the failed final jihad 225
vents his rage when he describes the last days of the siege and fi nal battle of the
campaign. For him, “a sixty day siege went to waste” since “the atheists in the
citadel” were incited by seeing the arrival of reinforcements (2:84). He wanted
God to “damn and destroy them.” But on the day of the fi nal battle, “the imperial
army left everything and all was taken by the accursed infi dels.... God forbid!
It was such a rout and great calamity; such a crushing defeat had never been
suffered in the history of the dynasty” (2:87).
Silahdar’s history refl ects how the tide turned for Mehmed IV. Followinghis description of the failed siege of Vienna, he ceases to call the sultan “ghazi,”
opting instead to simply refer to him as “his excellency, the sovereign,” nor
does he make the sultan the central agent in the narrative. At the meeting of his
council at the beginning of 1 684, Mehmed IV learned that the Habsburgs had
been aided by all Christian nations, including Muscovy, the Commonwealth
of Poland, Sweden, France, Spain, England, the Netherlands, the Papal States,
Genoese dukes, and Venice (2: 1 26–27). Christian armies were on the march
in the Crimea (Muscovy), Kamaniça and Moldova (Commonwealth of Poland-
Lithuania), Bosnia, Crete, the Greek islands and coasts (Venice). It was as if all
the enemies Mehmed IV had defeated earlier in his reign were coming back to
haunt him with a vengeance. The sultan asked his council what to do about the
situation. The viziers, commanders, and religious class were all in agreement:
they did not want the sultan to campaign anymore, but remain in the capital
and send men, munitions, and matériel and experienced commanders to fi ght
on all fronts. This was the end of Mehmed IV’s freedom to be a mobile ghazi.
The plan did not work, and soon rebellion was couched again in genderedlanguage. Territorial losses accelerated from the Peloponnese to central Eu-
rope (2: 1 39). Even Buda was besieged. In 1 685 a group of ten thousand sipahis
openly rebelled against the idea that their mobile ghazi leader could not lead
them in campaign (2:20 1 ). They refused to go on campaign without him at their
head, without the grand vizier, and without the banner of Muhammad, all of
which they considered to be contrary to the law of Suleiman I. They asked how
those who died could be considered martyrs and those who killed the enemy be
considered ghazis if they fought on their own without sultan, grand vizier, and
holy relic. The sheikhulislam responded by asking them whether Suleiman
I was a prophet and his word equivalent to Hadith (2:202). As the answer was
obviously negative, a statute from that era was annulled. Those who die are as-
sured of their manliness because they are martyrs, he assured them, and those
who kill are ghazis; yet those who do not obey commands are to be crushed
like infi dels and loose women. The sipahis were not persuaded and gathered at
dawn at the bank of the Tunca pledging to attack the homes of the grand vizier
and Janissary commander. Edirne’s public baths and markets were closed and