The “Golden Age” as a Political Agenda 191
historiographical works such as Arif ’s 1558 Süleymanname), but reached its
zenith in the seventeenth century, when a historian such as Solakzade could
write (in the 1650s) that “in Süleyman’s reign of justice the Ottoman state found
its balance (mizan) ”.5 This canonization of the past must have made its impact
felt in practical terms as early as the start of the seventeenth century. We read
that, in 1606, Ahmed I encountered the opposition of some ulema, who argued
that things used to be conducted in a different way during Süleyman’s reign;
his answer was that “each period is different, those times cannot be compared
with the present”. Even eight decades later, in 1685, the same argument was
used against the şeyhülislam, who had to remark:6
Was Sultan Süleyman any prophet? Do his words have the status of a
hadith? Such a rule was ordained for those times, but now it has to be
abolished by present necessity.A similar feeling may be deduced from a famous early seventeenth-century
poem, the Hâbnâme (“Vision” or “Dream-book”, mentioned also as Vâkı’a-
nâme) by Veysi (1561/2–1627/8), an ulema who held many judgeships during
his life and died as kadi of Üsküb (Skopje).7 In this work, composed in the early
1610s, Veysi sees Ahmed I meet Alexander the Great in a dream; when the for-
mer complains about his own time, Alexander points out that all the problems
(such as factionalism and bloodshed) have always been present in the history
of humanity: the world was never prosperous and thriving, at least no more
than it is now. This view can be described as optimistic, as it places emphasis
on historical parallels that show that the crisis can be overcome. Veysi stresses
that continuous warfare, the disobedience of the kuls, and excessive taxation
were the main causes for the difficulties of the Ottoman state; proposed rem-
edies include more careful choosing of state officials and a stricter adherence
to the Sharia. The ulema background of the author is evident in this way of
thinking. Moreover, the author claims that the fault is in the subjects’ sedition
5 Solakzade 1879, 4 (bunun ayyam-ı adlında bu devlet buldı mizanı), quoted in Woodhead 1995,
- See ibid., 165 for other instances of late sixteenth- or seventeenth-century eulogies of
Süleyman (Ali, Peçevi, Karaçelebizade); Kafadar 1993.
6 See the relevant references in Sariyannis 2008a, 142.
7 Veysi – Salimzjanova 1976; Veysi – Altun 2011. Cf. Gibb 1900–1909, 3:208–210; Fodor 1986, 227–
228; Sariyannis 2008a, 143–144; Günay 2010; Şen 2011; Tezcan (forthcoming). On the confusion
with his contemporary Üveysi see above, chapter 4. Sometimes (see e.g. Fleischer 1983, 199)
it is asserted that Veysi was one of the first Ottomans to have acquired a manuscript of Ibn
Khaldun’s Muqaddima in Cairo (1598); however, we cannot identify with certainty the buyer
of the manuscript as being this specific Veysi, although it seems quite probable.