QhoD

QhoD:Digitale Edition von Quellen zur habsburgisch-osmanischen Diplomatie 1500–1918 Yasir Yılmaz (bio) and Stephan Kurz (bio) KEYWORDS Ottoman, Habsburg, early modern, diplomacy, digital humanities, digital editions, paleography, transcription, Ottoman Turkish, kurrentschrift Digitale Edition von Quellen zur habsburgisch-osmanischen Diplomatie 1500–19181 (QhoD) is a digital editing project created in 2020 at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences to research and digitally edit all conceivable sources of the diplomatic contacts between Vienna and Istanbul, beginning from the earliest days of diplomatic contacts between the two states in the 1490s. The historical turning points of the diplomatic contacts and encounters between the two capitals are well-known to scholars. Yet there is a largely uncharted domain of diplomatic moments and processes in the finer details of archival sources. The QhoD project researches, transcribes, and publishes online and in open-access form all such sources in German and Ottoman Turkish from the imperial archives in Vienna and Istanbul. The Ottoman sources are transcribed using Diyanet İslam Ansiklopedisi Transkripsiyon Alfabesi2 and they are also translated into English. All documents are made available using Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) flavored XML under CC-BY license together with facsimile image data. [End Page 57] On July 5, 2022, the project website was officially launched and a sizable batch of textual sources and historical artifacts were published on the qhod.net infrastructure. As part of the first batch of publications, the QhoD team edited the sources of the grand embassy exchange between Vienna and Istanbul after the Peace of Passarowitz (1719–20). This first group of primary sources contains the official letters of the Austrian ambassador, Damian Hugo von Virmont, the travelogue of Virmont's secretary, Cornelius von den Driesch, and the Ottoman protocol register that documents the ceremonies and invitations Virmont and his delegation attended in Istanbul. We also edited the anonymous travelogue of the Ottoman ambassador Dayezade Ibrahim Pasha's journey to and stay in Vienna and miscellaneous Ottoman sources concerning both embassies' journeys through the Ottoman lands. In addition, the QhoD website contains digital representations and metadata of gifts exchanged between the two courts. In the next phase of the project, which will continue until the end of 2024, we plan to edit the sources of the grand embassy exchanges in 1699–1700 after Treaty of Karlowitz. (Graf von Öttingen and Elçi İbrahim Paşa) and in 1740–41 after Belgrade Treaty (Anton Corfiz/Corfitz, Graf von Ulfeldt and Canibi Ali Paşa). QhoD edits all forms of diplomatic correspondence and all types of sources documenting all conceivable aspects of diplomacy. The most important sources of Habsburg origin are Briefe, the correspondence of the diplomats and their letters to statesmen, friends, and relatives. Also published are peace agreements, instructions (Instruktionen), secret and final reports (Relationen), protocols, invoices (Rechnungen), pictures, maps, journalistic media (leaflets, pamphlets, newspapers such as the Wienerisches Diarium), diaries, and travel reports created in the diplomatic context. Artifacts, such as gifts that have been preserved in museums or collections, are also included. From the Ottoman side, seyahatnames and sefaretnames should be mentioned. QhoD also edits entries in teşrifat merasimi kayıt defterleri (protocol registers), decrees concerning the journey and security of diplomats in mühimme defterleri (registers of the imperial council orders), and relevant entries in Nemçe ahid defterleri and Nemçe ahkam defterleri both of which were registers dedicated to Austrian affairs. Existing originals and/or copies of name-i hümayuns and grand vizieral letters from the Ottoman and Habsburg archives are also transcribed. We also edit a variety of minutes, register books and booklets, and invoices. Both Habsburg and Ottoman sources are historically and critically edited along with extensive metadata, digitally processed, and made available open-access so that the diplomatic missions are documented as broadly as possible. In addition, the majority of Ottoman sources are translated into English to make them accessible to a broader scholarly audience, students, and the public. While QhoD is designed primarily as an editing project that aims to present the transcribed data to the global community of researchers in open-access [End Page 58] form, the

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