Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 brill.

com/thr

Ruler and State, State and Society

in Ottoman Political Thought

Marinos Sariyannis

Abstract
It can be argued that the late seventeenth century marks the transition of the Ottoman
entity into an early modern state, with one of its main features identified as the distinction
between the ruler and the state apparatus. The paper aims to explore whether, when and
how such a process reflected in contemporary political thought. It analyzes the ways
Ottoman elite authors represented society vis-à-vis the sultan; also, the development of the
notion of “state” in the same authors and how it came to be considered different from that
of the “ruler”.

Keywords
Ottoman smpire; Ottoman political thought; early modernity; state; bureaucracy

Contrary to the traditional image we used to have of the Ottoman empire,

it is now commonly accepted that innovation and reform has been a con-
stant feature of Ottoman administration even since the sixteenth century.1
Some Ottoman thinkers did realize the need for reform and advocated for
it, such as Naima in the beginnings of the eighteenth century; others, such
Mustafa Ali in the late sixteenth, perceived changes as a challenge for the
traditional order and suggested a return to what they considered the
“Golden Age” of the empire, back in the beginnings of the same century.
The process of transformation culminated, one can say, in the first half of
the nineteenth century, when the Tanzimat programme of reforms was
implemented. The traditional view of this change stresses the westernizing
aspects of it and attributes it to the influence of western Europe. However,
recent studies emphasize the internal dynamics of Ottoman society and

1 A first draft of this paper was presented at the 12th International Congress of Ottoman
Social and Economic History (ICOSEH) (Retz, Austria, July 11-15, 2011). I wish to thank all the
participants in the session for their remarks and ideas, as well as Antonis Anastasopoulos for
his insightful comments and suggestions. The anonymous THR reviewers’ remarks were very
helpful and essential for the final formulating of my thoughts.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI 10.1163/18775462-00401004

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 93

administration rather than external factors,2 stressing, for instance, the

“constitutionalist” effects of the expansion of the political nation (a term
that represents those actors that can legitimately participate in state
decision and policy-making) throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.3
This paper will focus on the notions of ruler, state and society as reflected
in these authors. Rifaat Abou-El-Haj has argued that the late seventeenth
century marks the transition of the Ottoman entity into an early modern
state, with one of its main features identified as the “progressive separation
between the state and the ruling class”, as well as the distinction between
the ruler and the state apparatus.4 More recently, Baki Tezcan argued that
“the early modern and modern periods had two very significant sociopoliti-
cal developments in common – the expansion of the political nation and
the limitation of royal authority”; according to his analysis, both develop-
ments can be traced in the Ottoman seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
as in this period, in contrast with previous centuries, “a much larger seg-
ment of the imperial administration came to consist of men whose social
origins were among the commoners” and “[t]hus more and more men
whose backgrounds were in finance and trade came to occupy significant
positions in the government of the empire, replacing those military slaves
and civilizing the imperial polity”5 The “political nation” was expanded

2 See, for example, the overview by Quataert, Donald, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 64 ff. and pp. 141-6; cf. the early thoughts
by Berkes, Niyazi, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London 1964, repr. London:
Hurst & Co., 1998), pp. 26 ff.
3 Yılmaz, Hüseyin, “Osmanlı Devleti’nde Batılılaşma Öncesi Meşrutiyetçi Gelişmeler”,
Dîvân. Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi, 13/24 (2008), 1-30; Tezcan, Baki, The Second
Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge –
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On the term “political nation” see, for example,
Loades, David M., Power in Tudor England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 4.
4 Abou-El-Haj, Rifaat Ali, Formation of the Modern State. The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth
to Eighteenth Centuries (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991); see esp. pp. 7,
18-19 and 54, where he enumerates more specifically the characteristics of early modern
centralization as follows: “the separation of public affairs from the personal affairs of the
ruler and his family, the tendency to transform the zone frontier into a demarcated linear
border, a growing specialization of function in some branches of the central administration,
and finally, [the] rapid conversion of public lands into semiprivate property”.
5 Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire, pp. 232 and 10, respectively; cf. pp. 48 ff. for his
analysis on two parallel, but coinciding, distinctions he names “absolutist/constitutional-
ists” and “conservatives/liberals”). Cf. the definitions of modernity by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt
(“Multiple Modernities,”, Daedalus 12 (2000), p. 2) as “actors’ engagement with gradually
larger sectors of their respective societies”; and by Karen Barkey (Empire of Difference.

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throughout this period by the increasing role of the janissaries in political

life (the janissaries constantly expanding their intermingling with the arti-
san world of Istanbul and other towns) and the intrusion of “strangers”
(ecnebi) into both the military and the sociopolitical elite; on the other
hand, according to Tezcan, royal authority as such started even from the
beginning of the seventeenth century to be challenged and limited legiti-
mately, in some way, by various factors of political life, including ulemas,
army rebellions and powerful households.
According to a different interpretation, expounded by Linda T. Darling
(who places the emergence of the early modern state in the beginnings of
the sixteenth century), on the other hand, modernity is defined as the suc-
cessful subordination of all sources of authority to the power of rulers.6
However, in my view the two interpretations can be somehow reconciled if
in the last statement we replace the term “rulers” with “state”. In the process
of emerging as an autonomous entity, the latter was taking gradually more
and more power from the hands of the king himself and, in the same time,
expressing more and more an extended “political nation” which tried to lay
hands on the state power, instead of finding alternative loci of authority.
This process may not have been entirely successful, as it is full of regres-
sions and shortcomings, but it was evident at least in the level of legitimiza-
tion. Insofar as it was signed not only by the provincial ayan and the sultan,
but also by the highest hierarchy of the state, the famous Sened-i İttifak
(1808),7 although produced and imposed by the provincial elite milieu,
may perhaps be considered the culmination (its eventual failure notwith-
standing) of this double process, but arguably it was founded on a long

The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),

p. 206), as “the constitution of a political arena increasingly defined by a struggle over the
definition of the political”.
6 Darling, Linda T., “Political change and political discourse in the Early Modern
Mediterranean world”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 38/4 (2008), 505-31 at p. 506.
7 See the full text and literature in Akyıldız, Ali, “Sened-i İttifâk’ın Tam Metni”, İslâm
Araştırmaları Dergisi/Turkish Journal of Islamic Studies, 2 (1998), 209-22, and cf. the analysis
by Yaycıoğlu, Ali, “The Provincial Challenge: Regionalism, Crisis, and Integration in the Late
Ottoman Empire (1792-1812)”, unpublished Ph.D. diss. (Harvard University, Cambridge MA
2008), pp. 428 ff. Similar concepts can be seen in the slightly earlier Hüccet-i Şer’iyye (1807),
agreed upon by “firstly our lord the sultan… secondly by the high officials of the state”
(“evvelen … padişahımız efendimiz sultan Mustafa han… ve saniyen vükelâ-yı devlet ve
zâbitân-ı sadakat-menzilet taraflarından dahi ahdullah ve ahd-ı resûlüllahî yâd ü tekrar…
olunacağı”): Beydilli, Kemal, “Kabakçı İsyanı Akabinde Hazırlanan Hüccet-i Şer’iyye”, Türk
Kültürü İncelemeleri Dergisi, 4 (2001), 33-48 at p. 45.

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 95

development.8 The process toward modernity may thus be said to have

occurred in two stages that cover more than two centuries. In a first stage,
sultans like Mehmed II, Selim I or Süleyman I successfully took over powers
and sources of revenue that had still remained in the hands of warlord or
ulema households, reminiscent of the early Ottoman empire; in a second,
which seems to have culminated from the late seventeenth century
onwards, a state apparatus which reproduced itself through apprenticeship
and patronage took over decision-making powers from both the palace and
its recruits, especially in financial administration. One may stress the first
stage (as Darling does) or the second (as Abou-El-Haj or Tezcan do), and
indeed we can talk of two political trends coexisting and in conflict; as a
matter of fact, this conflict characterizes the whole process of state forma-
tion. The very notion of “state” as (in Quentin Skinner’s words) “an indepen-
dent political apparatus… which the ruler may be said to have a duty to
maintain”9 is a sign of such a development, which took place from the late
sixteenth century onwards, as I will try to show.
If such a process toward this distinction can be traced throughout the
seventeenth century and on, how was it –or was it not– reflected in con-
temporary political thought? In this paper, I will try to explore the ways
Ottoman elite authors represented society vis-à-vis the sultan, examining
whether and when he was considered part of it or a kind of “gardener” of its
variety; also, to analyze the development of the notion of “state” in the
same authors and to seek whether and how it came to be considered
different from that of the “ruler”. Finally, I will try to analyze the ways
Ottoman authors perceived society and whether their changing percep-
tions corresponded to the process of dismantling the traditional order of
estates in the way towards modernity. Let me stress from the beginning that

8 Precedents of this model can be found in provinces such as Crete throughout the late
eighteenth century (Sariyannis, Marinos, “Rebellious janissaries: two military mutinies in
Candia (1688, 1762) and their aftermaths”, in The Eastern Mediterranean under Ottoman Rule:
Crete, 1645-1840 (Halcyon Days in Crete VI, A Symposium Held in Rethymno, 13-15 January 2006),
ed. Antonis Anastasopoulos (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2008), pp. 255-74 at pp. 260-
3), but also in an agreement imposed by Murad IV on sipahis as early as in 1632 (Mustafa
Naima, Tarih-i Na’îmâ, 6 vols (Istanbul: Matbaa-i amire, H. 1282/1865-1866), III, pp. 119-21;
Naîmâ Mustafa Efendi: Târih-i Na’îmâ (Ravzatü’l-Hüseyn fî Hulâsati Ahbâri’l-Hâfikayn), ed.
Mehmet İpşirli, 4 vols (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2007), pp. 722-23).
9 Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. II (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 353. On the relation between political thought and
state formation cf. Stuurman, Siep, “The canon of the history of political thought: its critique
and a proposed alternative”, History and Theory, 39/2 (2000), 147-66 at pp. 162 ff.

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this terminological query in ideology does not claim any proving ability for
this or another interpretation of Ottoman politics or state. Instead, its
ambition is to offer a rather preliminary description of currents and ideas,
which could serve as an auxiliary framework for the study of political
developments, dynamically interrelating with them.

The term devlet, from “power” to “state”

It was Rifaat Abou-El-Haj who first stressed that the term devlet had neither
“the connotation [nor] the denotation of the modern nation-state” but
rather (conveying a definition by Andreas Tietze) meant up to the seven-
teenth century “the decision-making power of the legitimate head of state
as well as of those to whom he has delegated this power”.10 Recently Nikos
Sigalas studied the semantic development of this word,11 showing that it
only acquired the modern sense of “state” toward the end of the seven-
teenth century.12 Following his analysis, the term (which started its political
career, so to speak, in the Abbasid period with the sense of “luck, good for-
tune”)13 meant clearly “power” or “dynasty”, with strong overtones of “divine
favor”, in the text of Aşıkpaşazade, for instance, and it continued to be
structured around the divine charisma of the ruler throughout the six-
teenth century. Sigalas finds that in Mustafa Ali’s texts, almost a century
later, the devlet is a power particular to the Prince or Sultan, which cannot
in any way be delegated;14 in contrast, from the beginnings of the

10 Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State, pp. 19-20.

11 Sigalas, Nikos, “Devlet et Etat: du glissement sémantique d’un ancien concept du pou-
voir au début du XVIIIe siècle ottoman”, in Byzantina et Moderna: Mélanges en l’honneur
d’Hélène Antoniadis-Bibicou, ed. Gilles Grivaud and Sokratis Petmezas (Athens: Alexandreia,
n.d. [2007]), pp. 385-415; see also Idem, “Des histoires des Sultans à l’histoire de l’Etat. Une
enquête sur le temps du pouvoir ottoman (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles)”, in Les Ottomans et le temps,
ed. François Georgeon and Frédéric Hitzel (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 99-127. Cf. also Doganalp-
Votzi, Heidemarie and Römer, Claudia, Herrschaft und Staat: Politische Terminologie des
Osmanisches Reiches der Tanzimatzeit (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 2008), pp. 171-79.
12 Quentin Skinner showed that in west Europe this procedure took place in the human-
ist circles of France, Italy and England during the sixteenth century, the more abstract
meaning of the term being established toward the end of the same century: Skinner, The
Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. II, pp. 352-8.
13 Lewis, Bernard, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago and London: The University
of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 35-37; Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition, s.v. “Dawla”
(F. Rosenthal).
14 Sigalas, “Devlet et etat”, pp. 392 ff.

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eighteenth century onwards (more or less just after the Treaty of Karlowitz,
which marked the first official recognition of a loss of Ottoman territory),
the use of the term devlet for other states of Europe marks the “desacraliza-
tion” of its notion.
A closer inspection of the use of the term devlet seems to corroborate
Sigalas’s conclusions. In fifteenth-century texts “state” (in our sense of the
word) is usually rendered as saltanat, and always with a highly personal
connotation, as identified with the ruler’s household and palace.15 In
Ahmedî’s history, composed shortly after 1411, the word devlet occurs only
twice. In the one instance, it means clearly “sultanic power, good fortune”
(v. 329: devletine irmesün anun fütûr); in the second, Kastamonu is con-
quered by Bayezid I “because, for him such is the task of the devlet” (v. 264:
böyle olur devlet işi çün ona).16 Here, too, I think we can translate “sultanic
power”; at any rate, there is a strictly personal notion of devlet. In Lütfi
Paşa’s Asafname, written after 1541, the word is still used in the meaning of
“power, good fortune” (devlet-i dünya-yı fâni, ashab-i devlet), even in
ambiguous phrases such as “the death of [the Sultan’s] power/state” (fena-yı
devlet).17 Similar observations can be made concerning the fundamental
work by Kınalızade Ali Çelebi, Ahlak-ı Alai (composed in 1563-65): devlet
means “power” as in “yümn-i sa’adet ü devlet”, or “dynasty” (Devlet-i
Abbasiyye, Çerakise [= Mamluks] evahir-i devletlerinde).18 Among other
works of the late sixteenth century that use devlet in the same context, one
can note the anonymous Hırzü’l-Mülûk (“stronghold [or, amulet] of the

15 See e.g. Mehmed II’s kanunname: Akgündüz, Ahmet, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri ve

Hukukî Tahlilleri, vol I: Osmanlı Hukukuna Giriş ve Fatih Devri Kanunnâmeleri (Istanbul: FEY
Vakfı 1990), p. 326 (“bu kadar ahval-ı saltanata nizam verildi”) and cf. with the famous regula-
tion on fratricide (ibid., p. 328: “her kimesneye evlâdımdan saltanat müyesser ola”).
16 Tâce’d-Dîn İbrâhîm bin Hızır Ahmedî: History of the Kings of the Ottoman Lineage and
Their Holy Raids Against the Infidels, ed. Kemal Silay (Harvard: The Department of Near
Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 2004). On the political thinkers discussed in this paper
see also Lewis, Bernard, “Ottoman observers of Ottoman decline”, Islamic Studies, 1 (1962),
71-87; 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), 217-40; Howard,
Douglas A., “Ottoman historiography and the literature of ‘decline’ of the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries”, Journal of Asian History, 22 (1988), 52-77; Yılmaz, Coşkun, “Osmanlı
Siyaset Düşüncesi Kaynakları ile İlgili Yeni bir Kavramsallaştırma: Islahatnâmeler”, Türkiye
Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi, 1/2 (2003), 299-338.
17 Das Asafname des Lutfi Pascha, nach den Handschriften zu Wien, Dresden und
Konstantinopel, ed. Rudolf Tschudi (Berlin: Majer & Müller, 1910), pp. 6, 13 and 12,
respectively.
18 Kınalızâde Ali Çelebi: Ahlâk-ı Alâî, ed. Mustafa Koç (Istanbul: Klasik, 2007), pp. 452 and
461 respectively.

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 98 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

kings”, written probably around 1574; e.g. “devam-ı devlet ve beka-yı

saltanat”)19 and of course (as Sigalas also does) Mustafa Ali of Gelibolu.20
Even in mid-seventeenth century, a historian like Solakzade could use the
term meaning still “power” or “dynasty”, since (in Rhoads Murphey’s words)
he speaks of the “ten supports which he calls payanda that were responsi-
ble for shoring up the dome of the building of state” (these pillars being, for
example, the maintenance of a defense network or the suppression of law-
lessness in the provinces).21 In the same vein, a “Sunna-minded” (as termed
by its editor, Derin Terzioğlu) treatise dated shortly after 1630 speaks of the
devlet as “a dream and phantasy of the world”, i.e. as dynastic power: “dünya-
nun hâb u hayaldür devleti”.22
However, one of the first instances of devlet meaning “state” can perhaps
also be seen in Kınalızade’s work: he speaks of the “pillars of the state” as
“erkân-ı devlet (siyaset-i erkân-ı devlet ve tevkir ü adalet-i ayan-ı mülk ü
millet”, or elsewhere: “erkân-ı devlet ve ayan-ı memleket”).23 In about the
same period an anonymous work, Kitabu Mesalihi’l-Müslimin ve Menafi’i’l-
Mü’minin (Book on the Proper Courses for Muslims and on the Interests
of the Faithful), seems to ignore devlet and uses instead the word beğlik

19 Yücel, Yaşar, Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilâtına Dair Kaynaklar: Kitâb-i Müstetâb – Kitâbu
Mesâlihi’l-Müslimîn ve Menâfi’i’l-Mü’minîn – Hırzü’l-Mülûk (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu,
1988), p. 175 = Akgündüz, Ahmet, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri ve Hukukî Tahlilleri, vol. VIII: III.
Murad Devri Kanunnâmeleri/III. Mehmed Devri Kanunnâmeleri (İstanbul: Osmanlı
Araştırmaları Vakfı, 1994), p. 36.
20 E.g. Mustafa Ali, Mustafâ ‘Âlî’s Counsel for Sultans of 1581. Text, Transliteration, Notes by
Andreas Tietze, 2 vols. (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1979-1982), vol. I, pp. 38/122 (“bir devlet-i kâmile ve bir sa’adet-i şamile), pp. 39/123; Gelibolulu
Mustafa Âlî, Füsûl-i hall ü Akd ve Usûl-i Harc ü Nakd (İslam Devletleri Tarihi, 622-1599), ed.
Mustafa Demir (Istanbul: Değişim Yayınları, 2006), p. 141.
21 Murphey, Rhoads, “Solakzade’s treatise of 1652: a glimpse at operational principles
guiding the Ottoman state during times of crisis”, in Idem, Essays on Ottoman Historians and
Historiography (Istanbul: Eren, 2009), pp. 43-8 at 46-7. In other instances, however, he seems
to use the term in its “state/society” meaning, like his contemporary Katib Çelebi (ibid.,
pp. 45-6).
22 Terzioğlu, Derin, “Sunna-minded Sufi preachers in service of the Ottoman state: the
Nasîhatnâme of Hasan addressed to Murad IV”, Archivum Ottomanicum, 27 (2010), 241-312 at
p. 284. In other instances (ibid., p. 295 and passim) the term din u devlet is used as a synonym
to “world”, alem (meaning “the Ottoman world/kingdom”: cf. ibid., p. 297: “cemî’ dünya
liman-ı selâmete vâsıl olup”). On this context cf. also Rosenthal, Erwin I. J., Political Thought
in Medieval Islam. An Introductory Outline (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958),
p. 8: “usually the complement of dîn is dunya (this world); dîn means religion, not church,
and is not contrasted with dunya which it comprises”; Watt, W. Montgomery, Islamic Political
Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998 [1st ed. 1968]), p. 29.
23 Koç (ed.), Ahlâk-ı Alâî, pp. 452, 463.

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referring clearly to the state: “matbah eminlerine… beğlikden develer

virülürmüş”.24 Glimpses of a new meaning for devlet, mainly in connection
to “government” or “state apparatus” can be seen in other works of the same
period, which otherwise use constantly the term meaning “power”,
“dynasty” or “kingship”. Hasan Kafi Akhisari, in his famous Usulü’l-Hikem fi
Nizami’l-Alem (Elements of Wisdom for the Order of the World) which he
first composed in Arabic in 1596 and translated into Ottoman Turkish
almost immediately, speaks of the “sultanic power, kingship” as “padişahun
devleti”, or of “the Ottoman dynasty i.e. the House of Osman” (“devlet-i
kahire-i Osmaniyye… ya’ni hazret-i Âl-i Osman”), but, in one instance, he
seems to mean “state apparatus”, as we can deduce from the phrase “ekrem
olanlarun devlete vâsıl olması” (“the intrusion to the state apparatus of the
most generous”).25 A similar sense can be detected in one or two references
by Mustafa Ali, who names available positions and offices as “the food on
the tables of government”, “ni’met-i simat-i devlet”.26 This example may be
considered ambiguous (as many others cited here), but another is much
clearer: namely when he uses a simile of the state as a workshop (“kârhane-
i devlet-i Osmaniye”); the task of securing its functioning as a big water-
wheel; the king as the master (üstad) of the workshop; the vezir as a capable
apprentice (şagird) who can repair the waterwheel.27 By the beginnings of
the seventeenth century, the sense of the term is much closer to that of
“state”: another anonymous work composed around 1620, Kitab-i Müstetab,
speaks of the “high state [of the Ottomans]” in the form that would be

24 Yücel, Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilâtına Dair Kaynaklar, p. 100 (cf. ibid., p. 118). On the dating
of this work see Tezcan, Baki, “The ‘Kânûnnâme of Mehmed II:’ a different perspective”, in
The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilisation, ed. Kemal Çiçek, 4 vols, vol. III, Philosophy, Science
and Institutions (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2000), pp. 657-65.
25 İpşirli, Mehmet, “Hasan Kâfî el-Akhisarî ve Devlet Düzenine Ait Eseri Usûlü’l-Hikem fî
Nizâmi’l-Âlem”, Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi, 10-11 (1979-80), 239-78, at pp. 261, 262 and 256
respectively.
26 Tietze, Counsel for Sultans, I, p. 66/163.
27 The Ottoman Gentleman of the Sixteenth Century: Mustafa Âli’s Mevâ’idü’n-Nefâ’is fî
Kavâ’idi’l-Mecâlis, “Tables of Delicacies Concerning the Rules of Social Gatherings, ed. Douglas
S. Brookes (Harvard: The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 2003),
pp. 59-60 = Gelibolulu Mustafa ‘Âlî ve Mevâ’idü’n-Nefâis fi-Kavâ’ıdi’l-Mecâlis, ed. Mehmet
Şeker (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1997), p. 307. The same simile (“kârhane-i devlet”) is used
in the mid-seventeenth century by Kara Çelebizade Abdülaziz Efendi, Ravzatü’l-Ebrâr Zeyli
(Tahlîl ve Metin), ed. Nevzat Kaya (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2003), p. 213, 214, as well as in
the early 1700s by Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Devlet Adamlarına Öğütler, ed. Hüseyin
Ragıp Uğural (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1987), p. 67.

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common afterwards.28 In the same vein, an anonymous chronicler covering

the period from 1688 till 1704 and apparently belonging, along with Na’ima,
to the circle of Rami Mehmed Paşa, inserts some advice to “the servants of
the Ottoman state” (“devlet-i aliyye hüddâmına”), such as neither to offend
their superiors nor to displease their inferiors;29 he terms this advice “lisan-ı
devlet”, the “language of state” or, as we would say today, of politics.30
At any rate, by the end of seventeenth century it seems that the use of
devlet in the sense of state or “government apparatus” was common enough,
as when Hezarfen Hüseyin Efendi, in his Telhîsü’l-Beyân fî Kavânîn-i Âl-i
Osmân (composed most probably around 1675) writes that “the state was
founded on the religious affairs; in fact, religion is fundamental, while the
state was established as its subdivision” (“devlet umur-ı din üzerine bina
olunup, din asıl, devlet anın fer’i gibi kurulmuşdur”). The author goes on
arguing that the şeyhülislam is the head of religion, the grand vezir the
head of state (“yalnız devlet reisi”), and the sultan the head of both.31 In
this case, the traditional coupling of din ü devlet, which used to denote an

28 Yücel, Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilâtına Dair Kaynaklar, pp. 2, 5 = Akgündüz, Osmanlı

Kanunnâmeleri, IX: I. Ahmed Devri Kanunnâmeleri/II. Osman Devri Kanunnâmeleri (İstanbul:
Osmanlı Araştırmaları Vakfı, 1996), pp. 601, 604 (“devlet-i aliyye umurunda, bu devlet-i aliyy-
enin temeli kazılmak üzeredir, devlet-i aliyyeye ne vechile hidmet idecekleri”), and passim.
Cf. also a similar use in Aziz Efendi (ca. 1630): “would not this matter [reforming the office of
the grand vezir] be most profitable and advantageous for the state” (“Devlet-i Aliyyelerine
nafi ve sudmend”): Kanûn-nâme-i Sultânî li ‘Azîz Efendi. Aziz Efendi’s Book of Sultanic Laws
and Regulations: An Agenda for Reform by a Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Statesman, ed.
Rhoads Murphey (Harvard: The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations,
1985), p. 22/41. Cf. also the formulation by Süleyman Nahifi (1645?-1738) in his Nasihatü’l-
Vüzerâ: an important task for the vezir, he says, is to secure safety and protection in all the
“domains governed by the Exalted State” (“devlet-i aliyye’nin havza-ı hükûmetlerinde”); see
İpşirli, Mehmet, “Nahîfî Süleyman Efendi: Nasihatü’l-Vüzera”, Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi, 15
(1997), 15-28, at p. 22.
29 Özcan, Abdülkadir (ed.), Anonim Osmanlı Tarihi (1099-1116/1688-1704 (Ankara: Türk
Tarih Kurumu, 2000), pp. 53-4; cf. Sariyannis, Marinos, “Ottoman critics of society and state,
fifteenth to early eighteenth centuries: toward a corpus for the study of Ottoman political
thought”, Archivum Ottomanicum, 25 (2008), 127-50 at p. 149.
30 More accurately, he says of a fallen vezir that “although a statesman (devletlü), he had
no knowledge of the language of state”.
31 Hezarfen Hüseyin Efendi: Telhîsü’l-Beyân fî Kavânîn-i Âl-i Osmân, ed. Sevim İlgürel
(Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1998), p. 197; Yılmaz, “Mesrutiyetçi Gelişmeler”, p. 8. An anony-
mous author of the same period, copying Hezarfen, writes that the vezir is head of “his own
state” (“kendi devlet re’isi”), which might show that the term had still strong connotations of
“power”: İpşirli, Mehmet, “Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilâtına Dair bir Eser: Kavânîn-i Osmanî ve
Râbıta-i Âsitâne”, Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi, 14 (1994), 9-35 at p. 33. See also below for a compari-
son with late fifteenth-century formulations.

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 101

inseparable entity uniting religious authority to maintain the Shari’a with

the sultan’s personal rule,32 is broken into its components in a way that
shows clearly the development of the latter term. Significantly, the word
devlet here modifies somehow the traditional formulation as exposed by
al-Gazali who repeatedly stated that religion (din) and kingship (mulk, sul-
tan) are inseparable twins, with the former being the essential basis (asl)
and the latter its guardian.33 Hezarfen’s formulation, thus, may be the clear-
est example of the transformation of the term to something distinct from
the ruler’s personal or dynastic power.

State, community, commonwealth

As observed again by Sigalas, a turning point in the history of the term

comes with Kâtib Çelebi’s Düsturü’l-Amel li Islahi’l-Halel (Guiding Principles
for the Correction of Defects).34 Indeed, Katib Çelebi begins his tract by
stating that “[the word] devlet, which [originally] meant saltanat and mülk,
according to another view consists of the human society (“ictima-ı
beşeriyeden ibaretdir”);35 using this definition he proceeds to develop his
version of the Ibn Khaldunian theory of state stages. This may be the first
instance of the cyclist theory systematically expounded in Ottoman
thought;36 however, while Ibn Khaldun spoke of the life-stages of a dynasty

32 Cf. the definition by Andreas Tietze, as conveyed by Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the

Modern State, p. 19: “The phrase din u devlet (religion and state) refers perhaps to the general
climate produced by this [decision-making] power in the community under the aspect of
perpetuating itself”. On the prehistory of this coupling cf. Lambton, Ann K. S., State and
Government in Medieval Islam. An Introduction to the Study of Islamic Political Theory: The
Jurists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 108 and elsewhere.
33 Laoust, Henri, La politique de Gazâlî (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1970), pp. 197 and 237.
Al-Gazali’s statement is based on a hadith that couples din with (alternatively) mulk, sultan
or dawla, the latter here meaning “(‘secular’) power” (Rosenthal, Political Thought in
Medieval Islam, p. 8).
34 Sigalas, “Devlet et etat”, pp. 400-5. For Katib Çelebi’s text see Ayn-ı Ali Efendi, Kavânîn-i
Âl-i Osman der Hülâsa-i Mezâmin-i Defter-i Divan (repr. İstanbul: Enderun Kitabevi, 1978),
pp. 119-40; Turkish translation in Gökyay, Orhan Şaik, Kâtib Çelebi’den Seçmeler (Istanbul:
Milli Eğitim Basımevi, 1968), pp. 154-61.
35 Cf. later on, “the present community of men, which consists of the state”, “insanın dev-
letden ibaret olan ictima-i hâli”. Bernard Lewis ignores these definitions, I think, when he
states that by “human states” Katib Çelebi “clearly means dynasties” (Lewis, The Political
Language of Islam, p. 24).
36 In a less systematic form such views may be found in Mustafa Ali’s work; cf. Fleischer,
Cornell, “Royal authority, dynastic cyclism and ‘Ibn Khaldunism’ in sixteenth century
Ottoman letters”, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 18/3-4 (1983), 198-220.

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 102 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

using the same term (dawla),37 Katib Çelebi explicitly uses the term in his
new definition, as “society” or “community”. Sigalas shows that this trans-
formation of meaning corresponds to a double conceptual and structural
change, namely the transformation of the concept of “power” to that of
“community”, in the one hand, and the secularization of the concept of
“power”, now founded on the society instead of the ruler’s charisma.38 Here,
however, one has to remark (along with Sigalas) that Katib Çelebi’s use of
the term as “society” seems rather isolated in the long run, although we will
meet similar uses in Mustafa Na’imâ or İbrahim Müteferrika’s work. Indeed,
Na’imâ talks of “a devlet that is properly conducted” (“nizam verilen dev-
let”);39 in this instance, the term could mean either “state, government” or
society in general. Moreover, although he uses in many instances the term
in the sense of “power” or “dynasty”, he also reiterates Katib Çelebi’s analy-
sis on the state as “human community” and speaks of the stages in the life
of “states or communities” (“her devlet ü cemiyyetin hali”); elsewhere he
seems to use umur-ı cumhur interchangeably, that is “affairs of the people,
common affairs”, and umur-ı devlet.40 In a now famous apostrophe on the
alleged plans of Çalık Ahmed Ağa during the 1703 rebellion, Naima says that
he wished “to turn the Ottoman state, ruled for four centuries by kings, into
a popular assembly and a state of crowds, like the polities of Algiers or
Tunis” (“istiklâl-i mülûk ile mazbut ve muntazam olan devlet-i Osmaniye’yi…

37 Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam, pp. 87-90; cf. ibid., p. 229. Ibn Khaldun’s
first translator to Ottoman Turkish, Pirizade Mehmed Sahib Efendi (1730), uses the alterna-
tive forms mülk ü devlet and devlet ü saltanat, with devlet clearly meaning dynasty or power,
as in: “mülûk ü selâtin ibtida-yı zuhûr-ı devlette”: ed. Yavuz Yıldırım, İbn Haldun: Mukaddime
Osmanlı Tercümesi. Mütercim Pîrîzâde Mehmed Sâhib (Istanbul: Klasik, 2008), vol. I, p. 334
and passim (cf. also the treatment of territories split over various dynasties: ibid., vol. II,
p. 167-9). In Pirizade’s translation, the term mülk ü saltanat is closer to what can be called
“the state”, as in the famous quote that “royal authority means superiority and the power to
rule by force… [it] is a goal to which group feeling leads”: “mülk ü saltanat rütbe-i riyasetten
ecell ü â’lâ olup… rical beyninde emr ü nehyini kahr u galebe ile tenfîz ü icraya kadirdir…
mülk ü saltanat asabiyyetin gayet ü nihayeti olduğu sabit ü zahir oldu” (ibid., I, p. 275; cf.
Baali, Fuad, Society, State, and Urbanism: Ibn Khaldun’s Sociological Thought (New York:
State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 53; Rosenthal, Franz, Ibn Khaldun: The
Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History, ed. and abridged by Nessim J. Dawood (Princeton:
Bollingen Foundation, 1967), p. 108).
38 Cf. also Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire, pp. 60-1.
39 Naima, Tarih, VI, appendix, p. 53; İpşirli, Tarih-i Na’ima, p. 1888; Thomas, Lewis V.,
A Study in Naima, ed. Norman Itzkowitz (New York: New York University Press, 1972), p. 87.
40 Naima, Tarih, I, pp. 27 (“human community”), 34 (“states or communities”) and 53
(“tedbir-i umur-ı cumhura mübaşir olan hall ü akd erbabı”); İpşirli, Tarih-i Na’îmâ, pp. 21, 26
and 39, respectively.

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 103

cumhur cemiyyeti ve tecemmu’ devleti kıyafetine koyup”).41 Not much

later, in 1732, İbrahim Müteferrika speaks of “the edifice of the state or the
building of the commonwealth” (“bünyan-ı devlet ve bina-i cumhur-ı cemi-
yet”; it is worth noting that for “commonwealth” he uses the same term,
cumhur-ı cemiyet, that for Naima denotes – rather reproachfully, as shown
by the expression kıyafetine koyup – a kind of democracy), while he enu-
merates the three ways of government (monarchy, oligarchy and democ-
racy) as devlets (with saltanat in the meaning of “power”, e.g. for English- or
Flemish-styled democracy: “saltanat tedbir-i reayanın olmak gerekdir… bu
üslûb üzere olan devlete “dîmukrâsiyâ” derler”).42 In the above last exam-
ples, it can be seen how Katib Çelebi’s definition of the term functions as a
bridge, so to speak, between the meaning “power, dynasty” and that of
“state apparatus, government” and eventually “state, nation”. A society has
to be governed, and its well-being is identified with the good functioning of
its government: this line of thought facilitated, it may be said, the semantic
transition toward the development of the notion of “state” as such.
It is all too natural that when one tries to give a European-styled transla-
tion of the word in the examples above, some confusion is evident. However,
other instances are perhaps clearer for the argument I am trying to make.
For one thing, Naima uses also the term in the plural for foreign states.43
This development, which must be connected with the treaty of Karlowitz
where the Ottoman sultan recognized for the first time officially a loss of
territory,44 was quite an innovation. For instance, an anonymous tract

41 Naima, Tarih, VI, Appendix, p. 34; İpşirli, Tarih-i Na’îmâ, p. 1877. Cf. Kafadar, Cemal,
“Janissaries and other riffraff of Ottoman Istanbul: rebels without a cause?”, in Identity and
Identity Formation in the Ottoman World: A Volume of Essays in Honor of Norman Itzkowitz, ed
Baki Tezcan and Karl K. Barbir (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), pp. 113-34 at
133; Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire, pp. 223-4. Kafadar notes the difficulty on translat-
ing these terms: “Any literal translation of this term ([cumhur cemiyyeti], popular assembly?)
is hazardous since the word “cumhur” was used in several meanings including a rebellious
crowd (rather than the whole population)”. Writing in 1785, Süleyman Penah Efendi com-
plained that provincial notables give and take the provinces “as if they had inherited them
from their fathers”, since they constitute “a kind of assembly” (“hükkâm ve ayan ve
kocabaşıyan bir cumhur misillü olub memleketler mevrûs-i pederleri gibi alub viriyorlar”):
see Berker, Aziz, “Mora İhtilâli Tarihçesi Veya Penah Efendi Mecmuası, 1769”, Tarih Vesikaları
2 (1942-1943), fasc. 7: 63-80, 8: 153-60, 9: 228-40, 10: 309-20, 11: 385-400, 12 473-80, at fasc. 10,
p. 318.
42 İbrahim Müteferrika ve Usûlü’l-Hikem fî Nizâmi’l-Ümem, ed. Adil Şen (Ankara: Türkiye
Diyanet Vakfı, 1995), pp. 130-1. Cf. Berkes, The Development of Secularism, pp. 42-3.
43 Sigalas, “Devlet et état”, pp. 404 ff.
44 Cf. Abou-El-Haj, Rifaat Ali, The 1703 Rebellion and the Structure of Ottoman Politics
(Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1984), pp. 22, 36, 72ff;
Thomas, A Study of Naima, pp. 66-8, 80-82.

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 104 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

composed probably toward the end of seventeenth century, speaks of

Mehmed II’s reign as “the first period of the state/dynasty” (“devlet evve-
linde”), but it stills does not consider European states as such, naming them
“Christian kings” as opposed to the “Exalted State” (“devlet-i aliyyede Nasâra
kırallarından birer balyoz… vardır”).45 By 1732, İbrahim Müteferrika talks
freely of the “states” of France or Spain (“Fransa devleti ile İspanya dev-
leti”),46 although he prefers to refer to the Christian “countries” or “kings”
(“milel-i Nasâra”, “mülûk-ı Nasâra”; the word milel [pl. of millet] here is
clearly meaning “countries” rather than “religious affiliations”); toward the
turn of the century, a pro-Selim III author speaks of “the Exalted State and
the other seven climes” (“Devlet-i Aliyye’de ve sair ekalim-i seb’ada”).47 This
meaning (the “empire”, rather than its governing apparatus) was common
by the end of the seventeenth century, as attested by Meninski’s dictionary
(1681).48 By the first decades of the nineteenth century, devlet had come to
mean the state as an abstraction (a meaning resembling now “nation” or
“country”), while “government” was then described as hükumet.49

The ruler versus society

As seen above, the notion of “state” seems to be absent in Ottoman litera-

ture until at least the late sixteenth century. Nonetheless, a perception of

45 İpşirli, “Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilâtına Dair bir Eser”, pp. 23 and 31; cf. also ibid., p. 33.
46 Şen, Usûlü’l-Hikem, p. 177. The use of devlet as “state” by Müteferrika is clear in phrases
like “people who live within the area of a state” (“bir devletin saha-yı dairesinde mevcud
efrad-ı nas”): ibid., p. 152.
47 Nizâm-ı Cedîde Dâir Bir Risâle: Zebîre-i Kuşmânî fî Ta’rîf-i Nizâm-ı İlhâmî, ed. Ömer
İşbilir (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu 2006), p. 43. Cf. the expression “devlet-i aliyyeyi dahi
düvel-i nasâra kavaidine irca” in the more official Hüccet-i Şer’iyye of 1807: Beydilli, “Hüccet-i
Şer’iyye”.
48 After citing the initial meaning of “fortune, luck”, Meninski notes also “Regnum,
Imperium / Staat, Herrschaft, Königreich, Reich / Regno, imperio, stato / Royaume, Empire,
Estat”: Meninski, Franciscus à Mesgnien, Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium Turcicae –
Arabicae – Persicae / Lexicon Turcico-Arabico-Persicum [Vienna 1680 (repr. Istanbul: Simurg,
2000)], vol. II, pp. 2185-8.
49 Lewis, The Political Language of Islam, p. 37; Doganalp-Votzi and Römer, Herrschaft
und Staat, pp. 154-7 and 160-2. Lewis argues that the “first unambiguous occurrence of the
new meaning [hükumet as “government”] that has so far come to light is in a Turkish memo-
randum of about 1837”. However, the Ottoman texts of the constitution of the Ionian State
(1800), translated from Italian, have hükumet for government (“senato ta’bir olınur hükûmet”)
and cumhur for state: see Nikiphorou, Aliki (ed.), Συνταγματικά κείμενα των Ιονίων Νήσων
[Constitutional Texts of the Ionian Islands] (Athens: Idryma tes Voules ton Hellenon, 2008),

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 105

society was of course always present, and it would be highly interesting to

study what was its relation to the ruler; in other words, was the king/sultan
conceived as a divinely ordained power outside (or above) society, or do we
have a certain notion of the ruler being elected in some way from among
the society? In medieval Persian society, notes Roy Mottahedeh, the king
“did not keep [people] in their places by virtue of his position at the top of
the social hierarchy. Rather, he did so as an outsider, the man who was
above categories and their associated hierarchies”.50 This medieval ideol-
ogy clearly influenced the classical tradition of political theory, but one
would expect a change in the latter reflecting changes in early modern
society and state.
A starting point for this analysis could be the comparison between vari-
ous formulations of the famous theory of the “circle of justice”. Linda T.
Darling notes that the Arabic version of the “circle of justice” described the
“hedged garden” of the world as a pasture for sheep (with the subjects,
reaya, being the “flock”) and the king as a shepherd who kept the army in its
corner, while in Davvani’s Persian version, developed in the Akkoyunlu
state, “kings ruled over a bounded world, not a pasture but an irrigated gar-
den in an urban, even a palatial, setting”.51 Davvani’s formulation is reiter-
ated by Kınalızade Ali, who speaks of the “sultanic power” as the fence of
the world-garden, the Holy Law as the power’s regulator, and the sover-
eignty or kingship (mülk) as the “watchman” of the Holy Law, which has to
be manned by people through justice (“cihan bir bağdır divarı devlet / dev-
letin nâzımı şeriattir / şeriate olamaz hiç hâris illâ mülk”).52 In Mustafa Ali’s
formulation, the garden simile is implied and the emphasis is put on the

p. 709. Meninski’s dictionary, at the end of the seventeenth century, has an intermediate
meaning of “dominium, jurisdictio, imperium, seu ipsum imperare, aut imperium exercere,
regimen absolutum, principatus / Dominio, padronanza, giurisdittione, commando,
governo assoluto, autorità, & Principato” (Meninski, Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium, I,
pp. 1793-4).
50 Mottahedeh, Roy, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (London – New
York: I. B. Tauris, 2001 [1st ed. 1980]), p. 178.
51 Darling, “Political change and political discourse”, p. 516. On the “circle of justice”
cf. Eadem, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the
Ottoman Empire, 1560-1660 (Leiden – New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 283-9. On Persian con-
tinuations of the simile of the king to a shepherd cf. Lambton, Ann K. S., “Justice in the
medieval Persian theory of kingship”, Studia Islamica, 17 (1962), 91-119, now in Eadem, Theory
and Practice in Medieval Persian Government (London: Variorum Reprints, 1980) at p. 94. On
the garden simile in the works of Razi (d. 1209) and Ibn Khaldun cf. Eadem, State and
Government in Medieval Islam, p. 137.
52 Koç (ed.), Ahlâk-ı Alâî, p. 539.

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 106 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

king in person (sultan), rather than on his power.53 The “pastoral” compari-
son is still alive in texts such as Hasan’s treatise to Murad IV, where the sul-
tan is compared to the shepherd, “his slaves” to lambs, and unjust judges
and officers to wolves.54 Katib Çelebi cites just the Arabic dictum, focusing
on “kingship” (“mülk”),55 while Naima, who does not use the garden simile
either, speaks of “mülk ü devlet”.56 On the other hand, it has already been
noted that the sultan as person had by mid-sixteenth century “largely
retreated from [many authors’] conceptions of justice and the social reality
it tendered” and that justice was viewed more as a “generalizable marker of
the status quo, representing stability via social hierarchy” rather than “a
personal quality emanating from the ruler”.57 Notions of the king as liable
to (divine, at least) punishment for failing to meet these standards are not
absent from Ottoman texts, not to mention political practice.58

The body metaphor: the king as head or heart of society

Another tradition concerning the relationship of kings to society took its

metaphors from various Islamic interpretations of the human body and

53 Mustafa Ali, Mustafâ ‘Âli’s Description of Cairo of 1599. Text, Transliteration, Notes by
Andreas Tietze (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1975),
p. 80.
54 Terzioğlu, “Sunna-minded Sufi preachers”, p. 295 (“Allah… seni coban eyledi kulları
koyuncuklarına. Bu kurdları gendi haline korsanuz beş on ra’iyyen kaldı”). In the same text,
the circle of justice is implied by the phrase, “are you then to fill the treasury from the air?”
(“hazine’i havadan mı cem’ idersin sonra?”).
55 Ayn-ı Ali Efendi, Kavânîn-i Âl-i Osman, p. 124; Gökyay, Kâtib Çelebi’den Seçmeler, p. 156.
56 Naima, Tarih, I, p. 37; İpşirli, Tarih-i Na’ima, p. 30. Cf. also Naima, Tarih, VI, p. 152; İpşirli,
Tarih-i Na’îmâ, p. 1653 (“padişah kul ile, kul hazine ile, hazine reayadan hasıl olur”). On the
various formulations of the “circle of equity” in Ottoman literature see also Fleischer, “Royal
authority, dynastic cyclism and ‘Ibn Khaldunism’”, p. 201.
57 Ferguson, Heather, “Genres of power: constructing a discourse of decline in Ottoman
nasihatname”, Osmanlı Araştırmaları, 35 (2010), 81-116 at pp. 97-8. The gradual abandonment
of moralist approaches in Ottoman political thought fits well with this “institution-
centered” development: see Sariyannis, Marinos, “The princely virtues as presented in
Ottoman political and moral literature”, forthcoming in Turcica, 43 (2011).
58 Mustafa Ali, for instance, is implying such a view in his history of Islamic dynasties: see
Demir (ed.), Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, Füsûl-i hall ü Akd ve Usûl-i Harc ü Nakd, passim. Similar
views were expounded in early nineteenth-century Iran: see Lambton, A. K. S., “Some new
trends in Islamic political thought in late 18th and early 19th century Persia”, Studia Islamica,
39 (1974), 95-128, at pp. 116 ff. On political praxis suffice to note the fetvas allowing sultans
to be deposed (a famous example is the 1703 rebellion: Özcan, Anonim Osmanlı Tarihi, pp.
241-2; Abou-El-Haj, The 1703 Rebellion, pp. 71-2; Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire, p. 221).

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 107

soul. This body metaphor goes back to al-Farabi, according to whom (in the
words of Erwin I. J. Rosenthal):59
“[t]he members of the body are designed and arranged in a hierarchy; the
highest is the chief (ra’îs), that is, the heart; the rank of the lower members is
determined by their nearness or remoteness from the heart. Those members
nearest to the heart both rule and are ruled, those farthest removed from the
head only serve, but all are united in serving the purpose of the heart. It is the
same with the state; when all parts of the state serve the purpose of the chief
or ruler, we have the ideal state, madîna fâdila.
Al-Farabi considered the heart as the ruling organ, “followed in rank by the
brain, which is also a ruling organ, its supremacy, however, not being pri-
mary but secondary: it is ruled by the heart and rules over all the other
organs and limbs”.60 One is tempted to suppose that similes of the king to
the brains, not to the heart (and there are such instances in Ottoman litera-
ture), imply that there is another, still higher source of social authority,
namely the ulema (al-Farabi himself clearly identified the ruler with the
heart); however, as it will be seen, a certain confusion in Ottoman formula-
tions of this metaphor make this hypothesis dubious.
In his Kanun-i Şehinşahi, composed in Persian during the reign of Selim I,
İdris b. Hüsameddîn Bitlisî states that the sultan is like the head in the
body, or the brains in the head; elsewhere, the king is paralleled to
the heart, while the vezir is the intellect.61 Now, in the first simile, where the
king has the place of the head within the kingdom, the head and the brains
constitute two separate powers, the first controlling perception and the
second movement. The motive power (kuvve-i muharrike) corresponds to
the army, the people of the sword, while the power of perception (kuvve-i
hassa) corresponds to the people of the pen; these two powers must be
kept in balance by the head and brain, i.e. the sultan. Toward the end of
the sixteenth century, the same simile is used by Hasan Kafi Akhisari,
who writes that kings are to the other people (“sair halk-ı âlem”) as the heart
is to the body; their [spiritual] health guarantees the health of the whole

59 Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam, p. 127; cf. Richard Walzer (ed.), Al-Farabi
on the Perfect State. Abû Nasr al-Fârâbî’s Mabâdi’ ârâ’ ahl al-madîna al-fâdila. A Revised Text
with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 231 ff.
(and p. 435 on al-Farabi’s neo-Platonic precursors).
60 Walzer, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State, p. 175.
61 Akgündüz, Ahmet, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri ve Hukukî Tahlilleri, 3. Kitap: Yavuz Sultan
Selim Devri Kanunnâmeleri (İstanbul: FEY Vakfı, 1991), pp. 32-3. In the same simile, the tax
collector (tahsildar) corresponds to desire and “guards”, i.e. the military, to anger (ibid., p. 21).

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 108 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

body.62 In about the same period, Mustafa Ali argues that “king and
subjects, especially army leaders and statesmen, all constitute one
organism (“padişah u reaya, hususan ümera vu vükelâ nefs-i vahid men-
zilesinde olub”), serving [the king] in various ways, at times as his seeing
eyes, his grasping hand… at times as his speaking tongue or his walking
foot”.63
These metaphors of the king as heart or brains of a body continue well
into the seventeenth century, as when the anonymous Kitab-i Müstetab
says somehow ambiguously that the sultan is like a glorious bird of the
spirit of the world, whose body are the wise ulema; its right wing is the
grand vezir, and its left one the kapı ağası of the sultan’s harem.64 Even
Katib Çelebi takes the metaphor of the state or more correctly society
(“heyet-i ictimaîyye-i beşeriye”)65 as a human body in order to argue for a
well-known analysis of the structure of the society. In this analysis he states
that “the sultan is the human reason, the vezir the power of intellect, the
şeyhülislam the power of perception and the other classes the four humours”
(“nefs-i natıka Sultan ve kuvvet-i âkıle vezir ve müdrike müfti ve ahlat-ı
erbaa sair esnaf makamında oldığı”).66 This analysis does not correspond
point-to-point to any of the known Islamic descriptions of human psychol-
ogy; rather, it uses quasi-randomly some features from one description and
some of the other, in order to convey the author’s message.67 Earlier on,
Katib Çelebi makes the ulema the equivalent of the “animal soul” (“ruh-ı
hayvanî”), which might reinforce the hypothesis that he meant the sultan

62 İpşirli, “Hasan Kâfî el-Akhisarî”, p. 252.

63 Tietze, Counsel for Sultans, I, p. 25 = 100-1.
64 Yücel, Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilâtına Dair Kaynaklar, pp. 25-7 = Akgündüz, Osmanlı
Kanunnâmeleri, IX, pp. 625-6.
65 Ayn-ı Ali Efendi, Kavânîn-i Âl-i Osman, p. 124; Gökyay, Kâtib Çelebi’den Seçmeler, p. 157.
66 Ayn-ı Ali Efendi, Kavânîn-i Âl-i Osman, p. 133; Gökyay, Kâtib Çelebi’den Seçmeler, p. 159.
67 Kınalızade Ali speaks of the “soul” or “human reason” (“ruh”, “nefs-i natıka”). Human
reason or soul is composed by three components, namely the “vegetable soul” or spirit of
growth (“nefs-i nebatî”), the “animal soul” or spirit of life (“nefs-i hayvanî”), and the “human
soul” (“nefs-i insanî”). Kınalızade explains their respective “powers” or faculties in his
Introduction: the “power of perception” belongs to the “animal soul”, while the “power of
intellect” is a power of the “human soul” (Koç, Ahlâk-ı Alâî, p. 52-94). Tursun Bey, drawing
from Nasireddin Tusi, mentions the human reason (“kuvvet-i natıka, nefs-i melekî”) as one
of the faculties of the human spirit, the other two being the faculty of wrath or passion
(“kuvvet-i gazabî”, “nefs-i sebui”), moderated by the power of intelligence (“nefs-i âkıle”), and
the faculty of lust or appetite (“kuvve-i şehvani, nefs-i behimî”), moderated by intelligence.
See Tursun Bey: Târîh-i Ebü’l-feth, ed. Mertol Tulum (Istanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1977), pp. 16-17,
and cf. Sariyannis, “The princely virtues”.

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 109

to be the “human soul”.68 At any rate, all these metaphors were current
among Ottoman theorists, who wished to stress the idea of the sultan rul-
ing over the social classes as a corollary of the composition of the human
body and soul.69 In the same vein, the ruler himself, or rather his soul,
should first and foremost have control over his own body.70

The place of the ruler within Ottoman class theory

Now, a more elaborate perception of society as a system of “classes” (the

term corresponding more or less to the English or French estates) was
already in use in classical Persian political literature. In its commonest
form this perception sees society as an assembly of four pillars, namely
ulema, military, merchants and artisans, and peasants. A typical expounder
of this view in Ottoman literature is Kınalızade, who states that societies
(temeddün) are a composition and arrangement of various classes and
communities (tavaif, ümem). Now, in the beginning of each state (or
dynasty: “her devletin ibtidası”) a class gets a unanimous agreement (pre-
sumably, on its aims and interests) and thus becomes strong; a small but
united class prevails over larger but fractioned ones. It is evident that any
ruling class (“her taife ki bir devletin ashabıdır”) is very small in numbers in
comparison to its subjects (“reayasına”); it prevails on them, however,
because of its strength in unity and mutual assistance (ittifak u teavün). On
the contrary, whenever such a ruling class was divided by fractions and dis-
agreement, its power declined.71 In Kınalızâde’s perception, thus, the ruler
is placed almost in the margin of the analysis, since he uses a more ‘Ibn
Khaldunian’ view of “ruling class” dominating the society, although it is
clear that he considers the king to be the head of this class.72 When he next

68 Ayn-ı Ali Efendi, Kavânîn-i Âl-i Osman, p. 125; Gökyay, Kâtib Çelebi’den Seçmeler, p. 156
(Gökyay translates here nefs-i natıka, i.e. the sultan, as ruh-ı insanî). Kınalızade Ali speaks of
the nefs-i natıka as identical with the human soul, nefs-i insanî or ruh (Koç, Ahlâk-ı Alâî,
p. 63).
69 Cf. Tezcan, “Ethics as a domain to discuss the political”; Sariyannis, “The princely
virtues”.
70 Terzioğlu, “Sunna-minded Sufi preachers”, p. 285 (“Hünkârım… vücudun saltanatına
malik ol… ruh-ı sultana haber it”).
71 Koç, Ahlâk-ı Alâî, pp. 479 ff.
72 Kınalızade does not mention Ibn Khaldun anywhere, but this description does not
seem to originate from any of his known sources. According to Fleischer, “Royal authority,
dynastic cyclism and ‘Ibn Khaldunism’, p. 199 and 201, the circulation of Ibn Khaldun’s work
in the Ottoman world cannot be established for before the beginnings of the seventeenth

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 110 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

proceeds to examine the conditions (or prerequisites, şürut) that ensure

the ruler’s justice, he emphasizes that all people are treated equally (“cümle
halaikı mütesavi tuta”), since men’s relation to the world is like the four ele-
ments (the author draws from Devvani, and then describes the traditional
four “elements of the world”, “anasır-ı beden-i âlem”).73 As we shall also see
below, this four-fold analysis of society is reiterated by many other authors,
among which Katib Çelebi and İbrahim Müteferrika, who argues that the
task of protecting those four “pillars of the state” belongs to the kings and
sultans (“bu cümlenin zimamı eyadi-i mülûk ve selâtine teslim oluna”), in
the same time including the latter to the askeri class.74
Indeed, it is interesting to note that in some texts the king himself is
explicitly made a member of the society, instead of being a kind of gardener
or shepherd ordained from outside. This view fits well with the notion of
“desacralisation” of kingly power, noticed also above as far as it concerns
the shifting meanings of the word devlet. A king belonging to the social
structure himself is arguably nearer to the early modern concept of state-
hood and kingship than one ordained by God from outside society.
In Persian political theory, such a view can be seen in a seventeenth-
century work, Muhammad Mufid’s Camii Mufidi, where sultans belong to
the same class with viziers and other high officials.75 Undoubtedly, how-
ever, similar views can be found even earlier. Akhisari, innovative in many
other ways as well, states that propagation of mankind comes with social
intercourse, which comes with property (mal), which comes with custom
(teamül), that is dealing with each other (“muamele ve alış-viriş”). To attain
this aim, certain rules are needed, so God divided people to four categories

century, and “there is no evidence to support Na’ima’s supposition that Kınalızâde read Ibn
Khaldûn” (although Fleischer refers to the “circle of justice” scheme, which Kınalızade,
according to Naima, copied from Ibn Khaldun).
73 Koç, Ahlâk-ı Alâî, pp. 485-6; on Devvani’s formulation see Rosenthal, Political Thought
in Medieval Islam, p. 220.
74 Şen, Usûlü’l-Hikem, p. 153. For an early nineteenth-century specimen of the quatri-
fold theory see e.g. Şâni-zâde Mehmed ‘Atâ’ullah Efendi: Şânî-zâde târîhi [Osmanlı tarihi
(1223-1237 / 1808-1821)], ed. Ziya Yılmazer (Istanbul: Çamlıca, 2008), vol. I, p. 481.
75 The other three classes are (a) the ulema; (b) land-owners, merchants and skilled
craftsmen; and (c) artisans, other craftsmen and workmen. Lambton, A. K. S., “Quis custodiet
custodies. Some reflections on the Persian theory of government”, pt. II, Studia Islamica,
6 (1956), 125-46 (now in Eadem, Theory and Practice in Medieval Persian Government), at
pp. 137-8. However, elsewhere Lambton omits the kings from the first class (“the chief mili-
tary and civil officials and the court”: Eadem, “Islamic society in Persia”, an inaugural lecture,
School of Oriental and African Studies (London 1954; now in Eadem, Theory and Practice in
Medieval Persian Government), p. 4. Lambton notes that in Mufid’s exposition “the leading
military and civil officials are placed together in the first class”.

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 111

(bölük, sınıf): the men of the sword, the men of the pen, the cultivators,
finally the artisans and merchants. Then God ordained kings and rulers
(“padişahlık ve beğlik itdiler”), to possess and control (“tasarruf idüp”, “zabt
eylemeği”) these four categories. However, when describing the first group,
i.e. the military, Akhisari includes kings, together with vezirs, officials and
soldiers, their purpose being to keep all four classes under control with jus-
tice and mild administration (adalet, hüsn-i siyaset).76 This somehow
awkward contradiction, with kings (and other administrators) controlling
themselves as well as the rest of society, is perhaps due to Akhisari’s con-
cern to apply classical Persian notions of political theory under the light of
his ulema background. The same background can perhaps be seen in a note
containing hadiths and other material, which was added in 1652/3 to one
manuscript containing Kitab-i Müstetab.77 The note asserts that God
divided humanity in five (not four) groups, adding kings as a group who
practices justice and equity to the whole of society. It might not be a coin-
cidence that both texts come from the same background, as it may be con-
vincingly argued that ulema as a class felt more and more self-confident
and strong throughout the seventeenth century.78 This intermediary view,
however, where kings are a separate class just like in the appendix of Kitab-i
Müstetab, can be also seen in the early nineteenth-century historian Asim:
after mentioning the traditional four-fold division, he adds that according
to some thinkers the four pillars of the state are (a) the ulema and scribes,
(b) the warriors, (c) the reaya and (d) the sultans, who constitute the soul
(nefs-i natıka) of the other classes.79 At any rate, the inclusion of kings to
the four or five classes or “pillars” seems to have found its way to the stan-
dard inventory of political ideas in the next centuries. İbrahim Müteferrika,
for instance, stresses that from among the four classes, that of the “men of
the sword” is the greatest, and that it comprises “kings and sultans, their
regents the ministers and vezirs, the provincial governors, other officers
and in general the military classes”.80

76 İpşirli, “Hasan Kâfî el-Akhisarî”, p. 251.

77 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri, IX, p. 640.
78 Cf. Tezcan, Baki, “Some thoughts on the politics of early modern Ottoman science”,
in Beyond Dominant Paradigms in Ottoman and Middle Eastern/North African Studies.
A Tribute to Rifa’at Abou-El-Haj, ed. Donald Quataert and Baki Tezcan (Istanbul: ISAM, 2010),
pp. 135-56.
79 Asim, Tarih (Istanbul 1874), 2:8-9, as quoted in Berkes, Niyazi, Türkiye’de Çağdalaşma,
ed. Ahmet Kuyaş (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yay., 2002), pp. 114-15.
80 See Şen, Usûlü’l-Hikem, p. 153 (“bunlar mülûk ve selâtîn ve anların nüvvâbı vükelâ ve
vüzerâ ve mîr-i mirân ve sair zabitân ve bi’l-cümle tavâyıf-ı asâkirdir”).

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 112 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

Ruler and state: The emergence of the central bureaucracy

In the examples mentioned above, the notion of “king” seems to be used as

identical with what we could now call “state” or “government”. From a soci-
ological point of view, so to speak, no distinction is made between the ruler
as such and the apparatus he uses to exert his dominion. However, as we
also saw in the first section of this paper, a use of the term devlet corre-
sponding to “state apparatus” had come to be common enough by the end
of the seventeenth century, as the sultan was increasingly losing more and
more possibilities of personal power against the decisions of both adminis-
trative and financial bureaucracy. Rhoads Murphey states that “[i]f the
state and the sultan were not co-terminus entities, then they came closer to
being so in the Ottoman society of the high imperial era than in any con-
temporary state”;81 however, I think that a notion of “state” or “government”
as distinct from the ruler may be discerned by the second half of the seven-
teenth century. In the md-seventeenth century, Kara Çelebizade Abdülaziz
Efendi could argue that sultans must take from “the state treasury” (beytül-
mal) only their portion in order to cover their eating and dressing expenses
by reverting to no less than Caliph Umar’s example: the Caliph, he main-
tains, used candles from the public treasury (“beytülmalden”) when he was
working overnight for state businesses (“mesalih-i mülk-i millet”), but from
his personal property when working on his own matters.82 The argument is
old, as we will see also below, but the phrasing is telling.
Indeed, there are some signs that, independently of the meaning of dev-
let, Ottoman political authors were conscious of this distinction long before
its semantic development. A text from the early 1630s speaks explicitly of
the financial bureaucracy (kalem) and its know-how (rakam) as a collective
entity that is “the eye to the affairs of kingship, the treasury of kings” (“bu
umur-ı saltanata göz kalem / padişahlarun hazinesi rakam”), a hidden trea-
sure and its alchemy, on the one hand, but also –if not reformed– the arch-
enemy of the dynasty and the destruction of the realm (“al-i Osmana büyük
düşmen kalem / din [ü] devleti yıkan ekser rakam”), on the other.83 In an

81 Murphey, Rhoads, Exploring Ottoman Sovereignty. Tradition, Image and Practice in the
Ottoman Imperial Household, 1400-1800 (London – New York: Continuum, 2008), p. 87. By
“high imperial era” he means the period from 1480 to 1826 (ibid., p. 5).
82 Kara Çelebizade Abdülaziz Efendi, Ravzatü’l-Ebrâr Zeyli, p. 218; copied almost verba-
tim half a century later by Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Devlet Adamlarına Öğütler, p. 73.
On this view see also below.
83 Terzioğlu, “Sunna-minded Sufi preachers”, pp. 306-8.

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 113

even earlier (and clearer) example, Mustafa Ali, as again mentioned above,
uses the simile of the state as a workshop, with the king as its master:
To ensure that the workshop known as the Ottoman state (kârhane-i devlet-i
Osmaniye), or the foundation of the Seljuk or Samanid sultanates, should not
suffer damage through bribery, and that those great wheels of fortune con-
tinue to turn according to their established rules (…) learned persons have
compared this heavy task to that great revolving wheel (…) [B]y using intelli-
gent and learned persons (…) one will ensure that the operation of that work-
shop and its regular functioning will be secured and guaranteed for months
and years.
However, whenever the foundation of the state (bir devletün esası) is dam-
aged so that great personages turn their thoughts to bribery (…) then that
waterwheel certainly begins to fall apart and collapse. Indeed its master [the
monarch] (üstadı) even dies, comes to his end.84
In this parable, the king is explicitly the owner of the state, not the state/
power itself, as implied in earliest uses of the term.
Perhaps more telling is a much later example already mentioned above:
around 1675, Hezarfen Hüseyin Efendi comments in the traditional pairing
of the words din ü devlet and writes that the sultan is the head of both the
vezir, i.e. of the head of the “state” (“devlet reisi”), and the şeyhülislam, i.e. of
the head of the religion.85 The comparison with previous such statements
is illustrative for the emergence of a concept of “state” as distinct from the
person of the ruler: for instance, in Mehmed II’s kanunname the grand vezir
is just the head of “vezirs and commanders” (“vüzera ve ümeranın başı”),
while the şeyhülislam that of the ulema.86 Naima shares a similar view with
Hezarfen when arguing against ulema wielding temporal power (umur-ı
devlet), which belongs to the vezir under the sultan.87 In both cases, devlet
seems to mean “government”, “state apparatus” or, more accurately, “secular
branch of the state”;88 what is more for our analysis, it places the ruler as a

84 Brookes, The Ottoman Gentleman, pp. 59-60 = Şeker, Mevâ’idü’n-Nefâis, p. 307.

85 İlgürel, Telhîsü’l-Beyân, p. 197; cf. Yılmaz, “Mesrutiyetçi Gelişmeler”, p. 8 and see above,
fn. 31 for contemporaneous copyists. The notorious şeyhülislam Feyzullah Efendi “had pen-
etrated so deeply into all government affairs that he was dubbed sahibürreaseteyn [holder of
the two headships] (the ilmiye and the central administration)”: Abou-El-Haj, The 1703
Rebellion, p. 50.
86 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri, I, p. 318.
87 Naima, Tarih, VI, appendix, pp. 10-13; İpşirli, Tarih-i Na’îmâ, pp. 1862-4; Thomas, A Study
in Naima, p. 85.
88 Cf. an expression in an early nineteenth-century treatise, where devlet is substituted
by dünya, “world”: “umur-ı din ü dünyeviye”, in İşbilir, Zebîre-i Kuşmânî, p. 62; however, this
reflects pre-Ottoman formulations (cf. above, fn. 22).

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 114 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

distinctly different entity that supervises the machinery of the state –which
as a matter of fact was by then (and up to a degree) functioning indepen-
dently from the personality of the sultan despite certain attempts to the
contrary (e.g. by Mustafa II).

A note: why the scribal bureaucracy?

On the other hand, a growing separation of the central government

mechanisms from the provincial military administration and the paşa
households (and I will try to show that this might be the case in the late
seventeenth century) would show what Abou-El-Haj viewed as “the ten-
dency toward a progressive separation between the state and the ruling
class”, i.e. a common feature of the European early modern state.89 In
Weberian terms, this corresponds to the development of a rational bureau-
cracy, more and more independent of the ruler’s wishes both in its deci-
sions and in its reproduction.90 In this respect, bureaucratic autonomy may
be considered a sign of early modernity in the Ottoman empire. I will skip
the judicial system here and focus on the central government apparatus,
namely, in our case, the financial and administrative officialdom as an
autonomous, self-reproductive locus of power; or, in other words, as a fea-
ture of the modern state.
To begin with, indeed, from at least the late sixteenth century Ottoman
bureaucracy enjoyed an exceptional longevity and continuity of term,91

89 Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State, p. 7.

90 See Max Weber, Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. and
trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of
California Press, 1978), vol. II, pp. 956 ff. and esp. pp. 1028-31.
91 On the financial bureaucracy see Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy, pp. 49-80;
Fleischer, Cornell, “Preliminaries to the study of the Ottoman bureaucracy”, Journal of
Turkish Studies 10, (1986) [Raiyyet rüsûmu: Essays presented to Halil İnalcık], 135-141. Cf.
Murphey, Exploring Ottoman Sovereignty, pp. 129 ff. on the “domino effect” changes in
Ottoman administrative apparatus with every change of sultan or even grand vezir, in sharp
contrast with the apparent continuity in scribal state service. A treatise of c. 1630, however,
advocates for judges and administrators to enjoy longer terms of tenure, and adds the same
for the palace scribes, saying that the constant threat of discharge from office makes all of
them greedy and corrupt; while he argues for a tenure of five or six years for all officials,
scribes are to be appointed for life (“cümle mansıbı beş altı sene vir / hep kitabetlikleri
ölünce vir”): Terzioğlu, “Sunna-minded Sufi preachers”, pp. 270-1, 307. For his part, Defterdar
Sarı Mehmed Paşa, an experienced bureaucrat himself, maintains in the early eighteenth
century that high bureaucracy officials (“menasıb-ı divaniye erbabı”) should serve for a

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 115

while it was possibly responsible for most of the financial experiments of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries;92 on the other hand, it made
considerable steps toward rationalization, for instance by unifying tax-
collection competence formerly divided between several departments.93
As showed by Norman Itzkowitz, by the eighteenth century the kalemiyye
career line had gained substantial importance, overshadowing the once
omnipotent “Palace career”. Inside this career line, the central administra-
tion bureaucracy under the reisülküttab gradually became more influential
than the financial one under the baş defterdar, in fact “professionalizing”
this latter office in a manner reminiscent, in my view, of Weber’s definition
of bureaucracy.94
Besides, the enhancing visibility of the government apparatus can also
be seen in the symbolic level of political practice, for example in its role in
the sultanic festivals.95 Thus, while for instance the 1582 festival included
meals offered to the ulema, preachers, various military groups, palace offi-
cials (including vezirs), and the people of Istanbul, no place was reserved

complete year at least, if not two: Defterdar, Devlet Adamlarına Öğütler, p. 65. On the other
side of the Ottoman border, note that the Persian author Rustam al-Hukama (late eight-
eenth – early nineteenth century) argued for a kind of stable financial bureaucracy and
stressed the need of its wages to be raised according to the increase of the cost of living: see
Lambton, “Some new trends in Islamic political thought”, pp. 107 ff.
92 In my view, the palace bureaucracy might be considered the real initiator of the con-
stant financial and administrative experiments from the second half of the seventeenth cen-
tury onwards (partial land-holding and cizye reform, introduction of lifelong tax-farming,
and so on), having moved away from the fear of innovation that still dominated Istanbul
politics: cf. Sariyannis, Marinos, “Notes on the Ottoman poll-tax reforms of the late seven-
teenth century: the case of Crete”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 54
(2011), 39-61, at pp. 40-1. On the size and composition of the scribal bureaucracy see Murphey,
Exploring Ottoman Sovereignty, pp. 255-9.
93 See, for example, Sariyannis, “Notes on the Ottoman poll-tax reforms”, pp. 41-3. This
late seventeenth-century reorganization process was preceded by another major re-
orientation and transformation of the financial bureaucracy in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries: Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy, pp. 304-5 and passim.
94 Itzkowitz, Norman, “Eighteenth century Ottoman realities”, Studia Islamica, 16 (1962),
73-94, also re-published in Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World, Tezcan and
Barbir, pp. xvii-xxxii. On the reisülküttab taking presidency over the nişancı already in the
late sixteenth century, see Woodhead, Christine, “Scribal chaos? Observations on the post of
re’isülküttab in the late sixteenth century”, in The Ottoman Empire: Myths, Realities and ‘Black
Holes’. Contributions in Honour of Colin Imber, ed. Eugenia Kermeli and Oktay Özel (Istanbul:
Isis Press, 2006), pp. 155-72.
95 On festivals and their symbolic role see Faroqhi, Suraiya, Another Mirror for Princes.
The Public Image of the Ottoman Sultans and its Reception (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2008), pp. 74
ff; Murphey, Exploring Ottoman Sovereignty, pp. 175 ff.

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 116 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

for palace clerks;96 on the contrary, the eighth day (out of 15) of the 1675
festival was devoted to a feast offered to the bureaucracy officials (reisülküt-
tab, ruznameci, baş muhasebeci).97 Moreover, by 1789 at least, ranking mem-
bers of the scribal classes were granted separate ceremonies on the occasion
of every new sultan’s enthronement, as did janissaries and other palace
staff, on the one hand, and ulema, on the other.98

The visibility of scribes and bureaucrats in political theory

Now, to what degree have political thinkers followed this process of institu-
tionalization of the central bureaucracy? In the traditional political theory,
what can be described as “state” was divided among the “men of the pen”,
the ulema, and the “men of the sword”, which included the ümera or
provincial and military administrators.99 If we may consider the scribal
bureaucracy as an indispensable part of the early modern notion of “state
apparatus” (especially when it develops a self-consciousness as such), it
might also be useful to see whether and when this bureaucracy entered
the various classifications of society.
Expounders of the classical quatrifold classification vary in this aspect.
Usually, the traditional view has no special place for scribes, squeezed
between the ulema and the military administrators.100 Although Huseyin
Vaiz Kaşifi in his famous Ahlak-ı Muhsini, composed in Herat in 1494/95,

96 See the description by Mustafa Ali in Gelibolulu Mustafa ‘Âlî: Câmi’u’l-Buhûr Der
Mecâlis-i Sûr. Edisyon Kritik ve Tahlil, ed. Ali Öztekin (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1996),
pp. 58 ff. and 232 ff.
97 Nutku, Özdemir, IV. Mehmet’in Edirne Şenliği (1675) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu,
1987), p. 56; İlgürel, Telhîsü’l-Bbeyân, p. 241.
98 Murphey, Exploring Ottoman Sovereignty, p. 101; Veinstein, Gilles and Nicolas Vatin, Le
Sérail ébranlé. Essai sur les morts, dépositions et avènements des sultans ottomans, XIVe-XIXe
siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2003), p. 286.
99 Gibb and Bowen had argued that the latter term should “be taken in the sense of
“Men supporting the Sword of Government”, so that it may include the whole personnel of
the Sultan’s court and the central and provincial administration” (Gibb, H. A. R. and Harold
Bowen, Islamic Society and the West (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), vol. I, pt. 1,
p. 45). In his classic critique, Itzkowitz showed that in fact the financial bureaucracy consti-
tuted the core of the “men of the pen”, gaining more and more in importance from the late
seventeenth century onwards (see Itzkowitz, “Eighteenth century Ottoman realities”).
100 For example, a formulation of the quatrifold order in the early eighteenth century,
recorded by Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Zübde-i Vekayiât. Tahlil ve Metin (1066-1116/1656-
1704), ed. Abdülkadir Özcan (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1995), p. 334; Abou-El-Haj, The 1703
Rebellion, p. 28 fn. 89.

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 117

has the bureaucracy (“the people of the pen, such as wazirs and scribes”)
put in the place of the ulema, whose he makes no mention,101 it seems that
Ottoman authors avoided so radical a formulation. Writing in the early six-
teenth century, İdris Bitlisi notes that the sultan should make constant
company but with two classes of people, namely the ulema in religious
affairs and the men of the pen and of the sword (ehl-i kalem, erbab-ı silah)
concerning the order of the kingdom; he adds that the sultan depends on
two classes of people: the men of the sword (erbab-ı seyf) and the men of
the pen (erbab-ı kalem).102 While in the first instance the men of the pen
seem to constitute a separate class from both ulema and the military, in the
second it is not clear whether they include the ulema or not.103 In his turn,
Hasan Kafi el-Akhisari, an ulema himself, has administrative officials
together with vezirs and soldiers, but seems to ignore the scribal classes at
all.104 Drawing from the Persian tradition on which he heavily relies,
Kınalızade Ali includes scribes, together with the ulema, judges, doctors,
poets and the like, to the “men of the pen” (ehl-i kalem),105 a view that would
prevail in the next century. By the end of the seventeenth century, indeed,
the standard “four classes” model seems to have been a commonplace, so
that it did not have to be explained. An anonymous late-seventeenth cen-
tury author mentions the “four pillars” (erkan-ı erbaa), but only bothers to
insert an excursion on the “most illustrious” of them, namely the ulema,
whom he subdivides in many sub-groups; one of these sub-groups consists
of the financial bureaucracy (“küttab-ı divan ki anlara hacegân-ı divan

101 Lambton, A. K. S., “Quis custodiet custodies. Some reflections on the Persian theory of
government”, pt. I, Studia Islamica, 5 (1956), 125-148 (now in Eadem, Theory and Practice in
Medieval Persian Government), at p. 147; Eadem, “Justice in the Medieval Persian theory”,
p. 117. Kaşifi’s work was used by Kınalızade (Koç, Ahlâk-ı Alâî, pp. 8-9).
102 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri, III, p. 32.
103 Sixteenth-century kanunnames use the term ehl-i ilm for the ulema (especially the
müderrises) and ehl-i kalem for the scribal bureaucracy: Akgündüz, Ahmet, Osmanlı
Kanunnâmeleri ve Hukukî Tahlilleri, vol. IV: Kanunî Devri Kanunnâmeleri, I. Kısım: Merkezî ve
Umumî Kanunnâmeleri (İstanbul: FEY Vakfı, 1992), pp. 594 (erbab-ı kalem), 607 (ehl-i kalem),
662 (ehl-i ilm).
104 İpşirli, “Hasan Kâfî el-Akhisarî”, pp. 251-3.
105 Koç (ed.), Ahlâk-ı Alâî, p. 485. Kınalızade draws again from Nasireddin Tusi and
Davvani, who included secretaries and fiscal officials, together with doctors of theology and
law, judges, geometricians, astronomers, physicians and poets, to the “men of knowledge”
(ilm): Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam, p. 220; Lambton, “Islamic society in
Persia”, p. 3. Tusi might be the first expounder of the four-fold social order theory: Ibn Sina,
for instance, follows the Platonic three-fold division to rulers, artisans and guardians
(Rosenthal, ibid., p. 152), while al-Farabi uses a more elaborate five-fold division (see below;
Tusi uses it as well).

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 118 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

derler, bunlar ki rakam-ı Hindî ve siyakatda mahirlerdir”).106 Nahifi, writing

in the turn of eighteenth century, speaks briefly of the “four classes of men
from the point of profession” (“beni Âdem hirfet ve sanayi cihetinden dört
kısma taksim olunmuşdur”), but mentions only the three of them, namely
cultivators (ehl-i ziraat), merchants and artisans (tüccar ve ehl-i sanayi), and
(explicitly) ulema.107 More or less his contemporary, Naimâ clearly includes
the financial bureaucracy and scribes to the ehl-i kalem, trying in fact to
make the quatrifold order compatible with the Ibn Khaldunian theory of
stages.108 Strangely, Dihkanizade Kuşmani in the late eighteenth century
includes scribes (ehl-i kitabet) to the military class;109 however, he probably
wished to stress the autonomous power of his fellow ulema and şeyhs, and
it seems in general that the scribes’ inclusion to the “men of the pen” was by
then prevailing.110 It is of some importance here to note that in most cases
of such classification, the “men of the pen” come first (with Akhisari, an
ulema himself, being a notable exception by beginning with the “men of
the sword”), but I am not quite sure whether this can lead to any plausible
conclusion;111 on the other hand, the distinct place (and importance) attrib-
uted to the government clerks as related to the military and provincial
administration can be considered a sign of the rise of this apparatus in the
world view of Ottoman authors. In general, however, the discussion of the
“four classes” in Ottoman theory seems to have followed somehow haphaz-
ardly the traditional patterns, rather than real developments in the admin-
istrative structure.
Nonetheless, some more elaborate classifications give greater place to
the government apparatus. Describing the “virtuous state”, Kınalızade
explains that its citizens (if we can translate ehl thus) include five classes

106 İpşirli, “Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilâtına Dair bir Eser”, p. 32.

107 İpşirli, “Nahîfî Süleyman Efendi: Nasihatü’l-Vüzera”, p. 27. İbrahim Müteferrika seems
also to ignore scribes when talking of the ashab-ı kalem, whom he identifies with the ulema
and judges: Şen, Usûlü’l-Hikem, p. 153.
108 “Tahsil-i fevaid ü semerat ve cem’-i emval-i cibayât ve zabt-ı varidat u ihracat ve naks
u ibram ve icra-i ahkâm misillü umurda tasrif-i kaleme ihtiyac mukarrer olmakla”: Naima,
Tarih, I, p. 50; İpşirli, Tarih-i Na’îmâ, p. 37; cf. Thomas, A Study on Naima, pp. 79-80.
109 İşbilir, Nizâm-ı Cedîde Dâir Bir Risâle, p. 12 (“dört sınıfın birisinden ya’ni bi’l-fi’l ehl-i
ulûm ü zehadet veya hakikaten askerî ve ehl-i kitabet veya tüccar ve eshab-ı sanaat veya
harras ve erbab-ı ziraat olmayup…”).
110 For example, Asim, Tarih, II, pp. 8-9 (quoted in Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdalaşma,
p. 115).
111 Cf. Yılmaz, Coşkun, “Siyasetnameler ve Osmanlılarda Sosyal Tabakalaşma”, in Osmanlı,
ed. Güler Eren, vol. IV: Toplum (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 1999), pp. 69-81 and esp. 77; Lewis,
The Political Language of Islam, p. 141 (note 47).

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 119

(taife): (a) the “superiors” (efazıl), on whom the good arrangement of the
state affairs depends; these are the judges and ulema (“hukema-i kâmil ve
ulema-yı amil”); (b) the “possessors of languages” (“zevi’l-elsine”), who
advise the people on good and right; (c) the “estimators” (“mukaddir”), who
look after the weights and measures, knowing of geometry and mathemat-
ics; (d) the warriors (“gaziler ve mücahid, sipahilik”), who protect the state
against external enemies; (e) the “men of property” (“erbab-ı emval”), who
produce the goods necessary for the people. These are the “pillars of the
state” (“erkân-ı Medine”); apart from them, however, there are also the
“plants” or “weed” (“nevabit”), those who are like the thorns among the use-
ful trees.112 However, Kınalızade here is merely copying his intellectual
mentors, namely al-Davvani, Tusi and ultimately al-Farabi, as he does in
most of his work;113 the limitations of the literary genre he serves do not
permit us to reach any conclusions on Ottoman perceptions of state in this
point. If we move to more innovating writers (or, in this context, to a more
distinctively “Ottoman” genre), it is rather remarkable that in the same
period Mustafa Ali, a member himself of the financial bureaucracy, speaks
nowhere of scribes as a social category although he uses repeatedly various
classifications of society.114 Nevertheless, almost half a century later, Katib
Çelebi, a scribe himself, compares the Treasury with the stomach and then
the money-changers and coin-weighers (“saraf ve vezzan”) with the faculty
of taste (“kuvvet-i zaika”), tax collectors (“muhassıl”) with attracting
power (“[kuvvet-i] cazibe”), treasurers (“hazinedar”) with holding power
“[kuvvet-i] masike”), finally ministers of finances and scribes (“defterdarân

112 Koç, Ahlâk-ı Alâî, pp. 457-8.

113 Cf. Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam, p. 218 (on al-Davvani), Lambton,
“Islamic society in Persia”, p. 3 fn. 2 (on Tusi) and Walzer, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State,
pp. 436-8 (on al-Farabi; see also Lambton, State and Government in Medieval Islam, p. 323.).
114 In one point, Ali distinguishes society in four distinct classes, namely: (a) sultans and
princes, (b) vezirs and governors, (c) notables of the realm who are considered to be among
the middling ranks (“evsat-ı nâs addolunan ayan-ı memleket”), finally (d) artisans, mer-
chants and craftsmen (“rencberân ve kâsibîn ve ehl-i san’at”). Brookes, The Ottoman
Gentleman, p. 137 = Şeker, Mevâ’idü’n-Nefâis, p. 371. Cf. Tietze, Andreas, “Mustafa Âlî on lux-
ury and the status symbols of Ottoman gentlemen”, Studia turcologica memoriae Alexii
Bombaci dicata (Napoli: Instituto Orientale di Napoli, 1982), pp. 577-90. In a poem of the
same author, the various professions are enumerated as follows: the sultan, the vezirs, the
ulema, the beylerbeyis, the defterdars, the şeyhs and dervishes, the poets, the timariots and
military, the imams, the preachers and those who serve in vakıfs (administrators, doctors,
teachers), the big merchants, the shop-keepers, the artisans, the workers and builders, the
night-watchers and judicial clerks, finally the peasants: Tietze, Andreas, “The poet as cri-
tique of society. A 16th-century Ottoman poem”, Turcica, 9/1 (1977), 120-60.

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 120 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

ve küttab”) with digesting power (“kuvvet-i hazıme”).115 Of course, this sim-

ile is little more than a play with words and notions, but the inclusion of
scribes together with their highest ministers into the ultimate stage of serv-
ing the treasury is rather telling. The growing number of political treatises
composed by members of the government bureaucracy, from Ayn Ali to
Kâtib Çelebi to Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Paşa, is another indicator for the
self-consciousness of the state apparatus. A comparative study of corre-
spondence or chancery manuals (inşa), compiled by members of the
scribal ranks, could further enhance this image.116

An excursus: the term miri, from sultan to state

A short history of the term miri could offer some further elaboration of the
development of the ruler-state relationship in Ottoman political thought.
As I tried to show elsewhere, authors opposing the statist policies of
Mehmed II stressed the moral need for the sultan to be generous, thus iden-
tifying the ruler’s private wealth with what we know as state property,
namely the land and its revenues.117 In his kanunnames, Mehmed himself
seems to take the treasury as his own property (malım).118 Indeed, the very
naming of the state or public treasury as miri implies an identification of
the sultan (mir, emir, translating Turkish beğ) with what we could call his
kingdom and government. When the miri land theory was formulated, it
took over pre-Ottoman definitions of tribute land as “royal demesne”
(“aradi’l-mamlaka”, “arazi-i memleket”), for example in the fetvas of Ibn
Bazzaz in the early fifteenth century. The şeyhülislam Kemalpaşazade

115 Ayn-ı Ali Efendi, Kavânîn-i Âl-i Osman, p. 133; Gökyay, Kâtib Çelebi’den Seçmeler, p. 159.
Naima follows him closely (Naima, Tarih, I, pp. 30-31; İpşirli, Tarih-i Na’îmâ, p. 23).
116 See Riedlmayer, András J., “Ottoman copybooks of correspondence and Miscellanies
as a source for political and cultural history”, Acta Orientalia Hungaricae, 61 (2008), 201-14.
Among Kınalızade’s works, one is entitled Risaletü’l-Kalemiyye or Risaletü’l-Kelamiyye ve’s-
Seyfiyye; on mss. see Koç (ed.), Ahlâk-ı Alâî, p. 21. This kind of treatise (a kind of literary
antagonism between the sword and the pen) is a common genre in Arabic literature but it
flourished also in the Ottoman seventeenth century, especially by members of the bureau-
cracy. I wish to thank Baki Tezcan, Edith Gülçin Ambros and especially Ekin Tuşalp for their
help in this point.
117 Sariyannis, “Ottoman critics”, pp. 129-30 and “The princely virtues”. Oktay Özel (“Limits
of the almighty: Mehmed II’s ‘land reform’ revisited”, Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient, 42/2 (1999), 226-46) points out that Mehmed’s was a fiscal rather than
land reform.
118 For example, Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri, I, pp. 318, 322.

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 121

(d. 1534) used the term miri, which, according to Colin Imber, was “simply
an Arabic calque on a Turkish term beglik, meaning ‘belonging to / at the
disposal of the lord’”.119 In the more elaborate thought of Ebussuud, the
expression “royal demesne” for miri land persists, but the real substance or
dominium eminens (rakaba) belongs to the treasury (beytülmal).120 The
same formulation was reiterated more than a hundred fifty years later,
when Morea was reconquered in 1716: the real substance was to belong to
the treasury, although there was no more need to define miri land as “royal
demesne” (“arazi-i memleket”).121 In these texts, the ruler per se is absent,
although Islamic jurisprudence stated that the treasury was at the disposal
of the sovereign to administer on behalf of the community.122
This implication is corroborated by the fact that the “outer treasury”, i.e.
the state treasury (in contrast with the Inner one, which belonged person-
ally to the sultan but also –from the late sixteenth century onwards– was
used as a reserve) was called hazine-i amire, meaning literally “king trea-
sury”.123 The confusion between the two is very well shown in Mehmed III’s
indignation when he was asked to make a loan from the inner to the outer
treasury in order to pay the salaries of the janissaries; the sultan’s reply is
telling: “Has the defterdar made my treasury a timar of his? Salaries from
the inner, campaign expenses from the inner –what is the use of such a

119 Imber, Colin, Ebu’s-su’ud: The Islamic Legal Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1997), p. 120. The same term (beğlik) is used in Mehmed II’s documents (“ve
yerden her ne gütürürlerse, beğlik tohum çıkarub sonra nısfı beğlik ve nısfı kendülerin ola”:
Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri, I, p. 460 and elsewhere), as well as in Kitabu Mesalihi’l-
Müslimin in the late sixteenth century (see above, fn. 24).
120 İnalcık, Halil, “Islamization of Ottoman laws on land and land tax”, in Festgabe an
Josef Matuz. Osmanistik – Turkologie – Diplomatik, ed. Christa Fragner and Klaus Schwarz
(Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1992), pp. 101-18, at 103; Imber, Ebu’s-su’ud, pp. 123-4; Barnes, John Robert,
An Introduction to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 1987), pp. 21 ff.
See the original text of the Buda kanunname (“arz-ı mîrî dimekle ma’ruf olan arazi-i memle-
ket gibi rakabe-i arz Beyt-i mal-i müslimînin olub”) in Barkan, Ömer Lütfi, XV ve XVIinci
Asırlarda Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Ziraî Ekonominin Hukukî ve Malî Esasları, vol. I:
Kanunlar (Istanbul: Bürhaneddin Matbaası, 1943), pp. 296-7; cf. also ibid., p. 299 and İlgürel,
Telhîsü’l-Beyân, pp. 108-12.
121 Barkan, Kanunlar, p. 326.
122 Imber, Ebu’s-su’ud, pp. 120-1.
123 See, for example, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Khazîne” (Cengiz Orhonlu);
İnalcık, Halil, with Donald Quataert (eds.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman
Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), vol. I, pp. 77-8; İlgürel, Telhîsü’l-
Beyân, pp. 61-3. On the “inner treasury” see Uzunçarşılı, İsmail Hakki, “Osmanlı Devleti
Maliyesinin Kuruluşu ve Osmanlı Devleti İç Hazinesi”, Belleten, 42 (1978), 67-93 and esp.
pp. 73 ff.

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defterdar?”124 Mustafa Ali adds to the confusion: on the one hand, he argues
that charitable foundations are to be created only with the personal prop-
erty of the sultan, i.e. his share of the booty, and not with the public trea-
sury (beytülmal); on the other, he claims that the public treasury (beytülmal-i
müslimin) should be protected from unnecessary expenditures, such as the
keeping of numerous palaces in the same city or the waste in the palace
kitchen and the court artisans, i.e. ‘personal’ expenses of the sultan.125 We
already saw that this view was widely held and justified by examples as old
as Caliph Umar, for example by Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Paşa; all the more
so, already in 1508 Şehzade Korkud had taken issue (in Cornell Fleischer’s
words) with the “use of communal resources (such as jizya revenues) for
such purposes as the purchase of personal slaves for the ruler”.126 In prac-
tice, moreover, Hezarfen Hüseyin Efendi records that the imperial treasury
(hazine-i amire) was to pay an annual sum of 10,562,359 akçe to the sultan
for his personal needs and those of his harem, as well as for robes of honour
to be bought for the imperial treasury.127 The issue of the robes of honour is
further interesting, as they were kept in and delivered from a sub-section
of the inner treasury called “outer inner treasury” (“diş enderun hazi-
nesi”), presumably because they were considered a personal favor of the
sultan.128
It is not my intention to further explore here the history of the term miri,
since this paper focuses in political thought and not in administrative

124 Orhonlu, Cengiz, Osmanlı Tarihine Ait Belgeler: Telhisler (1597-1607) (Istanbul: İstanbul
Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi, 1970), pp. 32-4.
125 Tietze, Counsel for Sultans, I, pp. 54 = 146 and 59-62 = 153-57, respectively. On the
Ottoman perception of the beytülmal see also Naima, Tarih, VI, pp. 307 ff.; İpşirli, Tarih-i
Na’îmâ, pp. 1762-4.
126 Fleischer, Cornell, “From Şehzade Korkud to Mustafa Âli: cultural origins of the
Ottoman Nasihatname”, in IIIrd Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey,
Princeton University, 24-26 August 1983. Proceedings, ed. Heath W. Lowry and Ralph S. Hattox
(Istanbul – Washington – Paris: Isis Press, 1990), pp. 67-77 at p. 71.
127 “Şevketlü Padişah-ı âlem-penah hazretlerinin nefs-i nefîsleri içün ve Enderun-ı
Hümayun yıllıklarına mübayaa olunan atlas ve çuka ve mühimmat-ı sairesine ve Hazine-i
Amire içün iştira olunan semmur kürkler ve mütenevvia seraser hil’atlar bahasına”. İlgürel,
Telhîsü’l-Beyân, p. 99 (copied verbatim in Eyyubi Efendi’s Kanunname, a few years later:
Özcan, Abdülkadir (ed.), Eyyubî Efendi Kanûnnâmesi (Istanbul: Eren, 1994), p. 39). On the
personal expenses of the sultan see also Uzunçarşılı, “Osmanlı Devleti İç Hazinesi”,
pp. 79-83.
128 Uzunçarşılı, “Osmanlı Devleti İç Hazinesi”, p. 74; cf. Orhonlu, Telhisler, pp. 108-9. On
robes of honour cf. Karateke, Hakan, An Ottoman Protocol Register, Containing Ceremonies
from 1736 to 1808 (Istanbul – London: The Ottoman Bank Archive and Research Centre – The
Royal Asiatic Society, 2007), pp. 27 ff.

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 123

terminology. However, we might arrive to the conclusion that, at least con-

cerning the private budget of the sultan, there came to be a clearer
distinction between sultanic and public, or state, property already by the
end of the sixteenth century. However, we should note that still in the early
1700s Defterdar still seems to identify the “treasury of the Sultan” with the
state treasury (“dahil-i hazine-i padişahî ve lâhik-i beytülmal-i müslimîn”);
this is corroborated by his allusion to the “treasuries of the sultan” provid-
ing the monthly payment of the kuls and the coronation gifts.129 Besides,
one may find it difficult to interpret his warning to the vezirs not to covet
“the private wealth of the sultan and the public wealth of the subjects and
of the army” (“emval-ı hassa-yı Padişah ve emval-ı amme-i reaya ve
sipah”).130 Did he mean by “wealth of the sultan” the inner treasury and by
“public wealth” the outer, or was he identifying the former with the state
treasury and the latter with the private properties of the sultan’s subjects?
Given that he then speaks of bribes and fines, it seems that we have to do
with the second case, which reinforces our cautions.
After all, apart from political authors, there were very real cases of fluid-
ity between state and sultanic property. For one thing, as Gottfried Hagen
notes, “[t]he ease with which state land and state sources of income are
assigned to a waqf which is set up in the name of an individual member of
the dynasty calls into question the notion of a state as an institution dis-
tinct from the persons who embody it”.131 This has led to the postulation by
Ömer Lütfi Barkan and then by İ. Metin Kunt that such vakıfs “should
indeed be considered state institutions”.132 On the ideological level,

129 Defterdar, Devlet Adamlarına Öğütler, pp. 21, 79. In the first instance, Karl K. Barbir,
using W. L. Wright’s translation, Ottoman Statecraft: The Book of Counsel for Vezirs and
Governors by Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Defterdar (Princeton 1935), argues that Defterdar “uses the
Islamic term Beytülmal, the treasury of the Muslim community, as distinct from the Sultan’s
private treasury, the Enderun-i hümayun hazinesi”: Barbir, “One marker of Ottomanism: con-
fiscation of Ottoman officials’ estates”, in Tezcan and Barbir, Identity and Identity Formation
in the Ottoman World, pp. 135-45 at p. 141. I think, however, that Defterdar here uses a very
common rhetorical figure of speech, pairing two expressions of identical meaning (cf. also a
similar figure in Mustafa Ali: Tietze, Description of Cairo, p. 80). In other points Defterdar
uses the expression “treasury of the exalted state” (“hazine-i devlet-i aliye”): Defterdar, Devlet
Adamlarına Öğütler, p. 67. Bonuses (not salaries) to the janissaries were bestowed from the
inner treasury: see Karateke, An Ottoman Protocol Register, p. 76.
130 Defterdar, Devlet Adamlarına Öğütler, p. 17.
131 Hagen, Gottfried, “Review of Singer, Amy, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An
Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem”, H-Turk, H-Net Reviews, May 2003 (URL: http://www
.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=7578).
132 Kunt, Metin İ., “The waqf as an instrument of public policy: notes on the Köprülü fam-
ily endowments”, in Studies in Ottoman History in Honour of Professor V. L. Ménage, eds.

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 124 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

Ottoman authors were conscious of the contradiction, as shown by Mustafa

Ali’s argument on sultanic vakıfs cited above; nonetheless, the contradic-
tion did exist, although one may argue that as time passed by the Ottoman
government tended to consider these institutions as parts of the state, for
instance when it cut down their expenses by half for the needs of the 1688
campaign.133

Synopsis: A disappointing confusion

In sum, the boundaries between state and royal spheres seem not to have
concerned Ottoman officials as much as we would like them to. Moreover,
expecting Ottoman mental categories to match our understanding of social
organization carries the danger of incurring a series of bias and distorting
lenses, not to mention an “orientalistic” air, while fluidity constituted a
standard feature, one may say, of Ottoman political and social categoriza-
tions. As Suraiya Faroqhi observes, with the occasion of the festivities held
for a prince’s circumcision in 1720:
[d]iscussion revolved around the question whether the circumcision was a
state occasion or rather a domestic festivity, the French position being that
gifts were only called for in the former and not in the latter instance. [The
grand vezir] by contrast does not seem to have regarded this distinction
between ‘state’ and ‘domestic’ as particularly relevant to his concerns. Rather,
he offered an inducement on a different, honorific level. If the French ambas-
sador was willing to make the expected gifts, he would be invited on particu-
larly honourable terms”.134

Colin Heywood and Colin Imber (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1994), pp. 189-98, at p. 190; cf. Barkan,
Ömer Lütfi and Ekrem Hakki Ayverdi, İstanbul Vakıfları Tahrir Defteri, 953 (1546) Tarihli
(Istanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1970), pp. XVI-XIX.
133 This decision is not mentioned in narrative sources (see other measures taken on this
occasion in Defterdar, Zübde-i Vekayiât, pp. 308-10; Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Ağa, Silâhdar
Tarihi, ed. Ahmed Refik (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1928), vol. II, pp. 375-8), but it is recorded,
together with a list of vakıfs with the stipends to be cut (including both sultanic and private
endowments) in the court registers of Kandiye, Crete (see Varoucha, Maria, Ιεροδικείο
Ηρακλείου. Πέμπτος Κώδικας [Kadi Court of Herakleio: Fifth Register], part II (1688-1689), ed.
Elizabeth A. Zachariadou (Herakleio: Vikelaia Dimotiki Vivliothiki, 2008), pp. 461-5 (nos 825-
828). The ferman specifies that this action would not be repeated; it might be the case that it
concerned only Cretan vakıfs. The transfer of the collection of vakıf revenues to the defterdar
under Mustafa III (1757-74) can be seen as another step toward control by the state apparatus
(see Barnes, An Introduction to Religious Foundations, pp. 68-9).
134 Faroqhi, Another Mirror for Princes, pp. 81-2. Unfortunately no such festivity is
recorded in Karateke, An Ottoman Protocol Register.

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 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126 125

Indeed, the examples I cited corroborate the conclusion that Ottoman

political thought did not follow the procedure toward the emergence of an
independent state mechanism but to a certain degree. However, in my view
it is clear that a certain notion of the distinction between ruler and state
did emerge after all. From the analysis above it is evident, I think, that it is
extremely difficult to locate this development in time; nonetheless, by the
beginning of the eighteenth century it seems that a notion of the state as
an autonomous entity had been established. Moreover, perceptions of the
ruler as a part of society (either in a body simile or in a more “class” or
rather “estate-oriented” perspective), usually belonging to the same stra-
tum as the military branch, are to be found in Ottoman texts at least from
the late sixteenth century; however, one should stress that this is by no
means an Ottoman innovation in the corpus of Arabic and Persian political
thought. Of more relevance, perhaps, is the growing importance of the
government apparatus within the framework of Ottoman perceptions of
society.
On the other hand, it would perhaps be useful to end this paper with
some cautionary remarks. First of all, we still are far away from fully com-
prehending Ottoman statehood and administration in all its development
and inner structure. The scholarly discussion I tried to describe in the first
part of this essay on the way toward early modernity shows exactly that this
way is far from having been understood and agreed upon; in this aspect,
I must stress again that the study of the development of the relevant vocab-
ulary is merely another tool for this discussion, rather than a conclusive
argument in favour of any authoritative interpretation.
Besides, it is evident from the examples cited above that Ottoman authors
somehow frustratingly tend to use the traditional vocabulary inherited by
earlier genres in a way less flexible than one might expect in order to reach
conclusions. To cite just one example, even İbrahim Müteferrika, in some
aspects a great innovator of political thinking, is the first Ottoman author to
describe the Aristotelian three forms of state, but only practically to ignore
this discussion short afterwards, as he hastens to dwell on military reforms
and the benefits of geography.
A study of the development of the Ottoman empire toward early modern
features, one may conclude, should take into account ideological and sym-
bolic aspects as well. Nonetheless, one has to bear in mind that these
aspects have a life of their own, being a normative language that influences
political practice and in the same time gets influenced by it. This second
procedure, i.e. the feedback to ideology, has to be very carefully traced
down in an interactive, non-linear way. Same theoretical schemes or

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 126 M. Sariyannis / Turkish Historical Review 4 (2013) 92–126

concepts may have been used in different contexts and for different pur-
poses. As an example, let us take the class theory and the limitations (hadd)
put in the askeri class. It is almost with the same phrasing that this theory is
expounded, for example, in Koçi Bey and in eighteenth or early nineteenth
centuries authors such as İbrahim Müteferrika or Dihkanizade Kuşmani.
But while the former uses it to display the need to control the number of
janissaries and prevent strangers from entering their ranks, the latter
authors use the same theory to justify the need for a new military system
distinguished from civilians by the use of uniforms and (in the case of
Kuşmani who advocates Selim III’s nizam-ı cedid) composed entirely by
these “strangers”.135
In sum, political authors cannot be studied properly outside their con-
text; for each text we have to know the author’s source, background, pur-
pose and political, social and ideological affiliation. On the other hand,
each of the various literary genres to which Ottoman political treatises
belong has its own limitations that should be taken into account. This is
why a synthesis of the history of Ottoman political thought is needed in
order to map these currents and study each notion and concept within the
framework that they were used.

135 See Şen, Usûlü’l-Hikem, p. 152-4; İşbilir, Nizâm-ı Cedîde Dâir Bir Risâle. Every source has
its peculiarities, though, so in the early nineteenth century Şanizade, who reverts back to
earlier tradition elsewhere as well, uses the same formula to protest against newcomers in
the military branch: Yılmazer, Şânî-zâde Târîhi, I, p. 481-2.

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