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

hunting for converts 191

Conversions before the sultan that required bestowals of cloaks and white tur-

ban cloth were so frequent in the 1 660s and 1 670s that the court wanted to clar-

ify matters and ensure that it was following correct procedures. Finally in 1 676,

after Fazıl Ahmed Pasha had passed away and was replaced by his fi fty-year-old

former deputy and nephew, Kara Mustafa Pasha, the grand vizier ordered Abdi

Pasha, who in addition to being offi cial chronicler also served as imperial chan-

cellor between 1 669 and 1 678, to codify the statute outlining correct procedure

while compiling all known Ottoman statutes into a single collection of Ottoman

law. Abdi Pasha fi nished it the following year. According to “The Statute of the

New Muslim”:

If an infi del [Christian] should desire to become Muslim in the

presence of the grand vizier in the imperial council, at once he is

instructed in the articles of the faith of Islam. After a command is or-

dered to the imperial treasurer for a handful of coins and clothing as

gifts of kindness to be bestowed upon the convert, an usher takes and

delivers him to the imperial surgeon on duty that day in the council.

The surgeon immediately takes him to the designated corner and cir-

cumcises him [right then and there]. It is an ancient statute for one of

the imperial surgeons to be on call every day in the imperial council

and in the palace of the grand vizier.^27

This archival document allows us to verify what Covel observed, to fi ll in or

correct the details, and to then compare this statute with the actual practice of

conversion as it occurred in the period by reading other archival and narrative

sources. First, however, it bears scrutiny.

Several parts to “The Statute of the New Muslim” immediately strike the

reader. Just as Covel mentioned only male converts, so too is this document ex-

plicitly written to prepare for the event of male Christian conversion. The term

“infi del” was routinely used in the seventeenth century to designate Christians;

Jews were usually labeled “Jews.” Though, theoretically speaking, the term

could include Jews, the emphasis on circumcision leads one to the conclusion

that Christian males are the group the court imagined converting. The fact

that an imperial surgeon who performed the operation was on call every day in

both the imperial council and the grand vizier’s quarters also informs us of the

court’s understanding that mainly Christian men would be seeking religious

change there and of the frequency of its occurrence. It is an interesting but

unanswerable question whether the surgeon himself was Muslim, Christian,

or Jewish, or a convert. In this period in all likelihood he may have been Jewish,

but more likely was a convert to Islam.