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

ghazi mehmed iv and candia 147

of Poland, and the Habsburg Empire into a major feature of his reign. At the

very end of 1 665, the Ottoman Imperial Council secretary Mehmed Necati

completed the History of the Conquest of Ya nık and presented it to Mehmed IV.

Necati’s work is devoted to the sultan’s heroic deeds of ghaza and jihad in the

early 1 660s. He writes that the sultan was motivated to wage war in central Eu-

rope, fi rst because “God commanded ‘wage jihad on the path of God’ ” (Qur’an

22:78), and second because the sultan aimed to follow the example of Muham-

mad, who strove to carry out this divine directive Accordingly:

In the auspicious year 1 073 [ 1 662–63], the illustrious, good fortuned,

felicitous, and magnifi cent sultan of Islam, shadow of God, caliph

of the age, master of the auspicious conjunction, custodian of the

two noble sanctuaries [Mecca and Medina], most holy lands, and two

directions of prayer [Mecca and Jerusalem], kingdoms of the West and

East, eye of humanity and pupil of the eye, sultan son of a sultan, the

Sultan Ghazi Mehmed Khan son of the Sultan Ibrahim Khan son of

the Sultan Ahmed Khan, may God cause his fortune to endure until

the end of time, his excellency, directed himself toward the Venetian

infi dels, and on the eighth day of Shaban the great [March 1 8,

1 663] departed the protected city of Istanbul, the abode of sultan

and residence of the caliph, the kings’ and sultan’s desire, and with a

tumultuous army like the sea, settled in Davud Pasha fi eld.

In order to “make known to the Christians the strength and vigor of Islam,”

the council had decided it was necessary to conquer the citadel of Yanık (Raab).^39

At the end of the sixteenth century Ottoman historians had explained the at-

tempt to take the same citadel of Yanık in more practical terms: the governor of

Bosnia had been defeated and killed in skirmishes with the Habsburgs.^40

In the words of court chroniclers and in the actions of the sultan, constant

reference was made to Muhammad. After the sultan and his representative

the grand vizier had arrived in Edirne, and one day prior to setting out on

the military campaign, Mehmed Necati writes, “In accordance with Ottoman

ceremony and befi tting sultanic pomp and display,” Mehmed IV handed Fazıl

Ahmed Pasha the banner of Muhammad (5a). The outcome of this campaign of

the “ghazi monotheists” or “ghazi Muslims” or “army given God’s help and vic-

tory in battle” against the “infi dels destined for Hell,” or “accursed ones fi rmly

fi xed in Hell,” and “evil-acting Caesar,” seemed obvious to the author ( 1 6b, 22a,

22b, 36b). In one clash, of 4,300 infi dels only twenty-eight “accursed ones” had

been spared the sword, but they were wounded (33b). Half dead, they threw

themselves into a river, and “like hooked fi sh, with a thousand torments and

trials,” crossed to the other side and were saved. During this campaign, when