mehmed iv’s life and legacy, from ghazi to hunter 237Like Ibrahim (who years before had witnessed the fi rst murder of a sultan
in Ottoman history, the deposition of sultans, and the execution of his three
brothers who had spent sixteen years locked in a room, and who feared for his
life every time he heard footsteps in the hall), Suleiman was also terrifi ed of
being killed.^7 He had refused to come out of his own accord. Told they did not
come to frighten him or hurt him, but to make him sultan, he expressed doubt.
He had been imprisoned for over forty years since childhood. Suleiman, com-
pletely breaking down from decades of anxiety about this very moment, asked
whether they could possibly understand what it was like to spend a life in ter-
ror, or know “what is it for a soul to face what I faced.” He concluded from his
experience that “it is better to die at once than to die a little each and every day,”
and began to cry (2:297). As was the case for Mehmed IV nearly forty years be-
fore, Suleiman had nothing suitable to wear, so the eunuch put his own sable
over his robe.
The transfer of power went smoothly. When he was informed that he had
been deposed, Mehmed IV stated, “This must be God’s desire” (2:298). The
sultan was not aware that he was merely to be imprisoned. Never forgetting
the fate of his father, he inquired, “Are you going to kill me?” The forty-seven-
year-old ruler was replaced by his forty-fi ve-year-old brother, Suleiman. After
Suleiman “was released from the prison [of the cage], he was placed down in
the cradle of the sultanate like an ignorant, young, and tender child.”^8 Although
a mature man, he was recast as a child, not able to escape the actual status of
Mehmed IV when he was enthroned at the age of seven. The new Sultan Sulei-
man II imprisoned his brother and his two sons, fi rst in the sword room in
Topkapı Palace, from whence he had been brought out, and then in Edirne in
1 689. Following Mehmed IV’s deposition, criers spread the news, the weekly
sermon and coinage were changed to refl ect the name of the new sultan, and
word was sent to all the lands of Islam.
Along with the more explicit reasons given for pressuring Mehmed IV to
step down, one can also cite the underlying tension that the sultan and his
mother had managed to control until the very end: the struggle between those
who wanted Istanbul to be the capital and those who demanded Edirne or
other cities in its place. Mehmed IV’s choice of capital and lifestyle refl ects
how, throughout Ottoman history, there was a tension of “Istanbul versus an-
other city,” especially Edirne in Thrace, which served as the Ottoman capital
prior to the conquest of Constantinople and was perceived as the center of war-
fare and raiding in Europe.^9 This tension between competing cities—the onethe pride of autonomous ghazis, the other the seat of the central bureaucratic
state―stood for competing visions of the nature of the state (frontier ghazi