190 chapter 5
three decades of continuous warfare. Murad died in 1640, leaving behind a ter-
rorizing reputation as a suppressor of janissary unrest and a strict keeper of
religious order.
1 The Canonization of Decline
It was only natural that the events described (those culminating in Osman’s
murder) brought about an even more alarming sense of “decline” than that pre-
vailing in the final decades of the sixteenth century. The comparison with the
allegedly glorious times of the past became increasingly fashionable through-
out the first half of the seventeenth century. While authors such as Mustafa
Ali had spoken of “deviations” or “departures” from the institutional lines of
old, they had not dismissed new ways of coping with the contemporaneous
situation, nor had they made this comparison a central argument in their
treatises. In contrast, the authors to be studied in this chapter, while further
deepening their predecessors’ “Ottomanization” (by concentrating on specifi-
cally Ottoman institutions and practices instead of copying general ideas and
advice), also focused on the need to return to the glorious past: institutions of
the early or mid-sixteenth century were idealized and strict adherence to their
functional rules was advocated.
The concept of a “decline” presupposes that of a “rise”; in other words, of a
“Golden Age” during which the institutions, power, and individual virtues of
the Ottoman dynasty and state had reached their zenith. The placing of this
era varied according to author. It may be remembered that the anonymous
author of the Hirzü’l-mülûk, for instance, considered Mehmed II and Selim I
as ideal rulers, and the same goes for Mustafa Ali, although they seem to have
had different political aims (thus, Hirzü’l-mülûk stresses Mehmed II’s absolut-
ism, while Ali sees him as the founder of the “old law”).4 As shall be seen, while
this remark remains valid for the first decades of the seventeenth century, by
the early 1620s the decline was seen as beginning with Murad III’s reign and
the “Golden Age” was increasingly identified with Süleyman’s era (although
there are voices, most notably in Koçi Bey’s work, blaming Süleyman for inau-
gurating administrative malpractices). Eventually, it was Süleyman’s reign that
came to be considered the “Golden Age” of the Ottoman Empire, even if most
authors acknowledged that signs of what they perceived as “decline” had al-
ready started to appear. This “canonization” had begun long before Süleyman’s
death (for instance, in Celalzade’s history, as well as in various commissioned
4 Cf. Tezcan 2010a, 57–58. On the image of Selim I in advice literature cf. also Çıpa 2014.