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

182 honored by the glory of islam

He was tall like his father. His arms were thick and his hands wide as a

lion’s paws.”^10

Contemporary chroniclers take a positive view of Mehmed IV’s fondness

for the hunt. The reader of Abdi Pasha’s Chronicle discovers that during his

reign Mehmed IV engaged in at least fi fty hunting expeditions, the earliest

in 1 658, when the sultan was seventeen years old, and the last in 1681 , soon

before the chronicle ends.^11 Naima narrates his fi rst hunting trip much earlier,

in autumn 1 650. In this account, the sultan went to a pavilion on the edge of

Kağıthane stream in Istanbul, where the chief palace guard released foxes and

rabbits; Arabians were dispatched after them, and the sovereign watched the

spectacle. Finding itself cornered when chased by a horse, one rabbit threw

itself into the river and swam to the other side. Seeing that it had been saved

from the horse, the palace guards wanted to send a hound after it. But the sul-

tan declared, “Free the rabbit!” A hound attacked the rabbit anyway, so the poor

creature turned and threw itself again into the water. But the hound caught it

and brought it back to the pavilion. The palace guards made it release its prey,

and they brought it before the sultan, who had it let go on a mountaintop where

it would be safe, at least from his hounds. Naima writes that this was seen as

an omen that the sultan’s life and reign would be long and prosperous. He

then narrates another episode during which the sultan prevented his falconers

from releasing their birds of prey on other birds considered harmless.^12 Naima

considered this further evidence that the sultan, who demonstrated compas-

sion for living creatures and made sound judgments concerning life and death,

had reached the age of discretion and sagacity and displayed intelligence. Thus

Mehmed IV’s earliest hunting trip is used by an Ottoman historian to prove

the ruler’s wisdom, not profl igacy. Yet modern novelist Orhan Pamuk, who

takes this scene from Naima and includes it in his novel The White Castle, adds

a redheaded dwarf, has the sultan ask about bulls with blue wings and pink

cats, and ignores the sentiment of the contemporary Ottoman writer because

it would upset the conventional depiction of the sultan as a buffoon, which is

what his audience expects.^13

The sultan’s mighty hunting trips lasted from one day to two months.

Mehmed IV hunted while residing in Edirne and Istanbul; while journeying

between the two cities; before, during, and after military campaigns; while win-

tering with the army on campaign; and while journeying for other purposes.

Abdi Pasha’s chronicle informs us that he spent fi fty-fi ve days in the environs

of Yanbolu hunting in 1 666 (226b); thirty-fi ve days in Eğrıboz while en route

to Crete in 1 669 (292a); twenty-fi ve days in Yanbolu and environs in 1664

( 1 49a); three weeks while wintering in Salonica following the conquest of Crete

in 1 669 (295b); fi fteen days in Uzunköprü in 1 667 (250b); and two weeks and