62 | Mahmud Pasha and His Christian Circle
Byzantine aristocracy that had remained intact during that period could also,
potentially, harm the newly established empire, particularly in a period of transi-
tion like the second half of the fifteenth century.
The great power of converts in the Ottoman court was regarded with mis-
trust in certain circles, like the old Muslim families, which had held administra-
tive power in the state before the reign of Mehmed II, and the gazi class, which
had thrived during the period of expansion and had their own reasons to oppose
the centralist imperial program initiated by the sultan.
A story related by the Ottoman chronicler Aşıkpaşazade, a member of the
gazi class, illustrates the concern caused among these circles by the increased
power of converts as well as their mistrust of converts’ loyalty to the sultan.
Aşıkpaşazade blamed Rum Mehmed Pasha, a convert who held the office of
grand vizier (1468–1469), for various evils that occurred in the empire during
that period and particularly for the abolition of freehold and the imposition of
rent for the houses of Istanbul. This measure was seen by Aşıkpaşazade as part
of a more general plan conceived by the Greeks to destroy the Ottoman Empire
from within and to avenge the loss of Constantinople:
A Vizier who was the son of an infidel came to the Sultan. He became very
close to the Sultan. And the old infidels of Istanbul were friends of this Vizier’s
father. They went to the Vizier and told him: “Hey! What are you doing? These
Turks have made this city prosperous again.... They took your father’s land
and our land. They took possession of it in front of our eyes. Now you are close
to the Sultan. Strive so that this people will abandon the prosperity of this city
so that it will fall back into our hands like before.”As a result of their request, Rum Mehmed Pasha took measures that were re-
garded by Aşıkpaşazade as hindering the growth and prosperity of the city.
The most plausible reason for the negative picture of Rum Mehmed Pasha
was his connection with certain unpopular measures of Mehmed II, which, as
usual, Ottoman chroniclers avoided attributing to the sultan, looking for scape-
goats among his advisors, whom they viewed as bad. On the other hand, Rum
Mehmed Pasha was also an ideal target, since he came from the ranks of con-
verts, a group representing state centralization, which the gazi milieu regarded as
antagonistic to their interests.
The point of this probably imaginary conspiracy is the hostility and suspi-
cion with which a group in Ottoman society regarded the rise to power of de-
scendants of Byzantine aristocratic families and the perceived potential threat
they posed to the new empire. On the other hand, equally important is the point
of view of the converts themselves, how they perceived their identity and their
degree of loyalty to the Ottoman state. An incident, which we learn about from
unpublished Venetian sources, may help in the discussion of this issue.