Osman Aga of Temesvar

Osman Ağa of Temeşvar (Turkish: Temeşvarlı Osman Ağa; 1670–1725) was an Ottoman army officer and one of the few Turkish-language autobiographers of the era. More important than that, he was a prisoner of war and he wrote mostly about his adventures in Habsburg Austria which makes the autobiography the sole Ottoman Turkish example of its kind.

Osman was born into a family of South Slavic origin in Temeşvar (Timişoara), Temeşvar Eyalet (in modern western Romania). He spoke Serbian. Temesvár was inhabited by Romanians, Serbs and Hungarians, and had been conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1552. Osman Aga was a low-ranking army officer in Temesvár. He excelled in learning foreign languages and equitation.

After the unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1683, the tide turned and the Holy League of European nations began forcing the Ottomans out of Hungary in the Great Turkish War between 1683–1699.

In his works, he noted the "uprisal of the Serb rayah"; he mentioned that the Serbs of the region rose up when the Austrian general Valis took Segedin on October 20, 1686.

During the war, the Austrians were unable to capture Temesvár. But in 1688, Osman's squadron of 80 men was given a special task. They had to deliver the salaries of army officiers to Lipova, Arad, just to the north of Temesvár. While they were in Arad County, it was attacked by superior Austrian forces and the city council decided to surrender. Osman thus became a prisoner of war at the age of eighteen.

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