416 chapter 9
est quarter” to write a simple-styled essay rebutting the calumnies circulated
by such people.
If Sekbanbaşı’s criticisms of the janissaries were made from a mainly military
point of view (and his pseudonym, “the old chief of irregulars”, clearly meant
to stress his experience), he had a more religious counterpoint, Dihkânîzade
(“son of the villager”) Ubeydullah Kuşmani, who tried to answer from the op-
position’s own standpoint. We know little about Kuşmani’s life except for what
he himself states in his own works. He describes himself as a “dervish traveler”
and states that he started his voyages in the year of Selim III’s ascension and
that he arrived in Istanbul five years later. Kuşmani seems to have traveled in
Russia (or near the Russian borders), too. Between 1803 and 1805 he was ac-
cused of being a spy of Tayyar Mahmud Pasha (an ayan of the Caniklizade
family who had taken control of the regions of Trabzon and Amasya); he was
imprisoned and then released. From the historian Cabî Efendi we learn that
Kuşmani was exiled from Istanbul in 1808 because he had spoken harshly
against the janissaries while preaching in a mosque, and this is the last in-
formation about him there is. His treatise, Zebîre-i Kuşmânî f î ta’rîf-i nizâm-ı
İlhâmî (“The book by Kuşmani describing the order [or, army] by İlhâmî70”),
was composed in 1806.71 In a similar way to Sekbanbaşı’s work, Kuşmani’s trea-
tise is mainly structured as a dialogue, with the janissaries’ arguments refuted
by the author in the second person plural.
Both tracts, in İbrahim Müteferrika’s tradition, primarily justify Selim’s
reforms based on the need for a strong army to defend the Muslim realms.
Sekbanbaşı starts his treatise by stating that God has created “an Emperor of
the world, to administer with justice the affairs of the whole company of his
servants, and to protect them from their enemies”; He also has “subjected the
earth to government in such a manner that it is divided into many regions,
each of them should have its own Sovereign”, while each sovereign protects
his country and “the servants of God whom [it] contain[s]” from hostile
neighbours.72 It is human nature that the strong are superior to the weak and
70 A play on words: İlhâmî means “inspiration-giving”, but it was also the poetic pseudonym
of Selim III.
71 Kuşmanî – İşbilir 2006. Other works by Kuşmani are a postscript (zeyl) to a narrative of
the 1806 revolt (Kabakçı İsyanı; Kuşmanî – Yıldız 2007, 72–80 [modern Turkish transla-
tion] = 135–145 [transcription]), in which he repeats most of his arguments in Zebîre, a
very short political essay (Mevâ’iz-i Kuşmânî, Millet Ktp. Ali Emîrî-Şer’iyye, nr. 591), and
some other treatises that have been lost. See also Beydilli 1999b, 35–37; Şakul 2005, 135–
138; Kuşmanî – Yıldız 2007, 15–19.
72 Cf. a similar remark by İbrahim Müteferrika: Müteferrika – Şen 1995, 131–132. Sekbanbaşı
mentions Müteferrika’s Usûlü’l-hikem in Wilkinson 1820, 245.