138 chapter 3
completed after his historical work (i.e. after 1554).107 Âsafnâme (“The book of
Asaf ”, alluding to the mythical wise vizier of the prophet Solomon—the name-
sake of Süleyman!), despite being rather short compared to other treatises of
the time, was a very popular and highly influential work; fifteen manuscripts
are in Istanbul alone, and Evliya Çelebi records a copy kept in the library of the
autonomous khan of Bitlis, in 1655;108 as will be seen in the following chapters,
it was partly or wholly incorporated into various treatises on government dur-
ing subsequent centuries.
Âsafnâme is structured very loosely along the lines of Persian “mirrors for
princes”, containing four chapters: on the qualities of the grand vizier, on the
army, on the treasury, and on the peasant subjects. There is no chapter on the
sultan, and though this is nothing new, the emphasis on the grand vizier seems
to have created a new tradition, as will be seen. The relevant chapter (T6–24)
is, in many ways, the least original: it mainly contains the usual advice, such as
that the grand vizier must not be malicious or selfish, that he must share his
secrets with no-one but the sultan, that he must not spend his time carousing,
and so forth. Yet the detail and the extent of concrete information on the func-
tioning of the Ottoman (and not of any other Muslim) court is unprecedented.
A few examples are telling: the advice that the grand vizier must take care of
his people, raising the poor and powerless among them to various posts, is not
original, but Lütfi goes on to specify that he should only grant timars, and not
ze’amets (greater timars), to his men. Lütfi was not the first to speak of restric-
tions in the system of couriers (ulak), yet he describes at some length the spe-
cific reforms he introduced during his own vizierate.109 The grand vizier must
appoint wise and experienced men at the head of the janissaries, and he must
take special care of price regulations (narh), since they are one of the most
important aspects of the world.
The same down-to-earth information can be seen when Lütfi Pasha
describes the income of a vizier, and others in the hierarchy of state officials,
from the beylerbeyis, the provincial governors, down to the various administra-
tive, judicial, and military offices. He specifies that only those who come from
the imperial palace or are the sons of beylerbeyis and defterdars (provincial
financial officers) can become salaried müteferrikas; similar premises must rule
107 Lütfî Pasha – Tschudi 1910; Lütfî Pasha – Kütükoğlu 1991; Akgündüz 1990–1996, 4:258–276
(facs. follows, 277–290). On Lutfi Pasha and his work, see Lewis 1962, 71–74; Fodor 1986,
223–224; Yılmaz 2003a, 302–303; Yılmaz 2005, 114–119.
108 Çolak 2003, 353; Evliya Çelebi – Dankoff 1990, 290.
109 Here Lütfi, as in other parts of his treatise as well, refers to specific reforms he intro-
duced during his own vizierate. See Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Lutfî Pasha”
(C. H. Imber) and Yürük 2014.