“Mirrors for Princes”: The Decline Theorists^165
the sultans of the House of Osman have withdrawn with lack of interest
whereas that afore-mentioned beg possesses the secret of sainthood and
working miracles.Ali’s discussion of Ottoman power is remarkably relativist, as (in his Künhü’l-
ahbâr) he carefully situates the house of Osman among other contemporane-
ous Islamic states and denies that the dynasty has power over “the conjunction
of times” (sahib-kıran), which, however, he willingly grants to Timur, for
instance.38 For that matter, Ali’s Füsûl-i hall ü akd was composed in order to
show exactly how the most powerful dynasties could fall prey to their own
injustice and oppression. Having described the rise and fall of almost every
Islamic dynasty, as noted above, there is a supplement (D141–43) on the
Ottomans, and here one may clearly discern how Ali set the tone for subse-
quent political treatises. The Ottomans differ from most previous dynasties,
he asserts, because they did not obtain power by any stratagem or trick but by
practising the Holy War, while other Anatolian states that eventually submit-
ted to the Ottoman sultans declined because of their own tyranny and oppres-
sion. At any rate, God’s special bestowals granted to the Ottoman dynasty, as
described in Nushatü’s-selâtîn (T1:37–40/121–25),39 incur a strong responsibil-
ity to keep their lands just and in good order and do not guarantee immunity
to decline.
A story related in Füsûl-i hall ü akd, in all probability invented by Ali,
illustrates this “exceptionalism under conditions” that directly links dynastic
longevity with maintenance of the “old law”.40 Mehmed II’s vizier, Mahmud
Pasha, proposed to him the promulgation of a legal code, a measure that
no previous Muslim king had taken, and suggested that once this code was
promulgated decline could not touch the Ottoman state, apart from under two
specific circumstances: first, if any of Mehmed’s successors decided to promul-
gate their own law; second, if strangers (ecnebi) intermingled with the army.
Indeed, states Ali, when such strangers from Istanbul became accepted in the
janissary army during the imperial festival of 1582 (a view which was to be
repeated by Koçi Bey, as shall be seen in the following chapter), the decline can
be said to have started. From this point onwards, the janissary corps started to
38 Fleischer 1986a, 277–283.
39 The special favors are: the excellence of the sultans’ palace and retinue; their religious
orthodoxy; their freedom from plague; their absolute power to appoint their own people
as governors of far-flung provinces; their extraordinary military power; and the fine state
of their finances.
40 Cf. Fleischer 1986a, 178; Tezcan 2010a, 57.