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

ghazi mehmed iv and candia 161

the path of God, by utterly destroying and crushing by irresistible might the

polytheist infi dels, converted the places of assembly and abode of despicable

infi delity into places of manifestation of the lights of the signs of Islam, and

converted churches of polytheism which are temples for worshipping idols into

the place of prayer of the community of Muhammad.”^86

Christian places would also be altered elsewhere in a refl ection of earlier

Islamization of the Cretan landscape. When Chania was conquered in the sum-

mer of 1 645 at the beginning of the campaign for the island, the ancient Hagia

Nikola church was converted to a mosque with the addition of prayer niche

and pulpit. Muslims rendered Friday prayers in it, and it was dedicated to Ibra-

him, becoming the Imperial Mosque.^87 Three other great churches with marble

walls embellished and ornamented with diverse icons and mosaics were also

converted and “purifi ed of their idols.”^88 Cemeteries “of rebels and the wicked”

were destroyed by cannon. Similar resacralization of space also occurred the

following year after the conquest of Resmo (Rethymo), where the largest church

became the sultan’s Friday mosque, and in Suda where a madrasa was also con-

structed.^89 As churches were converted into mosques throughout the island,

bell towers became minarets. Some churches became public baths. A nunnery

became a Janissary barracks.^90 This was as radical a gendered and religious

transformation as could be imagined: an abode of virginal Christian women

devoted to a peaceful life of prayer converted into the quarters of converted

Christian men who dedicated their lives to waging war on behalf of an Islamic

empire.

Jewish places suffered similar transformations and gave further evidence

of the decline of the Jewish elite vis-à-vis the Orthodox Christian elite. Candian

Jews, many of whom expressed a desire to fl ee to other lands, were paid to

give reports on the condition of the citadel during the campaign.^91 After the

Venetians agreed to surrender, as many as eighty Jews remained in the cita-

del, and a Janissary commander was appointed to protect them. Despite their

loyalty, the former Jewish neighborhoods and their homes and stores in Can-

dia were endowed in their entirety to the Valide Sultan Mosque in Candia, as

much of Eminönü had been Islamized in this fashion by the sultana.^92 Rather

than entrusting the duty to a member of the Jewish elite, Panayiotes Nicous-

sias was one of the offi cials who received the Venetian delegation surrendering

Candia in 1 669 and negotiated the subsequent peace treaty. Nicoussias was

allowed to buy a church in Candia, “which became the nucleus of the Orthodox

community.”^93