The Eighteenth Century: the Westernizers 413
Raşid Efendi praises the old system of janissaries, with their recruitment from
the provinces and their intensive training; he emphasizes that youths must be
recruited in the same old way (devşirilüp), but be trained with discipline and
order (Ka420–422). Similarly, Abdullah Birri Efendi remarks that, if someone
should raise objections regarding the imitation of Frankish ways, one should
remember that the Ottoman navy has been imitating its European counter-
parts from the very beginning, while the Russian army was created by imitating
the Ottomans.62 As for Mustafa Reşid Efendi, he remarks that Sultan Orhan
had tried to recruit salaried soldiers from Anatolia but could not impose disci-
pline over them, and thus created the janissaries, who fulfilled these precepts;
however, he writes, it is evident that this advantage has been lost for 150 years.
A second line of argument shows the influence of Ibn Khaldun’s theory
about nomadic and settled states, as popularized by Na’ima. By the third quar-
ter of the eighteenth century, as the reader may have noticed, these ideas were
recurrent in the Ottoman intellectual milieu.63 Mehmed Şerif Efendi bases his
plea for continuous training and exercise on the distinction between nomad-
ism and settled life: if soldiers are left to settle down, their military ability will
fade away (Ka422–424). Advisers proposing more modest reforms, namely
training the existing troops (rather than creating new ones), also used the
parallels between the nomadic state and the continuous drilling of soldiers.
Rasih Efendi, for instance, suggests the translation of European books on the
arts of war and the continuous training of the army in order to “restore the
nomadic conditions in the time of settled life”, with the help of military em-
issaries from friendly European countries. Furthermore, the old regulations
should be renewed and enforced according to the needs of the present, if
necessary (Kb107–108). This last idea, which originates in Kâtib Çelebi’s work,
can also be found in Mustafa Reşid Efendi’s memorandum. Before reverting to
Sultan Orhan’s example, he notes that the restoration of the old rules should
take into account the needs of the age (kavaid-i atikanın iadesi mizac-ı asra
tatbik olunması). Then, using historical examples and an explicitly Khaldunist
vocabulary, he shows how unanimity and solidarity (ittifakü’l-kelim, asabiyet)
secure the rule of the ruling class (administrators and soldiers) over the ten-
fold population of their subjects.
62 This idea was not so far from reality as it may seem, as far as it concerns earliest centuries:
see Ágoston 2011, 291–298.
63 Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima, as noted in the previous chapter, was translated into Ottoman
Turkish in 1730 (Ibn Haldun – Pirizade 2008). On Ottoman Khaldunism see Sariyannis
(forthcoming).