300 chapter 7
other desideratum). However, he clearly considers “a judge obtain[ing] his ap-
pointment by giving a bribe” as forbidden for both sides, i.e. both the donor
and the recipient, although a bribe given to secure one’s rights is permissible
under certain circumstances. Stressing the judge’s post, in these cases, seems
to be relevant to the holiness of that office. However, afterwards, Kâtib Çelebi
describes bribery as one of the customs that cannot be prohibited since “there
is no aversion from bribery at the present time”. As such, he recommends a
legal stratagem (the “oath of hire” or icare akdı, i.e. a fictional hire of the recipi-
ent by the giver for a day) to legitimize bribes given in order to avert harm or
secure an advantage, unless this is given to a judge. After all, he observes,
that is how bribery is conducted nowadays in government departments
in all matters except appointments to the office of judge.After this quite unusual proposal, Kâtib Çelebi somehow hastens to add, of
course, that rulers of the past were much more adamant in maintaining the
spirit of the law since
there are many actions which can be dressed in the garb of legality but
are not acceptable to the reason, because of the manifold corruptions
lurking beneath [the surface].It is impossible not to note the striking resemblance of such remarks with the
famous (or, for others, infamous) Jesuit casuistry of the same period. French
Jesuits had a marked presence in Istanbul from 1609 onwards, despite a tempo-
rary suspension in 1628, and they played an active role in Christian education
in the city from the 1580s onwards, and increasingly so in the 1610s and 1620s,
teaching the children not only of Catholic but of Orthodox Christians as well.43
Furthermore, it is highly likely that Kâtib Çelebi’s main convert informant and
translator, Mehmed İhlasî, had been a former Jesuit.44
As well as, or maybe rather than, a Jesuit influence, however, in Kâtib Çelebi’s
argument one may detect a perhaps excessive application of istihsan (the
mainly Hanafi doctrine for reasoning on the basis of personal deliberation)
and, even more, of istislah (the similar doctrine that stresses the public good or
human welfare, i.e. maslahat). The reader may also remember that Abdulahad
Nuri, Sivasi’s disciple who was discussed in chapter 6, had also used istihsan
43 Frazee 1983, 72ff. and esp. 80–87; Dursteler 2004, 294–301; Ruiu 2014. On casuistry in
Christian ethics, see Boarini 2009.
44 See Hagen 2003a, 278, and more generally 66–68 and 277–280 on İhlasî and his background.