Honored by the Glory of Islam. Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe

134 honored by the glory of islam

physicians shrank as the number of convert and Muslim physicians grew. Jew-

ish physicians in earlier centuries had occasionally converted and become chief

physicians while in palace service; for example, Hekim Yakub, physician to Meh-

med II, converted soon after the accession of Bayezid II to keep his position

and became known as Convert (Mühtedi) Yakub Efendi.^39 But in the seventeenth

century the practice became the norm. In 1 669 there were as many converts as

Jews serving as palace physicians (fi ve), and in 1 697 the number of converts

(not including the head of the privy physicians) surpassed the number of Jews

(two Jews, three converts).^40 By the end of the century, twice as many converts as

Jews served as privy physicians alongside the converted Jewish head of the privy

physicians, Nuh Efendi: two Jews and four converts.^41

Modern researchers in Istanbul use archival sources today because they

seem to provide hard data that when read sequentially narrate historical trends.

These sources demonstrate that over the course of the seventeenth century

Jewish physicians disappeared from the ranks of the most important physi-

cians in the empire as converted Christians and Jews joined a proportionally

larger staff of Muslim physicians. Basing their opinions on these documents,

scholars have made Jews the agents of their own decline or cited economic rea-

sons for their loss of offi ce. Some have surmised that fewer Jews were educated

in western European universities, which offered the most sophisticated medi-

cal training, and thus fewer were qualifi ed to be among the pool of potential

physicians. Others have speculated that fi nancial diffi culties may have caused

the palace to reduce the bloated staff of palace physicians during the reign of

Mehmed IV.^42 What these numbers cannot reveal, however, and what archival

sources fail to provide, are the ideological reasons for and context of the trends

they capture, in this case why Jews no longer became leading physicians.

To understand the story behind these bits of information, we have to turn

to narrative sources. Evidence from a treatise written by a palace preacher

from Vani Mehmed Efendi’s inner circle reveals that in order to preserve their

position at the sultan’s court it was a necessary but not suffi cient condition

for Jews to maintain their educational edge in the medical profession. The

suffi cient condition for Jews to remain as physicians was for the sultan’s court

to maintain its sixteenth-century attitude, which allowed Jews to treat the sul-

tan as head physician without converting. When this attitude changed, so did

the Jews’ ability to function in offi ce as Jews. The circumstances surround-

ing the conversion of the Spanish Jewish physician Moses son of Raphael

Abravanel illustrate how this happened. In the case of this physician, conver-

sion was a necessary step to remain as privy physician and be allowed access

to the sultan’s body. He became Hayatizade Mustafa Fevzi Efendi and head

physician in 1 669.^43