“Mirrors for Princes”: The Decline Theorists^147
must be cautious in adopting wholesale the image described above, as in large
part it originates from the Istanbul-based Ottoman authors; recently, Linda T.
Darling has argued that a detailed inspection of archival sources would show
that the timar system underwent a much less radical change from the 1580s
onwards than we used to think. The timar cavalry ceased to be the backbone
of the Ottoman army, but it remained useful for siege warfare, while timar-
holders continued to belong to the rural elites. What changed was their rela-
tionship with the central elites, to whom most writers belonged.8
Other changes in the second half of the sixteenth century concerned the
balance of power at the center itself: sultans were steadily withdrawing from
actual politics, delegating more and more of their powers to the grand viziers.
After the civil war between the sons of Süleyman, which eliminated all con-
tenders to the throne, the eldest son of every reigning sultan was sent to be
a provincial governor in order to gain experience. This meant there was no
“competition” over his succession, and he was to develop his own household
and prepare to rule. The sultan’s household, including both his harem and his
entourage, played an increasingly important role in government, while the ruler
himself withdrew into a more symbolic and legitimizing role.9 Furthermore,
the sultan’s slaves (i.e. the kapıkulları, who constituted not only the janissary
army but also most of the administrative apparatus of the empire) began to
reproduce themselves: the devşirme system of recruiting was gradually substi-
tuted by protégés rising from within the sultan’s household.10
The perception of all these changes as constituting a visible “decline” has
been seriously challenged by a series of studies since the early 1990s. Linda
Darling has shown that the financial bureaucracy actually increased its capac-
ity to deal with tax collection and the administration of public finances in the
late sixteenth century. Karen Barkey has claimed (perhaps with some exag-
geration) that the slow and intermittent suppression of the Celali revolts was
due to a process of state-building (co-opting the rebels into its system, with
French and English parallels) rather than state inefficiency. Jane Hathaway has
addressed the issue of decentralization, arguing that it was, in fact, a process
closely connected to the elites of the central government. Rifaat Abou-El-Haj
and Suraiya Faroqhi have maintained that, while there undoubtedly was a
crisis, what ensued was a transformation of the Ottoman system that led to
another version of the imperial paradigm, one not necessarily inferior (if this
8 Darling 2014; Darling 2015.
9 These developments were studied in detail by Peirce 1993.
10 On the function of the palace household see Kunt 2012.