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

hunting for converts 185

ninety-four deer, four elk, and three wolves, and in sedan chair hunting, target-

ing eleven deer and three wild boars (244a). The following April two battue

expeditions netted seven deer, seventeen elk, six wolves, and two lynx (257a).

Mehmed IV may not have killed any Venetians during his journey toward Crete

in 1 669, but he did kill 364 rabbits over fi ve days and 1 43 deer over another two

during his lengthy hunting expeditions after the campaign (296a). As K’ang-hsi

relates, in a fashion similar to Abdi Pasha’s writing style though in fi rst person,

“Since my childhood, with either gun or bow, I have killed in the wild 1 35 tigers

and 20 bear, 25 leopards, 20 lynx, 1 4 tailed mi deer, 96 wolves, and 1 32 wild boar,

as well as hundreds of ordinary stags and deer. How many animals I killed when

we formed the hunting circles and trapped the animals within them I have no

way of recalling—most ordinary people don’t kill in a lifetime what I have killed

in one day.”^21 The sultan was as boastful as the Chinese emperor and delighted

in giving especially large prey, such as massive stags, as gifts to the royal family

and members of the administration. It is not clear whether they shared his en-

thusiasm, although his favorite concubine and his mother may have noticed

that these gifts were symbols of the sultan’s manliness.

Hunting and Conversion

Mehmed IV’s contact with commoners compelled to join the hunting party

had other outcomes. Historians have overlooked how this sultan’s mobile

court served as a traveling conversion maker. While on the hunt or campaign,

while actually riding on horseback through the forests of Rumelia or holding

court in the imperial tent set up on the march or in palaces in the provinces,

Mehmed IV was responsible for either compelling Christians to join the fold

or facilitating their conversion to Islam by staging conversion ceremonies at

which new Muslims declared the Islamic credo, were re-dressed in Muslim

clothing, and were given Muslim names.

Abdi Pasha makes a link between hunting, ghaza, and the conversion of

Christians. He notes that even while hunting in the environs of Edirne, Meh-

med IV had the Biography of the Prophet read to him in his privy chambers.

When he “heard of the way infi dels cursed the companions of the prophet, his

religious fever boiled over” (228b) Abdi Pasha juxtaposes Mehmed IV’s enjoy-

ing having his chronicler read to him about the martial exploits of Muhammad

and previous Ottoman sultans on the path of ghaza and jihad and narrate how

they exerted themselves on behalf of the religion with the sultan’s personally

converting a peasant while out hunting ( 1 62b). The sultan’s chronicler narrates

how Mehmed IV compelled a Christian to become Muslim while he was on