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

hunting for converts 181

bringing Christians into the fold. Modern historians attack Mehmed IV for

being frivolous without recognizing what would be considered in the seven-

teenth century to be a positive. Since the eighteenth century, naysayers have

viewed his frequent pursuit of the chase as wasteful activity and luxury.

Earlier sultans with far greater reputations engaged in exactly the same

practices, and this may have been the precedent that Mehmed IV’s court

mimicked. Ottoman miniatures depict Mehmed IV’s predecessors hunting:

Bayezid II (reigned 1481 – 151 2), who had a reputation for being a peaceful Sufi ,

strikes a deer as hounds pursue rabbits; Selim (reigned 151 2–20) clobbers a

tiger in the head with a mace as hounds pursue deer and cuts a crocodile in

half on the banks of the Nile; and Suleiman I (reigned 1 520– 1 566) hits a bull

with his arrows while falconers watch the scene.^5 Suleiman I was not criticized

for temporarily moving his court to Edirne and engaging in the hunt while

on campaign. His successor, Selim II (reigned 1 566– 1 574), who was an avid

hunter, is remembered for building the splendid Selimiye mosque in Edirne

and not for his hunting passion. Ottoman writers discuss Ahmed I (reigned

1 603– 1 7) hunting while traveling between Edirne and Istanbul, but do not

criticize him for that practice; in fact, he has a favorable reputation for putting

down the widespread rebellions in the Anatolian countryside. Mehmed IV’s

father, Ibrahim, also left Istanbul on occasion in favor of Edirne’s open air, an

ideal place for a relaxing diversion.^6

All Ottoman sources attest that hunting was Sultan Mehmed IV’s pas-

sion. Mehmed Halife explains that before Mehmed IV’s constant devotion to

ghaza and jihad, he became excessively fond of falcons and javelin. A mini-

ature from an Ottoman costume album depicts a falconer with red-gloved

hand on which sits a bird of prey with a rope around its legs.^7 The mini-

ature calls to mind the thirteenth-century Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II

von Hohenstaufen’s beautifully illustrated De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus (The

Art of Falconry). The Ottoman miniature of the falconer was placed near

the front of the album, illustrating the position’s importance at the time.

According to Mehmed Halife, Mehmed IV had a zeal for the chase (sayd ü

şikar) and the drive (battue, sürgün avı) “that not a single one of his sultanic

predecessors had ever possessed.”^8 Going on the chase summer and winter

he is said to have developed the disposition or temper of a lion and brave

man. Mehmed IV may have begun his reign a tiny child, but beginning at

the age of twenty, hunting made him strong, tanned, and manly according to

contemporary writers. When he rode, “he became a horse swift as the wind

and a cavalryman like the wind.”^9 He was “big-bodied, had a solid chest, was

broad-shouldered, and broad-backed, but of average weight, and long-legged.