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

10 introduction

Chapters 9 and 11 reexamine Mehmed IV’s devotion to hunting and the

link between hunting and conversion, calling into question the critical inter-

pretations of hunting advanced by later Ottoman and modern historians of

his reign. These chapters demonstrate that Christian peasants who drove the

game for the sultan when he held massive hunting parties, and others en-

countered by him on his frequent, large, and lengthy chases or on the military

campaign trail, and those appearing before him and the grand vizier also con-

verted. After their change of religion, converts engaged in ritual ceremonies af-

fi rming internal and external transformation, where they publicly proclaimed

leaving the false religion and joining the true faith and affi rmed the unity of

God. Christian men were circumcized on the spot. Converts were re-dressed

from head to toe and given Muslim names and purses of Ottoman coins (sil-

ver asper, akçe) minted for the occasion, which had more symbolic than real

value. Because hierarchies of dress were intended to distinguish members

of different religions, changing the body by dressing it in new clothing was

fundamental to transforming Christians and Jews into Muslims. This practice

linked Mehmed IV to his prophetic namesake, who had given his cloak to a

convert, and to a millennium of Muslim leaders while ensuring his control

over the distribution of signs that marked society’s hierarchies.

The broadest circle of conversion reached deep into central Europe and the

Mediterranean, accompanying the greatest extension of Ottoman boundaries.

Chapters 7, 8, and 1 0 follow Mehmed IV out of Edirne into the battlefi elds,

where he made his mark in the middle years of his reign after his impotent

minority and before the defeat at Vienna. I discuss how the pious sultan and

those closest to him, including his preacher, Vani Mehmed Efendi, are de-

picted as desiring the conquest and conversion of foreign territories and their

inhabitants and places of worship and often being able to fulfi ll this wish. The

preacher accompanied the sultan and grand vizier on military campaigns,

brandishing Muhammad’s black wool banner, which the Ottomans had used

in imperial campaigns since Selim I conquered Egypt, and motivated by the

example of the Arabian prophet, inciting the besieging troops in the trenches

to fi ght on the path of God against infi dels. He believed that the Ottomans

had inherited the mantle of warfare from the Arabs in the struggle against

the infi dels, which ended in their conversion. Chapters 7 and 8 discuss how,

accordingly, Meh med IV began the well-known jihad for Candia (Iraklion),

Crete ( 1 666–69), which, along with conquests in central and eastern Europe

(Uyvar/Nové Zámky and Yanık/Raab/Győr in Hungary, Kamaniça/Kamenets-

Podol’skiy in Poland, and Çehrin/Chyhyryn in Ukraine) several years later sig-

nifi ed the greatest extent of Ottoman expansion. Chapter 1 0 explains how he

also launched the siege of the Habsburg capital of Vienna ( 1 683), where the