292 chapter 7
to fight back and extract the phlegm. What can be done is to try to bring the
predominance of the phlegm to a lesser, harmless degree. This metaphor may
be applied to the social organism (hey’et-i ictima ’iyye): Kâtib Çelebi narrates in
detail how Kemankeş Mustafa Pasha had been trying to reduce the number of
janissaries to the levels existing back in the Süleymanic era, but, whenever he
applied such measures, the janissaries again increased in number soon after.
Thus, just like the phlegm in an old man’s disposition, it is impossible to keep
salaried janissaries at very low levels; what can be done, however, is to try to
increase the power of the other three social classes. After all, there is no harm
in a large army. If the soldiers’ number cannot be reduced, their salaries may
be, according to the old rules, although this must be done slowly and gradually,
with thoughtfulness and careful timing: such is Kâtib Çelebi’s advice.
Another chapter (AA133–135; G159–160) concerns the treasury, and further
elaborates the medical simile. After noting that
the sultan is the human reason (nefs-i natıka), the vizier the power of in-
tellect (kuvvet-i akıle), the şeyhülislam the power of perception ([kuvvet-i]
müdrike), and the other classes the four humors,Kâtib Çelebi compares the treasury with the stomach, the money-changers
and coin-weighers (saraf ve vezzan) with the faculty of taste (kuvvet-i zaika),
tax collectors with attracting power ([kuvvet-i] cazibe), treasurers with holding
power ([kuvvet-i] masike), and finally ministers of finances and scribes with
digesting power (kuvvet-i hazıme). In the human body, food is digested with
the help of all these powers, after which it is distributed to the various limbs;
similarly, in society, all classes benefit from the money after it has been col-
lected in the treasury.30 However, if black bile is overwhelmed by the other
humors in the body, the stomach stays empty, and if these are not balanced,
30 There are some similarities between this description and an excerpt from the famous
thirteenth-century Sufi treatise Mirshad al-‘ibâd by Najm al-Din Razi, which, as we saw
in chapters 1 and 3, was translated or adapted (e.g. by Şeyhoğlu Mustafa) into various
Ottoman versions: “all the other officials ... are like the five senses (the eye, the ear, the
tongue, the nose, and the tactile sense), common sense, and the human faculties (think-
ing, imagining, understanding, memorizing, remembering, and the other faculties). The
army commanders are like the head, the hands, the feet, and the other main organs ... The
deputies, the tax collectors, the marshals, and other officials are like the fingers, the joints,
the intestines, and so forth; and the rest of the common soldiery and the subjects, with
their different ranks, are like the veins, the nerves, the bones, the hairs, the muscles, and
all else that goes to make up the body. Just as a human being needs all of these, so that if
one member is lacking his whole person will be deficient, so too the king needs all these
classes of men” (Razi – Algar 1982, 424).