Introduction
Conversion of Self, Others, and Sacred Space
The compound of the leading Muslim religious authority (mufti)
of Istanbul lies in the shadow of the magnificent sixteenth-century
mosque of Suleiman in one of the most religious neighborhoods of
the city. One building of the complex houses the Ottoman Islamic
Law Court (Shariah) Archive. Its small reading room lined with
wooden bookshelves built by nineteenth-century sultan Abdülhamid
II has just enough room for a long table seating several researchers
and the director of the archive. A pious Muslim from Erzurum, the
director favored faded green suits and a brown, knitted skullcap, and
fielded calls from the “Hello Islamic Legal Opinion” (Alo Fetva) tele-
phone line. The head of the archive, who has committed the Qur’an
to memory, insisted that I inform him of every conversion I located
in the yellowed pages of the court registers. He wanted me to inter-
rupt his phone calls or proofreading of Qur’ans or sipping of bracing
tea in tiny tulip-shaped glasses. He and the assistant director, whose
main function was to serve tea, and several other Turkish research-
ers would gather behind me and look over my shoulder as I read
aloud to them the brief texts written in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic.
Inevitably, the head of the archive would put his hand on my shoulder
and, inexplicably addressing me by the Muslim name Ahmed, state,
“Three hundred years ago that Armenian boy or that Jewish man or
that Orthodox Christian woman understood the truth and was rightly
guided into Islam. Why aren’t you?” This continued for the two and a
half years I worked there and on subsequent visits as well.