On Sunday, July 1, Nabil Al-Tikriti delivered a paper entitled “Grim Advice, Bold Solutions: Idris-i Bitlisi’s 1513 Treatise on the Caliphate and Sultanic Protocols” to the 20th annual CIÉPO [Comité International des Études Pré-Ottomanes et Ottomanes] Conference in Rethymno, Crete, Greece. The abstract of the paper was as follows:
“Following the intensely chaotic violence of the 1511-13 Şahkulu rebellion and fraternal succession struggle, a wholesale changing of the palace guard ensued. In the course of this transition, several imperial elites applied for court employment and patronage via submissions of poetry, advice treatises, and other forms of cultured knowledge production. While the historical narratives commonly known as Selim-nāmes have attracted a modicum of scholarly attention, treatises submitted at the very beginning of Selim’s reign remain largely unknown. Three examples of such submissions include the anonymous 1512 Risala fi Sharh Qasida Julus Sultan Selim Khan, Idris-i Bitlisi’s 1513 Risala fi al-Khilafa wa Adab al-Salatin, and Shams al-Din Jahrami’s 1514 Risala Siyasiyya Bara-yi Sultan Selim.
In this paper, I shall summarize, analyze, and contextualize the second of the aforementioned three works, the nearly forgotten treatise presented by Idris-i Bitlisi (d. 1520) to “Yavuz” Sultan Selim (d. 1520) in February 1513. In order to place this submission within its immediate context, I shall also detail Idris-i Bitlisi’s biography during the chaotic transition years and briefly summarize the contents of the other two aforementioned treatises. While each of these authors presumably had self-aggrandizing motivations for their respective submissions, the arguments which they put forth in support of Selim’s rule and reign should provide nuanced views of the political theories and public arguments mobilized to support the new Ottoman ruler during a sensitive and divisive period of social upheaval.”
