108 chapter 3
quotations) on public finances.23 Dede Cöngi first stresses the central role of
the ruler in the administration and distribution of public revenue, noting that
he is the administrator of the treasury rather than its proprietor (and here we
might detect an idea of the state as an entity distinct from the ruler).24 The
treatise highlights the well-known division of the public treasury (beytü’l-mal)
into four departments, each with its own income and expenses.25 In Dede
Cöngi’s account of this traditional fikh economic or, rather, financial theory,
it is again clear that he took care to justify the Ottoman practices of his age.
For instance, he refutes the idea that judges should not receive a salary from
the public treasury (A229ff.); we will see below that Ebussu’ud’s great oppo-
nent, Mehmed Birgivi Efendi, maintained that religious positions (including
judgeships) should not be remunerated unless in the form of donations.26 The
final part of Dede Cöngi’s treatise is of particular interest, since it deals with
the rights of the sultan in regard to land (A234–35); he notes that land is like
any other property in the public treasury and maintains that the sultan may
grant unclaimed land for the general benefit of the Muslims. In a way simi-
lar to Ebussu’ud’s arguments on cash-vakfs, Dede Cöngi claims that the very
existence of universally-acclaimed medreses and other foundations based on
landed property granted by rulers is proof of the legality of this practice.
1.2 Between State and Legal Thought
So far, reviews of Ottoman political thought have, surprisingly, ignored the
Süleymanic synthesis. Historians of medieval Islamic political ideas, who are
well aware of the debates on caliphal power and its limits, usually neglect
the Ottoman period, while Ottomanists (often reluctant to use ulema authors
when writing political history) tend to allocate such debates to the history of
law. Yet Ebussu’ud’s construction was, as seen, a major step in a long process
of integrating secular power into the idea of a perfect Islamic community.
Ottoman sultans contributed much to the institutional aspect of the process
by creating the post of the şeyhülislam and by increasing state control over
the judiciary. On the other hand, the continuity with Mamluk-era theorists
such as Ibn Taymiyya, as well as the use of “pragmatist” arguments such as
23 Akgündüz 1990–1996, 4:213–236 (facs. follows, 236–254); Yılmaz 2005, 73.
24 Cf. Sariyannis 2013. Similar remarks can be made about Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas on the ruler’s
authority (Black 2011, 161).
25 On the fikh theories concerning public income and expenses, cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam,
2nd ed., s.v. “Bayt al-mâl” (N. J. Coulson, C. Cahen et al.). The actual organization of the
financial departments did not follow these, neither in medieval Islamic empires nor in
the Ottoman case; see, for example, Sahillioğlu 1985; Tabakoğlu 1985.
26 Ivanyi 2012, 258–262.