Dating

Tugra of Mehmed II on the ^cahd-name establishing
peace with Venice, 25 January 1478 m.v.

The ^cahd-name was a statement of terms for peace, not a peace agreement, and it was a more generous agreement than Venice could have hoped for.  You can read it and read about it here, but I want to write about its dating.

The document is in Greek -- communications from Istanbul to Venice were normally in Greek -- and so is the date: ,ςϠπζ.  There is a line over each character in the manuscript which I cannot duplicate here but you can see it at the end of the second line in the image below. 

The date on the ^cahd-name (click to enlarge).  The text reads:

σύνορα τὸν καστρῶν αὐτον. ὁπου γητοναίβουσην μαι τοὺς τόπους της
αὐθ(εν)τη(ας) μου πάνταιχώθ(εν). δηα βαιβαίὁσην κ(αὶ) ἐπη |
κήρωσην τὼν ἄνωθ(εν) γεγραμένων καὶφάλαιων καὶ ορκωμοτηκῶν.
ἔγην(εν) δαι ἡ παρουσα γραφὴ εν τὼ ἐτους ͵ϛ̅ϡ̅π̅ζ̅   ι(νδ) ι̅β̅ μ(ηνι) οἱἀνουαριω κ̅ε̅ ἐν κωσταντηνουπολι

 . . . of their fortresses which neighbor with the lands of my Lordship on all sides.  

The above-written provisions are confirmed and ratified and sworn. 

The present writing was done in the year 6987, 

the 12^th indiction, the 25^th of the month of January, in Constantinople.

That number ,ςϠπζ translates to 6987 because Greek dating starts with the creation of the world. Lets not go there.

Now for the problems with 6987.  The Greek year starts with September, ours with January, the Venetian with March.  Normally, in conforming Greek dating with ours, one subtracts 5509 if the date is between September and December, and 5508 if the date is between January and August.  But if it is a Venetian date -- more Veneto or m.v., 5509 is used for September through February.  This assumes that we know the month.

So the Venetians understood that the ^cahd-name was issued in January 1478.

But if you follow the tradition of authority among historians, that date becomes 1479 because, apparently, the m.v. date, coming as it does from a culture without electricity and flush toilets, is not worth respecting.  Kenneth Setton and Franz Babinger are the authorities most often cited for the use of 1479 for the ^cahd-name, and since they opted for 1479, that is apparently definitive.  Had this been a document written for Romans instead of Venetians, the Romans would also have agreed with 1479. (Setton also pronounced a date other than 1470 for the fall of Negroponte which I will not repeat here, compounding the error. Mind you, I could not live without Setton, but I still check his sources.)

(An anecdote:  When I was in graduate school, in 1996, I compiled a list of sources Setton had cited that I wanted to see for myself, sources I could not find in DC libraries.  I took the train up from DC to Philadelphia, and went to his University of Pennsylvania library.  Not one of those sources was on the shelves.  It took some time and the efforts of several librarians, but it was determined that Setton had never returned the books on my list to the library, and that after his death in 1995, no one else had, either.)

The subject of dates comes up because a recent correspondent took me to task for using 1478 in my article on the document, condescendingly explaining, "Hence we convert any dates falling in Jan and Feb to the following year."

Well, that depends on who "we" are, and the problem with authority-based work is that "we" have to choose an authority.

I would like to say that I have opted for the document as my authority, but I chose instead to use 1478 instead of the 6987 chosen by the scribe whose employer, Mehmed, would himself have been using hijri dates.  I have used my authority to interpret the date for readers, and I have opted for the date the Venetians would have known since they were the people most involved.

Also, I think it is more interesting.  

 * * * * *

A correspondent (Comments, below) questions scribal choice.  I think this is an important issue so I want to put my response here, rather than in the Comments.


 I have looked at my copies of all the surviving Greek copies of Ottoman  ^cahd-names and correspondence with Venice for the 15th C.  More than half have no year dates at all, only the day and month.  One ^cahd-name, written in Greek, has the Venetian date written in Greek numerals.  The evidence indicates considerable leeway for the scribe.

Also, in the copies made in Greek by Greek scribes for the Venetian records, the dates are also in Greek -- this reflects the Venetian characteristic of copying as exactly as possible: I suggested this in the entry on The Argos Petition though I did not give the Italianate text.