islamizing istanbul 103
mosque nor at home. Thieves had even entered the plaintiff’s home. In an-
other case, an imam and muezzin along with nine other Muslims of the Hajji
Hüseyin neighborhood, also near Samatya Gate, complained to the magistrate
of Istanbul that although Christians had never previously resided in their
neighborhood, several Christians had rented or leased Muslim homes there,
even near the mosque.^104 The men complained that their “shameful words, evil
acts, and loud voices” hindered them from praying and reading and chanting
from the Qur’an in their own homes. They requested that the Christians be ex-
pelled. Based on their testimony and affi rmation of their claims by inspectors,
it was decided that the Christians had to be expelled from the Muslim homes
in which they resided.
Local Muslims also sought to Islamize neighborhoods on their own ini-tiative. The clerk of the imperial payroll register petitioned the sultan, stating
that when the great confl agration occurred all churches and synagogues that
burned accrued to the portion of state lands. A Muslim school and rooms to
rent to pay for the upkeep of the school were to be built on the lands of a church
confi scated in this way. The church had been located in the neighborhood west
of Eminönü, where the fi re had started. But a sheikh who resided in the neigh-
borhood, emboldened by a fatwa, urged the construction of a mosque in addi-
tion to the school.^105
Muslims turned to the sheikhulislam for his legal opinion concerning theexpulsion of Christians from Muslim neighborhoods. An entry in the Shariah
court records of the magistrate of Galata includes the following question: “If
a Christian should perform Christian rituals in the home in which he resides
in a Muslim neighborhood, is it legal for him to be compelled to sell the afore-
mentioned home to a Muslim when the people of the neighborhood notify the
Shariah expert?” The answer was affi rmative.^106 The same issue was raised in
the Bosporus village of Yeniköy. There the deputy magistrate recorded a similar
fatwa, asking, “If a Christian or Jew buys a home in a Muslim neighborhood
and resides in it, when the people of the neighborhood make the situation
known to the magistrate, is it appropriate for him to say that he must be com-
pelled to sell the home to a Muslim?” The response was again affi rmative. In
relation to this fatwa, the court scribe of Yeniköy recorded that a Muslim in
Yeniköy petitioned the sultan to have a Christian or Jew who bought a Muslim’s
home near the Yeniköy mosque and resided in it to appear before the magis-
trate of Galata.^107
What changed the attitude of Muslim commoners in Istanbul? Had theynot been frequently sighted at the city’s thousands of taverns, rubbing shoulders
with Christians and Jews and enjoying themselves before the fi re? The anony-
mous author of A Treatise on Strange Events, composed in the second half of the