184 chapter 4
the author’s time, however, these groups are destitute and the kapıkulu make
fun of them. Furthermore, Ottoman armies are defeated because the soldiers
have become oppressors, and God must punish them. Three years before the
completion of this treatise, Akhisari stresses, the soldiers in Rumili, and espe-
cially the janissaries, had started plundering the villages of Muslim reaya. All
such sedition comes from greed and envy (tam’-ı ham).
Finally, in another pioneering set of ideas that forms the epilogue of his
treatise, Akhisari defends peace (sulh) and agreeing treaties (ahd). War is dif-
ficult and full of bitterness, he writes, while peace brings safety and comfort. To
make war with a nation that seeks peace is wrong. Additionally, it is a mistake
and a great sin to break a treaty (I275–77). One may remark that, with Akhisari
having lived most of his life in a frontier region himself, this might not be a
coincidence; despite far from being a soldier himself, he knew very well the
consequences of war.
In sum, Akhisari’s treatise occupies a mixed position within the trends of his
era. On the one hand, he seems more like a representative of the earlier gen-
eration, in the tradition of moralistic “mirror for princes” literature. As such,
he refers explicitly (I250) to Qadi Bayzawi’s (d. 1291) Anwâr al-tanzîl wa asrâr
al-ta ’wîl, a work widely read in Ottoman medreses, and to al-Zamakhshari’s
(d. 1143) Rabî’ al-abrâr, which, as noted in chapter 3, was repeatedly translated
in various versions, shortened or not, throughout the sixteenth century. In fact,
it seems that his treatise is based on a shortened adaptation of Zamakhshari’s
work, entitled Rawz al-ahyâr, by Hatib Kasımoğlu Muhyiddin Mehmed
(d. 1533/4), which was produced in the early years of Süleyman’s reign. On the
other hand, his use of the traditional medrese style to convey concrete opin-
ions on contemporaneous problems, especially military ones, is typical of
his age—all the more so since, as noted, he tended to present original criti-
cisms and ideas, such as sections describing the weakness of women’s advice
in the chapter on consultation, the famous excerpt on European progress in
military technology, the references to Bosnia, Wallachia, and Moldavia, and his
disapproval of coffee. These ideas may have influenced political decisions, as
Akhisari’s work seems to have been widely read, though they do not seem to
have found their way into his contemporaries’ or his immediate successors’
works, even though other leitmotifs of his treatise (such as the emphasis on
consultation and the problems of coffeehouses) did.
For the sake of comparison, it will be useful to look at a very similar work
with the same title (Usûlü’l-hikem fi nizâmi’l-âlem), written by Hasanbeyzade
Ahmed Pasha (d. 1636/7). Known primarily for his chronicle, written in vari-
ous stages between 1628 and 1635 and covering the period from the reign of
Süleyman to that of Murad IV, Hasanbeyzade entered the palace bureaucracy