Khaldunist Philosophy: Innovation Justified 325
no matter whether you make a profit or a loss, you are not fit for this job
(ehli degülsin) ... farming turns a man into a peasant (şekl-i insanı ider
dihkâni).Last but not least, an important aspect of his accusations concerns Sufi circles,
perhaps due to the influence of the Kadızadeli movement that was active dur-
ing the author’s youth. In general, Nabi’s ideal is a quiet life, one self-sufficient
and calm; in Marlene Kurz’s words, he wished for “a state undisturbed by pres-
sures from without and untroubled by material concerns—thus a state which
permitted people to pursue their scientific and literary interests”.84 Perhaps
it would not be too far-fetched to generalize this image to a vision for the
Ottoman state as well.
The need for peace, as shall be seen, became one of the major tropes of
eighteenth-century political texts.85 Another was the need for innovation and
reform, based on the notion of universal historical laws governing the rise and
development of various states and hence the idea that different times need
different measures. As will be seen, after Na’ima and toward the end of the
eighteenth century the notion of nomadic life as a sign of valor and solidar-
ity, connected with the rise of empires, became the dominant element of the
Khaldunist ideas that were circulating. Thus, Na’ima’s more faithful rendering
of the stage theory did not leave as many traces. On the other hand, it certainly
seems that, eventually, Kâtib Çelebi successfully popularized a three-stage ver-
sion of Ibn Khaldun’s laws of imperial growth, one connected with his own
simile of the human body, and, perhaps most importantly, the idea that the
measures to be taken should be adapted to the specific needs of the age. In this
respect, it may be said that Kâtib Çelebi set the foundations for all reformist
discourse of the eighteenth century.
84 Kurz 2011, 255.
85 The historian Vasıf (d. 1806) generally follows Na ’ima’s allusion to the peace of Hudaybiya
in order to justify late eighteenth-century decisions to make peace: Menchinger
2014a, 139.