38 chapter 1
tendencies of the state is found in a wide range of Ottoman thinkers, as shall
be seen.20
More direct criticism of Mehmed’s policies is also evident, although always
with a careful allotment of responsibility to bad counsellors. For instance,
Aşıkpaşazade accuses Hakim Ya’kub Pasha of initiating “unprecedented
innovations” (işidilmedük ve görülmedük bid’atları), and particularly of bring-
ing Jews into the sultan’s company (A244). More importantly, the renting of
houses to Muslims in newly-conquered Istanbul for money (instead of grant-
ing them as full property) is severely condemned; Aşıkpaşazade attributes this
measure to Rum Mehmed Pasha, allegedly a friend of the infidels who hoped
thus to regain their city some day (A193; cf. A216).21 Equally vehement is his
attack on Nişancı (Karamani) Mehmed Pasha and the confiscations of pri-
vate property and vakfs the latter instigated (A244–45), confiscations which
Aşıkpaşazade describes as opposed to both the Sharia and the old practice—
a leitmotif that recurs again and again in these texts, as mentioned above.
Advisors and officials may be blamed, therefore, but ultimate responsibility
lies with the sultan: speaking of public kitchens and other charitable works,
Aşıkpaşazade observes in the same vein that the purpose of such works is ben-
efit in the next world (ahret), not in this one (vilayet). In this respect, the inten-
tion of viziers follows that of the sultan (niyyetleri padişah niyyetine tabi olur).
He explains that viziers must follow the ulema and the dervishes (vezirler
ülemaya ve fukaraya tabilerdür) because the sultan’s purpose is manifest
through his viziers; in turn, viziers depend on their stewards (kethüda), who
are acquainted with some of the ulema, the poor, the common, and the igno-
rant (i.e. the people), and thus they may know who is in need. As such, any
and all difficulties in such matters, and more generally problems in the world’s
order, come from the intervention of the viziers’ stewards or of unsuitable
trustees who refuse to feed and shelter every poor person as they ought to.
Sultans send special investigators to the vakıf, who cut off expenditures and
impose more burdens on the subjects in order to increase the wealth of the
sultan’s treasury (A246–47).
Thus, if we are to take these early chroniclers as representative of the ideas
prevailing in the milieus of the akıncıs and gazis, the social groups (togeth-
er with the antinomian or, rather, rural Sufis) which constituted the early
Ottomans par excellence, we would detect a strong commitment to a system
of collective decision-making, to a kind of military democracy where the sul-
tan was but primus inter pares. Every attempt to centralize power and revenue
20 Cf. on this Sariyannis 2011a.
21 On this issue cf. İnalcık 1969–1970, 242–45, and 1994, 145–146.