hunting for converts 201grand vizier and sultan to receive Muslim clothing. A handful of women and a
girl came alone.
The sources located in Istanbul are but the tip of the iceberg. Many peti-
tions were probably made orally and never recorded and never made it into
the modern archive. There may have been other informal conversions as well.
Other studies corroborate the fi nding that mainly men converted to Islam at the
traveling courts of the sultan and grand vizier in Rumelia. This included some
who converted while the sultan was hunting. Ottoman archival sources located
at the Oriental Department of the National Library in Sofi a, copies of which do
not exist in Istanbul, provide further evidence of this type of conversion. For
example, from autumn 1 679 to winter 1 680, twenty-two men, two women, and
a girl became Muslim in the presence of the sultan when he was on the hunt
in Thrace.^48 An extraordinary document records the conversion of 379 people
over the course of a single year, the period from summer 1 679 to late spring
1 680.^49 Most were men ( 1 93), although there were 1 46 women, eighteen boys,and twenty-two girls who also became Muslim. These conversions are further
evidence of the link between conquest, Kadızadeli preaching, hunting, and re-
ligious conversion, for they occurred in the wake of what is referred to as Kara
Mustafa Pasha’s successful ghaza leading the men of the religion of the beloved
of God (Muhammad) on behalf of the monotheists against the evil crucifi x-
worshipping crusader forces of Muscovy during the conquest of Çehrin in
1 678.^50 The sultan’s Kadızadeli preacher Vani Mehmed Efendi had accompa-
nied the grand vizier on the campaign and again played a key role inciting the
troops. The sultan had ventured as far as Hacıoğlu Pazarı and then returned to
spend a great deal of time hunting in Davud Pasha (4 1 2b).
Cloaking converts provided Mehmed IV a link to his prophetic namesake
and to a millennium of Muslim leaders. Abdi Pasha presented Mehmed IV with
a commentary on the “Mantle Ode,” memorializing Muhammad’s bestowal of
his cloak on a convert.^51 At the same time, cloaking converts was a means of
displaying Mehmed IV’s legitimacy, power, and prestige at a time when sultans
had become marginal, isolated, and symbolic fi gures. As a writer at the court
of Louis XVI observed, “Ceremonies are the most important support of royal
authority. If one takes away the splendor that surrounds him, he will be only
an ordinary man in the eyes of the multitude, because the populace respects
his sovereignty less for his virtue and rank than for the gold that covers him
and the pomp that surrounds him.”^52 Mehmed IV’s supporters and chronicle
writers believed virtue was important. With his piety and public ceremonies,
the sultan aimed to impress his subjects, those in the ruling class who opposed
his rule because they thought he was a do-nothing sultan, new wealthy civil-
ian constituents of the ruling class who were vying for power, and foreigners