The Eighteenth Century: the Traditionalists 375

a result, they prefer to follow the ulema career, and so the government remains
open to the meanest of men (esafile; Ç36–37).
Finally, another feature the treatises by Behic Efendi and Ömer Faik have in
common is that they do not seem to consider the army as the central point of
the reform efforts. They thus differ from both their predecessors and the cur-
rent debates on the Nizam-i Cedid in two ways: they give the dominant posi-
tion to the reform of state mechanisms, especially those that sought to control
society, and they write as if the issue of the new army was not the subject of a
hot debate that would lead to a rebellion a few years later. True, Behic Efendi’s
chapter on the army is incomplete, as the manuscript stops abruptly in the mid-
dle of it (Ç77–82), but what remains seems strikingly different from his near-
contemporaries Sekbanbaşı and Kuşmani (see chapter 9). Behic describes at
length the defeats since the 1768–74 war, which he attributes to a lack of prepa-
ration and proper administration (rather than poor tactics or equipment), and
praises Selim III’s efforts in short, noting that imitation of European models
is done in the context of reciprocity (mukabele bi’l-misl). Before the end of his
manuscript, he stresses that no training and discipline can bear fruits if the
officers are not chosen properly—which would have been the subject of his
next, lost section. As for Ömer Faik, he almost completely ignores the Nizam-i
Cedid: he only suggests the creation of smaller arsenals and naval bases on the
Black Sea coasts, as well as in Çanakkale and Bozcaada (Tenedos), to protect
the capital and the merchant routes from Russian attacks. Another problem he
addresses is the logistics of the campaigns, which result in the destruction of
the wealth of Muslims. Ömer Faik’s suggestion is that the vakf income should
be used for urgent state needs: a special treasury (hazine) should be created,
and in times of need the government should be able to take loans from it after
a relevant fetva from the şeyhülislam.

...

Thus, in Behic Efendi’s treatise one may see a committed supporter of Selim’s
reforms, but this commitment is more evident in his biography than in his
treatise. One could believe it was written by Penah Efendi, as far as it concerns
the section on the economy at least; even the comparison with Russia departs
from the topos of “reciprocity”, while the lengthy first part places emphasis on
the ilmiye and their role that is not seen in the army-centred supporters of the
Nizam-i Cedid that we are going to study in the next chapter. Penah Efendi’s
economic ideas on the need for the enhancement of local production are also
present in Ömer Faik’s work, who also shares with others of his era a concern
for enhanced state control and an emphasis on the use of the popularization