400 chapter 9
the Austrian surveying instrument (see above, chapter 8) is telling. This is how
he answers the Habsburg general, when the latter asks him how he did it:37
Do not think that since we do not know these tricks we had to learn them
by one of your engineers ... We know them through the science of geom-
etry and its proven rules. We have compilations of geometry books and
figures of theorems. Because in the Exalted State we do not pay attention
to mapmaking, it has been neglected, but we [know] it all the same. The
wise monk in the state of England who said “I invented this” had [in fact]
studied the rules ... contained in the books of geometry that had passed
to the hands of the Christian nations with the fall of Cordoba ... We do
know this practice with its methods and proofs ... Did you think we are
ignorant? Did you think the Exalted State chose us for such a task in vain?The idea that military discipline and training was an invention of the
Ottomans in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, which was then taken up by
their European foes, proved especially strong, since it could surpass objec-
tions based either on the abhorring of innovation and the superiority of Islam.
Combined with the principle of reciprocity, it made a mighty weapon in the
hands of the factions promoting European-style military reforms. What dif-
ferentiates the authors to be examined in this chapter from those called “tra-
ditionalists” who were analyzed in the previous one is exactly this notion of
reciprocal imitation. True, Süleyman Penah Efendi often looks to Europe for
models of military organization or cultural assimilation, but he looks for inspi-
ration not at a nation that is already a step beyond and that should be taken as
a model. This is the quintessence of mukabele bi’l-misl, the common feature of
the works examined in this chapter.
1.2 Ahmed Resmi Efendi and the Balance of Powers
As noted in the previous chapter, there is a strange 40-year gap in notable
works of political advice, roughly from the end of the “Tulip Period” until the
Ottoman-Russian war. The growing emphasis of Ottoman political thought on
military organization may (partly) account for this silence, since these four de-
cades were peaceful ones, as if Na’ima, Nabi, and other advocates of peace had
finally been heard by the administrators. Furthermore, both Na’ima and the
anonymous Christian interlocutor in the 1718 dialogue had stressed that peace
would be an opportunity for reorganization, with the eventual aim of fight-
ing back against the infidel with a stronger army. And, indeed, personalities
37 Nu’man Efendi – Savaş 1999, 89–90; Nu’man Efendi – Prokosch 1972, 93–94.