402 chapter 9
policies and international relations (or, in other words, a retreat of the idea of
Ottoman “exceptionalism”).41
Ahmed Resmî Efendi (1700–83), of Cretan descent, was the first Ottoman
ambassador to Prussia (1763), where he was shown a review of Frederick the
Great’s army (in turn, he wrote his own report or sefaretname). Throughout the
Russian-Ottoman war (1768–74) he was the kethüda of the grand vizier, Halil
Pasha, to whom he presented his first essay (1769) on military affairs, partly
based on his experience in Berlin (the word “experience”, tecrübe, is repeat-
edly mentioned in the preface of the essay).42 At the beginning of this treatise,
Resmi shows an attitude towards war somewhat rare for his time: he states
that “God has ordained that the order of the earth and protection from corrup-
tion is achieved through war” (based on a Quranic quotation),43 and attributes
Ottoman defeats in war to the long period of peace and the subsequent neglect
of proper military organization (1b–2a). He then enumerates some issues he
feels the grand vizier should attend to, concerning the order of a campaign; he
focuses on the need for discipline during the march and in the camp, stress-
ing ( just as Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Ağa had done on the occasion of the
defeat at Vienna) the unnecessary multitude of auxiliary followers and ani-
mals, especially among the troops from Anatolia (4a–7a). He also deals with
the army’s logistics, proposing ways to secure provisions for the army without
oppressing the peasants of the areas through which the troops would have to
march (8b–10a). Resmi also discusses price regulation (again with an eye on
provisioning the army), exhibiting detailed knowledge of the price of basic
goods (10a–12a). As for the janissaries, Ahmed Resmi stresses the well-known
problem of esame, i.e. roll titles, whose number did not correspond to the
actual soldiers and which were the object of illegal sale and corruption among
the officers. As did many before him, he recommends a thorough inspection of
the pay-rolls, which would show the real number of troops ready for the field,
but, proceeding beyond this, he also proposes (“in case these measures do not
bring about results”) the creation of a special corps (8a). Such a corps should
be formed by
2,000 men chosen from among the lowest ranks of the inhabitants of the
Balkans and Anatolia (edna mertebe iki tarafdan iki bin adem intihab).41 On this process see Beydilli 1999a. On Ahmed Resmi, the classic study is Aksan 1995.
42 İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi, TY 419, 1b–12a; an English summary is in Aksan 1993,
57–58 (=Aksan 2004, 33–35); Aksan 1995, 188–195.
43 Quran 2:251: “And if it were not for Allah checking [some] people by means of others, the
earth would have been corrupted”.