9

Hunting for Converts

Individual and group conversions of noncombatants occurred most

often before the sultan in the forests of Rumelia when he was on

campaign or the chase. As numerous chroniclers relate, like other

early modern monarchs, Mehmed IV preferred hunting as his

favorite pastime, but rather than being merely a frivolous activity, as

modern historians have claimed, the sultan’s contemporary chroni-

clers argued that hunting demonstrated his bravery and courage,

hence manliness, and trained him for warfare. Reading archival

records together with the chronicles we learn that in addition, hunt-

ing allowed Mehmed IV close contact with thousands of his subjects,

and in these circumstances he personally converted Christians, in

particular, to Islam. Hundreds of men and women changed religion

at his feet during conversion ceremonies in which the sultan dis-

played his magnanimity by re-dressing the converts head to toe.

Conversion ceremonies suggest a hint of modern rulers’ interest

in promoting (a new) life rather than death, the decentering of power,

and the creation of new interiorities and subjectivities that discipline

the body of the individual.^1 The sultan fi rst directly intervened in

commoners’ lives, not to end them, but to promote a new way of

being. Ceremonies before the sultan mirrored birth, as the convert,

similar to a naked newborn, was named and clothed. Converted to

a Kadızadeli interpretation of Islam, which also emphasized new

interiorities, the new Muslim was encouraged to play an active role

in self-governance, regulating his or her behavior from within and