Real economic application

Having spoken about intellectual discussions of social, political and economic topics which reflected Ottoman thought in the eighteenth century, I shall now attempt to illustrate the application of these ideas in real economic and social life. As stated in the introduction, the ideas discussed throughout this work were not always put into practice. Although some of these ideas, like the idea of the circle of justice, had a wide influence on real practice, the non-interventionist positions in the narḫ debates had only a limited application. With regard to humorism, it was actually the counter-argument of the devlet-i ebed müdded (the eternal state), which was common rhetoric in Ottoman intellectual circles. ¹ The application of humorism in the social context by Kātib Çelebi and Na‘īmā shows that the Ottomans (or at least some Ottomans) were aware that the ‘eternal state’ was impossible, and that the Ottoman state would also eventually come to an end. The only way that the Ottoman state could be devlet-i ebed müdded was that the world reaches the apocalypse before the Ottoman state goes down. ² It is not possible to imagine that the Ottomans meant the term devlet-i ebed müdded in its real sense, since this would imply that the Ottomans did not believe in the last day, which would be wrong. Enveri Efendi also recognized this, stating ‘Eternality is specific to God’. ³ With the humorism approach, Na‘īmā sought a reformation of the state and state mentality at the beginning of an age in which the Ottomans could no longer gain new territories. His contribution is described well by Itzkowitz:

Naima’s major contention was that the state needed to buy time through the Treaty of Karlowitz to restore equilibrium to the state and society and thereby victory to its arms. Whatever the measures taken were, they worked, for Peter the Great was defeated on the banks of the Pruth in 1711, the Morea was reconquered in 1715, and both Austria and Russia were defeated in the war of 1736–39. With their system vindicated in their own minds through success, the Ottoman ruling group settled down to the minutest observance of ritual as a substitute for thought or action. The Ottomans were awakened from their lethargy by the defeat at the hands of the Russians in 1774. No Naima arose to harmonize anew Islamic theories of state and society with unpleasant reality. Reform in the guise of controlled Westernization replaced the quest for the secrets of Süleyman’s golden age. A new period of social dislocation was ushered in that culminated in the crisis of 1808 and the sened-i ittifak. ⁴