mehmed iv’s life and legacy, from ghazi to hunter 235
with snow, which then melted over the stores; the fruit in gardens—lemons,
oranges, pomegranates, fi gs—was pickled; Kağıthane stream froze as far as the
garden of the dockyard; and one could walk on the ice over the Golden Horn
(2:263). Silahdar had great diffi culty crossing by boat using an ice paddle from
Eyüp to the dockyard garden where the sultan had alighted. In Istanbul roofs
collapsed from the weight of the snow, which may have caused as much dam-
age as a massive fi re.^4
The economic situation also began to refl ect the gloomy state of the mili-tary. Because of the campaigns, the treasury had again been emptied. Few akçes
remained, commoners were in terrible shape, and the grand vizier decided on
the extraordinary measure of raising a tax among the already seditious reli-
gious class (2:262). The response to the unprecedented auxiliary tax was unsur-
prisingly negative, and the religious scholars and offi cials blamed the sultan for
emptying the treasury during forty years of building superfl uous pleasure pal-
aces. They proclaimed that they might as well burn their books, for the sultan
honored priests and not Muslim scholars. The ringleader of such criticism was
banished to Cyprus and the tax was taken by force, quarter by quarter, house
by house, from every member of the religious class save those with the rank of
sheikhulislam (2:263).
Mehmed IV’s days were numbered because the army, administration, andreligious class united against him. In the autumn of 1 687 the Ottoman army
was routed at Mohács, the same Mohács that had been the scene of a great Ot-
toman triumph during Suleiman I’s day. The soldiers rebelled against Grand
Vizier Suleiman Pasha and desired to install in that offi ce another Köprülü in
his place, the Köprülü son-in-law Siyavuş Pasha, who favored putting the sul-
tan’s brother Suleiman on the throne (2:278–82). Their actions were heeded.
The new grand vizier Siyavuş Pasha exchanged letters with Sheikhulislam
Ankaravi in which they discussed how religion and faith and honor had dis-
appeared, that the Ottomans would have a bad name among infi dels so long
as Mehmed IV, once the terror of central Europe and the Mediterranean, re-
mained on the throne, and that there was no unity in the army. The religious
scholars argued that the sultan must be replaced for he acted against the Sha-
riah and did not accept their advice. The only solution was to dethrone him.
Desperate, Mehmed IV executed Suleiman Pasha and vowed “to completely
abandon hunting, to banish his greyhounds to other places, to keep only one
hundred of his horses in the imperial stables and disperse the rest, and limit
his expenses.”^5 These extraordinary pledges alert us to the ultimate failure of
Abdi Pasha, Hatice Turhan, and Mehmed IV to sell an image of a pious ghazi
sultan. By this point, with Abdi Pasha in Basra and Hatice Turhan buried be-
neath her tomb, the sultan was commonly viewed as a playboy.