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

22 introduction

Christianity, into the main royal mosque of the city, and the construction of

many sultanic and grand vizieral mosque complexes.^64 Ottomans linked the

construction of mosques, replete with mementos of victory that served as

triumphant memorials within the imperial domains, to victorious ghaza and

jihad from Bulgaria to Baghdad.^65 In celebration of successes abroad, sultans

also ordered churches in the imperial capital to be converted into mosques.^66

The transformation of sacred spaces continued to be an important element in

the process of conversion.

In contrast to the fi rst three centuries of Ottoman rule, when propagation

of Islam by dervishes and the recruitment of servants of the sultan, facilitated by

war and conquest, were probably equally signifi cant forces of religious change,

the seventeenth century, this book argues, was a turning point in the history

of conversion in the Ottoman Empire. Gone are encouragement of Sufi pros-

elytization, no longer promoted by the sultan and the leading men and women

of the dynasty, and the devshirme, which was phased out. While the abandon-

ment of the devshirme was the outcome of demographic change, since the

Muslim population had greatly expanded to become the majority and there was

no longer a need to rely on converted Christians to fuel the empire’s expansion,

turning away from affi liating with and supporting Sufi groups who had once

been an essential element in the conversion of the population of Anatolia and

southeastern Europe was directly related to the conversion to reformist piety-

mindedness by the sultan and his court, which took an active role in Islamizing

people and places in Istanbul and elsewhere in Ottoman Europe.

Although conversion has come under renewed scrutiny by scholars able to

read Ottoman archival sources, the most recent published studies present only

half of the picture because they do not utilize literary sources such as chroni-

cles, do not contextualize their studies within imperial politics or developments

in Islam, and, most surprisingly, do not engage the scholarly literature on re-

ligious conversion.^67 Offering detailed accounts of archival documentation of

conversion in Bursa, Trabzon, and southeastern Europe, their largely ahistori-

cal accounts attempt to provide the reader with insights into the mentality, per-

sonality, psychology, mind-set, attitude, and motivation of converts and not on

those who converted them.^68 In studying the process of conversion, it is impor-

tant to juxtapose different types of historical record because none gives a com-

plete picture. The problem with earlier arguments is that they rely too much

on archival sources, which are so formulaic as to say nothing that a critical

historian could claim speak to the actual motivations of the convert. The only

way to build on previous scholarship and understand such archival sources as

petitions to the sultan is to put them in the context of other documentation,

especially chronicles.