Századok – 2011

KÖZLEMÉNYEK BETHLEN GÁBORRÓL - Sudár Balázs: Iszkender és Bethlen Gábor: a pasa és a fejedelem IV/975

996 SUDÁR BALÁZS good terms with the pasha who served on the Hungarian and then the Polish marches, for he was able to cause a good deal of problems. Their relationship involved both common risks and common advantages. All this serves as a general warning against trying to understand the policies of the 17thcentury princes of Transylvania as Ottoman vassals without a profound knowledge of Ottoman domestic policies and of the power structures in the Romanian principalities and Ottoman Hungary. In each case it has to be considered how a given event affected Ottoman interests, and it is also worth knowing which groups of a divided Ottoman domestic elite aligned themselves with a certain case, and which opposed it. For, although the relations normally survived for a long time, whether the two persons concerned mutually supported or hindered each other always depended upon the actual state of interests.