8

Conversion and Conquest

Ghaza in Central and Eastern Europe

In Pursuit of the White Castle: The Sultan Leads

His Troops in Central Europe

Mehmed IV became a ghazi who personally went on the path of

jihad in the early 1 670s when he journeyed to the heart of Europe to

conquer a citadel, the elusive object of desire in Nobel Prize–winning

author Orhan Pamuk’s White Castle. Unlike the fi ctive modern

version, in the seventeenth century the pursuit was successful, and

today the citadel is referred to as “the Turkish fortress.” Hajji Ali

Efendi, like Kurdish Preacher Mustafa in the service of the deputy

grand vizier Mustafa Pasha, was charged with composing a narrative

of the sultan’s six-month journey as he traveled from Edirne to Ka-

maniça (Kamenets-Podol’skiy) and back in 1 672. The author depicts

the sultan as a ruler prepared to wage war in person to protect the

empire. First, when Mehmed IV learned that the Venetians were

violating the borders of Bosnia contrary to a peace treaty, he headed

toward Filibe to pacify them; then, learning that Arab bandits were

attacking Muslim pilgrims and Mecca, he planned on wintering in

Bursa before continuing on to Mecca in the spring.^1 If the pious

sultan had ventured to Arabia, he certainly would have made the hajj,

becoming the fi rst sultan in Ottoman history to do so, or, more likely,

being deposed for such a decision, like Osman II. The Ottoman

Empire was a European empire, and its heartland lay in southeastern

Europe, not Arabia.