186 chapter 4

admonition to the inhabitants of the Ottoman capital (ey kavm-i İslâmbol);
later on, however, the exclamation “Oh tyrant!” (â zâlim) seems to be addressed
to the sultan himself, although in other parts of the text the author addresses
the sultan with more respect. At the beginning of the poem, the prediction
of the end time drawing near is reiterated, although this might be a rhetori-
cal device rather than a real belief on the part of the author. After depicting
the cries of the poor against oppression, the author accuses the sultan (or
his administrators) of observing neither the Sharia nor the kanun, as he has
abandoned the world to corruption by adopting unholy innovations (ne şer’-i
Allaha tabi’siz ne hod kanuna ka’ilsiz / cihsni dürlü bid’atla fesada verdiñiz bil-
lah). The kadis are dismissed as corrupt, and the oppression and corruption
of Istanbul’s people has surpassed any known limits; vizierial posts are given
to accursed Jews, while the sultan is surrounded by a crew of dwarves, mutes,
and buffoons. Some criticism is more direct: instead of sword-fiefs (kılıç tîmâr),
timars are given as shoe-money (paşmaklık) to viziers and sultanas, resulting
in a natural reluctance of the gazis to go to war, a situation exacerbated by
the sipahis’ wages being far too low. Somewhat surprisingly, Üveysi seems to
defend the simple janissaries (“If you talk about the janissaries, what can you
tell of them? It is the pashas and the aghas that upset the world and cause cor-
ruption and anarchy”), keeping his wrath for major and minor officials, as well
as for sheikhs, preachers, and dervishes. The sultan, Uveysî boldly continues,
will be held responsible before God, though he will be saved in eternity if he
decides to act in an upright and pious manner. Finally, it should be noted that,
in one version of the poem (the one given by Fahir İz—see footnote), there is
also an allusion to an eschatological just ruler who will redress the world order.
One may see here a revival of the intellectual climate prevailing in the 1590s,
as described above.

...

Thus, by the end of the sixteenth century, a specifically Ottoman genre, a ver-
sion of adab or “mirrors for princes” in which advice was explicitly concrete,
addressed to very specific problems, and which emphasized institutional
rather than moral deficiencies, had reached maturity. Apart from these for-
mal characteristics, the most striking feature of this genre was its view of the
present as an era of disorder, a condition that could be mended only if cer-
tain shortcomings were addressed and, more often than not, departures from
established custom were abolished. As for its social content, it is clear that all
these works stood for the old feudal order, the timariot system; others spoke
mostly from the point of view of the sipahi cavalry, while still more emphasized