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

164 honored by the glory of islam

When Mehmed IV was about to set out for the fi rst Ottoman capital of

Bursa, word arrived that the king of the Polish Commonwealth had broken

their peace treaty. As a result, instead of setting off along the potentially danger-

ous path of Osman II, he decided to launch a campaign in central Europe. In

the spring of 1 672, despite the renewal of a 1 640 peace treaty fi ve years earlier,

the grand vizier and the sultan began a campaign against the Commonwealth

of Poland, desiring to conquer the Carpathian fortress of Kamaniça, located in

the southeast corner of Poland (today Ukraine) bordering the northern region

of Moldova. This incomparable white citadel, perched on a lofty rock like a pre-

cious jewel in a fortifi ed ring, was the key to Poland and Ukraine.^2 Polish forces

had been harassing the sultan’s protégé, the Cossack military leader Doroshenko,

who sided with the Tatar khan. Allied with the Cossacks of Ukraine and the

khan of the Crimea, the Ottomans faced a Polish, Russian, and Habsburg alli-

ance when war began in the spring of 1 672. As Rycaut observes, the sultan was

not unaware that his presence on the battlefi eld in the heart of Europe would

mean “that the Fame and terror of the Grand Signiors motion” could “abate and

bring low the spirits of the Poles, and induce them to dispatch an Ambassador

with terms of peace.”^3

According to Hajji Ali Efendi, more than geostrategic concerns motivated

the sultan. He aimed to conquer the citadel not only for military reasons, en-

suring that the enemy no longer used it to harass Ottoman dominions, but

to render it Muslim, converting its religious landscape. Mosques were to be

built, churches converted, the call to prayer read, Friday prayers rendered,

and Muslims incited by preachers from converted pulpits to wage jihad.^4 Just

as the author of The Conquest Book of Yanova had linked the sultan and the

divine plan, so too does this author begin his work drawing a connection

between the decree of God, the life of Muhammad, the exploits of the Otto-

man sultans, and Mehmed IV. According to this vision of history, God had

commanded the believers to engage in struggle and ghaza. Striving to follow

Muhammad’s example, the Muslims had persevered in implementing God’s

command to wage ghaza and jihad. Among all Muslims, the sultans of the

Ottoman dynasty were especially dutiful in carrying out this decree; in fact, it

had become their custom to carry out this command. The current Ottoman

sultan was also driven and impelled to do God’s will. Providence had decreed

Mehmed IV to be “the master of the auspicious conjunction who makes the

world luminous with the sword of victorious effect brilliant like the sun” ( 1 b).

Because of “the abundance of strength and toughness and imperial majesty

in his brave disposition,” during “his felicitous era of prosperity and lucky

planetary conjunction,” the sultan, repeatedly referred to in the text as the

“deliverer of conquest and ghaza, the powerful sultan who causes fear and