Khaldunist Philosophy: Innovation Justified 285
on they would appeal to a strong centralized state, one which would apply
smart measures to impose discipline. It appears, as will be seen, that this trend
was also born from within the scribal bureaucracy and that it had to struggle
its way through the second half of the seventeenth century (as shown from
Hezarfen’s example) until its eventual, albeit precarious, ideological victory, as
seen in Na’ima’s ideas and their influence.
In this context, it is not surprising that, the continuation of earlier trends
of political thought (as seen in the final section of chapter 5) notwithstand-
ing, this trend tried to take a wider view of the problems and structure of
Ottoman society, just as Bayezid I or Mehmed II’s authoritarian rule had fa-
vored the introduction of Nasir al-Din Tusi’s ethico-philosophical theories. On
the other hand, it would be strange if the difficulties and setbacks dominating
this period met with the same optimism as the grand imperial project of the
earlier sultans. As seen in the previous chapters, Ottoman littérateurs had al-
ready developed an acute sense of decline, and it was only natural that it was
Ibn Khaldun’s bio-historical theories they turned to when they began to look
for models for a new, elaborate theory of society. Whereas, as has been seen,
Tusi and his followers’ vision of a “world order” was universal and static, Ibn
Khaldun’s model offered the advantage of allowing, if not imposing, change
according to local, historical, and cultural conditions. In chapter 2 we traced
some echoes of Ibn Khaldun’s work in Kınalızade’s mid-sixteenth-century
Tusian masterpiece; from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, however, Ibn
Khaldun’s vision of revolving dynasties and general historical laws started to
permeate Ottoman political thought with increasing intensity.18
2 Kâtib Çelebi and Ottoman Khaldunism
Indeed, it was around the early 1650s that a more general and “philosophical”
view of society began to reclaim its place in Ottoman letters after the torrent
of concrete, institutional advice described in the previous chapters. And it
was Kâtib Çelebi, the famous polymath, geographer, and encyclopedist of the
first half of the seventeenth century who initiated this renaissance of political
standing cavalry, its growth, and its important role in earlier Istanbul revolts cf. Tezcan
2010a, 184–190.
18 The literature on Ibn Khaldun’s philosophy of history is vast: see e.g. Rosenthal 1958, 84–
109; Lambton 1981, 152–177; Fakhry 2000, 108–112; Black 2011, 169–185. On Khaldunism in
Ottoman writings see Fındıkoğlu 1953; Fleischer 1983; Lewis 1986.