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

18 introduction

the fact that it does not occur in a vacuum free of political framework or power

relations. Religious conversion efforts come in waves that are historically con-

tingent. Peaks of such movements arise out of specifi c historical circumstances

conditioned by economic, political, and social factors seen by people who con-

vert as a period of crisis that serves as the catalyst of religious change.^39 Each

wave has its own characteristics, whether conversion to Islam in seventeenth-

century Ottoman Europe, or conversion to Christianity in colonial Africa and

Latin America. Conversion takes place in the context of political events, includ-

ing the breaking down of societies in the wake of foreign invasion, conquest,

and occupation.^40 The aims of the converters may be considered to form their

politics of conversion. When conquerors obtain power over the political, they

also acquire the power to frame meaning, including values, ways of being and

perceiving the universe, and the activities of the everyday, such as architecture,

dress, social structure, and language.^41

Language is crucial, because conversion can be synonymous with trans-

lation. Proselytizers translate the doctrine of their religion into the language

of those they are attempting to convert, fi nding parallels, equivalences, and

antecedents in their mode of expression and belief system while the convert

translates and assimilates ideas into his or her own language and idiom.^42 The

convert to Islam may speak Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, for the fi rst time

and adopt an Arabic name harkening back to the beginnings of the Muslim era.

Converts declared that they left the false religion and entered the true religion.

This signifi es the communal basis of religious identity and the religious base of

communal identity.^43 Entering the religion is equivalent to joining the commu-

nity. Conquest transforms the religious geography, as temporal power creates

a new environment that allows previously unimaginable religious possibilities

to be realized.^44 Institutions of the conquering religion replace those of the

defeated religion, and a new political authority permits the colonization of the

territory by coreligionists.^45 At the same time, conquest, translation strategies,

and capturing of sacred spaces compel indigenous accommodation to or trans-

formation and subversion of the new forms of belief and practice.^46

Historiography: Mehmed IV, Conquest, and

Conversion in Ottoman History

While speaking to scholarship on religious conversion, this book also inter-

venes in a number of historiographical debates concerning Ottoman history.

I offer a reinterpretation of the history of the second half of the seventeenth

century in Ottoman Europe, a relatively understudied although crucial period,