the failed final jihad 213
frequently began during autumn. In 1 529, Suleiman I did not arrive before
Vienna until the end of September, slowed by rain and fl ooded rivers, facing a
well-garrisoned city, running out of time, lacking in provisions. In the middle
of October the sultan called off the siege: “‘Snow from evening until noon next
day,’ ‘much loss of horses and men in swamps,’ ‘many die of hunger’—so ran
the story of the grim march to Belgrade.”^9
Unlike his uncle Fazıl Ahmed Pasha who had spurned the requests of theleaders in the part of Hungary under Habsburg rule to break the peace treaty
with the Habsburgs and campaign to “liberate” the area, Grand Vizier Kara
Mustafa Pasha played the leading role in the debacle. Writing just before the
Vienna campaign, Evliya Çelebi considered him “a strong vizier whose opin-
ion and counsel are adopted, who is intelligent, and wise.”^10 Showing some
acumen, he had commissioned the translation of the Hungarian and German
sections of Willem Janszoon Blaeuw’s Atlas Maior, presented by the Dutch am-
bassador in eleven volumes to Mehmed IV in 1 668, not yet completely trans-
lated.^11 His predecessor had ended twenty-seven years of warfare with Venice,
subjected the entire island of Crete by conquering an invincible fortress, added
Ukraine to the empire, and subjugated the Poles and Cossacks. But contrary to
the efforts of Emperor Leopold I, he refused to renew the peace treaty with the
Habsburgs, which had one year remaining. Instead, in 1 682 he began prepara-
tions for war.
Not all members of the administration supported renewed war. Kara Mus-tafa Pasha asked Sheikhulislam Çatalcalı Ali Efendi to issue a fatwa on the
question of whether it was canonically valid to wage war against those desiring
to surrender or refusing to join battle.^12 The sheikhulislam did not give him the
answer he wanted, and opined that war was not licit. Nevertheless, because of
the grand vizier, war was unavoidable. The Habsburgs thought the Ottomans
would campaign against Yanık, so they fortifi ed it, leaving Vienna less pro-
tected and seemingly an easy target. Seeing the new situation, they even offered
to give up Yanık, but Kara Mustafa Pasha set his mind on Vienna. As a result,
a chronicler from a generation later considers the grand vizier to have been
“a courageous and strong person,” but “he had the disposition of a merchant.”^13
Why settle for Yanık when he could have better goods: Vienna? While on the
march Kara Mustafa Pasha received news of a bad omen: his palace in Istanbul
had nearly burned to the ground.
The best Ottoman perspective of the events that followed is the Events orCalamities of Vienna (Vekāyi‘-i Beç), composed by the grand vizier’s secretary of
imperial protocol Ahmed Agha, who accompanied the army on the march to
Vienna, served at headquarters during the siege before the citadel, and with-
drew with the defeated Ottoman forces.^14 The author refers to the campaign