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

190 honored by the glory of islam

seeing, as they would make way for you. There were many of riper

yeares, especially renegades that turn’d Turks. I saw an old man

which they reported to be 53 yeares old, cut. The common way there

of turning was (as I saw severall) to go before the G. Sr. [Mehmed IV]

and Vizier [Grand Vizier Fazıl Ahmed Pasha], and throw down their

cap, or hold up their right hand or forefi nger; then they were imme-

diately led away by an commander (who stands by on purpose), and

cut with the rest. I saw a Russe of about 20 yeares old, who, after he

had been before the Vizier, came to the tent skipping and rejoicing

excessively; yet, in cutting he frowned (as many of riper ages doe).

One night we met a young lad, who askt us the way to the Vizier.

Being a country boy, we askt him what he would with him. He told

us his brother turn’d Turk, and he would goe fi nd him, and be cut,

too; and two dayes after he was as good as his word. It is very danger-

ous meddling in these cases here. There were at least 200 proselytes

made in these 1 3 days. It is our shame, for I believe all Europe have

not gained so many Turkes to us these 200 years.^25

Once we get past the early modern Christian confusion of circumcision with

castration and emasculation, Covel’s observations of the pomp and ceremony,

serving as prelude to pain, provide an example of public conversion of Western

and Eastern Christians before the sultan.^26

The sultan provided a banquet for tens of thousands of people and be-

stowed a set of clothing on each circumcised child as well as a purse of coins,

thus symbolically becoming the generous father to several thousand sons.

Covel notes that among the thousands of Muslim children being circumcised

there were a couple of hundred Christian converts to Islam, mostly from Chris-

tian empires, and smaller numbers of Ottoman subjects.

What is especially signifi cant for our purposes is how Ottoman chroniclers

and foreign observers depict Mehmed IV’s central role in the process. The fi rst

crucial moment of actual religious conversion, the public transformation of

Christian into Muslim, literally occurs at his feet. According to Covel, the in-

tending convert would appear before the sultan and grand vizier in the imperial

tent set up for the occasion, exchange the headgear of a Christian for that of a

Muslim, or at least throw away the Christian headcovering in anticipation of

receiving a Muslim turban, raise one fi nger in order to state Allahu akbar, that

God is most great, and be whisked away for immediate circumcision.

Covel’s observations are signifi cant for he served as witness to the imple-

mentation of a statute that describes how the court of Mehmed IV responded

normatively when a Christian male voluntarily sought to become Muslim.