106 honored by the glory of islam
period lasting over two decades until the siege of Vienna, Mehmed IV is the
subject of chronicles, the author, or at least narrator, of his life. The writing
of history and induction into active sultanate went together for Mehmed IV.
Thereafter he was depicted as a pious convert maker promoting a purifi ed
Islam to Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
Preparing a Pious Legacy
In 1 663 the sultan abandoned Istanbul and established himself in Edirne, ap-
pointing Abdi Pasha to be court historian, even naming the work, in order to
mark his attainment of control over the sultanate.^1 Abdi Pasha, a Muslim from
Istanbul, was probably the same age as the sultan; both were educated in the
palace. The historian was trained to administer the empire and rose to the offi ces
of deputy grand vizier in Istanbul, imperial chancellor, and, toward the end of
his career and life, governor of provinces in the Arab world (Basra), southeastern
Europe (Bosnia), and the Mediterranean (Crete). Just as the trajectory of Abdi Pa-
sha’s offi cial appointments follows the expansion of the empire, he had an oppor-
tunity not only to have a hand in making history, but also to produce it, to write
about the affairs of the empire, shaping its history as it was to be remembered.
Although Abdi Pasha relied on the accounts of others to compose the his-tory of events between the enthronement of the sultan and the time he was
appointed court historian, the last twenty years of the chronicle are based on
his fi rsthand knowledge of events contained therein or the knowledge of events
as related to him by the sultan or his preacher. The sultan closely followed the
chronicle’s composition, written in straightforward Turkish, largely without
the ornamental Persianate touches found in sixteenth-century offi cial chroni-
cles. Abdi Pasha was constantly at the sultan’s side, which limited his critical
stance yet placed him in an intimate position to follow events, many of which
he witnessed or learned of from those who experienced them, or in which he
played a role, as, for example, when he compiled the compendium of statutes
including that concerning procedure to follow when a Christian converted to
Islam before the court. It is an invaluable work for presenting views of events
from the sultan’s perspective and how he wished to be remembered, and pro-
vides insight into which events were deemed important for posterity and which
were passed over in silence. Because he was appointed to write a work that
praises the sultan to posterity, Abdi Pasha chose the format of the book of kings
(Shahname), unlike earlier writers who selected the advice to kings genre.
Especially because it was modeled along the line of a book of kings, one can-not uncritically use Abdi Pasha’s chronicle as a biographical source. As Denise