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

150 honored by the glory of islam

breast. The sultan, who holds a scepter in his right hand, wears a turban with

an oversized ghazi aigrette and sports a mustache whose tips are upturned,

cocks his head to the right, his large dark eyes beneath slightly raised eyebrows

looking sternly yet dully and calmly just into the distance beyond the viewer.

He wears a many-pleated heavy garment beneath a spotted, fur-lined cloak.

His luxurious garment is rolled up his right leg, revealing a mighty, meaty

knee and thick calf, demanding comparison with the muscular yet slightly

smaller legs of the horse. Man and beast seem to share the same threatening

body. Mehmed IV’s left hand fi rmly holds the reins of the vigorous horse. In

the background a battle rages between charging Ottomans on horseback with

raised sword, arrow, and lance, and the banner-waving defenders of a citadel

lying in a plain. Contorted corpses are strewn across the foreground. Just be-

hind Mehmed IV a group that may be citadel defenders is moving toward the

Ottoman forces, giving the Christian viewer some hope for victory.

The prayers that Vani Mehmed Efendi composed for the sultan in the mid-

to late 1 660s offer insight into both the religious motivation and the legitima-

tion of such military campaigns.^45 Vani Mehmed Efendi depicts the sultan as the

defender of the domains of Islam, repelling threats to the empire. This was not

new, since previous sultans had also been called the defenders of Islam and

the protectors of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. But articulated along

with calls for reinvigorating Sunni Islam within the empire, this terminology

emphasizes dynastic concern with shoring up its moral defenses, waging the

jihad of the soul and the jihad of military campaign. Ottoman writers referred

to foreign Christians in ways that revealed the struggles were not merely de-

picted as geopolitical: they were described as a clash between Christendom

and Islam.

Vani Mehmed Efendi’s prayers provide a glimpse into the image of a pious

sultan and strong leader that the preacher favored, the chronicler echoed, and

the sultan and valide sultan promoted. Vani Mehmed Efendi encouraged the

sultan to defend the empire from the attacks of the infi dels, Catholic Venetians

and Habsburgs, while at the same time strengthening Sunni Hanafi Islam

and Islamic law against the threat of religious innovation within the empire,

shorthand for the Sufi practices that he condemned. Foreign Christians and

Ottoman Muslims who did not agree with the tenets of the Kadızadelis were

the external and internal enemies against whom the sultan was encouraged

to battle. A prayer composed in 1 664 on the occasion of the sultan’s leaving

the palace in Edirne to Yanbolu refers to him as “the defender of the lands of

Islam from the assault of infi delity and rebels, the protector of the dominion

of the illustrious Shariah from the evil of innovation and sinners” ( 1 b). In

the same prayer, the sultan is lauded for being “the guardian of the pillars of