ABSTRACT
This chapter documents the political relevance of physiognomy at the Ottoman court. Its purpose as a royal science was to provide a reliable and scientific selection mechanism for the ruler, through which he could control access to his retinue and ruling elite. Proper selection to imperial offices guaranteed the perpetuation of imperial justice, which, in turn, was the ultimate raison d’être of the Ottoman state. Physiognomy’s intellectual genealogy as a royal science stretched back across Arabic and Persian literature – particularly Mirror for Princes texts, such as Pseudo-Aristotle’s Secret of Secrets (Sirr al-asrār or Secretum Secretorum) and Kay Kāʾūs ibn Iskandar’s Letter to Qābūs (Qābūsnāma) – to numerous Ottoman texts on the subject. In practical terms, the cultivation of physiognomy at court was presented as a guarantee of perfect equity in the kingdom by assigning every person to the most suitable sociopolitical role through physiognomical discernment of inborn proclivities.
