150 chapter 4
death in 1566.18 There are some indications that the author held some minor
state offices; although Yaşar Yücel suggests that he may have belonged to the
ilmiye class, it seems very probable that he served in the palace, since he is very
well informed as to what each military body should wear, as well as on the
function of the imperial kitchens (Y104, 119). Furthermore, the author seems
to know much about the function of the palace bureaucracy: he laments the
poverty of some lower clerks, who have to spend the whole day in the palace
without having a meal (Y100–1), and is particularly sensitive to the intrusion
of strangers into the scribal ranks (though he says nothing at all about strang-
ers in the janissary ranks, a central point of later literature). He is also at great
pains to show that those who have worked in a particular bureau, such as the
financial service or the council secretariat, should remain there, and new posts
should be given to the apprentices of elder clerks (Y111–12).
Kitâbu mesâlih, which was destined for “the present rulers” (hakimü’l-vakt
olanlara: Y91; the plural term appears elsewhere as well) and especially for the
grand vizier (as indicated in many places), is a rather incoherent work, having
52 chapters that contain various pieces of practical advice with no apparent
structure. It clearly follows the same path as its contemporary, the Âsafnâme:
our anonymous author does not care for a philosophical foundation of society
and politics nor for the moral qualities required by the sultan or even the grand
vizier (who, as the addressee of the treatise, is considered a priori receptive
to good advice). Rather, he focuses on specific institutions and the ways their
shortcomings could be mended. It does this with much more detail (and much
18 According to Yaşar Yücel, who published it, the Kitâbu mesâlih should be dated shortly
after 1639: Yücel 1988, 59–62. Only one manuscript is known, dated earlier than 1643;
Yücel’s dating is based mainly on the identification of a certain Yahya Çelebi Efendi in
Beşiktaş, mentioned in the text, with the famous şeyhülislam who died in 1644, and on
the vague reference to some decisive victories of the sultan over the Safavids. Baki Tezcan
argued that several pieces of external and internal evidence point to a much earlier
date, between 1555 and 1566 (Tezcan 2000, 658–659). Tezcan argued that another Şeyh
Yahya Çelebi, a Sufi, resided in Beşiktaş in the mid-sixteenth century, while, moreover,
references to particular people (a physician, Hamunoğlu, who must be a famous doctor
from Süleyman’s era) and events (the conquest of Egypt) as having happened during the
author’s lifetime suggest that he was alive during Selim I’s reign; other pieces of infor-
mation (e.g. the number of palace ushers, kapıcı) also conflict with was is known of the
early seventeenth century. Based on the same reference to the sultan’s victories (which
arguably implies that the victorious sultan is still alive), Tezcan concludes that we should
date this text before the death of Süleyman (1566) and after the 1555 campaign. One may
also add that if we dated the treatise to the late 1630s it would be a quite out-of-date,
isolated specimen of old-fashioned scattered advice, ignoring all the major themes that
were steadily reccuring in the early seventeenth-century texts (for instance, there is no
reference at all to the number of the janissaries).