Abstract
The aftermath of the supposedly " happy " event didn't necessarily live up to that epithet. The human toll was heavy : 6 000 to 7 000 dead, up to 15 000 banished. Life in Istanbul had practically come to a halt ; stunned and appalled, the population went into hiding, fearing at any moment that they would fall victim to the imperial ire. This had struck down a number of individuals, deemed guilty by association, starting with the heterodox Bektachi order, close to the Janissaries, whose convents were closed and confiscated, and whose dervishes exiled and sometimes executed. The Şanizade historiographer Ataullah Efendi, whose strange plagiarism of Voltaire we saw last year, was exiled for his supposed sympathies and died of apoplexy when told that the sultan had pardoned him. The sultan is torn between the intoxication of power and the fear of assassination attempts. He performed more and more in public, but these crowd baths were sometimes the occasion for almost paranoid reactions, as when he had an individual arrested whose attitude and gaze had seemed suspicious.
The state paid particular attention to public places deemed dangerous : cafés, baths and taverns were closed, then reopened, under constant surveillance, and their control, traditionally the responsibility of the janissaries, was entrusted to troops whose loyalty had been proven. The palace and the government remained on a war footing, and the sacred standard of the Prophet was not brought back to the palace until a month and a half after the event, a sign of a timid beginning of calm. Summary executions continued and terror reigned, fuelled by rumours of mahuns loaded with bodies going to dump their cargo in the sea.
