48 honored by the glory of islamquiet down the Janissaries this time, in the end, “they had İpşir’s head cut off
and caused the bird of his soul to fl y to the plains of the hereafter.”^41 The head
was sent to the crowd gathered in the Hippodrome, who stuck it on the end of
a javelin and paraded it around the plaza.^42
The last forsaken grand vizier of the period was the octogenarian Damas-
cus governor Boynueğri Mehmed Pasha, who was appointed in 1 656. The most
interesting debate about him concerned the manliness of his name: was he
boynueÂri (bowed neck), or boynuyaralı (wounded neck)? During his brief pe-
riod in offi ce, which lasted but a couple of crucial months, the Ottoman navy
suffered the worst rout in nearly a century, and the treasury was utterly de-
pleted. While the sultan was taking pleasure in the company of his boon com-
panions and listening to poetry recitations, news arrived of the rout of the navy.
This caused many people in Istanbul to proclaim, “Our sultan must certainly
return to Islambol [ full of Islam]. This is no time for riding and promenading
about, or amusing himself in parks and gardens. The infi dels will arrive in
Islambol tomorrow or the next day. The straits have been closed. There will be
scarcity and famine in Islambol. What is he doing in Üsküdar?” Learning of
this outcry, the sultan immediately crossed the Bosporus. His mother ordered a
military campaign. But Boynueğri Mehmed Pasha said, “If 20,000 purses can
be procured from the treasury, fantastic, I can launch a campaign. Otherwise,
no way.”^43 Without guns and treasure, how could the Ottomans launch a war?^44
Although he was correct in his judgment, the grand vizier was imprisoned in
Yedikule on the Marmara Sea coast, where foreign ambassadors whiled away
their lives etching the number of days of their captivity into the walls.^45Financial Quandaries
The twelve grand viziers who served between 1 648 and 1 656 were unsuccess-
ful in their attempts to fi ll the depleted imperial treasury, regulate the coinage,
and enable prosperity to return. False and worthless coins fl oated freely in cir-
culation, and merchants and Janissaries clashed over the value of the coinage.
Janissary commanders, seeking a great profi t, forced Istanbul merchants to ac-
cept their debased aspers, including coins made of scrap metal, and exchange
them at a great loss for gold coins, which they compelled money changers to
accept in return for more valuable silver.^46 When the merchants went to thegrand vizier Melek Ahmed Pasha and told him it was diffi cult to pay their store
rents and that they could not pay new taxes, the grand vizier scolded them. Ac-
cording to Karaçelebizade, the grand vizier, “anxious about the dearth” of coins
in the treasury, “made many abominable choices and distressed the merchants;