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

Abstract

In 1556-1557 a Hungarian convert to Islam by the name of Murad b. Abdul lah, otherwise serving as an imperial interpreter (dragoman, terc?m?n) for the Ottoman Porte, penned a polemical treatise entitled The Guide for One s Turning towards God. In it, he introduces the essentials of the Muslim faith by arguing Islam's superiority to Christianity and Judaism. In the conclusion to his work Murad states that by writing this treatise he hopes to bring about the conversion of Christians from different parts of Europe (Firengist?n) and secure the salvation of their souls by bringing them to Islam. With this goal in mind, ten years after completing the text in Ottoman Turkish Murad trans lated it into Latin, inscribing the translation onto the margins of the Ottoman text so that Christians in the remotest parts of Firengist?n could understand it and be drawn to the true faith. To this curious bilingual work he then added an autobiographical section, in both languages, describing the process of his own conversion to Islam.x To a student of early modern European history this story sounds ordinary enough: polemical autobiographical narratives of conversion from one Chris tian denomination to another were a staple of the propaganda wars waged among states and religious factions in the era of confessional polarization that swept across Christendom in the sixteenth century.2 From the standpoint