“Mirrors for Princes”: The Decline Theorists^183
Perhaps the field in which Akhisari’s advice departs the most from his
Persian models and becomes clearly “Ottomanized” is in his description of
changes within the military strength of the empire.66 Here, Akhisari provides
one of his most original insights, namely that military technology has a role
to play in the confrontation with the infidel and that faith and zeal are not
sufficient factors for victory. First, he observes that Ottoman soldiers have
lost their ability in battle because their chiefs fail to inspect and register them
and their weapons, whereas in previous times the rulers themselves used to
inspect their armies. Then he remarks that, 50 years ago (i.e., in the mid-1540s),
the enemy started to use new weapons; if the Ottomans were to imitate the
infidels in this respect, as they used to, they would surely beat them, but the
Ottoman army neglected to do so and thus is constantly defeated. This impres-
sive instance of comparison with the West stands alone for many years to come;
on the particular subject of military technology, we have to wait until the early
eighteenth century to find something similar. Still, there are some contempo-
rary parallels: in Mustafa Ali’s Künhü’l-ahbâr (Ç3:591–593) there is the story of
a prisoner of the Habsburgs who reported that the enemy had four things that
the Ottomans did not, namely: justice for the peasants, adequate provisions,
timely payment of soldiers’ salaries, and discipline.67 As for Selaniki, he claims
that “infidel rulers who are around and about us” were more careful than the
Ottomans concerning monetary issues; “through the execution of [their] or-
ders and punitive authority, they did not [let the currency] change [but] said:
‘the Ottoman sultan is an example to us; see what kind of disorder will strike
the state and the wealth of the land [if we follow their example]’ ”.68
In his emphasis on army discipline and distrust of the janissaries, Akhisari
agrees completely with the intellectual climate of his era; indeed, he some-
times foreshadows the major themes of subsequent political literature, as shall
be seen in chapter 5. The king and his viziers, he writes, must prevent the sol-
diers from going to “innovations and needless whims” (bid’atleri ve beyhude
havalara) such as coffeehouses; this can be done either through mild mea-
sures or suppression (hüsn-i siyaset ve zabt ile). Victory can be achieved with
the help of God, but the officers must keep the army in good discipline, while
the prayers and spiritual guidance of the ulema and sheikhs are very helpful. In
66 Among the instances where Akhisari provides original advice is his argument that the
defeated enemy rulers should not be reinstated in their previous posts (for example,
Christian notables from Thrace should be appointed as rulers in Wallachia and Moldavia).
67 Cf. Fleischer 1986a, 298.
68 Quoted in Kafadar 1986, 100–102, who remarks that “the intellectual roots of Ottoman
Westernization lie in the earliest phases of Ottoman decline consciousness at the end of
the sixteenth century”.