Honored by the Glory of Islam

This is a fascinating work of historical retrieval, offering a compelling revisionist account of Sultan Mehmed IV (1648-1687) usually dismissed as a lover of hunting who led the Ottoman empire to a disastrous defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1683. This is to overlook the fact that before this defeat his empire achieved its greatest expansion, not least in Europe with one third absorbed through conquest.

At another level, this monograph provides an insight into a struggle between two views of the empire: Mehmed himself effectively withdrew to the old pre-Constantinople Ottoman capital at Edirne. Edirne was historically the centre of frontier warfare and raids deep into Europe. Mehmed was reinventing himself as ghazi and locating himself within that early Ottoman tradition of militant, Islamic expansionism whereby the Sultan’s rule was legitimized as the sword of God, purifying the earth of the filth of polytheism.

Against this vision was that of the bureaucrats of Istanbul for whom Islam was a centralized, sedentary, bureaucratic state with the Sultan caged in his harem and removed from active engagement as an almost hieratic figure, God’s shadow, aloof but authoritative. The later historiographical depictions of Mehmed could almost be characterized as the revenge of Sir Humphrey!

At a third level, the work has a much wider relevance to those interested in the topic of conversion in Islam. Mehmed IV, represents a type of reformist, Islamic piety which re-appears from time to time in Islamic history. Here we have an embodiment of convert-making sultan, the key figure mediating conversion, illustrating the relationship between piety and proselytization in a context of war and conquest. This type of activist piety is also evident in other 17th century Muslim emperors whether Shah Abbas 11 (1642-66) of the Safavid dynasty or the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb who reigned from 1658-1707.