Towards an Ottoman Conceptual History 437
seems to be more willing to accept the by-then long-established institution
and notes that tax-farmers should know the province and its peasants well.
It is interesting to see the different theories put forward on the beginnings
of social life and political society.17 Most Ottoman theories derive from their
predecessors and they usually stress the need for cooperation rather than con-
flict. The main argument is that, as no one can produce all the goods needed
for one’s own subsistence, people had to live together and, consequently, a
ruler had to control and regulate these arrangements. This vision comes from
Tusi’s philosophy, and thus we see it in Amasi’s, Tursun Beg’s, and Kınalızade’s
work, but also in later authors’: Ali considers humans “dependent upon one
another through the diversity of crafts and abilities”, while Akhisari argues that
the propagation of mankind comes with social intercourse, which comes with
property (mal), which comes with custom (te’amül), i.e., dealing with each
other (mu’amele ve alış-viriş). However, here, too, one may discern a change in
emphasis from the seventeenth century onwards: Kınalızade had justified gov-
ernance on the basis of the different wishes of people, which tend to produce
fighting and disorder. In later authors, this becomes a commonplace. Hemdemi
explains how men formed societies (cemiyet) in order to help each other, but
then argues that the statesmen’s (ehl-i siyaset) aim was to prevent people from
attacking one another according to their natural faculties of passion and lust.
Na’ima stresses that, for their reproductive needs, some men have the natural
tendency to dominate others (re’is bi’t-tab olup) but also claims (and this is
the Khaldunian influence) that when they are obliged towards too strict an
obeisance their zeal and ardor diminishes. As for Ibrahim Müteferrika, he
also began with the need for association in order to secure mankind’s suste-
nance and reproduction but then, like Hemdemi, claims that, due to differ-
ences in their dispositions and their customs and opinions (ihtilaf-ı meşarib
ve tebayün-i ayin ve mezahib olmalarıyle), some men tend to use power and
violence in order to take others under their control and make the latter sub-
mit to serve them. The need for laws and leaders is based on such injustices
and the desire to prevent them. Should we attribute this change to turbulent
seventeenth-century Istanbul politics or to the Khaldunist ideas that were in-
creasingly dominant from then on and which emphasized the rise and decline
of dynasties as the conflict between the nomadic and the settled state? It is
perhaps no coincidence that, throughout the eighteenth century, the image
of international politics as a field of natural struggle became prevalent. From
Müteferrika and Resmi Efendi, with their emphasis on the necessity of wars
from the beginning of history, to Dürri, who argues that greediness and im-
perialist tendencies are “the natural custom of the states”, even authors who
17 Cf. Yücesoy 2011, 21–27; Syros 2012a.