The Great Siege of Malta (1565) and the Istanbul State Archives

Abstract

The 1565 Great Siege of Malta has gone down as one of the most notable events in the history of the island and has hit the collective imagination of its people. The Great Siege was considered to be an important event even by most European rulers since the resistance of the Knights of Malta against the Turks meant the preservation of Christianity in the _ southernmost tip of Europe. The importance of the event was echoed immediately in contemporary western "literary" and "visual arts" circles. In fact, apart from a number of anonymous chronicles describing the episodes which characterized the nearly four month long siege, one also comes across a number of authored chronicles of the Great Siege. The most notable amongst these are those written by Antonfrancesco Cirni (1567), Giovanni Antonio Viperano (1567), Pierre Gentil de Vend6me (1567), Alonso Ulloa (1569) and, undoubtedly the most renowned amongst them, Francisco Balbi da Correggio (1567) (Sanminiatelli-Zabarella 1902: 13-15).