The Empire in the Making 37
“the one that made the house of Osman succumb to sin” by bringing many
Persian scholars to Ottoman lands. The main criticism against Bayezid, how-
ever, focuses on his alleged greed, i.e., an attitude similar to that attributed to
Mehmed II by his critics, namely the allocation of revenues to the state rather
than to the old military aristocracy. Thus, the description of the disastrous bat-
tle of Ankara in Aşıkpaşazade ends with a faithful servant accusing the sultan
(A144): “You didn’t spend your money. You put it all into your treasury, saying
it is trust for your children”. It is remarkable that, in his own chronicle, Nişancı
Karamani Mehmed Pasha, a paragon of Mehmed II’s administration (and ve-
hemently criticized by Aşıkpaşazade), says only that the defeat in Ankara was
due to “many reasons [he] cannot write in this book”.18
Indeed, one could say that the core of Aşıkpaşazade’s political advice lies in
its refutation of Mehmed II’s imperial policy. His side is clearly that of the old
military aristocracy, of the free gazi warriors who found themselves marginal-
ized by the imperial policies and the growing role of the janissary standing
army.19 He clearly tries to underestimate the janissaries’ alleged relationship
with the revered Hacı Bektaş (A238). Aşıkpaşazade puts the usual stress on
the importance of justice, dictated, as shall be seen, by the whole tradition of
political thought in his region and time, but then again justice is meant, in a
sense, as synonymous with generosity and in contrast with greed. For instance,
he observes that “the wishes and traditions of the House of Osman are founded
on justice”, noting that, upon his invasion of Karaman, Murad II did not extract
the slightest amount from any subject of the emirate (A175). In the final part
of Aşıkpaşazade’s work, a list of the virtues of the Ottoman sultans empha-
sizes their generosity, to both the poor and dervishes, as well as their activity
in charitable works and vakfs (A230–33). In a story where, once again, the
Persian intruders play the role of corrupters, we read that Fazlullah Pasha, a
Persian vizier of Murad II, advised him to collect obligatory alms (zekat), i.e.
taxes, from his subjects in order to feed the army and fill the treasury. The just
sultan replied that in his realm there are only three licit ways of collecting
money, namely silver mines, the poll-tax from the infidels, and booty from the
Holy War. “If the army is fed from sinful sources (haram lokma), it becomes
sinful itself ”. This advice is followed by a special chapter entitled “What the
end was of sultans who hoarded wealth” (A233–34), with Bayezid I as the first
example: the only true wealth is that spent on charity, and the real treasury of a
ruler is formed of the blessings showered on him by his subjects. This emphasis
on the virtue of generosity and the underlying disapproval of the centralizing
18 Nişancı Mehmed Paşa – Konyalı 1949, 348.
19 See e.g. İnalcık 1994b, 144–147.