Towards an Ottoman Conceptual History 455
the channels through which this common ground found its way to imperial
policy-makers towards the turn of the eighteenth century. Finally, interesting
conclusions (and in a similar vein) can be drawn from the study of the eigh-
teenth century as well: we showed that the gap between the “modernist” or
“Westernizing” reformers around Selim III and the more “traditionalist” au-
thors writing in the second half of the century was more narrow and blurred
than we tend to think, and that these two trends shared some common ideas
and prerequisites.
After this study of the conceptual development, we may also try to de-
duce some turning points in time that constituted “landmarks” for Ottoman
thought. One such turning point would be Murad III’s reign (1574–95), when
the distinctive Ottoman style of institutional advice (initiated some decades
earlier by Lütfi Pasha) was combined with the sense of decline; political trea-
tises continued to stress the need for a return to the old values and rules well
into the first half of the seventeenth century. We may trace a second turning
point to the mid-seventeenth century: starting with Kâtib Çelebi’s work, the
idea of change as a necessity of the time gradually permeated Ottoman views
in order to justify various reformist efforts. In parallel, the so-called “Sunna-
minded” authors, whose influence seems to culminate toward the turn of the
century, should not be neglected. A final turning point may be located during
or soon after the Russian-Ottoman war of 1768–74, when even the more tra-
ditionalist authors or administrators felt the urgent need for a Western-style
reform of the army.
4.1 Ottoman Political Ideas in Context
As stated in the introduction, this book tried to avoid dealing in detail with
the Islamicate origins of Ottoman political thought. Yet, after nine chapters
of analytical descriptions of Ottoman ideas, a short assessment of the place
Ottoman ideas occupy in the history of Islamic political thought should be
sketched. For one thing, even if we accept our working hypothesis, i.e. that
the Ottoman state followed a trajectory of development similar to those in
Western European states, it seems clear that, from the point of view of intel-
lectual history, Ottoman political thought almost never ceased to belong to
the broad category of Islamic ideological genealogies. Even works that sought
to follow European developments did not depart greatly, neither in form
nor categories of thought, from the Islamic tradition: Kâtib Çelebi’s con-
ception of historical change and of universal laws was placed in Khaldunist
terms, while the “Westernizing” authors of the late eighteenth century used
characteristically Islamic concepts such as mukabele bi’l-misl and even emr
bi’l-ma ’ruf.