22 Introduction
4 Trends and Currents: for a Thematic Description of Ottoman
Political Thought
As mentioned, this book was conceived as a reference work, one that would
amass as many of the available sources of Ottoman political thought as pos-
sible, place them into broader ideological currents, and seek to link them
with socio-political developments. It is therefore structured into chapters
that follow a roughly chronological order while mainly focusing on ideologi-
cal currents. Thus, later texts may be dealt with in chapters focusing on ear-
lier periods if they simply reproduce or develop an earlier tradition or thread
of thought; the reader can refer to the timetable in the Appendix in order to
study the chronological overlap of the chapters and the various trends. The
descriptions of the texts will be as detailed as possible; although this method
runs the risk of being tiresome, it also shows the literary structure of the vari-
ous works and offers an analytical table of contents for texts that are otherwise
difficult to read and understand.75 Furthermore, it is precisely by citing as fully
as possible the overall structure of such a text that the tropes and sub-divisions
of the literary genre can be discerned. In this respect, the reader will perhaps
observe that the ideological trends described in each chapter often correspond
(albeit roughly) to literary sub-genres: thus, the neo-Aristotelian tradition
described in chapter 2 is more often than not contained in ahlak treatises on
ethics, while the “declinist” theories of chapter 5 are usually expressed in what
modern scholars often call ıslahatnames (reform tracts) and in the more rec-
ognizable kanunnames, among others. Of course, the emphasis will be on the
content of these works rather than their form, yet it is hoped that the degree
of detail given will provide the reader with again the basis for analysis of form
as well.
The first chapter attempts to survey the political ideas of the gazi circles
which formed the nucleus of the early Ottoman state at the beginning of the
fourteenth century. Of course, there is no way to find written sources originat-
ing from these environments; instead we can trace the survival of these ideas,
mainly through later opposition to imperial policies toward the end of the fif-
teenth century. Thus, Yahşi Fakih’s chronicle as incorporated in Aşıkpaşazade’s
history, as well as those parts of the latter written by Aşıkpaşazade himself, are
studied as one example, together with other anti-imperial sources (such as by
Yazıcıoğlu Ahmed Bican). The authors’ emphasis on the need for the ruler to
75 More detailed summaries of most of the works analyzed here can be found online, on
the database of the OTTPOL project of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH
(Rethymno): http://ottpol.ims.forth.gr/?q=works.