Letter from the Ottoman Government to King James I of England (Constantinople (Istanbul, Türkiye), 1618/1619)

MS 253, fols 6v-7r

“That paragon among the lords of Christendom […] May he end his days as a Muslim!

A governmental ‘telling off’ in an album of curiosities

This letter from a senior member of the Ottoman government to James I of England was written shortly after Sultan Osman II (1604-1622), aged 14, had deposed his uncle, the usurper Mustafa I (c. 1600-1639). Unfortunately, the king of England had neglected to ‘send a delegation to deliver a letter of congratulation and amity’ to the new Ottoman ruler and it is requested that the king ‘ensure[s] that, in future, protocol is observed [in order to] be able to maintain your privileged position in relations with the Threshold of His Imperial Majesty’ (Stanley, p. 107). It was not long until James I would have had occasion to remember this protocol, as only four years later Osman II was imprisoned and executed by his own elite infantry, which paved the way for Mustafa I’s second reign.

It is not known how this letter came into the hands of the Oxford Antiquarian John Pointer (1668-1754), whose collections of ‘curiosities’, which he donated to St John’s College, included two scrapbooks, one of which is MS 253. Among uncontroversial items such as historic letters and autographs are text samples produced by disabled people and, most notoriously, an advertisement
for the display of a slave from the Philippines in London.

Seen today as pseudo-scientific at best and unethical at its worst, such collections were already criticised as sensationalistic in Pointer’s time. He defended them arguing they offered ‘a microcosm
of God’s creation [that leads] us to the Great Author of Nature, & not only serve to puzzle the Philosopher, but also to admonish (if not convince) the Atheist’ (Barnes, p. 32). Alas, Pointer did not
always seem to understand what he collected, as he incorrectly described this letter on the verso
as ‘A letter from the Sophi of Persia to K. Ch. I written upon Paper made of (the) Bark of Trees’.

Further Resources
Full digitization available at Digital Bodleian
Descriptive catalogue record available at Archives Hub