114 honored by the glory of islampreacher’s teaching at the palace and orations in public, the grand vizier sup-
pressed Sufi s and dissenters. He prohibited the public performance of Sufi
whirling in 1 665–66, even forcing the Mevlevi lodges in Beşiktaş and Galataand other dervish lodges to cease meetings, executing the Muslim scholar Lari
Mehmed Efendi in 1 665, and destroying shrines frequented by the populace
in 1 668, another means of Islamizing the landscape.^31 All these acts served as
moments of public edifi cation, theaters in the instruction of right belief and
practice.
Lari Mehmed Efendi was an important Muslim in Istanbul society. He
was wealthy and a member of the religious class. He was also an imam and
respected for his knowledge and intelligence. But Abdi Pasha, who was given
the report requesting the execution of Lari Mehmed Efendi by the sultan, re-
lates that he was notorious for his heretical beliefs ( 1 58a–b).^32 More than forty
witnesses ascertained that Lari Mehmed Efendi denied the raising of the dead
for the Last Judgment and the religious obligations of prayer and fasting, all
the while deeming the consumption of wine lawful.^33 He gathered a number
of Muslims around him who shared his views. He did not deny his beliefs.
A fatwa was decreed permitting his execution, which was duly carried out.^34
Mehmed IV approved his execution and insisted that Abdi Pasha include it
in his chronicle; he wanted to make an example of a Muslim who denied core
principles of the sultan’s pious faith. After exposing him to public view at Par-
mak Gate, where the patriarch had been hanged less than a decade earlier, they
decapitated him.
Displaying more boldness than Kadızade Efendi or Üstüvani Mehmed
Efendi, in 1 668 Vani Mehmed Efendi targeted a shrine affi liated with the Janis-
saries’ Bektashi order. He convinced the grand vizier to issue orders to destroy
the shrine of the Bektashi sheikh Kanber Baba located on a hill overlooking
Edirne because it had become a site of pilgrimage.^35 Abdi Pasha emphasizesthe role Vani Mehmed Efendi played in the destruction of the shrine. In an
example of the intimacy of the sultan and his chronicler, Mehmed IV spoke
to his historian one day while being shaved: “Today at prayers Preacher Vani
Mehmed Efendi said during his sermon that near Hafsa there is a grave of a
certain Kanber Baba to which some people come with bad convictions and slip
into polytheism. The sultan issued an imperial decree ordering the destruc-
tion of the shrine. Abdi Pasha praised the sultan: “Just as his eminence our
pious emperor guards the people of Islam from their enemies, so, too, does he
protect them from infi delity, error, and polytheism” (239b–240b).^36 A foreign
observer claims the shrine was razed because it was a notorious spot for illicit
sexual liaisons.^37 Other tombs that were the scene of inappropriate practices
received more lenient treatment: rather than destroying the tomb of Hüsam