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measures, described above, of cutting taxes and reducing military salaries. As
for the excessive expenses, those which are in the hands of government of-
fices (emanetlerde olan) will be reduced and then their administration given to
trustworthy, honest clerks. In such a way, the problem of excessive expenditure
would be solved within a year or two. Finally, oppression of the peasants must
be dealt with by significantly reducing their tax burden and giving the relevant
offices to experienced people who will not accept bribes; moreover, these ap-
pointments must be guaranteed for a long time. And so Kâtib Çelebi’s essay
ends with a message of hope (AA139; G161), namely that, no matter how grim
the situation may seem, historical experience shows that the Ottoman state
has the power to redress itself after disasters, as happened after the defeat by
Timur or the Celali rebellions. If the appropriate measures are taken, this crisis
will also be overcome.

...

It is in Düstûrü’l-amel that Kâtib Çelebi’s innovative spirit most shows itself.
His analysis of human society as being composed of four classes is not exactly
new, of course: we encountered it in Amasi’s (drawing from Tusi), Kınalızade’s
(drawing from Davvani), and Celalzade’s (drawing from Kashifi) works, and in
fact it constitutes a very common topos of the Persian and Ottoman political
tradition. Kâtib Çelebi’s contribution is that, whereas all those authors justi-
fied the need for balance based on a simile of the four classes with the four
elements, he introduced a more scientific perspective, speaking instead of the
four humors of Galenic medicine. Although the coupling of the four humors
with the four elements had been made in the antiquity, and although the as-
sociation of the humors with social groups had its counterpart in Renaissance
European thought as well (which, however, lacked a four-fold division of soci-
ety and thus focused on the need for balance),31 earlier Islamic similes stressed
the correspondence of the various elements of government with the limbs and
organs of the body, as has been seen (for instance in Bitlisi’s case).32 Neither
Renaissance European authors nor medieval Islamic ones had made Kâtib
Çelebi’s one-to-one coupling of the bodily humors with the four traditional
social groups, although it must be noted that medieval Islamic and Ottoman

31 On the genealogy of the theory of the four elements and its use in political thought see
Syros 2013; on the relation between the elements and the humors cf. Ermiş 2014, 48ff. (who
erroneously states that “the application of the theory to social contexts” was Na ’ima’s,
rather than Kâtib Çelebi’s, contribution: ibid., 49).
32 Cf. Sariyannis 2013, 97–100.