Correspondence between the Ottoman sultan and the Cossacks

This article is about the alleged letters exchanged between the sultan and Cossacks. For the painting by Ilya Repin, see Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks.

1912 Ukrainian version of the alleged correspondence in Mykola Arkas's History of Ukraine–Rus'

The Correspondence between the Ottoman sultan and the Cossacks,[1] also variously known as the Correspondence between the Cossacks and the Ottoman/Turkish sultan,[1] is a collection of apocryphal letters claiming to be between a sultan of the Ottoman Empire (usually identified as Mehmed IV[2]) and a group of Cossacks, originally associated with the city of Chyhyryn, Ukraine, but later with Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.[1]

According to traditional interpretations, the sultan's letter and the Cossack response (also known as the Zaporozhian/Cossack letter to the Turkish sultan;[2] Ukrainian: Лист запорожців турецькому султанові, romanized: Lyst zaporozhtsiv turets'komu sultanovi) were written between 1672 and 1680.[2] The sultan supposedly demanded the Cossacks to surrender by boasting about his titles and power, and the Cossacks, allegedly commanded by a man named Ivan Sirko (or "Zaxarcenko"[3]) sent an insulting sarcastic reply in which they vowed to fight against the sultan.[2]

Although early commentators were in doubt whether the apocryphal letters were possibly authentic,[2] modern scholars have known since the 1970s[4]: 16:50  that the supposed "correspondence" is a literary forgery, that is to be understood within a large body of similar writings of early modern European Christian anti-Ottoman propaganda which emerged during the Ottoman wars in Europe.[5][6] It is not certain whether the original text was written in Middle Polish or (less likely) Middle Ukrainian, but the Russian ("Muscovite") versions are almost certainly translations of a non-Russian original.[6] It is also possible that the Polish original was first translated into Russian, and later into Ukrainian.[4]: 10:25 

  1. ^ a b c Waugh 1971, p. 3.
  2. ^ a b c d e Friedman 1978, p. 2.
  3. ^ Friedman 1978, p. 7.
  4. ^ a b Shamin 2020.
  5. ^ Pylypenko 2019, p. 6.
  6. ^ a b Waugh 1971, p. 3–4.