Abstract
A full translation of Tursun Bey’s chronicle based on a manuscript from the collection of Sultan Bayezid II was published several years ago by the prestigious Italian publishing house Mondadori. For the first time, one may notice the important place held in the text by the Ottoman expeditions to the north of the Danube River in 1462, 1476, 1484, and 1485. The author of the present paper addresses especially the reasons for the Sultan’s 1476 expedition in Moldavia. The conclusion is that the intention of Sultan Mehmed II in 1475–1476 was to prevent the emerging alliance between the Genoese of Caffa and the Moldavian prince Stephen the Great, liable to become a threat to the Ottoman hegemony in the Black Sea region.
Keywords
alliance, Caffa, chronicle, Moldavia, Tursun Bey
