The problem of checking the political power in the tradition of siyasat-nama: the case of Nushatu's-Selatin

Abstract

The problem of how to be able to check the political power lies at the very heart of the historical debates over politics. This problem is part and parcel of another vital political problem that can be best described as the necessity of setting limits to the power of rulers. Accordingly, one might argue that checking the political power and setting limits to it are not basically and simply the same thing. This paper, moving from this assumption, attempts to shed some light upon the problem of checking the political power through the lenses of an Ottoman bureaucrat of the sixteenth century, namely, Mustafa Ali of Gallipoli. In so doing, the paper focuses on a text written by Mustafa Ali in 1581. The major argument of this paper is that Mustafa Ali's text, Nushatu'sSelatin (Advices to Sultans), which is an example of Siyasat-nama genre of books, deals with the problem of checking the political power with a particular emphasis upon three certain principles: Justice, fear of God and merit.