The life and ideas of an 18th-century Ottoman Bureaucrat: Süleyman Penah Efendi and his Order of the climes

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This thesis investigates the life and ideas of an 18th-century Ottoman bureaucrat Süleyman Penâh Efendi. Penâh Efendi was born in the Morea in 1722 and grown in the dynamic cultural atmosphere of the peninsula. He held various positions in the Ottoman state from the 1750s, mostly in the financial offices. In the Morea Rebellion of 1770, Penâh Efendi was present, and he wrote his memoirs during the rebellion in his History of the Morea Rebellion. During and after the Russo-Ottoman War 1768-1774, he held high posts in the bureaucracy, commissioned to the after-war diplomatic negotiations, and participated in numerous councils held in the capital following the Russian annexation of the Crimea. Shortly before his death, he wrote a treatise mentioned in this thesis as the Order of the Climes as an addendum to his history which reflects the contemporary Ottoman state’s pursuit of reform. He wrote his reform suggestions in the topics from military affairs and state finances, to the bureaucratic organization and center-province relations. In the second chapter of this thesis, this treatise was investigated, and his ideas were discussed. Taking his work as a modernization program, the thesis concludes that Penâh Efendi’s reforming ideas are targeting three main goals; centralization, interior expansion and mercantilism. The centralization was constituting the core of his reform program as all other issues were determined by it