulo Rochi, a citizen of Kotor. The vessel was loaded with goods purchased in Venice by Ragusan merchants and was on its way to Ragusa. Further SpanishVenetian naval clashes in its territory increased the diplomatic urgency of Ragusa’s complaints. The sultan urged the Venetian bailo to stop such raids since Ragusans had been loyal allies and “subjects” (sudditi) of the sultan for 300 years. The sultan also demanded Venice to restitute looted silks and wool to Ragusan merchants. So did the grand vizier, whose letter was translated by Genesino’s nephew, the aspiring dragoman Giovanni Antonio Grillo.188 Ragusa itself intensified its diplomatic activities in the Ottoman Empire, managing to carve out a space to survive and thrive between the confrontations of Ottoman, Spanish, and Venetian Empires. Ragusa played a game similar to Venice’s in Istanbul, asking its ambassadors, Bernardo Binciola and Marino Andrea di Sorgo, to highlight the republic’s “fidelity” towards the Ottoman sultan. Ragusa also demanded Ottoman intervention on behalf of “the interests of this city, its old and faithful vassal,” to ensure that Venice “treats well our subjects and things.”189 The official tributary status ­provided Ragusan merchants with wide liberties in Ottoman territory— movement, conduct, trade, purchasing goods at local prices—but also with direct access to Ottoman political circles.190 According to Venetian diplomats in Istanbul, Ragusan ambassadors emphasised that its military

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  151 support for Spain serve “the security of our city not less than the interest of the Grand Signor […] against such a powerful [Venetian] armada” that “puts the city [of Ragusa], as well as its tribute paid to the Grand Signor, in great danger.”191 Its tributary status thus equipped Ragusa with powerful diplomatic rhetoric to oppose the wider Mediterranean interests of its former colonial ruler—Venice, from 1205 to 1358.192 Language and interpreters mattered, in terms of giving the Split incident a pro-Ragusan twist. The republic’s own official languages—Italian and Ragusan-Slavic—allowed Ragusan envoys to speak without considerable language barriers with Ottoman officials in Istanbul, many of whom were themselves of Serbo-Croatian or Slavic origin.193 In addition, Ragusa started its own programme of training translators in Ottoman language command in 1558. Often, Miović has shown, these interpreters were former merchants turned dragomans active in Istanbul, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.194 To strengthen the Ragusan position in the Ottoman capital, Ragusa sent its most skilled dragoman, Giovanni Battista Guppi, to accompany newly appointed ambassador Marco Baseglio in Istanbul in February 1618. Guppi was to become the Ragusan counterpart to the bailate’s dragomans, like the Salvagos; yet, he was previously the serving dragoman of the city of Ragusa and his departure also left a serious gap. Due to Ragusa’s tributary status, its dragomans served both as diplomatic interpreter-envoys and as “dragoman-legal translators,” as Selma Zecevic puts it, whose interventions were of crucial significance when “helping Ragusan litigants prepare and present their cases at Ottoman sharia courts.”195 Hence, Ragusa requested that its ambassadors in Istanbul should immediately find an Armenian or another Christian subject knowledgeable in “teaching, reading, and writing in Turkish” to serve the republic as a new dragoman for an annual salary of 100 thalers.196 Ragusan authorities assiduously counter-checked the Italian translations of Ottoman documents produced by interpreters employed by ambassadors in Istanbul, both dragomans and an Ottoman hoca, who translated in the republic’s diplomatic service. The republic was deeply concerned “that this translation is not a good one,” informing the ambassador to improve the quality of interpreters and their interpretations immediately and to keep them informed of progress in the matter.197 In Istanbul, the most important task of envoy Baseglio and dragoman Guppi was to “restore […] our standing [valor].” Especially in audiences with the sultan, the ambassador of Ragusa and “our dragoman” should ensure that the republic would be held in high esteem. Immediately upon arrival, the ambassadors and dragoman also had to request audiences with the highest-ranking Ottoman pashas, following their honorary hierarchy, when presenting Ragusan gifts.198 The grand vizier was a special target for secret audiences, “without any dragoman [in Ottoman service] intervening.”199 In addition, the Ragusan ambassadors and dragoman were also instructed to liaise with relatives and clients of the newly appointed sancak-beg of Herzegovina. Among the recipients

152  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self of the tributary gifts were not only the sultan and high-ranking pashas, but also  the “dragoman of the Porte,” thus, the sultan’s highest courtly ­interpreter who was given 20 ducats and one piece of silverware—for comparison, the pasha of Romania and the Ottoman grand admiral received 100 ducats and two silver cups respectively. Despite such costly gifts, Ragusa could not be too sure about its dragomans’ reputation. In March 1618, the month of Genesino’s departure from Istanbul, an Ottoman pasha arrested the dragoman serving Ragusan ambassadors in Istanbul, presumably for suspicion of espionage.200 Ragusa also deemed it important to spread its position on the Split incident across the Ottoman Balkans. Thanks to close connections of Ragusan ambassadors and Ottoman officials in Istanbul, the republic was well informed of recent appointments that could matter in negotiations following the Split incident—such as Emir Agha’s appointment as sindico of Bosnia and Herzegovina—and could thus invest strategically into nurturing diplomatic exchange with nearby Ottoman authorities in the Balkans. Since the Bosnian beglerbeg and sancak-beg of Herzegovina in particular were considered the main spokespersons of Ragusan interests in the region, they ranked highly in terms of diplomatic actions. Prior to the newly appointed sancak-beg of Herzegovina issuing legislation demanding Ragusa to act on behalf of the interests of Ottoman merchants, whose commodities were seized by Naples near Split, the very same sancak-beg contacted Ragusa first, “our friend, to understand […] the truth’s details.” Giuseppe di Menze, the Ragusan envoy sent to the sancak-beg of Herzegovina in November 1617, then outlined the republic’s position to Ottoman authorities emphasising that “as we have been loyal tributaries of the Grand Signor for so many centuries, so we are still today and we are jealously safeguarding the interests of his subjects.” According to the envoy, Ottoman merchants’ losses were caused by Spain following a Veneto-Spanish conflict without any Ragusan involvement—“we are most innocent.”201 The Herzegovinan sancak-beg took on board the Ragusan interpretation of events. When the Ragusan ambassador continued his journey to Plovdiv, he heard news that the sancak-beg had issued “a legal statement [arz] in our justification against accusations regarding the Spaniards,” which then circulated widely across the Balkans and in Istanbul.202 In April 1618, when Genesino was travelling across the ­p eninsula, Ragusa further nurtured its contacts with such a powerful pro-­ Ragusan Ottoman spokesperson by sending another special ambassador to meet the sancak-beg of Herzegovina in Drijeva. For Ragusa, networking with Herzegovina was vital to strengthen Ragusan positions in the Ottoman capital. In April 1619, the appointment of Francesco Bobali and Domenico di Nicolino Menze as new ambassadors in Istanbul built on the strong Ragusan-Herzegovinan diplomatic links and family networks, since another member of the Menze family had earlier been a special envoy to the sancak-beg of Herzegovina, like Bobali himself.203

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  153 In the meantime, Venice was very concerned about the bad light that Ragusan ambassadors, consuls, dragomans, and citizens in Istanbul could cast on the city in audiences with Ottoman officials. In responses, Venice accused Ragusa of lying to the sultan. In January 1618, the senate also ordered Venetian authorities of Dalmatia, Albania, and Kotor, as well as Velutello in Sarajevo, to collect, by use of “any means that you consider appropriate,” Ottoman administrative documents from across the Balkans—such as those issued, signed, and sealed by kadis—that document both Venice’s benevolence against Ottoman merchants and the damage caused by Ragusan operations in the Balkans. Such letters should be sent to the bailo in Istanbul, who was ordered to warn Ottoman authorities of the threat of a joint Neapolitan-Ragusan attack via sea and land.204 Realities on the ground, however, looked less glorious than such a plan might suggest. Camillo Michiel, the Venetian governor of Kotor, wrote to Venice in early March 1618 that he could not maintain conversations with Ottoman subjects “because there is no dragoman of the Turkish language here.”205 It thus came in handy that Genesino, who clearly knew about the senate’s orders, collected anti-Ragusan letters from Herceg Novi on his journey to forward them to the bailo. Over time, the correspondence thickened. Letters of complaints from Ottoman merchants from Bar, Shkodër, and Ulcinj arrived at Kotor, some even signed by janissaries and sipahis involved in Veneto-Ottoman commerce. Further complaints of the Ottoman commander of Shkodër and the kadis of Bar and Shkodër, documenting the damage caused by Ragusan-Spanish activities, circulated in Kotor, Venice, and then Istanbul. Michiel also sent a translation of a letter from the kadi of Montenegro, who confirmed that border violations carried out by the sultan’s “old enemies, the Spaniards,” as well as the Ragusans, who looted and plundered the area at regular intervals. A few weeks prior, Michiel lamented the absence of a translator for such activities; now, he did not even consider the name of the translator worth mentioning.206 The governor of Split was also deeply involved in the Ragusan affair at the time of Genesino’s arrival. Having heard rumours about Ragusan attempts to destroy the commercial prosperity of Split, Garzoni sent an agent to Sarajevo to operate “against the Ragusan perfidy.” Though his name has not entered the archival record, he likely had a close contact with Velutello, and by extension Genesino during his stay in Sarajevo. Garzoni also maintained contact with Croatian-Ottoman subjects near Klis who informed Split about Ottoman subjects spreading fake news about the ongoing insecurity of the Split cargo galleys to redirect large caravans towards Ragusa. After Garzoni sent out his secret agents to chase down these Ottoman subjects, they reportedly swore never to distribute such news again. Venetian authorities at the Dalmatian coast would thus have heard with curiosity Genesino’s reports about merchants’ activities in Sarajevo, his experience of travelling from Sarajevo to Split with a stopover in Klis, and his ideas of bringing stability to “this business of utmost importance.” The very same

154  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self day that Genesino arrived in the territory of Split and Trogir, Garzoni wrote to Venice about the arrival of the fully loaded cargo galley in Zadar a few days prior. Garzoni was to forward the good news to Velutello in Sarajevo to help assuage Bosnian merchants’ doubts cast by Ragusan activities across Bosnia.207 Venice considered Ragusa an “instrument” of Spanish imperial ambitions in the Levant.208 At times of Genesino’s Balkan journeys, the sympathies of the republic were clear. In spring 1618, 60 Ragusan mariners arrived in Naples to support the fleet with manpower. Ragusa even welcomed the viceroy with public celebrations. In return, even more Neapolitan noblemen demanded the duke of Osuna to express a clear commitment of support towards Ragusa. In fact, a Roman soldier who served the Venetian fleet in Crete, and who also acted as a secret Venetian spy, informed the Venetian diplomatic resident in Naples that “the Spaniards are not for the tenth part as much an enemy of Venice as the Ragusans.”209 Such developments concerned Venetian authorities, who accused Ragusa of inventing “a thousand falsities.”210 As the bailo told Venice in January 1618, “the ambassadors of Ragusa have been […] in the house of the grand vizier for three consecutive mornings, one after another.” Before grand dragoman Borisi was to meet the pasha some days later, he had “a long conversation [discorso] with said ambassadors from Ragusa […] taking place in the Slavic language” since the pasha’s steward (kethüda) was himself of Bosnian origin and demanded to follow the conversations.211 Pushing linguistic boundaries, dragomans thus opened a space of communication not available to the bailo. When the bailo was then ordered to attend an audience in the same matter, the grand vizier said, “with a very severe face, […] that the Grand Signor did not wish to see the damage of the Ragusans, which is done to them every day, to be continued in any way.” The grand vizier presented this information in the presence of the Ragusan ambassador’s own dragoman, who “followed me,” the bailo wrote, “as if he was ordered to do so by this pasha.”212 “In these turbid times,” Venetian senators feared that Ragusa would intervene in Contarini’s negotiations about the renewal of the VenetoOttoman peace treaty, which were so diligently prepared by the ambassador, bailo, and Genesino.213 Venice therefore placed high hopes on the French ambassador in Istanbul, who was supporting the Venetian case against the Ragusans during audiences with Ottoman authorities. Without doubt, the Salvagos’ close relations with both the French ambassador and dragoman— the first being a previous tenant and the latter a close family friend—bore fruit during such moments of diplomatic crises.214 Soon, Ottoman authorities urged Ragusa to stop supporting the Neapolitan fleet with manpower, commodities, and safe harbour. Venice confirmed in a letter sent to the bailo that such action must be considered “the fruits of the good semen of your negotiations,” not mentioning the dragomans’ manifold involvements. Venice’s official letters of gratitude sent to the sultan and grand vizier were translated, again, by the bailo’s dragomans.215

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  155 The stage of the Veneto-Ragusan conflict encompassed the entire Mediterranean. It took Ragusa some time to write to Naples after the Split incident. On August 7, 1617, the republic sent a letter to the viceroy’s high admiral, Francesco Rivera, not to condemn the looting of the Split cargo galleys, but to offer the Neapolitan fleet the use of Ragusan harbours. The reason for this offer was explicit. Ragusa lamented the difficulties faced with the Ottomans due to raids of the uskoks of Senj, which were supported by archduke Ferdinand. The presence of the Spanish fleet, Ragusa hoped, would stop uskok ventures against the republic. Ragusa also informed its residents in Rome about the Neapolitan success of having seized the Venetian cargo galleys of Split. In the following months, Ragusa kept its Roman diplomats updated on the movements of the Spanish fleet and “the damage caused by the Venetian armada.” Ragusa also liaised with Ferrara and Vienna, searching for further support against Venetian interests in the Adriatic as well as to win foreign artillery experts for Ragusan service. Such wider Mediterranean investments, channelled through the communications of various imperial agents, were intended to spin politics in the interest of Ragusa.216 Immediately after the Split incident, Ragusa also informed its merchant-representatives in Belgrade and Sarajevo, Matteo di Luca and Gabriele Battitone, about the event and the known whereabouts of the looted goods. Sharing information about the circulation of these commodities in Apulia and Naples with the merchant communities in Belgrade and Sarajevo secured the benevolence of Serbian and Bosnian merchants towards Ragusa, especially in comparison to the thin-lipped responses of Venice and Split. Soon, Sarajevo merchants presented first requests, asking the republic to “protect and buy their goods.” Ragusa refused the request, thereby increasing pressure on Venice, but still used the occasion to distance itself from the incident, to express its disapproval, and to emphasise its will to further safeguard the interests of the sultan’s subjects. Ottoman merchants—those from Sarajevo in particular—were offered use of Ragusa instead of Split as a stopover for maritime commerce with Venice. Within a span of months after the Split incident, Jewish merchants from Bosnia explored trading routes to Italy via Ragusa, using a local Jewish agent (consule) and the returning Ottoman envoy to Venice, Mustafa Çavuş, as channels of communication. Jewish merchants also invested in the further consolidation of trade connections between Ragusa and Ancona. In addition, Ragusan spies forwarded news about the most recent developments in Istanbul to the Spanish ambassador in Venice, and provided Bosnian sancak-begs with the possibility of contacting Spain in March 1618, just as Genesino began his journey through the region.217 To counter Ragusan activities across the Balkans, Venice also activated its networks. Knowing that the kadi of Herceg Novi was a fond spokesperson of Ragusa, Venice kicked off a charm offensive with gifts like precious textiles to convince him and other Ottoman authorities to support the Venetian

156  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self cause instead. This was a well-established strategy. By 1602, then-governor of Split, Andrea Rhenier, considered friendship with Ottoman authorities in Klis and Sarajevo fundamental to avoid strengthening Ragusa and Drijeva, the marketplace of the Neretva River (scala di Narenta). During Genesino’s travel to Split, and perhaps following his own reports about the general sentiment of Jewish merchants in Sarajevo, governor Garzoni sent the consul of the Jewish community of Split, merchant Sabadai Samaglia, to Sarajevo to promote Venetian interests to Bosnian Jewish merchants. At the same time, Garzoni sent Vicenzo de Steffano to Mostar and Foča to initiate commercial contact beyond Sarajevo. This was a strategic time to do so, since Neapolitan galleys had also kidnapped Ottoman merchants from Foča conducting Adriatic commerce via Ragusa with Ancona a few months earlier, thus, weakening public opinion about the safety of that trading route. In just a few days, de Steffano successfully ensured the shipment of 400 items from Foča via Split to Venice. The agha of the region of the Neretva River, furthermore, issued a legal petition (arz) ensuring the safe conduct of Venetian subjects. A translated copy of this document—the name of the translator, active in Split in early April 1618, is left out—was sent to the bailo in Istanbul and to Venice. At exactly the same time, Ragusa sent orders to its agent in Foča, Mile Sotović, to distribute word of the pro-Ragusan arz of the sancak-beg of Herzegovina among the local merchant community and beyond, “so that one knows the truth.”218 Step by step, the tide turned in favour of Venice. Garzoni reported from Split “that the perfidy of the Ragusans shall eventually give birth to a viper damaging itself.” Desperate to increase their commercial turnover, Ragusans started trading goods incognito via Split with the help of Venetian merchant Gabriel Pocobello. Garzoni had been informed about these secret activities by the influential Jewish merchant David Coem, his spy in Ragusa. To undermine the illicit trade, Coem encouraged Jewish merchants in Sofia to change their established Veneto-Ottoman trading routes from Ragusa to Split. With pride, Garzoni informed Venice that Sofia merchants Abram Negri, Giosef Manuel, and Aron Anzel traded “a good number” of their commodities via Split in May 1618. This was a huge success given that most of Ragusa’s inland commerce was with Sofia, particularly the wool trade with Jewish merchants. Previous attempts by Split authorities at Ragusa’s behest, to drive trade via Skopje and Sofia had no tangible effects. Additionally, Ottoman subject Ali Chiato arrived in Split to negotiate the revitalisation of Veneto-Ottoman commerce with the local Venetian authority. Ragusan merchant Vincenzo Lonzali, who had a strong turnover of goods in Ancona, confirmed a large shipment of merchandise from the Black Sea to Venice via the Split cargo galleys. Many Ottoman merchants from Mostar considered following Lonzali’s example, shifting their Ancona trading routes to Split to the detriment of Ragusa. Reports on the Ragusan “loss of […] hope” to harm Veneto-Ottoman commercial transactions via Split soon circulated in Dalmatia and Venice.219

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  157 The creditworthiness of Ragusan merchants abroad suffered considerably. For instance, Mato Butchi and Marko Butchi, two Ragusan brothers active as merchants in Belgrade, faced “great difficulties […] cashing in their credits.” Responding to outstanding reimbursements and compensations for their commodities looted in the Split incident, Ottoman merchants started to hold back goods and cash from Ragusan merchants in Belgrade, resulting in them suffering substantial losses in terms of loans. These events took place just a few weeks after Genesino’s sojourn in the city and it is reasonable to assume that he would have used his language skills and cultural knowledge to further promote anti-Ragusan sentiments among local ­merchants. Genesino might have realised what was imminently brewing; or perhaps he himself made it happen when mingling with local merchants? Soon, Ragusa issued letters to Belgrade, complaining about the daily “vanity and imprudence that cause us [the Ragusan government and its merchants abroad] disgust, […] disorder, and damage.” Ragusan authorities began arresting merchants to settle outstanding financial liabilities. The inheritance disputes among Ragusan merchants in Belgrade added yet another layer to the complex situation, leading the republic to issue a statement lamenting the state of general “disunion and rumours” among ­merchants. Ragusa complained that “such severe procedures” would ruin its reputation. The republic demanded its residents live in well with Bosnians—certainly to ensure that their anger was focused on Venice.220 However, Venice and Split, its most important commercial entrepôt in the Adriatic, benefited from such conflicts. In early July 1618, Ottoman merchants increased the amount of goods to be traded via Split from 4,200 to 5,300 carriage pieces (coli) within the span of just a few days. Even more commodities were about to arrive from Banja Luka, Sarajevo, Mostar, and Foča. By the end of the month, also due to the flourishing fair of Doljani— which Genesino had visited a few months prior—Split housed around 7,000 coli. In August, caravans arrived in Split on a daily basis, bringing an additional 800 coli of goods in four days. From Sarajevo, both Velutello and İbrahim Çelebi—a merchant and spy on the secret payroll of the Venetian governor of Split, who was accompanying Mehmed Çavuş, the Ottoman envoy sent by Osman II to Venice, on his return journey to Istanbul— reported that 80 horses loading “camlets, wax, and wool” were on their way to Split despite the spread of the plague in Sarajevo. In September 1618, a caravan of about 60 horses from Belgrade arrived in Split, but the absence of the cargo galleys caused the Jewish merchant Cain Varon to transport the goods via Ragusa in the end.221 Bosnian merchant İbrahim Çelebi, mio confidente, sent governor Garzoni further up-to-date information about circulating goods, ­p eople, and news. A certain Lorenzo de Marco, merchant in Belgrade, as well as a Bortolo di Zanchi, a merchant in Sarajevo, sent another 100 horses with goods like wax and leather to Split. To avoid a repeat of Varon’s financial losses, Marco and Zanchi sent letters to Split informing Garzoni about the imminent arrival of their caravan. Further

158  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self caravans were expected to arrive from the Sava and Danube Rivers. Upon improvement of the s­ituation in plague-suffering Sarajevo, Abram Pardo and Moise Israel, “Jewish ­merchants and my friends,” informed Garzoni that most commodities from Sarajevo would continue to be traded, as usual, via Split.222 Learning from the Split incident in summer 1617, however, Ottoman merchants demanded that Split would carry all risks of potential losses. Still, the wide-ranging activities of formal and informal agents, like Genesino, had set in motion a revival of Split’s Balkan commerce. When visiting the town in 1621, “many Turkish merchants vividly” urged the provveditore general of Dalmatia and Albania, Antonio Barbaro, to avoid any delay of the cargo galleys. So many commodities had been stapled in Split by then that a delay of the arrival and departure of the cargo ships would have caused “severe damages” among the merchants.223

The Spying Dragoman: Information, Interpretation, and Espionage Early seventeenth-century Southeastern Europe and the wider Levant were bristling with spies. One of the many imperial agents on a secret mission was road dragoman Genesino. No letters in cipher of the dragoman-spy survive. However, the knowledge he collated, assembled, and passed on entered the ciphered correspondence between the bailo in Istanbul and the Venetian senate, and informed Venice’s political decision-making. The information gathered by Genesino during his Balkan journey would have been invaluable for the revaluation and settling of Veneto-Ragusan conflicts and VenetoBosnian disputes—important issues touching on war and peace, prosperity and decline, as negotiated by both the bailo and newly elected ambassador in whose service the dragoman was travelling. He would have tested, ­listened to, and actively enquired about various protagonists’ perspectives, “working […] out,” as Briggs calls the interpreter’s mode of operation, the different ends of the multipositional network active across the Balkans.224 The dragoman’s prolonged stays in a variety of caravanserais in particular put him in the best possible position to report on merchants’ attitudes towards the overdue Venetian compensation as a result of the Split incident (Figure 12, p. 83). As a node of communication, caravanserais enabled the dragoman to gather information, sense moods, and hear about the most recent political developments across the Balkans, and to put shifting attitudes in perspective. Caravanserais also provided him with the opportunity to enquire about merchants’ positions on the economic and diplomatic crisis that framed his journey, a conflict that grew to involve imperial ­protagonists from across the Mediterranean, and that increasingly thrust him into Venetian espionage schemes. Through conversations with Bosnian and Jewish merchants in caravanserais, Venetian merchants, agents, and representatives in Belgrade, Sarajevo, and Trogir, Muslim and Christian

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  159 subjects in Klis, and with Ragusan merchants via his family connection to the Gaglianos, Genesino would have had unique inside into this conflict. Since Genesino’s work was largely based in the oral world of interpretation, he would likely have passed on information orally to either ­ambassador Contarini or bailo Nani. However, the dragoman also left traces of his ­espionage activities in his travelogue, in the form of otherwise inaccessible military observations. Travelling along the Sava River in Belgrade and Zemun, the dragoman diligently counted the number of wooden boats and Ottoman harquebusiers on board. Genesino wondered why there were so few, and decided to find out more. He soon learned that Istanbul wanted Belgrade to equip 150 boats with armed men, but that due to overdue payments to soldiers from the previous year, it could only militarise nine boats. In this instance, Genesino managed to get access to secret military orders sent to Belgrade via two Istanbul gatekeepers (kapıcı).225 His language skills, diplomatic rank, and status as Ottoman subject—including the skill of foregrounding one or the other depending on context—as well as his access to considerable financial resources via the networks of the bailate, empowered him to conduct such espionage. Ottoman officials would have kept this information secret but Genesino knew that sharing this with ambassador Contarini might prove vital, not only to peace negotiations, but also in strengthening Venetian attempts to levy Ottoman subjects for military service against the Neapolitan-Spanish fleet. As an interpreter, Genesino was trained in gathering, evaluating, and contextualising information, as well as in rewording and transporting this into new contexts. The dragoman’s business of interpretation, often covering secrets circulating in the circle of the bailate, equipped him to access, handle, and interpret sensitive information, and to participate in a culture of secrecy that turned him into an interpreter and spy—a persona confidente with overlapping skill sets.226 At the time of Genesino’s journey, the Mediterranean vibrated with criss-crossing spies. Veneto-Spanish military clashes in the Adriatic in 1617 resonated widely in contemporary information networks. To spread news was a crucial means to spin interpretations, making it even more necessary for empires to gather secret information and cultivate intricate networks in the Balkans and beyond.227 Just a few days after the Split incident in July 1617, Naples arrested Venetian merchant Giovanni Battista Balbi on suspicion of espionage, confiscating all his letters. The local Venetian diplomatic resident, Gasparo Spinelli, grew anxious, since some of Balbi’s letters contained secrets shared with a fake addressee—although they were meant for him. No wonder that Spinelli would compose parts of his own letters to Venice in cipher, so to avoid prosecution for espionage and treason in case such correspondence was intercepted.228 In April 1618, Neapolitan spies returned from Venice with designs, plans, and measures of the water channels of the lagoon. Some Greeks also provided Otranto and Naples with information about Venetian military movements in the Adriatic. Soon after,

160  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self the Greek Orthodox quarter in Naples turned into a vibrant ­espionage hub channelling news from the Levant to different authorities across the Mediterranean. Spinelli also collected “rumours of the gulf”— from the Adriatic Sea—in particular information on the movements of Spanish, Dutch, and English ships. Ottoman subjects, like an unnamed çavuş who lost 25,000 ducats during the Split incident, likewise collected handwritten newsletters from Naples to stay updated on the whereabouts of their looted commodities. Naples also sent various spies to the Echinades to investigate the state of the Venetian armada. The result was that the Venetian fleet was in rather good shape, and that a Neapolitan conquest would be much more difficult than previously suggested by Ragusa.229 Venice, too, was well informed about Ragusan subjects conducting ­espionage on behalf of Naples in Venetian port cities across Dalmatia. A Ragusan called Francesco Sagro had written letters to Naples, spreading misinformation about the supposed mistreatment of the Venetian bailo in Istanbul and his grand dragoman Borisi, who, Sagro reported, was in danger of being assassinated by the Ottoman Empire. Sagro also spread rumours that the commodities looted by Naples near Split would be handed out to the Ragusans and a few Ottoman subjects—and not to Venice. Ragusa sent another spy to draw a map of the city of Split and its maritime environment. The spy, who arrived in Naples in April 1618, was also collecting information on the number of Ottoman subjects living in nearby Klis, fuelling Venetian speculation about a joint Ragusan-Ottoman-Neapolitan attack on Split from both land and sea.230 Beg Haidarović and Hussain Agha, two brothers from Herceg Novi, reported secret information about Ragusa and the Spanish fleet to the Venetian authority of Kotor. The agha of Herceg Novi also offered military support to Venice once Dalmatian authorities strategically passed on secret information about Spanish maritime movements to nearby Ottoman district governors.231 Split’s agent in Mostar and Foča, Vicenzo de Steffano, shared Ottoman rumours about an imminent Spanish attack on the Neretva region and Albania.232 İbrahim Çelebi, an Ottoman merchant who was demanding compensations for losses during the Split incident, was also passing on secret messages about Ottoman envoy Mehmed Çavuş to Split authorities when accompanying the envoy from Sarajevo to Istanbul.233 It is thus no surprise that Ottoman subjects purloined several pouches of the Venetian bailo’s letters sent from Istanbul to Venice nearby Kotor in April 1618—it was certainly to check for secret information.234 Ironically, Venice had itself become a hub for Spanish information gathering and espionage related to Ottoman affairs. Spanish ambassador marquis of Bedmar ran his “espionage empire” comprising Spanish spies in Venice, close information exchange with Austrian Viennese diplomats residing there, as well as Spanish, Ragusan, Greek, and Ottoman subjects active across the Adriatic and in Istanbul.235 Suspicions soon arose that even Genesino’s uncle, Odoardo, was a spy on Spanish payroll forwarding secret

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  161 information circulating in Istanbul and the wider Levant.236 It is telling that the marquis of Bedmar was even able to intercept the bailo’s secret correspondence with Venice at times.237 The Spanish ambassador also gathered news about the bailo’s impact on the mindset of the grand vizier, who was to convince the sultan that the “Ragusans are enemies of this [Ottoman] empire and spies of Your Majesty [of Spain].” The marquis informed the monarch in Madrid that the bailo was using all possible means to undermine the position of the Ragusans in Istanbul “against whom they [Venetians] have capital hatred here for being fond of Your Majesty.”238 Yet, Ragusa also played a key role in flooding Spanish espionage networks with news of the Ottoman Empire reporting, in March 1618, on “the grand division in this empire,” military losses against Safavid Persia, the inexperience and youth of the new sultan, and the janissaries’ coup d’état which had brought him into office.239 Such news, gathered through espionage, shaped politics. On May 8, news from Istanbul dating back to March 25 circulated in Venice, claiming that the bailo had presented precious gifts to Ottoman dignitaries to convince its navy to join the Venetian fleet against Spain and Naples. In early June 1618, when Genesino was in Venice, the local Spanish ambassador forwarded news from Istanbul about an imminent Ottoman maritime attack on southern Italy to Naples and Sicily. In addition, such reports contained information about the bailo’s conflicts with leading pashas about the restitution of the looted goods now stored in Naples, a Safavid attack on “Babylonia,” and further successes of the cossacks against the Ottomans. Over the coming months, Istanbul news about Persian victories over Ottomans and possible Persian advances into Europe circulated widely among Spanish-Italian espionage networks, as well as Neapolitan and Spanish circles. Spanish secret informants also copied Istanbul news pertaining to the deeds of the bailo in response to the long overdue restitution of the goods looted at Split. Between 1618 and 1622, therefore, Venice arrested numerous Spanish spies operating in the city.240 Espionage shaped Spanish politics towards the Balkans and the Levant. Ragusa, for instance, forwarded secret newsletters to Naples with information on the Ottoman-Persian military conflict, cossack military successes against the Ottomans “who fear one day they will come to plunder Constantinople,” Venetian naval movements in the Adriatic, and tumults and events at the Ottoman court, including disagreements among high-ranking officials.241 The viceroy of Naples used this news to convince Philip III to send military support for Neapolitan plans in the Adriatic. The circumstances are fortunate, the viceroy declared, referencing the strong Neapolitan espionage network across Southeastern Europe, for taking Ottoman Macedonia, Bosnia, and Albania. In Palermo, the conde de Castro dreamt of a Spanish maritime attack on the Ottoman Balkans now that the sultan had to amass its troops on the Eastern front. On several occasions in spring 1618, Ragusan news from Istanbul fuelled anxieties in Naples, and by extension Spain. The news

162  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self promoted a harsh political and military confrontation with Venice, which was “forced to put in the sea the biggest armada as they can.” Yet, this navy was now to unite with 60 to 70 Ottoman galleys which had left Istanbul on March 19, as Ragusan spies let Naples know, possibly to conduct a joint Veneto-Ottoman attack on Apulia and Calabria, and then to move onwards to “Mallorca, Menorca, and the coast of Spain.”242 Ragusan espionage networks in the Ottoman capital and Balkans, thus, aimed to shape Neapolitan politics and increase confrontations in the Adriatic and beyond to agitate allies against Venice. In addition, sharing such secrets allowed Ragusa to self-fashion as a reliable and trustworthy ally, who won the duke of Osuna’s appreciation by contributing to the vibrating Spanish espionage networks across the Levant.243 Venice also maintained a dynamic information and espionage network across the Mediterranean to broker the flows of communication and secrets between its most important agents.244 In Istanbul, bailo Nani was regularly informed about news from Naples, usually via the Venetian senate’s copies of the reports sent by Spinelli. In return, Spinelli asked Venice for further information about the “very important business” of the bailo in Istanbul. The senate also distributed copies of Spinelli’s Neapolitan news among Venetian authorities in the Echinades, Hvar, Corfu, Šibenik, Split, and Zadar.245 In the early seventeenth century, another member of the Contarini family, Tommaso, first governor of Kotor and then provveditore straordinario of Dalmatia, oversaw large espionage activities in Dalmatia.246 News about possible Ragusan activities directed against Split also reached Zadar via Ancona—sent from Venetian diplomatic residents in Rome and Naples. Likewise, Velutello’s letters from Sarajevo were sent to Trogir. Venice channelled secret information to chart the whereabouts of the looted goods from Split, and to investigate whether Spain conducted separate negotiations with the Ottoman Empire regarding the consequences of the Split incident.247 Istanbul also was a hub of espionage for many nations, and Venetian diplomats used all their formal and informal contacts to obtain secrets. They targeted, among others, Ottoman interpreters for “daily services” as spies.248 Yet, despite Venice’s efforts to stay on top of this Mediterranean web, bailo Nani lamented that Ragusan ambassadors in Istanbul “are indeed, which I regret to have to say, very well informed about all this.”249 Travelling the Balkans, Genesino participated in such networks of ­espionage. In Plovdid, on April 9, the dragoman stopped couriers on their way to Istanbul. “I have written a letter to the most excellent Signor Bailo,” Genesino wrote in his self-narrative, informing Contarini about his espionage activities as an imperial agent, “giving him [Nani] an account that the previous day I had met some from Herceg Novi, who were carrying with them short writings against the Ragusans, and that His Excellency would try to recover them [these writings] to proceed against them [the Ragusans].”250 Clearly, Genesino anticipated which news would be appreciated in the ­context of Mediterranean imperial rivalry. From his service

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  163 at  the bailate, the dragoman knew that by January 1618, the bailo had asked Venetian authorities across the Balkans to collect writings that could be used against Ragusan interventions in Istanbul. Travelling the region two and a half months later, Genesino saw an opportunity to demonstrate his versatility in information gathering and to contribute to the bailate’s Balkan politics. If the bailo were able to secure such writings from Herceg Novi, whose authorities had just offered to support Venetian interests in the Adriatic, the dragoman’s report could help strengthening Venetian anti-­ Ragusan positions.251 Herceg Novi was of particular importance since Ragusa itself was just starting to strengthen its diplomatic ties with the city. In June 1618, Ragusa appointed more ambassadors to the sancak-beg of Herzegovina, Jacomo di Franco Bobali and Luca Michele Mana di Zamagno, who were asked to make a stopover in Herceg Novi first to present gifts to local Ottoman authorities. After their arrival, the diplomats had to report on suspicious movements of Venetian galleys in the region that went “against the explicit order and wish of the Gran Signore [sultan].”252 The shared status as Ottoman subjects, it seems, was a means for Ragusa to call in support and alliance against Venice, pointing out that pro-Venetian behaviour would oppose the will of the sultan. It was not by chance, then, that Genesino’s spying activities targeted news from Herceg Novi, nor was it when he intervened in Plovdid. A few days before Genesino arrived in Plovdiv, the Ragusan ambassador Giuseppe di Menze travelled there to spread news about Herzegovinan authorities’ support of Ragusan positions against Venice.253 On his journey, Genesino gathered information, channelled secrets, strengthened Venetian politics, and delivered arguments relating to the Bosnian affair and opposing Ragusan interests in Istanbul. As an imperial agent, the dragoman was both an interpreter and spy using, fuelling, and brokering the Venetian postal system by channelling communications and politics across the Balkans and beyond.254 The Veneto-Ottoman border zone of Trogir and Split resonated with wider espionage activities during Genesino’s stay. News about a joint uprising of local Muslim subjects and morlachs—Christian pastoral communities living in the Ottoman hinterland, settling in the coastal regions of Dalmatia—against the sancak-beg of Klis spread just before Genesino’s arrival in Trogir. The Venetian governor of the city, Gabriel Morosini, acted immediately on behalf of the Ottoman sancak-beg. Morosini arrested and interrogated several morlachs residing in Trogir, who provided him with background information on the uprising. The sancak-beg had confiscated goods from a turco called Cirocuich, yet a vizier in Istanbul supported the return of the confiscated goods. When the sancak-beg refused to follow such orders, Cirocuich assembled the kadis and aghas from nearby cities to support his claim and to throw the sancak-beg into turmoil. Morosini immediately sent Marco Zadvanović, a spy and agent (huomo pratico) on Venetian payroll, to maintain conversations with the most important morlachs of the

164  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self Cetina River region. They confirmed reports about the discontent of the kadis, aghas, and sipahis over the actions of the sancak-beg, the confiscations carried out on his order, and secret negotiations taking place between the kadi’s men and the beglerbeg of Bosnia in Sarajevo.255 Seemingly, the sancak-beg’s authority in Klis had also suffered from the failure of Split authorities to compensate local merchants for their losses during the Split incident. The sultan himself had informed the kadi of Klis—the sancak-beg’s later opponent during the upheaval—that the sancak-beg was personally in charge of ensuring that such payments were made by Split on behalf of Venice.256 When Genesino travelled Klis, Morosini was travelling in Ottoman territory to share secrets with the sancak-beg; the Venetian governor might have also divulged these secrets to Genesino, the bailo’s dragoman and representative who had just travelled Klis. Gathering such information was crucial in gauging Venetian behaviour towards old and new Ottoman authorities, with Morosini diligently filling such information into Venetian secret channels. Morosini’s news about the upheaval against the sancak-beg of Klis reached Istanbul in early July. The bailo raised the issue in an audience with the grand vizier who, as it turned out, did not know about these developments, and was not amused that he heard it from the Venetian diplomat first.257 Genesino’s involvement corresponds with the fact that Istanbul dragomans were crucial in-betweens, brokering secrecy, diplomacy, and espionage.258 For instance, it was the Ragusan ambassadors’ dragoman who was first approached when bailo Nani became suspicious about a Neapolitan spy’s activities in the Ragusan diplomatic household in Istanbul. As the bailo speculated, a certain Neapolitan merchant named Draco de Zorzi, who claimed to be from Ragusa, might himself have owned some of the loot from Split, given that he was suspiciously interested in being up to date on negotiations regarding the Bosnian affair. “The dragoman of these ambassadors replied with only a few words,” leading the conversation back to the restitution of Ragusan commodities looted by Venice.259 But the bailo’s own grand dragoman Borisi was himself bound in espionage pertaining to Venice, the Adriatic Sea, Bosnia, Spain, and Naples. The secret correspondences between Ottoman envoy Mustafa Çavuş and Ragusa that had been intercepted by Venetian agents, and forwarded to the bailo, were translated by Borisi. The grand dragoman also translated the sultan’s order that Ragusa should stop providing manpower to the army of the “infidels and ancient enemies” of the Ottoman Empire, namely Spain and Naples. This armada “enters the sea with the purpose and intention to infer damage among the Muslims and Venetians,” in Borisi’s rephrasing, “our friends.”260 Borisi, Genesino’s superior, also managed espionage networks and activities maintained by the bailate’s travelling dragomans. The interpreter Giovanni Antonio Grillo, for example, always stuck close to Mustafa Çavuş on the journeys to Venice and back to Istanbul. Being part of Mustafa’s environment, Grillo could collect, interpret, and pass on

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  165 information at checkpoints along the journey, such as during stopovers in Ragusa or Drijeva. This information would arrive at the bailate in Istanbul, where Borisi would share it with the bailo, before being passed along again to Venice. Mustafa Çavuş had revealed to Grillo, during a stopover in Split, that he received orders to investigate Ragusan damages caused by Venice, as well as the claims of the Bosnian merchants. Grillo stuck to the official Venetian narrative—that Ragusa should compensate Venice first. Grillo shared such secret disputes with the dragomanate apparatus. In another instance, when Ragusan ambassadors secretly met with the grand vizier, Borisi lingered near the pasha’s residence to see if he could overhear what was being said as the attendees were leaving the premises. The grand dragoman also had a direct audience with Şeyhülislam Hocazade Esad Efendi, who revealed to him secret information about Spanish plans to invade Venetian territory by sea and land.261 Or was this the dragoman’s justification to cover how he had come upon such precious knowledge? In 1620, the grand dragoman became tangled in his own web of information brokering. The grand vizier called for Borisi to be hanged after having heard news about the latter disrespecting his honour in conversations with Bosnian merchants. Surely, these merchants had reason enough to libel the man who had, for years, given them bad news about their overdue compensations from the Split incident.262 Just a year before Borisi’s assassination, the grand vizier was singing his praises, commending “the first dragoman” of Venice for his service.263 Even Venetian authorities had become suspicious of Borisi, who knew a lot about secret Spanish affairs. The Venetian state inquisitor began to wonder if the dragoman was secretly a double agent for Venice and Spain, and started orchestrating a plot that led to the grand dragoman’s public hanging by the Ottomans.264 To further complicate matters, the suspicions of Venice could in fact have been the result of Ragusan espionage activities that sought to discredit the powerful grand dragoman. By June 1618, Ragusan spy Francesco Sagro spread news in Naples that Ottoman authorities tried to kill Borisi. At the same time, Sagro also disseminated fake news about commodities looted during the Split incident, claiming they were not to be released to Venice but to Ragusa instead.265 Dragomans were anchored in the overlapping world of diplomacy and espionage, producing experts in information brokering with unique access to state secrets—Borisi even translated the Ottoman sultan’s letters to the French monarch.266 But while their skills in linguistic and cultural translations equipped them for espionage, it was also very easy for them to get stuck in the dense web of multipositionality and distrust. By early 1618, the marquis of Bedmar was, expectedly, already well aware of the worsening circumstances that would finally culminate in Borisi’s execution two years later. In March 1618, the ambassador forwarded news from Istanbul to the Spanish court about a dramatic scene involving the bailo and his highest dragoman (Figure 25). During an audience, the bailo was

166  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self reportedly so agitated with the grand vizier that he began to yell and even threatened to strangle the latter. The grand vizier responded by beating grand dragoman Borisi and even pulled at his beard. The bailo, according to secret news from Istanbul, then feared that the grand vizier would physically attack him too.267 Other secret news pertaining to the bailo’s closest circle began entering Spanish espionage networks. On one such occasion, the marquis of Bedmar even could report that Venice paid gifts worth 100,000 escudos to appease the grand vizier for outstanding compensation claims related to the Split incident. In his correspondence with Madrid, the Spanish ambassador said that he obtained this information from a “very trustworthy person.”268 This person was not named, but it was likely Borisi, since it was the grand dragoman who handed over the gifts. The marquis of Bedmar even knew that the bailo relied on the financial contributions of the Venetian merchant community in Istanbul to cover the costs of such gifts, and was aware that the grand vizier wrote to the bailo demanding Venice hold back on military actions against Ragusa—which would only have been known by high Ottoman and Venetian dignitaries, as well as the bailate’s highest-ranking dragomans, like Borisi.269 Sharing such information with Spaniards might have given Borisi the impression of security, at a time when the bailo failed to stand up for him in front of Ottoman authorities. When reporting on the bailo’s audiences with Ottoman authorities just a few days later, in early April 1618, the marquis of Bedmar claimed to have heard the news from “two confidants.”270 If such information originated from another source close to the bailo, then the marquis’ letters in cipher—on the bailo’s activities and Ottoman calls for compensation—would have only increased suspicion of Borisi when the Spanish ambassador was found out two months later.271 To the bailate’s dragomans, and to the extended Salvago family in particular, events surrounding the fall of Borisi were a lesson of not getting caught up in conflicting loyalties. After the incident, Genesino’s nephew, Giovanni Antonio Grillo, married Borisi’s widow Soprana Caterina Olivieri, a member of the powerful French dragoman family. Soprana and Giovanni Antonio were to have a son, Ambrogio, and four daughters, Onorata, Cassandra, Battistina, and Soprana.272 The story of Borisi’s assassination, as well as that of their great-grandfather, Mateca Salvago, would surely have been passed down for generations. Such events would form the notion of self, family, and translation in the world of these dragomans. In the 1660s, Borisi’s assassination even featured prominently in an album used for didactic purposes in the bailate (Figure 26). The illustration of the event would have involved the contributions of diplomats, dragomans of the Tarsia family, and Ottoman miniaturists.273 Borisi’s half-naked body is seen hanging from a noose, next to two Ottomans discussing the event. Also depicted is an older man talking to a boy, who is pointing to the hanging body—the gesture indicating the didactic nature of this album. Events leading to the assassination of Borisi had become an exemplary story about

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  167

Figure 25  F  irst page of a letter in cipher from the marquis of Bedmar, issued in Venice on March 31, 1618, containing information on the involvement of the bailo in negotiations regarding Ottoman claims for restitution. The writing was deciphered by the Spanish royal secretary Antonio de Aróstegui y Zazo. Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), Estado, Venecia e Islas Jónicas, leg. 1930, #82, Venice, March 31, 1618.  ©España. Ministerio de Cultura. Archivo General de Simancas, AGS,EST,LEG,1930,82.

168  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self

Figure 26  G  rand dragoman Marc’antonio Borisi hanged by Ottoman authorities in1620.  BMC,Cod.Cicogna1971(1660s),30r.©bpk/DeAgostini/NewPicture Library/A. Dagli Orti.

what to do—and not to do—when playing the role of a dragoman, which would be passed down in the family’s casa and the bailate’s famiglia.274 But even extreme loyalty to Venice could not prevent the next generation of dragomans in the extended Salvago family from being caught up in the dangerous whirls of imperial espionage. Giovanni Antonio Grillo

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  169 was about to learn this harsh lesson himself. Over the years, the dragoman had specialised in dealing with issues pertaining to Wallachia. The prince of Moldavia, Vasile Lupu, even wanted his daughter Ruxandra to marry Grillo’s son, Ambrogio. The dragoman was pleased with the offer and willing to accept but the bailo feared interference and divided loyalties in the bailate. Nevertheless, the marriage took place in 1641. The great-grandson of Mateca Salvago, thus, married into a ruling house. Ambrogio would go on to send his father and the bailo secret spy reports from Moldavia, until his espionage was discovered in 1649. The Moldavian prince immediately arrested his son-in-law, while the grand vizier imprisoned the bailo, the grand dragoman, and other members of the bailate’s famiglia in Istanbul. The following day, Grillo was strangulated in public (Figure 8, p. 55). Just months later, still grieving his father’s death, Ambrogio joined the services of the bailate in Istanbul. Grillo—who had once been described by bailo Alvise Contarini as an excellent dragoman whose “biggest fault is that he wants to do everything himself”—was yet another Salvago interpreter who had lost control over espionage networks, conflicting loyalties, and troubling identity politics.275 In any case, Genesino was one of many contemporary dragomans active in espionage and counter-espionage. His meticulous detailing of an alternative route from Sarajevo via Novi Pazar and Sofia to Istanbul in his travelogue effectively extended Venice’s information networks.276 It redirected the Venetian colonial gaze from largely abandoned landscapes and snow-covered mountains towards alternative spheres of commerce and communication. The road connecting Priština and Niš, for example, was a prosperous trade route linking the Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Ragusa. Niš also linked the main East-West trading routes to those leading on southwards to Ottoman Greece, and Thessaloniki and Athens in particular.277 It was in such locations in Ottoman Serbia and the Kosovo that Genesino would have had access to valuable information from the south of the Balkan Peninsula. News of the Greek Sephardi community’s responses to the fate of Sephardi merchants in Bosnia after the Split incident would have been particularly valuable to the Venetian bailo, ambassador, and senate. “Relying on their trans-imperial background, their familiarity with both governing circles and the webs of personal and political ties they wove over the years,” members of the Salvago family, like so many spies active in diplomatic services in Istanbul and beyond, “successfully positioned themselves as liaisons between capitals.”278 In early modern Istanbul, Emrah Safa Gürkan and Tobias Graf have shown that diplomacy and espionage mutually reinforced and advanced the other. The one could often not be considered without the other, insofar as diplomacy comprised acts of espionage and spies held diplomatic roles.279 Genesino was deeply anchored in this world informed by the politics of information brokering. He knew how to gather, share, and keep secrets. Despite well-established Spanish-Neapolitan spy networks both in Istanbul and across Southeastern Europe, no contemporary Spanish espionage report mentions Genesino’s journey.280 The silence of the archive,

170  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self here, is telling: the travelling Venetian imperial agent managed to keep the trip secret from the Spaniards’ prying eyes. Interpreting politics across the Mediterranean, Genesino clearly mastered the entangled world of information, interpretation, and espionage.

Considering Hajduks and Uskoks Besides gathering and forwarding information on Bosnian merchants, Ottoman military matters, and Ragusan activities, Genesino also reported extensively on the hajduks. They were “outlaws operating within the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans,” many of whom were “military irregulars of pastoral origins whose privileges were being curtailed” by increasing Ottoman fiscal, imperial, and socio-economic advancements in the Balkans.281 Between April 17 and 22, 1618, days before his arrival in Belgrade, Genesino travelled wide mountain and forest landscapes surrounding the Morava and Jasenica Rivers that were widely affected by hajduk raids. The dragoman was deeply concerned about such attacks, especially in the Paraćin region. He reports on abandoned villages located between Niš and Belgrade and large forest areas that served as safe havens for the hajduk. Overnight, the dragoman stayed in small, fortified camps (palanca) surrounded by wooden stakes and brambles, and safeguarded by several Ottoman soldiers. At times, these camps were built around older forts or straw residences for merchants’ caravans, although not many crossed the region due to the danger of attacks. To avoid raids, Genesino left each palanca at dawn and tried to pass these areas quickly.282 To Genesino, hajduk raiding was a phenomenon deeply connected to wider political issues across the Balkans. The hajduks were, in the dragoman’s words, “a species of people like uskoks or cossacks”—all of whom he called “bad people” (mala gente).283 This was the official stance of both Venetian and Ottoman authorities. Over the course of the seventeenth century, hajduk raids had increased in the Balkan hinterland. At the same time, cossacks were making stronger claims over the Ottoman, Polish-Lithuanian, and Muscovite imperial border zone. Uskoks from the city of Senj, meanwhile, had established a “raiding economy” across the Ottoman and Venetian Adriatic (Figure 27). Regular looting of cattles, caravans, and the taking of prisoners for ransom created a society “largely dependent on plunder for their livelihood.”284 Ottoman Christians, Muslim refugees, converts from the Ottoman hinterland, Venetians, and Dalmatian subjects under Venetian rule joined the uskoks to make a living in the contested imperial border zone.285 As early as 1588, the Venetian collegio gathered information about “the many dangers of the uskoks” whose activities started to effect Veneto-Ottoman commerce, the integrity of cross-Balkan caravans, and the safety of local Dalmatian residents.286 In official Veneto-Dalmatian correspondence, uskoks are portrayed as more troublesome neighbours than the Ottomans. In 1604, Šibenik authorities reported to Venice that “uskoks have

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  171

Figure 27  C  ontemporary Venetian costume albums presented the uskoks as “a very ferocious, risqué, and terrible nation subject to prince Charles of Austria.” Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo libri due (Venice: Zenaro, 1590). ©Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf, H 32.

172  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self made truly barbaric and inhumane vendettas against the subjects of Your Serenity.”287 In fact, researchers claimed that “uskoks hated and distrusted the Venetians even more than they did the Muslims of the border,” since Ottomans “had at least recognized the rules that governed their mutual antagonism and dependence.”288 At the time of Genesino’s journey, the uskok conflict with Venice had spun out of control. This was due to the wider imperial interests negotiated through the raiding activities of the uskoks, who were supported by the Austrian Habsburgs. Senj was under the formal protection of the king of Croatia and Hungary, the Holy Roman Emperor, and thus uskok troops fell under the responsibility of the archduke of Styria. Due to this constellation, Alexander Koller argues, the Mediterranean came “for the first time […] into the focus of the politics of the German branch of the Casa de Austria.”289 Habsburg interests, in fact, were wide-ranging. Among their goals was to weaken Venetian hegemony in the Adriatic to implement a regime of free navigation, linked to acknowledging Croatian royal claims, now inherited by Habsburg monarchs, for Dalmatian territories. The archduke, however, also “needed the uskoks as troops in the constant ‘little war’ of the borders and as a weapon in the equally constant diplomatic struggle with the Serenissima,” especially “to resolve […] border disputes in Istria, Friuli, and the Tyrol.”290 The conflict escalated with the outbreak of the Veneto-Habsburg “Uskok War” in 1615, and the subsequent culmination of uskok raids into VenetoAdriatic territory. In addition, uskok spies operated both across Dalmatia and in Venice itself.291 By 1616, the Spanish monarch began mediating what had become a supraregional conflict. The frequency and severity of uskok raids increasingly isolated archduke Ferdinand, who was just about to be enthroned as Holy Roman emperor. In Madrid, negotiations gained speed when diplomacy regarding the uskok affair started to overlap with wider European border conflicts. Venetian negotiator Piero Gritti represented the duke of Savoy, for instance, since he supported Venetian positions against Ferdinand in Friuli. Soon, diplomatic circles in France got involved in negotiations to settle the conflict. Venice supported Savoyard interests against Mantua at the Spanish court and activated its diplomatic networks across the Ottoman Balkans.292 The bailo of Istanbul, for instance, had been in contact with Iskender Pasha, beglerbeg of Bosnia, to discuss ongoing uskok raids in the area in spring 1617.293 Over 1617 and 1618, Venice negotiated hard in the matter, and with increasing success. In July 1618, the Austrian Habsburg negotiator confirmed to Venetian representatives the expulsion of more than 100 leading uskoks and their families from Senj. The radical Habsburg shift in policy towards the uskoks resulted from a renewed Habsburg-Ottoman peace treaty “specifying that raiders and plunderers were no longer to receive Habsburg protection.”294 Diplomatic negotiations in Paris and Madrid had officially solved this pan-European conflict with the signing of the Treaty of Madrid, just a few months prior to Genesino’s

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  173 journey. The peace treaty between Venice, archduke Ferdinand, Savoy, Mantua, and Spain, agreed upon in Paris and signed in Madrid, amounted to the targeted destruction of uskok livelihood. Uskoks were to be expelled from Senj, resettled further inland, and their leaders were to be killed. “The uskoks,” Catherine Wendy Bracewell states, “were caught up in a broader conflict between empires.”295 Imperial agents like Genesino knew about the relevance of the uskok affair. The dragoman’s joint discussion of hajduks, uskoks, and cossacks shows his awareness of wider imperial geographies and the different stances involved in their negotiation. When travelling the area in spring 1618, Genesino would have considered recent developments regarding the community. At the time, as Yugoslav historian Grga Novak notes, it was hard to find any Venetian official report written in the Adriatic that did not address conflicts with the uskoks. Thus, Genesino could not have assessed the Bosnian merchant affair, Dalmatian border zone conflicts, or even ambassador Contarini’s agenda without taking the uskoks into account. Venice and the bailate were always well informed about Senj, even the price of local wine circulated among spies. Knowing about the uskoks’ close alliance with the Casa de Austria, Venice feared that a Veneto-Ragusan conflict following the Spanish-Neapolitan incident near Split could strengthen the uskoks and, as a result, Austrian Habsburg power in the Adriatic Sea. Before Genesino’s departure, news about the archduke’s production of ever more ships in Senj and Fiume circulated at the bailate. The dragoman knew that Ferdinand had sent German infantrymen to Senj both to support the uskoks and to establish a Habsburg maritime and mercantile stronghold in the Adriatic Sea—a direct attack on the prosperity of Split. Ferdinand’s movement of German-speaking troops to the uskoks of Senj had altered the fragile power balance in the Adriatic. Venice, via its ambassador at the Spanish Habsburg court, signalled agreement to the establishment of a future trading post near Senj controlled by the Austrian Habsburgs. In return, the Treaty of Madrid was signed, including a truce with the uskoks, their resettlement, and a Veneto-Habsburg prisoner exchange.296 And yet, uskok raids continued well into 1618. Venice appointed a “capitano against the uskos” who had to operate in collusion with the Split cargo galleys, the capitano general da mar, and Venetian authorities in Split and Zadar.297 Zadar, Šibenik, Trogir, and Split were still financing Croatian, Albanian, and Italian troops fighting the uskoks in June 1618. These troops had some successes against uskoks, Spaniards, and Austrian Habsburgs, especially in the region of Rijeka. In early 1619, uskoks under the leadership of Andrija Frletić and Matija Klišanin, the latter from Klis, continued to raid the Venetian territory of Zadar. Soon after, Frletić’s band joined with some Ragusans to loot Ottoman territories. Ottoman sancak-begs near Trogir responded with further raids against the archduke on behalf of Venice. In return, the sancak-begs received rich gifts. Soon, Frletić joined the Spanish fleet with five or six uskok ships. In fact, the uskoks who refused

174  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self to settle inland offered their services to the Neapolitan, Tuscan, or, at times, even Venetian fleet. The Neapolitan viceroy, meanwhile, hoped to use land and sea uskok raids to increase Spanish and Neapolitan maritime presence in the Adriatic. In the service of the viceroy, Frletić continued to cause the Venetian Adriatic fleet considerable damage, further spiralling the VenetoNeapolitan conflict over the restitution of Bosnian merchants’ goods.298 In  the administrative apparatus’ decision-making processes surrounding such wider Mediterranean conflicts, Genesino’s information proved invaluable. As a dragoman with a wider knowledge about different positions involved, he had a cross-regional understanding of Veneto-Ottoman diplomacy in general, and the Bosnian affair and Dalmatian border zones in particular.

Interpreter, Traveller, Spy: Traversing the Imperial Balkans The Neapolitan attack on Split cargo galleys in 1617 mobilised agents across the Mediterranean. It also put Genesino on the road, in search of alternative routes to disrupted Veneto-Ottoman connections. Venetian ambassadors usually took the maritime route to Istanbul, travelling the Adriatic Sea via Corfu, then through the Aegean Sea via the Peloponnese.299 With increasing Neapolitan military presence in the region, however, this established route was no longer safe and Venice had to consider different travel options for the newly appointed ambassador. Some of Contarini’s predecessors had indeed used land routes but they crossed the peninsula further south. In 1575, for instance, ambassador Jacopo Soranzo took a comparable route via Ulcinj. In 1591, bailo Lorenzo Bernardo travelled between Istanbul and Durrës, before continuing his journey by sea to Venice. Members of the extended Contarini family had previously also traversed the Balkan Peninsula: Paolo Contarini travelled from Ragusa via Niš and Edirne in 1580, while Simone Contarini had taken the land route from Istanbul to Corfu.300 Routes via Albania or Ragusa, however, were likewise not safe in 1618, given that Ragusa had clearly aligned with Naples, whose navy was present at the Albanian coast. Under such circumstances, Venice ordered its bailo to send a dragoman to explore a route further north through the Balkans—an inland route as deep in Ottoman Balkan territory as any Venetian ambassador had taken before. Even contemporary Ottoman envoys would have taken a route further south when travelling to and from Venice, with stopovers along the Dalmatian coast, Trogir and Split in particular, and then crossing the Balkans between Ragusa or Kotor and Istanbul. The Ottoman çavuş departing from Venice in summer 1618, for instance, when Genesino himself resided in the city, had received 1,000 zecchini for this return journey to Istanbul. In addition, Venice promised to cover the costs incurred during the envoy’s journey to Split. Kotor sent servants to Trogir to transport, with Venetian funding, horses and personal belongings of the çavuş to Ragusa. When passing through Kotor, the Venetian senate informed local authorities to receive

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  175 the çavuş with “every good treatment.”301 Hence, while routes further south were established, a Venetian ambassador’s journey to Istanbul via Sarajevo would have been a novelty. Genesino thus explored new terrain in VenetoOttoman diplomacy. In doing so, the road dragoman also provided Venice with invaluable information on travel infrastructure, espionage, and news circulation. A few weeks before his departure, Venice had instructed the bailo to identify the safest and fastest route for the transmission of letters to and from Istanbul. Bailo Nani asked for information to be sent from Split (Garzoni), Sarajevo (Velutello), and Kotor (Michiel), but could not reach a definite conclusion. Both the land route via Sarajevo to Split and Venice, as well as the sea route via Kotor to Split and Venice, had pros and cons in terms of the velocity and safety of the transmission of letters. Velutello, for instance, highlighted that changing riders and horses every day when taking the inland route via the Balkans would mean that the news would circulate quickly. But Velutello himself was interested in more Istanbul news being channelled via Sarajevo, as it would strengthen his own position within Venetian diplomatic networks. Velutello “would be very apt introducing this new voyage, so that letters would pass through Sarajevo” in the future, the bailo told Venice. Both Velutello and Garzoni emphasised that a high number of Muslim and Christian subjects would be available to transport the news for cheap via the Balkan route. Additionally, Garzoni’s repeated messages calling on Venice to establish more routine connections via the Split cargo galleys to boost Veneto-Ottoman commerce via Sarajevo would have also compelled the senators to consider opting for a route that would pass through the city for Contarini’s journey.302 Genesino’s on-the-ground experiences were crucial in the senate’s final decision. Venice delayed Contarini’s departure until it could evaluate the information provided by Genesino. Reporting on Contarini’s appointment in January 1618, the marquis of Bedmar assumed the new ambassador “will depart quickly because they [the Venetians],” as the Spanish ambassador put it, “are here very punctual with those barbarians [the Ottomans].”303 The galley that was supposed to transport Contarini to Istanbul, however, was in “such a bad state” that further works and plannings were required first.304 The sudden deaths of two doges in quick succession—Giovanni Bembo on March 16, and Nicolò Donato on May 8—further delayed Contarini’s departure, until the appointment of Antonio Priuli as doge on May 17. This was exactly a day after Genesino finished writing his travelogue in Trogir and left for Venice. Genesino would have entered the city in a state of relief mixed with anxiety, given the appointment of a new doge just as Spanish anti-Venetian conspiracies and spying activities were being unearthed, and Neapolitan attacks in the Adriatic became even more serious. On May 28, splendid festivities took place on St Mark’s square, St Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace, the Arsenal, “and in other parts of the city” to celebrate the new doge.305 The situation in the Adriatic, however, was getting worse by

176  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self day, with more and more Neapolitan ships appearing in spring and summer. By early May, the Spanish fleet had already been seen in the waters of Herceg Novi, Budva, and Ragusa. At the same time, Venice received news of the plague spreading quickly in Venetian Perast, Ottoman Ulcinj, and other territories in Albania.306 In the coming months, the plague made “horrible progresses in the land of the Signor Turco.” Sarajevo and other places near the Venetian border in Dalmatia were even more badly affected, and concern was growing in Split.307 Based on Genesino’s report, Contarini and fellow senators had to make a decision about travelling a contested region in tumultuous times. The dragoman himself advised against taking the inland route via Sarajevo: “Yes, this is indeed a long and bad journey for many days, on bad roads, and with great suffering.”308 Genesino also warned that travelling via Sarajevo might result in Contarini being forcefully confronted with Bosnian merchants claiming compensation for their losses.309 Additionally, the violent upheavals in the direct border zone of Split against the sancak-beg of Klis, which broke out just as Genesino was finishing his travelogue, largely took the overland journey option off the table. There were too many risks involved in travelling on land via Split now—which would also largely render Genesino’s report meaningless. To ensure that his travelogue would remain useful for Venetian political decision-making, Genesino suggested alternative routes. He recommended either taking the inland route from Corfu—a journey that is “less expensive, shorter, and has better roads”—or travelling by sea via Chios or Zakynthos. From there, he suggested boarding an English or Dutch ship “comfortable and safe until Constantinople, as it has been done on other occasions by many excellent baili and ambassadors, which your most illustrious excellency [Contarini] in particular has done.”310 In this way, Genesino, the self-fashioned imperial interpreter, traveller, and spy thus had to show he was savvy enough to react to current political events. The dragoman’s report ultimately influenced the senate’s decision. In the official appointment certificate issued in August 1618, Venice sent Contarini to Trogir, where he would be joined by Ottoman janissaries and gatekeepers that had previously accompanied Genesino from Istanbul to Trogir. From Trogir, the ambassador would travel via Split, Corfu, and the Greek archipelago in the interest of safety, as the senate emphasised. Just a month later, Contarini arrived in Zadar and Corfu. By early November, he was in Thessaloniki, before reaching Istanbul on December 6, where he immediately attended audiences with the grand vizier and the şeyhülislam to present rich gifts. Genesino Salvago’s self-narrative, thus, shaped political decisions around Contarini’s journey.311 Aside from the travelogue, Genesino continued to play a key role as the ambassador was travelling to Istanbul. On the instructions of Venice, Contarini was to send Genesino to meet local sancak-begs and explain the reason behind his journey. It was thus up to the dragoman to negotiate with

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  177 local Ottoman authorities to ensure the ambassador’s safe passage. Venice also advised Contarini to avoid attending any audiences prior to his arrival in Istanbul. If meetings with local Ottoman authorities were unavoidable, the senate said, he was to only attend these with Genesino—whose language proficiency, diplomatic experience, and expertise in negotiations were considered crucial to guide the new ambassador through contested imperial terrain. To avoid any trouble with local authorities and merchants, Contarini was also told to spread news among Ottoman subjects that he was not carrying any mercantile commodities with him.312 Yet, in one of his very first stopovers along the journey, Contarini was drawn into local disputes. In September 1618, during a stop in Zadar, Contarini heard the local Venetian governor’s complaints about “continuing fluctuations” and violent incidents in the Veneto-Ottoman border zone. Contarini, the authorities hoped, might present the case to the sultan in Istanbul. But the ambassador agreed to tackle the issue in situ, to the governor’s excitement. Contarini himself was once the governor of Zadar, and had undertaken negotiations with the sancak-beg of Lika in 1606. And so, the ambassador sent Genesino on a “most prudent expedition” to negotiate the matter with the new sancak-beg of nearby Zemunik. Among the gifts presented by the dragoman were precious textiles, one scarlet, and two damask cloths. Contarini then wrote to Venice, informing the senate about the necessity “to reform” the Veneto-Ottoman border near Trogir.313 Since Genesino had just travelled the area, his advice and expertise was greatly valued. Just as the ambassador was to depart Venice, one of his companions, Polo Minio, expressed his wish to travel to Bosnia. The senate granted Minio permission to hire one of the bailo’s dragomans and a janissary to accompany him from either Sofia or Skopje and Moldavia. The bailo sent language student Giovanni Battista Navon to meet with Minio.314 Returning to Genesino, it was clear that the value of his travelogue extended beyond the route travelled by the ambassador. The dragoman’s self-narrative contained plenty of useful information that informed Contarini’s decisions in his new role. Furthermore, in conversations in Venice and throughout the journey, Genesino would have provided more information on the Bosnian merchants’ claims, as well as recent developments in the bailate and Ottoman politics so as to prepare Contarini for what lay ahead. Upon arrival in Istanbul, Contarini was supposed to closely liaise with the bailo prior to visiting the sultan, grand vizier, and other high Ottoman officials. Where the sultan was concerned, Contarini had to renew previously established peace terms. The ambassador also presented gifts to the Greek-Orthodox patriarch of Istanbul, who returned the gesture by sending a relic of Saint Pantaleon to Venice.315 After Contarini’s audience with the sultan in February 1619, Osman II ordered a letter to be penned that informed the beglerbeg of Bosnia about the ambassador’s inaugural audience at the Topkapı Sarayı. Contarini presented the ­c eremonial ­congratulations of Venice, the sultan stated, confirming the renewal of

178  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self peace negotiations and Venetian merchants’ right of safe passage when trading with Ottoman Bosnia. In addition, Osman II officially declared Bosnian merchants’ claims against Venice as unjust and in contradiction of both existing law and peace terms. The beglerbeg of Bosnia was encouraged to try and recover the commodities—certainly in collaboration with Venice—and to return these goods to their previous owners. But Venice was to be not considered liable for the damage caused by the Neapolitan fleet.316 This was a resounding success of Contarini and Venice. Venetian imperial networking across the Balkans and in Istanbul, in the end, turned out to be a successful investment. The information gathered by the dragoman, traveller, and spy Genesino on his journey through Southeastern Europe proved crucial to Venetian diplomacy towards the Ottoman Empire during this period and equipped both him and the ambassador when acting as agents of empire.

Notes 1 Kármán, Tributaries; Barzman, Limits of Identities. 2 Hanß and McEwan, “Waves Across Empires” on assemblage theory and Mediterranean studies. This interpretation also resonates with researchers’ emphasis on the polycentric economic dynamism of the Ottoman Empire. Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change,” 478f. 3 Bachmann-Medick. “Menschenrechte als Übersetzungsproblem,” 331. 4 Bachmann-Medick, “Transnational Study,” 31. 5 Robinson, Who Translates?, 10; Blanchot, “Translating,” 83, translated by Richard Sieburth. 6 Bachmann-Medick, “Introduction,” 6f. Cf. Venuti, Rethinking Translation; Bhabha, Location of Culture, 303–37; Hermans, Translating Others. 7 Mignolo and Schiwy, “Double Translation,” 4. For the Venetian attempts to police language use, see Horodowich, Language and Statecraft. 8 Mignolo and Schiwy, “Double Translation,” 23. 9 On interpreters shaping history, see Aslanyan, Dancing on Ropes. 10 İnalcık, “Trade,” 262. On Ottoman merchants in Venice, see Kafadar, “Death in Venice”; Pedani, “Between Diplomacy and Trade”; Costantini, “Commerci ed economie”; Faroqhi, “Handelswege der Adria”; Hanß, Lepanto als Ereignis, 135–88. 11 ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 1, June  24, 1580; Novak, Commissiones, VI, 286f.; Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato e il commercio veneziano, 92f. 12 ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 1, October 28, 1577 and January 23, 1589 (MV). Cf. Paci, “La scala di Spalato e la politica veneziana”; İnalcık, “Trade,” 266f.; Arbel, Trading Nations, 7f.; Ravid, “Autobiographical Memorandum.” 13 ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 1, December  10, 1592 and January  13, 1593 (MV); Zahirović, Register, 56, 77f.; İnalcık, “Trade,” 266, 268; Freijdenberg, “Venetian Jews”; Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato e il commercio veneziano, 91–4; Morpurgo, “Daniel Rodriguez”; Popović, “Dalmatia.” 14 ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 3a; parte 3, May 1, 1614; Dursteler, Renegade Women, 63. 15 ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 1, December  10, 1592; parte  3, September  1, 1643. Cf. DAZD, 1: 1, 1v f., January 22, 1616 (MV), payment request for Zuanne di Rossi, merchant from Zadar; Novak, Commissiones, VI, 286f; Novak, Povijest Splita, vol. 2; Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato e il commercio veneziano, 91–4.

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  179 16 Pedani, “Culture of Trust”; DAZD, 1: 1, 293r–304v, 1621 (“interpreter and expert”); DAZD, Mletački Dragoman/Dragomano veneto, 25, XCVII, documents from 1621, treating mostly commerce in animals, debts, and payments; ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 1, January 23, 1589 (MV, “are safe”). Cf. Vercellin, “Mercanti turchi”; Naumann-Unverhau, “Aufnahme türkischer Kaufleute”; Rothman, Brokering Empire, 165–86. 17 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 18r–20r, July  25, 1617, here 18v (“commodities of much value”); ASV, SDN, filza 33, no.  51, 10r–12v, July  18/25, 1617 (“loaded with goods and merchandise of Turks and Jews”); ASV, SDelM, filza 218, August 9, 1618; DAD, 27.1: 43, 95r–6r, July  19 and 20, 1617; ASV, SDS, filza 49, no.  41, August  17, 1617. Cf. Traljić, “Trgovina Bosne i Hercegovine”; Popović, “Dalmatia”; Dursteler, Renegade Women, 63; Candiani, “Vele,” 128; De Vivo, “Microhistories of Long-Distance Information.” 18 DAZD, 1: 1, 7r–9v, April 2, 8, and 30, 1617; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 16v, July 20, 1617 (“Infinite was the sorrow […],” “that we will not fail […]”). Cf. ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 2, March 22, 1607; parte 3a, June 25, 1613; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 5r, March 14, 1617; 10r, June 9, 1617. 19 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 4r f., March 14, 1617 (“nearby Turks”); 7r, May 12, 1617. 20 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 5r f., March 14, 1617. 21 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 6vf., May 6, 1617; 9r, June 3, 1617 (quote); 14rf., June 27, 1617. 22 ASV, DT, no.  1233, 1234, 1255; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 326, 331f.; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 7v, May 12, 1617; 8v, May 18, 1617; 10r, June 9, 1617 (“the shared interests”); AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1881, no. 152, September 2, 1618; Preto, I servizi segreti, 252. 23 ASV, SDD, 19, December 7, 1618. 24 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 16v f., July 20, 1617. 25 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 76r–80r, July 19, 20, and 25, 1617; 82v, 29 June 1618; ASV, SDD, 18, May 3, 1618; ASV, SDelM, filza 217, May 12, 1618, and throughout; ASV, SDelM, filza 218, June 23, 27, and 29, 1618, July 7, 1618, and August 9, 1618; DAZD, 1: 1, 26v, April 27, 1618. See also the petition of Dutch captains Steffano Coop, Johan de Radt, and Johan van Loo in ASV, SDelM, filza 217, March 8, 1618, and May 11, 1618. Cf. Candiani, “Vele,” 128. 26 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 2v–3v, March 3, 1617 (“cargo of much value”); 5r, March 14, 1617 (“vigorously opposed”); ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 3, May 21, 1616; Bartl, Westbalkan, 37; Hocquet, “Commercio.” On mercantile connections between Venice and Egypt, see Christ, Trading Conflicts. 27 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 15r, July 5, 1617 (“viceroy’s idea […]”); ASV, SDN, filza 33, no. 9, March 28, 1617; White, “Shifting Winds.” 28 Novak, Commissiones, VI, 286, 288; ASV, SDD, 18, March 7, 1618, June 1, 1618, July 14, 1618 (“large number of hostile ships”). 29 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 11r, June 10, 1617; 18r–20r, July 25, 1617; 21r, August 9, 1617; 25r f., October 5, 1617; 28v f., October 24, 1617; ASV, SDD, 18, March 19, 1618; April 18, 1618 (on Zuanne Ručić); June 1, 1618; Predelli, I libri commemoriali, 151; Faroqhi, “Venetian Presence,” 356f.; Ricci, Appello al Turco. 30 Quotes, in the following order, Briggs, This Little Art, 73, 42, 43, 38. 31 TNA, PRO 30/25/18, fasc. 5. 32 Rothman, “Visualizing”; Bianchi and Howard, “Life and Death.” 33 Briggs, This Little Art, 39. 34 All quotes in the following order Briggs, This Little Art, 39, 57, 59, 118, 250, 179. Cf. ibid., 63, 182. 35 ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 298v f., June 19, 1614. 36 ASV, BAC, b. 266, vol. 375, 1r, November 29, 1587. 37 ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 49v, November  14, 1590, mentions “Nicolò da Curzola” as the patron della Naue Gagliana, by that time on a journey to Crete;

180  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self Radić Rossi, Nicolardi, and Batur, “Gnalić”; Luca, “Three Families,” 79–82. See also The Voyages of the Gagliana Grossa, a videodocumentary led by Irena Radić Rossi, accessed April 12, 2022, https://www.peopleinmotion-costaction. org/portfolio-items/the-voyages-of-the-gagliana-grossa-a-videodocumentay-led-by-prof-irena-radic-rossi/. 38 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 66. Cf. ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 90r, February 1590 (MV); ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 379, 3v f., June 22, 1591; ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 381, 75v, May 30, 1593. 39 ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 378, 91v f., May  25, 1591; Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 135f.; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 66. 40 ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 46v f., October  22, 1590; 49r, November  2, 1590; 76r f., February 21, 1590 (MV); 89v, February 15, 1590 (MV); ASV, BAC, b. 269, 12r–3r, September 24, 1594. On Giovani, see ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 89r f., February 15, 1590 (MV). 41 Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 135. 42 ASV, BAC, b. 266, vol. 376, 25r–7v, May 19, 1588; June 20 and 26, 1588. On dragoman Pasqua Navon, see ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 34v, 1590. 43 ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 65r, January 2, 1590 (MV); 76r f., February 21, 1590 (MV). On the Panzanos, see Luca, “Three Families,” 78f. 44 ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 99r, May 27, 1591; ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 380, 14v–5v, January 28, 1592 (MV), and May 15, 1593. 45 ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 381, 8r f., March 12, 1592 (quotes); 10v–1v, March 18 and 19, 1592; Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 135. 46 Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 413f.; Briggs, This Little Art, 73. 47 ASV, BAC, b. 269, 14r–5r, October 1594. 48 ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 381, 75r, May 27, 1593. 49 ASV, BAC, b. 272, vol. 387, 11r f., October 2, 1600. 50 ASV, BAC, b. 272, vol. 387, 217v f., April 4, 1602. 51 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 76r–8v, July 19, 20, and 25, 1617. 52 İnalcık, “Trade,” 266; Faroqhi, “Osmanische Handelspolitik”; Kafadar, “Death in Venice.” 53 ASV, DT, no.  1212, no date, sent in a letter of provveditore generale da mar Giacomo Zane, July 2, 1617; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti turchi, 316f. 54 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 22r, August 9, 1617; DAZD, 1: 1, 15v–7r, September 16, 1617; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 80v, August 9, 1617; ASV, DT, no. 1210, no date, sent in a letter of provveditore generale da mar Giacomo Zane, July 21, 1617; no. 1251; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti turchi, 316f., 330. 55 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 25v, October 5, 1617; 37v, January 5, 1617 (MV, “of utmost importance”); 76v, May 1, 1618; 78v f., July 20, 1618; 81r–2r, August 9, 1618; 86v f., July 7, 1618; ASV, SDD, 18, March 22, 1618; April 3, 1618 (“the most important merchant in Bosnia”); April 14, 1618. 56 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 3, September 30, 1617, 52v f. Cf. ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 1, August 31 and September 1, 1617; no. 2, September 16, 1617; no. 6, October 14, 1617, 69v (quote); ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 1, 31 August and 1 September 1617; no. 2, 16 September 1617, 25r (“Turks from Bosnia […]”); ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 48v–52v, November 30, 1617; 85v, October 5, 1617; ASV, DT, no. 1214, November 1617; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti turchi, 319f.; Arbel, “Venice and the Jewish Merchants of Istanbul.” Bosnian merchants surely also presented their cases in front of the sharia court of Sarajevo, however, no documentation survives for this period. Lavić, Catalogue, XIV, 293–312. 57 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no.  18, July  7, 1618, 198r; ASV, SDC, filza 85, no.  22, July  22, 1618, 253r f.; no.  24–30, August  4 until 25, 1618; ASV, DT, no.  1235; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 76v f., June 5, 1618; 83r, June 29, 1618 (quote). On Resul Agha’s complaint, translated by Giovanni Battista, see Pedani, Inventory,

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  181 151. Cf. Pedani-Fabris, Documenti turchi, 326; Kunt, “Solidarity”; Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants. 58 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 78r, June 5, 1618. Cf. White, “Fetva Diplomacy.” 59 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 97r, August 18, 1618. 60 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 80r, June 12, 1618; ASV, DT, no. 1214; 1217; 1224–8; 1231f.; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 319f., 322, 325f.; Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore, 209. 61 ASV, SDC, filza 87, no. 60, March 2, 1619; no. 58, March 2, 1619, 17r–8r; ASV, DT, no. 1251; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti turchi, 330. 62 ASV, SDC, filza 87, no. 60, March 2, 1619, 4v f. (quotes); no. 58, March 2, 1619, 17r–8r; ASV, DT, no. 1251. 63 Pedani, Inventory, 108, 110; Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni, XIV, 392; Faroqhi, “Bosnian Merchants.” 64 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 16, June 23, 1618, 167r. 65 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 97r–8v, September 21, 1618, here 97r (quote). 66 ASV, DT, no. 1243; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti turchi, 327f.; Pedani, “Ottoman Merchants in the Adriatic,” 162f. 67 ASV, SDD, 18, August 23, 1618 (July 6, 1618). The bailo sent Borisi’s translation also to Venice, ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 18, July 7, 1618, 203r–4r. 68 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 7, October 28, 1617, 93v f.; no. 11, November 20, 1617, 145r–7v. 69 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no.  3, September  16, 1617, 39v f. (quotes); ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 84r f., June 29, 1618. 70 Briggs, This Little Art, 119 (quote); ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 8, November 9, 1617, 109r f. (“angry […]”). Cf. ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 3, September 30, 1617, 52v f. 71 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 76v f., June  5, 1618; 83r, June  29, 1618 (quote); Pedani, Inventory, 151. 72 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 49r–52v, November 30, 1617; ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 12, November 21, 1617, 164v; Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore, 209. 73 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 46v, March 1, 1618. 74 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 24, January 10, 1617 (MV), 271r. 75 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 61r, April 18, 1618. 76 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 61v f., April 24, 1618, with Grillo’s translation ibid., 64r f., and the letter sent after the intervention of Nores ibid., 65r. 77 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 69v–70v, April 24, 1618. 78 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 74v, April 27, 1618 (“with which he can settle […]”). On the stopover in Split, ibid., 76r, May 1, 1618. Cf. ibid., 58r f., March 16, 1618. 79 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 74v f., April 27, 1618. 80 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 75r f., May 1, 1618. 81 DAD, 27.1: 43, 140v–3r, May 21 and 25, 1618, here 143r (quote); 124r, February 15, 1618. 82 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 90r, August  9, 1618; ASV, DT, no.  1224f., 1227; PedaniFabris, Documenti Turchi, 322–4. 83 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 12, May 24, 1618, 122r f. 84 ASV, SDelM, filza 217, April  24, 1618, with the quotes from the petition of Grillo, 1r f. 85 See above, and Lamansky, Secrets d’Etat, 804; ASV, SDD, 18, April 22, 1618; June 1, 1618; ASV, DT, no. 1211; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 318; Faroqhi, “Venetian Presence,” 356. 86 ASV, SDelM, filza 217, April 24, 1618, with the petition of Grillo, 1r f. (quotes). 87 GSItinerario, 173r f., 175r, 176r, 177v. 88 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 3, March 26, 1618, 30r f. 89 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 77v, 78v (quote), June 5, 1618. 90 Novak, Commissiones, VIII, 109.

182  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self 91 İnalcık, “Trade,” 265. 92 İnalcık, “Trade,” 265 (quote); Imber, Ottoman Empire, 179. 93 Popović, “Sarajevo”; Donia, Sarajevo. 94 ASV, DT, no.  1210; Norman, Islamization in Bosnia; Faroqhi, “Bosnian Merchants.” 95 GSItinerario, 176r; Orijentalni Institut u Sarajevu, Vakufname iz Bosne i Hercegovine, 61–8, translated by Fehim Spaho, as well as the document on ­display (Isa-Beg Ishaković, 1462) in the Sarajevo Museum, translated by Hazim Šabanovič. Cf. De Vivo, Information; Davis, “Enthüllen und Verbergen.” 96 ASV, BAC, b. 250, reg. 331, 12r, 1595; ASV, DT, no.  1485; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 406. 97 Faroqhi, “Bosnian Merchants,” 234 (quote); ASV, DT, no. 2114; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 319f. 98 Čičin-Šain, “Pisma Marka Kavanjina,” 108f., 115 (quote), 116, 120. On Venetian merchants’ activities at the Neretva River, see ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 1, June 4, 1588; June 20, 1589; July 20, 1589. Cf. Djurdjev, “Bosna”; Birken, Provinzen, 43; Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato e il commercio veneziano, 102f. 99 Fotić, “Coffee and Tobacco,” 90. On Ottoman social gatherings, see Pfeifer, Empire of Salons. 100 Following the Iberian expulsion of the Jews, Sephardi settled in Sarajevo at least since 1565. Levy, Sephardim in Bosnien, 13, 91–4; ASV, SDC, filza 87, no. 65, April 22, 1619, 147r–9r. Sarajevo, as a place of Veneto-Ottoman Jewish merchant activities, still awaits to be thoroughly studied, for comparison, see its absence in Arbel, Trading Nations. 101 Levy, Sephardim in Bosnien, 24f. 102 GSItinerario, 178r. 103 GHBB, R-10494, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad ar-Rūmī and al-Mufattiš ­al-Bosnawī,  Subḥa-ı ṣibyān (‫صبيان‬‎‫ سبحهء‬ ), 1033/1623–4; GHBB, R-2865, Muh ̣ammad-efendi Hawāyī Uskūfī, Maqbūl-i ʿĀrif: Potur Šāhidiya (‫ پوتور شاهديه‬:‫)مقبول عارف‬, 1041/1631, copied by Ḥasīb b. Ibrāhīm in 1164/1750; GHBB, R-10098, Muḥammad-efendi Hawāyī Uskūfī, Maqbūl-i ʿĀrif: Potur Šāhidiya (‫ پوتور شاهديه‬:‫ مقبول عارف‬ ), 1010/1601, 1041/1631, 1061/1651, copied in 1162/1748; Popara and Fajić, Catalogue, VII, 491; Popara, Catalogue, XVI, 339; Popara, Catalogue, XVIII, 257. 104 GHBB, R-5538, Turkče-italiyanča luġatī (‫) تركجه اطالينجه لغتي‬, 51r; Popara and Fajić, Catalogue, VII, 487. 105 Novak, Commissiones, VI, 177. 106 ASV, DT, no. 1197, 1199, 1201; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 312f.; Traljić, “Trgovina Bosne i Hercegovine”; Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato e il commercio veneziano, 103. Late Maria Pia Pedani kindly drew my attention to the ­existence of a collection of letters from Sarajevo, issued between 1616 and 1618, in the Archivio di Stato in Venice, however, none of us could identify the s­ ignature. Already in 1884, users described that file as being “unfortunately […] in a state of great deterioration.” Lamansky, Secrets d’Etat, 804. 107 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 1r, March 3, 1617; 2r (quote), March 3, 1617. 108 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 10v, June 10, 1617. 109 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 70v; 77r, Juli  20, 1617; 92v, December  1, 1617; 94v, December 14, 1617; 165r; Novak, Commissiones, VIII, 109. 110 ASV, SDD, 18, April  2, 1618; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 7v, May  12, 1617; 17r, July  20, 1617; 24v f., September  21, 1617; 34v f., December  14, 1617 (“to quell the tumults”); 48v–9v, November  30, 1617; ASV, DT, no.  1214; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti turchi, 319f.

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  183 111 ASV, SDD, 18, April 3, 1618; ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 3, September 16, 1617, 37v; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 10v, June 10, 1617. 112 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 98v, September 21, 1618. 113 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 102v f., September  27, 1618; ASV, SDD, 19, October  21, 1618. 114 Mircse, Oklevéltár Bethlen Gábor, 81–124; ASV, DT, no.  1364; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 370; Nemeth and Papo, “Le ambascerie”; Kármán, “Gábor Bethlen’s Diplomats”; Pálffy, Hungary between two Empires; Pálffy,“Ein ­vergessenes Territorium.” My thanks to Géza Pálffy for his help in identifying some of these protagonists. 115 ASV, DT, no.  1315, 1317; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 347f. Grillo ­mentions a breue relatione, a report about his journey, handed out to the provveditore generale of Dalmatia and Albania, Bernardo Venier (ASV, DT, no. 1345, 1r). 116 GSItinerario, 176v; Bamji, “Health Passes.” 117 Fotić, “Yahyapaşa-Oğlu Mehmed Pasha’s Evkaf,” 444; GSItinerario, 174v f. 118 GSItinerario, 178r. 119 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 16, June 23, 1618, 167r. 120 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 74v f., April 27, 1618. 121 DAZD, 1: 2, 110r, Kotor, March 1622. 122 ASV, SDN, filza 33, no. 51, 1r, 4r, 12v (quotes), July 18/25, 1617. 123 ASV, SDS, filza 49, no.  46, September  15, 1617, 1r (“to preserve the peace of Christianity”). Cf. ASV, SDelC, reg.  12, 2v–3v, March  3, 1617; Dandelet and Marino, Spain in Italy; Levin, Agents of Empire; Hanß and McEwan, The Habsburg Mediterranean. 124 ASV, SDS, filza 49, no. 49, September 24, 1617, 2v. 125 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1929, no.  380, September  11, 1617, 727r. Inteligençia references here the wider meanings of information, knowledge, and espionage. 126 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1929, no. 382, September 6, 1617, 738v. 127 ASV, SDS, filza 49, no. 48, September 24, 1617, 2v. 128 Predelli, I libri commemoriali, 141. 129 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 9v, June 9, 1617. 130 ASV, SDS, filza 49, no. 37, July 20, 1617, 1v. 131 ASV, SDS, filza 49, no. 41, August 17, 1617, 1v; no. 52, September 29, 1617. 132 ASV, SDS, filza 49, no.  53, October  4, 1617 (quote); no.  54, October  21, 1617; Predelli, I libri commemoriali, 141. 133 ASV, SDS, filza 49, no. 56, November 3, 1617, 1r (“the viceroy of Naples’ bad will […]”); no. 56, November 3, 1617, 2r; no. 64, December 14, 1617. 134 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 29r, October 24, 1617. 135 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 77v, June 5, 1618. 136 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Spagna, I, 535. 137 ASV, SDS, filza 50, December 1, 1618; February 12, 1619. 138 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Spagna, I, 582 (quote); ASV, SDS, filza  50, February 12, 1619. 139 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 114, May 5, 1618; AGS, ESTMilán, leg. 1918–23; De Rubertis, “La congiura”; Mansau, “1618.” 140 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 143, June 9, 1618; Mansau, “1618.” 141 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 180, July 22, 1618, 364r. 142 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 190, August 5, 1618, 385r (quote). After the departure of the marquis of Bedmar, Thomas de Çornoça Consul took over reporting from Venice. AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 146, July 21, 1618. 143 De Vivo, “Historical Justifications,” 159–76.

184  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self 44 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 150, October 27, 1618. 1 145 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 105, April 26, 1618 (quote); no. 60, March 3, 1618. 146 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 126, May 19, 1618; no. 314, July 29, 1618 (“quote”). 147 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 33, February 2, 1618 (quote); no. 16, November 27, 1617. 148 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 104, Istanbul, March 12, 1618, sent via Ragusa and copied in Venice, April 24, 1618; no. 111, Venice, May 2, 1618; no. 129, Venice, May 19, 1618. 149 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 105, April 26, 1618. 150 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 232, Istanbul, August 4, 1618. 151 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 268, November 25, 1618 (“his royal wish”); no. 213, September 1/2, 1618; no. 323, April 11, 1619, 683r. 152 ASV, SDS, filza 49, no. 52, September 29, 1617, 2r. 153 Bartl, Westbalkan, 42. 154 ASV, SDN, filza 37, December 4, 1618, 1r (“now they discuss Algiers […]”); ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 20r–2v, August 9, 1617; 122v, January 26, 1618 (MV). 155 AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1881, no. 1, December 28, 1617; no. 3, January 1, 1618; no. 7, January 1, 1618; no. 8, January 2, 1618; no. 18, March 31, 1618; no. 25, April 14, 1618; no. 26, April 14, 1618; no. 97, June 20, 1618; no. 102, July 29, 1618; no. 113f., July 16, 1618; no. 123 and 125, July 24, 1618; no. 126, undated (July 1618); no. 190, December 17, 1618; AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1882, no. 31, April 4, 1619; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 24r, September 21, 1617; 77v, June 5, 1618. 156 ASV, SDN, filza 34, no. 13, October 10, 1617, 1v (“big revolution”); ASV, SDN, filza 33, no. 53, August 1, 1617. 157 ASV, SDN, filza 33, no. 51, 7r f., July 25, 1617. 158 ASV, SDN, filza 33, no. 52, July 25, 1617; ASV, SDN, filza 33, no. 53, August 1, 1617. 159 ASV, SDN, filza 33, no.  54, August  8, 1617; no.  56, August  15, 1617; Preto, I servizi segreti, 206. 160 ASV, SDN, filza 34, no. 5, September 14, 1617; no. 9, September 26, 1617; ASV, SDN, filza  35, no.  39, June  12, 1618, 4r; no.  41, June  19, 1618, 5v; ASV, SDN, filza 37, January 1, 1619, with the discorso of Alessandro Macedonio. 161 Faroqhi, “Venetian Presence,” 357. 162 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 35v f., December 14, 1617; AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1881, no. 18, March 31, 1618. 163 AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1881, no. 48, May 15, 1618; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 76r, July 19, 1617. In Spanish Milan, Venice focused on negotiating increasing tensions between Venice, Spain, France, and Savoy, especially in regard to conflicting interests in Vercelli. See the correspondence of Venetian diplomatic residents Antonio Maria Vincenti (March 1, 1617–August 30, 1617, March 7, 1618–July 25, 1618) and Giacomo Vendramin (September 1, 1617–February 28, 1618) in ASV, SDM, filze 51–3. 164 ASV, SDS, filza 49, no. 42, August 26, 1617, 1v (“bad and blameful”); ASV, SDN, filza 34, October 24, 1617. 165 ASV, SDN, filza 33, no.  54, August  8, 1617; no.  56, August  15, 1617; no.  57, August 15, 1617; no. 60, August 29, 1617; ASV, SDN, filza 34, no. 1, September 5, 1617, 1v f., 5r (“need for money is massive”; “it was made public […]”); no.  3,  September  12, 1617, 1v (“have gone there […]”); no.  36, December  12, 1617, 2r. 166 ASV, SDN, filza 34, no.  18, October  31, 1617, 9r–10r (all quotes); no.  21, November  7, 1617. On contacts with Mara, also ASV, SDN, filza  34, no.  36, December 12, 1617, 2r. 167 ASV, SDN, filza 34, no.  29, November  28, 1617, 3v–5r, here 3v, 4r, 5r (quotes); no. 33, December 4, 1617.

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  185 168 ASV, SDN, filza 34, no. 35, December  5, 1617, 1v f. (“more than fifteen caskets of silk fabrics”); no.  39, December  19, 1617, 6r (“perhaps will have an opportunity […]”). 169 ASV, SDN, filza 34, no. 36, December 12, 1617, 1r f.; no. 37, December 12, 1617, 4v. 170 AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1881, no. 131, August 31, 1619. 171 AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1882, no. 104–5, July 30/31, 1619. 172 Bartl, Westbalkan, 37. 173 Miholjek and Zmaić Kralj, Iznik-osmanska keramika; Miović, Dubrovačka diplomacija; Miović, “Diplomatic Relations”; Kunčević, “Maritime Trading Network.” 174 Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change,” 510. Cf. Biegman, Turco-Ragusan Relationship. 175 Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change,” 510 (quote); İnalcık, “Trade,” 262–5, here 262 (quote); Biegman, Turco-Ragusan Relationship. 176 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 23v, September 7, 1617. 177 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 8r, May 18, 1617; 9v, June 9, 1617; 21v, August 9, 1617. 178 DAD, 27.6: 12, 126r, August 21, 1617. 179 DAD, 27.6: 12, 127v, August 31, 1617. Interesse here in a sense of “dedication” and “commitment.” 180 DAD, 27.6: 12, 132r f., September 26, 1617. 181 DAD, 27.6: 12, 130r f., September 12, 1617; 135r, October 11, 1617. 182 DAD, 27.6: 12, 141v, December 21, 1617; 162r, August 21, 1618. 183 DAD, 27.1: 43, 103v, September 1, 1617. 184 DAD, 27.1: 43, 106r, September 10, 1617. 185 DAD, 27.1: 43, 97r–9r, July 30, 1617, here 98v. 186 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 34v f., December 14, 1617. 187 DAD, 27.1: 43, 100r f., 105v, 107r, 108v, 139r, August 6, 11, 14, and 20, 1617, as well as May 15, 1618. 188 ASV, SDC, filza 84, with reports from November 1617 until January 1618; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 40r, January  12, 1617 (MV); 49r–52v, November  30, 1617 (“­subjects”); 99r, September  21, 1618; ASV, DT, no.  1218; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 320. 189 DAD, 27.1: 43, 93v–5r, July 19, 1617, here 94r f. 190 DAD, 27.1: 43, 129r, February  15, 1618. Cf. Panaite, Ottoman Law; Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change,” 510f. 191 DAD, 27.1: 43, 107v f, September 18, 1617. 192 Bartl, Westbalkan, 78. 193 Krekić, “Latino-Slavic Cultural Symbiosis”; Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants. 194 Miović-Perić, “Dragomans”; Miović-Perić, “Dubrovački mladići jezika.” 195 Zecevic, “Translating Ottoman Justice,” 392. 196 DAD, 27.1: 43, 121v, February 15, 1618. 197 DAD, 27.1: 43, 156r, February  19, 1619. Unfortunately, DAD, 27.2: 6, containing the Ottoman correspondence of a Ragusan dragoman, is lost since many years. 198 DAD, 27.1: 43, 116r–21r, 127v, 129r, February 15, 1618. 199 DAD, 27.1: 43, 126v, February 15, 1618. 200 DAD, 27.1: 43, 116r–21r, 127v, 129r, February 15, 1618. Year after year, Ragusan tribute payments comprised a special gift for the sultan’s dragoman, DAD, 27.1: 43, 159v, April 28/29, 1619. Cf. Miović, Dubrovačka diplomacija, 73f.; ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 4, March 27, 1618, 35v f. 201 DAD, 27.1: 43, 111v f, November 20, 1617 (all quotes); 107v f, September 18, 1617. Cf. Vinaver, “Bosna i Dubrovnik”; Miović, Dubrovačka Republika; Ohranović, “Prilog proučavanju bosansko-dubrovačkih.” 202 DAD, 27.1: 43, 129r, February 15, 1618; 135v, April 6, 1618. 203 DAD, 27.1: 43, 137r, April 24, 1618; 158r–63v, April 28/29, 1619.

186  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self 204 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 36r–7r, January 5, 1617 (MV, “any means […]”); ASV, DT, no. 1225; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 323. 205 ASV, SDD, 18, March 9, 1618. 206 GSItinerario, 173v; ASV, SDD, 18, March  9, 1618; April  2, 1618 (“old enemies […]”). 207 ASV, SDD, 18, April 7, 1618 (quotes); March 12, 1618; May 11, 1618. 208 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 39r, January 5, 1617 (MV). 209 ASV, SDN, filza 34, no. 1, September 5, 1617, here 3v (quote); ASV, SDN, filza 35, no. 31, May 15, 1618; ASV, SDN, filza 37, December 18, 1618; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 78r, June 5, 1618; 83r, June 29, 1618. There is also archival evidence for at least some Ragusan subjects’ close Spanish family relationships, DAD, 8: 33, 152r, February 25, 1619. 210 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 40r, January 12, 1617 (MV). 211 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 24, January 10, 1617 (MV), 269r. 212 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 29, February 10, 1617 (MV), 314r. 213 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 90r–3r, August 14, 1618. 214 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 37v, January  5, 1617 (MV). On the Salvagos’ French ­connection, see above, Chapter 1. 215 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 12r–4r, June 19, 1617. 216 DAD, 27.6: 12, 124v, July  24 and August  7, 1617; 135r, October  11, 1617 (“the damage […]”); 143r, 150v, 153r, January 24 and May 9, 1618. 217 DAD, 27.1: 43, 96r, July 20, 1617; 97r–9r, July 30, 1617, here 97r (“protect and buy their goods”); ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 85v f., June 29, 1618; ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 2, March 24, 1607; AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 103, Venice, April 24, 1618. 218 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 39v, January 12, 1618 (MV, quotes); Novak, Commissiones, VI, 67, 289; Filipović, “Nekoliko dokumenata,” 78; ASV, SDD, 18, April 7, 1618; DAD, 27.1: 43, 135v, April 6, 1618 (“so that one knows the truth”). 219 ASV, SDD, 18, May 28, 1618 (“perfidy of the Ragusans […]”; “a good n ­ umber”); June  13, 1618 (“loss of […] hopes”); DAD, 27.1: 43, 168r f., July  23, 1619. Cf. Novak, Commissiones, VI, 177f.; Galabov and Duda, Protokollbücher, 142, 145, 153, 178. 220 DAD, 27.1: 43, 148v, July 29, 1618 (“great difficulties”); 149r–52r, August 14 and 18, as well as October 26, 1618, here 149r (“vanity and imprudence”); 152r–5v, October 26, as well as December 11, 17, and 24, 1618, and January 26, 1619, here 153v f. (“disunion and rumours”; “such severe procedures”; “good”). 221 ASV, SDD, 18, July  2, 4, 7, 14, and 30, 1618; as well as August 15, 1618; August 28, 1618 (“camlets, wax, and wool”); ASV, SDD, 19, September 22 and 28, 1618. 222 ASV, SDD, 19, October 5, 1618 (mio confidente); November 2 and 27, 1618. 223 Novak, Commissiones, VII, 13; ASV, SDD, 18, August 24, 1618. 224 Briggs, This Little Art, 119. 225 GSItinerario, 175r. 226 DAZD, 1: 2, 110r, Kotor, March 1622. 227 De Vivo, “Microhistories of Long-Distance Information.” Cf. Infelise, “War.” 228 ASV, SDN, filza 33, no. 53, August 1, 1617; no. 54, August 8, 1617. 229 ASV, SDN, filza 34, no. 2, September 5, 1617, 2r (“rumours of the gulf”); ASV, SDN, filza 35, no. 24, April 17, 1618, 2r; no. 35, May 29, 1618, 2r; AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1881, no. 15, March 10, 1618; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 73r, April 26, 1618; Bartl, Westbalkan, 38. 230 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 5r, March 14, 1617; ASV, SDN, filza 35, no. 24, April 17, 1618, 4r; no. 38, June 5, 1618, 2v f. 231 ASV, SDD, 18, May  8, 1618; De Vivo, “Microhistories of Long-Distance Information,” 202f.

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  187 2 32 ASV, SDD, 18, April 7, 1618. Cf. Novak, Commissiones, VI, 289. 233 ASV, SDD, 18, March 22, 1618; April 3, 1618; August 10, 1618. 234 ASV, SDD, 18, April 2, 1618. 235 Preto, I servizi segreti, 123–8, here 123 (“espionage empire”). For example, AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 2, January 2, 1618; no. 12, January 12, 1618; no. 15, January 17, 1618; no. 16, November 27, 1617. 236 Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 135. 237 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 30, January 30, 1618. 238 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 52, February 20, 1618. 239 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 103, Venice, April  24, 1618 (quote); no.  104, Istanbul, March 12, 1618, sent via Ragusa and copied in Venice, April 24, 1618. 240 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 117, 8 May 1618; no.  135, Venice, June  2, 1618 (“Arcipielago”); no. 140, Istanbul, April 22, 1618 (“Babylonia”); AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1882, no. 6, January 25, 1619; AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1929, no. 329, May 5, 1618; Preto, I servizi segreti, 128f. 241 AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1881, no. 16, March 17/18, 1618; no. 19, April 4, 1618; no. 49, May  15, 1618; no.  80, January  15–March  26, 1618; no.  135, August  17, 1618 (quote). 242 AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1881, no. 80, January 15–March 26, 1618, 1r (“forced to put in the sea […]”), 1v f. (“Mallorca, Menorca, and the coast of Spain”); no.  18, March 31, 1618, 2r; no. 27, April 14, 1618. 243 AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1881, no. 49, May 15, 1618, 1r. 244 Preto, I servizi segreti. 245 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 22v, August 24, 1617; ASV, SDN, filza 37, December 25, 1618 (“very important business”); ASV, SDelM, filza 217, March 24, 1618. 246 Preto, I servizi segreti, 252. 247 ASV, SDD, 18, May 3, 1618; August 10, 1618; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 76r, July 19, 1617; 77r, July 20, 1617. 248 Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service, 211 (quote). In Istanbul in particular, Lesure, “Michel Černović”; Gürkan, “Dishonorable Ambassadors”; Graf, “Stopping  an  Ottoman Spy”; Hanß, Materielle Kultur der Seeschlacht von Lepanto, I, 122–48; Graf, “Knowing the ‘Hereditary Enemy’.” 249 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 9, November 9, 1617, 93v f. 250 GSItinerario, 173v. 251 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 36r–7r, January 5, 1617 (MV); De Vivo, “Microhistories of Long-Distance Information,” 202f. 252 DAD, 27.1: 43, 144r–5r, June 9, 1618. 253 DAD, 27.1: 43, 129r, February 15, 1618; 135v, April 6, 1618. 254 Dursteler, “Power and Information”; Schmitt, “Das venezianische Südosteuropa”; De Vivo, “Microhistories of Long-Distance Information.” 255 ASV, SDD, 18, May 22, 1618; June 7, 1618. 256 ASV, DT, no. 1235; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 326. 257 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 18, July 7, 1618, 196v–8r. 258 Cf. Graf, The Sultan’s Renegades, 140; Howell, “Ragusa Road,” 215f. 259 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 29, February 10, 1617 (MV), 315v f. 260 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 16, November 29, 1617, 195r–7r, here 195r. 261 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 19, December 8, 1617, 216v–9r. Cf. ASV, SDC, filza 84, no.  26, January  27, 1617 (MV), 286r; ASV, SDC, filza 85, no.  12, May  24, 1618, 127r. 262 Bertele, Il palazzo degli ambasciatori, 176; Speelman-Özkan and SpeelmanÖzkan, “Dragomanni,” 53f.; Yerasimos, “Istrian Dragomans,” 38; Malcolm, Agents of Empire, 375–8. 263 ASV, DT, no. 1249; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 330 (“the first dragoman”). 264 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 126; Malcolm, Agents of Empire, 375–8.

188  The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self 65 ASV, SDN, filza 35, no. 38, June 5, 1618, 2v f. 2 266 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 23, July 22, 1618, 260r–1v. 267 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 81, Venice, March 31, 1618 (Istanbul, January 10, 1618). 268 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 81, Venice, March 31, 1618 (Istanbul, January 10, 1618). 269 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 87, January 24–6, 1618, part of letters sent from Venice, April 6, 1618. Cf. AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 105, April 26, 1618. 270 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 84, April 4, 1618. 271 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 82, Venice, March 31, 1618. 272 Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 123f. 273 Rothman, “Visualizing.” 274 Jancke and Ulbrich, “From the Individual to the Person”; Ulbrich, “Family and House Books.” 275 Lucchetta, “La scuola,” 31 (“major biggest fault […]”); Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 121–3. 276 GSItinerario, 177r. 277 Jireček, Handelsstrassen, 74–6; Babinger and Bosworth, “Raghūsa”; Bajraktarević and Popović, “Nish.” 278 Gürkan, “Dishonorable Ambassadors,” 61. 279 Gürkan, “Dishonorable Ambassadors”; Graf, “Knowing the ‘Hereditary Enemy’.” 280 Esp. AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 119, Istanbul, March 25, 1618, as well as the documentation in AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1881. 281 Bracewell, Uskoks, 11 (quote); Adanır, “Heiduckentum.” 282 GSItinerario, 174r f., 175v; Jireček, Heerstrasse, 115f. 283 GSItinerario, 174r. 284 Bracewell, Uskoks, 3 (“raiding economy”), 4, 89 (“largely dependent […]”), 111; Adanır, “Heiduckentum”; Ostapchuk, “Cossack Ukraine”; Plokhy, Cossacks and Religion; Plokhy, Cossack Myth. 285 Bracewell, Uskoks, 51–88. 286 ASV, CSMII, 162 (ex 114), parte 1, June 13, 1588. 287 Novak, Commissiones, VI, 119. 288 Bracewell, Uskoks, 281. 289 Koller, “Uskoks,” 79. 290 Bracewell, Uskoks, 153 (“needed the uskoks […]”), 285 (“to resolve […]”). For a fuller discussion of these border conflicts, see Negri, “La politica veneta.” 291 Preto, I servizi segreti, 109f. 292 Predelli, I libri commemoriali, 136–41. Cf. Reberski de Baričević, “Duque de Osuna,” 323–43. 293 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 2r, March 3, 1617; 14v, June 27, 1617. 294 Bracewell, Uskoks, 290 (“specifying that […]”); Predelli, I libri commemoriali, 145–7. 295 Bracewell, Uskoks, 12 (quote), 5, 249–303, here 297 regarding “eliminating the leaders of the uskok bands, the most notorious uskoks.” Cf. Lopašić, Acta historiam confinii, II, 63–5; Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Spagna, I, 506f. 296 GSItinerario, 174r; Novak, Commissiones, VI, 7; ASV, SDD, 18, March 7, 1618; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 21v, August 9, 1617; 36v, January 5, 1617 (MV); ASV, SDS, filza 49, no. 44, September 12, 1617, 6v f. 297 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, June 29, 1618. 298 ASV, SDD, 18, June 27, 1618; July 8, 1618; August 13, 1618; ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 124r, February 23, 1618 (MV); ASV, SDD, 19, January 16, 1619; AGS, ESTNap, leg. 1882, no. 86, May, 1619: Still in February 1619, four uskok ships under the leadership of Capitan Andres de Nicobí, in service of the Holy Roman Emperor,

The Interpreter’s Mediterranean Self  189 attacked Zadar, seized an Ottoman ship with commodities as well on this ­occasion. ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 43v, January  19, 1617 (MV); 210r f., August  3, 1619; ASV, SDD, 18, March  7, 1618; Bracewell, Uskoks, 293f.; Reberski de Baričević, “Duque de Osuna,” 327–43. 299 Albèri, Relazioni, III/2, 209–53; Coco and Manzonetto, Baili, 79–84; Yerasimos, Voyageurs. 300 Soranzo, Diario; TNA, PRO 30/25/18, fasc. 13, 145r–72v; Contarini, Diario; Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 245–7. 301 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 79v, June 9, 1618 (quote); 81v, June 23, 1618; 85v f., June 29, 1618; ASV, SDD, 18, August 7 and 8, 1618. 302 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 32, February 24, 1617 (MV), 362r–4r, here 363r (“would be very apt […]”); ASV, SDD, 18, May 22, 1618. 303 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 15, January 17, 1618. 304 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, August 31, 1618. 305 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 133, June 2, 1618. 306 ASV, SDD, 18, May 8, 1618; May 17, 1618. 307 ASV, SDD, 18, August 5, 1618. 308 GSItinerario, 178r. 309 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 16, June 23, 1618, 167r. 310 GSItinerario, 178r. 311 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 90r–3r, August 14, 1618; ASV, SDC, rubrica D12, 9r–10r. I would expect to find more on Contarini’s journey in ASV, SDC, filza 86; however, the documents are severely damaged and extremely fragile. I owe special thanks to Stefania Piersanti (Archivio di Stato di Venezia) and Petra Schaefer (Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani) for granting me access to this filza. 312 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 90r–3r, August 14, 1618. 313 Novak, Commissiones, VI, 156–61, here 160f. (“continuing fluctuations”); ASV, SDD, 19, September 19, 1618 (“most prudent expedition”); ASV, SDC, rubrica D12, 9r–10r (“to reform”). 314 ASV, SDelM, filza 217, March 1, 1618, petition of Polo Minio, 1r; ASV, SDC, filza 87, no. 83, August 18, 1619, 368r. 315 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 90r–3r, August 14, 1618; Predelli, I libri commemoriali, 151. 316 ASV, DT, no. 1243, February 1619; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 328.

Genesino Salvago’s “I Poem”

Done by me I have begun in Vigne di Pera I walked the street I have arrived I have departed Continuing Continuing I have arrived I have departed I arrived I have departed Riding [a horse] I arrived I have departed Continuing I passed [go past] I have arrived I have departed I passed I arrived Continuing We passed I have departed Walking I have arrived I have departed Continuing I have departed Continuing We entered … I have departed I crossed [the river]

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-8

192  Genesino Salvago’s “I Poem” Continuing I ended up I went I encountered Having myself Having been received/welcomed myself I have come I have been treated I finished up here I have followed Lauding I liberated myself [from the rough and harsh mountains] We will find I am eagerly available to serve and obey I kiss your hands This is Genesino’s “I poem,” a text produced by “select[ing] every first-person ‘I’ […] along with the verb and any seemingly important accompanying words,” and then listing them according to their sequence in the form of a poem. Such an exercise, psychologists argue, “offers a way of hearing and developing an understanding of several different layers of a person’s expressed experience.”1 What is it that we listen to when reading Genesino’s “I poem”? I listen to the words of an author who, as an interpreter, is used to the fact that words represent others. The travelogue itself represents Genesino’s journey, and as such seemingly every word has been carefully drafted. I listen to the translator’s “creative labour,” as Kate Briggs puts it, the “labour of changing words, and changing the orders of words.”2 I listen to writing-as-translation: the translator’s writing, his self-­narrative, as “translation possibilities, each one with its own particular shades of meaning.”3 What is it that I listen to when reading Genesino’s “I poem”? I listen to the dragoman’s careful construction of the narrative position of the self. His emphasis on mobility—departure, ongoing movement, and arrival in particular. The almost monotonous reiteration of mobility that streamlines the road dragoman’s narrative self as being on the move. Moreover, I listen to the carefully tailored advice that Genesino gives to Venetian authorities at the very end of the travelogue, as well as his overall emphasis on translating the dragoman’s loyalty and service into words. To Genesino, the “‘I’ is a method […] to expand and vary of what it is possible to speak, and in what manner.”4 “And here am I amazed all over again by what a sentence—the right words in the right order—can do.”5 Reading Genesino’s “I poem,” I share this astound feeling. I sense the extent to which writing a self-narrative allowed Genesino, the writing translator, to redefine the boundaries involved in writing about oneself.

Genesino Salvago’s “I Poem”  193

Notes 1 Gilligan et al., “Listening Guide,” 162, 164. 2 Briggs, This Little Art, 40, 42. 3 Briggs, This Little Art, 192. 4 Briggs, This Little Art, 114. 5 Briggs, This Little Art, 96.

4 The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer Visibility, Authorship, and the Self in the Seventeenth-Century Contact Zone The more fluent the translation, the more invisible the translator. Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (London: Routledge, 1995), 1f.

Rewriting the Self in the Seventeenth-Century Istanbul Dragomanate This chapter situates Genesino Salvago’s Balkan travelogue within a wider assemblage of contemporary texts—translations and petitions, above all, but also reports, treatises, travel literature, correspondences, and contemporary literature. All these writings provoked and helped Genesino stage the dragoman’s narrative self by presenting his own activities as embedded in a broader “communicative act.”1 Communicating the self, I argue, was anchored in the dragomanate’s community of practice—the everyday activities of oral and written translations carried out by Genesino and fellow interpreters at the bailate. In addition, I argue that the changing social universe of the seventeenth-century dragomanate had a profound impact on Genesino’s use of self-narratives, as well as their use by his brothers. This chapter explores the close links between the interpreter’s practices of translation and writing, and their repercussions for the dragoman’s notion of the self and his concepts of authorship. Translation “complicates the authorial position,” as both translators and researchers in translation theory have highlighted, insofar as it introduces a further voice, a second writer.2 I will use concepts discussed in translation studies like the translator’s (in)visibility, the precarity of authorship, and an interpreter’s translatory practice conceptualised as would-be writing to broaden our understanding of the social universe in which Genesino’s travelogue, as a self-narrative, gained cultural significance for a dragoman’s doing of personhood.3 The recent emphasis on translation as a form of rewriting proves particularly fruitful to conceptualise the dragomans of the early seventeenth century venturing into writing activities beyond translation.4 Since early modern concepts of authorship were anchored in a writer’s refined use of imitation

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-9

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  195 and emulation, their everyday practice of translatory rewriting equipped dragomans to author other texts, self-narratives in particular. As experts in the juggling of words, interpreters could employ new narratives that helped rewrite the self’s social embeddedness. In terms of Genesino’s Balkan travelogue, I argue, authoring a text about the self was a dragoman’s call for recognition as much as an interpretative claim over his own life—and the implicit consequences for the future of the Salvagos’ business of translation, as this chapter will spell out in further detail. The self-narrative granted a different degree of visibility to Genesino, whose professional life, as I will show, shifted between the spheres of translation, authorship, and recognition when travelling Southeastern Europe. In the early seventeenth century, Salvago interpreters started to employ rewriting beyond doing translations. Such changing writing practices were anchored in a changing social world. Genesino’s use of a self-narrative to write about his 1618 journey through the Balkans was a novelty that must be understood within the shifting social contexts of the dragomanate. Venice’s assassination of Mateca in 1594 resulted, as discussed in Chapter 1, in a more general change of attitude of Venice towards its imperial interpreters in Istanbul. The Serenissima became profoundly suspicious about the loyalty of Ottoman subjects working as dragomans at the Venetian bailate in general, and about the Salvagos in particular. As a consequence, the next generation of the Salvagos receded in importance in the shifting, closely knit social world of the seventeenth-century dragomanate. Genesino, Giuliano, and Giovanni Battista faced the challenge of increasingly powerful competitor families, especially those of Venetian colonial subjects of Albanian and Istrian origins. The Borisi, Bruti, Carli, and Tarsia families, above all, gained ever more importance in the seventeenth-century bailate. Interpreters from these families built on their Venetian colonial subjecthood to stage themselves as loyal subjects—in implicit opposition to competing dragomans of Ottoman subjecthood like the Salvagos. As Natalie Rothman shows, dragomans of the Borisi, Bruti, Carli, and Tarsia clans spun a powerful kinship web and “intermarried among themselves as well as among Catholic Istanbul’s elite families” to fortify their influence in the bailate.5 For these aspiring newcomer dragoman families, conscious self-­ presentation as colonial Venetian subjects became a powerful tool to carve out a career path for their families within diplomatic service—targeting the very same profession and positions usually held by the extended families of the Salvagos and Grillos. This development culminated in the commissioning of a series of portraits celebrating the Tarsia and Carli dragoman dynasties (Figures 28–30). Over the course of the century, these oil paintings grew in number and size. Such portraits celebrated these Istrian dragomans’ presence, success, wealth, and proficiency in Venetian imperial service and created a sense of genealogy and glory. Referencing the dragoman’s name, profession, and his colonial status in inscriptions—sometimes prominently gestured to—these portraits demonstrate these families’ understanding of

196  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer

Figure 28  N  atalis Bertolini, Cristoforo Tarsia (1618–78). Oil painting, 150 × 95 cm. ©Pokrajinski Muzei Koper/Koper Regional Museum, PMK 3131.

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  197

Figure 29  N  atalis Bertolini, Marco Tarsia (c. 1624–50). Oil painting, 150 × 95 cm. ©Pokrajinski Muzei Koper/Koper Regional Museum, PMK 3128.

198  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer

Figure 30  S  ebastiano Bombelli (presumably), Gian Rinaldo Carli (1646–1722). Oil painting, 120 × 95 cm, 1679.  ©Zavičajni muzej Poreštine/Poreč Regional Museum, ZMP 1676.  Photo: R. Kosinožić.

the close relationship between the self, profession, and colonial subjecthood, as well as their confidence in self-presentation. The dragomanate’s newcomer families, thus, made strategic and ever more prominent use of self-fashioning as Venetian colonial subjects.6

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  199 The Salvagos thus experienced a climate in which the visibility of a ­ ragoman’s confident staging of the self became even more important for d the interpretation of diplomatic service and success. In response to this experience, as well as the increasing insecurity of the Salvagos’ own status and prospects in the bailate’s famiglia, the Salvago brothers decided to employ their skills in writing, as rewriting translators, to shape the visibility of their own professional activities in the textual universe of Venetian imperial administration. Narrating professional subjectivity as faithful service, of course, was long crucial for early modern interpreters in different imperial contexts. To Spanish-Arabic diplomatic translators, for instance, Claire Gilbert states that “signs of translator trustworthiness—articulated through claims of fidelity, expertise and experience, generations of family service, or patronage and other social connections—became a currency” that could be managed through “texts […] produced both in translation and about their ­service.”7 In the changing social world of the Veneto-Ottoman dragomanate in ­seventeenth-century Istanbul, however, the success of their self-­presentation as faithful diplomatic servants had become key to the future survival of the generations-long established unity between family, translation, and service. For the Salvagos, to adapt a phrase by Claudia Ulbrich, “family [was] the occasion for talking or writing about the self.”8 As this chapter shows, in a discussion that leads from the Salvago brothers’ travelogues and petitions to their end-of-mission reports, Genesino, Giuliano, and Giovanni Battista crafted numerous manuscripts as author-interpreters seeking to revaluate their own family’s recognition in Venetian diplomatic service. In the first decades of the century, these brothers furnished their skills in rewriting, as acquired through their everyday business of translation, to resituate the Salvago dragoman’s diplomatic self within Venetian institutional memory. Narrating the self had become crucial to this generation of Salvagos—in terms of doing personhood as imperial interpreters.

Claiming Recognition The year in which Genesino documented his journey through Southeastern Europe, 1618, was not just a crucial autobiographical moment, but signalled a shift in the archival record. The Salvagos, who were hitherto primarily visible through their translated documents began to move towards authoring texts as translator-writers. This shift was likely due to two recent developments. The first was Cristoforo Tarsia, the youngest representative of the Veneto-Istrian Tarsia family, beginning his service as a learning dragoman at the recommendation of his well-established uncle, Cristoforo Bruti.9 The Salvagos would have noticed this family of competitors becoming increasingly successful in placing its extended kin within the bailate’s cohort of interpreters. Second, there were an increasing number of dragomans vying for recognition for their services, including Genesino’s nephew, Giovanni Antonio Grillo. He had accompanied Ottoman envoy Mustafa

200  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer Çavuş on his journeys to Venice and Istanbul. Grillo had proven successful in ­dangerous acts of espionage, secret communications with the şeyhülislam and kapudan pasha, and in channelling precious information between Venice, the Adriatic, Sarajevo, and Istanbul. The young dragoman played an important role in enabling Venice to levy Ottoman subjects for military service against Naples, and also helped strengthen Venetian interests in Bosnian merchants’ restitution claims following the Split incident. Grillo clearly took pride in his achievements, and wished to see them recognised by Venetian authorities. In a petition sent to Venice in April 1618—the very same month Genesino composed his travelogue—Grillo demanded, with the backing of bailo Almorò Nani and ambassador Francesco Contarini, financial recognition for his services. “I, Giovanni Antonio Grillo, most devout and obliged servant”—the words with which he introduced himself could hardly have been more powerful in its claim for visibility.10 The tone left an impression. Grillo was rewarded with a pay raise from 120 to 200 ­zecchini per annum. Venice praised the young dragoman’s “diligent and fruitful service.”11 Barnabà Bruti, another dragoman from the kinship network of the Brutis, Borisis, and Tarsias opposing the Salvagos, also claimed recognition for his services in 1618.12 That summer, Bruti sent a petition to Venice to present himself as “your most devout servant and dragoman in Constantinople.” Above all, Bruti emphasised having been in Venetian service in Istanbul “already for many years,” which was furthermore presented as a family ­venture. With the death of his father in the Veneto-Istrian town of Koper, Bruti stated his wish to end his service at the bailate and return to Koper to support his three sisters. By narrating his life in a way that commemorated his family’s service as Venetian interpreters in Istanbul, Bruti’s self-narrative was also carving out a space for future generations to prosper in the drago­ manate’s business—in competition with the Salvagos.13 Bailo Agostino Nani and ambassador Contarini appreciated the dragoman’s service and lauded the Brutis’ commitment to Venice in a letter sent to the doge. Bruti’s grandfather, Antonio, had been decapitated by the Ottomans upon the conquest of Bar and Ulcinj, the letter read, and the family was settling in Koper. His father, Giacomo, was then appointed capitano de schiavi, a magistrate of the area of Koper, with an income of 300 ducats per annum. Two of Bruti’s brothers were in training to become dragomans at the bailate, all receiving a salary of 10 to 12 ducats a month. Grand dragoman Marc’antonio Borisi—not yet disgraced at the time, and still considered a role model for other dragomans—was the cousin of the Bruti brothers, and the bailo and ambassador even thought of Borisi as “their uncle.”14 Soon, Bruti was given permission to return to Koper in recognition of his “very honourable and meritorious” service. His brother, Bartolomeo, stayed as a dragoman trainee in Istanbul.15 Bruti thus made his service visible in writing, thereby making it count—prior to his return to Koper, the doge even named him a cavaliere di San Marco. Bruti thus contributed to his Veneto-Albanian family gaining

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  201 an even stronger foothold in the bailate by establishing “a web of dragoman careers and dragoman-dynasty-fortifying marriages.”16 Writing about oneself, as a dragoman, meant to write about one’s service and family. Writing a self-narrative in the form of a petition was an investment in the recognition of the service of past and future family members. Like Genesino, Bruti also traversed the Balkan Peninsula. The dragoman was accompanying Mehmed Çavuş, Osman II’s envoy returning from Venice to Istanbul via Ragusa. During the voyage, Bruti also translated the sultan’s letter to Ragusa, confirming the republic’s vassal status and its protection in exchange for “obedience and slavery.”17 This journey served as a crucial reference point in Bruti’s petition. The dragoman and the envoy stopped in Trogir in May 1618, arriving in the city with cargo galleys the very same month Genesino arrived there. Genesino was in close contact with the local Venetian authority, Gabriel Morosini, and stayed in Trogir for at least five days. In his travelogue, Genesino stated that he was received “with much courtesy” and “with much amiability.”18 In Morosini’s official letters to Venice, however, there was not a single mention of Genesino. Instead, Morosini praised Bruti as “a very qualified subject and very affectionate towards the Serenissima Repubblica [Venice].” Morosini applauded Bruti’s prowess (valore) in keeping the çavuş in a good mood and favourable towards Venice, as well as preventing him from travelling to Ragusa before Venice—which would have been a serious affront in the symbolically charged world of diplomacy.19

Competition in the Contact Zone When Genesino travelled to Split and Trogir, the Veneto-OttomanDalmatian contact zone was awash with interpreting experts. Genesino’s decision to write a self-narrative must be contextualised in this light. On the Adriatic border, as Giovanni Battista Contarini stated in Zadar in 1606, there is often a “necessity for someone who interprets the speaking of the Turks.”20 Evliya Çelebi also declared that Split interpreters “spoke excellent Turkish.”21 In May 1618, when the bailate’s dragomans Genesino, Bruti, and Grillo spent time in the region, many interpreters were already operating at the local level. But it was challenging for local interpreters to receive Venetian recognition for their services, a precarity that was often overcome with kinship networks and petitions. The public interpreter in Zadar, for instance, married into the powerful Venetian patrician family of the Veniers.22 Others sought permission to become publicly recognised interpreters, a status which came with financial security. Some instances of this survive in the Venetian colonial archives. For instance, a convert called Paulo dalla Urana gained fame as an interpreter of the Venetian ­provveditori. After his death, various protagonists tried to fill the gap. An escaped slave who once worked as translator for the pasha of Bosnia was appointed as the interpreter of a Venetian captain.23 Gieronimo della Pace, meanwhile, was active as an

202  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer Ottoman language interpreter in Split from at least 1619, and sought official recognition as a “public dragoman.”24 Domenigo Mattegussi of Shkodër, one of the many Albanese troops staying in Split while fighting in Venetian military service against uskoks and Spaniards, specialised in translating Albanian, Italian, and Serbo-Croatian.25 Zuane, a Muslim subject born in the nearby Ottoman fortress of Klis, translated for Venetians and Ottomans for many years, and eventually filled the role of Dalla Urana. Zuane had settled in Trogir at the age of 16 and went on to earn twice as much as his famous predecessor. From 1615 onwards, Zuane translated for Venetian provveditori, captains, and the governor of Split, culminating in his official appointment as interpreter of Split and Trogir six years later.26 After Zuane’s death in 1622, Gieronimo della Pace offered himself to serve as an Ottoman language interpreter in Split and Trogir. The local authorities welcomed della Pace’s offer, and considered it to be of “public interest.”27 In petitions, interpreters could showcase their language proficiency, given that large swathes of the population of Trogir and Split were either illiterate or at least preferred to sign documents with crosses.28 Oral interpretation skills, however, were widespread in the contact zone. Slavic was widely spoken and understood across the Ottoman Empire. As contemporary Italian chroniclers report, schiavona “is spoken [esser’n bocca] by many nations,” especially in Dalmatia, Syria, Bosnia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Wallachia, and in the Ottoman-Austrian, Ottoman-Polish, and Ottoman-Ukrainian-Russian border zone. Slavic dialects were spoken on the streets of Venice and Istanbul alike, and with many high-ranking Ottoman officials originating from Southeastern Europe, it was also esteemed in the Ottoman centre of power.29 This means, therefore, that in addition to professional interpreters, there was an entire army of interpreters, often unnamed in the archival record who translated Serbo-Croatian, Slavic, and other languages for Ottoman or Venetian authorities across the Balkans.30 When Mehmed Çavuş arrived from Venice in Split in summer 1618, Steffano Manzoni, a merchant who had widely travelled the Balkans, was assisting the governor of Split as an Ottoman-Italian interpreter.31 The Split authority clearly favoured him over Bruti, the imperial interpreter accompanying the çavuş. Bruti’s loyalties lay with the bailo, while Manzoni’s own financial interests were closely tied to Split’s Veneto-Ottoman commercial prosperity. Upon Manzoni’s death in Banja Luka the following year, the local kadi, pasha, and financial minister (defterdar) of Bosnia confiscated the silks and wool that were in his possession. The bailo and grand dragoman in Istanbul pressed the sultan for these goods to be returned to Split, demonstrating that Manzoni’s services could be considered of similar if not more value to Venice than that of the bailo’s own road dragomans.32 In the Veneto-Ottoman Adriatic contact zone, Genesino had entered a dense, competitive field, where interpreters had overlapping and at times conflicting local, transregional, and imperial interests. On the ground, Genesino’s own activities merged with the complex politics of imperial

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  203 border zones. As noted above, during Genesino’s stay in Split and Trogir, some of the highest-ranking dragomans of the bailate were present in the city, including Bruti and Grillo. The latter was a close ally of the Salvagos, but posed a threat nonetheless, having taken very impressive first steps of a promising career. When Mustafa Çavuş arrived in Split on May 10, 1618—a day before Genesino did—Garzoni reported that he believed that the Ottoman envoy was very satisfied with his treatment by Venice and its overseas authorities. If this were true, it was likely the result of the Ottoman envoy’s everyday conversations with dragoman Grillo. These oral conversations, of course, are largely invisible in the written record. Garzoni made no mention of the dragoman’s services at all, which is why Grillo took it upon himself to make his service visible to Venice. Grillo even attached his Italian translation of an Ottoman letter, in which Mustafa Çavuş expressed his satisfaction at his treatment by Venice, when sending a petition to Venice. Referencing contemporary debates about Bosnian merchants’ claims, the çavuş also made note of the way Venetian noblemen on the same galley as him treated Ottoman merchants. Mustafa Çavuş signed and sealed Grillo’s translation of this letter into Italian, which testified to the dragoman’s skills in situating the text within a wider performative setting. But the signature and seal also had the effect of making it seem as if the çavuş had written the letter himself—in a way, Grillo was so good in his profession that he almost risked rendering his own skills invisible. He, therefore, made certain to highlight his contribution: “I send Your Most Illustrious Excellency [Venice] the enclosed herein, which the çavuş made me write—signed in Turkish by his hand and sealed by his seal.” In crafting a persona as an imperial translator, Grillo clearly knew how to make himself visible.33 The heated debate over Bosnian merchants’ claims for compensation, however, also affected Grillo’s journey. Writing to Venice from Split, the young dragoman said: the Bosnians continue to threaten me day by day, confronting me again and again with vain and most false accusations; and that little çavuş called Mumiro does so in particular. The day we left Venice, he told me that he was very well informed about all my activities and since I was not afraid of him, he made it clear that one day he would make me anguish. I replied that I am not part of his evilness and that, because of my innocence, God will protect me. Grillo also emphasised that he would not hesitate to “offer blood, possessions, and the own life” for Venice.34 Genesino, who was completing his travelogue just a few kilometres away, was surely confronted with similar harassment. But he made no such incidents explicit in his writing. As his nephew in the petition to Venice, Genesino carved out a space for his own diplomatic persona in his travelogue. Unlike the messy, complex reality on the ground, Genesino penned a self-narrative that gave the impression of

204  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer him being the sole dragoman travelling the region—seemingly a textual strategy to consciously foreground his own achievements. Genesino had good reason to do so. The activities of the bailate’s other dragomans spun a web of competition that was getting more dense by day. When Genesino departed from the bailate in March 1618, Barnabà Bruti was still on Chios, accompanying—on bailo Nani’s orders—a certain Giacomo Bracchi, who transported silks and other goods worth 16,000 to 18,000 ducats in total from Christian and Jewish merchants to the Ottoman Empire. The bailo seemingly had hope of using some of these commodities to appease the Bosnian merchants, and considered Bruti a better fit for the significant task at hand than Genesino.35 Upon Bruti’s return from Chios, Nani appointed Bruti to accompany Mehmed Çavuş on his journey to Venice for the accession of Osman II. In a letter to Venice, the bailo made it clear why he chose Bruti for this assignment. Nani considered the dragoman “a wise and prudent man, experienced […] in other serious businesses.” Bruti “speaks and writes the Turkish language very well, so it will be easy for him to entertain the çavuş,” as well as to influence his actions regarding Ragusa and the Bosnian merchants. Officially, Mehmed Çavuş had no other business than handing out coronation letters to Venice and Ragusa, with a stopover in Kotor, but Nani was clearly suspicious.36 Bruti and Mehmed Çavuş left Istanbul on April 18, three weeks after Genesino did. Since they travelled by sea, however, they arrived in Trogir at the same time as Genesino. As a dragoman with decades-long experience, Genesino must have ­realised that his competitor was getting institutional recognition. Bruti clearly measured up to the bailo’s expectations. He was younger, feisty, proactive, and considered ingenious in dealing with Ottoman officials. In contrast, the bailo clearly thought that it was better for the older Genesino to travel without accompanying any noteworthy Ottoman official. Just a few months later, Nani even sent Giovanni Battista Navon, still a giovane della lingua, to accompany Polo Minio on his journey to meet the voivode of Moldavia, Gaspar Graziani. It was a huge assignment for the then inexperienced Navon, but the bailo surely wanted to preclude any difficulties that may have arisen due to pre-existing contact. Graziani had once been an interpreter himself, and had plans to marry the daughter of grand dragoman Borisi. Sending a Salvago dragoman would have been a risky decision.37 Borisi himself had a string of impressive achievements in early 1618. The grand dragoman was called to an audience of the grand vizier where a Bosnian merchant “with tears in the eyes” repeated his claim for restitution from Venice in front of the Ottoman Empire’s highest military judges (kadıasker). The situation, however, was threatening to spin out of control. The military judge of Greece turned to the grand vizier and said: talking about Borisi, ‘if this infidel would be dead or killed one would not find another infidel like him, full of malice and interpretative

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  205 sophistry,’ and that he would always speak against the Muslims without ever proffering anything in their favour. Borisi replied “that he demanded nothing but justice for this poor man [the Bosnian merchant in the audience],” to which the judge countered harshly that “there are a thousand poor men” suffering the consequences of the Split incident. The grand vizier was anything but amused. “Looking at Borisi with a very serious face,” he said, “curse be on you! I will take you from this world and I will be the cause for this good, which should have been done earlier already.” Writing to Venice, the bailo was outraged to see the grand dragoman “in this manner vilified, despised, and publicly injured.”38 Borisi immediately asked the bailo to invest 2,000 zecchini into precious textiles that would be presented to “Mehmed Agha, grand merchant of the Grand Signor [sultan], saying [Borisi to the bailo] that in this way one would ensure to be given advantages.” The same merchant maintained his conversations with the bailo “not in Turkish, but in Spanish.”39 Borisi was killed the ­following year, but at this time—when Genesino travelled through the Balkans—such stories from Istanbul only served to increase the grand dragoman’s cultural capital in Venice. On December 21, 1618, ambassador Contarini and bailo Nani sent “praises on dragoman Borisi” to Venice.40 Once again, there was no mention of Genesino, the dragoman who had accompanied the ambassador on his months-long journey to Venice. Set against the colourful stories of other dragomans in service, which were often spelled out in detail in passionate petitions, Genesino’s journey must have appeared as dull, everyday business. It was in this competitive setting for recognition of one’s own service that Genesino, in Trogir on May 16, 1618, signed the final version of his travelogue with the words: “most humble and most obliged servant, forever. Genesino Salvago, dragoman.”41

Rewriting the Self: Petitions: Shaping a Future in Translation, Creating a Family Legacy This time, putting pen to paper was special for Genesino. He was used to providing ad-hoc oral translations and composing written translations or petitions, but the Balkan travelogue is the first treatise-length self-narrative that we know of from the dragoman, who was now nearly 60 years old.42 By 1611, the bailo had described Genesino as a “long-serving and fruitful ­servant.”43 Seven years later, Genesino, who suffered a disability in his leg from birth, finished the travelogue in Trogir “praising the Lord” for having “freed myself from those crude and harsh mountains.”44 It must have been clear to him that this was one of his last journeys, if not the last, in office as a road dragoman. This was the end of an era, and Genesino had carefully planned every step in this moment of transition. The dragoman’s self-­ narrative, as we shall see, was key to his plans.

206  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer From the Adriatic coast, Genesino continued his journey to Venice, where he spent the summer months waiting to accompany Contarini to Istanbul. In his pocket, Genesino carried the travelogue, which was to inform the senate’s decision about which travel route to take. Upon arrival in Venice, he handed over this travelogue to its addressee Contarini. Genesino also carried a second letter in his pocket: a petition issued by bailo Nani in Istanbul on March 28, 1618, one day before the dragoman departed for the Balkans. The petition was on behalf of Genesino’s younger brother, Giovanni Battista, whose faithful service as a translator merited a pay raise. At this point, Giovanni Battista still earned the 50 ducats per annum commonly paid to a language trainee. According to the bailo, this trainee had served the bailate’s language school for ten years, and he had made “huge progress.” Nani confirmed that Giovanni Battista had already begun serving as a dragoman at certain public events. He also had proven his skills in the Ottoman language since he translates “with such an ease that there is no reason for him to envy anybody else in such a service.” This phrasing points to both the promise of this aspiring Salvago dragoman and the increasingly competitive setting of translating experts in the bailate. In addition, Nani confirmed Giovanni Battista’s fluency in Italian and his excellent skills in Latin and Greek. The young Salvago dragoman had by that time already translated a variety of letters to the Ottoman court, and to Polish, Transylvanian, and Hungarian diplomatic residents in Istanbul. The bailo also called Venice’s attention to the faithful service of Giovanni Battista’s brothers, Genesino and Giuliano, and to “the merit of the house [casa], which for one hundred years or more has always been employed in the most serious businesses that occurred at this [Ottoman] Porte.”45 Genesino presented this petition in person to the Venetian senate, alongside an additional document he wrote. In his own petitionary letter, Genesino emphasised his brother’s loyal service and diligent language studies. He specified the bailo’s comments on Giovanni Battista’s linguistic expertise, stating that he “speaks, reads, and writes the Turkish language,” as well as “the Turkish script mixed with Arabic and Persian.” Clearly, Genesino felt that the bailo’s description did not do justice to Giovanni Battista’s language skills, and wished to highlight that his brother’s command of the Ottoman language implied a very good knowledge of Arabic and Persian too. Like the bailo, Genesino pointed to Giovanni Battista’s translation of letters for Polish, Hungarian, and Transylvanian representatives, in addition to his versatility in unmasking and collecting, on a daily basis, “the biggest secrets” circulating—such as those contained within Latin documents shared among foreign diplomats in Istanbul. Genesino echoed the bailo’s plea for Giovanni Battista to get a pay raise, underlining “his long servitude” as well as “the grave poverty of our whole house [casa].” Despite ­decades of being in Venetian service, the Salvago household had fallen out of prosperity—or at least this was the impression Genesino wished to give to Venetian authorities, certainly

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  207 largely informed by the increasing successes of competing dragoman families. When promoting his brother’s services, the Salvagos’ glorious past became the most important reference point. With Venice’s support, Genesino stated, Giovanni Battista could continue to serve “in imitating our elders who have not only served as dragomans but also as grand dragomans over the course of a hundred and fifty years—also in troubled times of war.” Genesino added that the Salvagos had given everything, including their “own blood” and “their own life, in the faithful and continuing service for this most serene republic.”46 Translators are experts in reframing words. “Translation,” according to Susan Bassnett, “is by its very definition a form of textual manipulation in that it involves the rewriting of a text written in one language for a new set of readers in another language with different expectations.” As a petitioning author, Genesino’s own words reframed the bailo’s original petition. The dragoman rewrote the narrative self of Giovanni Battista, as presented in the bailo’s words. The “processes of rewriting, reshaping, and reconfiguring” that characterised the dragoman’s practice of translation, thus, also informed Genesino’s modalities of writing about the self. Rewriting, as will be made clear below, was one of the most common and most powerful techniques applied by Genesino and his brothers when writing self-narratives.47 Compared to the bailo’s petition, the tiny differences introduced by Genesino in his own petitionary letter matter. By submitting the bailo’s petition, written on behalf of Giovanni Battista Salvago (per nome suo), alongside his own, Genesino introduced another layer to the textual assemblage: another authorial position and voice. This allowed him to reframe the request and reappropriate his brother’s voice, only indirectly rendered by the bailo’s words.48 The dragoman applied a familiar textual strategy, the introduction of a narrative frame, to make the translation stand out and to grant visibility to the translator as an author. In his own work as an interpreter, an oral translation was signalled by the dragoman’s own voice, the speech act of rewording itself. A written translation, likewise, was marked as such through the insertion of an additional textual frame—a headline, for instance, that summarised the following text’s content and introduced its translator, or a final line claiming that the text was trans­ ragoman.49 The application of such a familiar narrative strategy lated by a d to reframe the bailo’s words allowed Genesino to highlight, adjust, alter, and twist information that was of particular importance to him. Genesino corrected information about his brother’s language skills and deftness in the collecting and channelling of secret information, implying Giovanni Battista’s future utility as a spying dragoman. He also implicitly references his grandfather, Genesino the Elder’s involvement in the peace negotiations which put an end to the Veneto-Ottoman War in 1540. Additionally, Genesino indirectly mentions his father Mateca’s activities during the War of Cyprus (1570–3), when the latter was sent to Venice to inform the republic about the Ottoman Empire’s demand for Cyprus.50

208  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer The only family member that had given “blood” and “life” for Venice was indeed Mateca, who was assassinated by Venice. The words here are, understandably, chosen carefully, an ostensibly innocuous reminder of the family tragedy that took place 24 years earlier. Genesino also seems to have felt misrepresented by the bailo’s comment on the Salvagos’ service of “one hundred years or more” for Venice.51 The dragoman used his own petition to correct the bailo’s statement, and indicate that the Salvagos had served Venice for 150 years, adding that some family members had been appointed grand dragomans—a detail that cannot be corroborated by the archival record. The framings used in Genesino’s petition are both the postmortem glorification of Genesino’s father and grandfather, and the embeddedness of the dragoman within the social unit of the casa. The family’s own memory of the unity between translation and imperial services was thus much longer than Venetian institutional memory accounted for. Inserting the family’s memory into the Venetian colonial archive mattered in terms of fulfilling the wider agenda behind the request. In short, Genesino had already planned to use the Balkan journey to create a family legacy in Venice, given that the bailo’s petition in support of Giovanni Battista was issued before his departure. Genesino clearly tried to use the journey to promote his brother’s service, increase his pay, situate him in the family tradition of dragomans, ensure that Venice knew about the Salvagos’ 150 years of service, and perhaps even put him in line to be a future grand dragoman. Thus, Genesino’s travelogue as a self-narrative must be situated within a wider textual assemblage that centres on the shaping of a family legacy for the sake of a prosperous future. Besides laying out a route for Contarini, his report foregrounds the hardships that the Salvagos encountered and overcame to be faithful servants of Venice. Upon presentation of the report to the ambassador, the travelogue might have generated the support of his wide-ranging networks among the Venetian political elite. Genesino inserts his social self “into a gift relation” with reciprocal opportunities within the travelogue’s dedication itself.52 It was intended to turn the ambassador into a potential spokesperson for the Salvagos, an influential supporter who could facilitate arranging an audience to present petitionary letters, and spread word of their contents among senators. Genesino thus planned ahead—for his self-narrative to function within an assemblage of documents, so as to showcase a cross-generational, household-centred sense of the self. This is indicated by the emphasis on the 150 years of service, which implicitly distinguishes the Salvagos from competing families who had not served nearly as long. The remark points not only to the changing climate in the bailate, but also to Genesino’s lingering anxieties over the unity of service, translation, and family, decades after being made the head of the Salvago clan following his father’s assassination. Genesino’s agenda was only partly successful. In June 1618, Venice agreed to bump up Giovanni Battista’s pay to 12 ducats a month.53 However,

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  209 Genesino’s attempt to raise his brother’s status over other dragomans, as implicit in his emphasis on the Salvagos being the longest-serving family of interpreters and their promising future of service, was met with failure. Giovanni Battista’s 12 ducats was the same amount every other dragoman received. Venice, in fact, deliberately tried to avoid creating an imbalance in the dragomanate with unequal pay. The senate even went so far as to order copies of previous decisions on the salaries of other dragomans. The documents showed that Grillo, “son of faithful dragoman Ambrosio,” and himself versatile in Italian, Greek, and Ottoman, and a fervent student of Arabic and Persian, had been granted a pay raise to 12 ducats a month in 1612.54 Cristoforo Bruti, after spending seven years as a language student earning 50 ducats a year, also had his pay increased to 12 ducats a month in 1615. To even get this 12 ducats, Cristoforo had applied rhetoric that was astonishingly similar to that used by Genesino. He had pointed out that “the Bruti family has served the Signoria [Venice] with great promptness and faithfulness for many years,” with “many of them having died in public service.”55 With opposing families making such claims, also Genesino had no choice but to position the Salvagos within the Venetian administrative archive to ensure the prosperity of his own and future generations. Genesino also put his second request, separate from the petition of Giovanni Battista. This, too, was only partially successful. In August 1618, the dragoman submitted a petition pointing out the “great distress in which I find myself, dragoman Genesino Salvago, having come to this city [Venice] recently to serve the excellent signor provveditore Contarini in his journey to Constantinople.” While traversing the Balkan Peninsula, the petition read, Genesino was forced to spend his own money on behalf of the bailo, such as when he paid for two unspecified garments. Such textiles commonly featured in gifts presented to Ottoman officials, so it was highly likely that the dragoman made these investments to further strengthen Veneto-Ottoman relationships in Sarajevo, Belgrade, or perhaps Klis. The journey itself ate up a lot of expenses, and since the dragoman had not been in Istanbul he had missed the payment of four monthly salaries. Genesino asked for his expenses to be covered, his back salary to be processed, and to receive two years of annual pay in advance “for the very urgent need to take care of my things.” The bailo’s scribe confirmed the dragoman’s explanation, and the senate agreed to settle his overdue wages and the cost of the textiles. However, Genesino was given a prepayment of only one annual salary, an amount that he would have considered as insufficient in light of his request.56

Would-Be Writers The dragoman’s practice of translation informed his concepts of authorship. Translators themselves stress that their professional sensitivity for words shapes their ways of speaking and writing. “Translation, like practising scales, learning to listen, that never-ending fine-tuning of nuance,” states

210  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer Mireille Gansel, as translated by Ros Schwartz, makes translation “the clay from which I would fashion my own interior language.”57 Translation was such a central feature to Genesino that it was only a small step to turn rewriting into writing when authoring a self-narrative. In the Arabic tradition, in fact, to write a self-narrative could be understood as an act of translation that renders experiences into a text.58 The phrasing “done by me,” prominently introduced by Genesino into the title of his Balkan travelogue, thus accounts for him having undertaken this journey, having had these experiences, as well as having written the actual travelogue. The interpreter’s phrasing is a proud claim for authorship, a vocal response to the often blurred visibility of interpreters as authors. It was a speech act, just like a translation itself. Claiming this authorial position allowed Salvago to introduce an element of fiction, understood in the early modern notion of the word—as Natalie Zemon Davis states, in the “broader sense of the root word fingere, their forming, shaping, and molding elements: the crafting of a narrative.”59 The self-narrative thus allowed the dragoman to interpret the lived experience of a translator’s work, and to engage in storytelling to render such interpretations, experiences, and perspectives centred on the self visible in writing. Again, this would have been familiar to Genesino from his professional work. As an act of rewriting, translators apply authorial techniques concerned with the remoulding, “reshaping, and reconfiguring” of narratives.60 In translation, “fiction” is “the thin layer (or degree of slight separation?) of further fiction that the translation introduces and asks us to accept.” Decisions made over words, as Kate Briggs puts it, result in “the translator” being “necessarily invested in instating her own further fiction, and working to make it hold.” An interpreter, thus, does not only rewrite the words of others, but is a writing self, an interpreting author that tries to translate the crafting of a narrative into a coherent story. “The translator: writer of new sentences on the closest basis of others, producer of relations,” which turns the practice of translation into “a venturing of something new on the very close basis of something that already and persistently exists.” A translation is always “twice-written.” Briggs introduces the category of a translator as a “would-be writer” into the discussion of translation studies: “Translation is not […] a prelude to writing […], but already and from the outset its own means of engaging with and of doing it.” Translation is thus a form of “creative authorship,” which also informed Genesino’s approach to authoring a self-narrative. The dragoman was an interpreter, translator, and author alike who made strategic use of rewriting, as a technique, “working to make it [the performance of the self in a narrative] hold.”61

The (In)Visibility of Translators in the Venetian Colonial Archive The step from an interpreter who authors translations towards one who writes a self-narrative was small but significant: it reshaped the visibility

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  211 of the road dragoman’s self. As a writing author, Genesino opposed the working mechanisms that produced the blurred visibility of translators in the Venetian colonial archive. These documents detail the workings of the Venetian republic and its colonies, but also function as political instruments that shaped colonialism itself. The bailate’s dragomans were both participating in and subject to the workings of the colonial archive. The social and imperial contexts in which the dragoman’s profession took place, in fact, shaped or, at times, reduced if not erased his own visibility as a diplomatic persona interpreting words and authoring texts.62 One might read the Venetian archival record of Genesino as a lifetime remembered through “the politics of translation.” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak uses this terminology to reconsider the general demand for the translation of world feminist literature into English—a process of unification that erases the specificity and plurality of “the production of identity as self-meaning.”63 Similarly, the Venetian colonial archive blurred and sometimes obliterated the plurality of specific contexts, and the very visibility of translation as an often highly personal practice shaping the sense-making of the self for dragomans like Genesino. His activities as represented in the archival record do not capture the plurality that constituted his lived experiences of translation, and the sense of self ingrained into such a practice, as remembered through a lifetime of translation. Put differently, Genesino’s translation is deeply embedded in a political terrain of decision-making and power relationships. This terrain, however, stretches beyond the practice of translation, and touches upon the survival of information and perspectives, the degree of visibility of the dragoman’s self, and his professional activities. Venice’s processes of centralisation and empire-building turned the archive into a space that negotiated relationships of power—a paper battlefield to document and claim governmentality at the costs of words, voices, and perspectives to be lost in the mechanisms of their translation into institutionalised memory.64 The dragoman’s voice—his own perspective, as well as the need to account for other perspectives, as inherent in the practice of translation—was central to Venice’s claim for power in its dominions, but could simultaneously become blurred, excluded, distorted, or lost ­altogether. The republic’s chancellery had become “the heart of the state,” as Filippo de Vivo put it. But even an imperial agent like Genesino, so crucial to Venice’s power and himself such a refined expert in the manipulation of words, struggled to see himself adequately represented in the empire’s state of words.65 The achievements of grand dragoman Borisi, on the contrary, were widely present in the archival record. As the highest dragoman, Borisi was able to put his name on almost every translation of the most significant Ottoman texts—such as those linked to high Ottoman officials in Istanbul and the Balkans, correspondences with Ragusa, and texts about the sultan’s approach to the uskoks.66 The visibility of dragomans in the Venetian colonial archive was strongly linked to the hierarchical structure of the dragomanate itself. For interpreters

212  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer in the lower and middle ranks, authorship was hardly visible when texts entered the archival record. Girolamo Alberti, for instance, faithfully translated an Ottoman complaint about Armenian merchants’ loss of commodities into Italian, only to sign off at the end of the text in the third person singular: “translated by Girolamo Alberti.”67 Salvago competitor Bruti, meanwhile, used this one-line-paratext to introduce a much stronger reference to the self as author: “Translated by me, Barnabà Bruti.”68 Translators are experts in the use words—they had to decide how to use the single line available to them to signal their authorship as a (re)writing translator. A single word could thus radically change the visibility of a dragoman. This paratextual arrangement, in fact, echoed the dragomanate’s rigid hierarchy. While the grand dragoman signed at the top of the translated text, other dragomans signed at the bottom at the final page. The confirmation of the peace treaty by Contarini a few months after Genesino’s Balkan journey resulted in a flood of Ottoman documents, mostly regarding the upholding of peaceful contacts in the Veneto-Ottoman border zone, that Venice considered important enough to be stored in Italian in the archival record. Grand dragoman Borisi was clearly well-informed of the latest developments regarding the contact zone in spring 1619. He translated the sultan’s letters to the doge of Venice, the archduke of Austria, the kapudan pasha, the beglerbeg and defterdar of Bosnia, the sandjaks of Klis, the Peloponnese Peninsula, and Shkodër, as well as the kadis of Bar, Chlemoutsi, Durrës, and Ulcinj—not without prominently adding his personal signature, “translated by the Borisi,” to each headline.69 The prominent authorial rendering of his name, one might assume, granted both the translation and its author additional textual authority. Borisi clearly set the standards for other drago­ mans in terms of his own visibility as a translator-author, as well as in the prominence granted in the bailo’s reports. Lower-ranking dragomans, like Cristoforo Bruti and Giovanni Antonio Grillo, were usually given less to translate during this period.70 This was not the case, however, with the newly promoted Giovanni Battista Salvago. He translated the sultan’s writings to the sandjak of Delvina, Ioannina, and Shkodër, as well as archduke Ferdinand of Austria’s letter to the Ottoman sultan. Most importantly, Giovanni Battista translated the grand vizier’s and the kapudan pasha’s letters to the doge of Venice in spring and early summer 1619.71 This testifies to the versatility of Giovanni Battista’s language command, the speed of his translations, as well as the appreciation of his service by both the bailo and grand dragoman. Giovanni Battista seemed to have become a well-established dragoman after just a few months in office, a promotion which he largely owed to his brother’s placing the Balkan travelogue at the very heart of Venice’s political and archival institutions. And yet, Giovanni Battista—on the occasion where he did not forget to do so—signed his name at the bottom of his translated documents, making him less visible in the archives than his superiors. Translations, as situated with the hierarchy of the bailate, thus also came along with certain

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  213 constraints. “What I am doing,” Briggs writes, “shapes the kinds of sentences I am able to write.”72 Writing a travelogue allowed Genesino to overcome these constraints. So it was not by chance that Genesino followed the grand dragoman’s practice and signalled his authorship by placing his name at the very top of the travelogue: “Itinerary of the journey from Constantinople to Split and Trogir, done by me, Genesino Salvago, dragoman.”73 This prominence matched Genesino’s own experience of translation. Unlike the other dragomans at the bailate, the Salvagos did not require “the help of the hoca of the household” to complete their texts. Dragoman Melchior Spinelli, for instance, required such support even after “many years” in service.74 The writings of such translators, in fact, often entered the Venetian archival record without any reference to authorship altogether. Collaborative authorship was widely practised in the early modern period, particularly among the bailate’s lower-ranked translators. This made it easier for patrons, like the bailo, to monopolise such texts.75 To speed up translations, the bailate often distributed Ottoman texts among translators-in-training, who were then credited not as single authors but as a group of nameless translators. The November 1617 translation of the Bosnian merchants’ claims for compensation into franco, for instance, was done by “all the language students and dragomans, except by Borisi, so that they copied them [the letters] more quickly into Turkish thus also transporting them into our language.”76 Once entering the administrative machinery, the social contexts of the bailate’s archive, in which these translations survive until today, often further obscured the authorship of writing translators. The bailo usually simply referenced translators as “house dragomans,” who “translated an Ottoman text whose copy follows.” For these dragomans to become visible as authors, their work had to be marked as both a translation and a written text. “And here ends the translation,” one document states in 1590, “in the hand of language student Marc’antonio Borisi, which I, Giovanni Carlo Scaramelli, secretary, have put into the archival record unit of the present bailate.”77 Dragomans either relied on scribes, baili, or ambassadors to signal their work as such, or they had to employ fine-tuned strategies to make their texts count. One way was to brand translations as written texts, the result of an author’s work. The “politics of translation,” thus, did not only manifest in whose work was translated. The visibility of a translator’s oral or written achievements, and their role as authors, were subject to the political terrain in the Venetian bailate in Istanbul.78 The same can be observed in the archival contexts of Venetian colonial possessions along the Adriatic coast. Here, making oneself visible as a translating author was the only way to circumvent the pitfalls of anonymity. In May 1618, the Venetian governor of Kotor, Camillo Michiel, reported on the arrival of a certain Hassan Pasha from Istanbul. Michiel stated that Hassan Pasha was sent “to guard these borders” against “our Spanish ­enemies.” In the aftermath of the Split incident, this visit was hugely important to Venice. Hassan Pasha’s signed and sealed letter, containing his “warm and

214  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer sweet greetings” to “my dearest friend” Michiel, was a written trophy to the local Venetian authority, since it allowed Michiel to foreground the fruits of his own service. No wonder, then, that Michiel sent Hassan Pasha’s letter— both the Serbian original and the Italian translation—to Venice. It is also of no surprise that Michiel leaves out the name of the translator. Referencing the translator would have diluted the experience of reading Hassan Pasha’s words of appraisal for Michiel, who wished to see his service being recognised in Venice. Likewise, it is unsurprising that the translator tried to carve out a space for himself within the text—here, in the title of the written translation—to grant himself visibility as an author: Traducione d’unna litera, scritte dal Ill.mo Sig.r Hassan Bassa, all Ill.mo Sig.r Camillo Michiel R.r et Prou.r di Cataro riceuuta li 27 Maggio 1618 tradota per me Gie.mo Paltatich drag:no publico della lingua ceruia in questa citta di Cataro.79 If a translator did not claim authorial position, his name could easily be lost in the Venetian colonial archive. Interpreters, thus, made “the experience of translating and that of being translated,” as Umberto Eco calls it, and the politics involved in such acts.80 Interpreters in the Veneto-Ottoman contact zone thus made strategic use of what Theo Hermans calls the “illocutionary speech act” of signalling a text as a translation.81 Or in Briggs’ words: This is a translation! Is it? I feel sure that something would happen—some adjustment to your reading manner would be very likely to occur—if you were to hear me all of a sudden insisting that it is.82 By signalling their translations as such, dragomans manipulated the modalities of encounter of the text with its readers, calling for the reader’s attunement towards their work. This was a call for a more complex understanding of a text’s authorial position, a claim for recognition of their authorship. It was a powerful response to the fact that most translations in the VenetoOttoman contact zone entered the archival record without being signalled as such. Their content was summarised, paraphrased, and copied, thereby being divorced from the actual text written by the translator. In this way, information entered the archival record without any mention of the translator, which could result in potentially severe consequences for the career paths of interpreters in imperial service. As Natalie Rothman states, drago­ mans fuelled European knowledge about the Ottoman Empire to a much larger extent than usually recognised by modern researchers.83 In short, Venetian administrative practices decreased the visibility of translators’ work as an acknowledged form of authorship. The women active in the translators’ households are also rarely visible in the archival record; if they are, it is often in a negative light. In 1609,

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  215 for instance, the Venetian doge Leonardo Donà commented on Borisi’s big family (grossissima famiglia). The grand dragoman had five daughters, three of which had already been sent to Koper “to be fed and educated.” He was about to send his remaining two daughters there as well “so that he is freed of thinking of their needs and may continue without diversion of mind to serve our Signoria [Venice] well.” Convinced by Borisi’s reasoning, Venice provided him with 20 zecchini for each daughter. The bailate’s account books reference manifold expenses for gifts, Venetian luxury items in particular, given to dragomans’ wives; acts acknowledging, in Rothman’s words, “the centrality of women to the weaving of dense, highly endogamous dragomans’ dynasties,” yet also demonstrating the necessity to “connect dragomans’ womenfolk with a Venetian world of goods.”84 On other occasions, dragoman’s daughters are mentioned if their marriage proposals raised suspicion or disapproval among Venetian diplomats. For instance, Caterina Piron, a relative of Borisi’s former wife Alessandra, is in the Venetian archival record for filing a lawsuit against her brother-in-law Genesino, requesting to receive her dowry in return for divorcing his younger brother, Benetto. The bailo accepted [Genesino’s] argument that, since both Caterina and her spouse were Ottoman subjects, the case should be argued in front of an Ottoman magistrate rather than the bailo.85 Such examples illustrate both the degree to which women used administration for their own safe and the silencing with which the Venetian colonial archive affected even the household of imperial interpreters—despite the key role of women in embedding dragoman dynasties in the world of Venetian and Ottoman elite sociability.86 For road dragomans, this problem was even more pressing. Genesino’s professional practices were more grounded in the oral world of interpretation and information gathering, brokering, and processing. Being constantly on the move, road dragomans’ letters were issued at a great distance from the bailate, the social space which defined whose authorship was recorded when texts entered the archive. In his travelogue, for instance, Genesino mentions having written and forwarded anti-Ragusan letters to the bailo. However, in the bailo’s correspondence with Venice—the paper trial which makes up part of the Venetian colonial archive—this information is missing. Writing to Venice, the bailo discussed plenty of information about Ragusa without mentioning Genesino even once as an informant and author. To adapt from Lawrence Venuti, the bailo’s “exclusive right to copy and circulate a work […] strictly limits the translator’s control of the translated text.”87 The more people writing about such information, often Venetian authorities situated abroad, the blurrier its origins became. Dragomans were too often written out of the colonial archive, and this was even more true of dragomans on the road.

216  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer As an interpreter on the move, Genesino’s texts were particularly ­ulnerable to reappropriation and decontextualisation, which became v a problem once recognition became crucial to the family’s future in the increasingly competitive Istanbul dragomanate. He was in a precarious dilemma. Translations of Ottoman texts had to be accurate and produced quickly for the bailo to deem it worthy. But this would also mean, in a way, rendering the translator’s skills and voice invisible. “Good translations,” of course, call to mind fidelity to the original instead of being singled out as an original piece of writing. Venuti identifies this phenomenon as “the translator’s invisibility.”88 Translators themselves are aware that “it’s easy not to think about translation and translators […] while reading.” It is for that reason, to quote Briggs, that translation is “broadly considered to be the most ‘selfless’ art.”89 Some modern translators embrace and celebrate this approach. Natalie Ginzburg, for instance, states that “the writer must do everything she can to make herself disappear” when translating a text.90 As translation theorist Daniel Simeoni notes, however, it is the translatorial habitus itself which shapes an interpreter’s decision-making regarding authorship.91 In the shifting social world of the seventeenth-century bailate, the dragomans’ translatorial attitudes towards authorship changed. For Genesino, among others, it became even more crucial to make one’s work as a dragoman stand out. Textual and social work in performing personhood as an author, as when writing a self-narrative, was required to avoid disappearing as a dragoman. It is in this context that Genesino decided to author his travelogue. By composing a text dedicated to Contarini, Genesino used the self-narrative to escape the boundaries that kept the road dragoman’s work unseen in the Venetian colonial archive. This self-narrative opened an alternative path for Genesino’s words to enter the archival record, circumventing the established paper trail of the bailate. Authoring himself a text as a writing dragoman, Genesino would force visibility for himself and his family in diplomatic records. The dragoman could disrupt the quick churn of everyday interpretation in the bailate to spend more time reflecting and writing about himself, more time to think and rewrite as an author. Genesino’s self-narrative grew over the course of this months-long journey across the Balkans. The time he now had allowed him to translate—to render a word in another language, to stop, to test this new wording, to think, reflect, work out a new phrasing, and to stop and start testing all over again; and to rewrite—turning it into a text about himself as narrated through his work. On his journey, Genesino surely kept notes, perhaps in the form of a diary. These notes would have been kept in the family home rather than in the official archives and would be unlikely to survive. Moreover, like every translated text, Genesino’s travelogue is “twice-written.”92 The self-narrative that was presented to Contarini is the final product. It is a well-composed text (re)written in Trogir in May 1618, based on drafts and notes that have been lost to time. Written in a nice hand, Genesino clearly put all his

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  217 effort into the appearance of the text. Writing the travelogue, therefore, was the ­dragoman’s conscious means of granting himself more visibility, a carefully orchestrated decision anchored in the changing social world of translation.

The Precarity of Authorship: Giuliano Salvago in Bosnia Genesino’s decision to translate his experiences travelling the Balkans into a self-narrative addressed at the new ambassador, I argue, was also a response to events that took place two years prior.93 In 1616, the bailo sent Genesino’s brother, Giuliano Salvago, alongside with a powerful opponent of the Salvago family, Barnabà Bruti, to meet the governors of Bosnia and Buda, with stopovers in Belgrade and Lipova. This was an important diplomatic mission carried out during the first months of the Uskok War, a time of Habsburg-Venetian conflicts, fragile Veneto-Ottoman borders, and espionage across the Adriatic Sea and Southeastern Europe.94 The dragomans were to collect information, appease Veneto-Ottoman relationships across the Balkans, and generate Ottoman support for the Venetian cause against both the uskoks and the Austrian Habsburgs. The role of the dragomans as information gatherers, political brokers, and informal agents can hardly be underestimated in this context. To Giuliano, this appointment was a substantial career advancement. He was by then an experienced dragoman and the rising star of the Salvago ­family. He had entered the dragomanate by 1605 at the latest, and established himself soon as the most important brokering intermediary between the Venetian baili in Istanbul and the Venetian consuls in Aleppo. Also when travelling the Balkans in 1616, Giuliano gave a stellar performance. The intelligence gathered by Giuliano in Bosnia still proved useful for Venetian political information brokering two years later—the bailo remembered Giuliano reporting that Morat Begogli Mehemet, then the newly appointed sandjak of Bicchia, was generally favourable towards Venetian interests. In 1616, Giuliano included this and other precious information in a report upon his return to the bailate. Bailo Almorò Nani then constructed his own summary of the information Giuliano had gathered and sent it to Venice. In his report, Nani praised his own information gathering, leaving out adequate mention of the actual brokers of such precious knowledge. As such, the dragoman’s achievements were lost.95 Two years later, Genesino was in danger of being in the same position as his younger brother. Genesino was on a similarly important but precarious mission through the Balkans, writing in a similarly vulnerable position as an author. The context of institutional patronage and dependencies had not changed in those two years, given that Nani was still in office as the bailo. In fact, Nani, who was preparing for a much-desired return to Venice, was under considerable pressure to present further stories of success. He was about to become one of the longest-serving baili in office, seven years in

218  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer total. He felt that he was “becoming trapped at the Porte,” Eric Dursteler states, “isolated for too long from the centre of political life [in Venice].”96 Genesino’s suspicions came true when Nani, once again, only included a token mention of his arduous journey in the official correspondence to Venice. Here, the bailo self-fashioned as a diplomat who fulfilled his duty to Venice by sending an experienced road dragoman to accompany the new ambassador to Istanbul.97 The Venetian governor of Trogir, Gabriel Morosini, also behaved similarly when Genesino was penning his travelogue. The dragoman had met Morosini in the border zone of Trogir and Klis. The governor, as he details in a letter to Venice, was keen on gathering information about an imminent uprising against the sancak-beg of Klis. During a meeting with informants, Morosini learned that such an attack would comprise “not less danger for his [the sancak-beg’s] person.” He learned that morlachs had planned to attack the Veneto-Ottoman border zone of Klis, Trogir, and Šibenik. In Šibenik, they even intended to destroy the local fortress. Morosini acquired this information when meeting Genesino, who was an expert in collecting news on the ground. Yet, when forwarding this information in a letter to Venice, Morosini foregrounded his own efficiency in managing wide-ranging espionage networks, stating that he had “received this news from those confidants that I continually have in Turchia.”98 The governor had indeed received information from morlachs and the treasurer of the sancak-beg of Klis, but Genesino is the only informant from the heartland of the Ottoman Empire whom he is known to have met at the time.99 Regardless of the relevance of the intelligence that Genesino gathered in Ottoman Bosnia, what remains true is that Venetian authorities tended to leave his name out when channelling such news to the administrative apparatus to raise their own status. Morosini used the dragoman’s information to self-fashion as a dutiful Venetian official, by emphasising that he immediately informed the authorities of Šibenik and Venice.100 In their reports to Venice, Morosini and Nani hardly mention Genesino. His activities are anonymised. As is so often the case, the translator’s words are read as the words of others, which undermines the visibility of his own achievements and authorship. Genesino was in danger of facing the same elision Giuliano did in 1616, but the stakes were higher this time. Genesino had planned to use this journey to manage the legacy and future of the Salvago family business, and could not afford to make the same mistake as his younger brother did. Composing a self-­narrative dedicated directly to ambassador Contarini—and not the bailo—was a powerful way to circumvent the workings of the Venetian ­colonial archive. Travelling the same region soon after Giuliano, the elision would have been fresh on Genesino’s mind—especially since the Salvagos kept alive the memory of the reappropriated authorship of Giuliano’s report on Bosnia for years. A year after Genesino’s journey through Southeastern Europe,

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  219 Giuliano remembered what happened in 1616. A 1619 account of his own achievements as a road dragoman provides a taste of his lingering bitterness. To make his own service visible, he decided to write a petitionary letter to Venice instead of a report directed to the bailo, a move which allowed for a higher degree of visibility. Giuliano’s petition reads as a powerful claim for recognition. Beginning with “I, Giuliano Salvago, your most humble dragoman in Constantinople,” he listed his impressive achievements over the years. Giuliano claimed to have served Venice for 30 years, clearly counting his time as a trainee language student, since he was only made an official dragoman in 1605. Giuliano pointed out that he had first served the consul in Aleppo and then the bailo in Istanbul. In 1612, he was called “in a greatest rush” from Aleppo to Istanbul to support the bailo in managing “great turbulences” in Kotor. Giuliano immediately embarked on a voyage from Syria to the capital of the Ottoman Empire and onwards to Montenegro, from where he sent “the most important reflections” to Venice. Here, Giuliano clearly references earlier writings that entered the Venetian archive, evoking a textual assemblage that helped him stage the persona of a diplomatic interpreter. Such service was followed by a number of other journeys, especially in times “of war.” Above all, Giuliano highlighted the significance of his Balkan journey in 1616. By order of the Venetian collegio and the bailo, the petition read, Giuliano travelled Bosnia and Dalmatia to maintain negotiations, and to hand over “Turkish letters” to the most important pashas and sandjaks of the border zone. He also references a “relazione [end-of-mission report] that I sent in writing to Your Serenity [Venice]” three years earlier— clearly aware that the authorship of that report had become largely invisible upon its translation into the paper machinery of the Venetian overseas empire. In his petition, Giuliano felt the urge to repeat details of his 1616 journey, emphasising that it led him to the sancak directly neighbouring archduke Ferdinand of Austria. Going on this journey was clearly dangerous, since it took place during the Veneto-Habsburg War. Giuliano then continued travelling to Zadar to hand over information gathered during this trip to Venetian authorities. While travelling the Balkans, Giuliano had also negotiated with Bosnian merchants as well as merchants from Aleppo trading with Venice along the Adriatic coast. “With my close friendship with some residents of Aleppo,” Giuliano claims, “I have not failed a single day to be a useful and fertile servant of Your Serenity.”101 Without penning such a self-narrative with this information and sending it directly to Venice—­ circumventing the bailate’s apparatus of processing information—the dragoman’s activities would have remained largely invisible. It seems that both Giuliano and his older brother Genesino had learned from earlier mistakes in handling Bosnian travels. Instead of dedicating a relazione to the bailo, as Giuliano did in 1616, Genesino decided to compose a lengthy itinerario to address the newly appointed ambassador instead.

220  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer

Rewriting the Self: Ars Apodemica Genesino Salvago in Belgrade Questions of genre mattered. Wise decision-making in this regard empowered the dragoman to situate himself within a textual tradition that allowed for a different degree of authorial visibility. More and more printed ­anthologies circulated in sixteenth-century Venice, lending authority to travel writing, creating a market, and moulding genre conventions.102 In contemporary travel theory (ars apodemica), a well-written travelogue frames the self in ways that foreground expertise—as it is in the case of Genesino, who clearly wished to showcase his own expertise as a road dragoman. “Travel methods contain instructions on what to observe, how to make observations and how to record and evaluate the information gained.”103 Genesino clearly adhered to such instructions to turn the self-narrative into a testimony of his own knowledge of how to travel and how to write about a journey in ways deemed appropriate when translating experiences into a text. Contemporary travel theory requires the author of a travelogue to consider the object, means, and form of a journey; to consult and a­ ppropriate textual authorities on the region; and to provide information on the place, its inhabitants, local specificities like landscapes and climate, historic and contemporary buildings, and noteworthy stories (Figure 31). If the purpose of the text is to provide other travellers with practical advice—like the intended recipient of Genesino’s travelogue, the new ambassador—authors are expected to cover the preparations for and the completion of the journey, as well as detail appropriate behaviour during and after such a journey, including relevant financial information.104 Genesino covered all these subjects in meticulous and subtle ways. The dragoman’s description of Belgrade, for instance, begins with details on most important sites in the flourishing city. Belgrade has provided travellers with shelter for centuries, Genesino states, and is a “very famous city, strong and well kept at the banks of the Danube River; a trading place abundant in everything, guarded by a large number of militia and cavalry with a lot of artillery.”105 Indeed, Ottoman subjects believed Belgrade was, like Baghdad, a “paradisiac” city, while historians like Aleksandar Fotić and Alexandre Popović have described seventeenth-century Belgrade as the principal military and economic centre of the northern part of the Ottoman Balkans. Situated at the junction of roads and waterways connecting Istanbul and Vienna, as well as the Adriatic and Ionian Seas with Hungarian and Romanian lands, the city developed rapidly and counted about 90,000 inhabitants in the 1660s.106 To capture such ­metropolitan vibrancy, Genesino adheres to classical ars apodemica guidelines, covering information on the region and the town, its names, inhabitants, and history, as well as the local rivers, buildings, and the city’s government. Genesino’s topographical description of Belgrade, in fact,

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  221

Figure 31   Apodemic knowledge scheme. Nathan Chyträus, VARIORUM IN EUROPA ITINERUM DELICIÆ (…) (s.l.: Christophorum Corvinum, 1606). ©Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich, L.eleg.m.200.

222  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer

Figure 32  B  elgrade in Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia Vniversale (…) (Cologne: Arnoldo Byrckmanno, 1575). ©Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich, Res/2 Geo.u.62.

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  223 references some of the most popular contemporary Italian prints of the city (Figure 32). In writing about Belgrade’s location at the Sava River’s junction with “the main river” Danube, as well as the city’s fortress, walls, and its location on a hill, Genesino cites the prints and printed translations of Abraham Ortelius, Marcos de Lisboa, Paolo Giovio, and Sebastian Münster, which further establishes his self-narrative’s textual authority.107 Genesino also provides an account of what he considered to be the city’s most ingenious architectural buildings, watermills situated at the banks of the Danube River, and lists the local Ottoman authority’s wrongdoings in dealing with Bosnian soldiers.108 The dragoman also skilfully appropriates the ars apodemica narrative frame to fit the scope of his travelogue, providing information on the “various caravanserais” that connect the city with Istanbul, singling out practical advice on cooks, horses, provisions, local prices, and the best times to travel.109 In his self-narrative, Salvago demonstrated his versatility in the ­“methodology of travel.”110 He consciously adhered to established apodemic guidelines throughout his travelogue, not just when describing towns, but also the convents, landscapes, rivers, ruins, as well as when detailing inhabitants’ religious belonging.111 Other seventeenth-century Ottoman travelogues, adhered to some of the same apodemic principles.112 Genesino also engaged with stories that he had heard or read about, for instance, when writing about the “famous landscape” near Zemun. This had the effect of personalising knowledge, corroborating authenticity, and situating the dragoman’s writing self into a textual tradition, which further strengthened his authorial position. As the early modern self was woven in its social relations, authorship was crafted by shaping a text’s embeddedness in the wider body of ­literature.113 It was translation itself that equipped the drago­man with the skills to manage such citational practices. In his everyday translations, Genesino had learned to think with other texts, to rewrite the words of others and to use them in new contexts, and to reappropriate these words within his own writing. Translators, in fact, may consider “all books” as being “made from other books and so, in their way, all books are translations in one way or another.”114 Early modern authors of travelogues were expected to frame the narrative self within exactly this kind of translatory and textual ­companionship. In early modern terms, authors were benchmarked against their ingenuity in imitation and emulation.115 Rewriting the words of ­others was the core activity of translators. Adhering to apodemic guidelines, therefore, would require Genesino to build on his everyday rewriting as a translator. If writing subjects had to consider their travels in light of a wider j­ourney through texts as integral to the concept of authorship, road dragoman Genesino would have had the best possible training for this. For decades, when transferring a source text or conversation into a translation, Genesino would have the skills to consider the reader’s foreknowledge, ­preconceptions, and expectations, or in other words, imitating words in a

224  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer thick web of intertextual and interpersonal relations.116 Choosing to write his self-narrative as a travelogue was a decision grounded in the dragoman’s world of translatory practice. It was, as noted above, a decision that helped Genesino develop visibility as an author by building on his practice and knowledge of translation. Genesino decided for a genre that made an ­inherent claim for ­eyewitnessing and thus lend the author a particular visibility.117 Repositioning this self-narrative within its wider textual assemblage also highlights that the often and rightly criticised modern distinction between authorship and translation—“whereas authorship is generally defined as originality, self-expression in a unique text, translation is derivative, neither self-expression nor unique: it imitates another text”—must be itself historicised when studying early modern translators’ texts.118 Genesino’s self-­ narrative itself, one might argue, was an achievement in translation.

Considering Audience and Markets Contemporary travel theory did not constrain Genesino’s writing. On the contrary, ars apodemica provided the translator-author with guidelines to  adhere to and words to lean on. It allowed Genesino to take the time to write a text, different to the frenetic pace of translation at the bailate in Istanbul. This pace is evident in a document translated by Barnabà Bruti. In the translation of an Ottoman complaint accusing the Venetian bailo of altering established customs traditions, Bruti inserted words in between the lines he had missed in his first draft, and crossed out grammatical errors. For example, he had to change prettendendolo tù to tu lo prettendi, and even got the date wrong translating the 17 Ramadan 999 AH into July 1 instead of July 9, 1591.119 Writing his travelogue, Genesino could partake in much slower (re)writing processes that granted reflections about the self and its rendering into a narrative a higher degree of prominence. The decision to write a self-narrative in the form of a travelogue, then, was also a decision to make time to carefully craft narratives about the self, and allow for a greater degree of investment in the craft that quick translations could not provide.120 Travel theory also allowed Genesino’s text to enter a booming print market, which itself drove Venice’s colonial expansionist agenda.121 ­ As rewriting, translation practice involves taking into account that the audience of a translated text is not the same as the audience of the source text. In other words, the dragoman was skilled in considering different readers and their potential expectations in his compositions. Genesino would have applied the same skills in writing his self-narrative. Given the popularity of printed travelogues and apodemic manuals, Genesino must have thought that Contarini would be familiar with the genre. There was a vital demand for travelogues, both in print and in handwriting, and framing the narrative self in terms laid out by the ars apodemica, thus, also ensured that there was an audience that cared about Genesino writing about himself.

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  225 The Salvago dragomans were well-acquainted with “an informal market of writings about the Ottoman Turks in European languages” flourishing in the diplomatic world of Istanbul—especially since their Ottoman counterparts, official sultanic interpreters (tercüman) engaging with foreign diplomatic residents, acted as key players in this market of information.122 Ottoman interpreter Yunus Beg, for instance, had co-authored a treatise on the Ottoman Empire’s governmental institutions together with Alvise Gritti, which was printed in 1537. Yunus Beg also composed an influential manual on letter writing. In fact, Genesino’s grandfather, Genesino the Elder, was a close acquaintance of this Ottoman interpreter of Greek ­origin. Both collaborated, for instance, in the exchange of diplomatic gifts. Yunus Beg was popular in Venetian diplomatic circles, and was praised for his affection towards Venice in 1540. He even loaned a substantial 20,000 sultanini to the bailo. Genesino the Elder served testimony when the bailo repaid the sum to Yunus Beg—and not by chance, since both the Venetian and Ottoman dragoman shared a code of professional ethics.123 A few years later, an interpreter named Mahmud—born in Bavaria, taken captive during the Battle of Mohács, and later made a career as an established interpreter at the Ottoman court—composed a translated, (re)written “Chronicle of Hungary” (Tarih-i Ungurus) which aimed to contextualise and legitimise the sultan’s Hungarian campaigns.124 Another Hungarian-born Ottoman interpreter serving the sultan, Murad Beg, composed an Ottoman religious treatise about the merits of Islam over Christianity in 1556, which he then translated into Latin for wider circulation between 1567 and 1569. Murad Beg also authored a hymn in Ottoman, Latin, and Hungarian, as well as a translation of an Ottoman chronicle commissioned by the secretary of the Habsburg imperial ambassador in Istanbul. In 1559, Murad Beg composed an Ottoman summary of Cicero’s De Senectute, entitled “Praise of Age” (kitab der medh-i piri or lode della vecchiaia). The fictional dialogue praising the virtues of old age featured former sultans Murad II and Mehmed II as protagonists. Murad Beg’s work was commissioned by Venetian bailo Marino di Cavallo, who wished to present it 65-year-old Sultan Suleiman.125 The Venetian ambassadorial milieu in Istanbul was thus a market for dragomans’ literary writings, with the Salvagos becoming increasingly involved in the cultural dynamics of the production of the written word.

Rewriting the Self: Storytelling Giovanni Battista Salvago in Venice Of the Salvagos, it was Giovanni Battista who was most prominently involved in this ambassadorial market for dragomans’ writings. During a lengthy stay in Venice between 1622 and 1624, while awaiting the recovery of new bailo Michele Foscarini, Giovanni Battista took pen to paper to narrate the most recent political upheavals of the Ottoman court: the regicide of Sultan Osman II, who had been taken captive and killed by revolting janissaries.

226  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer The text was intended to be both a preparation for Foscarini’s period in office and a means of self-fashioning. The manuscript, entitled Le riuolutioni Ottomane principiate dalla Vita infortunata, et morte infelice di Sultan Osman figliolo di Sultan Acmad, e nipote del Sultan Mustafà al present Rè de Turchi (“The Ottoman Revolutions precipitated by the Unfortunate Life and Unhappy Death of Sultan Osman, Son of Sultan Ahmet, and Nephew of Sultan Mustafa, the Present King of the Turks”) is a remarkable text, not least for its subtle narrative strategies. Giovanni Battista uses direct speech to foreground the narrator as witness, and provides a detailed account of different protagonists’ perspectives which evoked “a deep intimacy with the metropolitan elite milieu of the actions.” He also references Italian concepts for Ottoman terms with his intended readership in mind, and interprets the events in a way that legitimises the janissaries’ intervention. These narrative strategies, Rothman argues, point towards Giovanni Battista’s deep intellectual investments into the crafting of this text.126 Rothman adds that the dragoman “at least adapted if not verbatim translated Tuği,” a janissary who himself had composed an influential report chronicling the regicide, by “using both the Ottoman chronicler’s overall perspective and specific legitimizing strategies, yet without ever acknowledging his sources.” She calls this “a case of ‘unacknowledged translation’,” a “conceit [that] goes beyond the standard early modern laxity in citation practice.”127 Given that he was on one of his first important assignments in Venice, Giovanni Battista would have readily embraced this strategy to further lend authority to his own narrative, and in doing so, aid his self-fashioning as an author. One might also think of such appropriation as a dragoman’s response to being himself appropriated by others. As detailed above, the Salvagos’ own texts were often used without acknowledgement by Venetian officials. But this does not have to be understood as a case of intellectual fraud, since the early modern translator’s authorial position was complex. Tuği, a Belgrade-born janissary, called himself a meddah, which translates as both a “panegyrist” and a “public storyteller.” Baki Tezcan argues that Tuği was both. In fact, contemporaries considered Tuği’s chronicle less a written text to be translated than a “story” (hikaye) to be read aloud. Tezcan calls it a “performance-text” that was meant to be told and retold, altered, added to, and updated for each performance.128 Giovanni Battista’s narrative approach to a story, which he might have heard in Istanbul elite circles, would account for the strong overlap between its interpretation of events and the social contexts of its original audience. It also points to the translator’s own understanding of the concept of authorship that this text required, as well as the specific (re)writing practices it entailed. Here, the translator was acting as storyteller—an authorial concept that closely aligned with the Salvagos’ understanding of translation as a communicative act, the rendering of wordings. As Briggs states, translators borrow, think with, and lean on other texts to test whether their rewordings work. As  writers, translators are “necessarily invested in instating [their]

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  227 own further fiction, and working to make it hold.”129 A translator’s text “works,” thus, if the writer manages to enact a text’s “ability to exchange experiences,” as Walter Benjamin defines the profession of a storyteller: “The ability to relate his life,” thus, “the communicability of experience” is the joint business of storytellers and translators.130 As an everyday experience, translation ­enabled the Salvagos to engage with “creative authorship.”131 Giovanni Battista, as an oral interpreter and translating writer, followed the call of Tuği’s story to conceptualise authorship as storytelling. His conscious efforts to craft a narrative is evidenced by additions in his own hand in the surviving draft of the manuscript, as well as the addition of his signature. The dragoman usually signed his translations with “translated [tradotto] [by] Giovanni Battista Salvago.”132 However, he signed both surviving manuscript versions of “The Ottoman Revolutions” by using riferiva “to describe his role in the production of the text,” which “implicitly distinguishes it from other texts he translated and signed as such.”133 As an expert in linguistic nuances, the translator would have carefully considered such a change, especially if it pertained to the final line of the text and was the only verb accompanying his signature. It is unlikely that the text would have held up against the dragoman’s high standards of translation—composing the text in Venice meant not having direct access to Tuği’s story, which the dragoman would have heard in Istanbul months prior. To Giovanni Battista, the verb riferire would capture all the nuances of his writing activity. A ­contemporary dictionary equates “to tell [raccontare], to narrate [narrare], [and] to report [riferire],” ascribing riferire a much wider, overarching portfolio of meanings:134 referre, v. ridire, riportare, riferire, rapportare, recare, apportare, fare, importare, rilevare, levare, rappresentare, dire, ripresentare, simigliare, rinunziare, rassembrare, raccontare.135 As Filippo de Vivo highlights, “unlike the English equivalent ‘reporting’,” riferire, in the Renaissance Venetian use of the word, “was a verb associated with speaking.”136 It is likely that Giovanni Battista had presented the story in oral form first, maybe to the recovering Foscarini, or to other Venetian noble families. What is certain is that his choice of the word is tellingly out of line with his own tradition of signing his translations. “It is his infidelity,” as Jorge Luis Borges eloquently puts it, “his happy and creative infidelity, that must matter to us.”137 Introducing this single word allowed him to claim a different authorial position. Giovanni Battista, whose own practice of translation was grounded in dealing with both the spoken and written words, must have deliberately chosen this verb to conceptualise his authorship as a storyteller’s act. In his narration of Osman II’s regicide, Giovanni Battista also makes another significant alteration in the very first line. The dragoman introduces the events as a new climax “in the histories [Historie] and the annals [Annali]

228  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer of the Grand Signors and Ottoman monarchs.”138 This choice of words was not coincidental. In an earlier draft, the dragoman had simply referred to the “histories [historie] and lives [vite]” of the Ottoman ­sultans.139 By ­replacing “lives” with “annals” and capitalising “Histories” and “Annals,” the ­dragoman evoked Francesco Sansovino’s seminal print on the lives and deeds of the Ottoman sultans, which was first published in 1571 and updated in 1600.140 Four years after his brother’s conscious attempt to s­ituate a self-narrative within the popular genre of travel literature, Giovanni Battista carefully situated his own writing within the well-established, booming turcica genre to showcase his expertise on matters pertaining to politics in Istanbul, which, in his own words, “for a long time has been the theatre of victories and triumphs and, once again, became the stage of tragedies and spectacles.”141 These words were as true for the city’s Ottoman court as for the bailate—for a dragoman to manage triumphs and tragedies, the careful manipulation of the written word was key.

Claiming Expertise in Ottoman-Persian Affairs Authoring this text allowed Giovanni Battista to self-fashion as an expert on the inner workings of Ottoman state affairs. Several undated texts related to “The Ottoman Revolutions” survive, in which the dragoman showcases his expertise on Ottoman political and religious issues.142 The three-page text entitled “On the Form of the Litanies of the Turks” was labelled as a translation in his signature.143 The dragoman also wrote an eight-page piece on “The Turks’ Institution of Crying Out on their Towers,” which he originally planned to call “On the Turks’ Rites of Praying,” as well as the seven-page treatise “On the Oration of the Turks.” Interestingly, the dragoman signed the latter as “Giovanni Battista Salvago interpreted [this] [interpretava],” showing that he wished to highlight that this was not a translation, but a form of authorship that involved a different degree of interpretation.144 In these texts, Giovanni Battista addresses Islamic religious practices, a prominent topic in the popular turcica prints at that time. Authors of such prints, Almut Höfert shows, structured the description of the Ottoman Empire according to the categories of court, government, and military, customs, and religion.145 During his two-year stay in Venice, the dragoman would have had plenty of opportunity to familiarise himself with widely circulating turcica prints. He knew there was high demand for such prints, and the opportunities that writing such texts would bring for its author. Reading turcica prints, the dragoman would also gain a sense of what was commonly known about the Ottomans in Venice, as well as the expectations one would be faced with if one were to write about such matters. Following such established practices in the presentation of ethnographic knowledge about the Ottoman Empire, Giovanni Battista took care to emphasise what he could bring to early modern print culture. He seemingly wanted to show

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  229 his knowledge of the inner workings of Ottoman affairs, but did not miss the opportunity to highlight his own linguistic proficiency. Giovanni Battista ends the treatise on Muslim prayers, for instance, with a note highlighting that “the orations of the Turks are composed with Arabic words and phrases as for the most of those of the Christians are with Latin.”146 Even a text on religious matters could be used to hint at the dragoman’s proficiency in Arabic and his overall ingenuity. A closer look at Giovanni Battista’s texts on religious matters reveals their close association with contemporary Ottoman politics. The texts ­contextualise the Sunni-Shi’a debate that underpinned the spiralling conflicts of the Ottoman and Safavid Empires. Islamic discourse was crucial in such contexts, with bureaucrats, dignitaries, officials—the şeyhülislam and religious elite in particular—adjusting, twisting, spinning, and moulding such narratives in the 1630s and 1640s to articulate conflict and collaboration, and discord and unity during times of Ottoman-Safavid war and peace.147 When writing about religious affairs, Giovanni Battista engages with contemporary Ottoman debates to present himself as an expert whose knowledge would enlighten Italian readers on Muslim imperial politics. In the first decades of the seventeenth century, Shah Abbas I launched several military conquests on the Ottoman frontier, regaining much of the Safavid losses in the preceding century. Young Giovanni Battista, after joining the bailate’s service as a language student in 1607, would have followed such developments with curiosity. It was only in 1618, the same year Genesino travelled the Balkans, that the Safavid-Ottoman conflict had come to a provisional end after a considerable Ottoman defeat. Tumult ensued again in 1623, however, with Safavid Persia invading Ottoman Baghdad, looting sanctuaries and assassinating Sunnis.148 In light of such political developments, Giovanni Battista authored a variety of texts on Ottoman-Safavid affairs. “On the Death of Muhammad, Prophet of the Turks,” for instance, is a compiled translation of a manuscript “which Turks call ‘The Lives of the Holy Fathers and Martyrs’.” Covering Muhammad’s succession, the dragoman discusses the main reasons for the Islamic community’s split into Sunnites and Shi’ites.149 In two further translations, Giovanni Battista links such religious debates more explicitly with the Ottoman-Safavid conflict. One of these is titled “Translation of a Fetva, that is a Legal Response, by a Mufti, the Pontiff of the Mohammedans, against the Persians, in Justification of the War that the King of the Turks is legitimately Making against the King of Persia.” By labelling Ottoman military action against Persia as a just war, Giovanni Battista takes a distinct Istanbul metropolitan perspective that favoured the official reading of the royal court. He added a brief note to explain that the Ottoman document was originally issued under the reign of Sultan Suleiman—thereby highlighting both the longevity of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict and the institutional memory of the dragoman resulting from the Salvagos’ long experience in Venetian service.150

230  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer Another 16-page manuscript, entitled “Translation of a Letter of Reproach Against the Persians, Directed at the Teacher of the King of Persia, Written by an Unknown Turkish Author,” which highlights the translator’s far-reaching networks in accessing manuscripts that were circulating at the time. Giovanni Battista annotated the margins of this translated letter with comments to provide the reader with explanations. The marginalia identify the imperial protagonists mentioned in the letter, and provide comments on the life of Muhammad, Islamic law, the hajj, as well as explanations of Quranic understandings of angels, paradise, and women’s use of veils. In Giovanni Battista’s view, this translation needed comments to be accessible to an Italian readership, and he clearly considered himself capable of providing such comments.151 Rendering explanations as marginalia highlighted his expertise, and granted him a different degree of visibility as an author. The dragoman himself preferred literal over sense-to-sense translations—calling to mind Vladimir Nabokov’s famous phrase, “I want ­translations with copious footnotes”—and therefore used marginalia to comment on much more than the wider meanings of words.152 These comments helped him “compensat[e] for losses” in translation, or the difficulty of choosing corresponding Italian terms—what José Ortega y Gasset called the “misery of translation.” At the same time, the comments introduce a critical distance, laying bare what Ortega y Gasset termed “the joy of translation.”153 In addition to making information accessible, the marginalia allowed Giovanni Battista to switch his authorial position from rewriting to writing, showcasing his role as both a translator and an author. Since none of these texts are dated, however, further information on the contexts of their production is lost. Giovanni Battista might have collated these manuscripts during his stay in Venice between 1622 and 1624, if so perhaps to prepare bailo Foscarini for his duties ahead.154 In any case, the arena of translation functioned “as a site for learning” and allowed the young dragoman to self-fashion as a knowledgeable expert.155 It is also possible that these manuscripts were produced much earlier. By 1612, bailo Simone Contarini already noted that the then-trainee dragoman had an inclination towards humanist and philosophical writings—implying that Giovanni Battista did not just read but also wrote such texts.156 From the very beginning of his training as a dragoman, therefore, Giovanni Battista understood translation not as “a prelude to writing […], but already and from the outset its own means of engaging with and of doing it.”157 Firmly situating the dragoman’s self in the spheres of translation and authorship would have had a wider meaning for the Salvagos in the 1610s and 1620s. In this way, Salvago dragomans could claim and establish spheres of interest—a kind of division of labour, expertise, and professional specialisation—within the family business. The head of the family, Genesino, had widely travelled the Balkans; Giuliano was particularly knowledgeable in Syrian affairs, especially if linked to Aleppo, and had conducted first successful journeys to the Levant; aspiring Giovanni Battista could use his texts

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  231 on the Sunni-Shi’a debate and the Ottoman-Safavid conflict to self-fashion as an expert on Ottoman-Persian matters. In this way, Giovanni Battista carved out a path of a promising career at the bailate, especially in light of ongoing military conflicts between the two empires. Writing was one way for a translator to progress in the dragomanate, as well as to further entrench the wider family in the bailate. “Who we choose to translate is political,” it has been argued, where translation can also be understood “as a form of activism.”158 For aspiring dragoman Giovanni Battista, authoring texts as a translator was a means to actively shape his professional career. Being in his early thirties at the time of Genesino’s Balkan journey, Giovanni Battista would have surely employed this strategy in conversation and collaboration with the oldest family member, the almost 60-year-old Genesino. There are indeed good reasons to consider 1618, the year of Genesino’s Balkan journey, key in Giovanni Battista’s self-fashioning as the bailate’s most promising expert in Persian affairs. In that year, prayers were held in the mosques of Istanbul for the success of the Ottoman army fighting against Safavid Persia. At the same time, Safavid envoys arrived in Venice, together with Armenian and Persian merchants. Venice agreed to provide substantial financial support for their returning journey—surely also to generate further channels of trust and trade with the Near East in light of the increasing instability of the Balkan commercial route after the incident of Split. In addition, Venice agreed to channel Persian silks via Aleppo and Istanbul to Portugal on behalf of the Spanish monarch.159 Thus, commercial ties strengthened with the prospect of economic profits and diplomatic exchange. In Istanbul, the Salvagos would have observed such developments attentively. Based on Giuliano’s experiences in Aleppo, the Salvagos knew that Venetian commercial ties would result in the rise of specialised interpreters. When Genesino travelled Southeastern Europe, news of the recent death of an esteemed brother of the Safavid shah arrived in Istanbul. The letter was given to no one else besides Giovanni Battista, who translated and signed the document—one of the very rare occasions when the dragoman signed a translation up top in the headline instead of at the very end of the document. The dragoman proudly inserted his own name this way: “Translation of the letter of Halil Pasha, grand vizier general in Persia, written to the most excellent signor bailo, Almorò Nani, translated by myself, Giovanni Battista Salvago.”160 The fact that this important letter was given to Giovanni Battista and not, say, to the grand dragoman, illustrates that the dragoman’s self-fashioning as an expert in Persian affairs was successful and widely accepted in the bailate by 1618. Therefore, by the time Genesino travelled the Balkans, Giovanni Battista had already made a name for himself as being knowledgeable on Persian matters. Genesino’s journey to Venice, in fact, was also important in cementing his brother’s reputation. Just weeks after Giovanni Battista had finished translating Halil Pasha’s letter in Istanbul, Genesino, as noted above, submitted a petition in Venice in which he highlighted his brother’s

232  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer command of the Persian language.161 In the following years, much of the assessment of Safavid-Ottoman relationships as presented by returning baili to the Venetian senate was based on Giovanni Battista’s interpretations. In 1627, for instance, Giorgio Giustinian announced that Abbas I should be considered “the greatest and most powerful prince among Muslims,” and that “there was never a prince who knew better the ways and o ­ pportunities to negotiate war and peace with the Turks.” The bailo also discussed the impact of “the internal revolutions of the death of Sultan Osman” on current military developments, referencing verbatim the title of Giovanni Battista’s 1622 treatise on the subject.162 The dragoman’s text must have circulated in diplomatic circles over years, perhaps in different copies, and the bailo clearly valued the dragoman’s text and expertise even half a decade later. Establishing and building on the union of translation and authorship, as the Salvagos did, was clearly a means to frame the dragoman’s visibility, recognition, appreciation, and expertise. Visibility as an author, in other words, helped Giovanni Battista pave the way for a future career.

Rewriting the Self: Relazioni Giovanni Battista Salvago in North Africa Over the next few years, Giovanni Battista would further employ ­self-­narratives to craft a diplomatic persona. In 1624, his two-year sojourn in Venice finally came to an end. In a fortunate turn of events, Contarini— to whom Genesino’s 1616 travelogue was dedicated—was elected doge of Venice. Now, the power of Genesino’s self-narrative as a means to negotiate family advancement would be in full force. The new doge would have remembered the report and his conversations with Genesino on the arduous journey from Venice to Istanbul. Contarini would have had fond memories of the elderly dragoman, whose reports helped equip him for the challenging role of ambassador in the Ottoman Empire—the success of which propelled his later rise to the dogate.163 Since Genesino had written the Balkan travelogue with the intention to advancing the career of his brother, it is most likely that he would have praised Giovanni Battista in conversation with the nobleman and future doge. Upon arrival in the bailate, in fact, Contarini would have encountered Giovanni Battista himself, witnessing the dragoman’s diligence and commitment. In short, Contarini would have already heard Giovanni Battista’s promise by 1618. And six years later, the dragoman knew how to bring himself to the mind of the new doge. He authored two panegyrical texts, an epigraph and a sonnet, in praise of Contarini’s dogate. This culture of praise as a means to widen networks of patronage was familiar to the dragoman from both Ottoman and Venetian scribal cultures, and Giovanni Battista did so with success.164 In October 1624, Contarini appointed the dragoman special envoy to North Africa to negotiate the release of 20 Venetians who had been taken captive in Dalmatia a few months earlier. In the certificate of

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  233 appointment, Contarini references information sent by the baili of Istanbul, stating “the affection with which you [Giovanni Battista] work in the services of our republic.” In addition, Contarini praised the interpreter’s command in “reading, writing, and speaking the Turkish language.”165 The doge thus believed Giovanni Battista possessed the necessary practical skills, ­diplomatic ­sensitivity, and overall ingenuity to negotiate this ­sensitive issue—not just in the capacity of an interpreter, but as a quasi-­ambassador. On his journey, Giovanni Battista had to attend audiences, besides negotiate, translate, and engage with Venetian and non-Venetian diplomatic residents in numerous locations, including Genoa, Florence, Naples, and Messina.166 In this capacity, he acted as an official diplomatic representative of the ­republic—a monumental achievement in the career of Genesino’s brother. Writing a self-narrative about his time in office, again, was key for the Salvago dragoman. Like other ambassadors, Giovanni Battista had to present a report (relazione) to the senate upon his return to Venice. The diplomatic report closely follows established genre conventions of the relazioni and ars apodemica. Giovanni Battista discusses the ransom negotiations, inserts a translation of the Algerian regent’s response to Venice while sending the original document to the bailo in Istanbul, and includes a more general description of Northern Africa. He also attaches descriptions and drawings of Algiers, Tunis, and Bizerte, as well as a discussion of Venetian slaves living in Algiers and Tunis.167 Rothman argues that the report reveals “how the author sought to fashion himself as an educated metropolitan Venetian by simultaneously claiming insiders’ knowledge of the Ottoman world and distancing himself from it.” On the one hand, Giovanni Battista’s approach testifies to “a distinctly metropolitan Ottoman perspective.”168 The dragoman’s disparaging reading of North African ethnic diversity, for instance, clearly marks the author as belonging to an urban elite of Ottoman Istanbul. On the other hand, Giovanni Battista’s report is grounded in the wish to make cultural analysis fruitful for Venetian imperial interests— surely signalling the usefulness of the information he gathered, and proving his success in his new ambassadorial role. The dragoman’s heightened awareness of Ottoman and North African ethnic diversity, Rothman argues, had an impact on later Venetian imperial officials’ analysis of the Islamic world. In the Istanbul bailate of the late 1630s, Giovanni Battista introduced secretary Angelo Alessandri to Ottoman ethnic diversity.169 Yet contrary to other contemporary reports, most notably Leo Africanus’s popular description of North Africa, Salvago denies the region a degree of cultural civility. Giovanni Battista’s unrestrained use of the narrative frame of “Turkish barbarity” and “despotism” is surely premised on his reading of turcica prints during his two-year stay in Venice, which included such tropes to incite anti-Ottoman resentments. Giovanni Battista’s use of these tropes conceals his own status as an Ottoman subject, and allows him to self-fashion instead as both a Venetian diplomatic persona and “a learned man of letters.”170 The dragoman’s

234  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer textual strategy “reveals […] the extent to which he trusted his Venetian readers’ predisposition to accept such a biblically and classically inflected account of Turkish ethnogenesis, and his willingness to tell them just what they expected to hear.”171 This points to Giovanni Battista’s skills in translating the self into a narrative depending on expectations faced by a specific audience, in this case the Venetian senate. As rewriting, translation is concerned with establishing relations and thus embedded in a web of patronage. “Patronage,” as André Lefevere highlights in his theory of translation as rewriting, “is ­usually more interested in the ideology of literature than in its poetics,” and it seems that Giovanni Battista knew how to cater to the broader social politics of translation.172 At the same time, the dragoman’s prominent use of narratives’ anti-Ottoman tropes also highlights how he, as an imperial protagonist, participated in the shaping of a broader seventeenth-century Mediterranean consciousness, when “imperial center[s] contributed to the formalization of a [North African] border structure that inhibited cultural diffusion.”173 Translation, as Friedrich Nietzsche points out, can function as “a form of conquest.”174 In George Steiner’s words, “the translator invades, extracts, and brings home,” which Giovanni Battista does here. He champions the appropriative use of language to fulfil expectations he assumed he would face in his self-fashioning as a Venetian diplomatic representative rather than an Ottoman-subject translator working for Venice.175 As a self-narrative, Giovanni Battista’s North African relazione helped the dragoman “establish his unambiguous position as a loyal, useful, and humanistically inclined Venetian.”176 As a carefully crafted text, he consciously situates this document in the social world of Venetian diplomacy to corroborate his own elevation in rank. The dragoman must have considered successful delivery of this end-of-mission report key to the future advancement of his career. In social and textual terms, success was rated in terms of the report’s performance in equivalence. As a translator must balance the connection between translation and source text with regard to equivalence, the success of Giovanni Battista’s report was evaluated in terms of its equivalence with other ambassadors’ relazioni.177 As an author, thus, he built on his translatory expertise in relating his own words to other texts. He meticulously follows established genre conventions of other diplomats’ end-of-mission reports, commenting on his own activities, general political affairs, a state’s organisation and relationships, as well as local ­customs.178 Usually, relazioni are first presented orally to the senate, which is why he uses the verb riferiva, again, to characterise his role in authoring and delivering the text. It was also the word other ambassadors used when presenting their relazioni.179 After their oral delivery, a relazione was written down and kept in the senate’s secret archive. Though officially forbidden, these texts commonly circulated in manuscript or print copies among the Venetian nobility. Such circulation allowed Giovanni Battista to carefully study the structure, syntax, and vocabulary of other relazioni during his stay

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  235 in Venice; a textual approach that was familiar to the dragoman from his own activities in translation. This would have given him insight in the social power of words in Venetian diplomacy. Authoring a relazione, the dragoman learned, was an ambassador’s means to praise one’s own diplomatic service. As a self-narrative, the text could become a networking device to ensure a diplomat’s career advancement in the complex web of the Venetian cursus honorum. In this context, “the circulation of relazioni was crucial.”180 The fact that Giovanni Battista’s own report circulated among the Venetian elite further testifies to his understanding of how a relazione, as a self-narrative, had the power to establish relations, networks, and visions of success.181 Giovanni Battista considered being made a quasi-ambassador a chance to either be promoted to the rank of grand dragoman, or perhaps even a transfer to ambassadorial service—the dragoman even began his ambassadorial-style report with a statement highlighting his willingness to further his involvement in Venetian “public service.”182 As a self-narrative, the relazione was a precious investment in the dragoman’s future career. However, Giovanni Battista’s prospects were severely derailed by the sudden death of Contarini on December 6, 1624, during the dragoman’s North African mission. Upon his return to Venice, Giovanni I Cornaro had been appointed new doge. With this turn of events, the Salvago dragoman’s relationship of patronage to the centre of Venetian power—one that was carefully established over the years by the production of an assemblage of self-narratives, like his brother’s Balkan travelogue and his own panegyrical texts, translations, and treatises on Ottoman-Persian affairs and Muslim ritual practices—had collapsed. The possibility of an ambassadorial career in diplomatic service, as Giovanni Battista had hoped for, crumbled away. He was sent back to Istanbul to continue his service as a dragoman in the bailate.

A Death in Istanbul: Narrating the Self, Translation, and Service In the early seventeenth century, Salvago dragomans began to make their work as translators visible through self-narratives. Situating the Salvago dragoman’s self within an assemblage of text was a means to claim cultural capital for the household (casa). Since translation’s “promise of cultural capital,” according to recent studies, “is only ever a distant promise,” the Salvagos employed medium-term family strategies to invest in the accumulation of cultural capital through the strategic writing and positioning of self-narratives.183 This decision was also a response to the administrative jungle of Venice that often made linguistic experts struggle for money. Despite dragomans playing a crucial role in the republic’s diplomacy, commerce, and colonial regime, administrative walls were erected to make it difficult for them to have their work recognised financially. Local Venetian authorities in Dalmatia, for instance, refused to

236  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer pay Gieronimo della Pace, a well-established Veneto-Ottoman interpreter in Split, for ten months of service in 1621/22 under the pretence of him lacking an official certificate issued by Venice. Instead, della Pace started working as an Ottoman language interpreter in nearby Trogir. The translator clearly tried to improve his living conditions by looking for a new job elsewhere, instead of engaging in what would be a months-long battle with authorities in faraway Venice. Just a month after taking on his new role, the provveditore generale of Dalmatia and Albania bumped up della Pace’s monthly pay by a ducat. Still, this was only a quarter of his previous salary.184 Another example of Venice refusing to adequately compensate translators was in early seventeenth-century Kotor. At the beginning of his period in office as a rettore, governor Camillo Michiel insisted that the city’s dragomans must pay a tithe of their salaries to the Venetian administration. Michiel claimed that he was implementing a law passed by the maggior consiglio of Venice in 1616. Geronimo Paltašić, a long-serving dragoman of the town, contested this regulation—but to no avail. Michiel’s successors in office carried on this tradition. In 1622, when Paltašić submitted a petition to the Venetian provveditore of Dalmatia and Albania, Giustinian Antonio Bellegno, Kotor’s dragomans were finally exempted from the payment. Bellegno had asked for a copy of the law, and it turned out that dragomans were explicitly exempted from paying tithe. An enquiry sent to the bailo in Istanbul furthermore confirmed that Paltašić was right in stating that the bailate’s dragomans were also exempt. This demonstrates that dragomans were clearly aware of what their colleagues faced in different parts of the empire. Their fight for fair pay also exemplifies their persistence and skill in manoeuvring the republic’s administrative apparatus to their advantage. They used opportunities strategically, and employed their skills in writing to fight the injustices they encountered. It was a means to enact change, an activists’ tool to rewrite the colonial archive to suit their own ends.185 To the experienced Genesino, Contarini’s appointment as a special ambassador in 1618 was one such opportunity not to be missed. The dragoman’s journey to Venice, before accompanying Contarini to Istanbul, provided him with the chance of direct access to the centre of Venice’s power: the senate and collegio, as well as a representative of one of the most powerful Venetian noble families. Genesino would have recalled previous positive experiences with the Contarini family. Simone Contarini, who served as bailo from 1608 until 1612, had in 1611 praised Genesino as an experienced and successful servant. This was followed by Venice granting the dragoman a payment of 250 zecchini, as well as a pay raise from 250 to 300 zecchini for the “service, which is provided by the most faithful Genesino Salvago, dragoman, [in dealing] with so many perils and efforts during journeys by land and by sea [when] accompanying our baili and ambassadors.”186 At the end of the bailo’s term in office, he praised Genesino’s commitment, Giuliano’s

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  237 qualities, and Giovanni Battista’s benevolence and ingenuity in language learning. On November 29, 1612, Venice also decided to raise Giuliano’s pay, by 100 zecchini a year.187 This seems to have been more due to a general policy shift than an adjustment change in Venice’s approach to Mateca Salvago’s sons specifically. Due to the general importance of dragomans, doge Marcantonio Memmo stated in 1612, “every convenience must be given to those who already set out well in that service to the satisfaction of our baili.”188 To the Salvagos, however, the first instances of financial rewards in decades occurred during Simone’s period in office, and they would surely have remembered his generosity. Genesino’s appointment “to serve ambassador Contarini” in 1618 would have nourished his hope of greater financial recognition.189 Targeting a member of the Contarini family in the dedication of his self-narrative, hence, was a reasonable investment strategy for the future of the Salvago family. Genesino’s modalities of writing further supported this. The expansive descriptions of challenging landscapes and flawed infrastructure turns the travelogue into a discussion on the scarcity of resources—also echoed in the “grave poverty of our whole house [casa]” statement in the petition he submitted alongside the travelogue.190 The dragoman’s report of his journey through the Balkans was thus an autobiographical text about resources that itself served to generate resources for the family.191 Genesino was only partially successful in his application of such medium-term strategies. Even with the careful crafting of the travelogue, networking with Contarini, presentation of petitionary letters, and, of course, the monumental effort of travelling itself, Venice only granted Genesino the advance payment of one annual salary—instead of the two that he urgently needed. In the eyes of the collegio and senate, this advance payment would allow Genesino to “continue his diligent, fruitful service with a calm soul,” and was a recognition of his and his family’s long service to Venice. But this response could hardly be more cruising for the ageing dragoman, who remembered his father’s assassination, and now was in danger of himself falling by the wayside in the increasingly competitive dragomanate.192 On March 30, 1619, just months after his return to Istanbul, Genesino died unexpectedly. The road dragoman’s death merited only a single line in bailo Nani’s manuscript chronicling his period in office: “Death of Genesino Salvago, poor brothers.”193 But Nani was more explicit in a letter sent to Venice on the day of Genesino’s death: Genesino Salvago, who served as a road dragoman, has passed away to a better life; to my great regret for the good service that he provided to Your Serenity. This loss is very serious to […] Giuliano and Giovanni Battista, his brothers: having with his death left many debts. Hence, their case is even more worthy of commiseration.194

238  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer On the very same day, Giuliano—now the new head of the family—­ presented a rather hastily written petition to the bailo for a raise. “I, Giuliano Salvago, your most humble [he forgot to insert the word ‘servant’ here] and dragoman in Constantinople” starts his narrative by detailing his achievements in Istanbul, Syria, Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Buda. The dragoman states that he conducts the business of a dragoman “in imitation of my father and ancestors who on every occasion of peace and war showed their fidelity and diligence in public occurrences.” He points out that his brother’s “bitter death” has left the family without the latter’s annual salary of 300 zecchini, and that he has inherited considerable debt at a time when his own “growing family” was moving out of the house of his fatherin-law. Giuliano had just become a father and was about to establish his own household, and therefore asked for his salary to be bumped up to 200 zecchini a year.195 Again, situating the self-narrative within a wider textual assemblage and broader patronage networks was crucial. Giuliano’s petition was sent to Venice alongside the bailo’s letter of support, also issued on March 30, 1619. Nani reiterated that debt had fallen onto Giuliano’s household, called attention to Giuliano’s 1616 voyage to Bosnia, and confirmed that the dragoman had not spent a “single hour in idleness” for the past five years. Nani added that Giuliano “is serving myself continuously in the business that occurs on a daily basis and in exploring the news of this Porte [of Istanbul] to my full satisfaction.” The bailo’s brother, Agostino Nani, himself a former bailo, as well as Simone Contarini, a keen supporter of the Salvagos during his period in office, confirmed Giuliano’s “aptitude,” his expertise “in the Turkish and Greek languages, as well as in several other languages,” and his “efficiency in dealing and negotiating with Turkish ministers in favour of our interests, in imitation of his ancestors.” In their statement composed on June 3, 1619, the two former baili lauded Giuliano’s service in Aleppo and Istanbul, and also praised the service of Genesino and Mateca. The high-ranking spokespersons recommended that Giuliano be appointed road dragoman with a salary of 110 ducats per annum, with the same obligations and privileges as the late Genesino. On June 8, two months after Genesino’s death, the senate followed the recommendation of the baili—and also reworded their phrases in the official appointment document.196 But the Salvagos were to be struck by fate again. Just five weeks after his appointment as Genesino’s successor, Giuliano died on August 18, after fighting the plague for 24 hours.197 By that time, the plague had a firm grip on Istanbul. By November 1618, 1,300 people were dying every day, and some who fell ill were quarantined in Galata, the quarter where the Salvagos lived.198 The death of Genesino and Giuliano was a fatal turn of events that suddenly left Giovanni Battista, the youngest of the Salvago brothers, as the new head of the family, and the only interpreter left of this glorious generation of Salvago dragomans. It was now Giovanni Battista’s turn to once

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  239 again ask Venice for financial support. In his petition, the grieving dragoman recalls the deaths of his brothers, both road dragomans, and reminds the authorities that Giuliano left children and a wife behind. Within a few months, the family—“my poor and afflicted house [casa]”—now lost two salaries of 300 zecchini. Giovanni Battista ends the petition with a lengthy, deeply moving call for help: Finding myself in a sea of tears, chaperoned by the very clear light of the infinite kindness of Your Serenity, I come [i.e. kneel] very humbly to Your feet, presenting myself compassionately and miserably for the bitter loss of two brothers, Your very humble servants and not unsuccessful dragomans, quietly and tearfully I petition Your Serenity—to redirect and sustain the house that is left on my weak shoulders—to move out of mercy, and for the well-known, most faithful servitude of my ancestors and brothers in the past, as well as my own present [servitude], that I may succeed in the occupation of the road dragomanate, an ancient and hereditary occupation of our house, carried out very sufficiently by the father, and then by the elder brother, and that was rightly already granted to […] Giuliano by Your benignity for two months.199 Giovanni Battista clearly searched for powerful words to capture his sorrow and despair, and to move Venice. At such a difficult moment in life, the dragoman would have been grasping for words, and reached for the biblical trope of “a sea of tears.”200 The Christian imagery of tears was a particularly suitable reference for this Ottoman Catholic to ask Venice “to move out of mercy,” a phrase that captures early modern ideas on the ability of emotions to result in a change of status (e-movere).201 Once again, bailo Nani supported the dragoman’s petition. He highlighted Giovanni Battista’s “great virtue,” as well as his Ottoman and Latin language skills. Former baili Agostino Nani and Simone Contarini also wrote references in favour of the dragoman’s request.202 It had been only a year since Giovanni Battista was appointed dragoman, a promotion that he owed to Genesino’s strategic placement of petition and Balkan travelogue. He was now the only remaining Salvago interpreter, and was thus appointed the bailate’s leading road dragoman. The senate declared its wish to recognise Giovanni Battista’s Greek, Italian, Ottoman, and Latin language proficiency, as well as the service of “this meritorious and most faithful house [casa].”203 The textual trail left by the Salvago dragomans thus allowed for a narrative to be formed on their sense of self. Genesino, Giuliano, and Giovanni Battista made the textual assemblage work for them at specific biographical moments. Self-narratives provided the Salvagos with a key tool to shape a future as translators in diplomatic service—especially when faced with the challenges of fierce competition, pressing debts, and unexpected deaths.

240  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer

Rewriting Dalmatia: Imperial Interpretation and the Making of Veneto-Ottoman Borders Giovanni Battista travelled to Trogir in 1626, eight years after his brother Genesino did. Venetian senators had appointed the dragoman to investigate the juridical aspects of Dalmatian border zone disputes. Incidents of looting and violence in the region of Šibenik, Trogir, and Split had been increasing since the start of the decade. By 1621, provveditore generale of Dalmatia and Albania, Antonio Barbaro, complained about the “many and many letters of protest and threats” that referenced Ottoman juridical documentation in their borderland claims. Barbaro suspected that some of these legal documents were “stolen or perhaps even false.”204 By October 1619, Venice was already asking authorities in Zadar to check “various important and authentic writings in the Turkish language” on issues relating to the Dalmatian border. Specifically, Zadar authorities were to inspect if any documents were missing from a red box.205 In the same month, the governor of Šibenik was instructed to locate Ottoman originals discussing borderlands, issued in Istanbul in 1591, since Venice only had copies. The governor was told to use cargo galleys to send an inventory of such documents to Venice.206 In light of the swelling disagreements, both Ottoman and Venetian authorities agreed on a local revision of borders in April 1626, with road dragoman Giovanni Battista being appointed to study both contemporary and older Ottoman texts addressing borderland jurisdiction.207 Again, Giovanni Battista drafted an end-of-mission report. In the VenetoOttoman contact zone, he diligently compared original Ottoman documents with their copies and Italian translations. The approach Giovanni Battista used was based on textual criticism, in particular the evaluation of the accuracy of different rewriting modalities—copying, translating, annotating— and their possible textual corruption. Starting with the peace agreement from 1573, he uncovered what he believed to be a chain of Ottoman misinterpretations. The dragoman even accused Ottoman authorities of issuing fake documents. In his assessment, all Ottoman borderland intrusions in the area were unjust usurpations and hollow territorial claims, “a charge without any substance.” The dragoman arrived at a very convenient conclusion, from a Venetian imperial point of view: “With my study and examination, I came to know that some of the [Ottoman] legal documentation was missing, other was invalid, other defective, other prejudicial. In sum, I found such very important business badly organised.”208 Giovanni Battista’s prominent self-fashioning as a border-claiming interpreter flies in the face of the widespread glorification of translators as border-crossing in-betweens: people who transcend difference, overcome borders, and establish cross-cultural understanding.209 This romanticisation is criticised in translation studies, as it takes the existence of cultural borders for granted—with translators being celebrated for crossing “a pre-existing border.”210 This observation matters in particular for early

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Figure 33  V  enetian cartography depicted Trogir as a city with a largely vacant surrounding. Giovanni Camocio, Isole famose porti, fortezze, e terre maritime sottoposte alla Ser.ma Sig.ria di Venetia, ad altri Principi Christiani, et al Sig.or Turco (…) (Venice: Libraria del segno di S.  Marco, 1574). ©Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation.

seventeenth-century Dalmatia, since Giovanni Battista entered an area where, as Dursteler states, “actual borders were ill-defined and widely ignored by the region’s inhabitants, who shared a fluid cross-border culture that withstood all attempts to sketch out clear cut political or religious lines of demarcation.”211 Yet, Giovanni Battista, as we shall see in more detail below, clearly attempted doing so. “To think about translation without presupposing borders between cultures,” says Anthony Pym, who suggests a conceptual approach that overcomes ideas of borders and thinks, instead, of points of contact in which discourse and practice could establish a border experience. “Translation [practices] can thus tell us something about a ­border-to-be.” Close scrutiny of paratextual signs marking translations as such, Pym highlights, provides insight into how translators’ writings themselves map, and make, borders while situating the author in broader networks and relations.212 When applied to Giovanni Battista’s report, this approach enables a new reading of the relazione as an imperial interpreter’s

242  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer self-narrative. In translating and composing a self-narrative about his translatory activities, Giovanni Battista rewrote permeable conditions on the ground in Dalmatia, as well as the dragoman’s narrative self as presented in his late brother’s earlier travelogue. Genesino’s 1618 itinerario and Giovanni Battista’s 1626 relazione addressed different audiences.213 Genesino’s intended audience was a single person, while Giovanni Battista addressed a high-ranking political committee. This informed his choice of work within the genre conventions of endof-mission reports, as would be expected in Venetian diplomatic contexts. It also allowed him to connect the report on Dalmatian border issues with his North Africa relazione presented a year earlier. Above all, however, this decision enabled a different narrative focus. While Genesino’s travelogue narrates the journey to Trogir, composing a relazione allowed Giovanni Battista to elaborate on activities conducted upon his arrival. This narrative frame highlights the text’s sense of authenticity, and the author’s effort in composing the report—Giovanni Battista could highlight the laborious fieldwork he undertook and juxtapose that against the Ottoman misinterpretations which in his view resulted from “topographic descriptions” that were “rather vocally made than locally observed.” Phrases like “the various writings, both ours and Turkish ones, read and mediated by myself in Dalmatia” aim at showing the reader the extent of the dragoman’s meticulous scrutiny in situ. He reports on how he “explored” mountains, villages, and remote, abandoned towers on horse and by feet. “My horseback rides” to the rural surroundings of Zadar, he states, served “to better attend myself to this serious business.” Giovanni Battista elaborates on how just 14 of the 54 villages in Venetian Zadar were in good shape, with the others being largely abandoned.214 This choice of words calls for the political presence of Venice and echoes the “notion of ‘vacant land’,” a widely established “political strategy” in both Ottoman and Venetian contexts (Figure 33).215 This also foregrounds the author’s status as an eyewitness, as much as it does the hard work he conducted in the service of Venice. It evokes the impression of the Venetian imperial gaze being brought to a messy periphery—a narrative strategy emphasising the dragoman’s loyalty and service, as well as his embeddedness as a Venetian servant, obfuscating his actual status as an Ottoman subject. In Giovanni Battista’s self-narrative, translation is key to the definition and demarcation of borders. He presents interpretations that allow Venice to claim interpretative authority over Ottoman documents. It is through the translator’s work, then, that the Ottoman official record can support Venetian territorial claims. A document issued by Sultan Ahmed I, for instance, containing “orders that the morlachs must pay their leases and levies to the inhabitants of Trogir” and not, as claimed by other records, to Ottoman authorities, attracted the dragoman’s attention. Using the logics of case law, Giovanni Battista considers this document “the best weapon […] for the defence” of Venetian claims over the region’s border

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zone villages. The translator, here, embraces translation as a political tool. Elsewhere, Giovanni Battista claims that the permanence of vernacular Serbo-Croatian denominations of many villages, valleys, hills, and lakes in Ottoman Dalmatian territories points towards their original status as Venetian possessions.217 His interpretation is based on the presupposed linguistic equation of Serbo-Croatian language and culture as having a distinct Venetian colonial identity. The dragoman’s preference of word-by-word translations—over sense-tosense translations—and close textual scrutiny were in this case in support of Venetian imperial claims. In this context, paratextual elements were important. Giovanni Battista’s eagle-eyed comments discussed whether Ottoman claims resulted from the actual text or from marginalia notes, for instance, made by an anonymous notary in Istanbul. The dragoman considered the content of the first just and the latter unjust, since mutual jurisdiction in the Dalmatian contact zone would require Venetian representatives to be present during the issuing of new legislation. Giovanni Battista, hence, highlighted that the kadis of Skradin and Sarajevo enacted laws in 1576 without Venetian representatives being present, thereby void such legal documentation. “With all this,” the interpreter concludes, “the Turks are mixing the truth with the lie for them having the pen in their hands.”218 This choice of words underlines Giovanni Battista’s dismissal of Ottoman authoritative writings but also reveals his own understanding of the power of his words as the relazione’s author. As an imperial agent, Giovanni Battista applied translation to develop strategic imperial thinking through a distinct Venetian colonial gaze. ­ A shared contact zone, to him, is embedded in a narrative of Venetian hegemony. Commenting on the prosperity of Veneto-Ottoman commercial exchange in the region, for instance, Giovanni Battista claims that Ottoman merchants were dependent on Venetian markets and exchange goods like salt. Elsewhere, the dragoman deems the Ottoman hinterland of Zadar—Ravni Kotari or “Islam,” as it was called in Ottoman—a stronghold and safe haven of marauding borderland groups over which Venice made territorial claims, as being “invincible with words.” “It is better to implement justice by deeds rather than words,” Giovanni Battista concludes. “To truncate and eradicate this serpent ivy, which with its excesses takes the life of the tree surrounded by it, requires either strength/violence [ forza] or artifice.” Regarding the later, the dragoman suggests the use of bribery: “It is true that gold surpasses all oppositions.”219 The translator’s business thus justifies violence, conquest, and imperial claims over land and people.220 In fact, the interpreter hoped to make his service count to advance Venetian imperial hegemony in the area by offering himself as a spy snooping on the sancak-begs of Lika and Klis, as well as the pashas of Bosnia and Buda.221 Giovanni Battista’s relazione is about the power of translation as imperial interpretation.222 Some of the documents scrutinised by Giovanni Battista during his stay in Dalmatia survive in the State Archive of Zadar. Prior to composing his

244  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer relazione, Giovanni Battista handled, for instance, a declaration issued by the authorities of Obrovac in 1621. The aghas declared responsibility for morlach intrusions into Venetian territory, and confirmed that they would compensate damages. The dragoman closely studied an existing Italian translation of the agreement, and added his own summary. “There is the authentic [l’auttentico] and its translation follows,” Salvago noted on the back of the document, adding the letter “H” in bold.223 Another two surviving collections of texts regarding morlach activities in Skradin, the killing of a priest in the region, as well as the sultan’s order to the beglerbeg of Bosnia, issued in 1619 and translated by Giovanni Battista’s nephew, Grillo, contain his summaries as well as a similar note identifying originals and translations, along with the added letters “F” and “I.”224 Salvago used these documents to help him elaborate on such conflicts in his own relazione. From these specific documents, Salvago extracted information about conflicts in the region, especially those concerning Novigrad, and was able to get a better understanding of the involvement of ChristianOttoman shepherd communities.225 Translations issued by the Venetian public dragoman Giacomo de Nores and the bailate’s grand dragoman Borisi, both superior in rank to Salvago, were kept without any further note by the dragoman.226 Though scarce in quantity, these documents provide a rare glimpse into the dragoman’s working practice. He read and compared materials closely, identifying those documents which he considered “authentic” and rearranging them according to their geographical focus, assigning an alphabetical order to each batch of original and translated writings. In his relazione, Salvago then presented the results of his studies. Most interestingly, he used “authentic” texts for their informative content, and foregrounded his own archiving above all when the documents were deemed “non authentic,” “sealed and legalised but fraudulent,” or “without seals and [thus] not juridical.”227 As a self-narrative, the relazione aimed at the presentation of Giovanni Battista as a successful, loyal, and hard-working imperial interpreter. When personally presenting and reading the report in front of the collegio in Venice on September 4, 1626, he called himself “your servant and dragoman.”228 The humble presentation of translation, interpretation, and service, however, also empowered him to express his sense of professional and personal pride: In the present rarity and paucity of subjects attending the laborious position of a dragoman [ministerio di Turcimano], Your Serenity is pleased to have recently put into work me, Giovanni Battista Salvago, your most humble servant and dragoman, as much as I am a very weak instrument [of Venice].229 Disguised in tropes of humility and the implicit reference to his brothers’ deaths, Giovanni Battista skilfully addresses both the gap they left behind

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  245 in the dragomanate, as well as his own capacity to fill that gap. The use of the Ottoman term tercüman—though slightly Italianised to facilitate reading and understanding, rather than the equivalent dragomanno, which was known among the Italianate audience—is a means to “foreignise” translation; a strategy to claim knowledge of Ottoman language and administration, while evoking the Ottoman lands more prominently in the audience’s imagination.230 As with every detail of this text, words were carefully chosen to foreground expertise, service, and diligence. Giovanni Battista’s self-fashioning as a diligent imperial interpreter is also omnipresent in the report’s discussion of authorship. Over and over again, the dragoman introduces verbs that highlight the various activities involved in authoring this text—activities that go far beyond translation’s rewriting modalities. “I have diligently checked and noted down all this,” he writes, defining his authorial role as “having reduced and compiled in a summary the dismembered diversity of writings, both ours and Turkish [ones], regarding such a serious matter, distinguishing the good ones from the bad ones.” Later on, he widens his authorial role to “discussing” (discorrendo), a term used for the narrative mode of contemporary political treatises (discorsi), that turned the empirical analysis of a past and current issue into an argument about future political decisions. At the very end of the report, Giovanni Battista takes up an earlier phrasing to expand the concept of a writing translator’s authorship—of “what my labours [ fatiche] are”: This is what, for the service of the province [Dalmatia] and of this Serenissima Repubblica [Venice], I have been able to diligently observe and note; negotiating, riding, and studying, I have reduced the separated and torn apart parts of all the writings, ours and Turkish [ones], into a body of summary [un corpo di summaria]. The dragoman clearly wished to highlight that a translator’s work went far beyond juggling words.231 The report’s paratextual elements are important as well. Some of the Ottoman protagonists discussed in the Dalmatian report were linked to events previously covered in his “Ottoman Revolutions.”232 The dragoman, thus, references his own earlier texts. Such intertextuality weaved together an assemblage of texts that, over time, could accumulate prestige. In addition, Giovanni Battista grouped the Dalmatian report into marginalia and added an index that facilitated the authorities’ use of the text: “From the footnotes and the index,” Giovanni Battista explains, “Your Serenity and Your Most Illustrious Excellencies can see at ease the manifold at a single glance.” Such a sentence highlights his prudence and the usefulness of the knowledge he presents, as much as it defines the text as being the result of his “tireless work.”233 Yet it also hints at the translator’s broader agenda of introducing a narrative clarity into the region’s diversity.

246  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer In his analysis of Dalmatian borders, Giovanni Battista took their existence for granted. Framing the interpreter’s spatial mobility as border-­crossing helped imperial protagonist to make borders as such. This narrative strategy allowed him to portray conditions on the ground as messy and disordered, a deviation of an imaginary norm, as lost territory that can now be (re)claimed textually by the imperial interpreter.234 In reality, physical borders were largely absent in Dalmatia. In his own words, borders were “diverse and separate,” they were “imaginary lines” marked by “natural intersections, currents of rivers, or mountain foldings […]. Hence it is no surprise that Turks sometimes confuse terms and override limits, especially when those unstoppable and greedy people find no obstacle to their i­nsatiability.”235 As in his North African report from the previous year, Giovanni Battista makes strategic use of established anti-Ottoman tropes to corroborate his self-narrative’s rewriting of Dalmatian contact zones. Landscapes, in particular, are of crucial significance in his agenda. In Genesino’s travelogue, landscapes function as challenging sites to overcome. The contact area between Klis and Trogir, for instance, was “a long descent” which was a struggle for the disabled dragoman. In Giovanni Battista’s report, however, hillscapes were imperial perils for their resistance towards clear-cut border definitions:236 For more information, I will depict the delineation of the territory of Trogir here, which is square [in shape] and starts at Rogoznica, a maritime village of Šibenik, stoopingly passing from hill to hill upwards to the mountains near the village of Trolokve, its highest end, and from there [follows] a piece of flexibly walking along the mountain foldings with a tortuous pathway descending towards the sea of Kaštela.237 Thus, there was no actual straight border, but rather points assembled on an imaginary zigzag route. Giovanni Battista’s focus on specific locales helped the dragoman establish, in Pym’s words, “operative border points” to enact a narrative that takes the vision of border for granted. This narrative itself produces a border that allows it to make claims over allegedly lost “Venetian” territories.238 When describing the Venetian territory of Split as resembling the shape of a weasel, Giovanni Battista furthermore applies hunting metaphors to frame Ottoman territorial advances as intrusions.239 Compared to his brother’s earlier travelogue, Giovanni Battista was here rewriting Dalmatian realities. What to Genesino was a physically a­ rduous landscape, and to residents a shared crossover area, was to Giovanni Battista impurely defined imperial fringes. In the dragoman’s imperial analysis, Dalmatian ethnic diversity was also an unsettling disorder that “spoils [presupposed] pattern[s] […], but its potential for patterning is indefinite.” To adapt Mary Douglas, Giovanni Battista recognises ethnic diversity as an impurity of preconceived

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  247

Figure 34  Dalmatian subjects as depicted in the Venetian gaze. Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo libri due (Venice: Zenaro, 1590). ©Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf, H 32.

­categories. He considers ethnic diversity “destructive to existing patterns,” but “also [assumes] that it has potentiality,” for it allows, in his narrative, for the rewriting of Dalmatia’s plurality into Venetian imperial categories. The threat of such presupposed categories being subverted and the capacity to claim their normative existence “symbolises both danger and power.”240 Writing eight years after both his brother’s visit to the area and the signing of the Treaty of Madrid, Giovanni Battista considers the forced resettlement of the uskoks a mistake. Joint Venetian, Ottoman, and Habsburg imperial intervention had freed the local population of the uskoks’ “scourge and terror,” he explains, which left behind “insolent,” rebellious residents.241 The case of the morlachs—Christian shepherd communities from the Ottoman Balkans that had migrated to the Dalmatian coastal area in the fourteenth century and to the hinterland of Trogir in the sixteenth century— was particularly concerning to the dragoman.242 In fact, Giovanni Battista blames the morlachs for much of the confusion arising in the surroundings of Trogir. Despite their status as Ottoman subjects, morlachs settled and

248  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer cultivated the lands in between Venetian and Ottoman authorities, while also working for the Venetian authorities of Trogir. “Often,” he writes: the morlachs excuse themselves for not being able to pay their tributes to the Turks for the tributes they are required to pay to the inhabitants of Trogir. And the Turks, showing that they favour them [the morlachs], provide them with protection. However, the Turk’s goal is not to elevate the morlach, but to open himself entry to the [Venetian] lands.243 It is important to acknowledge the morlach perspective on such grassroots resistance as complex acts of collaboration and resistance that helped carve out a space for coexistence and survival of their way of living, religion, and communities. It was an act of self-positioning that declared Ottoman Muslim lords as preferable to Venetian Christian authorities when choosing between two faraway imperial powers thirsty for fiscal revenues, given the attempts to reshape morlach ways of living to fit Venetian identity concepts and colonial discourse.244 Giovanni Battista, however, does not acknowledge such local perspectives, and considers Ottoman authorities’ insistence on the status of the morlachs a mere pretence for territorial advance. In his view, morlachs, as mobile and evasive subjects with multiple belongings, had become a political instrument resulting from the messiness of the imperial contact zone. Morlachs did not fit the categories which the dragoman wished to establish. As Karen-edis Barzman puts it, morlachs were “an irreconcilable third term that disrupted the distinctions upon which Venetian identity turned […]. Remaining largely outside urban and even agrarian economies, the Morlacchi operated in spaces unthinkable in Venice, never establishing anything recognizable as institutions of ‘civic life’.” Exactly “the production and performance of Christian, civic-minded, patriotic Venetian/ness,” however, provided Venetian subjects with a “collective sense of self.” In that sense, Giovanni Battista’s relazione is also a means to inscribe the dragoman’s self into an imagined community of venezianità.245 As the author of a relazione, Giovanni Battista was expected to address the customs of residents. The introduction of a distinct ethnic lens into the discussion of Dalmatian plurality, however, first of all served to instigate the significance of ethnic categories in Venetian colonial discourse. Contemporary Venetian costume albums labelled Dalmatian subjects in ethnic terms: “This land [Dalmatia] produces large men and women, as well as robust [men and women] of fine blood,” the popular album of Vecellio details in 1590, “but in behaviour and speaking they are usually rather coarse” (Figure 34).246 Land and blood are thus of similar concern to the dragoman’s assessment. In particular, Giovanni Battista expressed concerns about the frequent intermarriage between Dalmatians and morlachs. Resulting from their common speech and faith, such ethnic mixing would create a “fraternity between villains and villains,” thus, a borderland ­population resisting ­clear-cut ­i mperial identities, undermining Venetian imperial rule.247

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  249 Rewriting Dalmatian diversity in ethnic terms also allowed Giovanni Battista to distance himself from his own Ottoman subjecthood. Morlachs were “complicating the articulation of self by blurring distinctions between the republic and its Ottoman neighbors.”248 But it is exactly this blurring that facilitated his own self-fashioning. Like morlachs, the dragoman was an Ottoman Christian. Given the circumstances in Trogir and its surrounding, Giovanni Battista would have been even permitted to travel in Muslim disguise, wearing a turban alongside arms.249 Ethnic labelling, however, enabled the translator to situate himself in a distinct urban perspective. Ottoman subjects in Dalmatia, he explains, are a race [razza] of Dalmatianised Turks [Turchi ischiavonati] more willingly speaking the Serbo-Croatian language than in Turkish. The other Levantine Turks are transitory and mobile. Those [Levantine Turks] which are permanent and established [in Dalmatia] receive salaries and are provisioned with the titles of castellani, presidiarii, and capitani of the [Ottoman] infantry and cavalry.250 Giovanni Battista, himself a member of the metropolitan elite of Istanbul, thus, distinguished between Ottoman subjects in Dalmatia and the Ottoman heartlands in ethnic terms, introducing a category of difference into a self-narrative written by a mobile Ottoman subject active in Venetian service. Like many contemporary costume albums, this relazione maps “moral geographies.”251 By doing so, Giovanni Battista charts an imperial landscape that takes ethnic belonging on either side of a presupposed, yet physically absent border for granted. The border, produced through the narrative, becomes a premise. The interpreter’s border-making translations are also narratives of homecoming. He writes about difference to negotiate belonging as the relazione also situated the translator’s self in a wider network of relationships.252 Translations, Pym states, “can be […] interpreted as maps of relations” with translators “seeking cooperation and […] benefits.”253 So did Giovanni Battista when highlighting the valour and prudence of the provveditore generale of Dalmatia and Albania, Antonio Pisani, as well as the expertise of Francesco Zola, a fiscal advocate in Zadar.254 The dragoman acknowledges patronage to further strengthen his networks. Most notably, Giovanni Battista starts the report with a “commemoration of predecessors” who carried out similar tasks as dragomans. Instead of mentioning his grandfather, father, and brothers, however, he establishes an artificial kinship tradition with Venice-based public dragomans Michiel Membrè and Giacomo de Nores. Both were well-known to the Venetian collegio, in front of which Giovanni Battista presented his kinshipping, for their decades-long service as public dragomans for Venice’s board of trade. The Cypriot Membrè held this office for almost half a century, from 1550 until 1594.255 Giovanni Battista encountered the signatures of these famous Venetian-based

250  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer ­ ragomans in the documents which he studied in Dalmatia.256 Membrè, in d fact, had conducted negotiations regarding Dalmatian borders twice (1546– 7, 1574–6), and was promoted at least once after his first visit to Dalmatia. In addition, Membrè’s journey to Persia (1539–42) would have resonated with Giovanni Battista’s own attempts in self-fashioning as an expert in PersianOttoman affairs.257 Mateca had at least once personally dealt with Membrè in 1589, when Membrè ironically applauded Mateca in front of the collegio, imitating the janissary’s symbolical gesture of defeat—an encounter that might have been remembered in the family.258 Beginning his report in front of the highest political committee of Venice in such a manner can be read in two ways: first, as Giovanni Battista’s attempt to avoid being commemorated by his assassinated father; second, as a means to leave open the possibility of a future career as a public dragoman in Venice. This was a time when the Istanbul dragomanate was populated by increasingly powerful Venetian overseas subjects, and when the Salvago family’s networks in Istanbul had largely collapsed due to the sudden deaths of Genesino and Giuliano. In Giovanni Battista’s words, the business of the revision of Dalmatian borders had a long and glorious history. It was handled and practiced by Your [Venice’s] greatest interpreters and grand dragomans, one was […] Michiel Membrè and the other […] Giacomo di Nones[sic], who are held in high esteem and reputation for being valiant and unique in the profession, and who by age could be my fathers and teachers, and they were by title my superiors.259 Giovanni Battista Salvago hardly knew these Venetian dragomans of Ottoman, Persian, and Arabic languages—he even gets de Nores’s name wrong. But he clearly thought of it as a promising narrative strategy to claim artificial kinship, rather than calling to the collegio’s mind the Salvago ­predecessors in office. Genesino the Elder, Mateca, Genesino, and Giuliano had all been road dragomans, as Giovanni Battista was now. As Genesino’s petition from 1618 made clear, Giovanni Battista long aimed for the post of grand dragoman. Name-dropping Borisi, the bailate’s grand dragoman who had recently fallen into such disgrace that he was assassinated, was hardly an alternative. By referencing Membrè and de Nores instead, Giovanni Battista claims a past and prospective relationship with the most honoured names of public dragomans serving Venice. Claiming such lineage in front of the collegio was a call for recognition and promotion. Francesco Scaramelli had recently been appointed their successor in office. Having served as a dragoman trainee in the bailate from 1611 until 1621, Giovanni Battista knew Scaramelli well—and seemingly was not pleased at all with his appointment. At least, Giovanni Battista used his report to state that some of the translations that he studied in Dalmatia, related to Scaramelli’s activities, were “not authentic.” It appears that Giovanni Battista thought of himself as better suited for the position of

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  251 public dragoman in Venice, where language competition was less fierce than it was in Istanbul. In fact, after Scaramelli’s period in office ended in 1643, the elderly Giovanni Battista, still a road dragoman in Istanbul, strategically targeted the position once again. He went as far as to convince other candidates in the bailate to withdraw their candidacy, without realising that young Galata-born subject and former dragoman trainee, Pietro Fortis, had secretly submitted his own. Fortis got the job, to the displeasure of Giovanni Battista and his fellow Istanbul dragomans.260 With the highest Venetian institutional power listening to Giovanni Battista’s finely calibrated words, the dragoman’s self-narrative engages in strategic kinshipping to open future career options. The narrative p ­ roduction of Dalmatian borders, the interpreter’s focus on cultural differences over similarities, as well as the appropriation of a distinct Venetian imperial and metropolitan gaze all turned the translator’s writing about Dalmatia—in fact, a rewriting of the Dalmatian contact zone—into a “­communication strategy” that negotiates hierarchies, patronage, and “relations between translators,” as well as the (future) exchange value of such a text. To adapt a wording of Pym, “to read translations [and translators’ self-narratives] in this way is […] to interpret what they say [and do not say] about networks.”261 In Giovanni Battista’s case, the relazione is used to situate the author as a useful and promising, maybe even the best imperial interpreter available to Venice. To some extent, the Venetian colonial archive and the institutional frame of imperial interpreters’ work as translators conditions the politics of rewriting, as a certain self-fashioning was required to advance in the ­dragomanate’s cursus honorum.262 Giovanni Battista, just like his dragoman brothers, clearly knew how to manoeuvre such expectations when using self-narratives to widen authorial visibility and craft a future in the family business of translation.

Notes 1 Jancke, “Autobiographical Texts,” 122; Jancke, Autobiographie als soziale Praxis. 2 Briggs, This Little Art, 34. 3 Hartmann and Jancke, “Roupens Erinnerungen.” 4 Lefevere, Translation; Forrai, “Translation as Rewriting”; Morini, “Intertextuality.” 5 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 30. Cf. Yerasimos, “Istrian Dragomans.” 6 Gardina, “Alla Turca”; Ölçer, Çağman, and Vidmar, Image of the Turks, 276– 99; Vidmar, “Series of Portraits”; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 113–39. On the visual culture of the diplomatic self, see also Polleroß, “Gesandte.” 7 Gilbert, Good Faith, 6. Cf. Gilbert, “Professions.” 8 Ulbrich, “Family and House Books,” 225. 9 Luca, “Notes.” 10 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, fol. 74v f., April  27, 1618 (quote); ASV, SDelM, filza  217, April 24, 1618. 11 ASV, SDelM, filza 217, April 24, 1618 (quotes from the petition of Grillo, 1r f.).

252  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer 12 Malcolm, Agents of Empire; Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 106–19. 13 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, July 6, 1618. 14 ASV, SDelM, filza  218, June  23, 1618 (quote). On (the slightly different story of) Antonio Bruti’s death, as well as Giacomo Bruti, see Malcolm, Agents of Empire, 145, 201; Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 110, 114. 15 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, April 14, 1618. 16 Malcolm, Agents of Empire, 363–78, here 377 (quote); Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 111. 17 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, July 6, 1618, with Barnabà Bruti’s translation. 18 GSItinerario, 176v f. 19 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, May 30, 1618. 20 DAZD, 1: 1, 313r, Zadar, May 30, 1606. 21 Dankoff and Kim, Ottoman Traveller, 164. 22 Sander-Faes, “Families and Institutions,” 179f. 23 DAZD, 1: 1, 312r–4r, May 30, 1606. 24 DAZD, 1: 2, 202r, 203r, Split, May 11, 1622; 345r, Šibenik, July 7, 1622 (quote). 25 DAZD, 1: 2, 461r, November 1622; 463r, November 13, 1622. 26 DAZD, 1: 1, 353r, petition of Zuane. 27 DAZD, 1: 2, 344r, Trogir, July 5, 1622; 345r, Šibenik, July 7, 1622; 347r, petition of Gieronimo della Pace. 28 As one of many examples, see the cross-signatures of Galazzi Lanza and Zuanne di Bonis in DAZD, 1: 1, 465v, Split and Trogir, August 1621. See also the contemporary understanding of interpreters as intelligence agents in DAZD, 1: 2, 110r, March 1622. 29 At least, this was the perspective of Luigi Bassano from Zadar, Bassano, Costvmi, 51v. Cf. Metzeltin, “Varietà italiane,” 215–20. On the impact of schiavonesco on Venetian language practices, see Cortelazzo, Venezia, 125–206, 379– 84. On the impact of Balkan languages on Turkic language variety on Istanbul, see Tietze, “Stambuler Türkisch.” 30 ASV, SDD, 18, Split, June  2, 1618; Veinstein, “L’administration ottoman”; Sadovski-Kornprobst, “Multilingualism in Venetian Dalmatia.” 31 ASV, SDD, 18, August 7, 1618. 32 ASV, SDC, filza 87, no. 65, April 13, 1619, 140r f. 33 ASV, SDD, 18, May 19 and 20, 1618. 34 ASV, SDD, 18, May 19, 1618, 1r f. 35 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 1, March 11, 1618, 8r f. 36 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 5, April 10, 1618, 44r f., 50r f. 37 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 9, April  26, 1618, 96r; ASV, SDC, filza 87, no.  83, August 18, 1619, 368r. 38 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 7, April 26, 1618, 66r–73v, here 66r, 67r f., 69r (quotes). 39 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 8, April 26, 1618, 80r f. 40 ASV, SDC, rubrica D12, 10v. 41 GSItinerario, 178r. 42 At least, we do not know of any other longer self-narrative surviving in the archival record. On Genesino’s age, see ASV, BAC, b.  277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 1r, July 9, 1611. 43 ASV, BAC, b. 277, protocollo of bailo Simone Contarini, 33r, March 26, 1611. 44 GSItinerario, 177r. 45 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, March 28, 1618; June 15 and 23, 1618. 46 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, June 6, 1618. 47 Bassnett, Translation, 32, 178. 48 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, March 28, 1618; June 15 and 23, 1618. 49 For example, Tradottione della lettera Imperiale scritta da Sultan Osman alla Ser:ma Rep:ca di Venetia, tradotta dal Borissi as opposed to Tradottione di Com:to

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  253 Reggio al Sanzacco di Deluina, without the translator’s name in the title, but at the end of the translation, given as Tradto da Gio: Batt[ist]a Saluago. ASV, SDC, filza 87, no. 58, March 2, 1619, 23r–4v, 32r f. 50 ASV, DT, no. 190, 426, 431; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 49f., 118f.; Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore, 96. See also the references to Mateca in Anonymous, “Diario di prigionia.” 51 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, March 28, 1618; June 15 and 23, 1618. 52 Davis, Gift, 78. 53 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, June 23, 1618. 54 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, December 6, 1612. 55 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, August 27, 1615. 56 ASV, SDelC, filza 14, August 17, 1618. 57 Gansel, Translation as Transhumance, 22. 58 Reynolds, Interpreting the Self, 3. 59 Davis, Fiction in the Archives, 3. 60 Bassnett, Translation, 178. 61 All quotes, in the following order, from Briggs, This Little Art, 22, 30, 45, 140, 31, 144f., 149, 30. See also Briggs, This Little Art, 93–163; Buffagni, Garzelli, and Zanotti, Translator as Author; Sulaibi, Translator as Writer. 62 Trouillot, Silencing the Past; Richards, Imperial Archive; Stoler, “Colonial Archives”; Stoler, Archival Grain; Stouraiti, “Printing Empire.” 63 Spivak, “Politics of Translation,” 312. 64 Trouillot, Silencing the Past. 65 De Vivo, “Cœur de l’État.” 66 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 2, September 16, 1617, 25r; no. 6, October 14, 1617, 85r–7r; no. 16, November 29, 1617, 195r–7r. 67 ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 380, at halfmoon during Shawwal 1000 AH/c. August 1, 1592. 68 ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 380, 17 Ramadan 999 AH/July 1, 1591 (sic). 69 My italics, ASV, SDC, filza 87, no. 58, March 2, 1619, 23r–7v, 35rf.; no. 58, March 16, 1619, 77r–9r; no. 64, April 1, 1619, 136r–7r; no. 65, April 13, 1619, 140r–2r; no. 74, June 9, 1619, 247rf.; no. 75, June 9, 1619, 264r–5v; no. 82, August 18, 1619, 359rf. 70 ASV, SDC, filza 87, no.  58, March  2, 1619, 36r; no.  74, June  9, 1619, 248r–9v; no. 75, June 9, 1619, 283r f.; no. 79, July 21, 1619, 316r f. 71 ASV, SDC, filza 87, no. 58, March 2, 1619, 28r–9r, 31r–2v; no. 71, June 26, 1619, 223r–4v; no. 75, June 9, 1619, 278r–9r, 281r–2r; no. 79, July 21, 1619, 315r f. 72 Briggs, This Little Art, 45 (quote), 252. 73 GSItinerario. 74 Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni, XIV, 392. 75 Hirschfeld, “Early Modern Collaboration.” 76 ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 8, November 9, 1617, 111r. 77 ASV, BAC, b. 267, vol. 377, 54v, November 22, 1590. 78 Spivak, “Politics of Translation.” 79 ASV, SDD, 18, May 29, 1618, with letters from March 21 and May 27, 1618. 80 Eco, Experiences, 5. See also Lahiri, Translating Myself and Others. 81 Hermans, Conference of Tongues, 91. 82 Briggs, This Little Art, 48. 83 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance; Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans,” 772. 84 Rothman, “Accounting for Gifts,” 442. 85 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 66f. 86 Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 115; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 66f. On Alessandra Piron, see Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 115. 87 Venuti, “Translation, Authorship, Copyright,” 1 (quote); GSItinerario, 173v; ASV, SDC, filza 85.

254  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer 88 Adaptation of Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 1. 89 Briggs, This Little Art, 53f., 63. 90 Ginzburg, “La Signora Bovary.” 91 Simeoni, “Pivotal Status.” 92 Briggs, This Little Art, 31. 93 Simeoni, “Pivotal Status,” 2. 94 Novak, Commissiones, VI, 245–61, 263–7, 269–74; Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 110f. 95 ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 164v, June  4, 1613; ASV, SDC, filza 84, no. 7, October 28, 1617, 93r f.; ASV, SDC, filza 81, no. 18, March 19, 1616; 343r–5r, August 20, 1616; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 46, 85; Mulsow, Prekäres Wissen. 96 Dursteler, “Bailo,” 18. 97 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 3, March 26, 1618, 20r f. 98 ASV, SDD, 18, May 20, 1618. 99 ASV, SDD, 18, March 19, 1618; May 22, 1618; June 7, 1618. 100 ASV, SDD, 18, May 20, 1618. 101 ASV, SDelC, filza 14, March 30, 1619. 102 Howard, “Oriental Traveller.” 103 Stagl, History of Curiosity, 47–94, here 78 (quote). Cf. Enenkel and De Jong, Artes Apodemicae. 104 Stagl, History of Curiosity, 71f., 76f., 81. 105 GSItinerario, 174v. 106 Kreiser, Edirne, 253; Popović, “Belgrade.” Cf. Fotić, “Belgrade.” 107 Chyträus, Variorum; Giovio, Istorie, 434; Münster, Cosmographia, 931f.; Ortelius, Theatro, 180f.; De Lisboa, Chroniche (1606), 135r–6r; De Lisboa, Chroniche (1615), 222–6. 108 GSItinerario, 175r. 109 GSItinerario, 174v f., 177v; Fotić, “Yahyapaşa-Oğlu Mehmed Pasha’s Evkaf.” 110 Stagl, History of Curiosity, 64. 111 GSItinerario, 173r–4v, 175v f. 112 Katip Çelebi. Rumeli und Bosna; Reynolds, Interpreting the Self. 113 Davis, “Boundaries and the Sense of Self”; Jancke, Autobiographie als soziale Praxis; Jancke and Ulbrich, “From the Individual to the Person”; Fulbrook and Rublack, “In Relation”; Grafton, Footnote; Kewes, Plagiarism; Bjørnstad, Borrowed Feathers; Dobranski, “Authorship.” 114 Briggs, This Little Art, 138 (quote), 30. 115 Greene, Light of Troy. 116 Borges, “Translators,” 98. 117 Brummett, Mapping the Ottomans, 284. 118 Venuti, Scandals of Translation, 31. Cf. Rohdewald et al. “Wissenszirkulation,” 84. 119 ASV, BAC, b. 268, vol. 380, 17 Ramadan 999 AH/July 1, 1591 (sic). 120 Briggs, This Little Art, 142. 121 Stouraiti, “Printing Empire”; Infelise, “War.” 122 Ghobrial, Whispers of Cities, 62. On the following, see also Krstić, “Of Translation.” 123 ASV, DT, no. 433, 448; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 112, 115, 118; Lybyer, Government, 262–75; Matuz, “Pfortendolmetscher,” 45. 124 Hazai, Geschichte der Ungarn; Hazai, “Notes”; Matuz, “Pfortendolmetscher,” 51. 125 Babinger, “Pfortendolmetsch Murād”; Gragger, “Murād’s ‘Glaubenshymnus’”; Rossi, “De Senectute”; Matuz, “Pfortendolmetscher,” 54. 126 BMC, MSS Morosini-Grimani 540, fasc. 24; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 198–202, here 199 (quote). Cf. Tezcan, Second Ottoman Empire; Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore, 186. I am deeply grateful to E. Natalie Rothman for sharing her photographs of Giovanni Battista’s BMC manuscripts with me.

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  255 127 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 200. For the janissary take on the events, see Piterberg, Ottoman Tragedy, 48. 128 Tezcan, “History of a ‘Primary Source’,” 46f. 129 Briggs, This Little Art, 30 (quote), 39. 130 Benjamin, Illuminations, 83, 107, 86. 131 Briggs, This Little Art, 149. 132 ASV, SDC, filza 87, no. 58, March 2, 1619, 32r f. 133 BMC, Cod. Cicogna 2715, fasc. 38, 315r–31v, here 331v; BMC, MSS MorosiniGrimani 540, fasc. 24, unfoliated; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 199 (“to describe his role […]”). 134 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, 659. 135 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, indice; g3r. 136 De Vivo, “How to Read Venetian ‘Relazioni’,” 30. 137 Borges, “Translators,” 103. 138 BMC, MSS Morosini-Grimani 540, fasc. 24, unfoliated. 139 BMC, Cod. Cicogna 2715, fasc. 38, 315r. 140 Sansovino, Gl’annali; Sansovino, Historia vniversale. 141 BMC, MSS Morosini-Grimani 540, fasc. 24, unfoliated. 142 BMC, Cod. Cicogna 2715, fasc. 38, 315r–31v. 143 BMC, Cod. Cicogna 2715, fasc. 27, 250r–1r. 144 BMC, Cod. Cicogna 2715, fasc. 23, 230r–3v; BMC, Cod. Cicogna 2715, fasc. 24, 234r–7r, here 237r (quote). 145 Höfert, Den Feind beschreiben, 22. 146 BMC, Cod. Cicogna 2715, fasc. 24, 234r–7r. 147 Krstić, Narratives of Religious Change, 12–16; Krstić, “Historicizing the Study of Sunni Islam”; Güngörürler, “Islamic Discourse.” Cf. Imber, Ottoman Empire, 94; Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It; Dale, Muslim Empires. 148 Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change,” 420f.; Tezcan, Second Ottoman Empire. See also the entry on Giovanni Battista Salvago in The Dragoman Renaissance Database, https://dragomans.digital.utsc.utoronto.ca/node/17 (accessed April 13, 2022). 149 BMC, Cod. Cicogna 2715, fasc. 22, 224r–9v. 150 BMC, Cod. Cicogna 2715, fasc. 25, 238r–41r. 151 BMC, Cod. Cicogna 2715, fasc. 26, 242r–9v. 152 Nabokov, “Problems of Translation,” 125. 153 Eco, Experiences, 48 (“compensating for losses”); Ortega y Gasset, “La miseria y el esplendor.” 154 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 96, 198f. 155 Briggs, This Little Art, 210. 156 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 252. 157 Briggs, This Little Art, 93–163, here 144f. Cf. Buffagni, Garzelli, and Zanotti, Translator as Author. 158 Antena, “Manifesto”; Briggs, This Little Art, 71; Gould and Tahmasebian, Translation and Activism. 159 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 27, August 8, 1618, 297v; no. 75; ASV, SDelM, filza 218, July 7, 1618; Rota, “Safavid Envoys.” 160 ASV, SDC, filza 85, no. 11, May 10, 1618, 110r, 112r. 161 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, June 6, 1618; Römer, “Einfluß der Übersetzungen.” 162 Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni, XIV, 625f. (quote); BMC, MSS Morosini-Grimani 540, fasc. 24. 163 Benzoni, “Contarini.” 164 Donazzolo, Viaggiatori, 207; Rothman, “Self-Fashioning,” 127. Cf. Droste, “Patronage”; Atçıl, Scholars and Sultans; Andrews and Kalpaklı, Age of the Beloveds.

256  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer 165 GBSAfrica, 3. 166 GBSAfrica, 3–6. 167 GBSAfrica, 22, 50–2. Salvago’s report was classified as a Venetian ambassadors’ report, Rothman, “Self-Fashioning,” 129. 168 Rothman, “Self-Fashioning,” 124f. 169 Rothman, “Self-Fashioning,” 132. 170 Rothman, “Self-Fashioning,” 136 (“a learned man of letters”). Cf. Preto, Venezia e i Turchi; Rhodes, “Battaglia di Lepanto”; Höfert, Den Feind beschreiben; Malcolm, Useful Enemies; Poumarède, Venise et les Turcs. On Leo Africanus’s report as a work of cultural translation, see Davis, Trickster Travels; Zhiri, “Limits of Translation.” 171 Rothman, “Self-Fashioning,” 137. 172 Lefevere, Translation, 12. 173 Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 211. 174 Nietzsche, “Translations,” 67, translated by Walter Kaufmann. 175 Steiner, “Hermeneutic Motion,” 157. 176 Rothman, “Self-Fashioning,” 128. 177 Venuti, “Introduction,” 5. 178 De Vivo, “How to Read Venetian ‘Relazioni’.” 179 GBSAfrica, 90; De Vivo, “How to Read Venetian ‘Relazioni’,” 30. 180 De Vivo, “How to Read Venetian ‘Relazioni’,” 37–39, 42 (quote). Cf. De Vivo, Information, 57–70; Dursteler, “Bailo,” 11. 181 Rothman, “Self-Fashioning,” 129f. 182 GBSAfrica, 20. 183 Briggs, This Little Art, 243. 184 DAZD, 1: 2, 202r, 203r, Split, May 11, 1622; 411r, Split, August 28, 1622. 185 DAZD, 1: 2, 125r–8v, 1622; Gould and Tahmasebian, Translation and Activism. 186 ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 1r, July 9, 1611 (quote); ASV, BAC, b. 277, protocollo of bailo Simone Contarini, 33r f., March 26, 1611. 187 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 251f.; ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 164v, June 4, 1613. 188 ASV, BAC, b. 277, libro atti of bailo Christoforo Valiero, 165v, June 4, 1613. 189 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 156v. 190 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, June 6, 1618. 191 Jancke, “Autobiographical Texts”; Jancke and Schläppi, Ökonomie sozialer Beziehungen. 192 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 94v (quote). Cf. ibid., 157r. 193 ASV, SDC, rubrica D12, 12r. 194 ASV, SDC, filza 87, no. 58, March 30, 1619, 117v. 195 ASV, SDelC, filza 14, March 30, 1619, unfoliated. 196 ASV, SDelC, filza 14, March 30, 1619, unfoliated (quotes). Cf. ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 143r, June 8, 1619. 197 ASV, SDelC, filza 14, September  29, 1619, unfoliated, letter from August  18, 1619. 198 AGS, ESTVen, leg. 1930, no. 351, Istanbul, November 5/6, 1618. 199 ASV, SDelC, filza 14, September 29, 1619, unfoliated. 200 Ulbrich, “Tränenspektakel.” 201 It was late Philippa Maddern who kindly shared this insight. 202 ASV, SDelC, filza 14, September 29, 1619, unfoliated. 203 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 218v, September  29, 1619 (quote); ASV, SDelC, filza  14, September 29, 1619, unfoliated. 204 Novak, Commissiones, VII, 14f. On incidents in the region of northern Dalmatia in 1621, see DAZD, Mletački Dragoman/Dragomano veneto, 25, XCVII.

The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer  257 221v f., v

205 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, October 29, 1619. 2 06 ASV, SDelC, reg. 12, 222 , October 29, 1619. 207 GBSDalmatia, 17, 19, 20f. Cf. Pedani, Ottoman-Venetian Border, 53; Ágoston, “Flexible Empire”; Orlando, “Tra Venezia e Impero ottomano.” 208 GBSDalmatia, 17–37, here 21 (“With my study […]”), 27 (“charge […]”), 29, 32. 209 For example, Mignolo and Schiwy, “Double Translation,” 23; Burke, “Renaissance Translator.” 210 Pym, “Alternatives to Borders,” 452. See also Apter, Against World Literature. 211 Dursteler, “Habsburgs, Ottomans and Venetians,” 77. Cf. Pedani, Dalla frontiera. 212 Pym, “Alternatives to Borders,” 452, 455f. (quotes). Cf. Rafael, Motherless Tongues; Brummett, Mapping the Ottomans. 213 The manuscript is stored in the relazioni holdings of the Venetian archive, GBSDalmatia, 19. 214 All quotes in this order, GBSDalmatia, 22, 27, 30, 27, 29, 30. 215 Kafadar, “Evliya Çelebi in Dalmatia,” 67. 216 GBSDalmatia, 25. 217 GBSDalmatia, 26, 31. 218 GBSDalmatia, 23, 24 (quote). Cf. Pedani, Ottoman-Venetian Border, 53f. 219 GBSDalmatia, 28f., 32f. For the negotij d’Islam, see DAZD, Mletački Dragoman/Dragomano veneto, 25, XCVII, here the correspondence from 1621. 220 Bracewell, “Balkan Travel Writing,” 2 states that Balkan travel writings “have justified self-interested political, military or economic policies towards the region.” Baker, Translation and Conflict, 1 emphasises that “translation is central to the ability of all parties to legitimize their version of events.” 221 Preto, I servizi segreti, 252. 222 Steiner, After Babel. 223 DAZD, Mletački Dragoman/Dragomano veneto, 41, CXXVI, P. 2. 224 DAZD, Mletački Dragoman/Dragomano veneto, 41, CXXVI, P.  3; DAZD, Mletački Dragoman/Dragomano veneto, 41, CXXVI, P. 5. 225 GBSDalmatia, 28. 226 DAZD, Mletački Dragoman/Dragomano veneto, 41, CXXVI, P. 4. 227 GBSDalmatia, 31. 228 GBSDalmatia, 19f. 229 GBSDalmatia, 20. 230 Venuti, “Strategies.” 231 GBSDalmatia, 19, 22, 35. Cf. Zwierlein, Discorso. 232 GBSDalmatia, 33. 233 GBSDalmatia, 20. 234 On such occasions, the Salvago dragomans, as imperial protagonists, promoted Venetian claims over territory, power, and influence. Baramova, Power and Influence; Baramova, Boykov, and Parvev, Bordering. 235 GBSDalmatia, 21. 236 GSItinerario, 176v; GBSDalmatia, 26. 237 GBSDalmatia, 24. 238 Pym, “Alternatives to Borders,” 455. 239 GBSDalmatia, 29f. 240 Douglas, Purity and Danger, chapter 6. 241 GBSDalmatia, 29. 242 Luca, “Vlachs/Morlaks”; Roksandić, “Dinaric Vlachs/Morlachs.” 243 GBSDalmatia, 25; Adanır, “Semi-Autonomous Provincial Forces,” 160f. 244 For a similar perspective in a recent revisionist study of Hungary, see Michels, Habsburg Empire under Siege.

258  The Dragoman, A Would-Be Writer 245 Barzman, Limits of Identity, 1–5, 17 (“irreconcilable third term […]”), 202 (“production and performance […]”), 203–61. On the significance of civic and urban identity concepts in the Adriatic context, see Budak, “Urban élites in Dalmatia”; Kunčević, “Civic and Ethnic Discourses of Identity”; Sander-Faes, Urban Elites of Zadar. On (later) Dalmatian responses to travellers’ assessments of the world of the morlachs, see Bracewell, “Arguing from Experience,” 555–62. 246 Vecellio, De gli habiti, Schiavone, overo Dalmatino. 247 GBSDalmatia, 33. 248 Barzman, Limits of Identity, 224. 249 ASV, DT, no. 1485; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 406. 250 GBSDalmatia, 33. 251 Rublack, Dressing Up, 146. 252 Cf. Steiner, “Hermeneutic Motion,” 157: “the translator invades, extracts, and brings home.” 253 Pym, “Alternatives to Borders,” 456f. 254 GBSDalmatia, 20, 35. 255 Rothman, Brokering Empire, 165–86; Arbel, “Translating the Orient.” 256 DAZD, Mletački Dragoman/Dragomano veneto, 41, CXXVI, P.  4; Pedani, “Interpreter Michele Membrè.” 257 Pedani, “Interpreter Michele Membrè,” 388f.; Dursteler, “Commerce and Coexistence,” 113. 258 Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore, 173. 259 GBSDalmatia, 20. 260 GBSDalmatia, 30f. (“not authentic”); Rothman, Brokering Empire, 179f. 261 Pym, “Alternatives to Borders,” 457, 459, 456. 262 Mason, “Text Parameters,” 399. Cf. Koskinen, “Institutional Illusions.”

Study of Perspective

Translators lean on books, Kate Briggs says, and so do historians. When ­writing their books, historians are shaped by the books of others, the writings that we engage with, that we think along, the texts that we disagree with or that shape the ways we see things. The words of others leave their traces.1 Yet, the texts that historians refer to in academic monographs tend to be academic texts, most notably other monographs and articles, usually heavily footnoted, a type of text that sets us in contexts, that shapes the conversations that we have in our own work, the relations that we draw. Such a comment matters since the books we reference matter. In her seminal Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed sketches the pillars of a feminist project in which citation policy is key. “I adopt a strict citation policy,” she states, “I do not cite any white men. By white men I am referring to an institution.” She explains: Instead, I cite those who have contributed to the intellectual genealogy of feminism and antiracism, including work that has been too quickly (in my view) cast aside or left behind, work that lays out other paths, paths we can call desire lines, created by not following the official paths laid out by disciplines. These paths might have become fainter from not being traveled upon; so we might work harder to find them; we might be willful just to keep them going the way we have been directed. My citation policy has given me more room to attend to those feminists who came before me. Citation is feminist memory. Citation is how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before.2 Ahmed’s reflections are crucial in so many regards. For example, I have consciously searched for and included secondary literature written in languages other than English to make the expertise of researchers visible that are still far too often less visible and more vulnerable in Anglophone academic discourse. Moreover, I treated the names of translators equal to the names of academic researchers, acknowledging their work, as authors, in the actual text, footnotes, and in the bibliography of this present book, treating translators as co-authors whose words I thought with. Visibility is thus a key concern in this study, which

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-10

260  Study of Perspective puts centre-stage an early modern translator’s concerns about the visibility of his own work and words. But what happens if we make the words of authors visible that are not necessarily considered part of the academic sphere, as words and works that have contributed to my way of thinking when authoring this text—the kind of texts that we read when trying not to think of work, yet that make us fail in doing so? To me, one of these kinds of texts is Ai Weiwei’s 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir. When the book was published some months ago, I was absorbed with thinking and writing my own book about the Salvagos; yet, I felt that Ai Weiwei’s memoir would be exactly the out-of-work reading that I longed for. We went to a book launch in Cambridge, bought a copy, and read. And it turned out that I was wrong. Sentences like The whirlpool that swallowed up my father upended my life too, leaving a mark on me that I carry to this day.3 kept me thinking… Ai Weiwei recalls the memory of his father being sent to an internment camp in “Little Siberia” during Mao Zedong’s “Cultural Revolution”: “I was about to turn ten,” he writes, “and the events that followed have stayed with me always.”4 I could not help it and thought about Genesino, and the mark that the assassination of his father would have left on him for the rest of his life. How would that have shaped him authoring texts? Of course, I am aware of the differences and I do not attempt to establish a comparison or analogy. Being absorbed by the words that I myself was crafting at that time, however, Ai Weiwei’s words spoke to me in a different way; they resonated; they offered something to lean on, as translator Briggs calls it: words that offer themselves to be tested and thought along. Mateca’s assassination by orders of Venice would have left such a mark on Genesino, for the rest of his life. Still in 1618, during the stay in Venice following his Balkan journey, Genesino reminded Venetian senators that his ancestors had given their “own blood” and “their own life, in the faithful and continuing service for this most serene republic.”5 Such memories would have lasted. The violence would have been part of the dragoman family’s memory, especially since he was constantly confronted with the institutions of Venetian authority and the need to tailor his own service towards the rhetoric of Venetian imperial self-fashioning. One of the marks left by this childhood experience, it seems, is the wish to carve out a narrative space for family memories; for the life stories of Ai Weiwei’s father and his own son to relate; to situate the self within the family as a passing of time; and a past that has shaped the author’s own self in ways that he wishes to articulate this experience in words to be given to his own son. “This book is dedicated to my parents and my son,” we read in 1000 Years of Joy and Sorrows, the title itself referencing the father’s own words. These observations resonate with my understanding of the place of the Salvagos in the

Study of Perspective  261 Venetian colonial archive, with Genesino crafting words—in his translations, the travelogue, and the petitions—to shape the family legacy and carve out a future for his younger brothers. Another mark that the father’s internment left, it seems, is Ai Weiwei’s admirable refusal of any unquestioned authority and power of the state, as well as the apparent legitimacy of state institutions to define the course of people’s life. This materialised perhaps most powerfully in the winter of 1995, on the west side of Tiananmen Square, in front of the Great Hall of the People, [where] I took a photo of myself sticking the middle finger of my left hand at Tiananmen. That day, under a typically leaden, featureless sky, only a few scattered tourists were walking across the square. The ancient Gate of Heavenly Peace looked the same as always, Mao’s portrait dimly visible in the murk. This unambiguously scornful gesture was my way of asserting the existence of self, and it left no room for misinterpretation. I had no other resources—all that I could deploy was an attitude. Through not forgetting, not forgiving, and not abandoning […].6 The artist exported the motif all over the world, with one photograph featuring him with a similar “gesture” in front of St Mark’s Basilica, Venice (Figure 35). This photograph brands mass tourism and the anonymity of cultures of mass consumption; yet, what if it does more, qua art, and draws our attention to the institution of power and workings of authority that lurk behind the beauty of the façades? What if it calls to attention the violence and injustice in the history of Renaissance Venice, perhaps most iconically present in the horses of St Mark’s, pointed at directly by Ai Weiwei’s finger, as they were looted during the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (1204)? The artist calls this photograph a Study of Perspective, and I would like to take this as an invitation to do so myself. Over recent years, historians of Renaissance Italy have themselves reconsidered perspectives on various occasions, reflecting on what might be called “the darker side of the Renaissance.”7 Similarly, historians of Venice have presented field-shaping studies initiating a shift towards the history of imperial agents, recovering their agendas, motivations, and experiences in negotiating the history and experiences of empire.8 This present book follows this path by uncovering, in Judith Butler’s words, the “precarity of life” and “vulnerability” of protagonists in imperial service.9 Many of the sources discussed in this book guided me towards reflections about how agents of empire might carve out a space for themselves and their families, their agency to make a living within the workings of power—notwithstanding exactly such workings. Such reflections make this book also contribute to “the pressing question of how to make a living as a […] translator,” and the history of a translator’s “ fragile livelihood” in the early modern Mediterranean.10 …

262  Study of Perspective

Figure 35  A  i Weiwei (b. 1957): Study of Perspective—San Marco, 1995-2003.  New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Gelatin silver print, 15 5/16 × 23 1/4” (38.9  × 59 cm). Acquired through the generosity of the Photography Council Fund and the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art. Acc. n.: 356.2008.  ©2022.  Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. ©Photo SCALA, Florence.

Now, let’s take a moment for a thought experiment: let us go just a few steps along the path to relate Ai Weiwei’s Study of Perspective to the Venetian colonial archive. Does this perhaps carve out a space for us to imagine the possibility that Genesino’s self-fashioning as a diligent and loyal imperial servant might have been a “scornful gesture,” “[his] way of asserting the existence of self,” “an attitude,” or him “not forgetting, not forgiving, and not abandoning” the assassination of his father by Venice? We cannot say but maybe there actually is more to be said…

Notes 1 According to Briggs, This Little Art, 38, translators rely on “supporting texts: the texts that brace us, the ones we lean on, testing them to see if they’ll support our weight; the texts we always seem to be in conversation with, whether directly or indirectly; the texts that enable us to say or write anything at all.”

Study of Perspective  263 2 Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, 15. 3 Ai Weiwei, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, 5. 4 Ai Weiwei, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, 5f. 5 ASV, SDelM, filza 218, June 6, 1618. 6 Ai Weiwei, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, 204. 7 Mignolo, Darker Side of the Renaissance. 8 O’Connell, Men of Empire; Rothman, Brokering Empire; Malcolm, Agents of Empire; Maglaque, Venice’s Intimate Empire. 9 Butler, Precarious Life. 10 Briggs, This Little Art, 55, 142.

Translation, Family, Espionage Interpreting Early Modern Imperial Interpreters

This book is a Balkan story as much as it is a Mediterranean m ­ icrohistory. I zoomed into the lives of the Salvago interpreters, and Genesino in particular, to unbundle the imperial histories of the early modern Mediterranean, as well as the connections and disconnections it entails. This book puts centre-stage an Ottoman subject’s Southeastern European travelogue, composed as a Venetian self-narrative, decentring Genesino’s Balkans ­ in light of the broader Mediterranean world of this family: the service of himself as well as his grandfather, father, brothers, and nephew in places as far-flung as Algiers, Aleppo, Belgrade, Istanbul, Sarajevo, Split, Tunis, and Venice, as well as the family’s ongoing attempts to widen such geographies, for instance, by establishing their expertise in Persian politics and ­ translations. Recalibrating the historian’s lens of analysis towards the Balkan story of this self-narrative, in fact, reveals the repercussions of Southeastern European events in early modern Iberia, Italy, Istanbul, and beyond. In the present study, Ragusa, Sarajevo, and Split, to name only a few, are vibrant hubs shaping politics across the Mediterranean. This book uncovers the Mediterranean dynamism engendered by events in early modern Southeastern Europe. Balkan events, in fact, shaped wider imperial politics and stung Istanbul, Madrid, and Venice, among others, into action. Empires across the Mediterranean had to respond to developments in the imperial Balkans, and agents, like the Salvagos, were key in channelling, mediating, and negotiating such responses. I uncover the unknown story of the Salvagos, a family of V ­ eneto-Ottoman interpreters who feature into previous studies, usually in the form of ­colourful anecdotes, but whose family history has never been the subject of a monograph. This book, thus, fills a pressing gap in research; yet, it also casts light on interpreters as full-fledged protagonists with their very own agendas and challenges. By unravelling such, this book showcases the ­versatility of what historians have called the “vernacular diplomacy” of the early modern Mediterranean, adding further insides, and shades, towards an increasingly colourful literature on diplomatic go-betweens.1 Translators are widely understood as people representing the words and persona of others. Unbundling both, this book recovers the extent to which

DOI: 10.4324/9780429279539-11

Translation, Family, Espionage  265 dragomans shaped the wor(l)ds of empires. Facing their own challenges, these ­interpreter-translators developed intricate strategies when manoeuvring selfhood in the attempt to carve out a future in the unsettling world of early modern Mediterranean diplomacy. In fact, this book introduces interpreters like the Salvagos as key protagonists in the making of imperial rivalry and interaction in the early modern Mediterranean. On their journeys, these dragomans helped negotiating imperial politics on the ground and fuelled the wider administrative apparatus with the information needed to keep the machinery of empires moving. Constantly on the move in ­far-flung places, mobility was key to these road dragomans’ experiences of translation. In fact, it was on occasions like Genesino’s travels in the Balkans that road dragomans experienced the urge to articulate, situate, and embed their sense of self. To the Salvagos in particular, the imperial contact zone of Southeastern Europe was key to the travelling translator’s narrative production of the self. The early modern dragoman’s self-narrative, this book shows, was ­anchored in wider communities of practices. The dragomans’ practice of translation thus shaped their notion of the self. As interpreters and translators, the Salvagos were experts in the use of words. They had been trained to have a close attention to the details of vocabulary, the workings of syntax, the references enacted by paratextual elements, as well as the meanings conveyed by the tonalities and gestures of speech and texts. Their experiences as practitioners of words mattered for their writing practices. Since translation itself is a “writing experiment” that, in Kate Briggs’ words, “[opens up] new writing possibility,” the dragomans’ doing of translation shaped their writing about the self—their doing of personhood.2 Among their translational practices of the self, rewriting stood out as a particularly powerful practice employed by the Salvagos to frame the self. Linked to both the interpreter’s practice and early modern concepts of authorship, rewriting allowed the Salvagos to exploit their skills in furnishing narratives of the self, thereby negotiating their own authorial position and the visibility of their work. Through rewriting, self-narratives served these interpreters to write themselves into the Venetian colonial archive, situating the dragoman within Venice’s apparatus of power. A study of the early modern interpreter’s narrative self, thus, must start with uncovering their everyday experiences of translation and of being translated. When doing so, this book shows, translation theory widens our understanding of the history of early modern self-narratives. Likewise, the history of self-narratives can broaden the scope of translation studies and our understanding of the history of ­translation. By radically historicising the Salvago dragomans’ doing of translation, this book introduces translation as an early modern way to think, establish, and practice relationships—translation itself could be an autobiographical practice. The Salvagos’ self-narratives were not isolated texts. On the contrary, their autobiographical writings functioned as assemblages, cross-referencing and

266  Translation, Family, Espionage interacting with other texts. Over the years, the Salvagos’ textual ­production fuelled the Venetian colonial archive. Whenever they composed another layer of text, these translators added an additional textual layer to the production of the dragoman’s narrative self, as well as its visibility in the overall archive of the institutionalised memory of Venetian power. Accumulating such texts, these dragomans produced a distributed self that worked over the course of years, and generations in fact. Carefully crafted over the period of decades, this assemblage of texts thickened networks of the self, webs of patronage in particular; yet, such workings of self-narratives also made the self-fashioning and career advancement of dragomans prone to vulnerability, for instance, in the case of the collapse of such networks in a sudden turn of events, like the death of the Salvagos’ most powerful patron, doge Francesco Contarini. The textual assemblages of self-narratives, however, also provided the dragomans with a social safety net, a textual universe that could be referenced and enacted in moments of biographical precarity, like on occasion of the sudden deaths of Genesino and Giuliano in 1619. Catapulted into an existential crisis, various members of the family employed the power of self-narratives to navigate such a crisis and mediate its impact on the Salvagos. It is this ongoing, unfolding character of self-narratives, their performative functioning within wider textual assemblages, that calls for in-depth archival research. The research presented in this volume shows, above all, the significance of relations in the dragoman’s production of the self. Just like early modern notions of the self were embedded in and shaped by social relationships, self-narratives too were anchored in a universe of textual relationships.3 The workings of self-narratives within wider assemblages, in fact, helped situating the self within wider communities. One such community was the family. The Salvagos ran a Mediterranean family business called translation. When travelling the Mediterranean, they negotiated imperial positions across geographies, as much as their own positioning within such a complex imperial topography. The family’s way of talking and doing translations, its lessico famigliare, provided a the­saurus of intimacy that spanned and connected the Mediterranean travelled by the members of this family—a means to shape the intimate links between family, translation, and self. The Salvagos’ language- and translation-based family unit established firm links with Venetian imperial service and diplomacy, which, in turn, widened the social unit of the family and the notion of the self. The household (casa) of the Salvagos was deeply embedded in the bailate’s diplomatic entourage ( famiglia), and negotiating both was an at times challenging balancing act for dragomans. Since interpretation was a skill acquired and practised within such units, translation became a ­family-based practice. To the Salvagos discussed in this book, neither family nor translation was separate; it was the nature of their entanglement that carved these interpreters’ sense of self. The assassination of Genesino’s father, Mateca, by secret orders of Venice was a crucial moment of rupture, a threat to the established unity of family, translation, and service and thus

Translation, Family, Espionage  267 a moment of peril with serious consequences for the family’s future. As this book shows, the Salvagos used self-narratives in conscious and strategic ways to realign their service with the authority’s notion of loyalty, as well as Venice’s institutional memory thereof. The careful use of the rhetoric of imperial loyalty, however, caused its own problems. Imperial servants were expected to reference such tropes and hence used them widely. The use of self-narratives to present their service as unique, thus, did not allow the Salvagos to stand out. In fact, other experienced dragomans employed similar tropes and textual strategies of selfhood to ensure access to power and the future prosperity of their family. Self-narratives thus granted visibility to the Salvagos within the administrative apparatus of Venetian power; however, the conditions of writing undermined the social efficacy of their self-fashioning as agents in imperial service. Hence, this book also highlights the limits of early modern self-fashioning. Imperial interpreters, as we have seen, were agents of empire. As such, the often-blurred boundaries between information management and ­intelligence gathering turned the Salvagos into a family of high-profile spies active across the Mediterranean, in particular in Bosnia, Dalmatia, Lika, and Serbia, but also in Hungary, Istanbul, and Moldavia. As Venetian spies, the Salvagos spearheaded anti-Ragusan and anti-Habsburg activities and informed Venetian economic politics towards the Ottoman Empire. The Salvagos were not pressured into such activities but offered themselves for such. Their espionage was a means of situating themselves, which often served to demonstrate their loyalty and negotiate career advancement. In this context, the Salvagos also exploited the potential of self-narratives to craft the diplomatic persona of interpreters in imperial service. It is for this reason that these translators’ self-narratives, as well as their actual work of interpretation, turned translation into an imperial tool. As Ottoman subjects in Venetian service, the Salvagos’ writings helped establish a metropoli­ tan, imperial gaze and contributed to the making of borders. Their work as interpreters strengthened the official interpretation of empires. Such interpreters, thus, should not be romanticised. Dragomans were not necessarily bridging borders, although they certainly did so at times, but they also helped establish them alongside regimes of imperial interpretations over territoriality and subjecthood. This volume casts a new light on the history of early modern ­imperial agents, insofar as it highlights the hardships of protagonists like the Salvagos. The precarity of their living condition was unsettling in many regards and manifested most brutally in the assassination of Genesino’s father and nephew. The fierce competition over imperial recognition, in local contexts in Dalmatia, for instance, but also in the bailate itself, just added another layer to the already troublesome identity politics resulting from the Salvagos’ status as Ottoman subjects in Venetian service. Yet, the vulnerability of the self also resulted from the very nature of their work since translation demanded them to convey other perspectives and to stand

268  Translation, Family, Espionage in for others while reducing the visibility of their own actions. Embedded in a world of hierarchies and the workings of the Venetian colonial archive, the Salvagos had limited control over their texts and self-fashioning. In fact, their experience of being translated into the Venetian archive, often resulting in reduced authorial visibility or the actual loss of authorship, shaped this family’s experiences as well as their approach to self-narratives. The weight of generations of Salvago dragomans on their shoulders, Genesino’s generation made strategic use of self-narratives to increase the visibility of their service, to shape a legacy, to make a living, and to design a future. To this generation, writing about themselves had become a means, if not a necessity, to ensure the family’s future in imperial service. This volume’s focus on mobility is another important contribution to the recent literature on dragomans. Genesino’s life writings, in fact, challenge some of the more general assumptions about Veneto-Ottoman dragomans— namely the widespread approach to situate them exclusively within the contexts of Istanbul or Venice. While much of the literature focuses exclusively on their sojourns in imperial metropolises, the present study carves out the importance of movement for dragomans’ understandings of their profession, as well as the ways they wrote about themselves. By doing so, we come to appreciate more fully the significance of Southeastern Europe to both Venice and the Ottoman Empire. As road dragomans, I show, the Salvagos were constantly on the move. Reconstructing their itineraries and experiences thus fleshes out the early modern nexus of travel and ­translation. Mobility was key to such imperial agents and the reconstruction of their itineraries is therefore crucial if we wish to get a fuller understanding of the role of dragomans in early modern Mediterranean diplomacy. Contemporary theory and practices of translation, this volume shows, were strongly linked to spatial concepts and travels thus mattered to the Salvagos’ notion and practice of interpretation and translation. Exactly this mobility, however, distanced the Salvagos for considerable time from the bailate. Their travels, thus, made road dragomans also particularly vulnerable. Posing limits to their attempts in self-fashioning, travels also provoked the Salvagos to put pen to paper, addressing what they did and why. When writing ­self-narratives, road dragomans’ attempts to craft a diplomatic persona were prone to misinterpretation and misappropriation. This was also the reason for the fragility of the future of the family business of translation. But this is not the Buddenbrooks—that is to say, this book does not detail the decline of a family in the age of empire. In fact, I rather uncover the Salvagos’ agency in negotiating their own place and future in such troublesome times. Though some of their attempts failed in the long run, ­self-narratives were crucial in doing so and their work equipped these translators when embarking to compose their own self-narratives. As the last protagonist of a generation of glorious dragomans, Giovanni Battista used the established tool of kinshipping to craft the family’s future in the bailate. He married Sultana Borisi, one of five daughters of the grand dragoman;

Translation, Family, Espionage  269 yet, the marriage seemingly remained childless and ended in annulment.4 Also the marriage between Benetto Salvago and Caterina Piron, a relative of Borisi’s former wife Alessandra, ended in divorce.5 The Salvagos thus seemingly sought to establish a closeness to the family of the former star of the dragomanate, a familiarity that resulted in further difficulties in the long run, especially after Borisi’s assassination in 1620. Only one year after the death of Genesino and Giuliano, this event was another stroke of fate to the Salvagos. In the coming decades, the brothers’ nephew, Giovanni Antonio Grillo, carried on the family’s tradition of imperial translation, however, on costs of the visibility of the Salvagos’ own history. Grillo seemingly defined himself via the patrilinear tradition of translators, surely also to reduce association with the difficult legacy of his grandfather, Mateca, as well as to distinguish himself, as grand dragoman, from the workings of his uncle and competitor, Giovanni Battista. Yet, the memory of the Salvagos’ imperial service lived on among the coming generations. Still in 1675, Giovanni Battista’s niece, Elisabeta, wrote to Venice to ask for her son Antonio to enter the bailate’s training programme of dragomans, evoking the memory of Genesino, Giuliano, and Giovanni Battista.6 Also another niece of these dragomans was at the very centre of the social fabric of the dragomanate: “Gioia was the granddaughter of Mateca Salvago, niece of Giuliano, [Genesino], and Giovanni Battista Salvago, wife of Stefano Testa, and aunt of Pietro and Giacomo Fortis and of Antonio Coressi, all dragomans at one point or another.”7 Notwithstanding such continuities, however, the ambiguous legacy of Mateca, the sudden death of Genesino and Giuliano, as well as ever more successful, incoming Venetian colonial subjects laid heavy on the family’s future generations. In the 1680s, the Salvagos had lost their influence. The dragomans were recruited mainly from the Navon and Tarsia families.8 In fact, the Salvagos still had to face one of the most considerable challenges at the time of Genesino’s Balkan journey. About a week after the dragoman finished writing his self-narrative, around the time of his arrival in Venice, on May 23, 1618, the Protestant estates of the Holy Roman Empire threw three royal agents out of the window of the Hradschin castle in Prague. The event set in motion a spiral of violence that was to shape the future decades of the continent, impacting the lives of millions. Genesino saw none of this happening and failed to recognise the possible impact that such tumults ­ ragomans—after all, would have on the future of the Salvagos’ service as d they were Catholic subjects labouring Venetian interests in Istanbul at a time when Ottoman policies were about to be redefined. During the first years of the war, however, Venetian diplomatic sources, and with them the writings of the Salvagos, are remarkably silent regarding the unfolding of this major military conflict. Venetian policy remained focused on negotiating the impact of clashes with Spanish Habsburgs and its Neapolitan subjects in the Adriatic Sea one the one hand, and with the Austrian Habsburgs in Southeastern Europe, especially following the Uskok War, on the

270  Translation, Family, Espionage other. The wider European politics at stake, however, prove the Salvagos’ i­nvestments into the negotiation of issues like the restitution of the loot of the Split accident fruitless and, ultimately, undermined the efficacy of their ­self-fashioning as successful imperial agents. This book casts a light on the impact of changing early modern imperial politics onto the lives of imperial agents like the Salvagos. The politics of translation, I argued, are intricately intertwined with the politics of the translator’s self-narratives. Unravelling the first widens our knowledge of the latter.9

Notes 1 Gürkan, “Mediating Boundaries,” 115; Van Gelder and Krstić, “CrossConfessional Diplomacy.” 2 Briggs, This Little Art, 163. 3 Jancke, “Autobiographical Texts”; Jancke and Ulbrich, “From the Individual to the Person.” 4 Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 115f.; ASV, BAC, b.  284, November  15, 1633; ASV, BAC, b. 331 I, December  7, 1649. I owe special thanks to Cristian Luca for ­sharing and commenting on his findings. 5 Luca, “Bailaggio veneto,” 115; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 66f. 6 ASV, DT, no.  750, 1604; Pedani-Fabris, Documenti Turchi, 437; Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 273. 7 Rothman, Dragoman Renaissance, 272. 8 Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Turchia, I/1, 428f.; ASV, DT, no. 1603, Cristoforo Tarsia petitioning for financial rewards for his lengthy service as grand dragoman, referencing Grillo and Borisi as predecessors but not the Salvagos. 9 I reference here Spivak, “Politics of Translation,” which I have discussed in more detail in Chapter 4. Cf.  Wilson, Thirty Years War, Medick, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg; Keller and Scheutz, Habsburgermonarchie; Baramova, “Non-Splendid Isolation”; Cevrioğlu, “Ottoman Foreign Policy.” See also the final report of Piero Gritti, Venetian ambassador in Spain (1620), Barozzi and Berchet, Relazioni: Spagna, I/1, 493–556.

Jtinerario del Viaggio da Costantinopoli sino à Spalato, e Traù, fatto da me Genesino Saluagho Dragomanno (1618)

TNA, PRO 30/25/18, fasc. 13 [not paginated front page] + i6i8 Jtinerario del Viaggio da Costantinopoli sino à Spalato, e Traù, fatto da me Genesino Saluagho Dragomanno [not paginated, empty page, recto] [not paginated, empty page, verso] [fol. 173r] # Laus Deo. Adi 29. marzo 1618 – Nota dell’itinerario del Viaggio da Costantinopoli à Spalato fatto da me Giannettin Saluago Dragomanno di ord.e dell’Ill.mo et Ecc.mo Sig.r Fran.co Contarini Caur Prou.r et Ambasciator destinato all’eccelsa porta.

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272  Jtinerario del Viaggio Adi 29. marzo. Mi son partido dalle Vigne di Pera, fatto la strada intorno l’acque dolci, strada buona, et pianura et Verso mezzo giorno son gionto à Ponte Piccolo, Vi sono più Caruassarà, si troua da mangiare e per gli huomini, et per li Caualli, Il Zecchino cioè Sultanino, et Vngaro Vale aspri 130. per Zecchino et il [tallero] aspri 90 – 30. detto. – Mi son partido dal sud.o Ponte piccolo à tre hore auanti giorno, continuando bona strada à lito del Mare, à mezzo Camino Vi è, vn Casal de Greci detto Piuates, sono più Carauassarà et si troua Vitto di ogni cosa, et continuando il Viaggio, doppo mezzo giorno son gionto à Siluera, Vi sono più Caruassarà, si troua da mangiare, e proune p[er] Caualli, et vi è, del Vino à honesto prezzo il [tallero] – 3i. d.o – Mi son partido da Siluera doi hore auanti giorno, et Verso mezzo di gionti à Ciurlù Strada buona, et pianura scarsa di Ville, et senza fontane d’acque, Vi sono più Caruassarà si troua del Vitto, et per li Caualli à honesto prezzo – Adi P.o Ap.le P.o Aprile Mi son partido da Ziurlù tre hore auanti giorno, caualcando bene per buona strada pianura, et Vi sono per il Viaggio doi, ò tre fontane d’acqua, et al cantar del mezzo giorno gionti à Birgaz, si troua da mangiare per gli huomini, et per gli animali à honesto prezzo sono doi Caruassarà grandi fabricati dal Gran Mechmet Bassà, et auanti che si arriui à Birgaz Vi è, vn Casal grande, qual’alloggiam.to serue d’inuerno per la lunghezza del Viaggio. Nelli Caruassarà soprad.i ogni sera Vien portata Vna mezzolera di rame con doi pani dentro, et Vna scudilaccia di Minestra con Vn pezzo di Carne, et questo p[er] ogni fuogo cioè posada; Prima si soleua dar anco doi Candele, et la mattina pani, et miele, mà Auhmat Bascià Tefterdar grande detto Hechmech Ciouli, hà leuado l’intrade, et per questa Causa si sono leuadi li Candele, et il mile – 2. detto Mi son partito da Birgaz, continuando buona strada passai in tre ò quattro luoghi diuersi ponti, et à mezza strada, è, Vn Casale con un Caruassarà grande coperto di Piombo, che serue ad alloggiam.to per l’inuerno Scarso di Vitto, et di ogni cosa, et Verso al Tiendi cioè 21.  hora son gionto à Capsa. Vi sono doi Caruassarà grandi, et della robba honestamte 3. detto Mi son partito da Capsà all’Alba, buona strada, passai alcuni ponti, et fontane, et Verso il mezzo giorno gionti in Andrinopoli Casal grande, Vna Cittadella antica, luogo mercantile, Vittuaria di ogni sorte à honesto prezzo sono diuerse Caruassarà, Vn grande nuouo fabricato da Hecmechci Vugli Tefterdar grande, et à Metropoli della Grecia, Vi è, [la]

Jtinerario del Viaggio  273 v

[fol. 173 ]

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8.

9.

la moschea di Sultan Selim, si trouano Cocchi tirati da Caualli, et da Bufali p[er] caricar robba per Cost.li caualli da soma, ne da sella à Vettura no[n] se ne trouano, p[er] mezzo la terra passano tre fiumi principali detti [gap] li quali tutti tre si riducono al Ponte di Micali, qual Micali era Vn personaggio Christiano, et quando fù preso Adrinopoli li fece Turco. Il Zecchino corre aspri 130. il t.ro [tallero] aspri 90. ne, i, fiumi si pigliano diuerse sorte di Pesci, feci posada doi giorni per riposo de Caualli. Ap.le – Mi son partido da Andrinopoli Vn’hora auanti giorno, continuando per buona strada passassimo doi ponti, et à man Zanca corre un fiume Veloce, et à mezzo camino, Vi, è, Vn Caruassarà da estade, et Vn luogo di santoni detto Babba, Vi, è, Vn Caruassarà grande coperto di Piombo, et di Vitto no[n] troppo abondante. detto. Mi son partito dal d.o Ponte doi hore auanti giorno caminando per Campagna che in qualche luogo, è, boscosa, à mezza strada Vi è, Vna Villa con Vn Caruassarà grande fabricato da Siaus Bassà, che si chiama Karamandi scarsa di Vitto, et doppo mezzo giorno son gionto à osumgi ouà, che Vuol dir Campagna longa, Vi, è, Vn Caruassarà grande serrado in fozza d’vn Castello fabricato da Sinan Bassa scarso di Vitto, et di ogni cosa – detto Son partido dal d.to ossumgi ouà doi hore auanti giorno, continuando sempre per buona strada parte pianura, et Colline co[n] qualche Bosco, et à mezzo camino Vi, è, Vn Casal de Bulgari Xpiani nominato Caiali co[n] alcune case di Baglia, et tutte hanno Vn poco di corte Serrada co[n] frasche, et questo serue p[er] alloggiam.to l’inverno per lunghezza del camino, et si alloggia in diuerse case p[er] no[n] esser Caruassarà, et si stà scarsi di Vettuaria, et si chiama la Villa Papasli. detto. Mi son partido dal d.o Papasli tre hore auanti giorno continuando pianura, et poi entrassimo in vn bosco grande di Alboroni pure in pianura, et al lito del Bosco corre Vn fiume Veloce, che si chiama Merich et doi hore inc.a doppo mezzogiorno son gionto à Filipopoli Città abondante di ogni cosa. hà campagne grandissime di risere, et si pigliano pesci di diuersi Sorti nel d.o fiume, qual corre p[er] mezzo la terra; nella d.a Campagna hò trouato li Portaletterre, che andauano in Constantinopoli, gli feci fermare et hò scritto Vna l[ette]ra all’ecc.mo sr Bailo dandoli conto, che il giorno auanti haueuo incontrato alcuni di Castelnuouo, che portauano corte scritture contro li Ragusei, et che Sua Ecc.a Vedesse di recuperarle per proceder contro di loro. Vi sono tre Caruassarà honestam.te buone Vi, è, Vn riloggio grande dal tempo antigo, che sona l’hore, posada Vn giorno in do luogo.

274  Jtinerario del Viaggio ii. detto Mi son partido da Filipopoli auanti il Cantar del p.o Turco cioè c.a tre hore auanti giorno et son gionto à Tartar Pasargich poco auanti mezzo giorno, Vi, è, Vn Caruassarà grande in doi parte coperto di Piombo con Vna Corte, et la fontana in mezzo, co[n] Vn Riloggio portado da Canissa, che Imbrahim Bassa Gen[era]le presa che hebbe canissa tolte il d.o Riloggio, et lo mandò in quel Caruassarà da lui ­fabricato si troua del Vitto honestam.te la strada Campagna co[n] diuersi boschi dall’Vna, et altra parte co[n] alcuni Ponti di legno, et di Pietra – [12. d.o] [fol. 174r] 12. Ap[ri]le. Mi son partito da Tatar Pasargich al botto delle 8. hore di Riloggio caualcando molto bene, et doi hore inc.a doppo mezzo giorno siamo gionti in vna Villa de Turchi detta Ichtiman, Vi, è, anco Vna Villa de Greci, il Vitto caro, et Carestia d’ogni cosa Vino no[n] si troua, passai diuerse colline petrose, et Campagna co[n] diuerse Ville ­all’Jntorno, si passano alcuni Ponti, et Vi, è, Vn bosco grande detto in Turco Capli Deeruent, che vuol dire Bosco coperto, che la più parte dell’Anno mass.e l’estade sempre vi si troua de mala gente. Nel d.o alloggiam.to ui, è, un Caruassarà grande, che ogni sera ui si porta da mangiare come à Bergaz, fù fabricato da Micali, che fece il Ponte in Andrinopoli – 13. d.o Mi partij da Ichtiman al Cantar del p.o Gallo caualcando molto bene, et Verso il mezzogiorno siamo gionti à Sofia, Vi sono diuersi Caruassarà Vn grande fabricato da Siaus Bassà cop[er]to di Piombo, è, Città ­abondante di ogni cosa, si trouano Caualli, et Cocchi da Nolo, et Caualli da caualcar co[n] sella, del prezzo ne hò fatto nota à parte. Strada bona con diuerse colline, et alcuni Boschetti co[n] Vna discesa grande, et poi si capita nella Campagna di Sofia, si passano alcuni ponti di legno et di Pietra, et certe acque à sguazzo, posada vn giorno – 15. d.o Mi partij da Sofia passada mezza notte, et Verso mezzo giorno ­g iongessimo in Vna Villa detta Dragoman le case coperte di Paglia, et si alloggia in diuerse case, et ui, è, anco in fozza di stalla p[er] Caualli, et p[er] li carauani. il Vitto caro, et p[er] li caualli ancora, strada buona pianura, campagna senza Albori et senza fontani d’acqua, et con poche Ville in da Campagna. 16. d.o Mi partij da Dragoman all’Alba et son gionto doi hore doppo mezzo giorno à Sciarchioi Castel de Turchi con Vn Casal’intorno de Xpiani con diuerse Caruassarà, si troua del Vitto, et p[er] caualli honestam.te strada per Vn pezzo buona, et poi ascendessimo, et discendessimo alcune montagne, che vi possono andar anco li Carrozzi, e sono petrosi in alcuni luoghi, et prima di giongere all’alloggiamento si capita in Vna Campagna rasa.

Jtinerario del Viaggio  275 o

17. d. Mi partij da Sciarchioi all’Alba per tema di mala gente, et circa il mezzo giorno siamo gionti in Vna Villa, che hà Vn Serraglio come Vn Castellazzo Serrado co[n] alcuni rami di Arbore in fozza di Muraglia detta Palanca, et questo si, è, Vn ridotto da Saluarsi p[er] tema de, i, Kaiduchi, che, è, Vna spetie di gente come Vscocchi, et Casacchi, no[n] ui, è, Caruassarà, li casi son di paglia, et quando Vi, è, compagnia grande si compartisse in diuerse case, et cosi med.te la robba, et li Caualli, per li quali et per gli huomini si troua del Vitto honestam.te. Doppo fatta Vn pezzo di buona strada, siamo entradi in Vna strettura frà montagne da Vna banda, et dall’altra piene di boschi et Vn poco sassosa, mà Vi ­possono passar li cocchi, et doppo Vna gran discesa trouai Vna Villa abandonada da gli huomini detta Curucesme, che Vuol dir fontana secca, la qual Villa, laq, è, stata abandonata per tema delli Kaiduchi, p[er] mezzo di essa corre vn fiume Velocissimo, et rapido, che nasce à piè d’Vn monte fuori d’Vna pietra. 18. d.o Mi partij dalla d.a Palanca doppo mezza notte, et son gionto à mj Verso mezzogiorno terra grande auerta co[n] Vn Castelletto antigo ben custodito, et vi, è, buona caualleria et in molto n.o, che stà sempre lista p[er]tema delli Kaiduchi. Vi, è, Caruassarà, si troua Vittuaria, et p[er] gli animali, et anco Vino. Il Camino, è, Vn poco di Campagna, et poi Vna discesa grande, s’entra in Vna Vallada imboscada intorno Cinta di montage [fol. 174v] 18. Ap.le et doppo questa si fà Vna gran salita, et discesa, et poi s’entra in Vna Campagna con un poco di Collina. in questo Viaggio, non Vi sono Ville ne fontane d’acqua, si passano alcuni ponti, et alcuni rami ­d’acqua à sguazzo, nell’entrare della Terra si passa Vn gran ponte di legno ­malfatto, sotto del quale corre Vn gran fiume. 19. d.o Mi partij da Nis al Cantar del p.o gallo, et siamo gionti in Vna Palanca detta rasina, pur ridotto come disopra, le case di Paglia, et Vi, è, Vn Caruassarà grande coperto di Piombo fatto da Jmbrahim Bassà Generale, il Vitto, è, scarso p[er] gli huomini, et per li Caualli, si passa p[er] diuerse pianure, et colline senza fontane ne Ville, boschi ­g randissimi in pianura, che formano la strada in Bissa luoghi molto ­p ericolosi da gli Kaiduchi, si camina co[n] li stoppini accesi et con grande auuertim.to et à man sinistra corre il fiume Moraua, in quelli luoghi passada la festa di San Giorgi, temono molto da gli Kaiduchi fino San Dimitri, che Vuol dire San Simone, et Giuda, strada, che può passare, i, Cocchi, et gionsi in d a Villa Verso le 22. hore. 20. d.o Mi partij dalla d a Palanca di Rasina all’Alba per tema delli Kaiduchi, et doppo mezzo giorno gionsi in Vna Villa detta Jauodina, Il Camino si, è, pianura boscada senz’acqua ne Ville, si trouano alcune

276  Jtinerario del Viaggio campagne di risiere, et à mezzo camino si passa il fiume chiamato Moraua con Vn Barcone doue entrano li caualli senza discaricare le some al n.o di 15. alla tolta et passado d.o fiume si và per campagna molto boscada, poi si troua Vna salida, et in cima di quella si scopre il Casal di Jauodina in Vna Campagna grande, et auanti, che si passi il Fiume à mezzo camino, è, Vna Villa detta Battistina co[n] vn Caruassarà grande cop[er]to di piombo, che serue p[er] l’inuerno, si troua abondanza di pane, et Carne, ma p[er] li animali, è, Vn poco cara la prou.ne, è, Casal de Turchi co[n] pochi Xpiani et sono tre Caruassarà p[er] alloggiare. 21. d.o Mi partij da Jauodina doi hore auanti giorno, et son gionto alla Palanca di Hassan Bassà doi hore inc.a doppo mezzo giorno, è, pure Vn ridotto come gli altri, ma grande cinto di muro fatto di rami di arbori e frascadi incretado di dentro et di fuori ben tenudo co[n] gran ­g uardie et con molta Cauallaria con alcuni pezzi d’artellaria intorno d.o Castello, Casal grande abondanti di Vitto, et p[er] li Caualli, Vi sono tre Caruassarie grandi, passai molti monti e pianure, e alcuni ponti, et arente la Villa sono doi ponti lunghi di legno sotto li quali corre Vn’acqua detto Jaseniza 2 2. d.o Mi partij dalla da Palanca di Hassan Bassà all’aurora per tema di Kaiduchi, et à mezzo giorno siamo gionti in Vna Palanca doue sono le case coperte di Paglia con doi Karuassarà, la da Villa si chiama Isargich carestia di ogni cosa, si passano molte colline, et gran pianure piene di grandissimi Boschi, et ui, è, tema de Kaiduchi, et à mezzo camino ui, è, Vna Villa con le Case di Paglia. senza Caruassarà, et Vltimam.te si uà p[er] Schiena d’Vn monte Bouado, et doppo Vna lunga discesa si entra in Vna Campagnola, et si Vede il Castelletto serrato come di s.a ­chiamato Isargich, et al piede del do Castello principia à correre il ­danubio con diuerse Jsole dentro piene de arbori, et Vi si prendono diuerse sorte di pesci – 23. d.o Mi partij da Isargich à boniss.a hora, et al botto di otto hore Son gionto à Belgrado doue, è, Riloggio antico, che batti le hore, è, Città famosiss.a forte et ben tenuda à lito del Danubio luogo mercantile, abondante di ogni cosa, custodita da gran militia et Cauallria co[n] molta artellaria, Vi sono diuersi Caruassarà fatti da Mechmet Bassà Grande [con] [fol. 175r] 23. Ap.le con gran n.o de Cocchi in fozza de foli, li quali seruono à portar li Carauani à Cost.li Caualli da Sella, et da soma, non se ne trouano in molto n.o et il nolo di essi hò porto in nota à parte Il Zecchino Vale aspri 130. et il [tallero] as.i 90 – il camino, è, parte pianura, et inmolti luoghi colline e discese, poi entra in vna montagna p[er] molto

Jtinerario del Viaggio  277 spatio, si scopre Belgrado in Vna Collina, et le muraglia sono sopra il danubio fiume principaliss.o nel quale si riducono altri doi fiumi famosi chiamati Draua, et Saua. Sopra il d.o Danubio sono alcuni Molini fabricati come casoni, che sono à guisa di Puppe delle Galie grosse co[n] ­ b ellissimi ingegni, et sono in molto numero. Questi Molini p[er] poter li Vsare e trattener saldi alla furia del Danubio che Velocissimo corre, sono ­fermati da Vn Jngegno [insertion: ce­stone] fatto di rami et bacchette grande come Vna Camaretta ben tessudo et pieno di terra et sassi, il quale raccommandato co[n] Cadene di legno rintorte come cordi alc.o Molino, à guisa di ancora, et gomena si cala nel fiume, et questo da fondi, et trattiene il Molino dalla Velocità dell’acqua, et qui à Belgrado per le gran pioue, feci posada doi giorni – 26. detto. Mi partij da Belgrado all’Alba, et passai il fiume detto Saua co[n] Vn Barcone doue entrorono tt a la gente et li caualli senza disca­ ricar le some, et questo Barcone si chiama Saica, et di poi in tre luoghi si tornò à passare il d.o fiume à Sguazzo fino alla panza de Caualli. Lontano da Belgrado tre miglia incirca, Vi, è, Vna fortezza in collina, che fà riua al danubio, si chiama Xemon, et resta à man Destra, nel qual Xemon, et Belligrado si armano, i, Caicchi, che si mandano contro, i, Casacchi nelli quali Caicchi s’imbarcano 20. Archibusieri p[er] cadauno, et quando vogliono fare Vn forlo possono armare caicchi, 150. et più, mà quest’Anno saranno scarsi rispetto, che l’Anno passado furono mal trattadi dal General sopra, i, Caicchi spedito da Cost.li che quando io fui à Bellegrado gionsero doi Capici in posta con commandam.ti espressi acciò si douessero armare come l’Anno passado, mà fino quell’hora ch’io mi trouai in quelle parti, no[n] si haueuano offerto altri che .9. di armarsi, et li altri si ren­ deuano difficili, no[n] si curauano di commandam.ti ne di Capigi per la scortesia, et mal trattam.to riceuuto l’Anno passado, et per no[n] hauer hauuto le loro paghe/ Passata ch’hebbi la fortezza di Xemon, entrai nella Campagna famosa detta Sirin campagna ampia et sem­ pre piana in alcuni luoghi Vn poco boscada, et molte Ville si da vna banda come dall’altra senza pietre, et senza fontane, et doppo mezzo giorno siamo capitati in Vna Villa angusta, la quale no[n] hà case ne di paglie, ne di tauole, mà solo sottoterra à guisa di grotte che no[n] può stare in Vna di esse altro che doi ò tre p[er]sone, et conuenissimo star fuori alla Campagna Sotto alcuni monti di fieno li homini come caualli con Vna piozza terribile, et grande, et questo fù p[er] Vn dis­ ordine, che la Compag.a de Giannizzari de la guardia di Castelnuouo, che Veniua meco restorno adietro, et p[er] aspettarli no[n] potessimo gionger all’alloggiam.to ord.o Carestia di ogni imaginabil cosa che à mala pena co[n] gran forza de danari trouassimo da Viuere p[er] gli huomini et p[er] li caualli –

278  Jtinerario del Viaggio [fol. 175v] 27. Ap.le Mi partij da da Villa ouer grotte continuando pure la Campagna di Sirin, et poi entrai in vn bosco grande con un poco di tema, qual bosco continuò per tre hore di riloggio, finito di passar d.o Bosco gionti al fiume Saua, et di quà dal fiume Vi, è, Vn Villaggio co[n] vn Caruassarà, passai il fiume co[n] Vn Barcone al pe d’Vn Castello di Pietra rotondo detto Burgu dilen che stà in Isola dentro nell’acqua et hà quattro Torri, et fin qui Vengono, i, Cocchi con robbe, mercantie, et gente da Cost.li Vi, è, Vn Caruassarà couerto di Tauole piccolo, si troua di ogni cosa, mà un poco caretto, partessimo dalle de grotte Vn’hora auanti giorno, et giongessimo alc.o Castello doppo mezzo giorno caualcando molto bene posada Vn giorno – 29. d.o Mi parti da Burgu Dilen all’Alba con Vna guida, et passai Vn bosco grande et molto folto co[n] li stoppini accesi, il qual durò fino à mezzo giorno, et poi Vn poco di Campagna capitai al fiume Drin molto Veloce, et l’hauemo passado co[n] Vn Barcone detto Saica, et doppo si troua Campagna rasa, continuando sino li 20. hore gionsi in’Vna Villa infelice de Turchi doue no[n] si troua cosa alc.a che à mala pena si, è, hauuto Vitto p[er] gli huomini et Caualli, et quasi à mezza strada Vi, è, Vn Caruassarà doue alloggiano le Carauane d’inuerno, passando acque in alcuni luoghi sino alla panza de Caualli. 30. d.o Mi partij da da Villa la mattina à buon’hora, seguitai il camino per campagna rasa et poi trouai Vna Caruassarà doue alloggiai c.a il mezzo giorno, scarsa di Vitto. Adi Po Maggio Po Maggio. Mi partij dalla d.a Caruassarà all’Alba, et entrassimo ne, i, monti aspri et sassosi, et molto boscadi continuando fino à mezzo giorno ascendendo, et descendendo, et doppo capitai in Vna Campagna et arriuai in Vna Villetta doue, è, Vna Caruassarà coperta di Tauole male in assetto et Carestia di ogni cosa, da Villa si chiama Sprezza. 2. detto Mi partij da Sprezza nello spuntar dell’Alba, entrai ne, i, monti altissimi, et petrosi pieni de Boschi ascendendo, et discendendo ­passando molti fiumi in alcuni luoghi à Sguazzo, et in altri sopra ponti, à mezzo camino si troua Vna Villa chiamata Cladina hà le case cop[er]te di Tauola, è, Casal de Turchi, et Vi sono anco de Xpiani et Bulgari, hà tre Caruassarà coperte di Tauole; et poi continuando il Camino son capitado doppo mezzo giorno nel Casal detto Oloua, che Vuol dire in lingua Bulgara Villa di Piombo, Vi, è, un Caruassarà, mà carestia di ogni cosa. quiui, è, Conuento di Padri Zoccolanti, et la chiesa si chiama la madonna di Piombo, et Vi, è, Vna Jmmagine della Madre di gratie, che fà gran Miracoli, et guarisce molti inspiritadi et

Jtinerario del Viaggio  279 non meno li Turchi, che li Xpiani hanno gran Veneration di essa. In questa Villa Vi, è, Vna Palanca come le altre, et alla banda della Villa corre il Danubio. 3. detto Mi partij da Oloua all’Alba continuando il camino sempre per montagne altissime et sassosi co[n] molti boschi, et in alcuni luoghi Vn poco di pianura, et doppo Vna grand.ma discesa siamo gionti in ­serraglio di Bosna doppo mezzogiorno, et auanti che [s’entri] [fol. 176r] 3. Maggio – s’entri nella terra grande aperta, si troua Vn Castello in cima di Vna montagna in Isola custodido bene co[n] alcuni pezzi d’Artillaria, Paese mercantile abondante con molti Caualli di Carauana, si da soma come da sella per tutte le parti, et Vi, è, anco Vn Riloggio, che sona, et il prezzo di essi hò notato à parte. Il Zecchino corre aspri 130. et il [tallero] aspri 83. Vi sono diuersi Caruassarà, et abondante di Vitto cosi p[er] homeni come p[er] Caualli, et per mezzo della terra, è, Vn ponte bellissimo di Pietra oltre molti altri, corre il fiume Milosca, Posada tre giorni – 7. detto – Partij dal Serraglio di Bosna all’Alba et à 21. hora son gionto in Vn Villaggio detto cognizza, Vi, è, vn caruassarà da Estade no[n] troppo buono, et Caristia di robba/ la strada quasi infino à mezzo giorno Vn poco imboscada in alcuni luoghi passando p[er] alcuni Ponti di legno et di Pietra co[n] gran quantità di acque si alla destra, come alla sinistra, et molte Ville dalle bande, e trà li altri passassimo Vn ponte di Pietra con diuersi Volti, sotto del quale corre il fiume Bosna, che da esso deriua il nome di Serragli di Bosna, il qual fiume nasce à piedi di Vn monte altissimo sassoso, et in esso vi si prendono di gran Trotte. / Cominciai poi à salir montange altissime no[n] troppo boscade, et in alcuni luoghi salizzadi di Pietra, et sassosi p[er] natura, ascendendo, et discendendo più Volte. Trà gli altri si passano sei in sette monti altissimi, quali si chiamano Monti di Micali p[er] cognome, et Vi sono molte acque, et in Vltimo si giunge in Vna pianura seguitando la strada alla riua di Vn fiume serradi da, i, monti sino all’arriuo del Casale. à mezzo camino Vi, è, Vna Villa co[n] Vn Caruassarà di Pietra cop[er]to di Tauole detto Passarich, che serue p[er] l’Jnuerno rispetto il lungo camino, et corre sotto la Villa il fiume Nerettua, che, è, Velociss.o et hà Vn gran ponte di legno, et vi si prendono diuerse sorte di Pesci et grandi, et in p ­ articolar trotte, et Vi, è, Vna Villa di qua, e l’altra di là dall’acqua co[n] Vn Caruassarà p[er] ciascheduna. 8. detto. Mi partij da Cognizza all’Alba et continuando p[er] fino 4. hore di giorno strada piana, et buona, mà però con molte acque de fiumi intorno et cinta la campagna di montagne siamo poi gionti ad

280  Jtinerario del Viaggio Vna salita, et discesa molto petrosa co[n] gran dirupi, doppo li quali si ascende Vna montagna molto aspra et sassosa, et in quelli dirupi, mi scapucciò Vn Caual da soma, che ando giù p[er] la montagna più di 100. passa raschiando sempre co[n] la groppa, et cadde alla riua del fiume no[n] facendosi altro male, che Vn poco in Vna gamba, mà, è, ben rimasto sbasito di sorte, che ancora no[n] può rinuenire da quel spasimo, continuando pure ad ascender quella montagna alta sassosa; et spauentosa, et altretanto alla discesa, che durò p[er] quattro hore et più strada pessima, et in alcuni luoghi Vi sono certi traui à guisa di Scala, qual monte p[er] nome Vien chiamado Tauornizza, mà auanti che si cominci à montar da Monte si troua Vn’acqua nascente al piede di esso, che sorge [fol. 176v] 8. Maggio – fuor d’Vna Pietra, et forma Vn torrente molto grande, che si chiama Rama, et Vltimamte siamo Capitadi doppo mezzogiorno in Vna Villa doue, è, Vn Caruassarà detta Doglian. Il Vitto, è, caro si per gli huomini, come per gli animali, et corre alla banda della Villa il fiume pur detto Doglian – 9. detto – Partij da Doglian all’Alba, et poco discosto dalla Villa, si comincia ad’ascendere Vna montagna, no[n] troppo aspra ne sassosa, laquale si chiama in Bulgaro Camarita Vrada et poi si fà Vn poco di discesa, et Vn’altra ascesa petrosa, et si capita in Vna Pradaria longa, che conduce à doi monti molto petrosi, et boscosi, che si chiamano Monte Negro et il Bosco produce legno grasso detto Teggia, et per essere d.i Monti tanto alti, vi era ancora della Neue Vecchia, et quel giorno fà gran Vento et Vn poco di Neue, et poi gionsi alla Campagna di Dumma, doue si cambiano li Caualli da nolo, si quelli, che Vengono dal Serraglio p[er] Spalato, come quelli che Vanno da Spalato in Serraglio, il Nella da Campagna Vi, è, Vn Caruassarà serrado co[n] Vn Muro di Pietra coperto di Tauole et, è, in Jsola lontano dalle Ville, delle quali vi ne sono molte intorno, che soccorrono di Vettouaglia, et in questa strada, et monte no[n] habbiamo mai trouado acque ne fontane. Passada questa Campagna si arriua à Vn Monte con ascesa et discesa grande et, è, petrosiss.o et nudo si di Arbori, come di herba, Capitassimo poi in Vna Villa doppo mezzogiorno co[n] le Case coperte di Paglia, spartendosi in diuerse Case, p[er] no[n] vi esser Caruassarà, et la Villa si chiama Bresnich, Vi è carestia di ogni cosa et p[er] necessità bisogna alloggiare pa di arriuare in questa Villa, al soprad.o Caruassarà – 10. d.o Siamo partidi da Bresnich all’Alba caminando sempre per ascese et discese sassose et male strade, et certo che in questi monti in Vece di pioggia d’acqua, han piouudo sassi Cogoli, et Boschi, et Verso le hore 20. doppo la cattiua, et lunga strada siamo gionti al fiume detto Cetina

Jtinerario del Viaggio  281 co[n] Vna guida doue ui, è, Vn Caruasciarà in Isola senza nessuna Villa in quei contorni, mà ben quello che tiene la chiaue del Caruassarà prouede di quanto fà bisogno mà à gran prezzo il tutto – ii. detto son partido dal da Caruassarà di Cetina et passai il fiume co[n] la Barca, et continuando pur p[er] monti ascese, et discese sassose capitai à Clissa, et doppo Vna lunga discesa andai alli Castelli della Giurisdittion di Spalato, et di Traù, et p[er] mia buona sorte m’incontrai nell’Ill.mo Sr Conte di Traù, che era andato alla Visita di d.i Castelli, et hauendo Jo la fede di Sanità da Cost.li che erano doi Anni, che no[n] Vi era mali, et anco la fede di Sanità del Serraglio di Bosna fatta dal Vellutelli, per l’amore et osseruanza, che q.to Ill.mo S.r porta all’Ill.mo et Ecc.mo Sig.r Caur Prour Contarini et Amb.re destinado al Ser mo Grans.re mi hà c­ oncessa gratia di pratica, no[n] hauendo meco robbe di mercantia, ne sospette, et essendo da S. S. Ill.mo stato raccolto co[n] [molta] [fol. 177r]

molta cortesia insieme con esso son Venuto à Traù alle 21. hore, doue son stato da quella trattato con molta amoreuolezza insieme co[n] tta la mia compagnia, et fauorito straord.te et hò calato quà, perche l’Illo Sr Conte et Cap.o di Spalato mi scrisse, che p[er] rispetto della Scala douessi venir à Traù et no[n] à spalato, doue no[n] mi haueria possuto dar la pratica se no[n] doppo la solita contumatia, come appare p[er] sue lettere, et cosi hò esseguido quanto mi hà ordenato, laudando Il S. Jddio che hò sin qui p[er]fettionato il Viaggio et mi son liberato da quelli crudi et aspri Monti – Viaggio dal Serraglio di Bosna per fino Nuouo Bazzarro, et Sofia, et Prima –

Dal Serraglio di Bosna si passa Vna Montagna alta Petrosa, et diuerse Colline, et si capita in Vna Villa detta Glasinza, vi, è, vn Caruassarà et p[er] Vitto honestam.te Da Glasinza si Và à Vissigrat Villaggio con Caruassarà, si troua Vitto per gli huomini, et p[er] li Caualli, et si passa il fiume Gria p[er] il Ponte strada honestamte buona. Da Vissigrad si Và à Priboi, strada honesta con Caruassaria, et si troua della Vettouaglia honestamente Da Priboi si Và à Nououaros Villaggio con Caruassarà strada honesta, et si troua Vettuaglia. Da Nououaros si Và à Sogobina strada con colline, et Campagna, Vi, è, Vn Caruassarà, et Vna Villa arente, et si troua Vittuaria Da Sogobina, si Và à Rogotaz buona strada, Vi, è, Caruassarà, et si troua Vitto.

282  Jtinerario del Viaggio Da Rogotaz si và à nuouo Bazzarro Villaggio grande co[n] alcuni Caruassarà si troua Caualli di Vetturo, et da Mangiare abondante. Da Nouobazzarro si Và à Postegnò Villa co[n] Vn Caruassarà, la strada, è, co[n] qualche ascesa, et discesa, et si passano alcune acque à sguazzo, giornada Vn poco longa. Da Postegnò à Morau, et Billocich bona strada Vi, è, Caruassarà, et da mangiare Da Billocich à Precupie strada honesta co[n] Vn Villaggio et Caruassarà, et da mangiare. Da Precupie à Nis, et poi da Nis si continua p[er] fini à Cost.li secondo la precedente nota [fol. 177v] Adi 4. Aprile in Andrinopoli Si trouano Cocchi alla Turchesca, che ui potranno star dentro persone tre ò quattro co[n] li piedi giontadi alla Turchesca, et Vno alla serpa, mà per caricare no[n] portano troppo robba, sono tiradi da doi Caualli, l’estade che s’intende p[er] tutto sett.re se li dà p[er] suo nolo aspri 600. Jnc.a p[er] cocchio, et da sett.re per fino à tutto Nou.re aspri 800. ouer mille segondo, i, tempi et da Nou.re sino à Primauera no[n] si può più, Voler de Cocchi et questo nolo s’intende da Andrinopoli sino à Cost.li Vi sono anco carri tirati da doi Bufali grandi, et portano robba per cinque some, l’estade come di sopra Vanno per aspri 800. l’Vno et l’autunno p[er] aspri 1200. Jnc.a Caualli da soma, ne da sella no[n] si trouano – Adi 9. d.o in Filipopoli Non si trouano Caualli da soma, ne da Caualcare, ne Cocchi à nolo. Adi 13. d.o in Sofia. Si trouano Caualli in quantità cosi da soma come per selle, et anco alcuni capi di Carauana Xpiani da Zerniza, et da Gazca, quali si prendono l’assunto di q[ua]nto caualli fà bisogno, et il prezzo sino à Cost.li cominciando da q.to tempo p[er]fino a tt.o 8bre per nolo di cadauno aspri 650. Jnc.a et molte Volte s’imbattono di quei Cocchi che Vengono dalla Campagna di Sirin p[er] Via di Belligrado tiradi da tre Caualli, quali portano robba p[er] tre some, et secondo la robba anco qualche huomo dentro di essi, il prezzo secondo, i, tempi et secondo la quantità de, i, Cocchi. Da Belgrado si tol pure delli d.i Cocchi caricando la robba come di s.a ne si discarica se no[n] gionti in Cost.li il nolo de quali, è, aspri 1100. fino 1200. p[er] Cocchio. Caualli da soma, et da sella pocchi se ne possono trouare, essendo la comodità de Cocchi à guisa de Foli, et senza hauer obligo di far le spese à, i, Caualli, ne alli nolezzini.

Jtinerario del Viaggio  283 Dal Serraglio di Bosna fino à Belligrado al presente si, è, pagado aspri 180. per ciascheduno Cauallo et da Spalato fino al Serraglio l’istesso più et meno secondo la qualità de tempi, et la quantità della robba. Al presente li Caualli da soma dal Serraglio di Bosna sino al nuouo Bazzarro si sono pagati aspri 167. la soma, et cosi anco quelli da sella et questi ancora crescono, et calano di prezzo secondo li tempi, et la quantità della robba Da Nuouo Bazzarro fino à Sofia al p[rese]nte si, è, pagado di nolo aspri 240. la [soma] [fol. 178r] soma, et cosi da sella, et questi anco crescono, et calano di prezzo come sopra – Il Sr Vellutelli mi hà detto, che quando se li farà sapere l’arriuo di sua Ecca Ill.ma procurarà di trouare Vn Capo di Carauana, che pigli l’assonto della quantità de Caualli, et del prezzo del Nolo fino à Nuouobazzarro, et Sofia. – Al Serraglio di Bosna potremo trouar Giannizzari alcuni che Vogliono andare à Cost.li p[er] li fatti loro, si contentaranno delle spese, et di Vna cortesia honesta, et altri anco quando faranno bisogno co[n] pagam.to il quale si procurarà al manco, che sia possib.e et per quello poi da Sofia altro patto nouo, ò quiui leuar altri Giannizzari. Questo si, è, Vn Viaggio longo et cattiuo p[er] molte giornade, male strade, et di gran patimenti, cosi parim.te da Spalato fino à nuouo Bazzaro et Sofia. Vi, è, il Viazzo di Corfù di manco spesa, più breue, et miglior strada, Vi, è, anco quel di Mare fino à Scio co[n] Galere, ouer fino al Zante, et poi sopra Bertoni Jnglesi, et Fiandresi come si, è, fatto delle altre volte da molti Ecc mi SS.ri Baili et Amb.ri comodo et sicuro sino in Cost.li che in part.re l’hà fatto V[ost]ra Ecca Ill.ma se ben’ d’Jnuerno, Lei, è, sauia et prudente, risolua, et commandi qual Viaggio le piace, che per tutto son qui prontiss.o à seruirla et vbedirla co[n] tto lo spirito, et riuerentem.te li bacio le mani. Fatto à Traù li 16. Maggio 1618 – A V[ost]ra ecca Ill.ma Hum.mo et oblig.mo Ser re p[er] sempre  Genesino Saluagho Dragoma:no

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Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Abbas I, Shah 229, 232 Abdi Çavuş Emir b. Emir Ahmed 50, 62n99 Abdullah b. Hacı Ali 126 Adriatic Sea 1, 9, 17, 50, 65, 89, 110–6, 124, 129, 132, 135, 138f., 141, 143–5, 148f., 155–7, 159–61, 163f., 170, 172–5, 200, 206, 213, 217, 219f., 258n244, 269 Aegean Sea 56, 174 Africa, North 3, 17, 29, 39, 57, 115, 145, 232–5, 242, 246 Ahmed b. Abdullah 50, 62n99 Ahmed b. Hüseyin Çelebi 124 Ahmed, I. 82, 97f., 226, 242 Ahmed, Sara 259 Ai Weiwei 260–2 Akhisar 122 Aksoy-Sheridan, R. Aslıhan 11 Albania 8, 17, 39, 70, 90, 99, 111, 112, 116, 138, 145f., 153, 158, 160f., 173f., 176, 195, 200, 202, 236, 240, 249 Alberti, Girolamo 56, 212 Aleppo 5, 42, 217, 219, 230f., 238, 264 Alessandri, Angelo 233 Alexander the Great 145 Alexandria 115, 137 Algeria 5, 9, 145f., 184n154, 233 Algiers 5, 9, 145f., 184n154, 233, 264 Ali Çelebi 118 Almeda, David Franco de 136 Alps 68 Anatolia 30, 90 Ancona 114, 149, 155f., 162 Andrić, Ivo 23–5 Ankara 137

Ansonio, Giulio 41 Anzel, Aron 156 Appelfeld, Aharon 39 Apulia 114, 155, 162 Arabian Peninsula, also Arabic 37, 47, 136, 199, 206, 209f., 229, 250 Armenia 137, 148, 151, 231 Armstrong, Guyda 73 Aróstegui y Zazo, Antonio de 141f., 167 Asia 30 Aslanyan, Anna 3, 35f. Athens 169 Bachmann-Medick, Doris 13, 109 Badi 24 Badoer, Alvise 34 Badoer, Andrea 51 Baghdad 220, 229 Baker, Mona 106 Balbi, Giovanni Battista 159 Balkans see Europe, Southeastern Banja Luka 114, 122, 157, 202 Bar 153, 200, 212 Baramova, Maria 19n27 Barbaro, Antonio 158, 240 Barthes, Roland 13 Barzman, Karen-edis 248 Baseglio, Marco 151 Bassan, Cain 46 Bassano, Luigi 252n29 Bassnett, Susan 207 Battitone, Gabriele 155 Bavaria 225 Beg Haidarović 160 Beijing 261 Bela Palanka 76, 83f.

316 Index Belforte, Salvador 46 Belgrade 3, 5–7, 66, 75f., 81–4, 87, 97, 129, 133, 135–6, 139f., 150, 155, 157–9, 170, 209, 217, 220–4, 226, 264 Bellegno, Giustinian Antonio 70, 112, 236 Bembo, Giovanni 137 Bembo, Giovanni 175 Benjamin, Walter 12–4, 16, 66, 227 Berlin 22n89 Bernardo, Lorenzo 17, 36–38, 44, 48, 50f., 56, 63n118, 120f., 174 Bernbeck, Reinhard 13 Bertolini, Natalis 196f. Bestici, Felice 41 Bethlen, Gabriel 139 Bhabha, Homi K. 8, 72f., 95 Bicchia 217 Binciola, Bernardo 150 Bizerte 233 Black Sea 30, 156 Bloch, Marc 5 Bobali, Francesco 152 Bobali, Franco 163 Boetticher, Friedrich von 22n89 Bombelli, Sebastiano 198 Bonis, Zuanne di 252n28 Borges, Jorge Luis 227 Borisi, Alessandra 215, 269 Borisi, family 39, 49, 195, 200, 215 Borisi, Marc’antonio 40–4, 46, 49, 56, 58, 61n63, 98, 121, 127, 131, 154, 160, 164–6, 168, 181n67, 200, 204f., 211–3, 215, 244, 250, 252n49, 270n8 Borisi, Pietro 49 Borisi, Sultana 268f. Borja y Velasco, Gaspar de 145 Bosnia 1, 7, 9, 16–17, 25, 39, 66, 68, 75, 82, 110f., 113f., 116, 122, 124–7, 129–33, 135, 137–42, 144, 146–8, 150–2, 154–7, 161, 163–5, 169f., 172, 174, 176–8, 180n55f., 200–5, 212f., 217–9, 238, 243f., 267 Bosnia and Herzegovina 23, 25, 67; see also Bosnia; Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska 67 Bracchi, Giacomo 204 Bracewell, Catherine Wendy 173 Brandenburg-Jägerndorf, Johann Georg von 139 Braudel, Fernand 6, 14, 24f., 66, 71, 87, 102n58

Briggs, Kate 13, 15f., 75, 116f., 121, 158, 192, 210, 213, 226, 259f., 265 Brindisi 115, 141, 145f. Brown, Rawdon Lubbock 17 Bruti, Antonio 200, 252n14 Bruti, Barnabà 41, 44, 56, 200–4, 212, 217, 224, 252n17 Bruti, Bartolomeo 49, 200 Bruti, Cristoforo 49, 56, 199, 209, 212 Bruti, family 39, 49, 195, 209 Bruti, Giacomo 200, 252n14 Budak, Neven 19n27 Budapest, also Buda and Pest 38, 139, 217, 238, 243 Budva 111, 116, 127, 176 Bulgaria 1, 82, 87, 202 Butchi, Marko 157 Butchi, Mato 157 Butler, Judith 5, 261 Byzantine Empire 30 Cafer 111 Cairo 113, 137 Calabria 145, 162 Cambridge 67, 260 Cappello, Girolamo 122 Carli, family 39, 195 Carli, Gian Rinaldo 198 Carlo, Giovanni 61n79 Cavagnini, Giacobbe 135 Cavagnini, Marco 135 Cavallo, Marino di 225 Cavazza, Gabriel (I) 56 Cavazza, Gabriel (II) 56 Çavuş Hüseyin 96 Çavuş Pasha 82 Cephalonia 113 Ceres, David de 118 Certeau, Michel de 89 Cetina River 116, 164 Charles of Austria 171 Chiato, Ali 156 Chiesa, Giovan Battista 4 Chios 57, 176, 204 Chlemoutsi 212 Cicero 225 Cirocuich 163 Čobanović, Milos 113 Coem, David 156 Comaro, Bartolo 112 Constantinople see Istanbul Contarini, Alvise 169 Contarini, Bernardin 99

Index  317 Contarini, Francesco 1–2, 17, 73, 91, 96–9, 104n115, 108, 110, 115–8, 126f., 131–3, 135, 140, 154, 159, 162, 173–8, 189n311, 200, 205f., 208f., 212, 216–8, 220, 224, 232–3, 236f., 266 Contarini, Giovanni Battista 99, 104n124, 201 Contarini, Marc’antonio 99 Contarini, Nicolò 99 Contarini, Paolo 51, 174 Contarini, Piero 143 Contarini, Pietro 99 Contarini, Simone 40f., 49, 58, 61n63f., 61n70f., 62n109, 96, 99, 103n105, 174, 230, 236, 238f., 252n43, 256n185 Contarini, Tommaso 162 Coop, Steffano 179n25 Coressi, Antonio 269 Corfu 96, 113f., 162, 174, 176 Cornaro, Giovanni I 235 Çornoça, Thomas de 183n142 Cossacks 161, 170 Crete 45f., 51, 53, 113f., 154, 179n37 Crisvan 50 Croatia, also Croatian 1, 7, 16, 23, 56, 65–70, 116, 151, 153, 172f., 202, 243, 249 Croce, Giovanni Bernardo dalla 121 Cueva y Benavides, Alfonso de la 143–5, 160f., 165–7, 175, 183n142 Curzola, Nicolò da 179n37 Cyprus 35, 52, 145, 207, 249 D’Allegri, Luca 111 D’Andrea, Piero 112 Dabri, Pasqual 56 Dalmatia 1, 9, 17, 39, 65, 70, 87–91, 99, 103n98, 106, 111–4, 116, 132f., 138, 140, 146, 148, 153, 156, 158, 160, 162f., 170, 172–4, 176, 202, 232, 235–6, 238, 240–51, 256n203, 267 Damad İbrahim Pasha 82 Damat Halil Pasha 43 Danube River 158, 220, 223 Dardanelles 56 Davis, Natalie Zemon 5, 13f., 30, 66, 210 Delvina 212, 253n49 Derrida, Jacques 12, 21n59 Diocletian 95 Dolce, Agostino 52 Dolfin, Cesare 137 Doljani 157

Donà, Leonardo 215 Donado, Giambattista 49 Donato, Nicolò 175 Douglas, Mary 246f. Dragoman 74 Drijeva 152, 156, 165 Drina River 23–6, 77 Dubrovnik see Ragusa, Republic of Duke of Lerma see Sandoval, Francisco Gómez de Duke of Osuna see Téllez-Girón, Pedro Duke of Uceda see Gómez de Sandoval, Cristóbal Durrës 57, 174, 212 Dursteler, Eric R. 5, 30, 44, 89, 218, 241 Echinades 146, 160, 162 Eco, Umberto 71 Edirne 74–6, 79, 81f., 84–5, 97, 122, 137, 174 Edolfi, Felice 148 Edwards, Lovett 24f. Egypt 113, 115, 137, 141, 179n26 Ekmekçizade Ahmed Pasha 82, 84 Elbasan 122, 124 Emir Agha 152 England, also English 17, 90, 114, 145, 160, 176, 259 Europe see specific entries Europe, Southeastern 1, 3f., 6–8, 10f., 14, 17, 23, 25, 29, 33, 39–40, 42, 47, 49, 59, 65, 68–101, 106, 108–78, 194f., 199, 202, 205, 208, 211f., 216–20, 229–32, 235, 237, 239, 252n29, 260, 264f., 268f. Evliya Çelebi 79, 82, 85, 133, 201 Fasuol, Carlo 56 Ferdinand of Austria 99, 155, 172f., 212, 219 Ferrara 155 Filippi, Živan 103n99 Fiume 173 Flanders, also Flemish 114, 139 Florence 99, 115, 145, 149, 233 Foča 122, 156f., 160 Fontana, Eustachio 52 Fortis, Giacomo 269 Fortis, Pietro 251, 269 Foscarini, Michele 225–7, 230 Fotić, Aleksandar 19n27, 140, 220 Frachetta, Girolamo 145

318 Index France 15, 17, 31, 40, 42f., 61n75, 96, 112, 115, 141, 143, 146f., 154, 165, 172, 184n163 Francesco, Claudio di 112 Franz Ferdinand of Austria 79 Friuli 172 Frletić, Andrija 173f. Gagliano, Domenico da (I) 119, 149, 159 Gagliano, Domenico da (II) 119, 120, 149, 159 Gagliano, Isabeta da 120 Gagliano, Odoardo da 40, 57, 118–22, 149, 159f. Galata 30, 36f., 42, 48f., 52, 58, 59n11, 62n106, 117, 120f., 238, 251 Gallagher, John 10 Gallipoli 56 Gansel, Mireille 15f., 26, 35, 38f., 58, 67f., 71, 210 Garzoni, Marin 89–91, 113, 116, 122, 124f., 132, 138, 153, 156–8, 175 Gazi Husrev Beg 85, 134f. Genoa 30, 34, 36, 112, 115, 129, 136, 141, 143, 233 German Democratic Republic, also East Germany 35 Gibraltar 145 Gilbert, Claire 199 Ginzburg, Natalia 28–31, 36f., 216 Giovani, Steffano 40, 53f., 56, 119 Giovio, Paolo 223 Giustinian, Giorgio 232 Giustiniano, Antonio 52 Goldstein, Eugenie 68 Gómez de Sandoval, Cristóbal 147 Goražde 23 Graf, Tobias P. 169 Graziani, Gaspar 44, 204 Greece, also Greek 17, 30, 36, 39, 47, 48f., 52, 111, 159f., 169, 176f., 202, 204, 206, 209, 225, 238f. Grendi, Edoardo 5 Grillo, Ambrogio 166, 169 Grillo, Ambrosio 40, 42, 44, 54, 57f., 131, 209 Grillo, Battistina 166 Grillo, Cassandra 166 Grillo, Francesco 58 Grillo, Giovanni Antonio 3, 6, 10, 42, 49, 54f., 61n70, 61n73, 129–32, 140, 144, 150, 164–6, 168f., 181n76, 181n84, 181n86, 183n115, 195,

199–201, 203, 209, 212, 244, 251n11, 264, 269, 270n8 Grillo, Onorata 166 Grillo, Soprana 166 Grimani, Marino 58 Gritti, Alvise 225 Gritti, Piero 141f., 148, 172, 270n9 Grocka 75 Grünbein, Durs 107n1 Gruž 149 Guerre, Martin 4 Guppi, Giovanni Battista 151 Gürkan, Emrah Safa 169 Hacı Ali 124, 126 Hacı Oruz 124 Hacı Yusuf 32 Hajduks 74, 170–4 Halil Pasha 231 Harlay de Sancy, Achille 43 Harmanli 82 Hassan Pasha 213f. Herceg Novi 111, 129, 153, 155, 160, 162f., 176 Hermans, Theo 214 Herzegovina 1, 116, 151f., 156, 163 Herzfeld, Michael 14 Herzog, Christoph 21n54 Hoca Tahsin 122 Hocazade Esad Efendi 125f., 129, 165 Hodes, Martha 14 Höfert, Almut 228 Hofkirchen, Georg Andreas Freiherr von 139 Holy Roman Empire 6, 17, 105, 108, 110, 115, 132, 139, 141, 160, 172f., 188n298, 202, 217, 219, 225, 247, 267, 269 Horodowich, Elizabeth 51 Hungary, also Hungarian 47, 76, 82, 116, 139, 172, 206, 220, 225, 257n243, 267 Hüseyin Beg 132 Hüseyin Çelebi 124 Hussain Agha 160 Hvar 112, 162 İbrahim Agha 147 İbrahim b. Hacı Ali 126 İbrahim Çelebi 124, 157, 160 İbrahim Kapıcı 148 Ihtiman 74, 82, 84, 86 Ioannina 212 Ionian Sea 220

Index  319 Iskender Pasha 113, 137f., 172 Israel, Moise 158 Istanbul 3, 5–9, 11, 15–7, 24, 29–36, 40–52, 54, 56–8, 66, 75–7, 80–2, 84, 88, 90, 93, 95–100, 102n43, 108–10, 113, 115–9, 122, 124–7, 129–33, 135, 137, 139f., 144–56, 158–66, 169, 172, 174–8, 184n148, 184n150, 187n239f., 187n248, 188n267–8, 188n280, 194f., 200–2, 204–6, 209, 211, 213, 215–9, 224–7, 229, 231–3, 235–8, 240, 243, 249–51, 252n29, 256n197, 261, 264, 267f. Istria 112, 114, 172, 195, 199f. Italy see specific entries Jagodina 97 Jancke, Gabriele 5, 10f. Jasenica River 170 Jews, also Jewish 38, 46, 90, 110–2, 115, 118, 122, 124f., 130, 133, 136, 140, 144, 147f., 150, 155–8, 169, 179n17, 182n100, 204 Kafadar, Cemal 11, 93 Karahasanoğlu, Selim 11 Kármán, Gábor 19n27 Kaštela 246 Kaufmann, Walter 256n173 Kepler, Katharina 4 Khalil Agha 116 Kirby, Gillian 22n90 Klima, Alan 13 Klis 65–9, 74, 78, 87–94, 96, 103n98, 116, 122, 124f., 127, 133, 153, 156, 159, 163f., 173, 176, 202, 209, 212, 218, 243, 246 Klišanin, Matija 173 Koca Sinan Pasha 82 Koller, Alexander 172 Koniç 122 Koper 39, 200 Korčulola 99 Köse Mihal 79f., 82 Kosovo 1, 169 Kotor 56, 70, 89, 99, 113, 129, 138, 150, 153, 160, 162, 174f., 183n121, 186n226, 204, 213, 219, 236 Kükçükçekmece 84 Kunčević, Lovro 19n27 Kunt, İ. Metin 77 Kuriel 136 Kythira 113

Lanza, Galazzi 252n28 Latinčić, Tommaso 130 Lefevere, André 234 Leo Africanus 4, 106, 233, 256n169 Lepanto, Battle of 66 Lepore, Jill 65 Lesina 112 Levant 1, 30, 36, 45f., 49, 52, 90, 97f., 113f., 116, 118, 121, 146, 154, 158, 160f., 230, 249 Levi, Giovanni 20n50 Levi, Giuseppe 31 Lezhë 111 Liebermann, Marita 26 Lika 243, 267 Lipova 217 Lippomano, Girolamo 51 Lisboa, Marcos de 223 Livno 122 London 99 Lonzali, Vincenzo 156 Loo, Johan van 179n25 Lotman, Juri 86f. Low Countries see Netherlands, also Dutch Low, D. M. 31 Luca, Cristian 8, 19n27, 270n4 Luca, Matteo di 155 Lucchetta, Francesca 39 Lüleburgaz 74, 82, 84 Lupu, Ruxandra 169 Lupu, Vasile 169 Lutfi Çavuş 148 Macedonia 161 Macedonio, Alessandro 184n160 Maddern, Philippa 256n200 Madrid 7, 106, 108, 141, 143, 145, 147f., 161, 172f., 247, 264 Maghreb see Africa, North Maglaque, Erin 6 Mahmud 225 Malcolm, Noel 8 Mallorca 162, 187n242 Malta 115 Mana di Zamagno, Luca Michele 163 Manchester 67 Mantua 172f. Manuel, Giosef 156 Manzoni, Steffano 202 Mao Zedong 260 Mara, Camillo dalla 147, 184n166

320 Index Marco, Lorenzo de 157 Mari, Luca de 148 Marini, Francesco 58 Marquis of Bedmar see Cueva y Benavides, Alfonso de la Marseille 43 Marulić, Marko 95 Mattegussi, Domenigo 202 Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor 145 Mauss, Marcel 20n50 Mecca 124 Medick, Hans 14 Mediterranean Sea see more precise entries Mehmed Agha 118, 205 Mehmed Çavuş 157, 160, 174f., 201f., 204 Mehmed II 225 Mehmed III 98 Mehmed Pasha 125 Membrè, Michiel 249f. Memi Çavuş 148 Memmo, Marcantonio 33, 237 Menorca 162, 187n242 Menze, Domenico di Nicolino 152 Menze, Giuseppe di 152, 163 Messina 114, 145, 147, 233 Michiel, Camillo 153, 175, 213f., 236 Mignolo, Walter 109 Mihajlović, Filip 68 Milan 17, 143, 146, 184n163 Miljacka River 79, 133 Minio, Polo 177, 189n314, 204 Miović, Vesna 19n27, 149, 151 Mohács 225 Moldavia 44, 54, 169, 177, 204, 267 Monla Şerif 125 Montalbot, Isach 46 Montenegro 153, 219 Morat Begogli Mehemet 217 Morava River 97, 170 Morlachs 163f., 218, 244, 247–9, 258n244 Morosini, Francesco 93 Morosini, Gabriel 91, 93, 163f., 201, 218 Morosini, Lorenzo 112 Morosini, Piero 93, 116 Moscow 170 Mostar 122, 135, 156f., 160 Mümin Çavuş 122 Mumiro Çavuş 203 Münster, Sebastian 222f. Muoi 111 Murad Beg 225

Murad II 225 Murano 119 Mustafa b. Hüseyin 90 Mustafa Beg 93 Mustafa Çavuş (I) 57 Mustafa Çavuş (II) 126, 129–31, 140, 144, 155, 164f., 174f., 199f., 203 Mustafa I 97f., 124f., 129, 138, 226 Mustafa Sardo Beg 113 Mutio, Giovanni 56 Nabokov, Vladimir 230 Nagykanizsa 82, 139 Nani, Agostino 34, 40, 99, 132, 200, 238 Nani, Almorò 33, 72, 75, 96, 124, 126f., 131f., 159, 162, 164, 175, 200, 204–6, 217f., 231, 237–9 Naples 3, 7, 17, 106, 108, 110–6, 124, 126f., 130, 132, 138, 140, 142f., 145–9, 152–6, 159–62, 164, 169, 174–6, 178, 200, 233, 269 Navagero, Bernardo 34, 48 Navon, Battista 49 Navon, family 39, 269 Navon, Giovanni Battista 177, 204 Navon, Pasquale, also Pasqua 34, 56, 120, 180n42 Navon, Tommaso 41, 58, 120 Naxos 61n81 Near East see more specific entries Negri, Abram 156 Negroponte, Francesco di 34 Nemeth, Gizella 19n27 Neretva River 111, 135, 156, 160, 182n98 Netherlands, also Dutch 112, 114f., 160, 176, 179n25 New York 89 Nicobí, Andres de 188n298 Nicolicchi, Simon 40f. Nicolo, Zuane de 118 Nietzsche, Friedrich 234 Niš 76f., 84, 169f., 174 Nis, Daniel 139 Niyazioğlu, Aslı 11 Nores, Giacomo (de) 118, 129f., 181n76, 244, 249f. Novak, Grga 173 Novi Pazar 84, 97, 140, 169 Novigrad 244 O’Connell, Monique 18n3 Obrovac 244 Ogras Agha Nasunović 116 Olivieri, Antonio 42

Index  321 Olivieri, Carlo 42 Olivieri, family 42f. Olivieri, Giovanni 42 Olivieri, Olivier 42 Olivieri, Soprana Caterina 42, 166 Orhan I 79 Ortega y Gasset, José 230 Ortelius, Abraham 223 Osman II 1, 97, 125f., 129, 157, 177f., 201, 204, 225–7, 232, 252n49 Otranto 114, 159 Ottoman Empire, 3–6, 8–11, 15–8, 23–6, 29–31, 34–9, 43–53, 56–8, 61n80, 65, 67, 70, 72, 74, 76–84, 87–96, 98–100, 106, 108–16, 118, 120, 122, 124, 126, 133–4, 136–9, 142, 144–7, 149f., 153f., 156, 158–64, 166–70, 172–8, 185n197, 189n298, 200–2, 204, 206f., 209, 211–5, 217–9, 223, 225, 228–36, 238–40, 242f., 245, 247–9, 264, 267–9 Pace, Gieronimo della 201f., 236 Palermo 114, 161 Pálffy, Géza 183n114 Palmi da Lodi, Dominico di 52 Palmi da Lodi, Valerio di 52 Paltašić, Geronimo 214, 236 Panzano, Dominico 52, 120, 180n42 Panzano, Theodora 52, 120, 180n42 Papacy 143, 145f., 154f., 162 Papo, Adriano 19n27 Paraćin 82, 170 Pardo, Abram 158 Pargalı İbrahim Pasha 82 Paris 99, 106, 141f., 172f. Paronda, Antonio 118 Pasardschik 82 Paštrovići 118, 138 Pedani, Maria P. 8, 91, 111, 182n106 Peloponnese 174, 212 Pera see Galata Pera, Giacomo di 42, 54 Perast 176 Perrot d’Ablancourt, Nicolas 15 Persia, also Persian 37, 47, 136f., 161, 206, 209, 228–32, 235, 250, 264 Philip III 141f., 144, 146, 148f., 161 Piccolomini, Ottavio 112, 148 Piero, Christfolo di 52 Piero, Simon di 44 Piersanti, Stefania 189n311 Piron, Alessandra 253n85 Piron, Caterina 215, 269

Pisani, Antonio 249 Plovdiv 74–6, 81f., 97, 129, 150, 152, 162f. Pocobello, Gabriel 156 Poland, also Polish 47, 170, 202, 206 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 47, 170, 202, 206 Ponte, Agostino dal 53 Popović, Alexandre 19n27, 220 Popovitsa 82 Portugal 46, 110, 231 Prague 269 Priština 76, 84, 169 Priuli, Antonio 175 Ptiković, Vicko 56, 63n118 Pym, Anthony 241, 246, 249, 251 Quevedo, Francisco de 143 Radić Rossi, Irena 180n37 Radt, Johan de 179n25 Ragusa, Republic of 3, 6, 17, 34, 45, 50, 53, 66, 77, 108, 110–4, 118, 124, 129–31, 133, 137–9, 144–7, 149–66, 169f., 173f., 176, 184n148, 185n197, 185n200, 186n209, 186n219, 201, 204, 211, 215, 264, 267 Ralli, Andrea 118 Ralli, Diamantin 118 Ralli, Jacomo 118 Ravni Kotari, also Islam 243, 257n218 Resul Agha 125, 180n57 Rhenier, Andrea 156 Rijeka 173 Ritter, Mark 26, 27n11 Rivera, Francesco 155 Robessi, Francesco de 148 Rochi, Pietro Paulo 150 Rodriguez, Daniele 110 Rogoznica 246 Roksandić, Drago 19n27 Romania 152, 220 Rome 99, 115, 143, 145f., 154f., 162 Rossi, Pellegrin di 114 Rossi, Zuanne di 178n15 Rosso, Zaccaria 120 Rothman, E. Natalie 8, 29, 35, 45, 61n69, 63n126, 195, 214f., 226, 233, 254n125 Rovere, Giovanni Battista della 112, 141 Rovinj 144 Ručić, Zuanne 116, 179n29 Rumelia 1 Russia 22n89, 50, 170, 202

322 Index Rüstem Pasha 35 Ruzzini, Carlo 33 Šabac 74f., 83 Šabanovič, Hazim 182n95 Sabean, David W. 52 Safavid Empire see Persia Sagro, Francesco 160, 165 Saïda 146 Salah Agha 148 Salona see Solin Salvago (Salvigo), Sorleone 59n8 Salvago, Ameda 29f., 42f., 57, 61n73, 131 Salvago, Benetto 29f., 38f., 44, 53, 121f., 215, 261, 269 Salvago, Caterina 32, 118–21 Salvago, family see more precise entries Salvago, Genesino 1, 3–18, 23, 25f., 28–34, 36–50, 52–9, 60n42, 61n81, 63n120, 63n127, 65–91, 93, 95–101, 105f., 108–11, 115–22, 124–7, 129, 131–3, 135–45, 148–50, 152–5, 157–64, 169f., 172–8, 191f., 194f., 199–213, 215–20, 223–5, 228–32, 235–40, 242, 244, 246–7, 250f., 252n42, 260–2, 264–70, 270n8 Salvago, Genesino the Elder 3, 5f., 8f., 12, 14–6, 30, 33–6, 48, 53f., 88, 109, 207–8, 225, 250, 264, 270n8 Salvago, Gioia 269 Salvago, Giovanni Battista 3, 5f., 8–12, 14–7, 29–33, 38f., 41f., 46, 48f., 52f., 58f., 63n127, 96, 109, 118, 120f., 125, 129, 180n57, 194f., 199, 204, 206–9, 212, 225–35, 237–51, 253n49, 254n125, 255n147, 261, 264, 266f., 270n8 Salvago, Giuliano 3, 5f., 8–12, 14–6, 29–31, 33, 38f., 41–4, 46, 48, 52f., 58f., 63n127, 75, 109, 117, 120f., 194f., 199, 204, 206, 217–9, 228, 230, 236–9, 244, 250f., 261, 264, 266–70, 270n8 Salvago, Mateca 3, 5f., 8–10, 12, 14–6, 29–31, 33–40, 42, 45–54, 57, 59n11, 62n99, 62n106–8, 72, 77, 88, 109, 118–21, 127, 166, 169, 195, 207f., 237f., 250, 253n50, 260, 262, 264, 266f., 269, 270n8 Samaglia, Sabadai 156 Sandoval, Francisco Gómez de 141–2, 147 Sansovino, Francesco 228

Sarajevo 3, 5–7, 66f., 74–6, 79, 81, 84f., 87, 90f., 97, 105f., 108, 110, 114, 122, 124–7, 130–40, 146, 150, 153–8, 160, 162, 164, 169, 175f., 180n56, 182n100, 182n106, 200, 209, 243, 264 Sava River 83, 158f., 223 Savoy 172f., 184n163 Scandella, Domenico, also known as Menocchio 4 Scaramelli, Carlo 44, 61n79 Scaramelli, Francesco 44, 61n79, 250f. Scaramelli, Giovanni Carlo 213 Schaefer, Petra 189n311 Schiwy, Freya 109 Schwartz, Ros 26, 35, 68, 101n6, 210 Scott, Joan W. 12f. Şen, A. Tunç 11 Senj 127, 145, 155, 170, 172f. Sephardim see Jews, also Jewish Serbia, also Serbian 1, 9, 17, 23, 25, 56, 122, 132, 151, 155, 169, 202, 214, 243, 249, 267 Seyyid Abdi b. Seyyed Ahmed 50 Shkodër 153, 202, 212 Šibenik 88f., 93, 116, 124, 133, 162, 170, 173, 218, 240, 246, 252n24, 252n27 Sicily 108, 112–4, 145, 161 Sieburth, Richard 178n5 Silvestrini, Marco Antonio 39 Simeoni, Daniel 216 Simmel, Georg 26 Skopje 122, 156, 177 Skradin 243f. Smederevska Palanka 74, 82–4 Smyrna 147 Sofia 3, 74–6, 81f., 97, 122, 137, 140, 156, 169, 177 Sokollu Mehmed Pasha 23f., 77, 82 Solin, also Salona 95 Soranzo, Giovanni 9 Soranzo, Jacopo 32, 174 Soranzo, Vettor 57 Sorgo, Marino Andrea di 150 Sotović, Mile 156 Soviet Union see Russia Spaho, Fehim 182n95 Spain 3, 16f., 51, 99, 106, 109–16, 122, 124, 126f., 129, 132, 138–51, 153–5, 159–62, 164–7, 169f., 172–4, 176, 184n163, 186n209, 199, 202, 205, 213, 231, 269, 270n9 Spalato, Zuane da (I) 111 Spalato, Zuanne da (II) 56 Spiera, Francesco 41

Index  323 Spinelli, Gasparo 141, 146f., 159f., 162 Spinelli, Melchior 213 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 211 Split 1, 5, 18n1, 66–8, 73f., 76, 87–97, 103n98, 108, 110–7, 122–7, 130–3, 135, 137–42, 144–50, 152–66, 169, 173–6, 181n78, 200–3, 205, 213, 231, 240, 252n24, 252n28, 256n183, 264, 270 St Petersburg 22n89 Stai, Piero Francesco de 149 Steffano, Vicenzo de 156, 160 Steiner, George 234 Stigliano 147 Styria 172 Suleiman Çavuş 145 Suleiman, Sultan 35, 47, 88, 225, 229 Surčin 83, 86 Syria 3, 9, 17, 29, 39, 117, 137, 202, 219, 230, 238 Tacitus 15 Taeschner, Franz 22n89 Tarsia, Cristoforo 196, 199, 270n8 Tarsia, family 39, 166, 195, 199f., 269 Tarsia, Marco 197 Téllez-Girón, Pedro 112, 115, 141–3, 145–9, 155, 162, 183n133 Tešne 122 Testa, Stefano 269 Tezcan, Baki 226 Thessaloniki 57, 112f., 137, 145f., 169, 176 Thobi, Salomon 90 Thurn, Heinrich Matthias von 139 Tiepolo, Antonio 34 Todorova, Maria 7, 19n27 Transylvania 139, 206 Trevisano, Domenico 35 Trieste 145 Trivisan, Polo 89 Trogir 1, 73f., 76, 88–91, 93, 95, 108, 111f., 116, 130, 133, 138, 140, 143, 154, 158, 162f., 173–7, 201–5, 213, 216, 218, 236, 240–2, 246–8, 252n27f. Trolokve 246 Tuği 226f. Tunis 233, 264 Turkey see Ottoman Empire Tuscany 99, 115, 145, 149, 174 Tyrol 172 Ukraine 161, 170, 202 Ulbrich, Claudia 5, 10f., 199

Ulcinj 111, 176, 200, 212 United Kingdom of Great Britain 16 United States of America 67 Urana, Paulo dalla 201f. Urbino 145 Uskoks 50, 115, 124, 127, 141, 155, 170–4, 188n290, 188n295, 188n298, 202, 211, 217, 247, 269 Uzundzhovo 82 Valiero, Christoforo 18n1, 60n24, 60n42, 61n77, 61n79, 62n83, 96, 103n107, 179n35, 252n42, 254n94, 256n185f. Varon, Cain 157 Vecellio, Cesare 248 Velutello, Marc’antonio 125, 127, 130–2, 137–40, 150, 153f., 162, 175 Vendramin, Giacomo 184n163 Venice 1, 3–11, 14, 16–8, 18n3, 22n89, 23, 26, 29–36, 39–46, 50–4, 56–9, 62n106, 66f., 70–8, 80f., 83, 86–101, 103n98, 105f., 108–19, 121–33, 135– 46, 148–51, 153–8, 160–78, 184n148, 184n163, 186n217, 187n239f., 188n267–9, 188n271, 192, 198–203, 205–20, 224–51, 252n29, 257n212, 260–2, 264–9, 270n9 Venier, Bernardo 183n115 Venier, family 201 Venier, Lorenzo 112, 132, 149 Venier, Marco 50, 52f. Venuti, Lawrence 51, 215f. Vercelli 184n163 Vienna 99, 155, 160, 220 Vincenti, Antonio Maria 184n163 Višegrad 23, 25, 77 Vivo, Filippo de 30, 211, 227 Vlorë 57, 110f., 114 Vrana 113, 116 Wallachia 35, 45, 169, 202 Warburg, Aby 68 White, Hayden 14 Wittmann, Richard 11, 21n54 Yahyapaşa-oğlu Mehmed Pasha 82, 140 Yugoslavia 173 Yunus Beg 225 Zadar 66, 70, 88f., 99, 104n124, 111, 113f., 132f., 138f., 154, 162, 173, 176f., 178n15, 189n298, 201, 219, 240, 242f., 249, 252n20, 252n29 Zadvanović, Marco 163

324 Index Zagreb 111 Zakynthos 113, 116, 176 Zanchi, Bortolo di 157 Zane, Giacomo 180n53f. Zane, Matteo 51f., 56 Zecevic, Selma 151

Zemun 159, 223 Zemunik 177 Zietto, Appolonio 40 Zola, Francesco 249 Zorzi, Draco de 164 Zuane, born in Klis 202