a decade of crisis 47murder of Kösem Sultan, and after a fatwa was delivered justifying the kill-
ing of Janissaries, the banner of Muhammad was taken out and placed before
the outermost or Imperial Gate. This fl ag was usually taken out at the start of
imperial campaigns against Christian or Shi‘i powers. To implement a general
levy of all able-bodied men for public defense, criers ran through the streets
of Istanbul shouting, “Whoever is a Muslim, let him rally around the banner
of the religion. Those who do not come are rendered infi dels and they are di-
vorced from their [Muslim] wives.”^32 Within an hour, more than one hundred
thousand heavily armed men gathered. Fortunately for the Janissaries, a bloody
battle was avoided. Some of the ringleaders were given new positions, and oth-
ers were killed. For fi fty years Kösem Sultan had been on the stage of Ottoman
politics and she and her men were loath to exit. They feared their young com-
petitor, who was terrifi ed of them. Many leading Janissaries were executed or
imprisoned; the sheikhulislam was exiled for being their ally.
Bloodshed and rebellion accompanied the period in offi ce of another typical
grand vizier, the governor-general of Aleppo İpşir Mustafa Pasha, who served
from 1 654 to 1 655. Just when one might have thought a worse person could
not have been found for the most important administrative position in the em-
pire, the court selected this pasha, who had rebelled against the sultan and
was the relative of Abaza Mehmed Pasha, a governor-general turned rebel who
had sought to avenge the 1 622 murder of Sultan Osman II, Young Osman.^33
Similar to the mature Mehmed IV, İpşir Mustafa Pasha excelled in horseman-
ship, javelin, swordplay, and hunting.^34 He also was known as a religious, if notobedient, short man who stood up for no one, respecting neither ceremony nor
rank.^35 People were amazed that a person with a reputation for injustice who
had sided with the sipahis would be made grand vizier; they believed the posi-
tion was offered with the intention of bringing him under control.^36 Ordered
to depart Aleppo and make haste to the capital, this rebel, fearing the court
offered him the position as a pretext to destroy the power he had accrued and
as a means to keep an eye on him in the capital, was in no hurry. He met with
dismissed military offi cials, gathered a militia, and took four months to reach
Istanbul.^37 When he arrived with tens of thousands of armed men, Istanbul
was fi lled with sedition: “The city of Constantinople was like the Day of Judge-
ment, the heavens full of battles.”^38 The Hippodrome was fi lled with “sipahis,
Janissaries, the rabble, armorers, artillerymen and gunners, other soldiers,
scoundrels, and bandits” who opposed the grand vizier and his army and the
sheikhulislam.^39 Soon after his arrival, the Janissaries pressed their demand
that this grand vizier, who not only represented the sipahis but also dared can-
cel their payments owed in arrears, be killed. According to Mehmed Halife,
they assembled in the biggest protest in history.^40 Because there was no way to