128 chapter 3
the market inspection—for this latter post, Semerkandi emphasizes its link
with the well-known precept of “commanding right and forbidding wrong”),
the chancery (inşâ’; among the qualities needed, the author stresses knowl-
edge of the Quran and the hadith), the book-keeping (dafâtîr; in fact, on the
keeping of army registers, a chapter somewhat outdated since it gives lengthy
instructions on the recruitment of Arabs, on checking the Turks’ religiosity,
and so on), and the treasury (amvâl; the ruler’s income must consist of canoni-
cal taxes and revenues only). As for the other two chapters, they discuss con-
sultation (müşâvere) and justice, considering both indispensable principles to
be followed in all the offices listed above.
In the previous chapter we examined another encyclopedist (and a major
biographer of Ottoman scholars), Ahmed Taşköprüzade (1495–1561); it was
seen how close he was to the Tusian model in his 1557 encyclopedia of knowl-
edge. Taşköprüzade also wrote a specifically political treatise, Risâla fi bayân
asrâr al-khilâfa al-insâniyya wa al-saltana al-ma ’nawiyya (“Treatise explain-
ing the mystery of man’s caliphate and the spiritual sultanate”); this work is
comprised of ten sections, on: the sultan and imam; the sultanate; subjects;
parents; spouses; children; slaves; servants; and friends. Apart from the first
section, they are all in the form of “rights” (hukûk): in order to attain the spiri-
tual sultanate, the ruler must fulfil the rights of others; for example, fulfilling
the rights of the sultanate means that the sultan must perform his duties as
ordained by the concept of rulership; the rights of subjects correspond to the
duty of the sultan to treat them with justice; and so on. Drawing on al-Ghazali
and, especially, Hamadani, the author is careful to use Islamic rather than
mythical anecdotes in order to illustrate his points.82
4.1 The Scribal Tradition
It was noted in the previous chapter that Kınalızade’s monumental work was,
in a way, a belated swansong of the Tusian theory. Even in his time, the fashion
had shifted toward Kâshifi rather than Davvani’s popularization of Tusi’s sys-
tem. Kashifi (d. 1504/5) wrote his work Akhlâq-e Muhsinî (1494/5) for a Timurid
ruler, Abu’l-Muhsin.83 As well as being more recent (and from Timurid cul-
ture, which had become the literary fashion in Ottoman circles), his work was
a loose adaptation of Tusi and Davvani’s books that gave much more weight
82 Yılmaz 2005, 94–96. Similar views on mutual duties can be seen in the early fourteenth-
century Mosul historian Ibn al-Tiqtaqa (Rosenthal 1958, 65).
83 Kashifi – Keene 1850 (a partial translation focusing on the morality chapters). On Kashifi
see Lambton 1956a, 147; Lambton 1962, 115–119; Donaldson 1963, 184–190; the special issue
of Iranian Studies 36/4 (2003); and esp. Subtelny 2013.