4

Islamizing Istanbul

At the beginning of Mehmed IV’s majority, cataclysmic natural disas-

ter served as a watershed in conversion. Fire that devastated most of

Istanbul provided an opportunity for the valide sultan to manifest her

conversion to piety by engaging in unprecedented policies, convert-

ing a Jewish landscape into a Muslim landscape, including building

an imperial mosque complex in the heart of the city’s main Jewish

neighborhood. The Ottoman narratives of the construction of the

mosque in Eminönü demonstrate how the creation of an Islamic sa-

cred geography in Istanbul occurred alongside and in place of Jewish

structures, an act considered by chroniclers as conversion and con-

quest of infi del space, mirroring the same processes on Bozca Island.

In an era where ghaza was emphasized, it was natural to compare

the conversion of the sacred geography of Istanbul to jihad. The most

visible and symbolic manifestation of the conversion of the landscape

in Ottoman territories in the wake of conquest had always been the

transformation of churches and synagogues into mosques and the

construction of grand royal mosques to mark the hegemony of the

new rulers. Imperial mosques marked spaces and delimited bounda-

ries, expressed power, supported political and hegemonic interests,

and conveyed meaning both to those who entered them and those

who passed by outside.^1 Major changes to urban space redefi ne the

dominant features of a city, how people perceive and experience

their environment, and infl uence world outlooks.^2 For Muslims,