5

Conversion to Piety

Mehmed IV and Preacher Vani

Mehmed Efendi

This chapter explores several of the major themes of the book,

including why people attempt to bring others of the same religion to

their understanding of that religion (the motivation of Vani Mehmed

Efendi), the link between piety and proselytization, and the sig-

nifi cance of the advocate or mediator of conversion. I focus on the

changed religious scene in the 1 660s following the fi re and Islamiza-

tion in Istanbul and the appointment of Fazıl Ahmed Pasha as grand

vizier. The crucial individual is Vani Mehmed Efendi, a preacher who

became closer to the dynasty and administration and more infl uen-

tial than the previous Kadızadeli leaders Kadızade Mehmed Efendi

and Üstüvani Mehmed Efendi. This advocate of a reformed Islam

free of innovations and Sufi accretions, who compelled the enjoining

of good and forbidding of wrong in Istanbul by attacking Sufi s and

dissenters, ending the trade in wine and spirits, and razing taverns,

mediated the conversion of the valide sultan, grand vizier, and sultan

to his way of Islam through charismatic preaching.

To explore Mehmed IV’s conversion to piety, one has to also

discuss the sultan’s simultaneous move to the old warrior capital

of Edirne and the appointment of an offi cial chronicler. It is mainly

through the work of Abdi Pasha that we learn of Mehmed IV’s

religiosity, his relation to Vani Mehmed Efendi, and his enjoining

good and forbidding wrong. Women overshadowed the sultan during

the fi rst eight to twelve years of his reign, while he was a boy. But by

the early 1 660s, when Mehmed IV was in his early twenties, and for a