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

6 introduction

Mehmed IV, Conversion, and War on the Path of God

This book is a study of the religious transformation of people and places in early

modern Ottoman Europe. It is based on the argument that the intersection of

three interdependent modalities of conversion resulted in Islamization: a turn to

piety or conversion of the self, the conversion of others, and the transformation

of sacred space. These three constitute intricately related concentric rings of

change set in motion by conversion to a reformist interpretation of Islam of the

most important members of the dynasty and ruling elite (queen mother, grand

vizier, sultan). Linked to this argument is a second one: that conversion is

best understood in the context of war, conquest, and changing power relations.

This book is concerned with conversion during the unique historical epoch of

Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV (reigned 1 648–87), when Islamization occurred

according to this pattern. I fi rst describe the intensifi cation of faith of the sul-

tan’s inner circle, including his preacher, grand vizier, and mother, and the

sultan, leading to their efforts to bring other Muslims to the same understand-

ing of Islam and the conversion of Christians and Jews and their holy space,

especially in Istanbul. Then I examine how the same conviction compelled

Mehmed IV and his court to wage war against the Habsburgs, Romanovs, and

Venetians, seeking to bring foreign Christians to Islam and transform the sa-

cred geography of Europe into a sanctifi ed Muslim landscape accompanying

the greatest territorial expansion and extension of the boundaries of the Otto-

man Empire.

I posit a link between Islamic piety and conversion in the seventeenth cen-

tury. I argue that piety can lead to both conversion within Islam and conversion

to Islam. A turn to piety is considered a transformation in a person’s beliefs

and practices. Fazıl Ahmed Pasha (“pasha” is a title for a military commander,

or statesman, particularly the grand vizier), Hatice Turhan Sultan (male and fe-

male members of the Ottoman dynasty were referred to as “sultan”), and Sultan

Mehmed IV experienced a revival of their faith, an intensifi cation of religious

fervor. When the grand vizier, queen mother, and sultan adopted the Kadızadeli

tenets preached by Vani Mehmed Efendi (“efendi” is a title for a member of the

religious class) and turned belief in a purifi ed, reformed Islam into political

policy, attempting to transform the way Muslims practiced their religion, they

spurred the conversion of other Muslims to their interpretation of Islam, just as

the preaching of Kadızadeli preachers in Istanbul’s mosques led to the similar

conversion of other Muslims (as well as resistance to that interpretation). Some

Christians and Jews may have been swayed by Islamic piety to abandon their

own religion, a sentiment that sometimes makes its way into Shariah court

records. More germane to my argument, which concerns the mentality of the