The “Sunna-minded” Trend 271
proposed that it be replaced by proportional taxation on produce (muqasa-
ma). The arguments in favor of proportional taxation were presented in such
a way as to stress the rights of the imam to vary taxation according to (the
imam’s) assessment of what the land could bear. In line with the work’s general
spirit of granting a wide legal space for caliphal adjudication, the arguments
in the Kitâb al-kharaj concerning the imposition of the kharaj aimed to maxi-
mize the government’s capacity to tax, at its discretion, through proportional
taxation.137
This translation act definitely symbolizes the Ottoman political elite’s search
for legal precedents for the increasingly Sharia-influenced taxation and land
policies. In that sense, it echoes the legal exercises that Birgivi carried out a
century earlier in his al-Tariqa al-Muhammadiyya. Given the date of the work’s
translation, one can further speculate whether the Ottoman Turkish version of
Kitâb al-kharaj was meant to lay the legal groundwork for Kara Mustafa Pasha’s
unrealized European conquests or whether it was a product of the efforts to
introduce more fiscal laxity into the Ottoman taxation system, as would be
attempted later by the 1691 life-long tax farming (malikâne) code. In any case,
there is one important difference between Birgivi’s interpretation and the re-
suscitation of the Abu Yusuf text: Birgivi stood clear of any contemporary in-
terpretation that gave the sultan too much leverage through kanun or other
kanun-minded manipulations of Hanafi law. However, in referencing one of
the most basic texts of Hanafi law, Kara Mustafa Pasha and the ulema around
him chose a text that gave a degree of flexibility in matters of taxation within
the larger Sharia framework while maintaining the centrality of caliphal, or in
the Ottoman case, sultanly discretion.
Although Rodosizade’s Kitâbü’l-harac continued to circulate extensively in
both manuscript and printed forms well into the nineteenth century, the intro-
ductory sections of later copies no longer mentioned Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa
and left a blank space in lieu of his name. It is not surprising that he disap-
peared from the pages, since the Ottoman forces under his leadership had
suffered a crushing defeat at the gates of Vienna at the hands of the Habsburg-
Polish alliance led by the Polish commander Jan Sobieski in 1683. Following
the execution of the grand vizier, who was held responsible for the failed siege
of Vienna, members of the Köprülü family became subject to demotions and
dismissals. So, too, did Vani Mehmed Efendi, who was sent back to his çiftlik in
Bursa where he stayed until his death in 1685. In the meantime, the Venetian
fleet conquered the Morean peninsula in 1686. The loss of Morea was followed
by the loss of Budin and a string of strategic Hungarian castles, the loss of
137 Calder 1993, 118, 123–124.