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

46 honored by the glory of islam

out of the water and it was lost, along with scores of men who had been letting

the ship into the water. Two years later Evliya Çelebi, Katip Çelebi’s younger

contemporary, a travel writer who wrote a self-promoting work that aimed to

entertain, educate, and criticize society, dreamed about the boat. Melek Ahmed

Pasha interpreted the dream to mean that the boat was his body. The top-heavy

bow symbolized that he had been “too concerned with worldly pomp” and

had a swelled head, which caused his downfall.^25 Melek Ahmed Pasha’s half-

submerged ship symbolized the state of the empire in the 1 650s as depicted

in the narrative sources of the era. The captains of the ship of state were not

capable of bringing it to safety.

In 1651 , following an uprising of merchants during Melek Ahmed Pasha’s

vizierate, which actually caused his dismissal, Janissaries intended to dethrone

the sultan and even marched to the gates of Topkapı Palace. All of the sultan’s

servants within its gates were compelled to take arms to repulse the rebels.^26

This brought to a swift end the rivalry between the factions allied with the

former valide sultan and the current one. Immediately after Mehmed IV’s en-

thronement, the parties of the two leading Ottoman women, Kösem Sultan

and Hatice Turhan Sultan, had competed to be the boy’s regent. According

to Solakzade, the harem eunuchs and inner pages connected to their patron,

Hatice Turhan, were not able to intervene in the affairs of state and could no

longer endure the former valide’s dominion in alliance with the Janissary com-

manders.^27 At fi rst they made plans only to drive her away from the palace, then

they claimed that the former valide was plotting to murder Mehmed IV and his

mother and allying with the Janissary commanders to enthrone Prince Sulei-

man. The treason demanded that she be permanently removed from palace

politics. The group in the harem who supported the valide sultan Hatice Tur-

han was determined to kill Kösem Sultan.^28 It was a matter of factional politics

in the palace; a powerful person makes enemies. Acting on the pretext that the

former valide was attempting to reclaim the throne, they had her and the head

of the palace guards killed.^29 The Janissaries who sided with Hatice Turhan had

to fi ght their way to the suite of Kösem Sultan. She hid in a secret compartment

inside, but they found and killed the seventy-year-old woman; the giant pal-

ace guard Tiny Mehmed strangled her.^30 Evliya Çelebi puts it crudely, claiming

that she was killed when he “twisted her braids around her neck.”^31 The brutal

murder of Kösem Sultan in 1651 barely three years after her own son had been

killed caused tumult and rioting in Istanbul and resulted in the execution of

hundreds of men.

The death of Kösem Sultan contributed to a dampening of the power of

the Janissary commanders and a rise in the authority of the young valide sultan

and her supporters, particularly the chief eunuch of the harem. Following the