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

232 honored by the glory of islam

second year of a ruinous drought and famine. Since the failed military cam-

paigns there had been a dearth of rainfall. The price of wheat and grain sky-

rocketed. In some places in Anatolia, oak and plum root and walnut shell

were ground into meal; because the combination was indigestible, many died

(2:242).

Dire straits for commoners, lawlessness in the capital, and military failure

turned commoners, the military, and factions in the administration against

Mehmed IV. The sultan’s constant hunting earned the wrath of the religious

class and united commoner and elite alike in opposition. All anyone could see

was that Mehmed IV was in the environs of Istanbul, pitching his tent where

he pleased and hunting; no one seemed to have appreciated his proselytizing

behavior.

Hunting practices defended before 1 683 failed to win approbation there-

after, when he was no longer considered a ghazi ( 1 : 1 60).^2 The sultan was like

a vampire, going to the hunt either before daybreak and returning at night,

or going at night and returning the following night, seemingly without con-

cern for the empire (2:245). It seemed that he entirely neglected his subjects

and his own religious obligations. He traveled from Üsküdar to Beşiktaş only

three times for prayers. Malicious rumors and reports began to spread. People

learned that the Commonwealth of Poland besieged Kamaniça and attacked

the borders of Moldova. As Silahdar, writing decades later, notes, his indiffer-

ence caused “all the people to hate him, and gossip increased.” The religious

scholars and Janissaries began to openly criticize his apparently indifferent be-

havior when the empire’s dominions were being lost: “When will he abandon

the hunt? For how long will he continue to hunt? Is he not ashamed? Does he

not fear God? What good has he been for the past forty years, other than not

oppressing the commoners? Don’t all the evils that the empire is suffering now

stem from the shameful act of hunting?” (2:245).

An archival document drawn up by the palace treasurer reveals that there

was justifi cation for these critiques at the end of Mehmed IV’s reign. A docu-

ment from the summer of 1 685—after Hatice Turhan Sultan, Vani Mehmed

Efendi, and Abdi Pasha were no longer on the scene—details the income and

expenses of the inner treasury.^3 Whereas the army expenses for the Hungarian

campaign of Commander in Chief Ibrahim Pasha were 1 82 loads akçe, and

the army expenses for the Polish campaign of Commander in Chief Suleiman

Pasha 1 00 loads (plus an additional 50 loads given to the soldiers), the remain-

der of the expenses for the sultan’s hunting trips in 1 685 amounted to 9 1 loads.

That is to say, expenses for the sultan’s hunting excursions were at least exactly

half as much as expenditures for war with the Habsburgs, over twice as much

as that sent to those defending the forts and redoubts on the road between