The Eighteenth Century: the Traditionalists 379
One of Şanizade’s most concrete and lengthy pieces of political thought is
contained in his discussion of the 1821 Greek Revolution (Y1027–1046). He be-
gins with the statement that, due to the neglect of good counsel, the rules of
politics (kava ’id-i siyasiyye) have been abandoned and the army in particular
lost its discipline and started to oppress the other three pillars, with the re-
sult that the balance of society was ruined. There are people ready to exploit
such situations and, since some of them cannot be reformed and must be dealt
with by severe punishments, it is a rule of politics (umur-ı siyasiyye) that the
statesman must imitate the doctor, who cuts away the limbs that may prove
irrevocably dangerous for the body (Y1029). Şanizade then cites the late thir-
teenth-century author Fâzıl (Shams al-Din) Shahrazûrî, who talks of the four
kinds of government “according to Aristotle”:90 tyranny (siyasetü’l-galebeti),
which ends in the humble and ignorant taking over the country; aristocracy
(siyasetü’l-kerameti), or the government of those seeking wealth and honor;
government of communities (siyasetü’l-cema ’ati), or “government according
to a common law (‘ala vefkı’l-kanuni’n-namusiyyi’l-mevzu’i) shared by various
groups (fırak)”; and monarchy (siyasetü’l-meliki), which is “the government of
governments” and the state of the virtuous.91
All the more striking for a polyglot doctor and a reader of Voltaire is
Şanizade’s view on authority. Not only does he favor the sultan’s rule over the
ayan, he is also very suspicious of collective systems of decision and counsel.
Thus, commenting on the 1808 signing of the Sened-i ittifak between the ayan
and the sultan (Y74–75; see below, chapter 9), Şanizade launches an attack on
the notables, which in itself is not inexplicable bearing in mind Mahmud II’s
policy against them. Later on (Y631–633), he describes the same pact as
the paper called “document of alliance” by some ecstatic idiots, blinded
by the dream of fortune and wanting to establish themselves as states-
men (rical-i devlet)and he quotes Mahmud II saying that the authors of the document dared to
oppose to the Ottoman sultanate “which is incapable of being shared” (kabil-
i iştirak olmayan). In the same vein, Şanizade’s analysis of consultation or
90 Pourjavady – Schmidtke 2006, 76–85. This citation comes from Shahrazuri’s Rasâ’il al-
shajara (Şânizâde – Yılmazer 2008, 1030 fn), which had influenced Davvani and was par-
ticularly popular among Ottoman philosophers (see Pourjavady – Schmidtke 2006, 79).
91 In fact, this is an interestingly incomplete repetition of al-Farabi’s (ultimately Platonic)
list of “imperfect states”, namely timocracy (madîna karâma), tyranny (taghallub, cor-
responding to Shahrazûrî’s siyâsetü’l-galebeti), and democracy (madîna jamâ’iya), while
monarchy corresponds to his “virtuous state” (see Rosenthal 1958, 135–136).