70 chapter 2
once the question was raised as to how one could express the infinite grati-
tude owed to Sultan Mehmed II, Mahmud Pasha answered that the sultan also
owes gratitude, to God, as recognition of His grace. The gratitude for the
vastness of his lands would be to not covet the properties of the reaya; the
gratitude for his highness (bülendi) would be to be merciful; for his innumer-
able treasuries, to give to charity and make charitable deeds; for his might, to
pity the helpless; for his health, to heal the oppressed with a just law (kanun-ı
adl); for his powerful army, to protect the lands of Islam from misfortunes; and
for his court, castles, and gardens, to keep the property of his subjects free from
oppression and torment (the reader may remember here similar ideas in the
work of Sinan Pasha, another victim of Mehmed II’s wrath). As well as the sul-
tan, each of these expressions of gratitude should extend to all his subjects as
well (T24–26). Mahmud Pasha also spoke against Mehmed II’s excessive tem-
per, although he noted that mildness, too, has a limit; the collection of money
and treasure may be accepted, but only as long as it takes place with justice
(tarik-i şer’ ve kanun-ı örf üzre ... hakk ile).22
It is evident that Tursun used his patron’s alleged words as the basis for
his own political advice. One may even suspect that he did not care much for
the elaborate ethical system he borrowed from Tusi: he begins with it so as to
smoothly introduce Mahmud Pasha’s encomium and his stress on mildness,
for lack of which he suffered, as Tursun clearly implies. After Mehmed II’s
death, Mahmud Pasha had acquired the position of perfect statesman, both
an exponent of Mehmed’s imperial project and a victim of his centralization
efforts and ruthless nature; the pasha’s exaltation even reached the point of
resulting in an anonymous hagiography, one which depicted him as a saint
with supernatural powers. It is to be noted that copies of this legend were
often grouped together with the anti-imperial texts on the “blessed Edirne” vs
“cursed Constantinople”, studied in the previous chapter.23 Putting his political
advice into the mouth of a deceased champion of the anti-Mehmed opposi-
tion, Tursun reinforced both his criticism of Mehmed’s policies and his own
position in the new environment following Bayezid’s enthronement.
Slightly younger than Tursun but an equally important figure who also
played a significant role in early sixteenth-century Ottoman writing was İdris b.
Hüsameddin Bitlisî. Born in Bitlis some time between 1452 and 1457, he served
under Uzun Hasan and his Akkoyunlu successors before joining Bayezid II in
1500 and living in the Ottoman state until his death in 1520. Bitlisi was thus
22 İnalcık and Murphey note that Tursun often makes allusions to the conquest as a process
by which state revenues could be expanded (Tursun Beg – İnalcık – Murphey 1978, 17, 24).
23 See Stavrides 2001, 356ff. On the legend, particularly, see ibid. 369–396; Reindl-Kiel 2003.