introduction 7
convert makers, the piety of Muslims was connected in contemporary writers’
minds not only to conversion within Islam, but to conversion of Christians and
Jews to Islam. Vani Mehmed Efendi made the connection between the Turks’
conversion to Islam and the subsequent conquest and conversion of much of
Eurasia by their pious descendants. Many contemporary Ottoman historical
narratives claim that just as the piety of Hatice Turhan both compelled her to
“conquer” Jewish space in Istanbul in order to convert the imperial capital’s
sacred geography and to compel Jews to become Muslim, Mehmed IV and
Grand Vizier Fazıl Ahmed Pasha were incited by their piety to wage both the
jihad of personal moral transformation and the jihad of military campaign that
would result in the conversion of the religious geography and people from the
Mediterranean to Poland and Ukraine.
The fi rst conversion I explore is conversion of the self facilitated by media-tors. Complicating the usual depiction of top-down conversions, whereby the
king converts, followed by his kingdom, I relate a chain of conversion whereby
the sultan was the fourth link following his preacher, grand vizier, and mother.
Before exploring conversion, I lay out the context of crisis and political instabil-
ity in which it occurred. Chapter 1 explores Mehmed IV’s turbulent accession
to the sultanate at the tender age of seven following the dethronement (and
subsequent execution) of his father, Ibrahim. Chapter 2 analyzes a decade of
economic, military, and political crisis during his minority which led to per-
ceptions of a cultural crisis whose resolution was sought in conversion to a
purifi ed Islam as advocated by pietist preachers. Chapters 3 to 6 follow Meh-
med IV’s coming of age and his turn to piety, as well as that of his former
regent and queen mother, the valide sultan Hatice Turhan Sultan, a converted
former Christian slave named after the fi rst convert in Islamic history, Muham-
mad’s wife, Khadija, under the infl uence of the Kadızadeli movement. Their
conversion was mediated by the preacher Vani Mehmed Efendi. The preacher
was brought to the attention of Mehmed IV and Hatice Turhan by Grand Vi-
zier Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, who had encountered the preacher on a provincial
posting and was the fi rst one swayed by his charismatic advocacy of revivalist
pietism. Chapter 3 provides the historical background of the Kadızadeli move-
ment through the 1 650s. Chapter 5 discusses the Kadızadeli movement led
by Vani Mehmed Efendi beginning in the 1 660s, which linked “rigorous self-
discipline” (enjoining good) and “strident social activism” (forbidding wrong).^1
These Muslims encouraged the interiorization of religion, undergoing a spir-
itual conversion, a revitalized commitment to the faith. They also promoted
rationality in religion, stripping the ecstatic Islam practiced in Istanbul of inno-
vations that they believed ran counter to the practices of the fi rst Muslim com-
munity. This included Sufi rituals such as repeating God’s name or dancing to