Towards an Ottoman Conceptual History 445
the janissaries (commonly known as heavy smokers) and their political power
is tempting, but cannot be established with certainty. On the other hand,
Sivasi’s disciple Abdulahad Nuri describes the usual course of a new custom in
a much more flexible way, one usually attributed to Kâtib Çelebi: something is
first prohibited, he maintains, but then takes root in people’s customs and, in
the end, is declared licit on the grounds of the public good (istihsan).
As well as the Sunna-minded condemnation of innovations, the term ac-
quired a specific meaning with the “declinist” authors of the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries. Selaniki associates bribery, usury, and corruption
with “injustice and innovative practices” (cevr ü bid’at), while his contempo-
rary Mustafa Ali has Mehmed II’s grand vizier making the grim prophecy that a
decline would come if any of the sultan’s successors decided to promulgate his
own law.42 In subsequent decades, authors such as Koçi Bey and Aziz Efendi,
who glorified the “old law” and lamented departures from it, were fiercely op-
posed to innovation, which thus acquired a new meaning of deviations from
a certain model of landholding and other military and administrative prac-
tices. Nowhere is this association clearer than in the anonymous Kavânîn-i
yeniçeriyân, as the author enumerates those innovations in the corps that are
against the (old) law and those that are not (kanuna muhalif olan bid’atlar ... ve
kanun üzere olanlar).43 Similar remarks continued to be made even at the be-
ginning of the eighteenth century: let us point to the short note on innovations
(“good and bad”) that form an appendix in some manuscripts of Defterdar
Mehmed Pasha’s treatise and to Nahifi’s stressing of “the annihilation of inno-
vative and unjust practices”, mainly meaning illegal taxes and dues.
Another line of thought, as stressed elsewhere as well, begins with Kâtib
Çelebi, who declares clearly that there is no point trying to abolish innova-
tions, even bad ones, once established in a community: “people will not
abandon custom” (halk adeti terk eylemez), and anyway “scarcely any of the
sayings or doings of any age are untainted by innovation”. In fact, Kâtib Çelebi
favors innovation, in the sense that he theorizes that different times need
different measures just as people need different treatment and medicine at
different ages; we saw how deeply this concept permeated late seventeenth
and eighteenth-century thought, from Hemdemi and Hezarfen to Penah Efendi.
Na’ima also systematically inserted such advice, even talking of the Sharia di-
vision of state income and expenses, which normally would be considered
inviolable. At the beginning of chapter 5 we showed how the justification of in-
novative practices had already begun by the early seventeenth century; in 1729,
Müteferrika could even state that “the ancients always made fine innovations”
42 Selaniki – İpşirli 1999, 458; Ali – Demir 2006, 142–143.
43 Akgündüz 1990–1996, 9:263–268.