The Eighteenth Century: the Traditionalists 359

country and had them married to Spanish men; their children, who spoke
both languages, were sent back to America and served as interpreters, with
the result that the natives soon forgot their own language and now speak only
Spanish. Similarly, Russia takes youths (uşak) from the Aegean islands and the
Morea to Moscow, where they are educated in order to prepare disorder and
rebellion. So must the Ottoman state bring Albanian youngsters to Istanbul,
and educate and train them in camps outside the city’s walls, giving them food
and teachers; conversely, artisans from various Balkan towns should be trans-
ferred to Albanian towns for three years in order to show the natives how to
produce tissues and other products. Obviously, Penah Efendi was conscious
that his unusual proposals would sound rather strange; thus, he embarks on
an excursus on the effectiveness of decisive imperial orders, giving again as an
example the West Indian tribes and their awe on seeing the Spanish cavalry,
having never seen a horse before.

...

At first glance, there is no significant difference between these post-1774 au-
thors and the early eighteenth-century ones. Canikli’s emphasis on distinct
career lines resembles Defterdar and his circle; Dürri and Penah Efendi’s
Khaldunism is a continuation of Kâtib Çelebi and Na’ima, and their ideas
on military uniforms do not really deserve the title of innovation in politi-
cal thought. More interesting is the abandonment of the timar system, which
nevertheless is but a synchronization with the realities of their times. In fact,
Dürri and Canikli belong more to the seventeenth century than to their own,
since the former was a rather conservative member of the bureaucracy and
the latter represents a view from the provinces (and an extraordinary case of
an ayan and a pasha authoring a political treatise). In a way, Canikli’s style of
concrete advice, one adapted to contemporaneous realities (a style originating
in the typically Ottoman “mirrors for princes” genre), shows the survival of a
tradition flexible enough to change its content without altering either form
or the general world-view based on Ottoman exceptionalism and patrimonial
patterns of sovereignty. It is perhaps not coincidental that Canikli belonged
to the provincial ayan-turned-pashas elite: significantly, a short essay with
very similar priorities and structure, Risâle-i terceme (“Essay of explanation”),
also appears to have been composed by an author familiar with Anatolia and
perhaps based in the Danubian provinces.55 A relatively late specimen of the
genre, as it must have been written in the late 1780s or the 1790s, this text could

55 Orhonlu 1967.