202 honored by the glory of islam
present in the empire. In a period of acute anxiety, caused by economic crisis,
political instability, and the ever-changing fortunes of the military, the sultan
desired to assert normality, order, and social balance and publicly celebrate
those Christians and Jews who joined the faith, articulated in the form of cloaks
and turbans. In this way religion played a part in regulating the social order by
contributing to the semiotics of clothing.
One more item bestowed by the sultan demands comment: the purse ofcoins. Here it may seem as if we are speaking of a truly recognizable com-
modity in the common understanding of the term as something intended for
exchange. But the sultan offered no more than a handful of Ottoman aspers at
a time when daily transactions were conducted with western European coins.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, as the Ottomans practically ceased
producing Ottoman coins, the only coins that issued from Istanbul mints were
used primarily in court ceremonies. The purse of coins thus had more sym-
bolic than real value. This is similar to the situation in early modern Europe
where the sparsio, the distribution of coins at coronations, involved not coins
currently in use, but new ones minted for the occasion.^53 Coins distributed
by the sovereign had extramonetary, not actual, value for the sultan, elite, and
commoners alike.
Mehmed IV as Convert Maker
Mehmed IV was a convert maker in the fi rst sense because he and his court fa-
cilitated the conversion of Christians and Jews to Islam through a ritual chang-
ing of mind and body. At the same time, this sultan was a convert maker in a
more literal sense because, like his mother, he also compelled people to enter
Islam. Numerous examples of the second meaning of convert maker appear
in the pages of Ottoman historical narratives, especially Abdi Pasha’s Chron-
icle. The earliest successful conversion occurred when Mehmed IV was only
thirteen years old. A foreign admiral, probably Venetian, was captured in 1654
(57b). When he appeared before the imperial council, the admiral “became dis-
tinguished among his peers by becoming honored by the glory of Islam.” He
was taken into the sultan’s private quarters and settled in the great room. Dur-
ing that chaotic time, when everything seemed to be going wrong, it must have
made an impression on the teenage sultan to have a mighty foreign military
leader who had guided successful attacks on the imperial domains become sub-
servient to him and a believer in the one true God. The admiral was but the fi rst
of enemy combatants to change religion at his feet. The drover with the magic
cow converted in the spring of 1 665. That summer “an edict was sent to the