132 honored by the glory of islam
attendant came to him bringing a robe which the sultan had worn, and another
attendant with one of the sultan’s turbans, and they clothed him with these and
called him Mehmed, in the name of the sultan.”^27 This is inaccurate but sig-
nifi cant, for the Jewish writer understood the symbolic weight of the robe and
turban. Though not actually items that the sultan had worn, they represented
the sultan. For the believer in the rabbi’s messianic calling, Shabbatai Tzevi’s
donning of the sultan’s garments and adopting his name as his own may have
been understood as if the rabbi had become the sultan and inherited his do-
mains as predicted. But from the sultan’s perspective, enrobing the prophetic
rebel tamed him, literally brought him within the fold of the cloth of the right
religion, and marked him as a successful spiritual conquest.
Hatice Turhan’s Conversion of Jewish Court Physicians
Shabbatai Tzevi was but the fi rst of a number of well-known Jews to be com-
pelled to convert to Islam before the sultan or sultana at court in the 1 660s.
We have already observed Hatice Turhan’s predilection for Islamizing Jewish
spaces in Istanbul. Following Shabbatai Tzevi’s conversion from provincial
rabbi to Muslim palace gatekeeper, she was instrumental in offering other
prominent Jews who were nearest to the sultan, such as privy physicians, the
choice of converting to Islam or losing their coveted palace positions. The head
of the privy physicians was the most important medical fi gure in the empire
because he appointed all physicians, oculists, and dentists, and he treated the
sultan, with whom he was on intimate terms. In fact, his residence and labo-
ratory at Topkapı Palace were located in the intimate, private space beyond the
third gate, making him practically a member of the royal family.
In the sixteenth century the position of privy physician was usually heldby a member of the Jewish elite.^28 Some scholars, such as Stanford Shaw, have
made the mistake of assuming that Jewish physicians remained in a prominent
position in the palace until the eighteenth century.^29 In fact, during the seven-
teenth century the number and proportion of Jewish physicians decreased
greatly, and many of those who wished to remain in offi ce converted to Islam,
in part due to sentiment in the palace. In previous centuries some individual
Jews had faced hostility in the palace because of their views concerning foreign
affairs, but it was not until the late seventeenth century that the group as a
whole lost its once signifi cant place.^30 İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı was the fi rst
to point out the decreasing number of Jewish physicians.^31 Ottoman treasury
records, although written in an almost indecipherable shorthand script, at least
make it easy to follow the trend since the register of the daily salaries of those