The Imperial Heyday 143
the land-holding and tax systems in line with feudal practice. The emphasis
of Lütfi Pasha on the rights of the sipahi and the need to check social mobility
was a sign of his time: it means that he was worried by the rise of new mercan-
tile strata and by the decline of the sipahi army, which, as will be seen, were
to become a standard feature of the following decades. On the other hand, as
the monetarization of the economy gradually created new opportunities to
accumulate wealth, there were many urban groups that tried to fill the gap;
among them, great pasha and ulema households, which, when needed, were
to use tools from the same inventory ( fikh, for instance) in order to justify their
own practices.115
On another level, and unlike European feudalism, the Ottoman system of
agrarian relations and the vassal-like fief-based military had to rely on a strong
and absolute ruler, one who could distribute lands as if they were his own
property and have ultimate control of legislation and administration. The mes-
sianic features of Süleyman’s early reign and later claims to the caliphate later
fit well into this need.116 It is no coincidence that scribal political literature, the
product of a governmental class whose power depended closely on the sultan’s
personal will and power, abandoned the view of the sultan as an individual
who strived for moral perfection (see chapter 1) in favor of a more charismatic
picture. One of the most striking features of Celalzade’s work, apart from the
glorification of his own scribal class, is the position he gives the sultan, above
the law: inspired by God, the Ottoman sultan can never succumb to the temp-
tation of tyranny even if he yields unlimited power. At the beginning of his
Tabakat, Celalzade even described Süleyman as the Mahdi (K134b), whereas,
in the preamble to the Egypt kanunname, he had compared Süleyman to the
Prophet and to saints.117 There were good reasons, therefore, why, when the
sultan ceased to be the protector of the sipahi network and its supporting
structures, theorists who favored the timariot forces tried to play down his
omnipotence and bind him to the rules. As for the emerging societal groups,
the tax-farmers on the one hand and the janissaries on the other, they had
not yet found a voice in political literature (or, they did not yet need to; power
comes first, justification follows).
115 See Gel 2013b; Tezcan 2010a, 36–40.
116 This trend was the culmination of a long process. Bayezid II was also seen as the renewer
of his age at the turn of the Islamic century: see Şen 2017, esp. 604–605.
117 Yılmaz 2006, 205–206, and fn. 628 (cf. ibid., 200, fn 607); Şahin 2013, 56–57, 188–190.