Introduction 21
and in its reproduction.73 If we want to place this periodization in terms of
the “transition to modernity” paradigm (and in an effort to reconcile the dif-
ferent views on this paradigm cited above), we could consider the course
towards modernity as having occurred in two separate stages. In the first stage,
late fifteenth and early or mid-sixteenth-century sultans such as Mehmed II,
Selim I, and Süleyman I successfully took control of the powers and sources
of revenue that had remained in the hands of warlord- or ulema households
in a manner reminiscent of the early Ottoman emirate. In the second, which
seems to have started in the late seventeenth century, a state apparatus that
reproduced itself through apprenticeships and patronage took over decision-
making powers from both the palace and its recruits, especially in the financial
administration.74
Of course, this Weberian approach offers no better explanation as to why
similar transitions happened in different societies. Interesting as it may be, it
still leaves the more or less simultaneous appearance of similar political fea-
tures in different societies in a kind of socio-economic vacuum. “Modernity”,
and all the more so “early modernity”, still continue to be heuristic models, by
no means explanatory. Until we make a new reassessment of what happened
within Ottoman society and its economy after the mid-sixteenth century,
and why, the similarities with European developments may be highlighted but
with no hope of providing any explanation for such similarities. Given such
remarks, the occasional use of these terms in the present book may seem con-
tradictory. Yet the main disadvantage of the “modernity” terminology, it could
be said, is precisely the fact that concepts such as these (in whatever terms
they are couched, Weberian or not) are restricted to the political and intel-
lectual levels: types of government and of authority, political participation,
and political actors’ engagement in the public sphere, as well as rationalism or
individuality. In a book concerning actors’ views on state and government, and,
more generally, intellectual history, the use of a paradigm focusing on a course
toward “early-modern” and “modern” forms of rule may be less unseemly than
my criticism above implies.
73 İnalcık 1992b; Sariyannis 2013, 105–107. I have also attempted to find similarities between
the “fundamentalist” movements of mid-seventeenth-century Istanbul and Weber’s
“protestant ethic”: Sariyannis 2012, 282–289. Weberian approaches have also focused on
the study of the late-Ottoman administration: see Findley 1980, and cf. Bouquet 2015.
74 I tried to express this view, with more details, in Sariyannis 2013, esp. 84–87.