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

140 honored by the glory of islam

Lithuania in central Europe and during the Russian campaign. These victories

enabled Mehmed IV to expand the empire to its greatest limits, leaving in his

wake bell towers converted into minarets and Christians circumcised as Mus-

lims, which in turn increased the morale of Muslims in the imperial capital.

Just as it is claimed in the Qur’an that the light of Islam abolished the pre-

Islamic age of darkness and ignorance, Ottoman chroniclers boasted that the

shadows of Christianity (substituting for paganism) manifested in churches

were dispersed by the light of Islam spread by its faithful soldiers.^1 In this view,

soldiers cleared a path allowing knowledge to be transmitted, which led to true

revelation being accepted by Christians, who gained eternal salvation.

The soldier may not be a proselytizer, but his actions are a precursor to

conversion.^2 Speros Vyronis Jr. demonstrated how conquest sets the stage for

conversion because the defeat of a Christian enemy allows Islamic institutions

to replace Christian institutions, which eventually serve to convert the defeated

population absorbed into an Islamic state.^3 Here the focus is not on impersonal

institutions such as dervish lodges and madrasas crucial for conversion in ear-

lier centuries, but on the personal role of the martial sultan as convert maker.^4

The chapter thus addresses the major themes of the book concerning the link

between piety and proselytization, the central role of the advocate of conver-

sion, how conversion affects religious geography and sacred space, and the role

that war, violence, and changing power relations play in conversion.

Depicting Mehmed IV as a Ghazi

There is a stark contrast in the way Mehmed IV is portrayed in the writing of

Ottoman historians who fi nished their works while he was still a minor and

the state was ruled by his regent, fi rst the previous valide sultan Kösem Sul-

tan, and then his mother, Hatice Turhan Sultan, and those written when the

sultan became an independent ruler after he was in his twenties and moved

the capital from Istanbul to Edirne, where he could spend his time hunting

and launching war. Chronicles composed in the former period harshly criticize

his father’s reign and express much anxiety about the rule of women. Histo-

ries written during the latter period, however, rarely discuss Ibrahim or royal

women, but instead praise the main subject, Mehmed IV, for his martial activi-

ties. The former mainly consisted of writing that consciously aims to warn the

ruler to heed the mistakes of his predecessor and not repeat them, works that

fi t the genre of advice to kings, whereas the latter writers chose to compose

largely uncritical works of praise, including a book of kings, and numerous

books of conquest.