412 chapter 9

of foreign advisors, as in the past under Baron de Tott. This should be done
gradually and, preferably, in provincial cities to avoid an adverse reaction by
the janissaries in the capital (Ka417–420).
Finally, a group of advisors, mainly from the ranks of the ulema, mainly re-
peated traditional advice, although they always took care regarding the con-
crete and the particular in a way (as we saw in the previous chapter) that was
typical of the eighteenth century. Thus, there are the usual criticisms of corrup-
tion and the inability of janissary and artillery officers (Enveri Efendi, Kc348;
Osman Efendi, Kd424–425), the lack of discipline (Veli Efendizade, Kb108–109),
and so forth, as well as traditional proposals about the control of pay-rolls and
registers (Salihzade Efendi, Kb108, Kc346; Firdevsi Efendi, Kc346–347; Enveri
Efendi, Kd429–430). In contrast to the proposals suggesting the recruitment of
new soldiers, Ali Raik Efendi noted that it is impossible to reform the army in a
short period and that the recruitment of troops from the provincial towns and
villages results only in pillage and ruin (Kb109); as for Sun’i Efendi, he rejects
all reformist attempts by simply proposing the restoration of the old laws for
the army (Kc348). As will be seen, however, this was not the opposition Selim
should have been afraid of.

...

The various ideas and proposals of the memoranda may be grouped around
two poles, a reformist and a more conservative one, but these were always the
poles and factions found within the palace and government elite (and the high
ulema); cautionary remarks favoring consultation with the janissary officers
may be seen as representing a defense of the status quo, of the balance among
political powers in the capital, as in Defterdar Mehmed Pasha’s case (see
chapter 8). A careful analysis of the social and political backgrounds of the “re-
formists” may show that most of them had connections with the faction of Halil
Hamid Pasha, the reformist grand vizier of Abdülhamid I and Süleyman Penah
Efendi’s protector.61 What is more important for our purposes, however, is the
argument behind their proposals. Not all memoranda care to expand on their
reasoning, as they mostly have a strictly administrative character, but when
they do they build on the foundations that had been prepared by reformist po-
litical thought ever since Müteferrika and the anonymous Su’âl-i Osmânî. Thus,
they usually stress that what they propose is not a sterile imitation of infidel
ways but rather a reappropriation of Islamic experience that had been unduly
forgotten. Before proposing the creation of a new corps, Çavuşbaşı Mehmed

61 See the detailed analysis by Yıldız 2008, 612–630.