The Imperial Heyday 105
poll-tax “provided they have no intercourse with other people at all” (asla halk
ile muhalataları yok ise) is also strongly reminiscent of Ibn Taymiyya’s views.18
A work adapting these ideas to the Ottoman context bore the same name
as Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise, namely Risâla al-siyâsa al-shar’îya (“Treatise on the
government in accordance with the Sharia”) or Siyaset-i şer’iye (“Government in
accordance with the Sharia”). It was written in Arabic by Kemalüddin İbrahim
b. Bahşi, known as Kara Dede or Dede Cöngî Efendi (d. 1565/6 or 1566/7); pre-
served in a number of manuscripts, since it became very popular in Ottoman
medreses, it was translated into Turkish at least three times from the late sev-
enteenth century.19 An outstanding example of Ottoman social mobility, Dede
Cöngi was an illiterate tanner before turning with great success to a career in
the ulema, eventually becoming a müderris or teacher in various medreses in
Bursa, Tire, Merzifon, Diyarbekir, Aleppo, and Iznik. In 1557, he became müfti
of Kefe (Caffa); he retired in 1565 and died in Bursa.
Dede Cöngi’s work is mainly a synopsis of the predominant views on Islamic
administration and politics in his era. As Uriel Heyd notes, “[t]here is ... very
little original thought in Dede Efendi’s work[, as h]e mainly quotes various
authorities in the field of public and especially penal law”; his sources
are, among others, al-Mawardi, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ala’ al-Din Ali b. Khalil
al-Tarabulusi, a fifteenth-century Hanafi judge from Jerusalem and the author
of Mu’în al-hukkâm.20 In this respect, it is interesting that Dede Cöngi (like Ibn
Taymiyya before him) employed ideas from different schools of law, especially
the Hanafi and the Maliki, reflecting perhaps the new legal situation in the
Ottoman Empire following the incorporation of the Kurdish and Arab territo-
ries; as expected of an Ottoman scholar, however, Hanafi thought is prevalent.
Dede Cöngi’s treatise, full of references to hadiths and other authorities, sets
out to demonstrate that one may justify, in terms of fikh, the existence of extra-
canonical rules, ones decreed by the ruler, which should be followed by both
18 On the Ottoman confiscation crisis see Fotić 1994; Alexander 1997; Kermeli 1997; on the
fetvas regarding the poll-tax of the monks, Ebussuud – Düzdağ 1972, 103, nos 450–451; on
Ibn Taymiyya and the Mamluks, Welle 2014.
19 Namely by Seyyid Sebzî Mehmed Efendi (d. 1680), İsmail Müfid Efendi (d. 1802), and
Meşrebzâde Mehmed Arif Efendi (d. 1858). This last translation (printed as Tercüme-i
Siyâsetnâme, Istanbul 1275/1858–9) was published (from a manuscript form) by Akgündüz
1990–1996, 4:127–173 (facs. follows). On this translation (not very accurate) see ibid., 4:124
and Heyd 1973, 198, fn. 5 (“rather free and enlarged”). Sabit Tuna (Dede Cöngi – Tuna 2011)
provides his own Turkish translation; I preferred to follow it in cases of conflict. On Dede
Çöngi’s work see Akgündüz 1990–1996, 4:122–126; Heyd 1973, 198–203; Yılmaz 2005, 73–76;
Black 2011, 215.
20 Heyd (1973, 199) notes that “in fact, most parts of Dede Efendi’s treatise are merely shorter
versions of some chapters of the Mu’în.”