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

ghaza in central and eastern europe 173

and have no fear of God. If you capture them in battle discriminate

between them and those that follow them, so that their followers may

take warning. If you fear treachery from any of your allies, you may

retaliate by breaking off your treaty with them. God does not love the

treacherous. Let the unbelievers not think that they will escape Us.

They do not have the power to do so. Muster against them all the

men and cavalry at your disposal, so that you may strike terror into

the enemies of God and the faithful, and others besides them. All

that you give for the cause of God shall be repaid you. You shall not

be wronged. If they incline to peace, make peace with them, and put

your trust in God. God hears all and knows all. Should they seek to

deceive you, God is all-suffi cient for you. God has made you strong

with God’s help and rallied the faithful round you, making their

hearts one.^35

The succeeding verses refer to how twenty steadfast men will vanquish two

hundred, and a hundred steadfast men may rout a thousand unbelievers since

God is with those who are steadfast in faith and battle.

Hüseyin Behçeti gives Vani Mehmed Efendi a central place in his narrative

and leads the reader to believe that his preaching led to the successful conquest

and Islamization of Christian places in central Europe, linked to Muhammad’s

exploits in Arabia against Jews a millennium before. This claim echoes the

earlier connection made between Muhammad’s and Hatice Turhan’s expulsion

of Jews. In many ways the campaign for Çehrin appeared a warm-up to the

attempt to take Vienna fi ve years later. Mehmed IV set out on campaign but

remained in a city along the campaign trail; he sent Grand Vizier Kara Mus-

tafa Pasha and Vani Mehmed Efendi ahead to the front, where they served to

conquer and convert people and places.

Conquest and Conversion in Central Europe

The alleged treachery of the Polish defenders at Kamaniça gave the sultan the

excuse to stamp out what Kadızadeli zealots considered idolatry. He ordered

that all churches be converted into mosques. To do so, Abdi Pasha records,

churches had to be “purifi ed of the images and idols that are the signs of infi -

delity and polytheism.” They also had to be purifi ed of the dead: “As many as

three to four thousand infi del corpses buried in the cellars, some decomposed,

others whole with their clothes on their backs in accordance with their false

rituals, were excavated with their coffi ns and thrown into the dunghills.”^36 An