“Mirrors for Princes”: The Decline Theorists^149
an eventual fall or disaster. When they have to use a term, they usually prefer
“corruption” ( fesad) or, more often, “turmoil” (ihtilal).15 The meaning of these
is that things are not as good as they once had been; however, they also imply
that the situation could improve if the sultan (or the grand vizier) follows the
authors’ advice. The idealization of a glorious past is clear, but does not yet
play a central role in these authors’ arguments—in chapter 5, it will be seen
how such an idealization began to occupy that role in the first decades of the
next century.
1.1 In Lütfi Pasha’s Footsteps
In other respects, the late sixteenth-century texts generally follow the path
forged by Lütfi Pasha’s treatise: not only are most addressed to the grand vizier
rather than to the sultan himself, they also tend to ignore older works, hardly
mentioning authorities such as Davvani or al-Ghazali at all, and, most impor-
tantly, they scarcely describe the moral qualities required of high officials.16
While they almost always stress that the vizier must choose honest subordi-
nates, their main emphasis is on the function of the imperial institutions: the
janissary system, the palace and the imperial council, the ulema hierarchy, and
so on. For the most part, these are works written by Ottomans for Ottomans,
and destined for Ottoman rather than universal usage. This current of “institu-
tional advice” reached its zenith in the final decades of the sixteenth century.
The political treatises composed in this period may not be numerically greater
than those produced in Süleyman’s era, but what distinguishes them from ear-
lier literature is their emphasis on the shortcomings of their own era, although
an emphasis on a past “Golden Era” would follow.
Yet the first work to bear all these characteristics appears to date from
before the end of Süleyman’s reign. It is an anonymous work, entitled Kitâbu
mesâlihi’l-müslimîn ve menâfi’i’l-mü’minîn (“Book on the proper course to be
followed by Muslims and on the interests of the faithful”).17 The date this text
was composed has been the subject of much scholarly debate, but it seems
that the text almost certainly originates from the decade before Süleyman’s
15 As seen in the previous chapter, Mehmed Birgivi was also an adherent of this trend;
cf. Ivanyi 2012, 74–75.
16 On the other hand, we must note that treatises describing the means to discern the moral
qualities of prospective officials by way of their physical characteristics were aboundant
even up to the beginning of the seventeenth century: Lelić 2017.
17 Yücel 1988, 49–142; facsimile follows (citations of the transcribed text). See also Tezcan
2000; Yılmaz 2003a, 303–304; Yılmaz 2005, 119–121; İnan 2009, 120; Tuşalp Atiyas 2013,
56–61.