Policing the Boundaries of Orthodoxy in the Seventeenth Century

There is no doubt, however, that religious violence was on much fuller display in the seventeenth century, in the form of a group known as the Kadizadeli. Named after the fiery mosque preacher Kadizade Mehmet, who burst on the scene in Istanbul around 1630 and electrified his audiences, the target was, once again, other Muslims.

Urged on by Kadizade Mehmet, his followers denounced and beat indivi­dual Sufi masters and vandalised their lodges. Sultan Murat IV, whose qualified support for the preacher allowed these attacks to take place, shut down and destroyed taverns and coffee houses and had hundreds executed for defying his ban on tobacco. The sultan's interest in law and order created a limited common front with the Kadizadeli, although the sultan and the palace refused to cut their ties with the Sufi orders.

In the next decade or so official tolerance of Kadizadeli violence waxed and waned. In 1651 the grand vizier, the sultan's chief minister, ordered the destruction of a Sufi lodge and the Kadizadeli carried it out; they now claimed the right to not only attack Sufi brethren but also ordinary visitors to the lodges as well.

If the persecution of the kizilbas has until recently been considered an exception in Ottoman history, the Kadizadeli movement has been interpreted in the light of debates within Islam dating back to the time of the Prophet; with reliable regularity, a fundamentalist movement such as the Kadizadeli would erupt.^[121] Recently, an argument that pays more attention to the Ottoman context has emerged.^[122] The Kadizadeli were part and parcel of the much longer process of the Sunnitisation of the empire. Throughout the sixteenth century the Ottoman state worked hard to inculcate the tenets of Sunni Islam in their Muslim subjects. In addition to the programme of mosque building and other top-down initiatives discussed earlier, literacy in Islam and its tenets was making real inroads into all levels of society, in part because literacy itself was rising.

The state's efforts to control religious education and promote Sunni values had the unintended effect of opening up debates about what constituted correct Islamic behaviour and the relationship between belief, orthodoxy and the state.^[124] Whereas some scholars worried about the perils of unsupervised reading, others admonished the Kadizadelis for their fanaticism and threat to the social order. The historian Katib Qelebi wrote that they ‘must not spread extremist notions and so provoke the people and sow dissension among the community of Muhammed'.^[125] The Kadizadelis and their followers of course did not see it that way. The debates of the seventeenth century largely covered the same ground as those in the previous century, a testimony in and of itself to the success of the state's efforts to promote learning. But the expansion of literacy meant that it was the non-elites who now took the lead in deciding who was and who was not a good Sunni Muslim. As has been shown, they were willing to use violence to enforce their vision. The Ottoman authorities vacillated in their willingness to condone popular vio­lence, but their own efforts to define normative Sunni Islam helped pave the way for the upheavals that followed.

The story of the Kadizadeli is an Istanbul story, and this is worth under­lining. Even as it is clear that a programme of Sunnitisation, including violence, was ongoing in the early modern period, it is also true that this effort did not extend beyond a few select urban centres. The empire was vast and in most places the sultan was willing to settle for obedience over orthodoxy. The Alawis in the mountains of northern Syria provide a good case in point. Historically viewed as a heterodox if not heretical sect by the Sunni majority, the Ottomans were certainly well aware of who they were.

Even when it came to the dreaded kizilbas, the Ottomans largely stopped persecuting them after 1600, when large-scale rural disturbances in Anatolia - known as the Celali revolts - made social order and political stability the top

priority. As long as the populations in eastern Anatolia kept their religious preferences to themselves, the authorities turned a blind eye. They even purchased loyalty through the grants of positions and titles. Prominent families were recognised as seyyids (that is, descendants of the prophet) and given tax privileges.^[127] In sum, in most of the empire the Ottomans followed a policy of accommodation with local religious practice.

Nor did the effort to mould Sunni subjects and to establish the boundaries of orthodox Sunni values translate into violence for the sultan's Christian or Jewish subjects. Even when the sultan increased the pressure on non­Muslims, he made it very clear that that was his prerogative as ruler of the empire; his Muslim subjects were not allowed to take matters into their own hands. The sultan was aware of the dangers of popular religious enthusiasm. Over the course of the sixteenth century, for example, several prominent churches were converted into mosques. Though these conversions were always met with great acclaim, the sultan was careful to contain and control the excitement. When the conversion of the patriarchal church of the Pammakaristos in Istanbul into the Fethiye mosque set off a particularly strong wave of fervour, the sultan was quick to send out an order forbidding any attempts to convert other churches into mosques across the empire.^[128]

The Kadizadeli, as with all movements of Islamic reform within the empire, were concerned first and foremost with their fellow Muslims and had little to say about the empire's Christians and Jews.

It was also in this period, in 1660, that a huge fire, the worst the city had ever experienced, destroyed two-thirds of Istanbul. The fire or, rather, its aftermath, was also exceptional. In the past the city's Christians and Jews had been allowed to rebuild their houses, their churches and their synago­gues. This time, Islamic law against the building of non-Muslim religious buildings was strictly applied, particularly against the Jews. The commercial centre of the city was a heavily Jewish area; it was also the site of an unfinished mosque, whose construction had begun in the late sixteenth century but had then been abandoned. The Valide Sultan, as the sultan's mother was known, took the opportunity of the fire to begin anew the building of what would become the very imposing Valide Sultan mosque (now known as the New Mosque). Not only were Jews forbidden from rebuilding their homes and synagogues; they were forced to leave the area all together. The written records - from chronicles to various documents - make it very clear that the construction of the mosque was not only an affirmation of Islam, but was also a condemnation of the Jews. The endow­ment deed of the mosque reads, in part:

By the decree of God the exalted, the fire of divine wrath turned all the neighbourhoods of the Jews upside down. The effect of the flames of the wrath of God made the homes and abodes belonging to that straying community resemble ashes. Every one of the Jewish households was turned into a fire temple full of sparks.²

These harsh policies against Christians and Jews were in part the result of Vani Mehmet's insistence that the two communities were too visible in the capital city and needed to be cut down to size.

The grand vizier and the Valide Sultan, however, were not only motivated by the desire to improve their popularity. Both of them, deeply entwined with the Kadizadeli movement, were committed to a personal renewal of their faith, and they eventually brought Sultan Mehmet IV (1648-87) along with them. The second half of the seventeenth century was a unique moment when the highest officials of the Ottoman state - led by the triumvirate of the sultan, Grand Vizier Fazil Ahmet Pasha and the Valide Sultan Hatice Turhan Sultan - pressured their Christian and Jewish subjects to convert to Islam.

The conversion of Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi in 1666 was of course a specta­cular event. Leader of one of the most fervent messianic movements in Jewish history, the Ottoman authorities ignored the rabbi for some years, but he was eventually arrested while on a ship en route to Istanbul. By that point, the sultan and his entourage were alarmed by the large and enthusias­tic following he had acquired (in fact, such a large crowd gathered outside the

26 M. Baer, ‘The Great Fire of 1660 and the Islamization of Christian and Jewish Space in Istanbul', International Journal of Middle East Studies 36.2 (2004), 172. dungeon where he was being held in Istanbul that his jailers moved him out of the city).^[129] The rabbi was summoned to the sultan's palace in Edirne where he was interrogated by none other than Vani Mehmet himself, in addition to the sultan. Given the choice between conversion or death, he chose conver­sion and emerged as Aziz Mehmet Efendi with a position in the palace.

Although Shabbatai Tzevi's movement itself was an important moment in early modern history, with repercussions across the European and Mediterranean world, the rabbi's forced conversion in front of the sultan was not that remarkable or surprising from the Ottoman point of view. Sultans were in the habit of co-opting rebels. Just one year later two other troublesome figures were summoned to the palace. Sheikh Seyyid Abdullah, a Kurdish dervish from south-eastern Anatolia, proclaimed that his son was a redeemer or rightly guided one, and started a rebellion. They too were questioned by Vani Mehmet, and once they renounced their claims the son was given a position as a gatekeeper in the palace (the same position, in fact, that had been given to Shabbatai Tzevi) while his father, the one who had actually raised an army against the sultan, was set up in a Sufi lodge in Istanbul.^[130]

But the story did not end with the rabbi's conversion. Many of his followers converted as well, and both European and Jewish sources from the time describe how the newly converted rabbi strolled through the streets of Istanbul ‘with a large retinue of turban-wearing Jewish converts' and went into synagogues trying to gain more followers.^[131] At the same time, the Valide Sultan - who just a few years previously had overseen the construction of the Valide Sultan mosque on the ruins of the old Jewish neighbourhood - then told the many Jewish members of the palace medical corps to either convert or lose their positions. The most eminent doctor in the palace, the privy physician Moses son of Raphael Abravanel, converted and became Hayatizade Mustafa Fevzi Efendi, and she was clearly successful at forcing conversion on others as well. At the beginning of the seventeenth century Jewish physicians in the palace outnumbered Muslims by three to one; by the end of the century there were seventeen Muslim physicians for every Jew and converts were far more prominent.^[132] This demonstrates the narrowing of the parameters for tolerance.

Sultan Mehmet IV had a conversion project of his own. In his case the stage was the forests of Rumelia, as the European provinces of the empire were known, and the converts were the sultan's own Christian subjects, many of them ordinary peasants. Military campaigns into central Europe were traditionally launched from Rumelia and it was there too that Mehmet indulged his passion for the hunt. It has been a tradition to see Mehmet as a frivolous ruler because of the amount of time he spent hunting, but a recent study has revealed a more complicated picture; among other things, the sultan himself personally converted hundreds of Christians to Islam.^[133] As many as 35,000 peasants could be recruited to drive animals through a forest. The sultan, mobile and virile on horseback, like the Ottoman sultans of old, took these expeditions as an opportunity to also stage outdoor conversion ceremonies. One of Mehmet's chroniclers describes how, in a place near the hunt, a cow was about to give birth: ‘Out of his royal compassion, his imperial majesty wished to assist that cow in giving birth, and so he had the cow's drover brought into his presence.'^[134] The sultan conversed with the drover and asked him if he was a Muslim. When he said no, he was a Christian, the sultan said, ‘Come, become a Muslim. Let me give you a means of livelihood and God will forgive all your sins. In the afterlife, you will go straight to Paradise.' In the account, the peasant, not realising that it was the sultan speaking to him, refused. But when he was told that it was the sultan himself who was inviting him to Islam, he quickly converted and then, amazed, confessed that he had already been offered the faith in his dreams. Hundreds of accounts appear in the historical records from Mehmet's reign: ‘one finds that converts appeared wherever the sultan hunted in Edirne, Istanbul and their environs'.^[135]

Although it is difficult to prove a direct causal link, it cannot be a coincidence that most cases of Christian martyrdom took place during the second half of the seventeenth century. In the space of just four years (between 1679 and 1683) seven people were executed on the charge of apostasy in Istanbul.^[136] Even though forcible conversion was not sanctioned by Islamic law, Christians could be pushed to convert, and if they refused they could be executed. Christians could also be charged with apostasy; that is, of recanting Islam. A fascinating case of martyrdom from Istanbul in 1680 shows how this could come about, and it also reveals the paradoxes of imperial society during the age of the Kadizadeli. It was August and a goldsmith named Angelis and his friends were celebrating the feast of the assumption of the Virgin. The group of celebrants included both Christians and Muslims; the latter were recent converts to Islam. Carried away by the festivities, the friends decided to exchange outfits, and one of them ended up wearing the headgear of a Muslim friend. The next day those very same friends denounced him to the authorities, saying that, since he had put on a turban, he was now a Muslim. Was this a trick to get him to convert? We do not know. What we do know is that Angelis's refusal to recognise Islam led to his death.^[137]

In this tragic story we see the easy camaraderie that could exist between Muslims and Christians, precisely because the former had only recently declared their allegiance to a new religion and clearly still had ties to their old life. At the same time, such close proximity was fraught with danger for both. What seems like an astonishing about face on the part of the Muslims is rendered somewhat more comprehensible when we remember that in 1680 the Kadizadeli were still very powerful in Istanbul. On the day after the festivities, the Muslims must have worried about the price they might have to pay for attending a Christian festival with Christian friends. For the Christians, of course, the vulnerability was even greater.

There was one other route to martyrdom and it was even more dramatic, and quite deliberately so. Beginning in the seventeenth century and continu­ing on into the eighteenth, a small number of Christians openly declared their own apostasy. Having converted to Islam, they then publicly and loudly renounced it, therefore leaving the Ottoman authorities with no choice but to execute them. The martyrologies that were written down beginning around 1700 make it clear that these events were very public spectacles. The determined young (and they were always young) martyr would square up against the local Muslim authorities, who were invariably very reluctant to carry out the execution and hoped only that the apostate would come to his senses.^[138] Thus we have the case of Nannos the shoemaker in the port city of Izmir. The city's Muslim authorities pleaded with him: ‘think of your life, and of how young you are; just say that you are a Turk and you can save yourself.^[139] Complicating the authorities' task was the crowd of Muslims who gathered around, demanding that the offender be put to death.

Spiritual advisors are present in these accounts. It is not uncommon to read that the shoemaker, or the goldsmith, or the leather worker, spent time at Mount Athos, the monastic centre of Greek Orthodoxy, prior to making his fateful announcement. These apostasies, then, were carefully orchestrated events, which is why one scholar has called them ‘theological ecclesiastical propaganda'.^[140] But to what end? The careful preparation of the martyrs by some Orthodox leaders was in part a response to conversion to Islam, which reached its height in the seventeenth century, for reasons that included but were not limited to the Kadizadeli movement and Mehmet IV. But during the eighteenth century this ‘ecclesiastical propaganda' was just as often targeted at elites within the Christian community. The monastic leaders who worked to prepare martyrs, and to publish accounts of their lives in simple and accessible Greek, represented a distinct movement within the Greek Orthodox Church known as the Kollyvades, a reference to the dispute over when memorial services for the dead should be performed. (Kollyva is the name of the boiled wheat that is served at such services.) This dispute was part of a much larger struggle over the growing influence of the European Enlightenment within Ottoman Greek society. The Kollyvades were fierce opponents of Western influence and were highly critical of wealthy Greeks who were increasingly enamoured of all things modern. The latter were concentrated in the port cities of the empire and thus it is not surprising that stories of the martyrs in the eighteenth century also take place there. The heroic young men who renounced Islam and braved death for the sake of Christ were intended to serve both as heroic exemplars of Orthodox teaching and as a rebuke to their fellow Christians.^[141]