"Al-katib kadhib;" "Who writes, lies." The Arabic aphorism invoked by such critical participants in the bureaucratic expansion of the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire as Mustafa Ali points at once to Ottoman awareness of the singular social and political importance of the scribal arts, and to the humanity of the wielder of the pen. Behind the impersonal, apparently seamless fabric of the imperial orders, financial registers, and formal memoranda produced by more or less literate, and more or less privileged, members of the Ottoman ruling apparatus, lie less orderly and more variegated histories. The scribal career as such, and the expansion and regularization of bureaucratic functions that were among the most notable dcvelopments in Ottoman administrative history of the sixtcenth century, are subjects that have attracted a certain amount of scholarly interest in the last decade. These studies, by and large, have focussed eitlier on the larger institutional frameworks within which the "Ottoman katib" is presumed to have functioned, or on the careers of extraordinary individuals associated with the scribal class, careers which, implicitly or explicitly, are treated wilhin the context of pervasive assumptions that there must have existed something like the ideal katib and the typical scribal professional path. "The typical Ottoman bureaucrat" has become a sufficiently powerful topos in modern historiography as to obscure the differences between the financial clerk of the fifteenth century and his counterpart of the eighteenth, let alone the social, economic, and political chasm separating the bureau chief of the sixteenth century from his subordinate.
Such distinctions must be relevant to the historian, and to no one more than the student of Ottoman "classicism" concerned with discovering the realities as well as the myths of the Suleymanic saeculum aureum. For it was during the forty-six year reign of the "Second Solomon" that the central and provincial bureaucracies of the Empire were suddenly expanded, with a dizzying speed that meant, among other things, that it was only toward the end of the reign, around 1555, that any significant measure of professionalism in the scribal class as a whole and regularity of procedure could take hold. This was an era in which literacy gained singular importance in the process of elite recruitment, both within the bureaucratic sphere proper and more widely in the ruling class; but the manpower needs of an expansive bureaucracy and the novelty of that professional class were such that the "typical" Ottoman bureaucrat could not yet have come into existence. In the interest of demythifying the received image of the Ottoman katip and contextualizing scribal service in the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the sixteenth century, I should like to adduce information taken from three petitions found in the Topkapi Palace Archives. These were written, at intervals that span roughly the first thirty years of Suleyman's reign, by functionaries whose livelihood depcnded on literacy and who, though other vise unknown, were among those who carried out the most basic work of empire in the sixteenth century.
The first request comes from the resident specialist in protective occult practices in the Palace, whose particular skill is the science of letters (ilm-i huruf) and divine names (ilm-i esma') and the production of written amulets. The otherwise unidentified petitioner wrote bewteen late 1524 and 1537; he mentions by name the princes Mehmed (b. 1521) and Selim (b. 1524), and he speaks of a Muhyiddin Celebi as the kadiasker of Rumeli, who in this context this must be Fenarizade. He further makes reference to an impending campaign against Christendom, which would indicate a date close to 1526,1529,1532 or, at the latest, 1537. Our author vaunts the virtues of his craft, which in fact encompasses all forms of sacred learning, having been practiced by all the prophets and saints from the time of Adam and Idris: "There is much power in this noble science, which, when properly applied, people think to be a saintly prodigy [velayet]; [one can] cause rain to fall, contrary winds to blow, a village to do things against its will, cripple a hand or a foot, blind an eye." Despite this power, our specialist, most particularly because of the demands on his services made by the Palace, which requires amulets for the sultan and princes to be produced on deadlines generated by the start of campaign seasons, faces certain practical difficulties. He has grown old in the family trade and farnily service to the Ottoman house -- his father would seem to have been at the court of Murad II -- and his failing eyesight prevents him from fulfilling in time his growing list of orders. Furthermore, it seems, his education is also somewhat lacking, a fact that threatens to compromise propriety and security. Because he must consult others on the meaning or spelling of Arabic words, his interlocutors may gossip about the particular sorts of amulets required, the special needs of the sultan, and their timing.
The second of these difficulties can be solved with books; he requests that he be given two dictionaries, the Qamus (i. e., of Fruzabadi) and the Sihah (i. e., of Jawhari), which will free him from reliance on others in deciphering the obscure texts that are his sources and stock in trade. The solution to the first problem is also at hand. The petitioner has an orphaned ward, named Ahmed, who is an exceptional calligrapher of ghubar script and practiced in other styles as well, so skilled that he can write the Fatiha or Ikhlas on a grain of rice. Indeed, he has already produced talismanic armbands for the sultan and the princes Selim and Mehmed; this took place because the objects were ordered in Edirne, and at that time and place there was no one but Ahmed to inscribe them.
At the Gate of felicity there are scribes who receive salaries. When something is to be written, they perform the task, and spend the rest of their time praying for the benefit of the just sovereign and warrior for the faith. My request is that he [Ahmed] be made one of these, and so when something is ordered to be made by your servant for your exalted person he should be assigned the writing part of the task.
This proceeding would, like the first, help to keep confidential imperial talismanic needs.
Although the result of this request is unknown, the document suggests a number of considerations of consequence for the study of the scribal career path in the sixteenth century. First, it indicates that the paths of recruitment to the ranks of the kuttab were at this point, relatively early in the reign of Suleyman, still open, varied, and irregular; the qualifications of the orphan Ahmed would seem to lie in his calligraphic skill and foster relationship to an occult specialist who had professional and family service ties to the Palace, rather than in particular clerical skills acquired through apprenticeship or other specialized education. The onomancer's characterization of the nature of the duties of Palace salaried scribes, while perhaps exaggeraled, still evokes an impression of the novelty of the accumulation of a sizeable body of stipended scribal talent (the growth and structuring of the paths of scribal service in Suleyman's reign is documented), of the perception of this development as opening a new avenue of social mobility in a fiscally and numerically expansive government apparatus, and of the still relatively unstruclured character of the duties of the kuttab.
Once an aspiring candidate gained a toehold in the developing bureaucratic hierarchy, his financial and social progress was by no means assured. As the next document demonstrates with dramatic clarity, even the most persistent and devoted katib was faced with extraordinary financial obligations imposed by his superiors. The first step on the ladder, for those unfortunate enough to be obliged to work their way up from the bottom rather than being appointed directly to a full scribal stipend within one of the unfolding branches of the central bureaucratic service, was to serve as apprentice, salaried or unsalaried, to a ranking scribal official. The apprentice owed his first loyalty to his master, as both the form of appointment (salaried apprentices are identified as being attached to particular individuals) and this petition make clear, until such time as the aspirant attained an appointment and salary line in his own right.
The petitioner, who does not identify himself by name but may well be the Mahmud registered as one of the two apprentices of the official in question, describes himself as the "longtime apprentice of the Accountant (muhasebeci) Ali Celebi; [I was] the one who actually took care of the tasks that fell to his office.'' The events Mahmud relates must have taken place in 1533-35, immediately before and duriog the Mesopotarnian carnpaign. When Ali Celebi fell ill -- mortally so, in the event -- Mahmud had asked him to confer on him the Registry of the garrison troops. (Although there seems as yet to have been no title or stipend earmarked for the functionary who fulfilled this role, acquisition of these responsibilities would presumably provide some stature as well as opportunilies for gain, whether in the form of fees or graft, that would be unavailable to a sakird). When Ali Celebi asked for "a llttle something"in return, Mahmud
used whatever I owned in cash and possessions, and took out a loan using some of my mother's and sisters' possessions as collateral. One way and another, I gathered one thousand florins and gave them to [Ali Celebi's agent] Huseyin Celebi; he reyurned two hundred florins, saying that they Cornell H. FLEISCHER were under measure, and he took full measure coins to make up for these. After a few days had passed Huseyin Celebi told me, "I gave the thousand florins you gave me to the Efendi, so now give me thirty thousand akce in addition. God willing, the matter will be put to the imperial council [divan] at once, and they will give it to you." Again, I begged my mother and sisters to help me however they could; they gave me what they could afford, and I was able to secure a loan for thirty thousand akce, which I then handed over to Huseyin Celebi.
Within a few days of this exchange, Ali Celebi had either died or had become so incapacitated that his position was given to Hayreddin Bey, who as Anatolian Accountant was his proper successor. Mahmud (assuming the correctness of this identification of our petitioner) retained his apprenticeship to the Rumeli Accountant, and the garrison registers that were the object of his desires passed either to his new master's province or, which is perhaps more likely, to that of the lalter's senior colleague, another Hayreddin Bey who as Second Day-book keeper was the second-ranked official within the Treasury scribal corps. Mahmud applied to Hayreddin Bey for lhe registers, and received an equivocal answer. In the summer of 1534 he asked for them again; Hayreddin Bey responded that nothing could be done at that time since the sultan was about to depart for the east on campaign. "Right now let's give you a harac register. Go collect [the taxes due from the non-Muslims of the region in question], and you'll also escape the rigors of the campaign. When you come back, you'll get those registers or we'll give you something better." Mahmud set off to the east, collected the assigned harac dues, and also "did all I could further to gather a little gift for Hayreddin Bey." While on his way back to the court, vhich was then in the vicinity of Tabriz (late 1534-early 1535), he encountered between Khoy and Marand a group of Kizilbas who took all of his possessions, including his two slaves and three pack animals; whether they also deprived him of the taxes he had collected or he had otherwise disposed of these is unclear. Mahmud went to pay his respects to Hayreddin Bey, kissing his hand; but the latter brushed him off, saying "What's this? You haven't brought us a present?"
Once again, Huseyin Celebi took a hand. He had a financial agent (vekil-i harc), another Huseyin who was also a member of the elite Palace cavalry corps of the Sons of the Sipahis (sipahi oglanlar). This Huseyin approached Mahmud with advice and a proposition.
"Whatever you do, give the Bey a gift," he said to me. "God willing, then he will look out for and torward your interests, whatever they might be." I said, "What resources do I have now, that I should give a gift?" "Come," he said, "I have a slave boy. Let me give him to you, and you give him to the Bey." He sold him to me for ten thousand akce, the sale witnessed by muslims, and I undertook to pay the money back in Istanbul. The slave boy remained with me for a week; since I had no slave [of my own], I did not really want to give him up. I sent him out for provisions; when he was to return, they [i.e., Hayreddin Bey] took him and the goods he had with him, saying '[I am doing this because you haven't given him to me [as you were supposed to]. Later, they will get the money from me before witnesses. It is my sultan's to dispose."
Mahmud's personal and professional entanglements did not end with the woes recounted above. He had further, in a complicated fashion, acquired responsibility for a 200,000 akce-per-annum tax assignment for the flour revenues of Ilica (probably the Ilica near Bergama is meant), for which he had formally registered a 140,000 akce deposit with the deputy magistrate (kadi na'ibi) of the town. Mahmud explains the reasons for the 60,000-akce deficit, and the mode of his acquisition of this responsibility, as follows.
A friend of his, one Nesimi who was attached to the Palace corps of the Salaried (ulufeciler), had been staying with him in his home (presumably in Istanbul). Nesimi had contracted for the one-year flour registry (un defteri) of Ilica, at five hundred thousand akce, as a tax-farm (iltizam); when he collected the revenues he was 60,000 akce short of the promised amount. "He begged me, 'Please, if you have a friend among the retainers of Abdi Celebi, make me his friend too." Mahmud arranged for an introduction to Mahmud Kethuda. Nesimi then suggested that they (i.e., he and our katib Mahmud) consult with the efendi (here clearly meaning Abdi Celebi Efendi) and propose that if he would award the flour registers of Ilica in iltizam contract for 200,000 akce, they would give the bey (presumably Hayreddin Bey) 60,000 akce. It seems that in this way he would at once make up the deficit from his original contract, although he would be paying the amount to an individual rather than to the state, and procure the same revenue source for anther year at a much more profitable rate than that originally established.
The offer was accepted, and the cash demanded. Nesimi put together the required amount from his own stores of coin (600 gold florins, unminted florins, 16,000 akce and objects made of precious metals, and delivered the full 60,000. Just as Nesimi was to be given formal designation as tax-farmer of the flour revenues of Ilica, he died of the plague, but not before declaring Mahmud his legatee in front of witnesses. The latter requested that the 60,000 akce be restored to him, since the tax-farm had not been conferred on Nesimi and therefore the gift-money still belonged to Nesimi's estate. He was asked to forego the sum, to deny his claims to it. Mahmud refused to acquiesce, saying that it was his legal property, but he did suggest that he would perform the collection duties for which the money had been payment as a means to resolve the dispute. Although the authorities at first protested that this would be an "unfair" burden on Mahmud, he insisted and made an additional request that Nesimi's brother, who was also a member of the Salaried Corps, be given "a little defter" (i.e., revenue collection assignment) that could be considered compensation to him for loss of his brother and his inheritance. Ultimately, the award was agreed to, but at tax-collection time (harac vakti) Mahmud found that it was not a tax-farm (defter... emaneti ve kitabeti ile) but a legally less lucrative assignment as a salaried tax collector (emanet) with no licit claims on the revenues exceeding the amount stipulated in a tax-farm contract. When he turned in his taxes together with his warrant (berat), questions arose about the amount he surrendered, since this was 60,000 akce short. Therefore Mahmud procured a receipt for the funds (140,000 akce) from the deputy of the magistrate (kadi na'ibi) of Ilica and refrained from pressing his own greater claims, "with the thought that he [Hayreddin Bey] is an important person [bir sahib-devletdur], and [if I oblige him now] later he will remember me kindly." His petition, undoubtedly, served as further documentation of the propriety of his action.
One of the most remarkable aspects of this document, for all the horrors reported by our katib, is the conspicuous absence of that more vigorous language of complaint -- complaint about venality of office, complaint about abuse of position, complaint about violation of imperial ideals enshrined in kanun, dynastic edict -- that would fill the pages of similar petitons penned by a slightly later generation. Here, the tone -- in an era that is generally supposed to have represented a golden age of meritocratic expectations and relative freedom from such personal impositions -- is rather one of explanation, apology, and openended appeal for personal assistance, assistance that is requested not because the subject has been wronged by greedy and immoral individuals, but because circumstances in an otherwise normal situation have conspired to place him in a difficult position. The matter-of-fact recounting of the events, and the lack of explicit rancor against those who have wronged him -- even the defunct Ali Celebi -- suggest that it would be erroneous to read Mahmud's petition as the sort of protest against corruption of an established, commonly understood sysem that would be characteristic of a somewhat later era. At this point, relatively early in Suleyman's reign, the relationships that structured the central administrative apparatus were still understood to be highly personalied ones within which the culture of exchange of "gifts" was taken as natural, if occasionally problematic. The gift had not yet become a bribe, and Mahmud's letter has as much the weight and tone of a report as of a complaint.
In the face of orderly, schematic representations of the hierarchy of rank and responsibility according to which Ottoman government has been regularly described -- beginning, perhaps, with the Lawcode of the Conqueror and continuing to the present -- we tend to assimilate to it our modern understanding of the nature and function of bureaucracy. But certain notions central to this modern understanding, such as exclusivity of service and compensation, definition of function and responsibility within a single chain of command, and a depersonalized service ethic, are most definitely not part of the bureaucratic world of the early sixteenth century, whether in the Ottoman Empire or in Europe. Our scribe's narrative lays out an intriguing picture of the complex web of personal and economic relationships through which Suleyman's government functioned, and brings into relief the degree to which such relationships were recognized as normal, even "legal," despite the apparent dictates of the logic of the bureaucratized (or, more properly at this point, bureaucratizing) structure within which they developed. Ali Celebi's apprentice not only acted as his master's agent in private financial dealings, he also acted on his own behalf (in demanding payment from Mahmud), and himself had a financial agent who was also a salaried member of the most prestigious of the Palace cavalry units. Neither the function nor the income of Ottoman functionaries was delimited by their membership in the imperial patrimonial household; they could simultaneously serve several masters and in several capacities without their appropriateness for appointment the way in which they fulfilled their ostensible tasks, or the propriety of their maintaining several levels or forms of employment and loyaly being questioned. It was sufficently natural for Nesimi to use his friendship with an apprentice clerk to gain access to authority, in order to be able literally to invest in his own future, for Mahmud to detail the transaction without shame and to use it as the basis of a legal claim on property. Nesimi acknowledged the economic and quasi-familial nature of his relationship with another member of his class by making Mahmud his heir, and the latter did the same by entering a plea for Nesimi's ulufeci brother.
Mahmud pleads that he be accorded some of the perquisites that accrued to other members of his class (such as supplemental duty-revenue assignments) rather than denouncing capricious and venal abuse of a hierarchical structure based on function and merit. His petition also demonstrates that, for all that his account implies the destitution of his family as a result of his master's demands for payment for provision of an office, the implicti and explicit references to wealth and poverty that regularly occur in the petitions of literate Ottomans of the sixteenth century (see also the next document) must be interpreted within the context of the high expectations and sense of entitlement that were part and parcel of the sensibility of all those associated with the apparatus of Ottoman government. Despite his debts (which he clearly hoped to be able to repay with interest once he received the supplementary assignments he desired), Mahmud had a dwelling in which he was able to lodge guests and, presumably, slaves. Furthermore, he was able to support himself on his small daily stipend (four akce) and on reserve resources for quite some time before he received the harac register, and he owned pack animals and slaves that he ultimately lost to Safavi marauders. His reluctance to do without a slave, despite his understanding that his professional interests lay in giving the boy as a gift, bears poignant witness to the sense of even a scribal apprentice of what constituted an acceptable standard of living for an Ottoman gentleman.
The personal resources and sense of propriety of function of such stipendiary office-holders were clearly not limited, in fact or in expectation, by their office and the daily wage attached to it. Rather, their appointments and stipends (these latter being as much a badge of membership in the ruling class and a means of assigning relative rank and status as a reward for service and means of maintenance) provided access, and entitlement, to important contacts and additional means of attaining advancemcnt and income. Mahmud and his friend Nesimi could not only negotiate for lucrative revenue-collecting assignments considered one of the normal perquisites of Palace service, they could also be absent from Istanbul and from their "posts" for considerable periods in order to carry out these supplemental duties. The relative proportions, within an individual's personal fortune, represented by stipendial and non-stipendial (but clearly licit) sources are suggested by the document. Mahmud had a daily stipend of four akce, or 1,400/year. Nevertheless, he was able to secure loans for over sixty-five times that amount (calculating the akce at 60/ducat) with apparent confidence that, once appointed to the Registry of Garrisons (at something like 4,380 akce yearly, exclusive of bonuses) he would be abte quickly to repay the loan with interest. Nesimi's precise salary is not known, but in the year 1530 the average salary of members of the two Salaried Corps was eleven akce. Even so, Nesimi had at his immediate disposal cash and valuables worth fifteen times his probable annual salary. This amount may represent the sum that was missing from the 500,000 akce he had contracted to collect (the figure obviously did not practically allow him to secure an appropriate profit), but even so his plan to procure the assignment again, negotiated at a lower rate of 200,000, gives a clear sense of the magnitude of potential gains at stake. Since he was apparently able to secure at least 440,000 akce in Ilica, a new contract at 200,000, after deduction of his expenses (including the 60,000 payment to the bey), would leave him with at least 180,000, forty times his annual stipend. It seems safe to assume that Mahmud, who ultimately did the collecting and admitted to retaining 60,000 akce, profited very handsomely and felt it right that he should do so. Official salary, for such men on their way up, was the least part of what they could expect to earn as members of the ruling class.
The third and final document was submitted during one of Rustem Pasa's two terms as grand vezir (1544-53,1555-61) by a certain Kasim, whose father was apparently known as Helvacloglu. Kasim's story sheds light on other dimensions of scribal life and the class consciousness of elite Ottomans:
...your poor, downtrodden servant, being possessed of a pen-case [i.e., literate], had for fourteen years been an unsalaried apprentice scribe for the Pillars of the State. [Then] when an imperial order of the glorious sovereign left the Harem (icruden] that a [particular] book be copied outside, that task was given to your prostrate servant. It was copied by my hand and submitted to you, and when you asked, "Who wrote [i.e., copied] this book?" the answer was, "Your servant Kasim, who is one of the apprentice scribes serving the great men of state [erkan], has written it." You responded, "How much is his salary?" and they answered, "He has no salary." You commanded, "Let him have a salary of six akce [per day]; and the imperial order hat resulted [from this exchange] is now extant in the offices of the Pillars of Felicity.
This being the case, it was then submitted to the dust of your blessed feet that "The other scribes [of this sort] are not stipended; the imperial law [kanun-i padisahi] is that they be compensated wih timar-grants." Thus it was ordered that I be given a timar, and this order too is preserved perfectly in the offices of the erkan. After I had served under these circumstances for some time it happened that the office of Intendant Registrar of Anatolia fell vacant and was given to this your servant.
As I was serving in this capacity, one of Rustem Pasa's retainers came and petitioned through his connections [iltimas] for my poor position; in justification he said, "This person's [i.e., Kasim's] father was not someone entitled to a post; he's the son of a sweet-maker." On this pretext, that person took my poor living [bunun dirlucigin] without there being any reason for my dismissal [bila sebebden]. Though my father never held a stipended post, he occupied himself with learning; but my grandfather was one of the Confectioners [helvaci] of the late Sultan Bayezid, and therefore [my father] was called by this name [i.e., Helvacloglu].
My hope is that you will save this, your abashed servant, from shame among the populace and will return again the wretched post won by my pen-case; otherwise, lovely lord, I will not have the face to return home. It is my sultan's to dispose.
Kasim's patronymic, his heredity, and his family's history of imperial service bear discussion. The trajectory of that history -- from a father, who may have had servile status and was attached to the Palace, to a son who became a scholar, to a grandson who became a clerical bureaucrat after long years of unsalaried apprenticeship -- demonstrates that at this epoch what have been called the "Otoman career paths" of Sword, Learning, and Pen were, inergenerationally, mutually permeable and inerpenetraing rather than rigid and exclusive. At his juncture, it seems likely that affiliation with the class of servitors broadly considered was a more significant determinant of an individual's career prospecs than membership in a particular professional caegory; these categories, after all, were clearly articulated only afer the reign of the Lawgiver, and the evidence lies in favor of heir being less formed and more porous in the first half of the sixteenth century than in the second. In place of, or in addition to, the received models of the operative lines of inclusion and cleavage in Ottoman society (askeri/re'aya ruling class/ tax-paying subjects], seyf/ilm/kalem, slave/non-slave, muslim/non-muslim), the document gives a name to a more elastic, but no less useful concept: the ehl-i mansib, those entitled by heredity, among other criteria, to appointment within the ranks of the non-tax-paying elite (askeri) whatever the particulars of the individual's career path or his legal status.
It seems clear that we must fully redraw our modern image of the structure of the ruling elite of the "classical" Ottoman Empire. This image, though modified in particulars, is still pervaded by romantic notions, derived largely from Christian European sources, of the upper class as primarily non-aristocratic, normally (or ideally) monogenerational and meritocratic in nature, and implicitly servile in origin or actual status, a service elite of the most fundamental sort. Victor Menage and Metin Kunt have addressed the question of how stricyly we should interpret contemporary European descriptions of the Ottoman governing order of the sixteenth century. Thc work of these scholars focuses on members of the military-administrative career within which it has been assumed, as stated by contemporary Christian commentators, that men of devsirme or otherwise servile origins would predominate and so preclude the formation of an elite that could function as something like an aristocracy of blood as well as of service. Menage and Kunt have shown that servile status was not an absolute requirement for entry to the elite administrative orders. Indeed, it may only have been a preferred qualification at very restricted and particular points in imperial history, for example, during the decade or decade and a half during which Suleyman felt it necessary to begin training a cadre of his own that would replace the upper echelons of the old guard of servitors inherited from his father and grandfather. Even so, and even at that juncture, Suleyman had still to acknowledge the force and weight of these countervalent principles; his famous proclamation to the timar-holders of the Empire of I531, cofirming the hereditary rights to preferential status of the descendants of sipahis, spoke directly to the question of transgenerational claims upon dynastic largesse.
The evidence of Kasim's story indicates that the perceptions of privileged class identity and hereditary entitlement that informed the conflicts that provoked the 153l edict were not confined to the military caste, but pervaded other sectors of the ruling class as well. The numbers of those with claims to membership in the class to which appointments, stipends, prebends, and status were to be distributed grew, and so did the ideological articulation of that class consciousness; the historiographical florescence of the second half of the sixteenth century is a striking example of this latter phenomenon. The threat to social stability represented by natural increase in elite families was limited by mortality and the enhanced absorptive capacity of a geographically and demographically expansive administrative apparatus. Still, once that apparatus was in place, the challenge facing ever more vocal Ottomans threatened with incrcased competition for dynastic rewards would be to renogotiate, in each generation, the criteria by which inclusion and exclusion from the ruling class and its particular components would be adjudicated. The factional violence that became so marked a part of elite life at the end of the sixteenth century represented one dimension of this process, that whereby the upper echelons of the askeri would sort out these matters inlernally.
Another dimension of the process, of course, was a tension, which became acute toward the end of Suleyman's reign, between the dynasty and the increasingly bureaucratized elite that ostensibly served it. At issue here was the locus of authority to pronounce on questions pertaining to the ideals, idenity, and practice of the dynastic state, particularly in matters of ideological representation, elite reproduction, and distribution of resourecs. With the arrival in the upper ranks of men like Rustem Pasa, senior statesmen who were wholly the products and the carriers of the burgeoning imperial eulture that was forged during the reign of the Lawgiver, the balance of power shifted in favor of the administrators. These men were furthermore strengthened in their stance by those very developments initiated by the architects of the Suleymanic regime as supports for dynastie authority: codification of law, regularization of administrative practice and elite recruitment proeedures, a move toward depersonalization of politics, and inculcation of expectations of regularity and reward based on common subscription to a system (as opposed to individual judgment) that determined standards of merit and entitlement.
It is therefore significant that Kasim should insist upon the fact that the orders governing his changes of status were written down, recorded, and registered in their proper place. The degree of orderliness and detail that the Suleymanic regime brought to record-keeping was probably still somewhat novel in Kasim's day. Furthermore, the registration of these orders in the central repository of the bureaucracy represented institutional protection against the predations of Kasim's less scrupulous fellows (predations that seem to have been more common in previous reigns). These records, Kasim's exposition suggests, constituted a powerful instrument of bureaucratic authority whereby the livelihood and security of status of members of the ruling class could be protected and the corporate rights and identity of that class asserted. It is equally significant in this context that our katib relates that the chief bureaucrats objected to and corrected the sovereign's command that Kasim be given a salaried position, invoking the priority of the impersonal principle of imperial law over individual dynastic decree.
These few scribal narratives (one hopes that more such will appear), seemingly frank and unpolished as they are, afford evocative and tantalizing glimpses into the professional and family lives of men who might be described as "ordinary" Ottomans. These were low-to-middle ranking members of the privileged sector of society whose aspirations were focussed on the imperial court in Istanbul in an era whcn the scribal service was only just taking full form and offered opportunities for mobility to the literate. It remains only to say a few words about the nature of that literacy as it is displayed by the documents.
For the katibs or would-be scribes whose stories have been told here, calligraphic skill would seem to have been their primary claim to scribal expertise, which was not necessarily buttressed by greater learning in the literary arts or philology. This was clearly the case with Ahmed. Although Kasim's father ostensibly occupied himself with the acquisition of religious learning, he was either poorly schooled or disinclined to make a paying profession of his scholarship, since he was appointed to no stipended post. This professional decision, voluntary or otherwise, signified a break in an incipient family tradition of service to the dynasty, a break that would ultimately count against -- temporarily, one hopes -- Kasim's chances for advancement. In any event, Kasim's father established no great family tradition of learning, for his son's petition is filled with egregious spelling errors that show, if nothing else, that his acquaintance with Arabic and Persian must have been rudimentary at best. (This judgment, of course, assumes that he, rather than a professional writer of petitions, actually penned the document; but if he did have it written for him, sufficiently significant questions arise about why he should have done so as to render the judgment reasonably valid). While Kasim's calligraphy may have been impressive, as he suggests, he was clearly at a loss when required to compose a document without a written model before him. His fourteen years of apprenticeship seem to have done him little good in this regard; like a fair number of his colleagues who learned their writing skills on the job rather than in the medrese-college, Kasim remained only partly literate outside his restricted area of competence. Mahmud's orthography is somewhat better than Kasim's (though by no means perfect), but his style is as unpolished as that of his colleague.
The "Ottoman bureaucrat," at this epoch of expansion when the description of an individual with appropriate connections as "a good hand with a pen" or "useful wielder of the reed" (yarar ehl-i kalemdur) was often enough to secure a scribal appointment, was not necessarily a highly educated person. Nor, does it seem, were there consistent standards of professionalism yet applied to the motley corps of the kuttab. The observations of some Ottoman observers on the tremendous difference in the educational levels and literacy of college- and non- college-trained bureaucrats should be taken with some measure of seriousness and not dismissed as the self-aggrandizing grumbling of disaffected intellectuals. The "Ottoman bureaucrat" was not one type, but several, and there was a world of difference between the Ottoman gentleman and the educated Ottoman gentleman, although they shared professional space and class affiliation.