ABSTRACT
Consideration of ‘the Other’ within the framework of East and West, Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, croyant or secular, necessarily involves using the largest of canvases. Within the context of western studies of Islam, the Self/Other paradigm as a basis for discourse has had a long run for its money. If the campaign of 1683 marks the restoration of the primacy of war over diplomacy in Ottoman relations with Austria, then Kara Mustafa Pasa’s summons, issued on 14 July 1683, to the commanders, garrison, notables and other inhabitants of Vienna either to convert or surrender or to face inevitable destruction can be seen as perhaps the last notable example of its genre. Peace, indeed, was for any Ottoman minister an ideological minefield. Behind the attitudes of diplomatic discourse, just as much as at Vienna, lay ideology, as evinced by Feyzullah Efendi, and legitimacy, in terms of what was thinkable and doable.
