74 chapter 2
kâtibi of the beylerbey), it soon became a very widespread, popular, and
influential work (“one of the ‘bestsellers’ of the Ottoman bookmarket from the
16th to the 18th centuries”, as characterized by Baki Tezcan30). It constitutes
an ambitious enterprise to encompass a full range of ethics at all three levels:
individual ethics, or the governance of self, household economics (the gover-
nance of the family and the house), and political theory (the governance of the
city, recte society). Kınalızade’s analysis is primarily based on the well-known
categories of ethics that were expounded by his predecessors. Kınalızade’s
account is, of course, much more analytical; as well as Tusi and Davvani, he also
used al-Ghazali’s philosophy and Avicenna’s terminology.31 The human condi-
tion is conceived as a continuum, from the human soul to society; Kınalızade’s
moral vision is in fact a study of government, in three escalating levels: from
individual morality, i.e. governing the self, to the family and household mainte-
nance, i.e. what the ancient Greeks called economics (οικονομία: “the regulation
of the household”), and finally to political theory, i.e. the governance of society.
For all three levels he employs the same analytical tools: the division of entities
into components and the quest for the mean and for a balance, which can lead
to harmony and order. As with his predecessors, the notion of the four cardinal
virtues (wisdom, justice, honesty, and courage) and their subvirtues, with the
respective vices, is central to his moral philosophy.
Kınalızade’s voluminous treatise remained a classic for centuries afterwards;
notions such as the “circle of equity ( justice)” or the division of society into the
four classes were to dominate or at least be present in almost every Ottoman
treatise of political advice composed from the mid-sixteenth century onwards.
On the other hand, his political ideas became increasingly marginalized. Even
during his own lifetime, as we are going to see in chapter 3, Davvani’s fashion
had waned in favor of Kashifi’s popularization, which gave more prominence
to concrete ethical and political advice rather than philosophical theory; what
is more important is that, in Kınalızade’s time, the characteristically Ottoman
“mirror for princes” genre, different from the previous mirrors thanks to its
stress on concrete advice and on institutions rather than personal qualities,
had already been started. Despite its tremendous popularity, therefore, Ahlâk-ı
Alâî was the swansong rather than the beginning of a tradition.
30 Tezcan 2001, 110. Printed in Bulak in 1833, this major work was published in transcription
only in 2007 (Kınalızade – Koç 2007; a modern Turkish version was also published in 1974
and 1975). Tezcan 1996, 65ff gives a detailed synopsis of the book, carefully noting the
respective sources (Tusi and Davvani); cf. also the detailed analyses in Tezcan 2001; Oktay
2002; Unan 2004; Hagen 2013, 433–438; Ermiş 2014, 60–71 and 81–110.
31 See Tezcan 1996, 67, fn. 244, 81, fn. 294. On Kınalızade’s philosophical and psychological
ideas cf. also Yurtoğlu 2014.