92 chapter 2
versions. A classic and complex formulation belongs to Kınalızade and con-
stitutes the final part of his essay (K539). It consists of a cyclical border, inside
which these verses are written:
Justice is the cause of the righteousness of the world—The world is a gar-
den; its wall is the state/power (devlet)—The Holy Law is what arranges
the state (devletin nâzımı)—The only possible guardian of the Holy Law
is sovereignty (mülk)—Only the army can give sovereignty a firm hold—
Only wealth (mal) can bring together an army—The peasant is he who
creates wealth (malı kesb eyleyen ra ’iyyettir)—Justice makes the peasant
faithful (ra ’iyyeti kul eder) to the king of the world.Third is the division of society into four classes and the related simile of the
four elements, with the underlying idea that the balance between them is a
prerequisite for the world order.59 Although Plato’s philosophy and Galenic
medicine had put forth the need for balance in human society, the tripar-
tite division of society found in Western political thought did not offer itself
to a one-to-one simile; Iranian tradition, on the other hand, had developed
the notion of a four-fold division. Whereas Tusi’s main source, Avicenna,
had kept Plato’s three-fold division (also adapted in a similar form in medi-
eval Europe) of rulers, artisans, and guardians,60 it seems that the traditional
division into warriors, priests, artisans and farmers appeared first in Firdawsi’s
early eleventh-century epic. This allowed Tusi to add the idea of a one-to-one
correspondence of these classes with the four elements, in order to enhance
the cosmic significance of this model and to inspire the idea of the need for
balance; moreover, it was Tusi who first included merchants as well as the
“artisan” class. Like the “circle of justice”, the four-fold division of society soon
became one of the more recurrent elements in Ottoman political thought. In
fact, as will be seen in the conclusion of this book, it is exactly this model that
is implied in the concept of “world order” (nizam-i alem), one of the most cen-
tral notions in Ottoman thought.
2.3 The adab Element in ahlak Literature
Although the main characteristic of the ahlak philosophers is their highly
theoretical description and normalization of human society and government,
one should not think that they were devoid of more concrete advice in the
style of adab or “mirrors for princes” that we studied in chapter 1. Indeed, they
59 On the pre-Ottoman genealogy of this idea cf. Syros 2013; Tezcan 1996, 121.
60 Rosenthal 1958, 152.