434 conclusion
himself. Mustafa Ali, for instance, seems to connect equity with government
while keeping mildness and punishment (i.e., the administration of justice)
separate (gerek adaletle hükûmetde gerek hüsn-i tedbir ve siyasetde), while other
sixteenth-century authors speak of the “affairs of the kingdom” (mesalih-i mülk,
Celalzade) or the “affairs of the people” (masalih-i halk, Lütfi Pasha). What is
translated here as “affairs” is (like istislah) a cognate of maslaha, a fundamental
term of Islamic political vocabulary broadly meaning “the common good” (in
al-Ghazali’s definition, it is that which allows the acquisition of benefit and
the avoidance of harm).8 The seventeenth-century Ottomans would use a term
like “affairs of the state” (or “of the dynasty”: umur-i devlet) but not necessarily
for what we would call “politics” today. Significantly, the term politika appears
in Behic Efendi’s treatise (the scribes have to read “books on politics”) with a
marginal note explaining it as “a Frankish word used, in our times, to signify
falsehood and cheating (kizb ü hîle), although its real meaning is political af-
fairs and the government of cities (umûr-ı siyasiyye ve tedbir-i müdün) ”. 9
Usually, the meaning of such expressions depended on the speaker. When
non-ulema elites accused the ulema of becoming involved in “state affairs”,
they meant non-ulema patronage and appointments;10 in the same way, the
terms havass and avam, “private” and “public” or “elite” and “commoners”, had
different connotations depending on their object.11 For Aziz Efendi in the early
seventeenth century, the janissary commander and other officers could be de-
scribed as “shareholder[s] in this noble state” (bu devlet-i aliyyeden hıssedâr).
Under all these meanings and nuances, “state affairs”, i.e. government issues,
formed the object of the “political advice” genre. The audience for such texts
was not confined just to rulers or even viziers: it comprised all those termed by
Hemdemi “statesmen” (ehl-i siyaset), i.e. those who practise good administra-
tion (hüsn-i zabt ile hâkim ve zâbit eyleyüb).
Thus, there was a sphere of activity that corresponded to our “politics” and
whose meaning can best be conveyed as “governance” or “statecraft”. This
sphere was legitimately shared by all those entitled to a government post, al-
though it was always the sultan who granted such a privilege, at least in theory
(one may remember Silahdar’s paradoxical praise of the 1656 rebels against
the palace eunuchs who had thought “that they could share the power with
8 See Afsaruddin 2014 (and 387 for al-Ghazali’s definition); Laoust 1970, 166ff.
9 Behic – Çınar 1992, 37; cf. Beydilli 1999b, 53–54.
10 Zilfi 1988, 112–114.
11 Thus, the term avam could mean the rabble, inferior janissary officers, non-dervishes,
non-ulema etc.: Sariyannis 2005, 2, fn. 6.