The Empire in the Making 51
contemporaneous authors. Furthermore, his descent from two prominent
early Ottoman ulema families (his father was the first judge of Istanbul) has
him closer to this scholarly milieu than to the older warlords.
Probably born ca. 1440 in Bursa, Sinan Pasha was a teacher in various medre-
ses in Edirne and later in Mehmed II’s sahn-i semaniye, while he also held the
post of the sultan’s hoca. In 1470 he became the vizier and in 1476 grand vizier.
Within a year he was dismissed and imprisoned, but after a collective protest
by members of the ulema (who allegedly threatened to burn their books and
leave the realm), Mehmed II released him and sent him as a judge and teacher
to Sivrihisar, where he stayed until the sultan’s death. Bayezid II restored him
as vizier and as a teacher in Edirne, and he died in 1486. Sinan Pasha wrote a
number of legal and mathematical treatises, a voluminous work on tasavvuf
(Tazarru’-nâme), and a collection of saints’ biographies. The work that inter-
ests us here, Ma’ârifnâme (“Book of knowledge”, also known as Nasîhatnâme,
“Book of advice”), was completed during Bayezid’s reign, i.e. after 1481, and
is infused with his bitterness and lamentations about fate and the transitory
nature of all worldly things.53 Written in a mixture of prose, verse, and rhym-
ing prose, a form that was to be perfected in the late sixteenth century, the
Ma’ârif-nâme—written for “the commoners” who read Turkish—is a volumi-
nous compendium of moral advice, one of the first in a long series of Ottoman
ethical works.
2.2 The Main Themes of Early Ottoman “Mirrors for Princes” Texts
It has already been noted that, for the Persian authors and their Anatolian imi-
tators of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, kingship was not a sacred qual-
ity. Instead of the mystic or even cosmic overtones it was to acquire later, in
the sixteenth century, the position of the sultan was viewed as one of continu-
ous moral strife. Thus, Şeyhoğlu may declare that the sultan is God’s shadow
upon earth, as if God was a huge bird whose shadow offers power and might
on whoever befalls, and that perfect kingship approaches prophecy and (ulti-
mate) knowledge, but on the other hand he stresses that the ruler must be just
and generous and avoid oppressive and illegal acts by guarding his soul from
evil qualities and wishes, such as lust for material things, calumny, or fornica-
tion. Real kingship (has padişahlık) is subjugation of one’s body and heart and
control of one’s desires; on the other hand, though a good many may exert
this “real kingship” only a few can exert the “general” one (am), i.e. worldly
53 İslam Ansiklopedisi, s.v. “Sinan Paşa, Hoca” (H. Mazıoğlu); Yılmaz 2005, 38–40; Darling
2013c, 131. His Ma’ârifnâme has been published in facsimile (Sinan Paşa – Ertaylan 1961)
and recently in transcription and modern Turkish translation (Sinan Paşa – Tulum 2013).