72 chapter 2
This part of the work is closer to adab literature; however, there is a degree of
abstraction not often found in other “mirrors for princes”. The fourth and final
chapter (A38–40), again close to the adab tradition, tries to link worldly king-
ship with the Hereafter.
Bitlisi’s treatise constitutes a fully-fledged exposition of the Persian poli-
tical and moral tradition. True, the discussion of governments (originating
from al-Farabi), included by Amasi, is missing, in favor of a weightier place for
individual ethics; but, on the other hand, this lack is replaced by an adab-styled
discussion of concrete advice. Here we have both an account of the soul and
virtues theory and one of the first instances of the dichotomy in the adminis-
trative apparatus, i.e. the antagonism between military and scribal services. In
fact, Bitlisi’s sources are two: on the one hand, his moral theory comes from
Jalal al-Din Davvani’s Akhlâq-e Jalâlî, an improved and extended version of
Tusi’s ethical system. On the other, for the last set of rules, with their emphasis
on the conduct of imperial councils and care for the peasants, Bitlisi reverts to
the famous Siyâsetnâme by Nizam al-Mulk (Nizamü’l-mülk), a work belonging
more to the “mirror for princes” or adab genre. This kind of synthesis appears
for the first time in Ottoman writings here: Amasi and Tursun only presented
Tusi’s philosophical system, while Şeyhoğlu or Sinan Pasha stressed either
abstract moral advice for the ruler or a somewhat ethical reading of earlier
adab. With Bitlisi, the literary unity of the Islamicate cultures that extended
from Anatolia to Khorasan shows one of its last blossomings: his synthesis was
a superb example of the fertile mobility of this international bureaucratic stra-
tum to which he belonged; but, while Persian poetry continued to function as a
model for Ottoman literati, political thought took (for the most part) a distinct
path from then on, all the more since the heretical position of the Persian dy-
nasty in Ottoman eyes made its political views reprehensible.
Amasi, Tursun, and Bitlisi’s works did much to popularize this coupling
of political advice with moral philosophy in a complete explanatory system,
based mainly on Tusi’s and Davvani’s elaboration of al-Farabi and Avicenna’s
neo-Aristotelian theory. Their efforts, however, seem not to have been crowned
with success: all three works were not very popular in their lifetimes, with very
few manuscripts copied. Furthermore, as will be seen in the following chap-
ters, the major political thinkers of the sixteenth century tended to abandon
this approach in favor of a more down-to-earth, “mirror for princes” style.
There were a few authors, mostly immigrants like Bitlisi, who (in a similarly
unpopular way) tried to transfer the Tusian system: a contemporary of Bitlisi,
Şemseddin Cahrami ( Jahramî) likely came from Iran ( Jahram is small town
near Shiraz) and wrote his work, probably entitled Siyâsiya berâ-ye Sultân Selîm
(“Government for Sultan Selim”), in 1513. The work is in three parts, concerning