A Few Thoughts on İbrahim Metin Kunt’s “Derviş Mehmed Paşa, Vezir and Entrepreneur: A Study in Ottoman Political-Economic Theory and Practice” and the (Mis)interpretation of Cāh/Jāh/جاه

I wanted to offer a few informal and decidedly in the weeds thoughts on İbrahim Metin Kunt’s 1977 Turcica article, “Derviş Mehmed Paşa, Vezir and Entrepreneur: A Study in Ottoman Political-Economic Theory and Practice,” and what appears to me, at least, to be a misreading at the heart of the article when Kunt attempts to explain how early modern and pre-modern authors conceptualized cāh, which he translates as 'rank'.

In brief, Kunt's article traces the economic thought and practice attributed to Derviş Mehmed Paşa by the historian Naʿīmā during his tenure as governor of Baghdad following its reconquest by the Ottomans in the 1630s. Kunt interrogates Derviş Mehmed Paşa's theoretical justification for political authorities, particularly the households of paşas, engaging in commerce and argues that this represents a departure from classical Islamic and Ottoman politico-economic theory, particularly the thinking of Ibn Khaldūn on whose work Derviş Mehmed Paşa's words heavily rely.

At its core, the "serious departure from medieval Islamic and classical Ottoman political theory" that Kunt identifies in Derviş Mehmed Paşa's thought rests on two interrelated misconceptions. The first is his failure to consider that for these authors cāh might be a more capacious concept than a term that just encompasses political/governmental rank. As a result of this narrow conception, he also fails to recognize that these writers regard "political authority (emāret)" not as synonymous with cāh but rather as merely one specific way of deploying cāh, which is, in fact, a much more capacious concept.

But first, a few words are in order about why we would should care at all about an article that is, at this point, nearly fifty years old and not easily accessible. As the Ottomanist Marinos Sariyannis noted in his rather disappointed review of Fatih Ermiş' book, A History of Ottoman Economic Thought, the history of Ottoman ideas about the economy is still an underexplored field with the exception of two important articles: "Halil İnalcık’s famous discussion of the 'Ottoman economic mind'" and the article under discussion here, "Metin Kunt’s seminal paper on the views of the historian Naʿīmā on elite entrepreneurship" (Sariyannis 2015, 87). And yet, as Sariyannis points out Kunt's article is missing even from the bibliography of Ermiş' newer work.

Elsewhere, Sariyannis has described Kunt's study of Derviş Mehmed Paşa as masterful (Sariyannis 2019, 283). The article's importance to Sariyannis and other important Ottomanists who cite it is not particularly difficult to grasp, the field is largely devoid of competent works on Ottoman economic thought, which is itself a subject that "was generally neglected by Ottoman authors" (Sariyannis 2019, 319). As such, Kunt's attempt to elucidate glimpses into Naʿīmā's or Derviş Mehmed Paşa's economic thought as well as to draw attention to a shift in Ottoman bureaucrats' economic behavior in the 17th century—when they became increasingly engaged in the market through commerce and agriculture—has been a rare valuable contribution to a small but important corner of Ottoman history.

If Kunt's article is enduring, then, it should be both more widely available and its arguments should be carefully scrutinized. In this case, the argument at the core of Kunt's work—both figuratively and literally—is a careful (but I fear not particularly accurate) reading of how Derviş Mehmed Paşa's thoughts on the means of gaining wealth represent an important reappraisal of Ibn Khaldūn's discussion of the same matter in The Muqaddimah.

Kunt translates the following lengthy explanation of economic theory from Naʿīmā, who, in turn, attributes the statement to Derviş Mehmed Paşa, although he offers that it might also be the words of ancient philosophers:

There are three means of gaining wealth: agriculture, commerce and political authority (emâret). Crafts have also been considered by some as a fourth means; nevertheless, it would be proper to limit the means of wealth to the three mentioned above since most artisans are unable to provide for their living, since they keep of the produce of their crafts barely enough to subsist on while most of the fruit of their labor falls to the rich merchants of that particular commodity.

It has traditionally been the case that agriculture and trade have been the more profitable [to an individual] in direct proportion to [his] power and position in society (kuvvet-i cāh ve uluvv-i nam). This is so because people serve a person of power and high position (cāh ve nam sahibi), work for his gain both with their labor and with their funds, without asking for immediate remuneration, hoping to become closer to him and expecting future benefits. Some others fear his power and oppression and therefore give up an expected share of their profits, or they too may work for him. Thus, in either of these two ways, the payment for the people's services and one-fourth of their labor being due to the person of position, he should amass a huge fortune in a short time.

If a ruler or governor (vāli ve hākim) is not able to expand his capital, to increase his income or to obtain necessary supplies through engaging in commerce and agriculture, he is afflicted by two kinds of evil and will be damned in this world and in the next. One of these evils is that he will be forced to violate the people's property and seize their money and goods; thus he will become an oppressor. The second evil is that he will not be able to keep the money that he wrongfully seized from the people; he will spend it on necessities like food and clothing and other supplies; this money in the end will fall into the hands of perfidious speculators and usurers while he will fall into shame and ignominy. He will, in effect, have gained for speculators and usurers; he himself will be burdened with the consequences of these evil deeds. Thus, all such a ruler (hākim) is able to achieve is the destruction of the country and the dispersal of its people. (Kunt 1977, 205-6)

Kunt has rather incredibly (in an age before machine readable texts) managed to identify that these words seem to be derived, with some meaningful alteration, from Ibn Khaldūn's famous work The Muqaddimah, particularly his discussion of "the various ways, means, and methods of making a living."

Kunt states:

[I]n a later passage, which obviously is the source of part of Derviş Mehmed Paşa's ideas, under the heading "Ranks [cāh, the same word Derviş Mehmed Paşa uses] are useful in securing property," he says:

"We find that the person of rank who is highly esteemed is in every material aspect more fortunate and wealthier than a person who has no rank. The reason for this is that the person of rank is serviced by the labor (of others). They try to approach him with their labor, since they want to be close to (him) and are in need of (the protection) his rank affords. People help him with their labor in all his needs, whether these are necessities, conveniences, or luxuries. The value realized from all such labor becomes part of his profit. For tasks that usually require giving some compensation (to the persons who perform them), he always employs people without giving them anything in return. He realizes a value from their labor. It is the difference between the value he realizes from the (free) labor (products) and the prices he must pay for things he needs. He thus makes a very great (profit). A person of rank receives much (free) labor which makes him rich in a very short time. With the passing of days, his fortune and wealth increases."

And then he adds "It is in this sense that the possession of political power (imārah) is one of the ways of making a living." (Kunt 1977, 208-9)

In an ensuing discussion of this passage, Kunt elucidates what he thinks is a confusion of terms, declaring, "[T]here seems to be a confusion between imārah/political authority and cāh/rank or sāhib-i cāh, a person who has some political power. Perhaps there is no confusion here at all: perhaps by both terms Ibn Khaldûn refers to the ruler and the state, as one." (Kunt 1977, 209)

Returning to the full passage that Kunt cites from Rosenthal's translation of The Muqaddimah reveals that there is no confusion in terms here, but rather a wider meaning of cāh that Kunt has likely missed and that is somewhat obscured by Rosenthal's translation. Once we have established this wider meaning it will become clear that imārah (Ottoman: emāret) is but one variety of cāh. However, it is first helpful to return to Rosenthal's translation of Ibn Khaldūn's section on "Ranks are useful in securing property" in its entirety:

This is as follows: We find that the person of rank who is highly esteemed is in every material aspect more fortunate and wealthier than a person who has no rank. The reason for this is that the person of rank is served by the labor (of others). They try to approach him with their labor, since they want to be close to (him) and are in need of (the protection) his rank affords. People help him with their labor in all his needs, whether these are necessities, conveniences, or luxuries. The value realized from all such labor becomes part of his profit. For tasks that usually require giving some compensation (to the persons who perform them), he always employs people without giving anything in return. He realizes a very high value from their labor. It is (the difference) between the value he realizes from the (free) labor (products) and the prices he must pay for things he needs. He thus makes a very great (profit). A person of rank receives much (free) labor which makes him rich in a very short time. With the passing of days, his fortune and wealth increase. It is in this sense that (the possession of) political power (imarāh) is one of the ways of making a living, as we have stated before.

The person who has no rank whatever, even though he may have property, acquires a fortune only in proportion to the property he owns and in accordance with the efforts he himself makes. Most merchants are in this position. Therefore, (merchants) who have a rank are far better off (than other merchants).

Evidence for this is the fact that many jurists and religious scholars and pious persons acquire a good reputation. Then, the great mass believes that when they give them presents, they serve God. People, therefore, are willing to help them in their worldly affairs and to work for their interests. As a result, they quickly become wealthy and turn out to be very well off although they have acquired no property but have only the value realized from the labor with which the people have supported them. We have seen much of this in cities and towns as well as in the desert. People do farm work and business for these men, who sit at home and do not leave their places. But still their property grows and their profits increase. Without effort, they accumulate wealth, to the surprise of those who do not understand what the secret of their affluence is, what the reasons for their wealth and fortune are.

"God gives sustenance to whomever He wishes to give it, without accounting." (Ibn Khaldūn, II:326-28)

From this fuller account I would tentatively put forward that the meaning of cāh, as intended by Ibn Khaldūn, is in fact much more extensive than 'rank' in the strict sense of political/governmental rank and is better understood as something like good reputation or social rank. After all, "jurists and religious scholars and pious persons" need not, and often did not, have any political rank in Islamicate societies. Instead, as the passage suggests, they acquired the free labor of others as a result of their reputation—that is to say, their social rank. Indeed, the preceding passage gets to the heart of the matter. Ibn Khaldūn states rather elusively that "(merchants) who have a rank [cāh] are far better off (than other merchants)." (Ibn Khaldūn, II:327) Now, on its face, this passage could be interpreted multiple ways, and it appears that Kunt has assumed that this is a reference to merchants with political rank.

Helpfully, however, Jessica Goldberg and others have produced an extensive treatment of how Islamicate merchants, particularly the Geniza merchants, employed the concept of cāh (jāh in Goldberg's Arabic transliteration) in their Judeo-Arabic correspondence from the 11th century. As Goldberg argues, these merchants traded primarily on their "pull" or "personal connections," and in their letters, "Merchants used the word jāh to refer to this kind of reputation, a term that occurs five times as often as ʿird. The primary semantic range of jāh as reputation includes 'social rank', 'standing' and 'prestige'; for Geniza merchants, this meant in the breadth and strength of a merchant's personal ties — the number and importance of his Jewish associates, but also his connections to Muslim merchants and powerful non-merchants, officials and patrons" (Goldberg 2012a, 34). Goldberg provides several examples where cāh is invoked in Geniza letters between merchants to encourage one or another to take personally unprofitable actions or provide free labor to others:

Zakariyya b. Ya'qub b. al-Shama, Nahray b. Nisslm's closest associate in Tripoli, asked Nahray to take care of some of his Muslim colleagues: 'assist them', he urges, '. . . even if you have to abandon your own affairs for a day or two in order to do this... I would like them to come back here grateful to you, having accomplished their purpose to their satisfaction ... I would like you, thereby, to strengthen my jāh'. His reputation would be enhanced in that he had the pull to get Nahray to abandon personal work for unprofitable work at his behest. Similarly, Farah b. Yusuf requests that an associate 'strengthen my jāh' by doing a favour for a fellow merchant regarding payment of a draft — demonstrating his pull by getting a merchant to make a cash payment, inconvenient in a world of low liquidity. (Goldberg 2012a, 34)

Now, one might rightly complain that the functioning of commercial relationships occurring some five and a half centuries prior to the 'words' of Derviş Mehmed Paşa cannot possibly be pertinent to his view of economic theory. Yet, consider how closely Goldberg's description of Geniza apprenticeships matches Derviş Mehmed Paşa's description of how and why people served those who possessed cāh. Goldberg describes the process of informal apprenticeship as follows:

A son did not inherit his father’s business, nor did he usually work under his father. Instead, a young man would become the junior associate of one of his father’s associates (sometimes relatives, sometimes not) ... . A mentor paid all his junior’s living expenses while the apprentice worked, unpaid, as his agent. ... A junior would do whatever work he was assigned – limits were essentially those of his mentor’s conscience and confidence in his abilities. At the same time, with his maintenance paid by a mentor the apprentice would be able to make deals of his own with his initial capital: a father or other relative might start his son out with either capital or a package of goods. Indeed, a junior’s travels gave him opportunities to gain knowledge of specific markets and form the relationships that would be the foundation of his career, while at the same time acquiring and selling goods on his own account.

...

Although a merchant started out as an apprentice whose labor value was nearly nil he might aspire to become a Yūsuf Ibn ʿAwkal, whose connections and knowledge were so important that his effort was no longer needed at all. (Goldberg 2012b, 136-7, 147)

This is remarkably similar to the arrangement Derviş Mehmed Paşa describes as existing between those possessing cāh and those who labor for free on their behalf: "people serve a person of power and high position (cāh ve nam sahibi), work for his gain both with their labor and with their funds, without asking for immediate remuneration, hoping to become closer to him and expecting future benefits" (Kunt 1977, 206).

Thus, it would appear that, contrary to Kunt's understanding, emāret (the exercise of political power or leadership) is for Ibn Khaldūn—and for Derviş Mehmed Paşa following him—just one manifestation of a variety of types of cāh.

With this nuance established, we can turn back to Kunt's other assertion about these passages, which states:

It seems that Ibn Khaldūn contradicts himself, first rejecting imārah as a means of livelihood in the sense of the state collecting taxes, then accepting it in the sense of a person with political power using it to gain economic benefits. (It may be that Ibn Khaldūn rejects it as a theoretical means of gaining wealth but recognizes it as a fact of life). ... In Derviş Mehmed Paşa's words it is not clear how emāret brings wealth other than in conjunction with other economic activities. His man of power uses his power to further his agricultural and trade interests, as in Ibn Khaldūn's second case [that is to say via emāret/political authority as a kind of cāh]; but the exercise of power alone, as in Ibn Khaldūn's first case [that is to say via emāret/political authority alone], is not a source of income. His man of power is not the ruler collecting taxes but an official using his power. (Kunt 1977, 209, bracketed insertions my own)

It is true that Ibn Khaldūn, in a separate passage and in a different chapter, identifies the exercise of political authority as one of the methods of making a living. In this context, Ibn Khaldūn states that he is following al-Harīrī's assertion that a living can be "made by (exercising) political power (imārah)," by which he means "sustenance and profit may be obtained through having the power to take them away from others and to appropriate them according to a generally recognized norm. This is called imposts and taxation" (Ibn Khaldūn, II:315-6). However, he also goes on to state in this chapter that "(The exercise of) political power is not a natural way of making a living." I take Kunt's parenthetical comment to be an acknowledgement of this distinction by Ibn Khaldūn between reality and what is natural.

Contrary to Kunt's assertions, however, Derviş Mehmed Paşa's understanding of emāret seems to encompass these two meanings, as is visible when he states that, "If a ruler or governor (vāli ve hākim) is not able to expand his capital, to increase his income or to obtain necessary supplies through engaging in commerce and agriculture, he is afflicted by two kinds of evil and will be damned in this world and in the next. One of these evils is that he will be forced to violate the people's property and seize their money and goods; thus he will become an oppressor" (Kunt 1977, 206). Reading this passage generously, it strikes me that Derviş Mehmed Paşa is admitting, much like Ibn Khaldūn, that one with political power (emāret) can acquire sustenance and profit from taxation, but that it is not natural (or rather advisable) to do so.

This begins to reveal the real contradiction in Ibn Khaldūn's theory. As Kunt astutely points out, rather confusingly elsewhere in The Muqaddimah Ibn Khaldūn has a section entitled, "Commercial activity on the part of the ruler is harmful to his subjects and ruinous to the tax revenue" in which he states forcefully:

It should be known that the finances of a ruler can be increased, and his financial resources improved, only through the revenue from taxes. (The revenue from taxes) can be improved only through the equitable treatment of people with property and regard for them. This makes their hopes rise, and they have the incentive to start making their capital bear fruit and grow. This, in turn, increases the ruler's revenues in taxes. Other (measures) taken by the ruler, such as engaging in commerce or agriculture, soon turn out to be harmful to the subjects, to be ruinous to the revenues, and to decrease cultural activity. (Ibn Khaldūn, II:95-6)

Taxation is an unnatural way of making a living, according to Ibn Khaldūn, but it is also the only acceptable means for a political authority (or at least the supreme one) to sustain himself.

Kunt concludes from all this that:

It appears Derviş Mehmed Paşa - or whoever it was that formulated his ideas - did not read his Ibn Khaldūn too carefully, or ignored what he did not like. ... Derviş Mehmed Paşa's words and deeds we see a serious departure from medieval Islamic and classical Ottoman political theory. Naʿīmā, too, is well aware of this departure but defends the paşa vigorously. Some books on ethics, he says, state that kings, ministers, and officials should not engage in commerce and agriculture. This, however, is only when they monopolize economic activities to the exclusion of the people. Then it can be considered unjust and even sheer tyranny; but to supply one's own needs and protect oneself from the deceit and trickery of hoarders is surely not what is meant in these books! It is a good try on Naʿīmā's part, but he wants to have his cake and eat it too. It is clear that Derviş Mehmed Paşa's views cannot be reconciled with the earlier classics. (Kunt 1977, 210-11)

I think this is altogether too harsh. Naʿīmā and Derviş Mehmed Paşa, or his ventriloquist, were attempting to grapple with a real contradiction in Ibn Khaldūn's advice, albeit not the one Kunt identifies. In response to this contradiction these 17th century Ottomans offer up a middle ground, political authorities might engage in commerce so long as they do not monopolize economic activities. While this compromise will not satisfy Ibn Khaldūn, who is explicit in his earlier section that any economic activity by the ruler is a slippery slope toward civilizational decline, perhaps it did satisfy those Ottomans who (contra Kunt) did not equate paşa and sultan, given their knowledge that the former faced a limited tenure as governor and was subject to institutions like confiscation.

Where does all this mucking about with the semantic range of various words leave us? It certainly does not topple the observation for which Kunt's article is most widely cited, namely that at least some Ottoman paşas and their households became more extensively engaged in the market during the 17th century as a way of managing household costs without resorting to overburdensome taxation. Similarly, it does not negate what Kunt and others have written about how Derviş Mehmed Paşa's economic thought is in some way an evolution and deviation from Ibn Khaldūn's economic principles, especially with regards to Ibn Khaldūn's thoughts on the ruler's relationship to the market. It does, however, suggest that by simply expanding our understanding of a single word, the conflict between these thinkers appears to be of an entirely different nature than the one allowed by Kunt. Derviş Mehmed Paşa and Naʿīmā are no longer lazy readers of Ibn Khaldūn but rather are grappling with a fundamental conflict in Ibn Khaldūn's own economic thought.

To return to where we started, Sariyannis' 2015 review article encouraged the field to turn toward the study of the history of Ottoman philosophical, theological, scientific, and economic ideas. With the comments above, it should hopefully be clear that without an accompanying history of concepts (such as that of cāh), which investigates the terms that Ottoman authors employed to express their ideas either persisted or evolved from pre-Ottoman and earlier Ottoman usages, it will be difficult to meaningfully trace the evolution of their thinking in particular fields.

Bibliography

Goldberg, Jessica. Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Geniza Merchants and Their Business World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Goldberg, Jessica L. “Choosing and Enforcing Business Relationships in the Eleventh-Century Mediterranean: Reassessing the ‘Maghribī Traders’.” Past & Present 216, no. 1 (2012): 3–40.

Ibn Khaldūn. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. Vol. 2. New York: Princeton University Press, 1958.

Kunt, İ Metin. "Derviş Mehmed Paşa, Vezir and Entrepreneur: A Study in Ottoman Political-Economic Theory and Practice." Turcica 9 (1977): 197–214.

Sariyannis, Marinos. “Review of Fatih Ermiş’, A History of Ottoman Economic Thought: Developments Before the Nineteenth Century.” Historein 15, no. 2 (2015): 87.

Sariyannis, Marinos, and Ekin Tuşalp Atiyas. A History of Ottoman Political Thought up to the Early Nineteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2019.