The Eighteenth Century: the Traditionalists 367
accuses greedy tax-collectors, and blames bribery for losing so much land to
the Russians, enumerates the advantages of forgiveness, piety, and abstinence
for rulers and viziers, and so on. Between such traditional advice, Halim inter-
polates pieces on extra-canonical authority (siyaset) as a branch of the Sharia
(Ş118–123, 132–154) and on the duty for Holy War or cihad (Ş127–131).
Halim’s views of the army and war are typical of his stance between tradi-
tion and modernity. He defends the occasional use of archery in battle with the
reasoning that all weapons are useful and that a bow can sometimes be more
fitting than a cannon (Ş131), which may be an indirect criticism of Westernizing
military reforms, and maintains that soldiers should not occupy themselves
with agriculture or commerce (Ş164), describing the four-fold division of soci-
ety as found in earlier writings. Yet although he does not speak of uniforms, he
does suggest that each group of soldiers is given its own symbols so that they
can be discerned from one another (Ş159). As for his division of the army into
three groups (Ş156: those paid from the tax of the infidels and the booty, mal-ı
harâc u ganâyimden; the ordered army or asâkir-i mürettibe, paid by the public
treasury and more particularly from the section for canonical alms or sadaka;
and the volunteers), it sounds like a modernizing concession with a concealed
reference to the now bygone timariot army (paid for by the infidels’ taxes).
By far the most interesting part of the treatise, however, is its epilogue (Ş175–
243). It is structured in the form of a dialogue that appears to present all the
different views of the Ottoman crisis prevailing in the 1780s: Halim imagines
that in the year of the composition of his work, due to the loss of the Crimea
and other territories to Russia, the population of Istanbul was divided into
twelve groups, each of which elected its most distinguished and experienced
member to voice their opinion. This meeting is described in some detail, and
in lively (often humorous) direct speech, with the interlocutors having names
such as Zerdeçâv (“turmeric”) Çelebi or Yumurtacı (“egg-seller”) Receb. These
speakers lament the large-scale intrusion of ignorant Turkish peasants into
the cities, which has led to a general decline in the quality of statesmen and
scribes. The ulema and bureaucrats have neglected knowledge because of their
rush for wealth and material gain. Meanwhile, morals have deteriorated (in
contrast with the “nice custom of Moscovy”, where a chief keeps in order every
ten persons, another every hundred and so on; although this view is vehement-
ly attacked by the chief of the meeting: Ş195 and 197), judges oppress peas-
ants, the soldiers are not paid on time, and the viziers are too many in number
and prone to luxury.69 The chief of the meeting, Hidayet (“right path”) Çelebi,
69 One participant even suggests killing the infidels of Istanbul (Ş204: İslambol’un re’ayası),
since they are becoming increasingly numerous and pay much less in tax than the Muslim
peasants.