Towards an Ottoman Conceptual History 435
the sultan of the seven regions of the earth”). With Kâtib Çelebi, one may see
a widening of the object of “political advice” to the whole of society, as he sys-
tematically speaks of “the affairs of the community” (umur-ı cumhur) instead
of the usual umur-i devlet. Rather than from the actual politics of his day and
the growing participation of the janissaries in decision-making, this under-
standing must have come from his Khaldunist conception of history. Indeed,
Kâtib Çelebi sees the problems of his day as those of the whole of society rather
than of the government, and his definition of devlet in terms of society match-
es this conception. Nevertheless, it would be a gross exaggeration to say that
the meaning of politics changed radically from the mid-seventeenth century
onwards to encompass a wider strata of the population. Kâtib Çelebi himself
continues to use the traditional definitions, such as when he says in his Takvim
that good politics (siyaset) is the prerequisite for the longevity and well-being
of a state, and that it can emanate either from reason (aklî), in which case it is
a branch of philosophy, or from the Sharia.
Furthermore, within the sphere of governance there are different levels of
issues, each of which pertains to the competence of different levels of gov-
ernment. Hence the distinction between “important” and trivial affairs of the
state, which is also apparent in administrative practice as can be seen from
the mere existence of special registers for “important affairs” (mühimme
defterleri), where the chancellery copied imperial orders related to public
order, defence and war, trade regulations, and so forth, excluding (it seems)
affairs of a more private nature. In the language of political advice, this distinc-
tion is expressed by the terms külli and cüz’i. There is no unanimity as to which
affairs belong in one or the other category: thus, in his second treatise, Koçi Bey
describes the inspection of the registers and the knowledge of the situation
of the treasury and the army as “the important affairs”, noting that all the rest
are small (cüz’iyyât). Most authors, however, emphasize that market regulation
must be considered an important issue to be looked after by the sultan himself:
Mustafa Ali claims that if the sultans consider this matter trivial and leave it to
the judges, then lower-class people become rich and the army becomes poor,
and in almost the same words Hezarfen argues that the regulation of prices is
one of the public issues (umûr-ı külliye); if the sultan or the viziers consider it
a triviality (cüz’î) and leave it to a judge, the latter cannot regulate it by him-
self since it is outside his competence as it is a “matter of politics” (or: of the
administrative branch, emr-i siyaset). As seen in chapter 8, these terms were
current in Ottoman philosophy in many other ways. Vasıf Efendi uses them
when defining events with or without a direct connection to God, while they
were also used in argumentation and legal theory.