Imaginea creștinilor în viziunea otomană, în timpul domniilor lui Mircea cel Bătrân, Ștefan cel Mare și Iancu de Hunedoara

Abstract

The study is part of the research carried out on the theme of alterity, its purpose being to observe how Christians were described by Muslims in internal and external documents, as well as in Romanian and Turkish chronicles. The vastness of the theme, understood through the period and the extended geographical framework, determined a circumscription of its approach. Thus, by Christians is meant especially the Romanians or the peoples of South-Eastern Europe on the „border” with the Ottoman Empire, and by Turks the great Ottoman Empire. We can say from the beginning that the relations between the Sublime Porte and the Romanian Countries change quite often, and through the conclusion of the peace treaties this can also be seen in the characteristics that the Turks attribute to Christians. If in times of conflict Christians and their leaders are described as „damned, full of stubbornness, hateful and bloodthirsty”, „riders of errant faith”, „bearers of misfortune”, „rebels”, etc., when they become subjects of the sultan, and moreover they participate in the battle with the Turkish army, as was the case in the time of Stephen the Great, by the attacks in southern Poland, the leader of the Christians, Stephen described before as „damned, wretched and arrogant”, becomes „a very skilled man and a great master in fighting giaours”. The internal and external documents consulted for the research of the proposed theme are published with translation in the Romanian editions. Of course, in the analysis of the topic, sources published in various other editions or unpublished sources are also extremely useful. The Romanian chronicles are also published, and the Turkish ones are accompanied by a translation into Romanian.