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

136 honored by the glory of islam

by his skill, matchless in the canons of medicine, and unequalled

in its arts, who used to prescribe health-giving tonics designed for

the inhabitants of the hospital of the world, for the young and the

old, the diseased and the ailing, was brought to the attention of her

excellency, the sultana [Hatice Turhan], whose mark is chastity. Yet al-

though Hayatizade was renowned for his high degree of skillfulness

in medicine, because he had not become ennobled and graced by the

honor of Islam, and was not exempt from and absolved of the fi lth of

infi delity, she was not pleased that he should take the noble pulse and

diagnose the maladies of his excellency, the sovereign whose justice

is vigilant. Therefore, she ordered that as long as Hayatizade did not

wear the crown of Islam on his head, or don the cloak of the faith on

his shoulders, he was not granted permission to give medical treat-

ment to that sultan whose extraction is pure and who is full of justice.

In fact, treatment of the sovereign was not permitted to Hayatizade

as long as he did not ennoble himself with the teaching of Islam and

distinguish himself from among the Jews with the banner of Islam.^50

This narrative declares that it was brought to the attention of the valide sultan

that the most renowned physician in the palace was Jewish. She determined

that no matter how superior his medical knowledge and experience, he had to

fi rst become a Muslim to be allowed to continue having access to the sultan

and to treat him. He had to literally look like a Muslim, wearing a Muslim tur-

ban and cloak, and fi guratively be clothed in the teaching of Islam. His mind

and body had to be transformed. Only after spiritually cleansing himself of his

Jewishness could he be allowed to again touch the skin of the sultan, examine

his body to determine what ailed him, and be trusted to prescribe tonics and

cures that would restore his health. The Jewish touch, which had once been

considered life-giving, was becoming taboo.

In the seventeenth century a Jewish person could convert and erase all

Jewish “taint.” Early modern anti-Jewish sentiment was not modern racial

anti-Semitism that posits an “eternal Jewish biology,” which can never be puri-

fi ed, even by religious change. Hayatizade served as head of the privy physi-

cians once he converted. One grandson, Hayatizade Mustafa (d. 1 733), became

head of the privy physicians. Another grandson, Hayatizade Mehmed Emin

(d. 1 748), became the sheikhulislam, the leading Muslim religious authority in

the empire and head of the religious class’s hierarchy. And displaying an inti-

macy with the sultan’s preacher, until the mid-twentieth century his descend-

ants resided in a seaside mansion in Vaniköy, Vani Mehmed Efendi’s Islamized

village on the Bosporus in Istanbul.^51