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

introduction 9

presents the story of the conversion of Jewish palace physicians converted by

the valide sultan Hatice Turhan. She was praised for her piety, which included

both constructing the imperial mosque complex in Istanbul and not permitting

a renowned Jewish physician named Moses son of Raphael Abravanel to con-

tinue in his post as privy physician unless he became a Muslim. He had to dress

as a Muslim and fi guratively be clothed in the teaching of Islam and renamed

Hayatizade Mustafa Fevzi Efendi. He was transformed internally and exter-

nally. Only after cleansing himself of his former religion could he touch the

sultan, examine his body to determine what ailed him, and restore his health.

Subsequently, other Jewish palace physicians converted, so that where once

Jews had outnumbered members of any other group in this position, after the

conversion of Hayatizade there were more convert physicians than Jews.

The imperial capital also witnessed the conversion of other Muslims to the

inner circle’s form of piety, which linked elite and commoner in the Kadızadeli

pietistic movement. New forms of belief such as the prohibition of what

were considered harmful innovations, the implementation of new laws and

regulations such as the banning of alcohol, and the punishment of those who

would not change their behavior served as manifestations of the piety that passed

through the palace. Chapter 5 explores more deeply Mehmed IV’s newfound

piety mediated by the Kadızadeli preacher Vani Mehmed Efendi and links the

sultan’s coming of age with the abandonment of Topkapı Palace for the palace

at Edirne and the composition of chronicles that emphasize his pious persona.

A campaign against Sufi s and the illicit behavior of Muslims quickly followed.

Following these conversions of self, inner circle, places, and people con-

tiguous to the inner circle and those of the same religion were conversions of

hundreds of Christians and Jews encountered by the pious within the domains

of the empire, whose conversions signaled the sultan’s Islamic virtues. Chap-

ter 6 describes how the sultan’s conversion of others led to converts bringing ad-

ditional Christians and Jews to Islam. Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi became a Muslim

rather than prove his prophetic pluck in the presence of the sultan, to whom the

rabbi appeared as another antinomian, ecstatic dervish. Engaged in a crackdown

on Sufi s and Sufi practices, Mehmed IV could not tolerate the rabbi’s advocacy

of conversion to millenarianism, which challenged the sultan’s mediating oth-

ers’ change to his interpretation of the best means of fulfi lling God’s will. Once

Shabbatai Tzevi was converted by the sultan, he in turn became a convert maker,

translating the phrase “Enjoin good and forbid wrong” into Hebrew and com-

pelling his wife and many of his followers to change religion. The rabbi, who

was instructed in the tenets of Islam by Vani Mehmed Efendi, was given a cer-

emonial gatekeeper position in the palace after conversion, serving as a daily,

visible reminder that confi rmed the superiority of the sultan’s beliefs.