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

ghazi mehmed iv and candia 151

the Shariah” and “the keeper of the armies of the people of the Sunna” (2a).

Vani Mehmed Efendi composed another prayer on the occasion of the sultan’s

journeying from the palace in Edirne to Çatalca the following year, in which

he praises the sultan for being “always guided to success by God over the en-

emies of religion and state, infi dels and innovators” since “those enemies of

bad laws and customs are overwhelmed and utterly destroyed (2b). In a prayer

composed in 1 665, the year Vani Mehmed Efendi became the preacher at the

Valide Sultan Mosque, whirling by dervishes was banned, and Lari Mehmed

Efendi executed, the preacher credits the sultan for being “true-hearted in pro-

claiming the true religion to unbelievers, faithfully resolved to reinvigorate

the practices of the messenger of God” (2b). Other prayers composed in those

years for when the sultan traveled or during public holidays praised him for

“driving away the infi delity of polytheists” (3b), defending Shariah and Sunni

Muslims (6a), protecting the borders of Islamdom and saving Islam (7b),

since he was “the one who strengthens the building of Islam and its pillars”

while also being “the one who proclaims the true religion to unbelievers and

humiliates the word of the infi dels and sinners” (8a–b).

The Campaign for Candia, Crete

The best contemporary source for an Ottoman view of Mehmed IV’s role in

military campaigns in the 1 660s, including the fi nal stages of the war over

Crete, is a work that is explicitly labeled a book of jihad and ghaza. The Essence

of History, by the imam Hasan Agha, Fazıl Ahmed Pasha’s private secretary

and seal keeper, was begun in 1 675 and completed in 1681 , when the sultan

was at the height of his power. It was dedicated to narrating the grand vizier’s

conquests.^46 Already on the fi rst folio in the invocation written in Arabic the

author uses the Arabic terms for warrior in God’s cause (mujahid) and strug-

gle in God’s cause ( jihad) eight times to describe the pious grand vizier who

modeled his life on that of the prophet, waging war against unbelievers and

hindering Muslims from engaging in error. He is “the most superior of muja-

hids,” “commander of the army of the believers,” “crusher of the enemies with

the sword of the mujahids,” “destroyer of the idols of the infi dels,” “cutter of

the roots of vice,” and “one who exalts the call of the victorious jihad.” While

Fazıl Ahmed Pasha led the actual campaign against Venice, Mehmed IV of-

fered moral support from the European mainland, traveling to the ports from

which the Ottoman navy embarked to besiege the island. This action alone

allowed Hasan Agha to refer to the sultan as a ghazi since he was “the distin-

guished one of the Ottoman dynasty, the heir of the sovereignty of Suleiman,