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

the failed final jihad 227

among Muslims again intensifi ed. Invited to appear before the sultan at the

Beşiktaş pavilion, the sultan’s Kadızadeli preachers and Sufi sheikhs disputed

whether a perfect spiritual guide was to be found in that age or not. Each side

cursed the other and the sheikhulislam had to come between them to make

them kiss and make up. Kadızadelis were no longer prominent or largely un-

challenged at court. At the beginning and end of his reign the sultan was sur-

rounded by Mevlevi Sufi s, those dervishes whose public practices of whirling to

music and ecstatically, rhythmically reciting God’s names were a central target

of Kadızadeli preachers who promoted rational religion.

Mehmed IV had expanded the empire to its greatest extent during his

reign; bit by bit the pieces were falling off. The years 1 685 and 1 686 were

marked by the execution of grand viziers, military crisis and defeat, the loss of

territory and citadels, shrinking empire, renewed fi nancial crisis, and the reap-

pearance of rebels and bandits in Anatolia, who gathered thousands of men to

their side to pillage and plunder town and village from Sivas to Bolu (2:2 1 5–28).

Exhilarated by their successes against the Ottomans, Polish forces attempted

for the next four years to retake Kamaniça, but were unsuccessful. They applied

constant military pressure nonetheless. Venice, allied with the pope, Spain,

Genoa, Florence, and Malta in the Holy Alliance of 1 684, tried to reconquer

Crete, also without success, but was able to make serious inroads, particularly

in the Morea, where the defeated Venetian defender of Candia Francisco Mo-

rosini was able to exact some revenge, and Venice even took Athens in 1 687.

Conversion of Christians and Jews at

the End of Mehmed IV’s Reign

How did the sultan respond during these dark years that called to mind the

crisis-ridden 1 650s? In part, he went hunting while going back and forth be-

tween Edirne and Istanbul, where he fi nally settled beginning in the spring

of 1 686. Sometime in this period Abdi Pasha, sent perhaps partly in exile to

remote Basra to serve as governor, presented Mehmed IV the fi nal version of

the history of his reign, which mercifully covered events only up to 1 682, com-

pletely avoiding the siege of Vienna and his loss of ghazi status.

Despite an end to ghaza and jihad, the sultan continued to facilitate the

conversion of Christians and Jews to Islam in public conversion ceremonies.

Archival sources housed in Istanbul record that in 1 685, fi fty people converted

together to Islam before the sultan when Mehmed IV had traveled from Ed-

irne to Istanbul. It was at the Yapacağı estate near Silivri where most presented

themselves before him and became Muslims. Forty-three people converted