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

170 honored by the glory of islam

The Second Polish Campaign and the Death

of Fazıl Ahmed Pasha

The following year Mehmed IV had to wage a second campaign to ensure the

Treaty of Buczacz that guaranteed Polish tribute. Silahdar, echoing Abdi Pasha,

depicts the fi rst campaign as but a warm-up, for the zeal of the sultan had

not been dissipated. He was aching for battle and bloodshed, and to make the

Polish king “taste the sword of fi re” in order to uphold his honor and that of the

religion and dynasty he represented.^19 He was like a champion falcon or a tough

horseman; one campaign was not enough to satisfy the hunger of his zeal. He

journeyed as far as Isakçı on the Moldovan frontier with Vani Mehmed Efendi

and did not return to Edirne for almost a year and a half. Due to the heavy snow,

the campaign was suspended for winter, which gave the sultan ample time for

hunting, such as one trip lasting thirty-three days. The journey was taken up

again on the day of the vernal equinox. During that time, the opponent of the

Kadızadeli movement, Sheikhulislam Minkarizade Yahya Efendi, lying sick in

bed in Edirne, was replaced by the more compliant Çatalcalı Ali Efendi.^20

Mehmed IV passed into Cossack territory and again presided over the

bloody capture of numerous defensive works after offering the defenders terms

of surrender. Abdi Pasha notes that the troops fi ghting for the sultan often

killed or imprisoned the enemy after ignoring white fl ags asking for quarter.

He watched as hundreds of others who waved the white fl ag were put in chains

and sent to the galleys. Of prisoners remaining in defense works, the sultan

took scores for himself to serve in a variety of palace roles. As we have seen

before in the case of Shabbatai Tzevi, this sultan liked to surround himself with

converts. After the long journey from Isakçi, the sultan, in the words of Abdi

Pasha, arrived in Edirne “with the splendor of the master of the auspicious

conjunction conquests.”^21

After several more years of off-and-on battles with the Commonwealth of

Poland, which saw the Ottoman army advance as far as Lvov, by 1 676 the Ot-

tomans had conquered Podolia in Ukraine. In that year it turned out that not

everyone around the sultan seems to have been on the same page of the book

of correct morals. The learned, virtuous ghazi Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, who had oth-

erwise exalted morals and had left in his wake mosques in Uyvar, Crete, and

Kamaniça, a man who defeated Habsburgs, Poles, and Venetians, could not over-

come the bottle. Some unnamed close associates had helped convert him into an

alcoholic.^22 Because of his declining health, in autumn 1 676, rather than travel

overland from Istanbul to Edirne with the sultan, he went by skiff to the quay

of Ereğli, and from there to Çorlu.^23 After a stroke his condition worsened, and