The Eighteenth Century: the Westernizers 423
reputation—on the fact that this innovation was actually an imitation of the
infidel. Most of Sekbanbaşı’s arguments appear to answer such claims, and
Kuşmani explicitly cites (in order to refute it) the argument that “those who
use the innovations of the infidel (ihdas-ı küffar) become like them”, as well as
that the glorious sultans of old did not use such “bad innovations” (bid’at-ı bed;
İ10). We know that this argument was indeed used in the Hüccet-i şeriyye drawn
after Selim’s fall, and thus that it was actually the main weapon in the inven-
tory of the opposition.81 Another argument, which is addressed by Kuşmani,
was again of a religious nature and emphasized the importance of the janis-
sary corps not in terms of “old law” but of literal sanctity, namely that the New
Army was accused of having no spiritual leader (pir), unlike the janissaries
who had allegiance to Hacı Bektaş-ı Velî. Kuşmani’s answer is also interest-
ing: he notes that an army should obey no-one but the “master of the time”
(sahibü’l-vakt), i.e. the sultan, and if they act in unity they will succeed. After
all, Hacı Bektaş gave his blessing to Osman I and to his successors, not to the
janissary corps; furthermore, according to another tradition, Bektaş (and not
Hacı Bektaş) was just the name of the first agha of the janissaries, whereas
Alâ’eddin Pasha, Osman’s brother, founded the corps (İ33–41).
More generally, it appears that the janissaries, partly because they sincerely
considered their position sanctified by age-old tradition and partly because
they were pushed toward conservatist reasoning by the very naming of the
reform as “the new order” or Nizam-i Cedid, reverted to all the ideas of the
“old law” and the religious vocabulary and terminology that prevailed in sev-
enteenth-century texts. If we are to believe Kuşmani, another argument of the
opposition was based on the precept of “commanding right and forbidding
wrong” (emr-i ma ’ruf ve nehy-i münker), which was also present in the 1807
Hüccet-i şeriyye.82 Allegedly, the argument claimed that if obeying the ruler’s
orders can be considered an act within “commanding right” then disobeying
wrong can bring no harm (İ80), and wrong in this context is the fact that public
money (beytü’l-mal) is spent on the new soldiers’ training (to which Kuşmani
answers that this applies only when a ruler spends public money for his per-
sonal whims, not for something necessary). It appears that protests had focused
on the issue of the financing of the new army, since Sekbanbaşı also deals at
81 Heyd 1961, 69; Beydilli 2001, 42 (nâ-mesbuk bir bid’at-ı azime ... kefereye taklidden başka
devlet-i aliyyeyi dahi düvel-i nasara kava ’idine irca ’).
82 Beydilli 2001, 44.