314 chapter 7
Thus, in his foreword, Na’ima stresses the idea that God has taught man-
kind to use those means and courses of action that suit each age of history,
sometimes declaring war, sometimes concluding peace. To prove his point, he
narrates at length the story of the treaty of Hudaybiyya, i.e. the peace con-
cluded with the Quraysh of Mecca by the Prophet Muhammad, even though
he undoubtedly could have employed miraculous means to overpower them
supernaturally (N I:12–26; Ip I:10–20). Another historical example comes after
Na’ima’s description of the “circle of justice”.68 Na’ima again stresses that mili-
tary campaigns are the most serious factor leading to the disruption of this
circle; when the finances are in a bad state and the soldiers are divided, many
rulers of the past chose to make peace instead. To support his view, Na’ima re-
calls the history of the First Crusade, who benefited from the discord and strife
among Muslim rulers of the Middle East. In Na’ima’s version, the temporary
peace that gave Jerusalem to the crusaders also gave the opportunity to the
Islamic states to re-organize their power; once this had happened, Salah al-Din
(Saladin) was able to recapture the Holy Land after first recovering financially
and mobilizing a united army.69
The second line of argument Na’ima uses in his plea for peace is more philo-
sophical and must have been addressed to his fellow-members of the govern-
mental bureaucracy. He reverts to the stage theory in order to prove not only
that unnecessary war is a sign of the stages of decline but also that a prolonged
peace might be a way to break this circle of decline and thus extend the life
of a dynasty. This assertion is best described in a long concluding chapter in
which he tries to plan a road-map for ending a crisis, based on Khaldunian
notions (N I: 52–65; Ip I:39–48). Copying Kâtib Çelebi’s Düstûrü’l-amel almost
68 He cites Kınalızade, erroneously claiming that the latter had taken this scheme from Ibn
Khaldun’s Muqaddima, as Kınalızade’s source was Davvani. However, a similar “circle of
justice” can indeed be found in Ibn Khaldun’s work: see Ibn Khaldun – Rosenthal 1958, 1:81
and 2:105; Ibn Khaldun – Rosenthal – Dawood 1969, 41; Fleischer 1983, 201; Tezcan 1996,
115, fn. 419.
69 Na ’ima cites al-Maqrizi’s Kitâb al-sulûk li-ma ’rifat duwal al-mulûk and remarks that this
success story and its prerequisites are described in Abd al-Rahman Shirazî’s book, parts of
which were translated by Mustafa Ali in his Nüshatü’l-selatin, whence Na ’ima took them
and, as he asserts, appended them to his history. There is no further sign of this work
in both Ali and Na ’ima; in his second preface, Na ’ima speaks of a treatise by Ebünnecib
that was used by Saladin and which he intended to translate into Turkish (Na ’ima 1864–
1866, 6:Appendix, 53–58; Na ’ima – İpşirli 2007, 4:1890–1892; cf. Thomas 1972, 45–48). The
book must be Abd al-Rahman b. Nasr b. Abdullah (al-Shayzari)’s Nahj al-sulûk fi siyâsat
al-mulûk, eventually translated into Turkish during the reign of Abdülhamid I (1774–89):
see Na ’ima – İpşirli 2007, 1:XXV; Fleischer 1990, 68, fn 4. Nahj al-sulûk belongs to the ahlak
tradition, resembling Kınalızade’s ethico-political synthesis with “mirror for princes”
overtones (see some specimens in Ermiş 2014, 33–34, 45–47).