Çenebaz Osman Efendi

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Çenebaz Osman Efendi (Osman Efendi the Chatterer or the Loudmouthed), formally named as Yenişehirli Osman Efendi (either from

His name remains a byword to this day, thanks to his highly original perception of international relations and the unusual methods he developed while conducting diplomatic negotiations. He regained notoriety in Turkey's everyday culture from an anecdote about him related in a book by the Turkish novelist Kemal Tahir.

He started by burying an amulet into the ground on the way the members of the Russian delegation were to walk each day to render themselves to the conference hall. He also kept by his side a large sack full of gold coins at all times during the pourparlers, shuffling the coins noisily and gazing at his interlocutors with meaningful eyes, to the great puzzlement of the Russian negotiators. Proud of his rhetorical skill, he thought he could wear down the Russians with his diatribe of words and he sometimes just shouted at them meaninglessly to keep the pace of his speech. A first-hand Ottoman witness, named below, wrote that, in the end, the Russians had got used to listening to him as they would listen to a kaval.

Russian Field-Marshal Count

The same Ahmed Resmi Efendi was to be the one to appose his signature on the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, disastrous for the Ottomans, at the end of the second round of the war resumed in March 1773.

See also

• Ahmed Resmî Efendi

Sources