Eski Rejimin Meşruiyeti: 17. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Nasihatnameleri Üzerine Siyasal Bir İnceleme

This book recasts seventeenth-century Ottoman advice literature as a contested political language in which competing visions of legitimacy, authority, and social order were articulated.

About the Book

This book recasts Ottoman advice literature as a contested political language rather than a merely moralizing genre or a repertoire of administrative remedies. It argues that works conventionally gathered under the rubric of advice did more than reiterate a shared vocabulary of counsel, order, and reform: they articulated competing visions of legitimate authority and social hierarchy. At the center of the analysis are three Ottoman works in the mirrors-for-princes tradition—Kâtip Çelebi’s Düstûrü’l-Amel li-Islâhi’l-Halel, Koçi Bey’s Risâle, and Veysî’s Hâbnâme. Read in relation to one another, these texts disclose the internal plurality of Ottoman advice literature and reveal it as a vital arena in which the foundations, limits, and proper ordering of legitimate rule were debated. In doing so, the book offers a new account of Ottoman political thought as a field of argument rather than a uniform discourse of decline and reform.