The “Golden Age” as a Political Agenda 205
posts were granted on the basis of bribes rather than merit, and while timars
started to be given to others than their natural holders, i.e. the fighting sipahis,
the Ottomans started to experience serious losses on all fronts. The “Circle of
Justice” has been totally disrupted, states Koçi Bey, as peasants, the treasury,
and the army all are in a desperate position.
Both Kitâb-ı müstetâb and Koçi Bey attribute the rise of the Celalis to the
disruption of timar relations: Koçi Bey remarks that all the servants of grand
viziers and other high state officials used to be their own bought slaves, not
salaried peasants or tradesmen. There are two reasons why the latter case is
harmful: first, such servants would stop paying their taxes and thus reduce
the income of the treasury and of the timariots; second, that a peasant who
tastes riding horses and carrying weapons gets used to such habits and can
no longer return to agriculture. Koçi Bey notes that most of the Celali rebels
belonged to that sort. As for the author of Kitâb-ı müstetâb, after citing a story
about Süleyman and Lütfi Pasha illustrating the point that what matters most
is not the amount of money in the public treasury but the well-being of the
subjects (Y17–23, A616–22), he observes that poor peasants end up praising
brigands and Celalis, and the Celali rebellions would not have occurred were
it not for the judges’ oppressive behavior (Y23–25, A622–25). He also adds a
philosophical digression: kingship (saltanat) needs three things in order to
be perpetuated, namely peasants, a treasury, and an army. The treasury is fed
by the peasants, the army is maintained by the treasury, and thus can defend
the peasants against the enemy. These three things are secured through three
means: (a) justice, (b) the granting of posts and fiefs according to the old laws
(kanun-ı kadim), and (c) that the sultan does not consult servants, who are ir-
relevant for the government (hükûmetde olmayan hademe). This passage, we
must note, is typical of the genre: from a general, commonplace version of the
traditional circle of justice, the author jumps into concrete advice on particular
Ottoman institutions. On the other hand, we should also remark that here we
have a very rare example of abstract political theory in a treatise of this kind.
Furthermore, this is also an occasion on which justice is explicitly identified
with the “old laws”, which effectively take up a position in the traditional circle.
If we are to seek the underlying assumptions behind these assessments, we
will find the invisible yet heavy inheritance of moral philosophy as expressed
by Tursun Beg or Kınalızade. The circle of justice, meaning that the sultanly
power had absolute need of the peasants’ welfare, the four-fold division of so-
ciety, and the need for a balance between the classes, had remained an integral
part of Ottoman political thought, even if they were not always articulated in
such terms. It was only in Kâtib Çelebi’s time, the mid-seventeenth century,
that the balance among the classes would re-emerge, in order to justify the