ghazi mehmed iv and candia 141Early modern chronicle writers composed their works in a dialogic relation
to the works of their predecessors, as their works were often explicitly labeled
continuations. Here I am infl uenced by the recent study of Gabriel Piterberg,
who examined the intertextuality of four accounts of the 1 622 deposition and
murder of Ottoman Sultan Osman II. At the same time, I have heeded Piter-
berg’s call, echoing that of Dominick LaCapra, rare in the fi eld of Ottoman his-
tory, of entering a dialogue with these historical texts to see what early modern
authors were trying to tell us. By looking at not only the choice of genre they
selected as the medium for narrating their stories (which carries a lot of the
work for the story), but also the story in their works, I examine the interplay
between historical experience and the accountings of that experience.^5
In this book, the intertextuality of the works of four writers also stands
out: Karaçelebizade, Katip Çelebi, and Solakzade, who wrote on Ibrahim and
the fi rst decade of Mehmed IV’s rule, and Abdi Pasha, who as offi cial chroni-
cler wrote about almost the entire reign of his patron, Mehmed IV. Writing in
part in response to the other three historians’ barbed critiques of Ibrahim, and
based on the premise that “the realm refl ects the ruler,” Abdi Pasha and other
writers connected to the court, specifi cally those who wrote conquest books,
promote the view that Mehmed IV was a mobile, active military leader and
warrior breaking out of the harem cage in the palace of Istanbul and spending
most of his reign in Edirne and Rumelia, the heartland of the empire, moti-
vated by religious zeal, bringing war to the Christian enemy and promoting the
image of a worthy Islamic sovereign.^6
Mehmed IV reigned during a period of social and economic change lead-
ing to a loss of men’s control over women and women’s attendant gaining of
more power, an age in which understandings of the sultanate had been greatly
transformed, which is refl ected in the critiques and anxieties of contemporary
chronicles.^7 By the time Ibrahim was enthroned, the Ottoman Empire was nolonger a frontier-oriented realm whose motivating force was warfare and ter-
ritorial expansion. Instead, it was a bureaucratic, sedentary empire. The sultan
had been removed from the operations of government and “the cut and thrust
of decision-making.”^8 He withdrew from subjects and servants and from public
view. Because ordinary speech was considered undignifi ed for sultans to use,
they communicated by sign language. Unable even to speak, the sultan became
out of touch, and was visible only on rare, carefully staged processions through
the capital. The sultan had become a showpiece and sat silently on his throne in
a three-foot turban, like an icon, immobile.^9 He appeared to be aloof, secluded,
and as sublime as a Byzantine or Persian emperor. This was refl ected in art as it
became convention for miniaturists to depict the sultan on the throne and not
on horseback leading a military campaign.^10