438 conclusion
advocated peace clearly considered war and conflict as a natural characteristic
of humanity (rather than speaking in terms of Holy War).
3 The Ottoman Political Vocabulary and Its Development
Let us now proceed to the concepts used by the Ottomans themselves. The
repeated use of an almost settled set of notions by authors writing from the
fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries can easily lead a hasty reader to the con-
clusion that Ottoman political thought is but a series of commonplace asser-
tions and advice that repeated itself in various combinations. And indeed,
arguments stating, for instance, that the ruler must practice justice in order
to maintain the world order, or that he should prevent bribery and innovation
and stick to the old law instead, can be found in most of the authors examined
in this book. Yet these very terms (“justice”, “bribery”, “world order”, and so on)
did not mean the same for Tursun Beg as they did for Kâtib Çelebi or Penah
Efendi; their content was widened, narrowed, or completely changed over the
course of time, as was the emphasis given to each in the context of the indi-
vidual author’s argument.18
3.1 Justice (adalet)
It is quite clear that all Ottoman authors considered justice to be the para-
mount kingly virtue, usually (but not always) in the context of the famous
“circle of justice”. Because of its central place in political ideology, justice has
been one of the most researched notions in Ottoman studies. It is charac-
teristic that, while Byzantine and Western tradition, following Aristotle, had
wisdom as the “most kingly” of kingly virtues, Persian and Ottoman authors
substituted justice.19 As noted in chapter 1, Halil İnalcık argued that it was the
Turkic tradition that linked justice to the keeping of law (törü, yasa) rather
than to the moral perfection of the ruler.20 This connection of justice with law
is reflected in Ottoman administrative texts, such as regulations and “scripts of
18 This approach, of course, is not altogether new: see Ergene 2001; Yılmaz 2002; Hagen 2005;
Doganalp-Votzi – Römer 2008; Topal 2017; and cf. Sariyannis 2011a, 140–143.
19 Cf. Panou 2008, 267; among the Western authors, Brunetto Latini in the late thirteenth
century follows Aristotle in praising wisdom (prudence), while Francesco Patrizi in the
late fifteenth and Sir Thomas Elyot half a century later did give justice a distinct place
(Skinner 1978, 1:47–48, 126, 229). There are some Islamic authors, such as Ibn al-Muqaffa’
and later “philosophers”, in whose work wisdom keeps its pre-eminent place vis-à-vis jus-
tice: see Lambton 1962, 98.
20 İnalcık 1967, 269.