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~ THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE WORLD AROUND IT ~
the notorious storms of the Black Sea.50 Those who planned to visit Anatolia or Aleppo might avoid the costs of a stay in Istanbul by transiting through the Black Sea ports of Trabzon, Samsun or Sinop. But the considerable funds that such merchants carried might make them vulnerable targets: thus in 984/1576–7, the Ottoman authorities struggled to clear up a case of robbery and murder whose victims were two Polish merchants carrying gold coins and woollens to Aleppo. Apparently the richness of these goods had struck the brother of the customs official in the port of Sinop, who seems to have found himself partners in crime among some merchants and truant medrese students. It would be good to know where the stolen woollens, which were retrieved at least in part, had been manufactured, but our texts are of no help in this matter.51 A certain number of the merchants importing textiles into Poland were domiciled in the Ottoman Black Sea port of Kefe/Kaffa/Feodosia. Judging from the names, some of them were Slavs, while others seem to have been German-speaking; we do not know whether these men had started out as subjects of the king of Poland, but it is possible.52
~ Merchants from the lands of a (doubtful) ally: France Ottoman sultans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were interested in friendly relations with rulers perceived as actual or potential allies in the struggle against the Habsburgs.53 Capitulations granting privileges to foreign merchants were typically issued in this context. In a sense, this was applicable even to Venice, whose government in this period felt particularly threatened by the Spanish presence in Naples and Milan, and thus was interested in a modus vivendi with the Ottoman Empire.54 But the first Christian partner of the Ottomans in western Europe was King François I of France, whose alliance with Süleyman the Magnificent included provisions for the safety of French merchants on Ottoman territory.55 Several times in the seventeenth century, the ‘understanding’ between the French and Ottoman rulers showed signs of considerable strain.56 Yet conflict was contained, and in the period under discussion here, there never was any war between the Ottoman Empire and France. However, in the sixteenth century, and even during the first half of the seventeenth, there were not many French merchants who actually availed themselves of the opportunities provided by the Franco-Ottoman ‘special relationship’. At first the so-called wars of religion and the civil war following the extinction of the royal house of Valois ruined the trade of Lyons, at that time the commercial centre of France. As a result the Italian bankers who had financed Lyons’ economic activities either returned home or else sought assimilation into the French aristocracy.57 Once Henri IV of the Bourbon dynasty had gained recognition as king of France, there was a brief period of commercial revival, reflected in a renewal of the capitulations (1604/1012–13). But the murder of this ruler in