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Illuminated by the Light of Islam and the Glory of the Ottoman Sultanate: Self-Narratives of Conversion to Islam in the Age of Confessionalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Tijana Krstić
Tijana Krstić
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 35 - 63
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Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2009

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References

1 Murad B. Abdullah, Kitāb-ı tesviyetü't-teveccüh ilā'l-hakk, British Library, Add. 19894, 148 a–b.

2 See for example Questier, Micheal, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 12–39.Google Scholar; Carlebach, Elisheva, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pollmann, Judith, “A Different Road to God: The Protestant Experience of Conversion in the Sixteenth-Century,” in van der Veer, Peter, ed., Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity (New York and London: Routledge: 1995), 47–64Google Scholar.

3 On Ottoman self-narratives and the concept of autobiography in the Ottoman context, see Kafadar, Cemal, “Self and Others: The Diary of a Dervish in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul and First-Person Narratives in Ottoman Literature,” Studia Islamica 69 (1989): 121–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Terzioğlu, Derin, “Man in the Image of God in the Image of the Times: Sufi Self-Narratives and the Diary of Niyāzī-i Mısrī (1618–1694),” Studia Islamica 94 (2002): 139–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further examples of self-narratives see Fleischer, Cornell H., Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541–1600) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kafadar, Cemal, “Mütereddit bir mutasavvıf: Üsküp'lü Asiye Hatun'un Rüya Defteri, 1641–43,” Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Yıllık 5 (1992): 168–222Google Scholar; and Faroqhi, Suraiya, Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 192–203.Google Scholar.

4 See Kafadar, “Self and Others,” 125–38.

5 Ibid., 125–26.

6 For an overview on the concept of “confessionalization,” see Schilling, Heinz, “Confessionalization: Historical and Scholarly Perspectives of a Comparative and Interdisciplinary Paradigm,” in Headley, J. M., Hillerbrand, H. J., and Papalas, A. J., eds., Confessionalization in Europe, 1555–1700 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 21–36.Google Scholar.

7 The most recent collaborative work on religious trends in early modern Europe acknowledges the need for further research on the mutual influences of early modern Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in Europe's “religious borderlands.” Nevertheless, Islam remains tangential to the discussion even in this ambitious multi-volume study on the topic. See Schilling, Heinz and Toth, Istvan György, eds., Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, Vol. I: Religion and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

8 On the category of “early modern” (and the Ottomans' place in it), see Goldstone, Jack A., “The Problem of the ‘Early Modern’ World,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41, 3 (1998): 249–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, “Connected Histories: Notes towards Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,” Modern Asian Studies 31, 3 (1997): 735–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See especially Goffman, Daniel, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Agoston, Gabor, “Information, Ideology, and Limits of Imperial Policy: Ottoman Grand Strategy in the Context of Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry,” in Aksan, Virginia and Goffman, Daniel, eds., Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 75–103Google Scholar; and Daniel Goffman, “Negotiating with the Renaissance State: The Ottoman Empire and the New Diplomacy,” in ibid., 61–74.

10 See, for instance, Jardine, Lisa and Brotton, Jerry, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Orbay, Ayşe, ed., The Sultan's Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: Işbank, 2000)Google Scholar; MacLean, Gerald, ed., Re-Orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Exchanges with the East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Birchwood, Matthew and Dimmock, Matthew, Cultural Encounters between East and West, 1453–1699 (London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

11 See Peirce, Leslie, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar, and the “Book Forum” devoted to it in the Journal of Women's History 18, 1 (2006): 181–202; and Walter Andrews and Mehmet Kalpakli, The Age of Beloveds (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005).

12 See Bennassar, Bartholomé and Bennassar, Lucile, Les Chrétiens d'Allah: L'histoire extraordinaire des renégats, XVIe–XVIIe siècles (Paris: Perrin, 1989)Google Scholar; Garcia-Arenal, Mercedes and Wiegers, Gerard, A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, A Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Dursteler, Eric, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 103–29Google Scholar; Davis, Natalie Z., Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006)Google Scholar; and E. Natalie Rothman, “Between Venice and Istanbul: Trans-Imperial Subjects and Cultural Mediation in the Early Modern Mediterranean,” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2006.

13 For the Ottoman case, see Fleischer, Cornell H., “Shadows of Shadows: Prophecy and Politics in 1530s Istanbul,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 13, 1–2 (2007): 51–52Google Scholar; and his “The Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Süleyman,” in Veinstein, Gilles, ed., Soliman le Magnifique et son temps (Paris: n.p., 1992), 159–77Google Scholar. But see also Finlay, Robert, “Prophecy and Politics in Istanbul: Charles V, Sultan Süleyman, and the Habsburg Embassy of 1533–1534,” Journal of Early Modern History 2, 1 (1998): 1–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Necipoğlu, Gülrü, “Suleiman the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the Context of Ottoman-Habsburg-Papal Rivalry,” Art Bulletin 71, 3 (1989), 402–25Google Scholar. For other European cases, see Yates, Frances A., Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Routledge, 1975)Google Scholar; Pagden, Antony, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 26Google Scholar; and Reeves, Marjorie, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 359–76Google Scholar.

14 See Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, “Turning the Stones Over: Sixteenth-Century Millenarianism from the Tagus to the Ganges,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 40, 2 (2003): 129–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On sixteenth-century millenarianism, see also Niccoli, Ottavia, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Kagan, Richard, Lucrecia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

15 MacCullouch, D., Laven, M., and Duffy, E., “Recent Trends in the Study of Christianity in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly 59 (2006): 709Google Scholar. See also O'Malley, John W., Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2000), 108–15Google Scholar.

16 Literature on the subject abounds, but see especially Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–1750 (New York: Routledge, 1989)Google Scholar; O'Malley, Trent and All That, 92–118; de Boer, Wietse, “Social Discipline in Italy: Peregrinations of a Historical Paradigm,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 94 (2003): 294–307Google Scholar; Schilling, “Confessionalization,” 21–36.

17 Although the Mughal Emperors in India also drew on millenarianism and the notion of a universal empire, and relied on religion to strengthen their state-building project, peculiar local conditions led the Mughal Sultan Akbar to eventually adopt in the 1580s a very inclusive brand of Islam that would not alienate any of the constituent ethnic groups comprising the Mughal elite. See Subrahmanyam, “Turning the Stones,” 149–52.

18 On confessionalization “from below” versus “from above,” see de Boer, “Social Discipline in Italy,” 294–307.

19 See Fischer-Galati, Stephen A., Ottoman Imperialism and German Protestantism, 1521–1555 (New York: Octagon Books, 1972)Google Scholar.

20 Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb, 149a.

21 Pál Ács, “Tarjumans Mahmud and Murad. Austrian and Hungarian Renegades as Sultan's Interpreters,” in Kühlmann, Wilhelm and Guthmüller, Bodo, eds., Europa und die Türken in der Renaissance (Tübingen: Frühe Neuzeit, 2000), 307–16Google Scholar.

22 See Gerlach, Stefan, Türkiye günlüğü 1573–1576, vol. 1, Noyan, T., trans. (Istanbul: Kitap yayınevi, 2006), 98Google Scholar; Matuz, Josef, “Die Pfortendolmetscher zur Herrschaftszeit Süleyman des Prächtigen,” Südost-Forschungen 24 (1975): 54Google Scholar.

23 On early Ottoman policies, see Kafadar, Cemal, Between Two Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 118–50Google Scholar; and Lowry, Heath, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State (New York: SUNY Press, 2003), 55–94Google Scholar. On early converts, see Inalcık, Halil, Hicri 835 Tarihli Suret-i Defter-i Sanacak-i Arvanid (Ankara:Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1954)Google Scholar; Delilbaşı, Melek, “Christian Sipahis in the Tırhala Taxation Registers (15th and 16th Centuries),” in Anatastasopoulos, A., ed., Provincial Elites in the Ottoman Empire (Herakleion: Crete University Press, 2005), 87–114Google Scholar; Minkov, Anton, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans. Kisve Bahasi Petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 1670–1730 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 37–40Google Scholar.

24 On the peculiar nature of Ottoman slavery, see Toledano, Ehud, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

25 For instance, Mihailović, Konstantin was captured during the Ottoman siege of Novo Brdo (Kosovo) in 1455 and enlisted into the janissary corps. See his Memoirs of a Janissary, Stolz, Benjamin and Soucek, Svat, trans. and commentary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

26 See Ginio, Eyal, “Childhood, Mental Capacity and Conversion to Islam in the Ottoman State,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 25 (2001): 90–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baer, Marc, “Islamic Conversion Narratives of Women: Social Change and Gendered Religious Hierarchy in Early Modern Ottoman Istanbul,” Gender and History 16, 2 (2004), 425–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krstić, Tijana, “How to Read Ottoman Soldiers' Stories,” forthcoming in Turkish Studies Association Journal 29 (2008)Google Scholar. For the same development in other Muslim contexts, see Dale, Stephen, “Trade, Conversion and the Growth of the Islamic Community in Kerala, South India,” Studia Islamica 71 (1990): 155–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bulliet, Richard, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 43–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 See Dutton, Yasin, “Conversion to Islam: The Qur'anic Paradigm,” in Lamb, Christopher and Bryant, M. Darrol, eds., Religious Conversion: Contemporary Practices and Controversies (London: Cassell, 1999), 151–65Google Scholar.

28 See Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, 33–64. For the development of the custom of endowing converts with new clothes, which predates the Ottoman period, see Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans, 152–58.

29 See Fleischer, “The Lawgiver as Messiah; and Gülrü Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), 36–38.

30 See Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans, 67–77, 195–96.

31 Ibid., 195–96.

32 Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb, 149a.

33 On the proselytization to captives of war brought to Istanbul, see Gerlach, Türkiye günlüğü I, 186. On manumission and the role of conversion in this process in the Ottoman Empire, see Fisher, Alan, “Studies in Ottoman Slavery and the Slave Trade II: Manumission,” Journal of Turkish Studies 4 (1980): 49–56Google Scholar.

34 Bulliet, Richard, “Conversion Stories in Early Islam,” in Gervers, Michael and Bikhazi, Ramzi J., eds., Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries (Toronto, 1990), 123–33Google Scholar; Giovanna Calasso, “Récits de conversions, zèle dévotionnel et instruction religieuse dans les biographes des “gens de Basra” du Kitab al-Tabaqat d' Ibn Sa'd,” in García-Arenal, Mercedes, ed., Conversions islamiques: Identités religieuses en Islam méditeranéen (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2002), 19–48Google Scholar.

35 Calasso, “Récits,” 20; Bulliet, “Conversion Stories,” 131.

36 Calasso, 33. For the classical formulation of conversion as transformation of heart and soul, see Nock, Arthur D., Conversion: The Old and New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 7Google Scholar. See also Fredricksen, Paula, “Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self,” Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986): 3–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 See for example Jean, and Comaroff, John, Of Revelation and Revolution I (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1991), 249Google Scholar; Talal Asad, “Comments on Conversion,” in Conversion to Modernities, 263–73; Keane, Webb, “From Fetishism to Sincerity: Agency, the Speaking Subject, and Their Historicity in the Context of Religious Conversion,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 39, 4 (1997): 674–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the relationship between the post-Tridentine conversion narratives and the accounts of Paul and Augustine see Pollman, “A Different Road,” 48–52; and Carlebach, Divided Souls, 88–123.

38 Bulliet, “Conversion Stories,” 131.

39 See Reynolds, Dwight F. et al. , Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 194Google Scholar.

40 On Samuel see Mercedes García-Arenal, “Dreams and Reason: Autobiographies of Converts in Religious Polemics,” in Conversions Islamiques, 94–100; and Stroumsa, Sarah, “On Jewish Intellectuals Who Converted in the Early Middle Ages,” in Frank, Daniel, ed., The Jews of Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 191–97Google Scholar. On Turmeda, , de Epalza, Miguel, Fray Anselm Turmeda (‘Abdallāh al-Taryumān) y su polémica islamo-cristiana, 3d ed. (Madrid: Hiperion, 1994)Google Scholar.

41 See García-Arenal, “Dreams,” 93–94.

42 See Epalza, Fray Anselm, 92–118; García-Arenal, “Dreams,” 96–97, 101.

43 Rummel, Erika, The Confessionalization of Humanism in Reformation Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 10Google Scholar.

44 Murad participated in the peace negotiations between the Habsburg ambassadors and the Ottoman Porte in the 1550s and 1570s as a second imperial dragoman. In the meantime, he wrote the Guide during 1556–1557, translated Cicero's De senectute into Ottoman Turkish at the commission of the Venetian bailo Marino di Cavalli around 1559, and translated the Guide into Latin in 1567–1569. Sometime between 1580 and 1582 he wrote a number of religious hymns on the unity of God in Ottoman Turkish, which he presented in a parallel translation into Hungarian and Latin. Finally, as an elderly man dismissed from imperial service due to his “immoderate enjoyment of wine,” he translated Mehmed Neşri's Ottoman chronicle into Latin for Philip Haniwald of Eckersdorf in return for a small per diem. This translation became one of the central texts of the Codex Hanivaldanus. On his works, including the short reference to his treatise, see Babinger, Franz, “Der Pfortendolmetsch Murad und seine Schriften” in Babinger, Franz et al. , eds., Literaturdenkmäler aus Ungarns Türkenzeit (Berlin, Leipzig: 1927), 33–54Google Scholar. On his work as an imperial interpreter see Matuz, “Die Pfortendolmetcher,” 54–55 and Àcs, “Tarjumans,” 310.

45 Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb, 153a.

46 Ibid., 150b.

47 On the history of tahrīf as a polemical trope see Aydın, Mehmet, Müslümanların Hristiyanlara Karşı Yazdığı Reddiyeler ve Tartışma Konuları (Ankara: Diyanet Vakfı, 1998), 145–84Google Scholar.

48 Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb, 12a–b.

49 On this issue, see Abdul-Raof, Hussein, Qur'an Translation: Discourse, Texture and Exegesis (New York: Routledge, 2001)Google Scholar.

50 See Gerlach, Türkiye günlüğü I, 101–3, 156, 239.

51 Murad's letters to the Transylvanian voyvoda Stephan Bathory (see note 76) testify to his close relations to Transylvania where Unitarianism was developing into a state religion. On Murad's hymns see Babinger, Literaturdenkmäler, 45–51.

52 For anti-Trinitarians in Italy and their belief in the humanity of Jesus and unity of God see Martin, John J., Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 99–122. For anti-Trinitarians and their affinity with Islam see for instance Mout, M.E.H.N., “Calvinoturcismus und Chiliasmus im 17. Jahrhundert.” Pietismus und Neuzeit 14 (1988): 72–84Google Scholar; and Ritchie, Susan, “The Islamic Ottoman Influence on the Development of Religious Toleration in Reformation Transylvania,” Seasons (Spring-Summer 2004): 59–70Google Scholar.

53 Chittick, William C., Sufism: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000), 22Google Scholar.

54 Most notably, Yazıcızade Mehmed, Mevlāna Kutbeddin Mehmed Iznikī, Mevlāna Rumī, al-Ghazāli, Lami Çelebi, and Ibn ‘Arabi. See Tijana Krstić, “Narrating Conversions to Islam: The Dialogue of Texts and Practices in the Early Modern Ottoman Balkans,” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2004, 204–5.

55 Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb, 150b–151a; Also Krstić, “Narrating,” 198.

56 Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb, 48a–49b. See also Miyamoto, Yoko, “The Influence of Medieval Prophecies on Views of the Turks: Islam and Apocalypticism in the Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Turkish Studies 17 (1993): 125–45Google Scholar.

57 Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb, 131a–132b.

58 For other polemical narratives authored by Ottoman converts, see Krstić, “Narrating,” 173–97.

59 See Fleischer, “Shadows of Shadows,” 51–52, and “The Lawgiver as Messiah” 159–77; Necipoğlu, “Suleiman the Magnificent,” 402–25.

60 See Imber, Colin, Ebu's-su‘ud: The Islamic Legal Tradition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 98–110Google Scholar; Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 29.

61 Traditionally, Muslim caliphs could not interpret or add to the holy law, which was a prerogative of the religious scholars. However, as Haim Gerber points out, “Kanun and sharia were enmeshed and the Ottoman ruler intervened into an area of legislation where Ottoman sultans never dared to intervene before or after.” See his State, Society and Law in Islam (New York: SUNY Press, 1994), 88–89.

62 See Parker, Geoffrey, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 95Google Scholar.

63 See Newman, Andrew J., Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 37Google Scholar.

64 See Ocak, Ahmet Y., Osmanlı Toplumunda Zındıklar ve Mülhidler (15.–17. Yüzyıllar) (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1998), 230–304Google Scholar. See also Dressler, Markus, “Inventing Orthodoxy: Competing Claims for Authority and Legitimacy in the Ottoman Safavid Conflict,” in Karateke, Hakan T. and Reinkowski, Marius, eds., Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2005), 153–76Google Scholar.

65 See Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 29, 47–59; and Heyd, Uriel, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 24–32, 93–131Google Scholar.

66 See Boer, Wietse de, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter Reformation Milan (Leiden: Brill, 2001)Google Scholar; and Hsia, Social Discipline, 122–42.

67 See Newman, Safavid Iran, 13–38; Abisaab, Rula J., Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 15–30Google Scholar; Babayan, Kathryn, Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 349–66Google Scholar. See also Quinn, Sholeh A., Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000), 76–86Google Scholar.

68 Consider, for example, dragoman Ali Bey's explanation to Stefan Gerlach, who inquired after differences between Sunnis and Shi‘is: “In their beliefs there is no difference, but Persians do not want to recognize as their caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman, only Ali, who was Muhammad's son-in-law, and whom they believe the only rightful heir of political authority. They also say that when angel Gabriel brought a section of the Qur'an down from heaven, he made a mistake and gave Muhammad the section that he was supposed to bring to Ali. Because the Qur'an did not come down all at once, but several verses or several leaves at a time … .” Gerlach, Türkiye günlüğü I, 292–93.

69 See Terzioğlu, Derin, “The Imperial Circumcision Festival of 1582: An Interpretation,” Muqarnas 12 (1995), 85–86Google Scholar.

70 Ibid., 86. In 1578, Stefan Gerlach reports on the conversion of a Safavid governor's chief steward (kahya), who crossed into the Ottoman territory with the governor's entire household. Gerlach explains that the kahya had openly admitted that the Safavid Shi‘a religion was wrong, and was brought to convert in the imperial council. See Gerlach, Türkiye günlüğü II, 795.

71 See Terzioğlu, “The Imperial Circumcision Festival,” 85.

72 Murad states that he translated his work into Latin so that infidels in all parts of Firengistan (i.e., Land of Franks, such as Hungary, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, France, Portugal, and Spain) could be “softened” toward Islam. Kitāb, 148b.

73 See Ocak, Ahmet Y., “Les réactions socio-religieuses contre l'idéologie officielle ottomane et la question de zendeqa ve ilhad au XVIe siècle,” Turcica 21–23 (1991): 73–75Google Scholar; Fleischer, Cornell H., “From Şeyhzade Korkud to Mustafa Ali: Cultural Origins of the Ottoman Nasihatname,” in Lowry, Heath and Hattox, Ralph, eds., Proceedings of the IIIrd Congress of the Social and Economic History of Turkey (Princeton 24–26 August 1983) (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 1990), 67–77Google Scholar; and Fodor, Pál, “State and Society, Crisis and Reform, in 15th–17th Century Ottoman Mirror for Princes,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 40, 2–3 (1986): 217–40Google Scholar.

74 At the very end of his account Murad writes: “It is my foremost desire to spend my transitory life in ensuring the eternity and auspicious hereafter of the exalted sovereign of the world in the felicitous time of his sultanate. … It is hoped that having distinguished the truth from the illusory I will put my trust in God by consenting to God's decree, and having attained right guidance with God's grace and favor, I will befriend all the believers and all other groups with Islam before the last hour” (Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb, 153b).

75 See Matar, Nabil, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 109–27Google Scholar.

76 For instance, his personal letters suggest he sought patronage from the Transylvanian voyvoda Stephan Bathory in 1572 and 1573. See Szalay, Laszlo, ed., Erdély és a Porta, 1567–78 (Budapest, 1862), 57–59, 112–14Google Scholar. Gerlach states that in December 1576 David Ungnad, the Habsburg ambassador to Constantinople, intervened with Sokollu Mehmed Paşa to secure financial support for Murad, who had not been receiving income for years. See Gerlach, Türkiye günlüğü II, 480.

77 See Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb, 149b–150a; and Babinger, Literaturdenkmäler, 143. On the changes in patron-client relations in the reign of Murad III (1574–1595) and patronage practices of these viziers and other members of the court, see Fleischer, Bureaucrat, 70–190; and E. Fetvaci, “Vezirs to Eunuchs: Transitions in Ottoman Manuscript Patronage, 1566–1617,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2005.

78 See Gerlach, Türkiye günlüğü, I, 239.

79 Besides the complete manuscript in the British Library, about one-third of the account, also in Murad's hand, is at the Österreichischer Nationalbibliothek in Vienna (A.F. 180).

80 I am using the manuscript N.F. 380 from the Österreichischer Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. Another manuscript of the same work from the Süleymaniye Library (Ali Nihat Tarlan 144) carries the copying date of 1035 a.h. (1625), which is the terminus ante quem.

81 N.F. 380, 227b. I thank Cornell Fleischer for his assistance with deciphering some of the more linguistically challenging passages in this text.

82 See Runciman, Steven, The Great Church in Captivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 215–17Google Scholar.

83 See Podskalsky, Gerhard, Griechische Theologie in der Zeit der Türkenschaft (1481–1821) (München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1987), 194–95Google Scholar.

84 N.F. 380, 227b–228a.

85 See de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 60.

86 N.F. 380, 227b–228a.

87 Ibid., 230b.

88 For this episode in the Tuhfa, see Epalza, Fray Anselm, 212–18.

89 Ibid., 48.

90 For dissemination of the Tuhfa in Ottoman Turkish and Turkish, see ibid., 48–54, 177–79.

91 Several copies survive in the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul: Ali Nihat Tarlan 144, Giresün yazmaları 3610.

92 The earliest dated manuscript of Yusuf's account I was able to locate is MS #2050, 91a–107b, preserved in the Bulgarian National Library in Sofia, which suggests that the text must have been originally written in or before 1088 a.h. (1677/78). Numerous copies of this account also survive in the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul. See note 91 for manuscripts where Yusuf's account is bound together with Mehmed's and Anselm Turmeda's.

93 MS #2050, 93a.

94 This is borne out by an entry entitled kanun-i nev müslim [The law of the new Muslim] in the collection of Ottoman laws compiled in 1677/78 by Tevkii Abdurrahman Paşa. See “Kanunname,” Milli Tetebbular Mecmuası I (İstanbul 1331), 542. Converts' petitions to the sultan and the Imperial Council asking for stipends and appointments also boomed beginning in the early seventeenth century. See Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans, 145–63.

95 Başbakanlık Archives, Istanbul, Ali Emiri collection, #757.

96 See Marc D. Baer, “Honored by the Glory of Islam: The Ottoman State, Non-Muslims, and Conversion to Islam in Late-Seventeenth-Century Istanbul and Rumelia,” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2001.

97 See Le Strange, Guy, ed. and trans., Don Juan of Persia: A Shi‘ah Catholic, 1560–1604 (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1926), 299Google Scholar.

98 Ibid., 299–303.

99 See Rothman, Natalie E., “Becoming Venetian: Conversion and Transformation in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean,” Mediterranean Historical Review 21, 1 (2006): 39–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 See Krstić, “Narrating,” 127–31.

101 The earliest of the four copies of this text I was able to locate is Ms Mixt 689, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Vienna), which dates to 1062 a.h./1653. Other copies come from the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, Turkey; Vahid Paşa Public Library in Kütahya; and the National Library of Tunisia. I thank my colleague Günhan Börekci of Ohio State University for bringing this text to my attention.

102 The narrative in question belongs to the Sufi genre of sohbetnāme, a record of conversation and companionship, usually between a master and a disciple. On this genre, see Kafadar, “Self and Others,” 126–28; and Terzioğlu, “Man in the Image of God,” 145.

103 Ms Mixt 689, 4a–b; Saliha Hatun 112/2, 79b.

104 For a more detailed discussion of this text, see Krstić, “Narrating Conversions,” 221–33.

105 For a discussion of the Ottoman observers of “decline” and of the modern historiographical “decline paradigm” (which views Ottoman history from 1560 to 1922 as a prolonged decline), see Fleischer, Cornell, “Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and Ibn Khaldunism' in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Letters,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 18 (1983): 198–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howard, Douglas, “Ottoman Historiography and the Literature of ‘Decline’ of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Journal of Asian History 22 (1988): 52–77Google Scholar; Kafadar, Cemal, “The Question of Ottoman Decline,” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 4 (1997–1998): 30–71Google Scholar.

106 On the Kadizadeli movement see Zilfi, Madeline C., The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600–1800) (Minneapolis: Biblioteca Islamica, 1988)Google Scholar; and Derin Terzioğlu, “Sufi and Dissident in the Ottoman Empire: Niyāzī-ı Mısrī (1618–1694),” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1999, 195–276.

107 See note 101.

108 Reported in Abou-El-Haj, Rifat, “The Narcissism of Mustafa II (1695–1703): Psychohistorical Study,” Studia Islamica 40 (1974): 115–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109 For the latest study on Müteferrika, see Sabev, Orlin, İbrahim Müteferrika ya da ilk Osmanlı matbaa serüveni (1726–1746): Yeniden değerlendirme (Istanbul: Yeditepe, 2006)Google Scholar. On his Unitarian background see Berkes, Niyazi, “Ilk Türk Matbaası Kurucusunun Dinī ve Fikrī Kimliği,” Belleten 26, 104 (1962): 715–37Google Scholar.

110 The manuscript, which is most likely an autograph, is located in the Süleymaniye Library (Esad Efendi 1187), and was recently published by Halil Necatioğlu as Matbaacı Ibrahim-i Müteferrika ve Risāle-i Islāmiye (tenkidli metin) (Ankara: Elif Matbaacılık, 1982).

111 Müteferrika relates that from early childhood he was persistent in his study of the Old Testament (Tevrāt), the Gospels (Incīl), and the Psalms (Zebūr). Having perfected his knowledge of the scriptures, and having been appointed to perform sermons, he felt a great desire to secretly study the “old sections” of the Old Testament that had been forbidden to him by the master teachers. He says that he first studied a verse in Greek that announced Muhammad's arrival as the last in the line of prophets, the concept that was removed from numerous places in the books he had studied before. Having embraced the divine guidance, he confronted his teachers asserting that they had altered the holy books and refused to believe in Muhammad. He then decided to translate into Turkish some verses from the holy books in Greek that predict the coming of Muhammad as the prophet of the Last Age. See Necatioğlu, Risāle-yi Islāmiye, 55–56.

112 Ibid., 56.

113 On converts' petitions, see Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans, 145–98. On conversion in court records, see Baer, “Islamic Conversion Narratives of Women,” 438–52.

114 We know, for instance, that a partially completed manuscript copy of Murad b. Abdullah's treatise was obtained and bequeathed to the oriental collection of the Imperial Library in Vienna by Sebastian Tengnagel, the librarian from 1608 to 1636. See Flügel, Gustav, Die arabischen, persischen und türkischen Handschriften der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Hofbibliothek zu Wien, vol. 3 (Wien: K. K. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1867), 131Google Scholar.