Quarantine, which was firstly started to be implemented in the Mediterranean ports of Europe in the XIVst century, has become institutionalized over time and has played a very important role in protection from epidemics. Western States have applied quarantine indiscriminately to everyone who came to their countries from outside. Therefore, the Ottoman ambassadors sent to these states were also subjected to quarantine. The ambassadors gave important information in sefaretnames (the books of embassy) which they wrote about the quarantine practices, the quarantine processes and quarantine places. The responses of the Ottoman ambassadors to the quarantine varied according to the quarantine period, the quarantine space and the attitudes of the authorities responsible for enforcing the quarantine. Although the ambassadors displayed different attitudes from each other, it is observed that they are generally uncomfortable with this practice, which they are not familiar with from their own countries. Although the attitudes of the ambassadors against quarantine stem from humanitarian reasons, they bear traces of both the Ottoman mentality and the Ottoman understanding of State. In this study, the attitudes of the Ottoman ambassadors against quarantine were evaluated by giving information about the quarantine measures encountered by the ambassadors sent to Europe before the quarantine practices started in the Ottoman Empire. 

Keywords: Ottoman State, Ambassador, Quarantine