The Empire in the Making 57

to just and compassionate administrators, whom he, too, must honor. Sinan
Pasha, with his more pessimistic view, describes careers in the sultan’s service
as full of anguish and strife (T496ff, E190ff ), since viziers are almost doomed to
practice oppression; the same happens with governors, who will have great dif-
ficulty in avoiding tyranny and arrogance and in observing their subjects’ rights
as they wish them to be observed (T504: kendi hakkına muti’ gerek ki kendi dahi
muta ’ ola). In Sinan Pasha’s opinion, the sultan must not confer his power on
officers, since, if they are unjust, his own justice is of no avail (T678), while he
must choose them with care and ask them continually about the state of his
realm. His governors should be competent and experienced, and he should
ensure that the notables of his realm are trustworthy (T680: zuaması sikat u
ümena olalar). However, as soon as he appoints such a governor, he should not
interfere or dismiss him in the first instance as a governor must have time to
learn the state of his province and acquire experience.

...

These ideas set the foundations underpinning most of Ottoman political
thought until at least the mid-seventeenth century. The pre-eminence of
justice is perhaps the most important of them. True, the concept of justice
as a political virtue has a long history. Robert Dankoff summarized three
major relevant strands in ancient political thought: in ancient Persia, the king
was conceived as the embodiment of both justice and fortune; in ancient
Greece, justice is social harmony, while the king is subject to fortune; and
in the major religions of Europe and the Middle East ( Judaism, Christianity,
Islam), the ruler is subject to God’s will (which replaces fortune) and his justice
depends on his submitting to God’s will.56 Fortune or divine charisma also
seems to have had a particular position in the Turkic political tradition of
Inner Asia.57 In early Islamic political thought, justice was not a central notion;
as such, it belongs more to the Persian tradition—or, as Linda T. Darling has
recently showed, to the Middle Eastern one from the ancient Mesopotamian
civilizations.58 According to Halil İnalcık, the Turkic tradition modified the
Persian concept of justice, which was originally conceived of as a favor granted
by the sultan. In texts such as Kutadgu Bilig, he argued, justice refers to keeping
the law (törü, yasa);59 one may notice this connection with legal rules in the

56 Yusuf Khass Hajib – Dankoff 1983, 6–7.
57 See Bombaci 1965–1966.
58 Darling 2013c; cf. Lambton 1962.
59 İnalcık 1967, 269; cf. İnalcık 1969a, 107–108; Mustafayev 2013.