5
The Turkish annalists do not fail to remark, that Kiuprili crossed the imperial threshold at the moment when the call to noon prayers was resounding from the minaretsan evident token of the Divine protection extended to him!
6
In a narrative by a writer named Chassipol, (Paris, 1676,) professing to be the biography of the two first Kiuprili vizirs, Mohammed is said to have been the son of a French emigrant, and this romance has been copied by most European authors. But the testimony of Evliya, Kara-Tchelibi, and all contemporary Turkish writers, is decisive on the point of his Albanian origin.
7
Ipshir Mustapha Pasha was originally a Circassian slave, and said to have been a tribesman and near relation of the famous Abaza. During the revolutions which distracted the minority of Mohammed, he became grand-vizir for a few months, (Oct. 1654May 1655,) but was cut off by an unanimous insurrection of the spahis and janissaries, who forgot their feuds for the sake of vengeance on the common enemy.
8
De la Haye, the French ambassador, was imprisoned in 1658, and his son bastinadoed in the presence of Kiuprili, for being unable or unwilling to give a key to some letters in cipher from the Venetians; and some years later, the envoy of the Czar, Alexis Mikhailowitz, was driven, with blows and violence, from the presence of the sultan, who was irritated by the incompetency of the interpreter to translate the Czar's letter! This latter outrage, however, was not till after the death of the elder Kiuprili.
9
This monstrous exaggeration is reduced by Rycaut to the more credible, but still enormous number of 36,000 victims during the five years of his ministry.