284 chapter 7
legitimization was carefully selected so as to leave space for the sultan’s, or in
fact (given the conditions of the era) the grand vizier’s, discretion. Yet in the
case of the Cretan reforms of the poll-tax and landholding, as may be remem-
bered, this attempt at justification was made after the measures themselves
had been implemented, which may imply that the financial bureaucracy had
played a much more active role than the Köprülü viziers’ personalities would
make us think. Thus, it seems that after the mid-seventeenth century an al-
liance of this bureaucracy with the autocratic vizerial regime began to initi-
ate market-oriented reforms using the inventory of Sunna-minded political
thought. In this context, as noted in chapter 5, this alliance had to compete
with the janissaries, or rather the military, who were increasingly cooperating
with the lower-class artisans and traders and developing their own financial
networks.
Throughout the first half of the seventeenth century the governmental ap-
paratus used the “old law” as a tool for establishing its predominance in the
political field against the army forces; as analyzed above, when the bureaucrats
started to identify themselves with the monetized policies and relations they
chose to turn to the Sunna as a binding justification of their power. In response,
it appears that the janissaries gradually began to appropriate an argument that
traditionally had been used against them: the “old law” and the abhorrence of
institutional innovation. As will be made apparent in chapter 9, they ended
up identifying themselves with the old and sanctified Ottoman constitution in
order to block any attempt on the part of the court and the government to curb
their own power and their legitimate claim of being shareholders in the state.
On the other side of the conflict, however, the Sharia-based model had its
shortcomings. The failure of the narh reform, as well as the eventually short
life of the landholding and surveyal experiments, showed that Sunna-minded
arguments worked poorly when set against age-old practices. One may suggest
that, because the janissaries successfully claimed for themselves the benefits of
the “old law” reasoning, and because the Sunna-minded model was not strong
enough when applied to state policies, a new trend emerged, one that broke
the circle of constitutional reasoning to advocate innovation and change—
or, eventually, the right of the state to apply innovation and change. Whereas
scribal discourse of the previous decades was still trying to suggest that en-
hanced timariot forces would counterbalance the janissary threat,17 from now
17 In a similar vein, kapıkulu sipahis, i.e. standing cavalry, had been effectively acting as a
counterbalance to the janissary infantry throughout the first half of the seventeenth cen-
tury. However, after the middle of the century the two groups tended to forge alliances to-
gether, and even participated in joint mutinies and revolts (1655, 1656, 1687–1688). On this