ABSTRACT
Ibrahim Hakki follows the medieval pattern of dividing creation into three orders: plant, animal and mineral. Orders were issued for the French engineers, technicians, teachers and military advisors to pack up and leave Ottoman territory immediately. Ibrahim Hakki description of the conflicts between those who believed Copernicus and those who rejected the new astronomy, with houses being burned down, indicates Copernicanism was gaining ground among Ottomans. French diplomats, keen to have their Ottoman friends check Catherine's expansionist ambitions, joined the conservatives in urging the sultan to go to war, just as they had in 1683 against Austria. Greek Fire had in fact prevented the Arabs from taking Constantinople from the Byzantines; now Russian Fire was threatening to take that same city back from the Ottomans to reconstitute the Byzantine state. One of the Ottoman teachers in the naval school, the Gelenbevi Ismail Efendi, who had studied trigonometry and written on the subject, was a religious judge.
