The Empire in the Making 43
in Ottoman politics some centuries later.31 This traditional Islamic obliga-
tion was generally conceived as the obligation of each Muslim individual to
impose (by deed, word, or at least thought) Islamic morality whenever it
seemed to be neglected. Ibn Taymiyya’s views (which were later to dominate
the relevant Ottoman thought) tended to identify state officials rather than
mere commoners as the main actors of this precept, and Ottoman jurists such
as Taşköprüzade (d. 1561) and İsma’il Hakki Bursevi (d. 1725) downplayed what-
ever elements of the theory (e.g. in al-Ghazali’s work) might be considered as
an injunction to rebel.32 The precept usually remained a tool in the hands of
“fundamentalist” movements with a view to (re)installing orthodox life, such
as the Hanbalis of Baghdad in the first half of the tenth century33 and, as we
will see, the Kadızadelis of Istanbul throughout the seventeenth. At any rate,
it served as a commonplace for describing a corrupt society, one in which
nobody (and the ruler least of all) is concerned with sin, and thus it was a use-
ful tool in efforts to criticize state policies.
It should be noted that the army is absent from all signs listed as preludes
to the Apocalypse and is not viewed as the cause of past disasters. It is mer-
chants and, in particular, the ulema who are primarily blamed for the immo-
rality of the times; the janissaries also have their place in the stories about
Constantinople, where we also see enmity toward “strangers”. One clearly
recognizes the reaction of the early gazis and their descendants to the new
imperial order imposed by Mehmed II. We should not think of these writers as
“simple folk”, as opposed to the sophisticated ulema and court officials (some
of these authors clearly belonged to the elite of the day);34 however, in a period
where the notables of the past were bitterly reacting to the emergence of new
elites, there is little doubt which side such works were on. The implied ideolo-
gy is that morality and honesty, strict observance of religious rules, and a domi-
nant role for free warriors who sustained themselves by raids or timars and
who should have a share in state power, are the primary precepts an ideal soci-
ety should follow. One could make two points here. Firstly, this predominantly
moral interpretation of politics was not a feature of anti-imperial opposition
exclusively; as will be seen, the imperial ideology of the fifteenth and early six-
teenth centuries, imported from the Persianate emirates of Anatolia, was also
31 See the comprehensive and detailed study by Cook 2000.
32 Cook 2000, 151ff. (Ibn Taymiyya) and 316ff. (Ottoman Hanafism; cf. 427ff. and esp. 446 on
al-Ghazali).
33 See Cook 2000, 114ff.
34 Cf. Kastritsis 2016, 252–253.