converting the jewish prophet and jewish physicians 133paid by the treasury contained two separate lists of court physicians by name,
title, and salary. These were the group of Jewish privy physicians, usually re-
corded on the last page of the register, and the group of privy physicians, who
were Muslim.
The palace salary registers show that the number and proportion of Jewish
physicians declined. In 1 603–4 there were sixty-three Jewish and twenty-one
Muslim physicians.^32 In 1 607–8 there were forty-one Jewish and twenty-oneMuslim physicians.^33 By the mid-seventeenth century, the overall number of
palace physicians decreased to eighteen: fourteen Muslims and four Jews.^34
Sultan Mehmed IV cut the number of physicians drastically, but then the num-
bers rose again at the end of the century. Salary is also an important measure
of the fading prestige of the Jewish physicians. The highest paid Muslim head
of the privy physicians saw his daily pay decrease 20 percent, from 1 00 akçe
in 1 653 to 80 akçe in 1 672, where it remained for the rest of the period. The
daily salary of the highest paid Jewish physician, however, decreased 56 per-
cent, from 45 akçe in 1 653 to 25 akçe in 1 666, before rising back to 30 akçe in
1 670, only to fall back to 25 akçe in 1 687.^35 Muslim physicians earned two to
three times the salary of Jewish physicians.
In the register of 1 666 the following note appears at the end of the docu-
ment listing the salaries of privy physicians: “The salary of the new Muslim
physician Mehmed was ordered to be added to that of the group of privy phy-
sicians. The reason for the imperial writ joined to felicity is that he became
ennobled by the honor of Islam in the imperial presence of the sovereign, and
became a faithful servant entitled to reward according to the requirement of an
imperial writ affi rming the promotion on the seventh of Ramadan, AH 1 077.”^36
It is important to note that the conversion is validated by stating that it occurred
under the gaze of the sultan. The man adopted the name Mehmed, Turkish for
Muhammad, the name of the prophet and the sultan. This conversion occurred
in the same year as that of Shabbatai Tzevi, who also adopted the Muslim name
Mehmed.
Radical changes affected the corps of privy physicians in the seventeenth
century. At the beginning of the century, a Jewish head of the privy physicians
presided over a large staff of Jewish physicians and a smaller staff of Muslim
physicians. By the end of the century, a converted Jewish head of the privy physi-
cians led a staff of physicians mainly composed of converted Christian or Jew-
ish and Muslim physicians. Whereas Jewish physicians outnumbered Muslims
three to one at the beginning of the century (63/2 1 ), by its end Muslim physi-
cians outnumbered Jewish seventeen to one (34/2).^37 Muslim physicians out-
numbered Jewish physicians one and a half to one at the beginning of the reign
of Mehmed IV ( 1 7/ 1 2), and fi ve to one at its end (20/4).^38 The number of Jewish