conclusion 247
to the Ottomans from the beginning, including the trailblazing proselytizing
path of Sufis linked with the dynasty, the formation and replenishment of the
elite infantry corps of Janissaries through a levy on Christian youth, and the
conquest and conversion of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. Archival
sources attest to how, to the very end of Ottoman history in the early twentieth
century, Christians and Jews became Muslims in diverse circumstances. Yet
the meaning of conversion, the amount of weight it is given by the ruler and
his court, like the sultan’s hunting habits and military conquest, was always
defined by the particular ideological and historical context.
Earlier Islamic rulers facing grave internal and external threats had con-verted to piety, sought to purify Islam of innovations, compelled other Muslims
to follow the same path, and engaged in stricter enforcement of restrictions on
Christians and Jews, including those concerning churches and synagogues.
Examples are as diverse as Umayyad Caliph Umar II (reigned 7 1 7–20), Abbasid
Caliph al-Mutawakkil (reigned 847–67), Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim (reigned
996– 1021 ), and Ottoman sultans Bayezid II (reigned 1481 – 151 2) and Murad III
(reigned 1 574–95).^5 Whereas these rulers did not necessarily want Christians
and Jews to join their ranks, as earlier pietistic movements did not go hand
in hand with conversion of people of other religions, Mehmed IV’s court pro-
moted the conversion of Christians and Jews as well as Muslims.
Mehmed IV differed from his predecessors, yet several phenomena in theseventeenth-century Ottoman Empire were not unique in the Islamic world.
Although their differences were also great, Mehmed IV had much in common
with his neighboring Islamic sovereigns, for, like the Safavid shah in Isfahan
and the Mughal sultan in Delhi, he also became a visible ruler, appearing reg-
ularly in public.^6 More significantly, as in the Safavid and Mughal empires,
a reassertion of the center with the male sovereign at its head and the conversion
of Christians or Jews or Hindus, and in the latter empire a crackdown on pow-
erful Sufis and attacks on dervish centers, went together. Indeed, Mehmed IV,
Abbas II, and Aurangzeb were all convert makers.
As in the Ottoman Empire, where religious conversion was a central motifin its history, beginning with the recruitment of Christians into the adminis-
tration and military through conversion to Islam, so too in the Safavid Empire
( 1501 – 1 722) did conversion appear as a central theme. The Safavids rode to
power on the zeal of men who converted to a revolutionary, messianic, “ex-
aggerated” version of Islam in the fifteenth century. Once in power they pro-
moted conversion to a more rationalistic legalistic, and Shariah-minded Imami
Twelver Shi‘ism in the sixteenth century, converted most of the populace of