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

8 introduction

music as a form of prayer and visiting the tombs of Sufi s to ask for intercession.

Purifi cation requires an opposing practice or person that is to be purifi ed.^2 The

wrath of the Kadızadelis particularly targeted Bektashi, Halveti, and Mevlevi

Sufi s, members of orders previously instrumental in facilitating conversion.

Kadızadeli-inspired conversion of the self is connected to the conversion of

other Muslims in Mehmed IV’s immediate inner circle.

The next ring of conversion encompasses people and places nearest this

inner circle. The sultan, usually depicted in the secondary literature, like his pre-

decessors, as an aloof fi gure unconcerned about the beliefs and practices of

his subjects, became an interventionist ruler and convert maker. Chapter 4

examines the Islamization of Istanbul in the aftermath of the 1 660 fi re. It

narrates how places nearest the residence of key palace fi gures, considered an

extension of the sultan’s personal space, were transformed into Muslim space,

including the predominantly Jewish neighborhoods closest to Topkapı Palace

in Istanbul. Just as the hearts of the pietists had turned, so did they turn the

heart of Istanbul into Muslim sacred space. Mehmed IV’s reign witnessed the

transformation of the religious geography of Istanbul in the wake of the most

devastating fi re ever to have befallen the city, a connection of confl agration

and conversion. The sultan expelled Jews from the city’s main port area and

prohibited their return to a wide swath of the peninsula, especially those areas

nearest the palace and the monumental imperial mosque, the Valide Sultan

Mosque (New Mosque), built by Mehmed IV’s mother. Those who constructed

the mosque compared the exile of Jews from Eminönü to Hasköy with Mu-

hammad’s exile of the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir from Medina. This act ex-

poses the historical consciousness of this sultan and his mother. They linked

their actions to those of the fi nal prophet and considered their actions to be

justifi ed because they represented the conquest of infi del places in the present

and were associated with future conquests abroad when lamps lit between the

minarets of the new mosque illuminated the name of Christian citadels taken

by the Ottomans. Christian areas of Galata, the district across the Golden Horn

from Istanbul proper, were also Islamized by means of converting church

properties to mosques and prohibiting Christians from residing in their vicin-

ity. At the same time, many formerly Christian- and Jewish-inhabited areas

of the city saw mosques replace churches and synagogues in the aftermath

of the fi re, as offi cials limited the districts that Christians and Jews could in-

habit. As Armenians, Orthodox Christians, and Jews began to live in formerly

predominantly Muslim neighborhoods, Muslim commoners asked for offi cial

interference to expel the encroachers.

The conversion of places nearest the sultan’s inner circle paralleled the

conversion of Christians and Jews allowed within that elite group. Chapter 6