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

184 honored by the glory of islam

Emperor K’ang-hsi and Sultan Mehmed IV favored the drive, or battue, a

hunting technique that brought them into close contact with commoners. In

these hunts hundreds or even thousands of local villagers moved through the

forest beating bushes, making noise, scaring animals, and fl ushing the game

in the direction of the waiting sovereign and his retinue, who would be either

on horseback or on foot, bearing arrows, axes, blades, and bullets. A mini-

ature from early in Mehmed IV’s reign depicts a hunter using his left arm to

hold a rifl e to his left shoulder; the hind legs of a large gray hare are wrapped

around the barrel of the weapon, and the animal’s heavy carcass points head-

fi rst toward the ground.^17 The commoners assembled for the hunt, such as this

armed hunter, would also bring the prey to the sultan. Mehmed IV’s involving

commoners in the chase and having personal contact with them is another

reminder of how his reign harkened back to those of earlier ghazi sultans who

were mobile and visible.

Massive numbers of peasants were assembled. For example, Abdi Pasha

relates how on one Sunday in 1 667 the sultan used as many as thirty-fi ve thou-

sand peasants to drive animals through a forest preserve near Filibe (247b).^18

In 1 670 Mehmed IV drafted twenty-fi ve thousand and ten thousand common-

ers into hunting duty for two other massive hunts in Eski Zağra (Stara Zagora;

304b). During the fi rst chase in Eski Zağra, 265 deer were killed. This was not

a great ratio of peasant to prey, and was more akin to shooting fi sh in a barrel

than engaging in battle between man and beast. It was less exciting than the

capture of a deer by a panther that Mehmed IV observed and insisted Abdi

Pasha record (“If you did not write about it, immediately write it down!”), but

impressive nonetheless ( 1 72a). The drive could cover very large distances: while

traveling from Edirne to Istanbul in 1661 , the sultan set aside time to engage

in a drive hunt that began in Çatalca and stretched as far as Davud Pasha on

the outskirts of Istanbul.^19 John Covel wrote in 1 675 that the sultan’s physician

told him Mehmed IV engaged in “exercise, especially hunting, which he fol-

lowes still most extravagantly, many times going out two or three houres before

day[light], and it may be not returning till as late at night; sometimes (as this

last winter) summoning in all the Villánes in 20 mile compasse to drive a whole

wood or forest before them.”^20

Like other rulers, Mehmed IV killed stupendous numbers of animals. Sev-

eral thousand deer and hares were killed during all the hunting expeditions,

along with hundreds of bears, elk, foxes, leopards, lynx, wild boars, wolves,

and extinct animals that no longer appear in modern dictionaries. In typical

entries from Abdi Pasha’s chronicle, we learn that in one hunting expedition

in April 1 666, 2,200 rabbits and eighty foxes were killed (204a–b). During a

three-day span in November 1 667, the sultan engaged in battue hunting, killing