6

Converting the Jewish

Prophet and Jewish

Physicians

Not all Muslims were pleased with the religious turn in the palace

and the more rigorous policing of public morality. But not only

Muslims were affected by the conversion to piety at court. In that era

Muslim piety was manifested in the conversion of Christians and

Jews. Accordingly, conversion moved from the sultan’s inner circle

outward and involved Jews closest to it. Like fi re half a decade earlier,

the messianic movement of Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi in 1 665 pro-

vided an opportune moment for the pious Muslim elite to promote

conversion to Islam. This chapter fi rst explores how the attempt

of the sultan, his preacher, and the grand vizier to stamp out what

they considered heterodox, illegitimate practices among Muslims, to

root out heresy and dampen religious ecstasy, and to destroy places

where rapturous religious practices were performed coincided with

the outbreak of Shabbatai Tzevi’s preaching, which aimed to reform

Jewish life and convert Jews to the rabbi’s understanding of God’s

prophecy. The movement culminated instead in Jewish conversion to

Islam as the sultan’s preacher, Vani Mehmed Efendi, instructed the

rabbi in Kadızadeli tenets of Islam. Hundreds of the rabbi’s follow-

ers followed suit. The Islamic reform movement that promoted a

rational religion preferred by the sultan prevailed at the time over the

competing ecstatic conversion movement of the rabbi.

The second part of the chapter analyzes Hatice Turhan’s conver-

sion of other Jews at the sultan’s court, especially the group of Jewish

palace physicians, the most visible and infl uential Jews in the empire.