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

inauspicious enthronement 33

tower, although in the seventeenth century it was without the mosque-like cap

added centuries later. In this district Catholics and western Europeans, especially

French and Italians, lived paradoxically along with Moriscos, Muslims who had

ostensibly converted to Catholicism, who had fl ed from Catholic persecution

in Spain, and smaller numbers of Orthodox Christians, Armenians, Muslims,

and Jews. Galata had been a Genoese commercial colony in Byzantine Con-

stantinople and remained an important entrepôt, with large warehouses and

workshops another defi ning feature.^36 Following surrender to Ottoman forces

in 1453, most Galata Catholics became poll-tax-paying subjects of the sultan,

while some merchants became resident foreigners. Some of their churches

were converted to mosques immediately following the district’s surrender to

Sultan Meh med II, including Saints Paul and Dominic, which became the

Mosque of the Arabs; the bell tower became a minaret. Other churches, such as

San Michele, were converted during the following century. Yet in 1648, Galata

presented a Christian landscape to the gaze: the predominant buildings that

made up Galata’s skyline remained the Genoese tower and imposing Catholic

churches.

As the skiff made its way up the Golden Horn, the royal family would

have had a chance to look back on the tip of the peninsula of Istanbul and

up the hill, fi rst to Topkapı Palace and then to the immense structure for-

merly known as Hagia Sophia, the grandest cathedral in Christendom, the

Church of Divine Wisdom, which had been converted by Sultan Mehmed II

into the most imposing mosque in the Islamic world. On the other side of

Hagia Sophia stood Sultan Ahmed I’s six-minaret mosque, its massive dome

completed in 1617, built on the ruins of the last Byzantine palace adjacent to

the Hippodrome. The two imposing imperial structures of the Sultan Ahmed

Mosque and Topkapı Palace, established by Sultan Mehmed II, fl anked Hagia

Sophia.

The royal family could then redirect their gaze to the port district of

Eminönü in the well-situated and safe harbor on the Golden Horn opposite

Galata, a kaleidoscope of goods and people. Eminönü was the embarkation and

disembarkation point for the goods of international trade, such as timber, cloth,

iron, lead, tin, dye, leather, cotton, and precious stones, taxed by the head con-

troller of customs. The goods were then either stored in the great warehouses

lining the coast, such as the huge bins of wheat and barley that fed the large

city, or handled in the major trading houses inland at Tahtakale and uphill

stretching all the way to the old and new markets, including the covered ba-

zaar established by Sultan Mehmed II.^37 According to the Ottoman Armenian

writer Eremya Çelebi, the fi sh sold in the market nearby were apparently so

colorful that a person walking past the fi shmongers might think he or she was