The “Golden Age” as a Political Agenda 223
the etymology of the name Istanbul from εις την Πόλιν: I46); the mosques,
schools, markets, and other foundations of the city are also enumerated, as are
its guilds (in alphabetical order). Then, Hezarfen gives lengthy and detailed
information on the protocol and internal workings of the palace, its scribal
institutions, the feasts and ceremonies held therein, the grand vizier and his
income (copying mainly the first chapter of Lütfi Pasha’s work), and the vari-
ous career lines in the palace hierarchy; after the palace, he moves on to the
army, enumerating the soldiers’ salaries; he talks about state finances (with an
excursus on the difference between the solar and the lunar year), land-holding
and taxation, as well as the rules of the timariot system (again mostly copied
from Lütfi Pasha);71 he enumerates in great detail the provincial administrative
units of the empire and their timars (including newly-conquered Crete) and
describes the janissary corps, the navy, and the imperial arsenal (stressing the
importance of geography and hydrography, as “the victories of the infidels are
the result of the care they show for the naval sciences and weapons”: I160).72
The final chapters concern the Crimean khans, as well as various pieces of in-
formation on the science of war, the ulema, and the şeyhülislams. Finally, at
the end of his treatise Hezarfen copies various legal texts: mining regulations,
some kanunnames from Thrace, and Mehmed II’s law code. To this he adds the
whole text of Lütfi Pasha’s Âsafnâme (I266–274) as well as two reports on the
introduction of coffee and tobacco to the Ottoman Empire (copied from Kâtib
Çelebi). Finally, the thirteenth chapter is devoted to a lengthy and very detailed
description of the 1672 feast of the sultan in Edirne.
Most of Hezarfen’s treatise can be viewed as the consummation of the
“administration manual” genre: the extensive lists of provinces, salaries, and
names (of grand viziers, for instance) are modeled upon the finest specimens
of earlier manuals, enriched with commentaries and further information. One
may even find a detailed budget of state income and expenses (for the year
1660/1; I86–104). Most of the information he copies is rather outdated, much
more so than that of his predecessors: for instance, he inserts some fetvas on
land-holding and taxation by Ebussu’ud Efendi and Kemalpaşazâde (I108–112),
while he seems to ignore totally the land and land-tax reforms implemented
experimentally in Crete at a time when he himself was present there.73
71 These rules stress the need to avoid the intrusion of peasants into the timariot ranks
(I141), but Hezarfen notes pragmatically that this cannot be achieved in every period, in a
remark which will be examined in more detail in chapter 7.
72 The same advice is contained in his universal history, obviously under Kâtib Çelebi’s in-
fluence: Wurm 1971, 98; Hezarfen – İlgürel 1998, 10.
73 On the other hand, he does take into account the poll-tax reform, implemented in Crete
at the same period. See Sariyannis 2011b and esp. 48–49.