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

enjoining good and forbidding wrong 71

Other examples of corruption included Sheikhulislam Sunizade’s down-

fall for bribery and lenient treatment of heretical scholars. In 1 653 the mosque

lecturer Kurdish Mehmed Efendi, based at the madrasa affi liated with Sulei-

man I’s mosque, was released with a mere renewal of his vows of faith and was

not executed “although his heresy was well known.”^41 At the same time there

were disputes in the ranks over who should rise to become the leading Mus-

lim religious authority in the land, also illustrating chaos in administration.^42

Üstüvani Mehmed Efendi even went so far as to call the sheikhulislam Yahya

Efendi an infi del for the poetry he had written. The sheikhulislam responded

boldly by writing, “In the mosque let hypocrites have their hypocrisy. Come to

the tavern where neither pretense nor pretender be.”^43 Rising in infl uence in

part due to a reaction to early and mid-seventeenth-century corruption among

religious scholars, and the economic and political failures of the Ottoman pol-

ity, the Kadızadelis offered steps to restore Muslim society to greatness.

Üstüvani Mehmed Efendi promoted coercion and violence as means of

converting Muslims to his vision of piety. He gained considerable infl uence

over members of the dynasty in the 1 650s, which caused a crackdown on

Sufi s, questioned dynastic links with Sufi s, and caused unrest among Muslims

throughout the imperial capital. Üstüvani Mehmed Efendi convinced Grand

Vizier Melek Ahmed Pasha to raid the Halveti lodge at Demirkapı in 1651 and

storm other lodges in this manner. Janissary disciples of a Sufi sheikh man-

aged to save a Halveti lodge of Sivasi Efendi’s cousin and disciple, a preacher

at Suleiman I’s mosque. The grand vizier ordered that Sufi rituals not be dis-

turbed, but the Kadızadelis intended to purify the city of Sufi practices and

Sufi s. They especially targeted Sivasi’s Sufi brotherhood because of its dancing

and whirling. Intending to prevent any interpretation of Islam other than their

own understanding, the Kadızadelis told them they would raid their lodge,

kill them, dig out the foundations of their building, and dump them into the

sea.^44 In addition, the Kadızadelis also trashed the tombs or refuges for Sufi s

that served as popular pleasure gardens, such as one in Çamlıca in Üsküdar

that Mehmed IV enjoyed frequenting and in which he had constructed a place

for repose that Kadızadelis broke apart in 1 655. They wanted a landscape de-

nuded of such ornaments of pleasure. At that time Üstüvani Mehmed Efendi

preached at Fatih Mosque. When the Venetians captured the islands of Bozca

and Limni, the Kadızadelis blamed the loss of the islands on the fact that Grand

Vizier Boynueğri Mehmed Pasha was a Sufi. Around the same time, Kadızadeli

preachers attached to the privy garden incited the head of the palace guards to

shut down dervish lodges in Üsküdar and to raid another lodge in Kasımpaşa

and seize its Sufi s.^45 In Eyüp Kadızadelis also put pressure on a sheikh and his

disciples to desist from engaging in whirling, which they considered an act of