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

the failed final jihad 221

slept in the open.^41 What had happened to the triumphant grand vizier? What

of Vani Mehmed Efendi’s exhortations, which had apparently worked so well at

Çehrin but failed to produce the same effect at Vienna? How could the “army

of monotheists” be defeated by the “infi dels without religion”?

It was time for the Ottoman enemies to boast. The following day, Sep-

tember 1 3, 1 683, the triumphant Polish king wrote a letter in Latin from the

captured grand vizier’s tent:

For the Turkish Gran Vizier, swell’d bigg with the entire Force of the

East, and of the Crim-Tartars, already swallowing in hope, not only

what (without Relief ) was within three days of its Fate, Vienna; but

with that, even all Christendom; was notwithstanding in one day’s

Battle and Onset, entirely Routed and put to Flight. Their Infantry

(in the common style Janizaries) as being a slaver Force, and no

wayes equal in Flight to their Horse, was left behind in the Tents, and

abandoned to the Direction of the Conqueror. The Tents themselves,

taking up well nigh two Miles in length and breadth taken. Their

Cannon, all their Powder, and Ammunition, with the Richest of their

Spoils, became the just Reward of the Victors Arms. Vienna freed

thus from so hard a Siege, and from such Dangers as had almost

proved Fatal, and the Imperial Seat restored to its own Caesar.^42

Mehmed IV would not be able to call himself the Caesar of Christendom. He

had come as far as Belgrade, and had even brought along Gülnuş Emetullah as

he had to Kamaniça over a decade previously, in anticipation of the triumphant

conquest of the Habsburg city. Learning of the course of events, how the sol-

diers of Islam had been routed, and then “half naked and in wild disorder, fall-

ing and rising like a wounded fugitive, they fl ed to Yanık,” the sultan returned

to Edirne following a diffi cult journey in heavy rain.^43

Political and Religious Aftermath

Unfortunately for the dynasty, defeat before the walls of Vienna, the Golden

Apple, proved costly. Following the crisis of Vienna, Mehmed IV’s proclivity

for hunting was criticized, as was his mobility; no longer desiring Abdi Pasha’s

imagined ruler whose “footstep covered the world from end to end,” his oppo-

nents demanded a sedentary sultan enthroned in Istanbul, and some chroni-

clers ceased to apply the ghazi label to him.^44 The failed siege served to “shake

the Ottoman state at its foundation and cause its power to become so weak it

could never again be compared to its former might.”^45 It was a mighty gamble