246 conclusion
Correlated with the ever-widening scale of Mehmed IV’s pursuit of con-quest and conversion, the sultan also effectively changed the capital from
Istanbul to Edirne. However, the “evocative power” of the power struggle be-
tween the ghazis and the sultan’s servants, represented by the choice of impe-
rial seat and the proper balance between ghazi, frontier sultans, and sedentary
emperors, remained unresolved.^1 Already in 1 703, Sultan Mustafa II, who had
personally engaged in ghaza and jihad, was forced to abdicate, and his succes-
sor Ahmed III had to promise not to relocate to Edirne as had his predecessor.^2
In “the ‘long durée’ of Ottoman political history,” the tension between Istanbul
and especially Edirne “represented a symbolically potent axis that defi ned dif-
ferent sociopolitical interests, preferences, and visions.”^3 Mehmed IV’s reign
was an initially successful effort to regain the aura of a mobile, ghazi sultan
fi ghting for the religion and the empire, which suited his vision of an Otto-
man sultan. But it was ultimately doomed to failure without frontier warriors
to keep him in power. Unfortunately for Mehmed IV, he lived in the wrong
era. Had he been in power in the sixteenth century, or certainly before 1 453, he
might have been known as “the Ghazi” today. In the end, he could not shape
the outcome according to his will alone. His ability to remain in power was
limited by the specifi c historical context (his decreasing popularity, loss of pil-
lars of support Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, Abdi Pasha, and Hatice Turhan), the struc-
tural constraints of the late seventeenth-century empire (the fragmentation of
authority between the bureaucracy headed by the grand vizier—particularly
men from the Köprülü household—and the dynasty, the power of Janissaries
and the religious class to make and unmake sultans), the cultural expectations
of Ottoman sovereignty that the sultan be an aloof yet authoritative emperor
seated in Istanbul, and the contingency of military rout and soldiers’ anger at
Vienna, conditions that conspired against his aims.^4
Mehmed IV’s immediate successors understood how important successfulghaza was for a sultan’s career. What their chroniclers did not emphasize, how-
ever, was religious conversion. Although archival sources continue to provide a
narrative of the conversion of Christians in Ottoman Europe in the eighteenth
century, with magistrates appearing as the most important mediators of con-
version, the process escaped the attention of writers at court. As conversion
was not one of their interests, it is not surprising that they failed to mention its
occurrence during Mehmed IV’s or his successors’ reigns. The link between
conversion and conquest was sundered. In part because the mediators of con-
version to piety were implicated in failure, the crisis of the 1 680s did not lead
to conversion at court. Of great importance during the era of Kadızadeli piety, it
simply became less important in the aftermath of the debacle at Vienna and the
dethronement of Mehmed IV. Conversion in and of itself had been important