Ottoman statecraft treated calibration of fear as governance technique

Evidence

The only people who have ever succeeded in ruling the Middle East for any length of time, the Turks, had their own views on these matters. In a Turkish manual of statecraft, written in the middle of the seventeenth century, the author, Huseyn Hezarfenn, advises the sovereign to use fear as well as law to maintain his authority: If the fear of punishment were to pass away from people’s hearts, the evildoers would become more numerous and more arrogant. The right thing is that there should be fear among the bad and trust among the good people. Permanent fear and permanent trust are both harmful. While the people are between fear and hope, let the Sultanate be well-ordered and let the Sultan be generous. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1196

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the representation cluster: Lewis selectively deploys a Turkish source to argue Middle Eastern governance is inherently about kingship and fear, contrasting with Western parliamentary forms he discusses nearby.