The Imperial Heyday 117
(b) seizing and spending illicit wealth—the author considers the various taxes
a mixture (at best) of permissible and impermissible expropriations of wealth,
admitting all the same that, were they abandoned, the ruler would have no
resources whatsoever from his subjects. Even if the subjects accept paying their
taxes, this does not invalidate the illegality of such extortions; moreover, the
ways these revenues are spent are often sinful, such as when they support Sufis;
(c) associating with sinners, for example Melami dervishes (a clear criticism of
Bayezid’s support for various Sufi orders); (d) abandoning one’s spiritual “emp-
tying of the heart”, i.e. concentration on devotion to God and withdrawal from
worldly affairs—to this effect, Korkud cites some historical anecdotes where
princes and rulers abdicated to follow a sinless life; and, finally, (e) causing
civil strife in the struggle for succession—because of the “emptiness of power”
(T207: khuluw al-imâra), internal disputes and conflicts are inevitable and the
Ottoman experience only proves this. Korkud further elaborates his argument
on not associating with sinners in terms of the traditional complaint regard-
ing the decline of the time (T211). From the time of the Prophet onwards, he
argues, each generation is worse than the previous one, and he sees the soci-
ety of his own days as especially guilty of material greed; moreover, living in
a court causes jealousy in every possible facet of one’s life, and jealousy and
slander are grave sins. Korkud lists a number of ways to fight one’s desire for
alcohol, gluttony, sleep, and all kind of temptations inherent in court life; the
only sure way, he concludes, is poverty and withdrawal from any governmental
affair. Power and wealth inevitably give rise to enmity and envy.
These views clearly belong to an earlier trend of opposition; we may see
their parallels in Kadı Fadlullah’s adaptation of the Marzuban-name (see
chapter 1)50 and even (when discussing the inevitable character of internal
strife) in Aşıkpaşazade’s work.51 However, there are points where Korkud’s cri-
tique is more reminiscent of sixteenth-century debates. After lengthy discus-
sions on the nature of knowledge and self-knowledge and on sin, guilt, and
penitence, which aim to show that the only way to save his own soul was to
withdraw immediately, i.e. before his death, from all worldly affairs (he also
stresses that, for a ruler, this is even more obligatory: T227), Korkud embarks
on an explicit attack on the emerging tendency to legitimize secular law: he
50 A story about Hüsrev’s vizier who avoided killing his ruler’s wife, as ordered, implies
that committing a sin under the orders of one’s ruler is a sin itself: Kadı Fadlullah – Altay
2008, 199.
51 For instance, when he speaks of fratricide (Aşıkpaşazade – Atsız 1949, 162): he has the
officer who arrested and executed Murad II’s brother admitting that he committed a
grave sin, but that in this way the world was set to peace and a rule was laid for the future
(bizden öndin gelenler bu kanunı kurmışlar).