The Empire in the Making 45
both Persian and Arabic.36 The antagonistic nature of this influx can be seen
in the frequent accusations leveled against the “corrupt ulema” in the texts
representing the earlier military aristocracy, as was seen above. A number of
such scholars, individuals who had been educated in thriving cities such as
Kütahya, Amasya, or even Cairo, were, quite early, writing works of political
advice, direct or indirect, in an effort to establish their own position in the
newly-born Ottoman apparatus. One of the first was Ahmed bin Hüsameddin
Amasi, whose work will be examined in the next chapter, since it begins a tra-
dition of translating Nasir al-Din Tusi’s systematic moral and political theory.
Most of the rest, however, turned to the more practical adab or “mirror for
princes” literature.
Identifying adab with “mirrors for princes” might be somewhat mislead-
ing. Adab is a vague term that refers more to a genre than to a specific tradi-
tion: it comprises all literary works describing proper behavior and etiquette
while also providing entertainment. In a sense, adab is everything an educated
and witty person should know, and at the same time so is every literary work
containing such information. As such, adab can also be conceived in a nar-
rower sense, containing everything a specific professional, such as a scribe or
a courtier, should know; and in this sense, “mirrors for princes” are the adab
of rulers and follow the same literary rules (such as entertainment value, the
widespread use of maxims, stories, and anecdotes, and elegance of style). As
also noted in the introduction, on the other hand, “mirrors for princes” is a con-
ventional term, borrowed from the European literary tradition, to designate a
tradition of advice with a moral basis that sought to give concrete counsel for
what is now called governance.37
At the time scholars from the Anatolian emirates began to enter Ottoman
intellectual life, production of “mirrors for princes” was thriving in Anatolia. If
we are to describe their basic aspects, there were two main models which could
be followed, either independently or combined together. One was the Persian
imperial tradition, as seen in Nizam al-Mulk’s Siyâsatnâme (“Book of govern-
ment”) from the end of the eleventh century: focusing on practical aspects
of kingship, such works gave detailed advice on the choice of one’s courtiers
and advisors, the use of spies, the administration of the army, the collection of
taxes, and so forth, with particular emphasis on the importance of justice. The
other most important works were those of al-Ghazali, and especially his Ihyâ
36 Kafadar 1995, 139; Lindner 2009, 120; Tuşalp Atiyas 2013, 43ff.
37 The literature on Islamic “mirrors for princes” is vast: see, for instance, Lambton 1971;
Leder 1999; Dakhlia 2002; Aigle 2007; Marlow 2009; Black 2011, 91ff. and 111ff.; Darling
2013b; Yavari 2014.