494 appendix 2
will ensure that the operation of that workshop and its regular functioning will
be secured and guaranteed for months and years.
However, whenever the foundation of a state is damaged so that the great
personages turn their thoughts to bribery; whenever kings and ministers toss
aside the safeguarding of the law so that their intelligent subjects, who seek their
rights without having to pay money, rot in corners, dismissed from office; when-
ever unworthy and unprincipled low-brows who know only how to count out the
coinage of bribery are raised day by day to offices of lofty rank, and so fulfill their
every desire—then that waterwheel begins to fall and collapse. Indeed its mas-
ter even dies, comes to his end. Especially when a capable apprentice, with suf-
ficient strength to repair the waterwheel, does not exist, then on such occasion
animals ... and even an intelligent and strong-armed human, are too worn out to
make that workshop hum ...
All in all, when a state or realm is, God forbid, taken over by bribe-takers, its
waterwheel is utterly destroyed. Neither does that state endure in order, nor can
that realm oppose its seasons, which are like the progression of the days of the
months through the year.13 Hasan Kâfi Akhisari, Usûlü’l-hikem (See Chapter 4)
From Usûlü’l-hikem fi nizâmi’l-âlem (“Elements of wisdom for the order of the world”):16
If you ask whether one may live outside the four classes described as wise and
movers (of the world), then (the answer is that), according to wise Muslims, this
kind of people should not be left unmolested; on the contrary, they should be
constantly pushed and forced to enter one of the four classes ... For some phi-
losophers, such jobless people should even be executed instead of being left to
wander uselessly ... In the times of the sultans of old—God may have mercy
on them!—such idle people were inspected once a year and prohibited (from
wandering) ... But it is against the law if a class neglects its own tasks out of
laziness; this results in riots in the realm. Thus, it has become clear that ... it
is not right if people of one class leave their jobs and are forced to do those of
another ... Besides, this is the reason for the rebellion and disturbance of recent
years. Peasants, villagers, artisans, and inhabitants of the towns were transferred
to the border and forced to fight; the [real] soldiers, such as the sipahis, were
not cared for during war and lost their means of living because of the officers’
negligence; dearth and famine in the land reached such a degree that things that16 Akhisari – İpşirli 1979–80, 252–253 and 268–269.