A contemporary source about the 1730-1731 rebellions: Relation des Deux Rebellions Arrivees a Constantinople en MDCCXXX. Et XXXI., dans la Dépositon d'Achmet III. et l'Elevation au Trône de Mahomet V. (Examination and annotated translation)

This study scrutinises a primary source on the rebellions of 1730-1731. The respective source is a printed work titled Relation des Deux Rebellions Arrivees a Constantinople en MDCCXXX. et XXXI., dans la Dépositon d'Achmet III. et l'Elevation au Trône de Mahomet V. The work, published in French in 1737, was translated into English and Italian the same year, and a year later into German and Russian. This source is about the Rebellion of 1730 and a second uprising that took place in 1731, which is a revanchist repetition of it. It was claimed a few years ago that the source, which has considered an anonymous work for a long time, was written by Claude Alexandre de Bonneval, known as Khumbaradji Ahmed Pasha. Although the work is regarded as a reliable source in the secondary literature on the rebellions of 1730 and 1731 and is frequently used, it has not been the subject of a separate study. Likewise, the source has not been translated into Turkish, despite the fact that it relates an important incident from the 18th-century political history of the Ottoman Empire. This study mainly aims to contribute to the source-based scientific studies on the rebellions of 1730 and 1731, where a significant increase in Ottoman historiography has been observed in recent years, by making the account the subject of a specific examination. In addition, the study, which includes a comparative and annotated translation of the French and English versions of the source, aimed to fill the gap in the absence of Turkish translation of it.