Introduction 13
Ottomanists), and which have been studied only in short, article-length sur-
veys and unpublished theses. As Colin Imber wrote recently,43
There is always ... a temptation to try to catch up with whatever histori-
ans of Europe are doing by applying to the Ottoman Empire whatever is
currently fashionable in the West. However, attempts to catch up and to
follow fashion are usually doomed, since the requisite basis of knowledge
is so often lacking.The aim of this book is, precisely, to offer this “requisite basis of knowledge”.
As such, no elaborate textual analysis tools are used and there is little effort at
comparative study; there is, instead, a detailed narrative of texts considered
as political, which are placed together under the rubric of identifiable ideo-
logical currents with an effort to trace genealogies and affinities. This does not
mean that new results do not appear: at the end of the conclusions section of
this book, I try to gather some of these in order to show how the methodology
described above has helped bring to light continuities, ruptures, and links that
were not evident through previous methodological approaches.
Furthermore, we will only deal with the origins and influences of Ottoman
political thought in passing. Literature on medieval Islamicate thought is
abundant,44 and continuities will be duly noted where necessary; on the other
hand, the questions of the Central Asian origins of,45 the relationship with
contemporary Islamicate empires such as the Safavids of,46 and the Byzantine
influences on Ottoman political theories47 will be left for another time and/or
author. In the same vein, I am fully aware that any study of Ottoman ideas and
culture would be incomplete if it did not cover the non-Turkish-speaking popu-
lations of the Empire, including Ottoman Arabs, Christians (Greek, Armenian,
43 Imber 2011, 8.
44 For example Rosenthal 1958; Lambton 1980; Lambton 1981; Black 2011; Darling 2013b;
Boroujerdi 2013. Islamic ethics, on the other hand, is curiously understudied; see
Donaldson 1963; Fouchécour 1986; Fakhry 1994. A detailed study of Ottoman translations
of Arab and Persian treatises would be very useful, but as far as I know none has been
carried out so far; one may consult the notes by Levend 1962, 176–183 (cf. the remarks by
Hagen 2003b).
45 For two conflicting views on this issue, see İnalcık 1967 and Imber 2011, 173–200;
cf. Kafadar 2001, Burak 2015. The major source is the eleventh-century Kutadgu Bilig, com-
posed in the Karakhanid khanate in Transoxania (Yusuf Khass Hajib – Dankoff 1983).
46 See, for example, Lambton 1980 and esp. Lambton 1956b; Lambton 1981, 264–287; Mitchell
2009; Black 2011, 223ff.; cf. also the last section of the conclusion in the present book.
47 See Oktay 2001; Ahrweiler 1975 remains a classic of Byzantine political ideology; see also
Paidas 2006; Odorico 2009; Syros 2010.