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

242 honored by the glory of islam

drivers had to be hired, fed, and supplied, and hundreds of palace pages were

also needed. The pages demanded thoroughbreds. Others could not pass up an

opportunity for a day in the country. The chief eunuch and the palace eunuchs,

royal grooms, and palace treasurer also joined the sultan’s retinue, leading to

exorbitant expenses to supply hundreds of carriage horses and thoroughbreds

(76a). Not only the animals had to eat. Cooks were sent into the forests to bring

fi rewood to the next day’s halting ground, light a fi re in the snow, and cook

meals for the sultan and the hundreds of people who accompanied him, his

companions, slave girls, eunuchs, pages, carriage drivers, and saddlers. As a re-

sult, Mehmed IV had become a ruler in name only: “The only signs and marks

of his sultanate that remained were the reading of his name at Friday prayers

and the striking of coins in his name” (76b).

Sir Paul Rycaut refl ected the view of the anonymous chronicler. Rycaut both

criticized the sultan’s personality and alluded to the damage hunting caused:

For never was a Prince so great a Nimrod, so unwearied a Hunts-

men as this; never was he at quiet, but continually in the fi elds on

Horseback, rising sometimes at Midnight, to ride up the Mountains,

that he might more easily discover the Sun in the Morning; by which

extravagant course of Life, he wearied out his Court and Attendants,

who began to believe the amourous humour of the Father more sup-

portable, than the wandaring Vagaries, and restless Spirit of the Son.

But not only were his Huntings tedious to his Court, but troublesome

and expensive to the whole Country, which were all summoned in

wheresoever he came, and sometimes thirty or forty thousand men

appointed to beat the Woods for three or four days, carrying before

them the compass of a days Journey about, inclosing all the Game

and wild Beasts within that Circuit, which on the day of the Hunt,

the Grand Signior [the sultan] kills and destroys with Dogs, Guns,

or any other way, with abundance of noise and confusion; which

Pastime, tho lawful in itself, and commendable enough in so great a

Prince, yet the frequent use of it, was a burden and an oppression to

his People, whilst in the Winter they passed many cold Nights in the

Woods, and being unused to that hardship, many of them paid for

their Emperors Pastime with their own lives.

Rycaut also complains of the sultan’s stubborn and even childish nature, writ-

ing that “no diffi culties and inconveniences of Weather,” including driving rain

and wind that overturned tents, “could give one Hour of intermission” to the

sultan’s hunting desires.^16