96 chapter 2
remember, by the way, that Şeyhoğlu had explicitly referred to rules the sultan
should follow: ol kanunca gide, Y72).
3 The Afterlife of a Genre
With Kınalızade’s monumental work, Tusi and Davvani’s development of
neo-Aristotelian political and moral philosophy (mainly through al-Farabi’s
version) was finally popularized in Ottoman literature. In contrast to his pre-
decessors (the works by Amasi, Tursun, and Bitlisi were copied only once or
twice), Kınalızade’s work enjoyed great popularity. Notions such as the “circle
of equity” or the division of society into the four classes, especially, were to
dominate or, at least, be present in almost every treatise of political advice
composed from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. On another level, the
Farabian notion of “the virtuous state” was incorporated by some sixteenth-
century ulema authors, as, for instance, when Ahmed Taşköprüzade (1495–
1561), one of the most celebrated Ottoman scholars of his time, presented “the
science of government” (ilm al-siyâsa) in his encyclopedia (Miftâh al-sa ’âda wa
misbâh al-siyâda f î mawzû’ât al-‘ulûm, or “The key to happiness and the guide
to nobility in the objects of science”, completed in 1557):65
The science of government is the knowledge of what state and govern-
ment entail, the condition of dignitaries, the situation of subjects, and
the welfare of cities. This is a science which rulers need first, and then
other people. Because man is by nature social. A person is required to
reside in a virtuous city (al-madînatü’l-fâdıla) and migrate from an
unvirtuous one, and to know how the residents of the virtuous city could
benefit from him and how he could benefit from them.Taşköprüzade, significantly, has this science as part of his section on ethics,
and the authors he enumerates are pseudo-Aristotle, al-Farabi, Tusi, and
Davvani. Like Amasi and Kınalızade, he does not ignore practical advice,
which is contained in other parts of his encyclopedia, in special sections
on manners for kings (âdâb al-mulûk) and viziers (âdâb al-wizâra), market
inspection (ihtisâb), military administration, and so forth. A short note on his
quite original categorization of science could be useful here: Taşköprüzade
attempted to classify knowledgeable sciences along the stages of God’s mani-
festation according to Sufi doctrine (universal spirit, intellect, nature, and
65 Taşköprüzade – Bakry – Abu’l-Nur 1968, 1:407–8 (as translated by Yılmaz 2005, 8).