Honored by the Glory of Islam. Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe

94 honored by the glory of islam

unbelieving Jews out of the city of believers, Medina. And, in what could be

understood in late seventeenth-century Istanbul as a reference to recent events,

the chapter warns that in the world to come those Jews will also be punished

in hellfi re.

The mosque and its inscriptions served as public texts which conveyed

several meanings to the intended audience of Christians and Jews. Although

few knew the meaning of the inscriptions, Christians and Jews recognized

that they were Qur’anic texts written in Arabic. They did not need to under-

stand Arabic to realize the radical transformation of the neighborhood and

to recognize what the building was.^66 They had to be aware that the ruler had

converted the place into a space restricted to Muslims, which they could not

enter unless they converted to Islam. Thus the three doors on the gates in

the mosque’s main courtyard included the shahadah or profession of faith,

“There is no God save God and Muhammad is God’s messenger,” which con-

verts recite when becoming Muslim. This major change to the urban environ-

ment altered Christians’ and Jews’ daily pattern of behavior, causing them to

change the way they traveled through and experienced the city, and may have

transformed their worldview, leading to belief in prophecies of deliverance, or

conversion to Islam.^67

For many Muslims, the existence of the great mosque on the waterfront

facing largely Christian Galata declared the conquest of Jewish space and its

enclosure by sacred, Muslim space. In this view the scourge of God manifested

in fi ery form erased the onerous presence of the Jews. The forlorn neighbor-

hood at the heart of the city, which had been overrun by Jews and represented

by the ruined hulk of an incomplete mosque, a symbol of indecisiveness and

failure, had been replaced by a proud mosque in a prominent position on the

seafront at the center of the city.

While the expulsion order of 1 660 was not as severe as Austro-Hungarian

Emperor Leopold I’s expelling Jews from his imperial capital of Vienna a de-

cade after the Jews were sent from Eminönü, these transformations had a great

impact on the face of the city. Istanbul’s main port and commercial district

of Eminönü had been home to most of the city’s Jewish population. Syna-

gogues fl ourished throughout the peninsula; a synagogue of a Romaniot Jew-

ish community even stood near the Rüstem Pasha mosque on the waterfront.

Approximately a year after the 1 660 great fi re in Istanbul, when Hatice Turhan

began construction of the Valide Sultan Mosque in Eminönü, Jews were or-

dered to leave a wide area; they were expelled from rented rooms, made to sell

their property, and compelled to turn over endowments to Muslims. The be-

ginning of a massive public works project radically affected the Jewish popula-

tion by redistributing them throughout the city.^68 With Hatice Turhan making