THE GOVERNMENT OF 
 
 FHE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 m THE TIME OF SULEIMAN 
 
 THE MAGNIFICENT 
 
 LYBYER
 
 HARVARD HISTORICAL STUDIES 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF 
 THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY 
 
 FROM THE INCOME OF 
 
 THE HENRY WARREN TORREY FUND 
 VOLUME XVIII
 
 HARVARD HISTORICAL STUDIES 
 
 I. The Suppression of the African Slave- 
 Trade to the United States of America, 
 1638-1870. By \V. E. B. Du Bois, Ph.D., 
 Editor of "The Crisis." 8vo. $1.50 net. 
 
 II. The Contest over the Ratification of the 
 Federal Constitution in Massachusetts. 
 By S. B. Harding, Ph.D., Professor of Euro- 
 pean Historj- in Indiana University. 8vo. 
 
 $1.25 net. 
 
 En. A Critical Study of Nullification in 
 South Carolina. By D. F. Houston, 
 A.M., LL.D., Secretary of Agriculture. 
 8vo. $1.25 net. 
 
 IV. Nominations for Elective Office in the 
 United States. By Frederick W. D.al- 
 LiNCER, A.M., late Member of the Massa- 
 chusetts Senate. 8vo. Si. 50 net. 
 
 V. A Bibliography of British Municipal 
 
 History. Including Gilds and Parliamen- 
 tary Representation. By CH..iRLES Gross, 
 Ph.D., late Gurney Professor of History and 
 Political Science in Harvard University. 
 8vo. $2.50 net. 
 
 VI. The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in 
 the Northwest. By Theodore Cl.arke 
 SiilTH, Ph.D., Professor of History in Wil- 
 liams College. 8vo. Si. 7 5 net. 
 
 Vn. The Provincial Governor in the Eng- 
 lish Colonies of North America. By 
 
 Ev.ARTS BocTELL Greene, Ph.D., Professor 
 of History in the University of Illinois. 
 8vo. $1.50 net. 
 
 Vm. The County Palatine of Durham. 
 A Study in Constitutional History. By 
 G. T. L.\psley, Ph.D., Fellow of Trinity 
 College, Cambridge. 8vo. S2.00 net. 
 
 IX. The Anglican Episcopate and the Amer- 
 ican Colonies. By Arthur Lyon Cross, 
 Ph.D., Professor of European History in the 
 University of Michigan. Svo. $2.50 net. 
 
 X. The Administration 
 Revolutionary Army. 
 H.ATCH, Ph.D. Svo. 
 
 of the American 
 
 By Louis ClintOxN 
 $1.50 net. 
 
 XI. The Civil Service and the Patronage. 
 
 By Carl Russell Fish, Ph.D., Professor 
 of American History in the University of 
 Wisconsin. Svo. S2.00 net. 
 
 Xn. The Development of Freedom of the 
 Press in Massachusetts. By C. A. 
 DuNiw.AY, Ph.D., President of the Univer- 
 sity of Wyoming. Svo. $r.so net. 
 
 Xin. The Seigniorial System in Canada. 
 By W. B. Mu.VRO, Ph.D., Professor of 
 Municipal Government in Harvard Univer- 
 sity. Svo. $2.00 net. 
 
 XIV. The Frankpledge System. By Wn,- 
 
 LI.AII Alfred Morris, Ph.D., Assistant 
 Professor of English History in the Univer- 
 sity of California. Svo. Si. 50 net. 
 
 XV. The Public Life of Joseph Dudley. 
 
 By Everett Kimball, Ph.D., Associate 
 Professor of History in Smith College. 
 Svo. $2.00 net. 
 
 XVI. Memoire de Marie Caroline, Reine 
 de Naples. Edited by Robert M-atteson 
 Johnston, A.M., Assistant Professor of 
 Modem History in Harvard University. 
 Svo. $2.00 net. 
 
 XVII. The Barrington- Bernard Corre- 
 spondence. Edited by Edward Ch.an- 
 NnNG, Ph.D., McLean Professor of Ancient 
 and Modern History in Harvard University. 
 Svo. $2.00 net. 
 
 XVin. The Government of the Ottoman 
 Empire in the Time of Suleiman the 
 Magnificent. By Albert Howe L\b\-er, 
 Professor of European History in Oberltn 
 College. Svo. $2.00 net. 
 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF 
 
 THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 IN THE TIME OF SULEIMAN 
 THE MAGNIFICENT 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT HOWE LYBYER, Ph.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY, OBERLtN COLLEGE 
 
 "Our empire is the home of Islam; from father to son the 
 lamp of our empire is kept burning with oil from the hearts of 
 the infidels." Mohammed II, the Conqueror. 
 
 " A lord and his bondsmen." Ranks. 
 
 " Les Turcs . . . n6es de la guerre et organis6es pour la 
 conqufte." Cahun. 
 
 " The Ottoman government . . . seems to have attained 
 during the sixteenth century the highest degree of perfection of 
 which its constitution was capable." Robertson. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON: HENRY FROWDE 
 Oxford University Press 
 
 1913
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1 913 
 BY HARVARD UNIVERSITY
 
 nut. 
 
 OR 
 501 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The Ottoman Turks, after the world had long despaired of 
 them, have in these last years shown signs of renewed vigor. 
 The time is, then, perhaps not inauspicious for an examination 
 of the structure of their organisation in the period of its greatest 
 power and prestige. It is not easy for the present age to reahze 
 how large the empire of Suleiman bulked in the eyes of contem- 
 poraneous Europe. Amid the vast energies and activities, the 
 magnificent undertakings and achievements, of the marvellous 
 sixteenth century, nothing surpassed the manifestations of power 
 that swept forth from Constantinople. The following pages 
 will have been worth while if their incomplete presentation 
 shadows forth, however dimly, the secrets of Ottoman greatness 
 and success. 
 
 This book was originally prepared in partial fulfilment of the 
 requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Harvard 
 University, and was subsequently awarded the Toppan Prize. 
 The writer desires to acknowledge his very great indebtedness 
 for advice, suggestion, and criticism to a number of kind friends 
 with whom he has consulted, but especially to Professor A. C. 
 Coolidge and Professor G. F. Moore. Nor can he let the book 
 go to press without recording his extreme obligation to his wife 
 for unwearying assistance at every stage of its preparation. 
 
 A. H. L. 
 
 Oberlin, Ohio, 1912.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ideas Constitute a Nation 3 
 
 The Background of Ottoman History 5 
 
 Character and Mission of the Ottoman Empire 7 
 
 The Racial Descent of the Ottoman Turks lo 
 
 Seljuk and Ottoman Turks in Asia Minor 14 
 
 The Sources of Ottoman Culture 18 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE IN GENERAL 
 
 Definition 25 
 
 The Limitations on Despotism 26 
 
 The Territorlal Basis 28 
 
 The Peoples 33 
 
 Institutions of Government 35 
 
 Contemporary Descriptions of the Two Great Institutions . 38 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE OTTOMAN RULING INSTITUTION: AS A SLAVE-FAMILY 
 
 I. General Description 45 
 
 II. The Slave-Family 47 
 
 Methods of Recruiting 49 
 
 The Tribute Boys 51 
 
 Estimate of the System 53 
 
 The Slave Status 55 
 
 The Harem, the Eunuchs, and the Royal Family ... 56 
 
 Other Ottoman Slave-Families 58 
 
 Character of Ottoman Slavery 60 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 
 
 AND EDUCATION.\L SYSTEM 
 
 I. The Missionary Motive 62 
 
 The Ottoman Attitude 63 
 
 Other Motives for Incorporating Christlans 65 
 
 vii
 
 Vlll CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Requirement of Conversion 66 
 
 Sincerity of Conversion 68 
 
 Effect of the Process 69 
 
 II. The Educational Scheme 71 
 
 The Colleges of Pages 73 
 
 The Harem 78 
 
 The Ajem-oghlans 79 
 
 Advancement Based on Merit 82 
 
 Punishments 88 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS AN ARMY 
 
 The Military Aspect 90 
 
 The Janissaries 91 
 
 The Succession to the Throne 93 
 
 The Spahis of the Porte 98 
 
 The Feudal Spahis 100 
 
 Officers of the Feudal Spahis 103 
 
 Other Bodies of Troops 105 
 
 Discipline and Ardor 108 
 
 The Supreme Command 109 
 
 Indivisibility of the Army iii 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS A NOBILITY AND A COURT 
 
 I. Privileges of the Kullar 114 
 
 Nobility not Hereditary 117 
 
 II. Character of the Sultan's Court 120 
 
 Organization of the Household 123 
 
 The Harem 124 
 
 The Inside Service 126 
 
 The Outside Service 128 
 
 The Ceremonies of the Court 133 
 
 Influence of the Court 141 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS GOVERNMENT 
 
 Summary 146 
 
 Functions of the Ottoman Government 147 
 
 The Sultan as Head of the State and of the Government . 150 
 
 The Sultan as Legislator 152 
 
 The Legislation of Suleiman 159 
 
 The Viziers 163
 
 CONTENTS IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Defterdars or Treasurers 167 
 
 Taxation in the Ottoman Empire i75 
 
 SuLEiiiAN's Income i79 
 
 The Nishanji or Chancellor 182 
 
 The Divan or Council 187 
 
 The Ruling Institution as a Whole 193 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 General Description 199 
 
 Financial Support of the Moslem Institution 200 
 
 The Educational System 203 
 
 Clergy, Seids, and Dervishes 206 
 
 Jurists and the Mufti 207 
 
 The Judicial System 215 
 
 The Moslem Institution as a Whole 224 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 COMPARISON OF THE TWO GREAT INSTITUTIONS 
 
 Likenesses 227 
 
 Differences 230 
 
 Interactions 232 
 
 The Relative Power of the Institutions 233 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 I. The Second Book of the Affairs of the Turks 
 
 Written in 1534, supposedly by Benedetto Raaiberti. 
 Translated from the Italian 239 
 
 II. Pamphlet of Junis Bey and Alvise Gritti 
 
 Printed in 1537. Presented in the original Italian 262 
 
 III. Incomplete Table of Contents of the Kanun-Nameh, 
 
 OR Collection of Edicts, of Suleiman the Magnificent 
 
 as arranged by the Mufti Ebu Su'ud 
 
 Translated from the Turkish 276 
 
 IV. The Government of the Mogul Empire in India 
 
 General Comparison of Ottoman and Indian Conditions . . 278 
 
 The Personnel of the Mogul Government 279 
 
 Relation of Government to Religious Propagation ..'... 2S3 
 
 The Army 285
 
 X CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Court 287 
 
 The Government Proper 292 
 
 The Moslems and the Moslem Church 299 
 
 Books consulted in the Preparation of Appendix IV .... 303 
 
 V. Bibliographical Notes 
 
 i. Origins of Ottoman Governmental Ideas 305 
 
 ii. The Ottoman Government in the Sixteenth Century . . . 307 
 
 iii. Alphabetical List of Works Cited 322 
 
 GLOSSARY OF TURKISH WORDS 331 
 
 INDEX 339
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN 
 
 EMPIRE
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE 
 OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Ideas Constitute a Nation 
 
 A nation, when considered from its earliest to its latest days, 
 is much more a body of ideas than a race of men. Men die, 
 families decay, the original stock tends to disappear; new 
 individuals are admitted from without, new family groups take 
 the lead, whole tribes are incorporated and absorbed; after 
 centuries the anthropological result often bears but slight resem- 
 blance to the original type. Undoubtedly the fabric of ideas 
 which a nation weaves as its history develops also undergoes 
 changes of pattern; old principles pass out of sight, and new 
 ones, born of circumstance, or brought in from without, come to 
 controlling influence. But ideas are not, Hke men, mortal: 
 they can be transmitted from man to man through ages; they 
 can be stored in books and thus pass from the dead to the li\'ing; 
 when built together into a soHd and attractive structure, they 
 impart to the whole something of their individual immortality. 
 Singly they pass as readily to strangers as to kindred; when 
 organized to rounded completeness as the culture of a great 
 living nation, they have a power which lays hold of men of many 
 races, alone or in masses, and in the absence of strong prejudice 
 compels acceptance. 
 
 Such an assimilative force can clearly be seen in vigorous 
 operation in the United States of America today, A system of 
 ideas, woven of countless threads spun by Egyptian, Babylonian, 
 Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Teuton, preserved and enlarged 
 by Frank, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Enghshman, recombined 
 in a new and striking pattern by the founders of the repubhc, 
 is thrown over men from every nation under heaven, who under 
 its influence all become of one type, not to be mistaken wherever 
 it is seen. 
 
 3
 
 4 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 The history of the Ottoman Empire reveals the constant 
 working of a like assimilative force. It was not merely, and not 
 even mainly, the compulsion of the sword that built up and main- 
 tained the strongest national power of the sixteenth century. 
 Swords must be wielded by men; and how were enough strong 
 and capable men found and bound together in willing cooperation 
 to conquer large sections of Europe, Asia, and Africa, to organize 
 and govern their conquests in a fairly satisfactory fashion, and 
 to establish a structure which, after more than three hundred 
 years of decay, disaster, and disintegration, has yet enough 
 strength to form the basis for a new departure ? The only 
 answer possible is that the attraction of a great body of national 
 ideas gathered men from every direction and many races to unite 
 in a common effort. Although much violence, injustice, and 
 destructive passion was involved, the result was a great and on 
 the whole a durable and useful empire. 
 
 The government of the Ottoman Empire when at the height 
 of its power cannot be understood from a description of its court, 
 costumes, ceremonies, and officials, with a catalogue of their 
 provinces and duties. A thorough comprehension of the main 
 political ideas that constituted the life of the empire is essential. 
 Since most of these ideas were old and tried, and were wrought 
 in a thousand ways into the general scheme, a complete treat- 
 ment w^ould demand that they should be considered historically 
 from the time of their adoption. Nor would it be sufficient to 
 go back to the beginning of the house of Osman. The Turkish 
 nucleus which gathered around him, and the Mohammedans 
 and Christians from near and far who joined his rising fortunes 
 were already in possession, in a fairly systematic form, of most 
 of the ideas of the completed Ottoman government. The 
 inquiry should be begun farther back, among Byzantine Greeks, 
 Seljuk Turks, Mohammedans of Persia and Arabia, and Turks 
 of Central Asia. Many of the ideas, indeed, can be traced yet 
 farther, through Tartary to China and through Parthia and 
 Rome to Babylon and Egypt. 
 
 These origins, however, cannot be considered here except in 
 the briefest possible fashion. All that can be done is to outhne
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 the background of Ottoman history, the general character of 
 the Ottoman Empire and its service to the world, the racial 
 descent of the Ottoman Turks, and the main influences which 
 affected their institutions and culture. 
 
 The Background of Ottoman History 
 
 From early times the developing Chinese civilization in the 
 valley of the Yellow River had to contend with intermittent 
 attacks from the barbarians of the north and west. In the latter 
 half of the third century B.C. China's work of domestic consoHda- 
 tion and centralization reached completeness, and foreign con- 
 quest began. The policy was then initiated which has never 
 since been departed from, — the subjugation of the outlying 
 lands and the cultural assimilation of their inhabitants.^ Fol- 
 lowing up with armies, governors, and garrisons the nomads 
 who fled to the west, by the beginning of the second century a.d. 
 China held vassal all the population of the steppe country from 
 the Great Wall to the Caspian Sea; her frontiers marched with 
 those of Parthia. Early in the third century she entered upon 
 four hundred years of weakness, and her western possessions 
 fell away; but she regained strength and restored her western 
 dominion just in time to confront the rising Saracen flood. 
 During three brilliant centuries, the seventh, eight, and ninth 
 of our era, she held the nomads in fairly constant subjection, 
 and presumably taught them many of her orderly, organized 
 ways. It was probably in part by the strength of her discipline 
 that in the succeeding half-millennium the descendants of these 
 nomads, Turks and Mongols, wrought their will from the Sea 
 of Japan to the Adriatic, over most of Asia, half of Europe, 
 and a goodly portion of Africa. 
 
 From the eighth century Turks drifted southwestward in 
 ever-increasing numbers out of Chinese territory into the declin- 
 ing Saracen Empire. Early in the eleventh century an army 
 followed this course and set up the vast but short-lived empire 
 of the Seljuk Turks. These broke the eastern frontier of Asia 
 Minor, which had protected the Greeks and Romans for fourteen 
 
 ^ Cahun, Introduction a VHistoire de rAsie, go.
 
 6 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 hundred years, and pushed on until they could see the domes o: 
 Constantinople. The eastward pressure of the crusading perioc 
 kept them from European shores for two centuries, near the close 
 of which the Mongols overran their disintegrated lands. ^. 
 remnant, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, struggled on in Asif 
 Minor until the close of the thirteenth century, when it fell intc 
 ten parts. The East Roman, or Byzantine Empire, had by thai 
 time also been thoroughly wrecked, and the Balkan Peninsula 
 was divided among Frank, ItaHan, and Catalan, Greek, Serb 
 Albanian, Wallach, and Bulgarian. 
 
 The people of one of the ten fragments of the Seljuk Sultanate 
 of Rum took the name of Osmanlis from their chief Osman, 
 Located on the border of the Greek and Turkish groups oi 
 principalities, they drew men and governmental ideas from both 
 The rapidity of their growth from so small a beginning, and undei 
 such apparently unfavorable circumstances, into a durable stat€ 
 is one of the marvellous things of history. In about two and a 
 quarter centuries from the time of their independence they were 
 able to attempt for the last time to unite the entire Mediter- 
 ranean civilization into one empire. North Africa, Eg}^t. 
 Syria, Arabia, the Tigris-Euphrates valley, Armenia, Asia 
 Minor, Greece, the Balkan Peninsula, a large part of moderr 
 Austria-Hungary and of modern Russia, were theirs; the> 
 threatened Italy, Central and Eastern Europe, and Persia, 
 They thus held all three of the earhest centers of Mediterranear 
 civilization, the western half of the Old Persian Empire, and all 
 the dominions of Rome except the northwestern one-third. 
 Apart from Spain and the lands east of the Zagros Mountains, 
 they ruled the Saracen Empire. With the exception of Ital> 
 (with Illyricum and the adjacent islands) and the short-lived 
 Byzantine conquests in Spain, the empire of Justinian lay within 
 their boundaries. The later Byzantine Empire became the 
 heart of their dominions, and its two chief supports — the trade 
 which passed through the Bosphorus and the products and mer 
 of Asia Minor — became their own principal supports. The 
 inheritance of lands and of institutions by the Ottoman Turks 
 from the two great medieval empires of the Levant, the Saracer
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 and the East Roman, is by all odds the most pregnant fact of 
 their existence. They were the immediate heirs of a part of 
 the territory and of the whole of the culture of the Seljuk Turks. 
 The scene of the " world's debate " formed but an insignificant 
 part of their dominions. They gathered into one net all the 
 shoal of feudal, royal, and imperial powers which made the 
 Levant of the thirteenth century as decentralized as the Holy 
 Roman Empire or the Italy of the fifteenth century. 
 
 Character and Mission of the Ottoman Empire 
 
 This rapid survey leads to a number of significant observations. 
 First, the Ottoman Turks of the sixteenth century ruled countries 
 wholly within the sphere of the Mediterranean civilization. 
 The only possible exception was the steppe lands north of the 
 Black Sea; but these had been almost as much under the sway 
 of Rome and Constantinople as they ever were under that of 
 Stamboul. Even communication with Eastern and Southern 
 Asia was well-nigh cut off. The road to China north of the 
 Caspian Sea alone remained open, but after the break-up of 
 the Mongol Empire it had become long and dangerous. The 
 rival and hostile New Persian power firmly closed the southern 
 land route to India and China; and even the sea-way from 
 Egypt eastward was blockaded by the newly-arrived Portuguese. 
 Thus the Ottoman Empire, except in remote origins, which, 
 indeed, profoundly influenced it, grew and flourished within 
 what is commonly considered the main field of history. Accord- 
 ingly, it has a greater claim upon the Western world on the score 
 of kinship than has hitherto generally been allowed. 
 
 Second, within the Mediterranean civilization the Ottoman 
 Empire combined regions of both Orient and Occident. The 
 classical world knew chiefly Romans, Greeks, and Orientals. 
 The Ottoman Turk succeeded to two-thirds of this world, the 
 lands of Greece and the East. From the day of Issus to the day 
 of Menzikert, Asia Minor had to all intents and purposes been 
 a part of Europe. After Menzikert it became a center of Turk- 
 ish rule, to which, in the course of time, territories from both 
 Asia and Europe were added in widening circles. No deep
 
 8 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 knowledge of historical forces is necessary to suggest that neither 
 in Southern Europe nor in Asia Minor itself could the teachings 
 of fourteen centuries or more be obUterated in five centuries or 
 less, or even in an eternity; nor would they fail to exert a pro- 
 found influence from the moment of conquest. To regard the 
 Ottoman Empire as a mere Oriental state would be to misread 
 history and to misunderstand human nature. Its lands were 
 of both Orient and Occident, so also were its people, so also were 
 its culture and its government. 
 
 Third, the Ottoman Turks drew men and ideas from both 
 Mohammedans and Christians. They have commonly been 
 regarded as wholly Mohammedan, and therefore they have 
 been shut off by a well-nigh impenetrable barrier from the sym- 
 pathies of a world still possessed by the prejudices of crusading 
 days. The foundations of such prejudices are easily open to 
 attack. The main religious ideas of Mohammedanism are not, 
 except as to the divinity of Christ, inharmonious with those of 
 Christianity; they were, indeed, in all probability drawn chiefly 
 from the reUgious teachings of the Old Testament. The social 
 system of Mohammedanism is also much like that of the Old 
 Testament. Its most objectionable features, the seclusion of 
 women, polygamy, and slavery, may be regarded as survivals 
 from an older condition of mankind out of which a portion of 
 the human race has emerged — not without frequent cases of 
 atavism — and which Mohammedans themselves are tending 
 to abandon. But, leaving aside the question of the kinship of 
 Christianity and Mohammedanism, no one can deny that the 
 Ottomans ruled over many Christians, that many of their 
 ablest men and families were of Christian ancestry, and that, 
 according to the nature of humanity, as much of their civihzation 
 and ruling ideas may have come from Christian as from Moham- 
 medan sources. 
 
 It is true that as a nation the Ottoman Turks remained Mo- 
 hammedan; this has constituted the real " tragedy of the Turk." 
 Bound hand and foot by that scholastic Mohammedanism which 
 was reaching rigid perfection at the time when the Turks first 
 became prominent in the Saracen Empire, and which only in
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 very recent days seems tending toward a Reformation, they 
 could not amalgamate the subject Christian peoples, already 
 confirmed in nationalism by the events of centuries. The 
 deadening system stilled their active spirits, imprisoned their 
 extraordinary adaptability, and held them at a stage of culture 
 which, though in some respects it distinctly led Europe in the 
 sixteenth century, was before long passed through and left 
 behind by the progressive West. Nevertheless, the Turks 
 were no more limited to Mohammedan ideas than to Moham- 
 medan men, and they are entitled to be considered in the light 
 of their double origin. 
 
 Fourth and last, the great task before the Ottoman Turks 
 was a work of unification. Lands which had been united under 
 the great Theodosius, and then during eleven centuries had been 
 more and more disintegrated by invasion of German, Slav, Arab, 
 Tatar, and Turk, by war of Byzantine, Persian, Moslem, Cru- 
 sader, and Mongol, by destruction of roads and safe water-routes, 
 and by general decay of civilization, until confusion and disorder 
 reigned and anarchy seemed not far ahead — these lands were 
 once more brought under a single control. Was it their destiny 
 to be genuinely reunited, not merely in a common subjection, 
 not merely by an external shell of authority, but in the pulsing 
 life of a vigorous nation, harmonious in every part and run 
 through by patriotism ? This was the well-nigh insoluble 
 problem which the Ottoman Turks attempted bravely. How 
 they solved the administrative and governmental phase of it 
 the present treatise will try to show. Religious unity was 
 out of the question; and in the sixteenth century, in East and 
 West ahke, social and cultural unity waited upon the religious. 
 Had the Ottoman Empire been able four hundred years ago to 
 set apart religious considerations as matters for the individual — 
 a process which affords the chief hope of the new Turkey of the 
 twentieth century — her whole subsequent history must have 
 been very different. 
 
 But in the measure in which unity was attained in the Levant 
 under the Ottoman authority, in that measure did the Ottoman 
 Empire render service to civilization and humanity. After the
 
 lO THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 dose of the thirteenth century Western Europe, absorbed in its 
 own affairs, was able to give little attention to the East. Two 
 centuries were taken up with the consolidation of national powers, 
 chiefly at the expense of feudalism and the medieval church. 
 By the sixteenth century a measure of internal solidarity had 
 been attained and the struggle for external supremacy over the 
 West had been begun. The whole situation was complicated 
 by the actively leavening force of the New Learning and the 
 explosively rending force of the Reformation. Under such 
 circumstances even the advance of the Turks into Central 
 Europe could only temporarily divert attention from absorbing 
 problems and direct it toward the East. To what a state of 
 minute division and infinite disorder the Levant would have 
 come by that time, had the Ottoman Empire not grown up, 
 can only be imagined. Egypt, the only Levantine power of 
 consequence after the close of the crusades, had reached the 
 natural limits of her dominion, and had she aimed at wider 
 conquests the Mameluke government would scarcely have been 
 capable of imperial sway. No other of the countless princi- 
 palities of the eastern Mediterranean showed enough Hfe to 
 accomplish unity. But the Ottoman Turks, cruelly and destruc- 
 tively, imperfectly and clumsily, yet surely and effectively, 
 built up and maintained a single authority, to which the world 
 probably owes most of that measure of enlightenment, culture, 
 and order which can be found in the Levant today. 
 
 The Racial Descent of the Ottoman Turks 
 
 The question as to the origin of the Ottoman Turks was raised 
 in Western Europe as soon as the race began to appear upon the 
 stage of history. There seemed to be something mysterious and 
 uncanny about their rise to power. If an innumerable horde 
 of strange barbarians, a second invasion of Attila, had overrun 
 the Levant and settled down to rule its conquests, cause and 
 effect would have been apparent. But this nation seemed to 
 arise out of the earth. Organized and disciplined beyond any 
 parallel in the West, it seemed to come from nowhere and to
 
 INTRODUCTION 1 1 
 
 begin at once to take a very real part in human affairs.* The 
 problem of its origin is by no means completely solved as yet, 
 but the main elements can perhaps be outlined. A search for 
 these carries the inquiry to the steppe lands. 
 
 The great band of open country which stretches with hardly 
 a break across the whole of Asia and far into Europe resembles 
 the ocean both in its vastness and in its character as an inter- 
 mediate region through which the travel of commerce, states- 
 manship, religion, learning, and curiosity can pass between more 
 thickly-settled lands. It differs from the ocean, however, in 
 being everywhere more or less habitable. The ethnic relations 
 of its families, tribes, and nations are by no means clear. China, 
 with a markedly Mongolian population, lay at the east and south- 
 east; Indo-Europeans of the Caucasian race dwelt at the south- 
 west and west. The tribes between seem from the earliest re- 
 corded times to have presented every intermediate stage of 
 physical type, as they do now; and in general the shading from 
 yellow to white appears to have proceeded regularly from east to 
 west, a circumstance that may have been due largely to climatic 
 influence, but was probably far more the result of admixture.^ 
 These peoples were given to frequent warfare, one of whose 
 objects was the capture of men, women, and children as the most 
 valuable booty. They seem to have had no race aversions that 
 
 ' The West was much concerned in the sixteenth century with the problem of 
 ascertaining the origin of the Turks. Balbus gives an idea how difficult it was 
 to reach a definite opinion: " Some count the Turks among the Asiatic Sarma- 
 tians, and say that they were expelled by their neighbors from the Caspian moun- 
 tains into Persia, and descended into Asia Minor. Others, following the name, 
 perhaps, think that this people had its beginning in Turce, a great and opulent 
 city of the Persians. Others consider them the progeny of the Parthians. Some 
 think the Turks had their origin in Arabia, and some in Syria. But it is more likely 
 that they were Scythians by origin, and (as we said above) from the foot of Mount 
 Caucasus, and that they formerly inhabited vast deserts." See also KnoUes, 
 
 1-2. 
 
 ^ Keane, Mayi, Past and Present, 268, 314-315. Holdich (in Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica, nth ed., ii. 749 b) says, " .-^s ethnographical inquiry advances the 
 Turk appears to recede from his Mongolian affinities and to approach the 
 Caucasian." Keene {Turks in India, i ff.) is inclined to consider the Turks a 
 mere mixture of Mongols with Caucasians. So bald a theory does not account 
 for the group of Turkish languages.
 
 12 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 would hinder inter-mixture, and no race pride that would prevent 
 captives, in the course of time, from attaining full equality in 
 any rank to which their abilities could carry them. Accordingly, 
 the process of admixture that can be observed in historic times 
 has probably been followed from the remote past. 
 
 The name Tatars may be used to designate all the inhabitants 
 of the steppe-ocean who were not distinctly Caucasian. By 
 geographical designation they are properly called the Ural- 
 Altaic peoples, while ethnically they constitute the Mongolo- 
 Turki group. ^ Included perhaps among those unclassified 
 peoples who were known of old to the Greek as Scythians, to the 
 Persians as Turanians, and to the Chinese as Hiung-nu, the 
 Tatars, despite many differences, show unmistakable kinship, 
 usually in their physical features, always in their language and 
 institutions. They have been grouped since medieval times 
 into two great divisions, the Mongols and the Turks. This 
 division may be said to correspond in a very general way to their 
 greater and lesser resemblance to the Chinese, and to a narrower 
 and wider geographical separation from China. Many tribes 
 possess such intermediate characteristics that they cannot 
 easily be classified as Turks or Mongols; ^ but a tribe that is 
 markedly hke the Chinese is clearly Mongol, and a tribe that 
 differs widely from the Chinese is clearly Turkish. If these 
 explanations be adopted, the Turkish peoples are then in general 
 those Tatars who have had the greatest admixture of Caucasian 
 blood. Their original seat seems to have been in MongoHa, 
 but in historic times they had come to occupy the whole central 
 part of the steppe region, from the Desert of Gobi to the Volga, 
 in contact with their Mongol kindred on the east and with 
 Iranians on the south and Slavs on the west. The theory of 
 admixture receives support from the fact that the peoples of the 
 Mediterranean civilization found MongoHans repulsive in appear- 
 ance, but prized Turkish slaves for their beauty.^ 
 
 The name Turk does not appear prominently in the Byzantine 
 and Chinese annals before the fifth century a.d., when the people 
 
 ^ Keane, 267. ^ Ibid. 322; Hammer, Geschichle, i. 3. 
 
 ^ Ibid. 317.
 
 INTRODUCTION 1 3 
 
 of a Tatar empire were designated TovpKot and Tu-kin} The 
 word Turcae was used by classical writers soon after the begin- 
 ning of the Christian era.^ The name has been suspected of 
 lying hidden in the Targitaos of Herodotus and the Togharniah 
 of Scriptures, However this may be, ancestral peoples possess- 
 ing the characteristics of the Turks of course existed, and perhaps 
 appeared in history, in very early times. 
 
 Some have suggested that the Sumero-Accadians of Babylonia 
 were Turks, but this question hardly bears on the present subject. 
 The relations of Turks and Persians on the Central Asian frontier 
 is much more apropos. The legends of the long wars of Iran 
 and Turan, however little detailed historical value they may 
 have, illustrate the circumstances of continual contact both in 
 war and in peace.^ Princes and nobles whose lives were forfeit 
 in their own country fled over the border; princesses were 
 exchanged in marriage; and unnumbered thousands of less 
 exalted folk passed the frontier as captives or slaves. The 
 frontier itself was not fixed, but left great regions now to the 
 rule of the Persian and now to the rule of the Turk. The Par- 
 thians may have been Turks.'* After their downfall the Knes 
 
 * Keane, 322; Hammer, Geschkhle, i. 2; etc. 
 
 2 Hammer, Geschkhle, i. i. This fact, known to KnoUes (p. 2), seems to have 
 escaped the attention of Sir Charles Eliot {^Encyclopaedia Britatmka, nth ed., 
 xxvii. 470 d). 
 
 2 The older view, that Iran represented peoples of Indo-European stock, and 
 Turan peoples of Ural-Altaic stock, though once so generally adopted as to sanction 
 the bestowal of the names Iranian and Turanian upon these groups of peoples, 
 has been abandoned as regards the orii^inal legends, in which Turan seems to have 
 represented ruder tribes of Indo-European lineage (Meyer, Geschiihte, i. pt. ii. 
 814-815). But the Greeks from their first acquaintance with the name identi- 
 fied Turan with the Scythians, and at about the same time the Persians began to 
 apply it to the Northern peoples of alien stock. The conditions of frontier contact 
 between Turks and Persians during many centuries were undoubtedly as described 
 in the legends. 
 
 * Rawlinson, Parthia, 33-35; Keane, 319. Meyer (in Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 nica, nth ed., xxi. 214 c) regards the Parni or Apami, who became the conquer- 
 ing tribe in Parthia, as Iranian nomads; but Peisker (in Cambridge Medieval 
 History, i. 332) asserts that the nomads of the Asiatic background all belong to 
 the Altaian branch of the Ural-Altaian race. The fact that the Parthian army 
 was a slave army (see Meyer, as above, 217 a) is perhaps the strongest piece of 
 evidence that the original Parthians were Turks.
 
 14 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 of Persian and Turk were drawn sharply by the nationalist 
 Sassanians. From the middle of the fifth century, indeed, the 
 Persians had their fill of wars with the Ephthalites, whose appel- 
 lation of White Huns may indicate their mixed MongoHan and 
 Caucasian origin; the Chinese annals specify the kinship of the 
 Tie-le with the Tu-kiu. No sooner had the Arabs engulfed 
 Persia than they began to welcome the Turks whom they found 
 to the north, and whose semi-nomadic culture was singularly 
 like their own. The Saracen Empire was administered for about 
 a century chiefly by Arabs, for another century chiefly by Per- 
 sians, and after that chiefly by Turks, who rose rapidly through 
 slavery and military service to the rule of provinces and even 
 of kingdoms. Thus great numbers of Turks came or were 
 brought into many parts of Western Asia. When Toghrul, 
 grandson of Seljuk, led the first great Turkish invasion into the 
 heart of the Saracen Empire, he found his kindred everywhere. 
 Under the Seljuk Sultans large numbers of Turks streamed in 
 and were settled in Persia, Azerbaijan, Syria, and Asia Minor. 
 
 The Turkish occupation of Asia Minor has been called the 
 most thorough piece of work done by the race.^ Few details 
 of it have been recorded, but one great fact stands out: under 
 the Byzantine Empire, Asia Minor was Greek, Christian, and 
 the home of the empire's most vigorous and loyal citizens; under 
 the Ottoman Empire, Asia Minor is Turkish, Mohammedan, 
 and the home of the empire's most vigorous and faithful subjects. 
 The process of this transformation, so far as it is known, deserves 
 examination. 
 
 Seljuk and Ottoman Turks in Asia Minor 
 
 The Seljuk Turks were orthodox, and often fanatical, Mos- 
 lems; accordingly they put great pressure upon the inhabitants 
 of the peninsula to make them exchange Christ for Mohammed. 
 " Great numbers apostatized, * many thousand children were 
 marked by the knife of circumcision; and many thousand 
 
 1 Keane, 327. Asia Minor is here used in the larger sense, as denoting in 
 general the Asian territory which lies west of a line drawn from the eastern end of 
 the Black Sea to the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta.
 
 INTRODUCTION 1 5 
 
 captives were devoted to the service or the pleasures of their 
 masters.^ ' " 
 
 The Seljuk Turks were already a mixed race, and had no greater 
 objection than their ancestors to the reception of new members. 
 They had come as a Turkish army followed by a host of Tur- 
 coman nomads.2 The soldiers took wives from the women of 
 the land and servants from the men and children, and the nomads 
 filled the gaps left among their women and children after the 
 long, hard journey. Those of the adult Anatolians who were 
 left free found a thousand temporal advantages in following 
 the Prophet, whose simple faith and consoling doctrines, more- 
 over, suited both their temperament and their circumstances. 
 Christianity had sat hghtly upon many of them, and Moham- 
 medanism seems to have been accepted as lightly; for traces 
 of Christian and perhaps of pre-Christian practices and behefs 
 can be seen among the Moslems of Asia Minor today. ^ To turn 
 Moslem was then, as ever since, to turn Turk. In the course 
 of three centuries the process of settlement and conversion 
 reached virtual completion ; nearly all the plateau of Asia Minor 
 became Mohammedan and Turkish. Nothing approaching 
 the nature of statistics is available for determining what the 
 proportion was between invading Turks and converted Christians. 
 The probabilities, based on the known character of Turkish 
 invasions and the length and difficulty of the journey from the 
 steppe lands, point to a relatively small number of Turkish 
 settlers.^ Yet this doubly-mixed people has contributed those 
 subjects of the Ottoman Empire who are accounted the most 
 characteristically Turkish. 
 
 The invasion of Western Asia by the Mongols of Genghis 
 Khan in the early part of the thirteenth century drove an un- 
 
 ^ Quoted in Kcane, 328, from Gibbon (cd. Bun'), \\. 250. 
 
 * Vambery, Die Primitive Cultiir, 47; Keane, 328; Cahun, Introduction, 169 fl.; 
 Ramsay, Studies in Eastern Roman Provinces, 295. 
 
 8 Ramsay, Studies in Eastern Roman Provinces, 297. This statement has been 
 confirmed by conversation w'xXh. other persons well acquainted with conditions in 
 Asia M inor. See also E. Huntington, in National Geographic Magazine, September, 
 1910, p. 767. 
 
 * Vambery {Die Primitive Cultur, 47) expresses the opinion that the Ottomans 
 never received, all told, more than 25,000 men of Turkish blood.
 
 1 6 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 known number of Persians and Turks to take refuge in Asia 
 Minor. Among these is said to have been a group led by a 
 chief named Suleiman, whose grandson Osman gave the Otto- 
 mans their name.^ This group reached the Seljuk kingdom of 
 Rum, and was allowed by good custom of the time to proceed 
 to the Christian frontier and conquer what it could. About 
 the time of settlement tradition specifies the number as four 
 hundred famihes, or 444 horsemen, a figure which has clearly 
 been shaped with reference to the sacred number four, but which 
 shows the behef that the group was not large.^ The growth of 
 this band was far more rapid than could have been accomphshed 
 by natural increase. A part of the additional membership was 
 suppHed by Turks and other Moslems of adventurous spirit 
 who sought the fighting and booty of the border-land. But 
 these were by no means all. The Ottoman traditions and history 
 reveal at countless places the hospitable incorporating spirit 
 of the embryonic nation, which rapidly increased its numbers 
 from the Christian population by conversion, marriage, and 
 capture, and most strikingly by the tribute tax of Christian 
 male children. The Ottoman conquests to the eastward brought 
 gradually into the brotherhood all the Seljuk Turks of Asia 
 Minor, and as many as were or became Mohammedan from the 
 various conquered peoples — Greeks of Trebizond, Armenians, 
 Syrians, and others. The conquests in Europe converted en 
 masse some sections of Bulgarians and Albanians, who still 
 show evidence of their origin ; a very great number of individuals 
 among the subject Christians, however, were so completely 
 incorporated as to lose all trace of their source. Thousands 
 upon thousands of captives from the whole of Southeastern 
 Europe, from all of Southern Russia and Poland, from the 
 Caucasus region, from Central Europe as far as Regensburg 
 and Friule, and from the shores and islands of the IMediterranean 
 were likewise incorporated; till, as a result of all this Western 
 admixture, the ruling nationahty of the Ottoman Empire, 
 
 ^ Ottoman is an attempt to pronounce Othman by those who pronounce th like t; 
 Osman a similar attempt by those who pronounce th (as in " thin ") like 5. 
 2 Hammer, Geschkhte, i. 42-43.
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 though called Turkish today, retains no physical trace whatever 
 of Mongolian ancestry.^ Many of its members undoubtedly 
 have no Tatar blood in their veins; as for the rest, they are, 
 if the above discussion be well founded, a mixture of Europeans 
 chiefly with Turks of Asia Minor, who were themselves a mixture 
 of the former Christian population with Seljuk Turks, while 
 these again were a mixture dating back through countless ages 
 of contact between the white and the yellow races. A simple 
 computation will illustrate the matter. Osman is said to have 
 captured a fair Greek lady named Nenuphar, or Nilufer, the 
 Lotus-flower, and to have given her as bride to his son Orchan, 
 the first of the Ottoman sultans.- From that time it became 
 increasingly the policy of the sultans to take their wives from the 
 Caucasian race.^ If Orchan be set down as of pure Mongolian 
 descent, and if it be supposed, as is certainly very near the truth, 
 that all the mothers of succeeding sultans were not of Turkish 
 blood, and if the mother be assumed to contribute to the child 
 an influence equal to the father's, the proportion of Mongolian 
 blood in the veins of the reigning sultan, who is of the twentieth 
 generation from Orchan, can readily be calculated, — about 
 one part in one million.'' Similar proportions would hold good 
 
 * Keane, 268, 316. Peschel, 380, says, "The Turks of the west have so 
 much Aryan and Semitic blood in them that the last vestiges of their original 
 physical characters have been lost, and their language alone indicates their previous 
 descent." On the other hand, E. Huntington (in National Geographic Magazine, 
 September, 1910, p. 767) expresses the opinion that the inhabitants of the central 
 part of the plateau of Asia Minor are " almost purely Turkish in race." He does 
 not say, however, that this opinion is based on observation of physical appearances. 
 
 2 Hammer, Geschichte, i. 59. 
 
 ' Keene, 2, makes the interesting suggestion that this custom, followed 
 mutatis mutandis by the Moguls of India, was a survival of exogamous conditions 
 among the ancestors of the Turks. 
 
 * The twentieth power of § is 1/1,148,576. The description given of Orchan, 
 furthermore, shows scarcely a discernible trace of Mongolian ancestrj'. Compare 
 Hammer, Geschichte, i. 158: " Mit demselben [Osman] waren ihm zwar die 
 Bocksnase und die schon gewolbtcn schwarzen Augenbrauncn gemcin; aber er 
 hatte blonde Haare und lichte Augcn, die Statur und die Slirne hoch, die Brust 
 breit, die Faust kriiftig wie die Klaue des Lowen, das Gesicht rund und die Farbe 
 desselben weiss und roth; dor Korperbau stark, der Bart und Knebclbart dicht 
 und wohlgenahrt." Murad II showed a little more evidence of Tatar descent. 
 He " is," says La Broquiere, 181, " a man of stout build and short body, and he
 
 1 8 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 for many of the Osmanli Turks. Probably the nation as a 
 whole has no more of Tatar blood than the American nation 
 has of Norman. 
 
 The Sources of Ottoman Culture 
 
 The question at once arises: What significance, then, has 
 the name Turk as applied to modern Turkey ? To this query 
 a general answer only can be given here, as part of a rough 
 statement in regard to the derivation of the main elements of 
 Ottoman culture. 
 
 Of the whole body of ideas and institutions and intangible 
 inheritances possessed by the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth 
 century, no small number of the most fundamental ones were 
 derived from the remote Tatar ancestors of a part of the nation, 
 from whom even this part was far separated in time and space. 
 Foremost among these inheritances is the Turkish language, 
 which in its principles of monosyllabic stem, inflexion by post- 
 fixes alone, and assonance, and in its general system of grammar 
 and body of words of ordinary life, has survived from the early 
 days through all vicissitudes.^ Old Turkish is the Anglo-Saxon 
 of the Osmanli, as Persian is his Greek and Arabic his Latin. 
 Somewhat more hospitable than those who use Western lan- 
 guages, the Turk has nearly always accepted with a foreign 
 thing its foreign name; and the great majority of the foreign 
 words and phrases so accepted he has not changed in any way, 
 except to modify the pronunciation of some sounds about which 
 the tongue does not readily curl. Among other Tatar bequests 
 to the Osmanlis may be named the hospitable assimilative 
 tendency to which reference has already been made; a predis- 
 position to war and conquest, accompanied by an openness of 
 mind as to the best methods and means of prevaihng; an ability 
 and inclination to govern, combined with great adaptability as 
 to methods and means; and some acquaintance with systematic 
 
 has something of the broad face of a Tatar's physiognomy, and he has a rather 
 large hooked nose and rather small eyes, and he is very brown in the face, and he has 
 plump cheeks and a round beard." 
 ^ Keane, 266.
 
 INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 and bureaucratic methods of government impressed upon 
 the nation by the Chinese. Again, the Tatars, possessed of the 
 tenacious conservatism of a primitive people, predisposed the 
 Ottomans to a close adherence to custom — to the doctrine 
 that, when a thing had been done once in a certain way, it should 
 always thereafter be done in the same way. Finally, the Tatars 
 contributed various elements of the national character, such as a 
 touch of the old love of nomad life, a certain stolidity of spirit 
 and calm sobriety of temper (taught, perhaps, by the vastness 
 of the steppe in comparison with the littleness of man), and a 
 lack of originality which hindered the construction of freely- 
 borrowed ideas into new forms of higher relation. In general, 
 therefore, the foundations of the national character of the Otto- 
 mans were laid in the early days, in a body of ideas which was 
 passed down continuously from man to man, not so much through 
 blood-relationship as through willing acceptance or enforced 
 adoption. 
 
 The nature of a Tatar nation in the steppe lands, manifesting 
 many of the elements mentioned above, is extremely significant 
 as foreshadowing some features of the Ottoman government. 
 A Tatar nation was a voluntary association, independent of 
 kinship, formed about a promising leader, and interested in 
 war and conquest; thus it might grow with extreme rapidity 
 until the geographical extent of its dominion would be marvel- 
 lous. The empire of the Tu-kiu, for example, gathered in about 
 twenty-five years after its foundation territories which reached 
 from China proper to the confines of the Byzantine Empire. 
 The leader of such a nation maintained his control by the right 
 voluntarily given him to punish treason and conspiracy by death ; ^ 
 when his controlling hand grew weak, the nation went to pieces. 
 " A Turkish tribe could maintain a political organization and a 
 compact grouping only by war; without benefits from pillage 
 and tributes, it would be obliged to dissolve and to disperse by 
 clans, whose fractions would group themselves anew, and form 
 another nation about the strongest man. ... In regard to 
 
 1 Compare the election of Sebuktegin, in Sch^fer's edition of the Siasset Nameh, 
 
 158.
 
 20 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 empires like those of the Huns, or the Turks, military associations 
 without ethnic bonds, one cannot say that they dissolve; they 
 disband. Reversing the custom of other peoples, with the Turks 
 it is the king who feeds his people, who clothes them, who pays 
 them." ^ Add to this system a loyalty to a hereditary leader 
 which makes the bonds of union permanent, and the description 
 would apply fairly well to the growing Ottoman nation. A 
 passage from the Kudatku Bilik applies yet more closely, since 
 it shows a mihtary government in the midst of a subject popula- 
 tion : 2 — 
 
 "In order to hold a land one needs troops and men; 
 In order to keep troops one must divide out property; 
 In order to have property one needs a rich people; 
 Only laws create the riches of a people: 
 If one of these be lacking all four are lacking; 
 Where all four are lacking, the dominion goes to pieces." 
 
 The ancient Persian seems to have given the Ottoman at long 
 range a number of his ideas of government, such as the exaltation 
 of the monarch, the separation of officials of the court from 
 those of the government proper, the division of the ministry 
 into five departments, the council of state, the giving of large 
 powers to local governors, and the beginnings of the so-called 
 " legal " system of taxation.^ From him also seems to have 
 come the policy of allowing subjects who professed alien religions 
 to form separate organizations, which lived in a measure under 
 their own laws. One writer goes so far as to say: " All investi- 
 gations into the oldest state regulations of the Orient, into the 
 origin of monarchical forms and constitutions, into the cere- 
 monial of courts and the hierarchy of ofi&cials, lead back to the 
 great kingdom of the ancient Persians, from whom they have 
 come down more or less modified, to the Arabs, who sat as 
 
 * Cahun, Introduction, 79. 
 
 2 Vambery, Uigurische Sprachmonumente und das Kudatku Bilik, 118. This 
 passage closely resembles the words attributed to Artaxerxes I, first king of the 
 Sassanian Persian hne: " There can be no power without an army, no army without 
 money, no money without agriculture, and no agriculture without justice " (Raw- 
 linson, Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy, i. 6i). 
 
 3 Hammer, Staatsverjassung, 36-45.
 
 INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 caliphs on the thrones of the three continents, to the Seljuk 
 Turks and the Byzantines, who at the same time grew up on the 
 ruins of the Saracen and Roman kingdoms in Asia and Europe, 
 and through both to the Ottomans who swallowed up the king- 
 doms of Iconium and Byzantium." ^ The Sassanian Persians 
 handed down through the Moslems the completed " legal " 
 system of a land tax of two sorts based on cadasters, and a 
 capitation tax levied on those who practised a foreign religion. 
 They may also have contributed many features of the Ottoman 
 feudal system. During the Abbassid period the Persians and 
 the Turks who gradually displaced the Arabs in the civil and 
 military administration of the Saracen Empire were thrown into 
 very close contact with each other. It was only natural, there- 
 fore, that the Persians, who possessed the more advanced cul- 
 ture, should influence the Turks in many directions. Their 
 chief direct gift lay in the domain of poetry and literature, 
 a field in which they added a vast number of words and ideas to 
 the original Turkish stock. 
 
 The Saracens gave the Ottomans a complete religious and social 
 system, united under a Sacred Law which professed to provide 
 for all relations of life, and which became more and more rigid 
 as time went on. Into this had been wrought slowly by genera- 
 tions of learned men most of the Persian governmental ideas 
 that have been mentioned, together with others from Arabian 
 and Byzantine sources, such as a species of laws of inheritance 
 and a system of juristic responses. The Saracens gave also their 
 alphabet and a large stock of Arabic words. All that the Mos- 
 lems gave the Ottomans was embodied in one great, complex 
 institution, which was founded upon an elaborate system of 
 education and supported by the revenues from a large part of 
 the land of the empire, and which possessed great sohdity and 
 an almost changeless permanence. In the Ottoman Empire, 
 as in all other Moslem lands, the influence of this completed 
 institution was ultimately very injurious; when added to the 
 Tatar love of custom, it laid a heavy hand on all movements 
 toward improvement and progress. Its ultimate attitude 
 
 1 Ibid. 36.
 
 22 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 toward earthly affairs is well expressed in the following 
 couplet: — 
 
 " To build in this world palaces and castles, there is no need; 
 They will at last be ruins: to build cities, there is no need." * 
 
 A development which took place among the Turks within the 
 Saracen Empire was of the profoundest significance to Ottoman 
 history. From some date in the early ninth century, Turkish 
 youth were brought to Bagdad in large numbers as purchased, 
 but by no means unwilling, slaves. Having been trained as 
 soldiers, they became generals and local governors, and after 
 no great length of time the central government also passed into 
 their hands. The training of such young Turkish slaves in the 
 palaces of caliphs and governors clearly foreshadowed Ottoman 
 methods. The account that perhaps looks farthest back in rela- 
 tion to the Turks is found in the Siasset Nameh, and refers to 
 the time of the Samanid dynasty, which ruled in East Persia 
 from 874 to 999. It describes the external aspect of the system 
 of education, such as promotion and marks of honor, but leaves 
 the severe work which lay behind to be inferred : — 
 
 " This is the rule that was followed at the court of the Sama- 
 nids: 
 
 " They advanced slaves gradually, taking account of their 
 services, their courage, and their merit. Thus a slave who 
 had just been purchased served for one year on foot. Clothed 
 in a cotton tunic, he walked beside the stirrup of his chief; they 
 did not have him mount on horseback either in public or in 
 private, and he would be punished if it were learned that he had 
 done so. When his first year of service was ended, the head 
 of the chamber informed the chamberlain, and the latter gave the 
 slave a Turkish horse which had only a rope in its mouth, a 
 bridle and a halter in one. When he had served one year on 
 horseback, whip in hand, lie was given a leathern girth to put 
 about the horse. The fifth year they gave him a better saddle, 
 a bridle ornamented with stars, a tunic of cotton mixed with silk, 
 and a mace which he suspended by a ring from his saddle-bow. 
 
 ^ Quoted by Cahun, in Lavisse and Rambaud, iii. 964.
 
 INTRODUCTION 2$ 
 
 In the sixth year he received a garment of a more splendid color; 
 and in the seventh year, they gave him a tent held up by a pole 
 and fixed by sixteen pegs: he had three slaves in his suite, and 
 he was honored with the title of head of a chamber; he wore 
 on his head a hat of black felt embroidered with silver and he was 
 clothed with a silk robe. Every year he was advanced in place 
 and dignity; his retinue and his escort were increased until the 
 time when he reached the rank of chief of squadron and finally 
 that of chamberlain. Though his capacity and merit might be 
 generally recognized, though he had done some noteworthy deed 
 and had acquired universal esteem and the affection of his 
 sovereign, he was obliged nevertheless to wait until the age of 
 thirty-five years before obtaining the title of e?nir and a govern- 
 ment." 1 
 
 In this system of the training of slaves for war and government 
 lay the nucleus of the fundamental institution of the Ottoman 
 state, which, together with the institution based on the Sacred 
 Law, was to sum up practically the entire organized life of the 
 Ottoman nation. Under the Samanids it was Turkish boys 
 who were thus educated by Arabs and Persians, but the Ottomans 
 were later to apply the same principle to the education of Chris- 
 tian youth. 
 
 The Seljuk Turks brought most of the ideas that have been 
 mentioned into Asia Minor. They served chiefly as mediators 
 between the older Turkish, Persian, and Mohammedan systems 
 and that of the Ottomans. Besides adding some features out 
 of their own experience, such as a method of book-keeping, and 
 handing on a taste for constructing public buildings like caravan- 
 serais, khans, and mosques, they gave rise to several important 
 religious orders which were to have a place in Ottoman life. 
 
 What was left for the Byzantines to contribute to the Otto- 
 man ? He had received already the main features of his national 
 character, — language, literary influences, law, and religion. 
 One of his two leading institutions was already almost fully 
 developed in Moslem lands, and required only transplantation. 
 The other, however, the institution of war and government, 
 
 1 Sch^fer, Siasset Namch, 139.
 
 24 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 could still be modified considerably; and this was to incorporate 
 much from the Byzantines.^ Many details of governmental 
 organization, both imperial and local, a supplementary system 
 of taxation, a greatly elaborated taste for court ceremonial and 
 splendor, a plan of organizing foreign residents under a special 
 law, and a host of lesser usages and customs were to be taken over 
 by the Ottomans. The Ottoman feudal system also probably 
 owed its final form to the Byzantines; and perhaps it was from 
 them that the Ottomans learned their abnormal love for fees and 
 gifts. The matchless structure of Saint Sophia served as a 
 model for the superb mosques that lift the shapely masses of 
 their great gray domes, supported by clusters of semidomes and 
 lesser domes, above the cypress tress and gardens of the rounded 
 hills which in Constantine's city slope down to the blue waters 
 of the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn. 
 
 This sketch of the origin of the elements of Ottoman culture 
 does not profess to be in any sense complete. So great a subject 
 is worthy of separate and extended treatment. No more has 
 been attempted here than partly to prepare the way for an under- 
 standing of the strange system of government which the Ottoman 
 Turks developed, and to show that that system was no new crea- 
 tion, but was made of elements which in their origins reached 
 far back into the past. Out of old and tried ideas was built up a 
 double structure which was individual, conservative, and effi- 
 cient, strong, durable, and useful. 
 
 ' Berard, 4 ff.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE IN 
 
 GENERAL 
 
 Definition 
 
 The Ottoman Turkish state of the sixteentli century was a 
 despotism, hmited and supported by the Mohammedan Sacred 
 Law; it governed a vast territory, which had been gathered by 
 the progressive conquest of many separate lands, and which was 
 consequently held in many diverse relationships; it ruled a 
 multitude of peoples, some of which were favored as holding to 
 the state religion, and others of which, though in an inferior 
 position, had yet the right by sacred compacts to practise other 
 religions and obey other laws. 
 
 This description reveals at once the complex and parti-colored 
 character of the Ottoman Empire at the period when its power 
 and prestige were greatest, when its armies were feared from 
 the shore of the German Ocean to the borders of India and its 
 fleets from Gibraltar to Bombay, and when its favor and good- 
 will were sought by powers great and small in Asia, Africa, and 
 Europe. For the state as for the individual, the penalty of 
 greatness is increase of responsibihty and care. In any conquer- 
 ing nation the growth of governmental institutions must keep 
 pace with increase of territory and population, or advance will 
 be stifled by confusion. The growth may, however, be too 
 rapid to be intelligently directed. Most great institutions, in 
 fact, tend to develop a separate life of their own which may 
 become too vast and powerful for human comprehension and 
 control; for political, rehgious, economic, and social forces 
 proceed out of and act upon them in numerous and unexpected 
 ways. In the case of the Ottoman Empire the situation was 
 rendered more difficult by the presence in its territory of stable 
 and vigorous institutions centuries older than its own. These 
 were profoundly hostfle to its inner spirit, far too powerful and 
 
 25
 
 26 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 indi\ddual to be destroyed or absorbed by it, and therefore an 
 eternal obstacle to unity. In addition, the Ottoman institu- 
 tions themselves grew more and more apart into two unified 
 groups, which were in striking contrast in many ways; dwelHng 
 together, they acted upon each other continually; and unfortu- 
 nately they were so constituted that their reciprocal influence 
 was to the injury of both. A fuller explanation will make the 
 comphcated situation clearer. 
 
 The Limitations on Despotism 
 
 It may seem a contradiction in terms to speak of a despotism 
 as limited; yet a little reflection will show that there never has 
 existed and never can exist a despotism that is not limited. 
 In what land has the will of one man been obeyed instantly, 
 everywhere, and by all ? In what land have there not been stub- 
 born traditions, ineradicable prejudices, and powerful organiza- 
 tions, which have blocked the way of the despot as effectively 
 as lofty mountains and stormy channels ? The great limitation 
 upon the power of the Ottoman sultan was the Sheri, or Sacred 
 Law of Islam, which claimed to be wholly above him and 
 beyond his alteration. ^ He might by act of violence transgress 
 its provisions, but he had even then done it no damage; it was 
 still what it had always been. And he knew well that his trans- 
 gressions must not be too many, and must not at all touch certain 
 matters, else he would be declared to have forfeited the throne.^ 
 The Sacred Law divided with him the allegiance of his Moham- 
 medan subjects; it demanded to be consulted before he removed 
 the head of a criminal,^ or went to war with an enemy; •* it took 
 for itself the revenues of a large share of his lands, and so 
 controlled the imposition of general taxation as seriously to 
 embarrass his finances; it even protected his Christian subjects 
 from all efforts of his to bring them forcibly under its sway; ^ it 
 entered into his very spirit and persuaded him to rehnquish 
 
 1 Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 30; D'Ohsson, v. 7; Heidbom, iii 
 " D'Ohsson, i. 291; Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 32. 
 
 2 D'Ohsson, vi. 253. 
 
 * Ibid. V. 53. * Ibid. 109.
 
 TEE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE 27 
 
 harmless pleasures/ while it supported him in the execution of 
 able and worthy brothers and sons,^ The Sheri was a form of 
 rigid constitution which by its own provisions was incapable of 
 amendment. It purported to regulate for all time the matters 
 included in its scope. Open to a small measure of modification 
 by juristic interpfetation, it was probably on the whole as 
 changeless a system as has ever prevailed among men. The 
 sovereign had no right to modify it in the least respect. 
 
 Nor was the Sacred Law the only real limitation upon the 
 sultan's power. Although he was not bound to observe the 
 legislation of his ancestors or maintain their institutions,^ yet 
 he could not lightly destroy what he must at once replace. 
 Some of their laws he might cease to observe, some institutions 
 he might neglect, improve, or reform; but the main substance 
 of their work was too useful and too well-established to be 
 undone. Suleiman bears the name of Legislator (El Kanuni); 
 but in his case it was even more true than in similar instances 
 in other lands that he did not so much ordain and create anew 
 as rearrange and put in order, reorganize and regulate. 
 
 Again, few other peoples in the world, perhaps, have been so 
 much under the power of custom as was the Ottoman nation.^ 
 That which had been once done in a certain way must always 
 be done in the same way, or in what was believed to be the same 
 way, unless a change had been accompHshed by the distinct 
 intervention of fully recognized authority. The inertia of the 
 
 * Ibid. iv. 280; Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 331; Erizzo, 137. 
 
 2 This was based upon a passage of the Koran, " Sedition is worse than exe- 
 cution " (Sura 2: 187): Hammer, Geschichte, i. 216. Professor G. F. Moore 
 points out that in this passage (and in Sura 2: 214, which is substantially identi- 
 cal) the text refers to Mohammed's war with the Mcccans, or to fighting in the 
 sacred months. The woTdfitnah, here translated " sedition," has various meanings: 
 first of all, " trial," as gold and silver, for example, are tried by smelting; then, 
 " successful temptation, leading or turning a man astray, error, discord, dissension, 
 sedition, etc." The context indicates clearly that Mohammed had in mind the 
 leading or turning of people from the true religion as that which is " worse than 
 killing." The other meanings would, however, allow some accommodating jurist 
 or theologian to make this a plausible proof-text for authorizing the killing of the 
 sultan's brothers, who might become seditious or furnish cause for dissension. 
 
 ' Hammer, Staalsverfassung, 31. 
 
 * Ibid. 32; D'Ohsson, vii. 150.
 
 28 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 people was so marked that the sovereign power seldom found it 
 worth while, and then only when driven by necessity, to put forth 
 the great exertion required to make a change in the estabhshed 
 order. 
 
 Restricted thus by an unchangeable constitution, by the 
 presence of deep-rooted laws and institutions, and by the settled 
 customs of a highly conservative people, the power of the Otto- 
 man sultan could be exerted freely in certain directions only. 
 What these were will appear as the scheme of the government is 
 unfolded. 
 
 The Territorial Basis 
 
 A fundamental characteristic of the modern state is considered 
 to lie in the fact that its power is territorial, that it exerts equal 
 authority over every part of a certain territory, and over every 
 human being and every material object upon, above,* or under 
 the surface of that territory. Although an authority so evenly 
 applied may be possible theoretically, it is never in actual exis- 
 tence in any particular state; for special laws and arrangements 
 always modify the situation. For example, lands and property 
 devoted to religious or educational uses, or owned by a foreign 
 nation for its ambassador, are regularly exempted from taxation. 
 Or, again, the government of the United States of America 
 stands in different relations toward the soil of the District of 
 Columbia, the state of Massachusetts, the territory of Alaska, 
 the Philippine Islands, and the Panama Canal Zone. 
 
 By the laws of Islam the soil of a conquered land is granted by 
 God as the absolute possession of the Imam, or divinely com- 
 missioned prince, who commands the conquering army.^ Apart 
 from the question as to where the sovereignty rests, this theory 
 of ownership is substantially that of the modern state. The fact 
 that the soil of the Ottoman Empire came into highly complex 
 relationships with the government, therefore, arose not so much 
 from a different fundamental theory as from a greater number of 
 special arrangements based on circumstances and on the per- 
 sonality of religion and law. 
 
 * Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 478, and Staatsverfassung, 340.
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE 29 
 
 The Ottoman Empire consisted, first, of a great body of lands 
 which were directly administered according to a system that 
 was exceedingly intricate but approximately uniform; second, 
 of a number of regions less directly administered under special 
 regulations; third, of numerous tributary provinces; and fourth, 
 of certain protected or vassal states. Outside the whole, except 
 where the frontiers were natural, lay a belt of neutral or disputed 
 territory, which tended to be depopulated by continual raids 
 from both sides, only less frequent and terrible in time of peace 
 than in time of war.^ The great significance of this belt to the 
 Ottoman people and government was that it furnished a con- 
 tinuous supply of captives for the enorrnpus slave-trade of the 
 empire. Outside of the raided belt, again, lay the Dar-ul harh, 
 or land of war, inhabited either by peoples whose religions were 
 regarded as inferior, or by heretics, wJpom it was a duty to con- 
 quer, at least when practical.- The ^der in which these several 
 regions are mentioned, an order based on progressive diminution 
 of control, corresponds in general to an increasing distance from 
 Constantinople. While the Ottoman Empire was growing, 
 each sort of territory tended to absorb the next, proceeding from 
 the center outward. 
 
 These lands may be considered rapidly in the reverse order. 
 The territory in which raiding was frequent consisted of a strip 
 extending across Austria-Hungary from the head of the Adriatic 
 in a northeasterly direction, and another band stretching east- 
 wardly across Southern Poland and Russia in the edge of the 
 forest region. The latter was separated from Crimean Tartary 
 by the steppe land, which the Tartars kept uninhabited in order 
 to afford a free passage to their light horse. The Persian frontier 
 also lay waste; but the country was too much broken for easy 
 raiding, and Mohammedans, even though heretical, could not 
 
 ^ For the Tartar method of raiding in the seventeenth centun,-, see Ricaut, 
 book i. ch. xiii. This may be compared with Turkish methods in the fifteenth 
 century, as described by the author of the Tractatus, ch. v. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, V. 50. Orthodoxy in the Moslem religion was by no means an 
 insuperable obstacle to attempts at conquest. The Mamelukes whom Selim I 
 overthrew were Sunnites, and Malekile Morocco was long a land coveted by the 
 Ottomans. A desire for the unification of orthodox Islam came into play here. 
 
 \
 
 30 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 lawfully be enslaved.^ Similar conditions existed on the Moroc- 
 can frontier, except that the majority of the inhabitants of 
 Morocco were orthodox Moslems. Another section that may 
 properly be regarded as one of the raided regions from which 
 slaves and booty were drawn was the Christian shipping on the 
 Mediterranean Sea, and the islands and shores of that sea so far 
 as they were held by Christians. Crimean Tartary, Georgia, 
 MingreHa, and parts of Arabia were vassal territories, more or 
 less lightly attached and paying no regular tribute.^ Venice's 
 island of Cyprus, the Emperor Ferdinand's possessions in Hun- 
 gary, the territories of Ragusa, Transylvania, Moldavia, and 
 Wallachia, all paid regular tribute with occasional presents, for 
 the privilege of maintaining their own administrations. Eg^^^t 
 was under a special government, adapted with sHght changes from 
 that of the Mamelukes, headed by a pasha sent out from Constan- 
 tinople for a term of three years, and delivering a large part of 
 its annual revenue to the imperial treasury. The Holy Cities of 
 Mecca and Medina, far from paying tribute, received a large 
 annual subsidy at the cost of Egypt.^ North Africa, conquered 
 by the Corsairs, was brought into the empire by Khaireddin 
 Barbarossa principally for the sake of prestige and support; 
 but, though in its organization it imitated the parent government, 
 it was seldom in close obedience. 
 
 The regions directly administered were divided into districts, 
 or sanjaks, each of which had a separate law or kanun-nameh, of 
 taxation, which rested upon terms made at the time of conquest.* 
 Parts of the mountain lands of Albania and Kurdistan, and the 
 desert of Arabia, though nominally under direct administration, 
 were in very slight obedience ; they retained their ancient tribal 
 organizations, under hereditary chieftains who were invested 
 with Ottoman titles in return for military service, and whose 
 followers might or might not submit to taxation.^ The remaining 
 
 1 D'Ohsson, V. 86. 
 
 2 The Turks laid claim also to Morocco, but they never exercised abiding 
 authority there: Knolles (ed. 1687), 987. 
 
 ' Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 520-521. 
 
 * These are given in detail in Hammer's Staatsverfassung, 219-327. 
 
 * Ibid. 251 {Kanun-nameh of the sanjak of Kurdistan).
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE 3 1 
 
 sanjaks, more closely under control, were yet organized in no 
 simple way. 
 
 Parcels of land in the great central portion of the Ottoman 
 Empire were in three classes, — the tithe lands (ersi 'ushriyeh), 
 the tribute lands (ersi kliardjiyeh), and the state lands (ersi 
 memleke.t) } The tithe lands had been granted to Mohammedans 
 in fee-simple (mulk) at the time of conquest, on condition of 
 paying a relatively small portion (not more than one-tenth) of 
 the produce to the state. The tribute lands had been granted 
 or left to Christians in fee-simple at the time of conquest, on 
 payment of one of two taxes — either a fixed sum for the land 
 itself or a share of the produce — the latter ranging in amount 
 from one-tenth to one-half.^ The state lands were such as had 
 never been granted in fee-simple, and hence their title remained 
 in the sultan. He received the revenue, however, from only a 
 part of them; for a very large portion had been given to mosques 
 as endowment (vakf) for their maintenance and the support of 
 their attendants, or for the benefit of the schools, hospitals, and 
 other buildings attached to them; and another large portion 
 had been granted in fief to Mohammedans, who in return ren- 
 dered military service on horseback.* The comparatively 
 small remainder of the state lands was held as crown domain, 
 administered in a special way by the sultan as owner. The 
 tenants of state lands held title only by lease, or tapji, and paid 
 both money and crop rent to the church, the fief-holder, or the 
 crown.* All the lands in Europe were regarded as state land,* 
 for the Ottomans gave out in fee-simple few lands that were 
 conquered from Christians. Asia Minor was also largely state 
 land; but Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt were held under 
 older arrangements, and were mainly tribute lands. Arabia 
 and Bosra were almost wholly tithe lands, as being the oldest 
 Arabian possessions.^ The fundamental quality of all tribute 
 
 ' Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 478, and Staatsverfassung, 343 ff.; Heidbom, 320 ff. 
 
 * Hammer, Slaalsverfassitng, 344. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, vii. 372 ff.; Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 475 ff., and Staatsverfassung, 
 
 337 ff- 
 
 * Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 345. 
 
 » Ibid. 347. ' Ibid. 344.
 
 32 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 land was unchangeable; ^ but original tithe lands which had come 
 into the hands of Christians were temporarily regarded as tribute 
 lands,^ and lands in fee-simple (tithe and tribute lands) might 
 be devoted by their owners as religious endowments iyakj)} 
 Original small fiefs might be made into one large one; or a num- 
 ber of persons might come to hold a iief without division of it, 
 provided they jointly furnished the required military service.* 
 Many endowments (vakf) were made by private individuals 
 for various public purposes; in time, through the attachment of 
 pension provisions and by other devices, a system was built up 
 which had many of the features of the employment of uses under 
 English law.^ 
 
 No small amount of land of every sort went out of cultivation, 
 and after a certain time had elapsed, if the owner was unknown, 
 became state land. If this or any other unoccupied land was 
 brought again under the plow, it might be granted to the new 
 cultivator.^ 
 
 This rapid survey is sufficient to reveal the tangled nature 
 of the Ottoman land system in both its farther and its nearer 
 aspects, and to show why the administration had to become 
 markedly and increasingly bureaucratic. Such a multiplication 
 of relations acted powerfully toward decentralization, since the 
 regulation of countless details could be attended to better from 
 points near at hand; and the immense amount of adjustment to 
 which officials and clerks must devote their time afforded infinite 
 opportunities for corruption and extortion. Suleiman, in his 
 legislation, made a series of efforts to simplify and systematize 
 the situation, and with some success; but he could not remove 
 the causes of the compHcations, or arrange matters so that they 
 would not eventually become worse than before. 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, V. 96. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 ^ Belin, La Propriele Fonciere, 88 ff. 
 
 * Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 476; D'Ohsson, vii. 374. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, ii. 523 ff., especially 552-557. 
 
 * Belin, La Propriele Foncihre, 104 flf.
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE 33 
 
 The Peoples 
 
 The wide Ottoman territory held a great number of peoples, 
 marked off by differences of race, language, religion, and customs. 
 The raided belt was inhabited chiefly by Southern Slavs, Ger- 
 mans, Hungarians, Poles, and Russians; and the Christian 
 shores and islands of the Mediterranean chiefly by Greeks, 
 Italians, French, and Spaniards. Accordingly, slaves from all 
 these peoples were constantly forwarded to the center and dis- 
 tributed widely — in the service of the sultan, in the households 
 of the great, and on the estates of country gentlemen. They 
 were treated without prejudice in accordance with their abilities, 
 and in the end the great majority were brought into the Moslem 
 fold, many of them rising to the highest positions. The inhabi- 
 tants of the tributary states were left in possession of most of 
 their own institutions, but whether to their advantage in the 
 long run is a question open to debate.' They were plundered 
 directly by their own princes and indirectly by the Turks, and 
 they had almost no part in the work and hfe of the empire. The 
 Mingrelians and Georgians captured and even raised children 
 for the slave-trade of the empire proper and of Egypt.^ The 
 Egyptian fellahs toiled, as they have done through all ages, 
 to produce wealth for their masters, who were now in two bodies 
 — the Mamelukes, recruited as always from slaves of many races, 
 and the group of officials and Janissaries who aided and sustained 
 the Ottoman pasha. The Berbers of North Africa furnished 
 a sufficient task of government to their rulers, who consisted of a 
 body of officials and Janissaries recruited from captives and from 
 the Turks and other inhabitants of southwestern Asia Minor,^ 
 
 * Ricaut, 112. 
 
 * Bernardo, 387 (" like a mine of slaves for the service of the Turks "); Ricaut, 
 123; Chardin, 85, 90 (" sometimes they will sell their own children "), 94, 114, 192. 
 It is said that the practice of raising Circassian girls for sale is still carried on in 
 Asia Minor (Heidbom, 81). 
 
 * Ricaut, 138; Postel, iii. 71; Nicolay, 10 (" The most of those who are called 
 Turks in Algiers, whether in the king's household, or on the galleys, are Christians 
 of all nations who have denied their faith and turned Mohammedan — sont 
 Chresticns reniez et Mahumetizez de toutes nations"); Lavisse and Rambaud, 
 iv. 816, 820.
 
 34 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 but connected only at the top with the central government of the 
 empire. 
 
 In the region which was under more or less direct administra- 
 tion, Albanians, Servians, Croatians, Bulgarians, and Greeks — 
 in general, the Christian subjects in the Balkan Peninsula — 
 furnished most of the tribute children; but some were taken from 
 the Christians of western and northeastern Asia Minor and the 
 Caucasus region. ^ Kurds and Arabs, being Moslems, could 
 not be enslaved, but they fought for the empire on the eastern 
 frontiers. Armenians and Jews were, by ancient privilege, 
 exempt from both blood tribute and military service. ^ 
 
 The principle of the personality of law and religion came most 
 visibly into play in the heart of the empire. Prevalent in the 
 Orient from the time of Assyria's greatness to the present day, 
 it is not easily to be understood in a land that has wholly sepa- 
 rated rehgion and law. Where these two ideas are united, two 
 men who hold different faiths must perforce Hve under different 
 laws.^ Islam inherited the idea of the personaUty of law through 
 the Sassanian Persians, and endeavored to apply it with simplic- 
 ity by drawing a single line between Moslem citizens {Muslim) 
 and non-Moslem subjects {Zimmi).^ The Ottomans adopted 
 the idea unreservedly and worked it out into a complicated 
 system: each considerable body of their non-Moslem subjects, 
 Greek Orthodox, United Greek, Armenian, and Jewish, they 
 left, in time, not merely to its own rehgion, but to its own law 
 and the administration of its law in all matters that did not 
 concern Moslems.^ Proceeding yet farther with the same prin- 
 
 ^ Nicolay, 83. Jorga, iii. 167-189, has taken note of the ancestry of many of 
 the high Turkish ofl&cials of the sixteenth century; he finds no Roumanian among 
 them. 
 
 2 In regard to the Armenians, see Schiltberger, 73; Chalcocondyles, 53. As to 
 both Armenians and Jews, see Navagero, 42; Postel, 1. 34. Morosini, 294, makes 
 mention of an Armenian who was in 1585 the Beylerbey of Greece by special 
 favor of the Sultan. 
 
 ^ Pelissie du Rausas, i. 21-22. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, V. 104. Visiting foreigners (muste emin) who might remain more 
 than one year became tributary subjects {zimmi): Behn, La Propricle Fonciere, 57. 
 
 ^ For the times when these different " communities " were formed within the 
 Ottoman state, see Steen de Jehay, passim. In brief, the Greek community was
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE 35 
 
 ciple, they granted even greater privileges to foreigners who 
 wished to reside within the empire. Except for a tax upon the 
 land which they might occupy, for the necessity of paying cus- 
 toms duties, and for responsibility to Ottoman courts of justice 
 in civil cases in which Ottoman subjects were concerned, such 
 foreigners were almost wholly free from Ottoman control, freer 
 far to do as they pleased than they could be in their native lands. 
 Regions existed where nearly all the inhabitants obeyed one 
 law. In Bulgaria and Greece few were not Greek Orthodox. 
 In the interior of Asia Minor few were not, at least legally, 
 Mohammedan. But in the great cities of the empire, and 
 especially in the capital, there was an immense variety of obedi- 
 ence. Not only did the various colonies of foreigners and the 
 various subject nationalities have their separate rights under 
 different systems, but individuals among them, such as ambas- 
 sadors and clergymen, had special privileges and immunities. 
 Even among the Mohammedans there were various distinctions. 
 Several large classes were privileged, and in different ways, 
 including all the people of court and church, of the army and 
 the law, of government and education. The social and legal 
 structure was thus scarcely less compUcated than that of medieval 
 Western Europe, with its interlocking of feudal and official and 
 royal privilege, of clergy and nobility, of free and chartered 
 cities. 
 
 Institutions of Government 
 
 In the midst of so much territorial complexity and among 
 so many peoples which enjoyed different rights, what unifying 
 institutions did the Ottoman Empire possess ? In the largest 
 sense, the government included every organization that could 
 lay claim to any public character, and all of these must be brought 
 into view if there is to be a complete understanding of the condi- 
 tions. In the first place, however, it is necessary to discover and 
 
 organized in 1453 and the Armenian in 1461. The latter was at first supposed to 
 include all subjects who were not Moslem or Greek Orthodox; those who were not 
 Gregorian Armenians were gradually separated off by a process of differentiation 
 which may be said to be active still. With the growth of the spirit of nationalism 
 in the nineteenth century, the Greek Orthodox community has also been divided.
 
 36 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 comprehend the genuinely great and powerful institutions. 
 These were two, and not, as is essential to the modern conception 
 of the state, a single one. Each was, it is true, composed of several 
 parts, which may be regarded as distinct institutions in them- 
 selves; and yet each had an inherent unity that must be firmly 
 grasped and held if the situation is to be understood. 
 
 If names must be assigned to these two great composite 
 institutions, the nearest approximation would perhaps be to 
 call them State and Church. But these words give no adequate 
 idea of them, since each embraced a little less and at the same 
 time far more than is included in the conception of the corre- 
 sponding Western institutions. They will therefore be described 
 and discussed as the " Ottoman Ruling Institution," and the 
 " Moslem Institution of the Ottoman Empire." The character 
 of each and the distinction between them -will become clear as 
 they are explained in detail. For the present, a brief statement 
 of the composition of each and of its function in the government 
 of the empire will sufhce. 
 
 The Ottoman Ruling Institution included the sultan and his 
 family, the ofilicers of his household, the executive officers of the 
 government, the standing army composed of cavalry and infan- 
 try, and a large body of young men who were being educated for 
 service in the standing army, the court, and the government. 
 These men wielded the sword, the pen, and the scepter. They 
 conducted the whole of the government except the mere render- 
 ing of justice in matters that were controlled by the Sacred Law, 
 and those limited functions that were left in the hands of subject 
 and foreign groups of non-Moslems. The most vital and charac- 
 teristic features of this institution were, first, that its personnel 
 consisted, with few exceptions, of men born of Christian parents 
 or of the sons of such; and, second, that almost every member 
 of the Institution came into it as the sultan's slave, and remained 
 the sultan's slave throughout life no matter to what height of 
 wealth, power, and greatness he might attain. 
 
 The Moslem Institution of the Ottoman Empire included the 
 educators, priests, jurisconsults, and judges of the empire, and
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE 37 
 
 all who were in training for such duties, besides certain allied 
 groups, such as dervishes or monks, and emirs or descendants 
 of the Prophet Mohammed. These men embodied and main- 
 tained the whole substance and structure of Mohammedan 
 learning, religion, and law in the empire. They took part in the 
 government by applying the Sacred Law as judges assisted by 
 jurisconsults, and in these capacities they .paralleled the entire 
 structure of administration to the remotest corner of the empire.^ 
 In fact, their system extended to regions where direct administra- 
 tion was not exercised. In the Crimea, for example, the render- 
 ing of justice was in their hands, while the other functions of 
 government were performed by a vassal state in light obedience. 
 The situation in Arabia and in North Africa was somewhat 
 similar, though complicated by the presence of rival systems of 
 jurisprudence. In direct contrast to the Ruling Institution, 
 the personnel of the Moslem Institution consisted, with hardly 
 an exception, of men born of Moslem parents, and born and 
 brought up free. 
 
 Both these institutions, while uniquely powerful and inde- 
 pendent within the empire, were paralleled by lesser institutions, 
 but in different ways. The Ruling Institution was followed 
 closely by the governments of Eg>'pt and North Africa, and less 
 closely by those of the tributary and vassal states; but all these 
 were strictly subordinate, and exercised what authority they 
 possessed only within definite territorial limits. The Moslem 
 Institution was followed closely by the Greek and Armenian 
 and Jewish national institutions, and to some extent by the 
 organization of the foreign colonies. Each of these various 
 institutions rested on a religious organization or theory, cared 
 for the learning, rehgion, and law of its people, and rendered 
 justice in matters not covered by the Ottoman administration; 
 but all were wholly independent of the Moslem Institution, 
 and, since they were based on personality instead of territory, 
 they exercised jurisdictions which were territorially co-extensive 
 with its jurisdiction and often with the jurisdictions of each 
 other. 
 
 * Hammer, Geschkhte, ii. 237.
 
 38 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 The two great institutions and the lesser parallel ones included 
 practically all the government of the empire when regarded in 
 its widest aspect. In the time of Suleiman the Ruling Institution 
 was perhaps of greater power and influence than the Moslem 
 Institution, but the tendency of the latter was to gain upon the 
 former. Notable progress in that direction was made during 
 his reign, and indeed through his personahty. The policy of 
 both toward the parallel lesser institutions was to prevent them 
 from gaining in power, and, so far as possible, to weaken them. 
 In the former aim this policy succeeded with all but two classes, — 
 the governments of North Africa, which were separated by a sea 
 under their own control, and the organizations of the foreign 
 settlements, which were supported by active and increasing 
 powers outside of the empire. But the two great institutions 
 were restrained by circumstances and their own inherent struc- 
 ture from extirpating the parallel institutions, and in time they 
 were to cease to weaken them. The greatest dangers to the 
 whole Ottoman system lay, however, in the rivalry of the two 
 great institutions and in a tendency of the Ruling Institution 
 toward decentralization and division into its component parts. 
 
 Contemporary Descriptions of the Two Great 
 
 Institutions 
 
 Few writers on the history and government of the Ottoman 
 Empire since the sixteenth century have grasped the individual 
 unity, the paralleHsm, and the contrast of its two leading institu- 
 tions. D'Ohsson and Von Hammer understood the Moslem 
 Institution, but missed the conception of the Ruling Institution, 
 the unity of which had disappeared long before their time. 
 Ranke obtained from a few of the Italian writers a very \avid 
 conception of the Ruhng Institution, particularly as a slave- 
 family and an army; but he did not see the Moslem Institution 
 in its due proportion and importance. Zinkeisen, making wider 
 use of the Italians, came nearer than any other to a clear under- 
 standing of the whole scheme; yet his exposition does not leave 
 a distinct impression. Bury, in his lucid chapter in the Cambridge 
 Modern History, describes well the Spahis and the Janissaries,
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE 39 
 
 and notes that many tribute children rose to high positions; 
 but he does not grasp tha unity of the RuHng Institution, and 
 he seems hardly at all to see the Moslem Institution. Jorga, 
 the latest to write a general history of Turkey, makes it his 
 avowed purpose to exhibit cultural and institutional growth; 
 he comes near, but does not attain, a distinct conception of the 
 Ruling Institution; while giving especial attention to the rene- 
 gades who reached high position in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries, he seems not to recognize how definite, and how intelli- 
 gently constructed and directed, were the policy and organization 
 which raised them to power.^ 
 
 In order to show how clearly some of the Italian writers of 
 the sixteenth century understood the two institutions, though 
 not under any particular names, translations of certain quota- 
 tions are subjoined. Since they will serve also to justify the 
 present writer's point of view, no apology need be made for their 
 length. 
 
 Andrea Gritti, Venetian orator extraordinary to Bayezid II, in 
 his report to the Venetian senate on December 2, 1503, mentions 
 the highest Turkish officials as follows: — "For affairs of state 
 and every other matter of importance His Majesty is wont to 
 take counsel with the pashas. . . . These are ordinarily four 
 in number, who reside in Constantinople; they are born of 
 Christian parents, seized from the provinces while small, and 
 educated in different places by men delegated for that purpose; 
 raised then to certain positions either through the affection 
 which the Grand Signor bears for them, or by some enterprises 
 valorously carried through, they quickly become very rich, 
 selling, among matters of importance, justice and favors; but 
 when they find themselves at the summit of fehcity they live 
 in great danger." ^ 
 
 Antonio Barbarigo, Venetian Bailo at Constantinople from 
 1555 to 1560, speaks further of the high officials: "Nor does 
 there exist in this so great empire either superiority or illustrious- 
 ness of blood, so that any one can glory in his descent, but all 
 
 ^ See Jorga, iii. 1O7 ff., especially 174, 188. 
 2 Gritti, 24-25.
 
 40 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 are in an equal condition, and they themselves wish to be named 
 and called slaves of the Grand Signor, and their greatest pride is 
 when they say that they are slaves of the Signor; and all his chief 
 men and governors are slaves, and Christian renegades, and 
 sons of Christians brought up from an early age in the seraglio, 
 and then in time, according to their worth, exalted and rewarded 
 and made great by His Majesty." ^ 
 
 Marcantonio Barbaro, Bailo of Venice at Constantinople from 
 1568 to 1573, seems to have been the first to discern clearly the 
 contrast of the two institutions. 
 
 " It is a fact truly worthy of much consideration, that the 
 riches, the forces, the government, and in short the whole state 
 of the Ottoman Empire is founded upon and placed in the hands 
 of persons all born in the faith of Christ; who by difTerent 
 methods are made slaves and transferred into the Mohammedan 
 sect. Then whoever will carefully direct his attention to this 
 principal consideration, will come more easily to an understand- 
 ing of the government and nature of the Turks. . . . 
 
 " Other sorts of persons are not ordinarily admitted to the 
 honors and the pay of the Grand Signor, except the above- 
 mentioned, all Christian-born. . . . 
 
 " The emperor of the Turks has ordinarily no other ordinances 
 and no other laws which regulate justice, the state, and religion, 
 than the Koran; so that, as the arms and the forces are wholly 
 reposed in the hands of persons all born Christians, so, as I have 
 already said, the administration of the laws is all solely in the 
 hands of those who are born Turks, who bring up their sons in the 
 service of the mosques, where they learn the Koran, until being 
 come of age they are made kazis of the land, who are like our 
 podestas, and administer justice, although the execution remains 
 in the hands of those who wield arms. . . . 
 
 " I have taken much space to demonstrate to your most excel- 
 lent Signory how the government of this empire is wholly reposed 
 in the hands of slaves born Christians, this appearing to me a 
 matter for much consideration. . . ." ^ 
 
 ^ A. Barbarigo, 149-150 (from a summary of his Relazione). 
 2 Barbaro, 315-329, /»a«i»w.
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE 4 1 
 
 Gianfrancesco Morosini, Venetian Bailo at Constantinople 
 from 1582 to 1585, later made a cardinal of the Roman church, 
 yields to none in the fulness and depth of his observation of the 
 Turks. He too distinguishes clearly the great institutions: — 
 
 " There are two sorts of Turks: one of these is composed of 
 natives born of Turkish fathers, and the other of renegades, 
 who are sons of Christian fathers, taken violently in the depreda- 
 tions which his fleets and sailors are accustomed to make on 
 Christian territories, or levied in his own territory by force of 
 hand from the subjects and non-Moslem tax-payers (carzeri) of 
 the Signor, who while boys are by allurement or by force cir- 
 cumcised and made Turks. . . . Not only does the greater part 
 of the soldiery of the Turks consist of these renegades, but in 
 yet greater proportion all the principal offices of the Porte are 
 wont to be given to them, from the grand vizier to the lowest 
 chief of this soldiery, it being established by ancient custom that 
 the sons of Turks cannot have these positions. . . . 
 
 " To the native Turks are reserved then the governing of 
 the mosques, the judging of civil and criminal cases, and the 
 ofiice of the chancery: from these are taken the kazis and the 
 kaziaskers, the teachers Qtojas) , and their Mufti, who is the head 
 of their false religion ; and the kazis are like podestas, and render 
 justice to every one, and the kaziaskers are like judges of appeal 
 from these ^as/5. ..." 
 
 " The renegades are all slaves and take great pride in being 
 able to say, * I am a slave of the Grand Signor ' ; since they 
 know that this is a lordship or a republic of slaves, where it is 
 theirs to command." ^ 
 
 Lorenzo Bernardo was Bailo of Venice in Constantinople 
 from 1584 to 1587. After a second period of service in 1591 
 and 1592 he presented the longest extant report to the Venetian 
 senate on the Ottoman Empire. After describing the principal 
 officers of the Ottoman government at the time he says in his 
 involved style : — 
 
 " These are they, in whom is reposed not only the whole 
 government of the state, but also the command of all the arms 
 
 ^ Morosini, 263-267, passim.
 
 42 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 of this so great an empire; and yet these are neither dukes, nor 
 marquises, nor counts, but all by origin are shepherds, and per- 
 sons base and vile; wherefore it would be well if this most serene 
 republic, imitating in this direction the Grand Signor, he who 
 from this sort of persons, his slaves, creates and makes the best 
 captains, sanjaks and beylerbeys, giving them in this way credit 
 and reputation 
 
 " Just as the whole government of the affairs of the state 
 and the command of its arms is reposed in the hands or the 
 control of slaves by origin Christian, and then made Turks by 
 various accidents; so the government of the affairs which look 
 toward justice, and all the charge of affairs of religion are located 
 in the hands of native Turks, sons of Turks, who ha\dng been 
 educated in the universities instituted by the Grand Signor 
 and the present ministers, and made learned in their laws, which 
 consist, both civil and criminal, in no other teaching than that 
 of the sole book, the Koran, become imams, or priests, who govern 
 mosques; kazis, or podestas; hojas, or preceptors of great men; 
 and finally kaziaskers, or judges of supreme appeal, of whom 
 there are only two, the one in Asia and the other in Europe; 
 and the head of all these and supreme in their reHgion is the 
 mufti, Hke the pope among us, who is chosen by the Grand 
 Signor." ^ 
 
 Lastly, Matteo Zane shall speak, Venetian Bailo in Constanti- 
 nople from 1 591 to 1597. In the imperfect record of his vigorous 
 report, the illustrious diplomatist says: " The Turks are partly 
 natives and partly renegades; the natives, who live for the most 
 part in Asia, are in comparison with the renegades less depraved 
 and less tyrannous, because they still have in them some rehgion, 
 which the others have not, — the most arrogant and scoundrelly 
 men that can be imagined, having seemingly with the true faith 
 lost all humanity. This ahenation from rehgion is fitting in 
 desperate characters, who are induced to it by Ucentious freedom 
 of hfe, and by seeing placed in their hands the arms, the govern- 
 ment, the riches, and in short the whole empire, excluding the 
 native Turks, who are admitted only to the careers of justice, 
 
 ^ Bernardo, 358-364, passim.
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE 43 
 
 as that of kazi and the like, and to those of religion, such as 
 mujli, hoja, and imam, as is very well known." '■ 
 
 The impending break-down of the system near the close of 
 the sixteenth century is also set forth clearly by Zane: " The 
 government of the Turkish Empire is suffering within itself so 
 many and such great alterations, that one may very reasonably 
 hope, divine aid mediating, for some notable revolution within a 
 short time, because the native Turks continue to sustain the 
 greatest dissatisfaction, from seeing all the confidence of the 
 government reposed in the renegades, who, at a tender age for 
 the most part, are taken into the seraglio of the king or of private 
 citizens, and made Turks. To the renegades is committed not 
 merely the care of arms, but the entire command and the execu- 
 tion of the acts of justice of the kazis (although they do not allow 
 appeals), and the superintendence of religion; whence one may 
 say that they rule everything and that the native Turks are their 
 subjects as are servants to their masters; which was not true in 
 other times to such excess as at present." ^ 
 
 To these testimonies from Italian writers may be added a 
 paragraph written about 1603 by the great English historian of 
 Turkey, Richard Knolles. Knolles shows no acquaintance with 
 the Moslem Institution, but his recognition of the Ruling Institu- 
 tion is good : — 
 
 " The Othoman Government in this his so great an Empire, 
 is altogether like the Government of the Master over his Slave, 
 and indeed mcer tyrannical; for the Great Sultan is so absolute 
 a Lord of all things within the compass of his Empire, that all 
 his Subjects and People, be they never so great, do call them- 
 selves his Slaves and not his Subjects; neither hath any man 
 power over himself, much less is he Lord of the House wherein 
 he dwelleth, or of the Land which he tillcth, except some few 
 Families in Constantinople, to whom some few such things were 
 by way of reward, and upon especial favour given by Mahomet 
 the Second, at such time as he won the same. Neither is any 
 man in that Empire so great, or yet so far in favour with the 
 Great Sultan, as that he can assure himself of his Life, much less 
 
 * Zane, 389. ^ Ibid. 414.
 
 44 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 of his present Fortune or State, longer than it pleaseth the 
 Sultan. In which so absolute a Sovereignty (by any free born 
 People not to be endured) the Tyrant preserveth himself by 
 two most especial means; first, by taking off all Arms from his 
 natural Subjects; and then by putting the same and all things 
 else concerning the State and Government thereof into the 
 Hands of the Apostata, or Renegade Christians, whom for the 
 most part every third, fourth, or fifth Year (or of tner, if his need 
 so require) he taketh in their Child-hood, from their miserable 
 Parents, as his Tenths or Tribute Children; whereby he gaineth 
 two great Commodities: First, For that in so doing he spoileth 
 the Provinces he most feareth, of the flower, sinews, and strength 
 of the People, choice being still made of the strongest Youths, 
 and fittest for War; then, for that with these, as with his own 
 Creatures, he armeth himself, and by them assureth his State; 
 for they, in their Child-hood, taken from their Parents Laps, 
 and dehvered in Charge to one or other appointed for that 
 purpose, quickly, and before they are aware, become Mahome- 
 tans; and so no more acknowledging Father or Mother, depend 
 wholly on the Great Sultan; who, to make use of them, both 
 feeds them and fosters them, at whose hands onely they look 
 for all things, and whom alone they thank for all. Of which 
 Fry, so taken from their Christian Parents (the only Seminary 
 of his Wars) some become Horse-men, some Foot-men, and so in 
 time the greatest Commanders of his State and Empire, next 
 unto himself; the natural Turks, in the mean time, giving them- 
 selves wholly unto the Trade of Merchandise, and other their 
 Mechanical Occupations; or else to the feeding of Cattel, their 
 most ancient and natural Vocation, not intermedling at all with 
 matters of Government or State." ^ 
 
 ^ Knolles (ed. 1687), 982.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE OTTOMAN RULING INSTITUTION: AS A SLAVE- 
 FAMILY 
 
 I. General Description 
 
 Perhaps no more daring experiment has been tried on a large 
 scale upon the face of the earth than that embodied in the 
 Ottoman Ruling Institution. Its nearest ideal analogue is 
 found in the Republic of Plato, its nearest actual parallel in the 
 Mameluke system of Egypt; but it was not restrained within 
 the aristocratic Hellenic limitations of the first, and it subdued 
 and outlived the second. In the United States of America 
 men have risen from the rude work of the backwoods to the 
 presidential chair, but they have done so by their own effort 
 and not through the gradations of a system carefully organized 
 to push them forward. The Roman Catholic church can still 
 train a peasant to become a pope, but it has never begun by 
 choosing its candidates almost exclusively from famihes which 
 profess a hostile rehgion. The Ottoman system dehberately 
 took slaves and made them ministers of state; it took boys from 
 the sheep-run and the plow-tail and made them courtiers and 
 the husbands of princesses; it took young men whose ancestors 
 had borne the Christian name for centuries, and made them 
 rulers in the greatest of Mohammedan states, and soldiers and 
 generals in invincible armies whose chief joy was to beat down 
 the Cross and elevate the Crescent. It never asked its novices, 
 " Who was your father ? " or " What do you know ? " or even 
 "Can you speak our tongue?"; but it studied their faces 
 and their frames and said, " You shall be a soldier, and if you 
 show yourself worthy, a general," or, " You shall be a scholar 
 and a gentleman, and if the ability lies in you, a governor and a 
 prime minister." Grandly disregarding that fabric of funda- 
 mental customs which is called " human nature," and those 
 
 45
 
 4-6 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 religious and social prejudices which are thought to be almost 
 as deep as life itself, the Ottoman system took children forever 
 from parents, discouraged family cares among its members 
 through their most active years, allowed them no certain hold 
 on property, gave them no definite promise that their sons and 
 daughters would profit by their success and sacrifice, raised and 
 lowered them with no regard for ancestry or previous distinction, 
 taught them a strange law, ethics, and religion, and ever kept 
 them conscious of a sword raised above their heads which might 
 put an end at any moment to a brilhant career along a matchless 
 path of human glory. 
 
 The members of this system were, in a general way, as long 
 as they lived, at once slaves, proselytes, students, soidiers, nobles, 
 courtiers, and officers of government. To be understood fully, 
 the institution should be considered from each of these points of 
 view. The aspects which were of central and controlling im- 
 portance, however, were those of war and government; the 
 others were preparatory or accessory. Furthermore, the sultan 
 was the head and center of the institution in every one of its 
 aspects. He gave it its unity, its vigor, and its propelling force. 
 Although his despotic power was limited in many directions, it 
 knew no limits with regard to the members and the mechanism 
 of this institution. The person, the fortune, the property, and 
 the life of every member lay in his hand.^ 
 
 The absolute character of the sultan's authority was an element 
 of great strength to the institution, but it contained also the 
 possibihty of a great danger. To manage the system well 
 required an almost superhuman intelligence. The sultan held 
 the position of Deity toward his slaves, and he needed the 
 omniscience and benevolence of Deity to exercise his power 
 wisely and justly. Unfortunately, his position, which controlled 
 the whole scheme, was the only one that was filled by the uncer- 
 tain lot of heredity. While strong men came to the throne, the 
 system worked out marvellous results. When weak men were 
 to come, as happened immediately after Suleiman, the system 
 was to begin to fall apart into dangerous fragments. Yet its 
 
 1 Ricaut, 14-15.
 
 THE SLAVE-FAMILY 47 
 
 vitality was so strong that it lived on through nearly three 
 centuries of alternate decline and rehabilitation, and its spirit 
 may almost be said to abide still. 
 
 The Ruling Institution contained certain component parts, 
 which were capable of separate existence, and some of which at 
 times tended to escape complete control. Among these the best- 
 known, though not intrinsically the most important, was the 
 body of permanent infantry known as the Janissaries. They 
 represented the brute force of the system and its most dangerous 
 element. Another component institution was the permanent 
 cavalry, the Spahis of the Porte. ^ These were more numerous 
 than the Janissaries, but being better educated and encouraged 
 by the presence of greater opportunities, they were not so dan- 
 gerous. A third important sub-institution was the hierarchy of 
 governing officials. Although these had great power, they could 
 be dealt with individually; and the sword was never far from 
 their necks. Subordinate bodies of a secondary influence were 
 the Ajem-oghlans, or apprentice Janissaries, and the colleges of 
 pages, which trained many of the Spahis of the Porte and most 
 of the officers of government. Each of these component parts 
 will be dealt with in its proper place. Theoretically, and except 
 at certain junctures practically, they were strictly subordinated 
 to the main institution and yet fully incorporated with it. The 
 Ruling Institution as a whole will be considered as a slave-family, 
 a missionary institution, an educational system, an army, a 
 court, a nobility, and a government. 
 
 II. The Slave-Family 
 
 Every one who belonged to the Ruling Institution in any 
 capacity from gardener to grand vizier, save only the members of 
 the royal family, bore the title of kul, or slave, of the sultan.- 
 
 ^ These Spahis of the Porte are to be distinguished from the body of feudal 
 Spahis. See below, pp. 98-105. 
 
 ^ This is illustrated by the quotations in the last section of Chapter i, above. 
 See also Menavino, 138 (referring to the pages, he says " Tutti sono suoi schiaui 
 & figlioli Christiani "); Ricaut, 14 (all who receive pay or oflice from the sultan 
 are called kul); D'Ohsson, vii. 203 (" Les employes civils de mdme que les mili-
 
 48 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 Nor was this title a mere form : with few exceptions, all members 
 entered the system as actual slaves, and there was nowhere 
 along the line of promotion any formal or real process of emanci- 
 pation. The power of the sultan over the lives, persons, and 
 property of the members of the institution, and his right to their 
 absolute obedience, bear every mark of having been derived 
 from the idea of slavery. The very word despot means by 
 derivation the master of slaves, and it was only over his kullar 
 that the sultan's power was despotic in the fullest sense.^ 
 
 Entrance to the system came by the door of slavery, which 
 was open regularly only to Christian boys from ten to twenty 
 years of age. It is an error, found in some writers even lately, 
 to name eight years as the usual age.^ The correct limits are 
 given approximately by many contemporary writers.^ It is 
 probable that the preferred ages were between fourteen and 
 eighteen, and that only in exceptional cases were boys taken 
 before the age of twelve or after the age of twenty. 
 
 taires, suiv-ant I'antique usage de I'Orient, sont assimiles aux esclaves du Souverain, 
 et qualifies de ce nom — coul — dans toutes les pieces publiques "). In D'Ohsson's 
 time the term had acquired such a general usage as in the English phrase " your 
 obedient ser\'ant." Delia Valle, i. 44, speaking of the entry to the Divan, says, 
 " Tutti sono schiavi; " and Ranke, 9, says, " All were slaves." 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, vii. 149, 207. 
 
 * For example, Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages (1906), 500; Myers, Medieval 
 and Modern History (1905), 165. 
 
 ^ The Tractatus, ch. viii, says simply 20 years and imder; Zeno, 128, says above 
 10 years. Ramberti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 244, 263) mention pages from 
 8 to 20 years old; Navagero, 49, says between 12 and 15 years, Trevisano, 229, 
 says that they were taken not at the age of 6 or 7 years as formerly, but at 10 or 
 12 years. Postel, iii. 23, sets between 12 and 14 as the lower limit, and 18 and 
 20 as the upper limit. Nicolay, 62, says that the pages were from 8 to 20 years 
 of age; Garzoni, 396, says that they ranged from the tenth to the thirteenth 
 year; Ricaut, 74, fixes the age at 10 or 12 years. Too much reliance should not be 
 placed on Trevisano's statement as to former times, since hearsay evidence as to 
 Turkish affairs is unreliable. Considering the rougher life in earlier times, it is 
 likely that levies would then have been made of older, rather than younger, boys. 
 The presence of young boys among the pages was due to the selection of unusually 
 promising captives.
 
 THE SLAVE-FAMILY 49 
 
 Methods of Recruiting 
 
 Four methods were employed for obtaining recruits for the 
 system, — by capture, purchase, gift, and tribute. Of these only 
 the last is commonly considered; ' but it was originally, and 
 probably always, merely supplementary to the others.- The 
 four methods ultimately rested on two. Slaves who were 
 bought for the sultan or given to him had nearly all been either 
 taken as captives or levied illegally with the tribute boys; there 
 was hardly any other way, since slaves passed too rapidly into 
 the Moslem fold to have their children available for the system. 
 As to the comparative numbers obtained by the different methods 
 there are few data for calculation. Probably about three thou- 
 sand tribute boys was the annual average in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury,^ but there is no reason to think that this was a majority 
 in the number of annual recruits. The whole number in the 
 system may be estimated at about eighty thousand.^ Since 
 the losses by war were sometimes tremendous, it is probable 
 that the average annual renewal required was as much as one- 
 tenth, or between seven and eight thousand. On this basis the 
 tribute boys furnished somewhat less than one-half of the whole 
 number. These calculations are, of course, more or less arbitrary. 
 
 It is true that children of Spahis of the Porte might be admitted 
 to the college of pages at the pleasure of the sultan, but their 
 
 ^ Myers (as above) mentions the two methods of capture and tribute as suc- 
 cessive. 
 
 '^ Djevad Bey, i. 26: " Ces prisonniers ou esclaves 6taient d'ailleurs incorpores 
 dans I'armee des Janissaires, et alors I'efTectif qui manquait 6tait complete par la 
 voie de la levee de troupes parmi Ics sujets chretiens." 
 
 ' Ramberti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 254, 270) say that 10,000, or 12,000 
 were taken every 4 years. Geuffroy, 242, and Postel, iii. 23, give the same esti- 
 mate. Ricaut, 74, says he is " given to understand " that about 2000 were 
 collected yearly in the middle of the seventeenth century. The exigencies of war 
 probably increased the number greatly at times. B6rard, 12, naming no author- 
 ity, says that in some years Suleiman took 40,000 boys. 
 
 * 20,000 Ajem-oghlans, 12,000 to 14,000 Janissaries, 10,000 of the auxiliar\- 
 corps, grooms, etc., 40,000 Spahis of the Porte (including the 12,000 members of 
 the four corps and the followers they were obliged to bring), 2000 pages and high 
 ofiicials. Suleiman took with him on his last campaign 48,316 men under pay 
 (Hammer, Staalsvcrd'olluug, 181). Morosini, 259, says that in 15S5 the sultan 
 had under pay 80,000 men. This is exclusive of about one-half of the Ajem-oghUns.
 
 50 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 grandchildren and the children of all other Moslems were ex- 
 cluded by rigid rules. ^ These rules began to be invaded about 
 the close of Suleiman's reign by the admission of the sons of 
 Janissaries,- an innovation that was of ultimately fatal import to 
 the system, A certain number of adults were also received and 
 some of these were sons of Moslems; exceptional individuals 
 from among the irregular troops were admitted to the Spahis 
 of the Porte by way of reward,^ and that body contained a For- 
 eign Legion of about two thousand, composed of renegade 
 Christians, Arabs, Nubians, and the like.^ Occasionally, also, 
 some high official of Suleiman's government had been born a 
 Moslem.^ But the total effect of all these exceptions was so 
 shght as to cause them to be disregarded by more than one 
 contemporary observer.^ 
 
 The original homes of the captives have been described.^ 
 By the Sacred Law the sultan was entitled to one-fifth of all 
 captives taken in war; * and he chose as his share, through 
 agents, such young men as seemed suitable for a place in his 
 system.^ Since by special Ottoman regulation the sultan's 
 fifth belonged to the church, he was accustomed to pay twenty- 
 five aspers to the church for each slave that he took.^'^ His 
 officers also purchased in the pubhc slave-market of the capital 
 such youths as were available." These came from the captives 
 that the Tartars of the Crimea took in great numbers, from the 
 quasi-slave-farms of the Caucasus,^' from the irregular raids in 
 
 1 Postel, i. 20. 
 
 2 See below, p. 69, note 3. 
 ' Postel, iii. 36. 
 
 ^ See below, p. 99, note i. 
 
 ^ For example, Piri Mohammed, a descendant of the thirteenth-century poet, 
 Jelal ad-din Rumi. Cf. Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 18. 
 
 ^ Notably Junis Bey, who says (below, p. 265), " None can be a pasha except 
 a Christian renegade." This custom is said to have been established by Bayezid 
 II (.-Vngiolello, 74, quoted by Jorga, ii. 306, note 2). For further instances, see 
 the last section of Chapter i, above. 
 
 ^ See above, p. :i2)- 
 
 8 D'Ohsson, V. 91. 
 
 9 Schiltberger, 5, gives an early example. See also Tractatiis, ch. viii. 
 1" Hammer, Geschichte, i. 167. " Zeno, 127. 
 
 12 Zeno is strongly impressed by these two sources.
 
 THE SLAVE-FAMILY 51 
 
 Austria, and from the corsair expeditions. The sultan received 
 a large number of boys as gifts, since it was well known that no 
 presents were more acceptable.^ Those who desired his favor 
 kept a lookout for such as would please him. 
 
 The Tribute Boys 
 
 Although the levying of tribute boys in the Christian provinces 
 of the empire seems not to have produced the majority of neo- 
 phytes for the system, the practice has always received a share 
 of attention far beyond its numerical importance. Several 
 reasons for this suggest themselves. In the first place, it rested 
 on a unique and almost unparalleled idea; then, it involved an 
 extraordinary disregard of human affection and of the generally 
 acknowledged right of parents to bring up their children in 
 their own law and religion; ^ and, finally, it produced the ablest 
 and highest officials of the system.^ In the latter respect its 
 youth seem to have borne some such relation to those obtained 
 by capture as the cultivated fruits of the garden do to those 
 gathered in the woods. 
 
 The levying was accomplished by a regular process, the devsh- 
 iirmch. Normally every four years, but oftener in case of need,^ 
 a body of officials more skilled in judging boys than trained 
 horse-dealers are in judging colts were sent out by the govern- 
 ment to the regions from which tribute was taken.* The whole 
 of the Balkan Peninsula, Hungary, the western coast of Asia 
 
 ' Postel, iii. 17-18. It was in this way that Menavino entered the system (see 
 his Trattato, 10). 
 2 Cf. Postel, iii. 23. 
 
 * A study of the nationality of the high officials of the sixteenth centuty gives 
 evidence of this. For example, Ibrahim was an Albanian (Junis Bey, below, 
 p. 265) ; Rustem Pasha was a Croat (Hammer, Geschichle, iii. 268) ; Ferhad was 
 a Hungarian {ibid. 365); the grand vizier AJi, whom Busbecq {Life and Letters, 
 i. 157) calls " a thorough gentleman," was a Dalmatian; Ayas was an .\lbanian, 
 and Kassim a Croat (Junis Bey, p. 265) ; etc. For many other examples, see Jorga, 
 iii. 167-189. 
 
 * The Tractatus, ch. viii, says every 5 years; Spandugino, 102, says once in 5 
 years or oftener; Zeno, 128, says each year; Rambcrti and Junis Bey (below, 
 pp. 254, 270) say every 4 years; PosteL iii. 22, says every 3 or 4 years. 
 
 * Tractatus, ch. vi.
 
 52 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 Minor, and the southern and eastern shores of the Black Sea 
 were inckided in the territory visited; but the strongest and 
 ablest youths came from the mountain regions inhabited by 
 Albanians and the Southern Slavic peoples.^ The recruiting 
 officers were commissioned each to bring in a certain number, 
 which had been apportioned to them out of a total determined 
 at the capital. 2 There was no principle of tithing, and no fixed 
 proportion or number of boys was levied from each village or 
 family; ^ the quota desired from each district was obtained for 
 the government by selection of the most available youths. The 
 recruiting officers sometimes collected a larger number than was 
 asked for, and sold the surplus on their own account to high 
 officials or wealthy private citizens.^ A regular procedure was 
 followed. The officers obtained from the Christian priest of 
 the village a list of the boys whom he had baptized, and who were 
 between the ages of twelve and twenty years or thereabouts.^ 
 All these were brought before the officers, who selected the best.® 
 Parents who had strong and well-favored sons might lose them 
 all, while those who had weakhngs would lose none.' On leaving 
 each village, the officer took with him the boys whom he had 
 
 ^ Giovio, Commentarius, 75; Zeno, 128; Nicolay, 83. Jorga, iii. 188, finds no 
 Roumanian among the high Turkish officials of the sixteenth century. Roumania, 
 being a vassal state, was not exposed to the devshurmek. Knolles (ed. 1687, pp. 
 984-985) says that the tribute boys from Asia were not advanced to become Jan- 
 issaries, because they were not of sufficiently high quality. They are not found 
 in positions of prominence. 
 
 2 Navagero, 48. 
 
 ' Menavino's translator says quasi decimatione (Lonicerus, i. 140). Postel, iii. 
 22-23, says expressly that the children were not tithed; Nicolay, 83, however, states 
 that one in three were taken, as does J. Soranzo, 245. Morosini, 264, speaks of 
 a tithe {decima). Gibbon (ed. Bury), vii. 79, says that a fifth of the boys were 
 taken; see also Lavisse and Rambaud, iv. 758. The latter statements seem to 
 be based theoretically on the fifth of the captives to which the sultan was entitled. 
 The differences among those who profess to fix a proportion are evidence that 
 there was none. 
 
 ^ Spandugino, 103. 
 
 * Postel, iii. 22. Navagero, 49, says that the officers summoned the heads of 
 families and commanded them to present their sons. 
 
 ^ Navagero, 49. 
 
 ' Postel, iii. 23.
 
 THE SLAVE-FAMILY 53 
 
 selected; and, when his quota had been gathered, he took them 
 to the capital.^ 
 
 Estimate of the System 
 
 This levying of boys as tribute has always ehcited a great 
 amount of moral indignation, as representing an extreme of 
 oppression, heartlessness, and cruelty. The rehgious factor 
 has increased the odium of the custom. Certainly no argument 
 can be found which will justify it to those who believe in the 
 liberty of the individual, the absolute right of parents over 
 minor children, and a complete withdrawal of human beings 
 from the category of property, — principles which seem in the 
 sixteenth century to have had no place in Ottoman philosophy 
 or jurisprudence, at least as regards Christian subjects. It may 
 be said at once that the custom cannot be brought into harmony 
 with Western ideas. So much being granted, how did the 
 system bear upon the parents who were despoiled and the boys 
 who were taken ? 
 
 In the midst of the conflicting testimony of reputable witnesses, 
 it is evident that the parents of tribute boys did not all feel 
 alike. The grief at parting was often a heart-breaking thing to 
 witness; ^ the mother whose son was taken by force to an unknown 
 life among enemies of all that she had been taught to hold dear 
 would hardly have suffered more at the death of her son. At 
 the same time, she might hope to see him one day in the posses- 
 sion of great wealth and power. It is not to be supposed that 
 youth taken at from twelve to twenty years of age would ever 
 forget their parents; and, if they lived and prospered, they would 
 sometimes seek them out, as did Ibrahim, even though they 
 might not try his unfortunate experiment of bringing them up 
 to the capital.^ Fathers would appreciate the opportunities 
 
 * Navagero, 49. ^ Postel, iii. 23. 
 
 ' Geuffroy, 240. Bragadin (1526), 103, says: " Ibrahim has his mother and two 
 brothers in the palace. He does much good to Christians. His father is Sanjak 
 in Parga." And again, 104: " Ayas has three brothers. His mother at Avlona is 
 a Christian, and he sends her 100 ducats annually." Nicolay, 86, says, on the 
 contrar)', that the tribute boys are never afterwards willing to recognize father, 
 mother, or relatives. He cites the case of an uncle and nephews of Rustem Pasha, 
 who begged in Adrianople, but received no aid from him. Cf. Zane, 438.
 
 54 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 which arose before their sons much more than would the mothers. 
 Both would be more or less reluctant to let them go, according 
 as their Christian religious convictions were deep or shallow. 
 Parents who wished to keep their sons would sometimes marry 
 them in tender years, since married boys were ineligible; those 
 who had means bought exemption for their sons from the recruit- 
 ing officers, who thus reaped great rewards.^ On the contrary, 
 many parents were glad to have their sons chosen, knowing that 
 they would thus escape from grinding poverty,^ receive a first- 
 rate training suited to their abilities, and enter upon the possi- 
 bility of a great career. Some parents, in fact, came to regard 
 the process as a privilege rather than a burden ; ^ and they had 
 reason to do so, since Turkish parents envied them the opportu- 
 nity, and sometimes tried to evade the regulations by paying 
 Christians to take their Moslem sons, and declare them as 
 Christian children, so that they might be enrolled as the sultan's 
 slaves.* Apart, then, from poHtical theory and religious pre- 
 possession, the levying of tribute children was by no means a 
 mere evil to the parents. 
 
 The situation of the boys themselves, considered under the 
 same reservations, was almost wholly favorable. They were 
 taken at an age when they would not feel the parting as they 
 might have felt it in earlier or later years, when their attachment 
 to things and places would be at its weakest, and before their 
 religious convictions were likely to have become fixed. They 
 were taken from the narrow mountain valleys and the labor- 
 hungry plains. They were taken at the age when the bounding 
 pulse and the increasing strength of youth suggests great hope 
 and promises great achievement. They were taken to opportu- 
 nities as great as their utmost abilities, greater often than they 
 could possibly imagine. They might still have to labor for a 
 time, but a distinct career lay ahead. The best military educa- 
 
 ^ Spandugino, 144, 145. 
 
 * Trevisano, 130. 
 3 Ibid. 
 
 * Bernardo, 332, says in 1592, after the system had been dislocated, that the 
 greater part of the recruits were then sons of Turks.
 
 THE SLAVE-FAMILY SS 
 
 tion in the world would certainly be theirs. If their abihties 
 lay in that direction they could have a finished and thorough, 
 though specialized, education of the mind. They could look 
 forward to travel, wealth, power, and all else that human ambi- 
 tion desires. In that land and that age of the world, the question 
 of the religious and social systems being laid aside, an unpreju- 
 diced observer could hardly imagine a more brilliant opportu- 
 nity than that which lay before the tribute boys. 
 
 The Slave Status 
 
 Whether captured, purchased, presented, or levied, the young 
 men who entered the system were the slaves of the sultan, the 
 personal property of a despot. They were his slaves for life, 
 and, though they felt honored by the title, ^ they were never 
 allowed to forget the responsibilities of their condition. They 
 must to the end of their days go where the sultan chose to send 
 them, obey his sHghtest wish, submit to disgrace as readily as 
 to promotion,^ and, though in the highest office of state, they 
 must accept death by his order from the hands of their humblest 
 fellow-slaves,^ If one of them was executed, all his property 
 went to his master. The time had not yet come when heads 
 would be removed for the sake of the owner's possessions; yet 
 Suleiman profited greatly by the death of several of his slaves, 
 in particular from the estates of the Dcfterdar Iskender Chelebi 
 and the grand vizier Ibrahim.^ When one of the sultan's slaves 
 died leaving sons or daughters, the master sealed up his property, 
 and took the tenth part for himself before distributing the rest 
 to the children;^ the nine-tenths was, indeed, given to the 
 children rather by the favor of a bountiful and wealthy master 
 than as a right. If the slave had no sons or daughters, the 
 sultan took his whole estate ; * and a day was to come when his 
 
 1 Erizzo, 131; Morosini, 267; Ricaut, 14. 
 
 ''■ Spandugino, 180. 
 
 * Ibid. 183; J. Soranzo, 250. 
 
 * Hammer, Gcschichle, iii. 144, 156, 162. 
 ^ Postel, iii. 68. 
 
 ' Ibid. G. Soranzo (1576), 197, says that the Grand Signer is heir of all the 
 pashas.
 
 ^6 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 empty treasury would demand the whole estate under all cir- 
 cumstances.^ Thus in all essential respects the eighty thousand 
 kidlar of the sultan constituted one great slave-family. 
 
 The Harem, the Eunuchs, and the Royal Family 
 
 Two or three less numerous but highly important groups may 
 properly be discussed in the present connection. The imperial 
 harem and the imperial family itself were virtually parts of the 
 same slave system.^ The harem of Suleiman was not the large 
 and costly institution that was maintained by some of his succes- 
 sors; like his father Selim,^ he was not given to sensuality, but 
 is said to have been faithful to Khurrem from the time that 
 he made her his wife.^ The character of an Oriental royal 
 harem has often been set forth incorrectly. While it may 
 contain hundreds or even thousands of women, a very few of 
 these are the actual consorts of the monarch. A large number are 
 the personal servants and entertainers of himself, his mother, his 
 consorts, his daughters, and his infant sons. Another section 
 consists of those who are being educated for the same personal 
 service. A fourth group, probably the great majority, are mere 
 house-servants, who attend to all the domestic labors of the 
 harem and are seldom promoted to more honorable positions. 
 There is, finally, a group of older women who preserve order 
 and peace, teach, keep accounts, and manage the estabUshment 
 generally.^ 
 
 Suleiman's harem contained about three hundred women, 
 who were kept in a separate palace well fortified and guarded.^ 
 His harem fully deserves to be reckoned as part of the great 
 slave-family, since all its inmates except his children were pur- 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, vii. 147. In the seventeenth century the sultan allowed the 
 children of pashas only what pleased him (Ricaut, 131). Morosini, 274, refers to 
 a similar practice in the latter part of the sixteenth century. 
 
 2 Ricaut, 16, calls the Turkish court " a prison of slaves." 
 
 3 Hammer, Geschichle, ii. 379. 
 
 * Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 159. 
 6 D'Ohsson, vii. 61 ff. 
 
 8 Spandugino, 77; Ramberti, below, p. 253; Junis Bey below, p. 268; Nicolay, 
 64.
 
 THE SLAVE-FAMILY 57 
 
 chased or presented slaves.* These women, brought for the 
 most part from the region of the Caucasus,^ and including in 
 their number some of the fairest female captives of many lands, 
 were nearly all daughters of Christians. Khurrem herself was 
 a Russian, while the rival of her youth seems to have been a 
 Circassian.^ In another respect the harem deserves to be 
 reckoned with the Ruling Institution, in that its inmates, upon 
 attaining the age of twenty-five, were, if they had not attracted 
 the sultan's special attention, as a rule given in marriage to 
 distinguished Spahis of the Porte."* 
 
 A comparatively small group, not hitherto mentioned, of the 
 attendants at the sultan's palace and harem belong within the 
 slave-family. Although the Sacred Law strongly disapproved 
 of the employment of eunuchs, that unfortunate class was thought 
 too useful to be dispensed with entirely. Some were white, 
 brought mainly from the Caucasus region ; but the great majority 
 were negroes brought from Africa. Tribute children seem 
 rarely to have been made eunuchs.^ The class deserves mention 
 because several of the important offices of state among the 
 " men of the pen " were held by eunuchs, and now and then one 
 rose to high place in the army or the administration.^ 
 
 The royal family also may rightly be included in the slave- 
 family. The mothers of the sultan's children were slaves; the 
 sultan himself was the son of a slave; and his daughters were 
 married to men, who, though they might be called vizier and 
 
 1 Spandugino, 78, is probably wrong in his statement that the girls of the harem 
 were recruited from gifts, tithes, and tribute. The small number of women in the 
 harem would make the elaborate process of tribute-taking unnecessary. 
 
 ^ Postcl, i. 34. 
 
 ' Navagero, 75; Jovius, Historiarum, ii. 371. But Bragadin, 101, calls her a 
 Montenegrin, and Ludovisi, 29, an Albanian; while Busbecq (Life and Letters, 
 i. 178) says that she came from the Crimea. Gomara indicates that her Turkish 
 name was Gul-behar, the Rose of Spring (Mcrriman, Gomara's Annals of Charles 
 V, 141). This confusion of knowledge in regard to so important a personage 
 gives evidence of the secrecy which surrounded the sultan's harem. 
 
 * See below, p. 79, note 2. 
 
 ' Hammer, Geschichte, i. 232. Spandugino, 69, says that many were made such. 
 Menavino, who was himself a page, says that very few were so treated, and only 
 for punishment {Trattato, 138). 
 
 ^ Spandugino, 69; Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 237.
 
 58 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 pasha, wore these titles at the sultan's pleasure, whereas they 
 bore indelibly the title of kul, or slave.^ The sultan's sons, 
 though they might sit upon the throne, would be the consorts 
 of none but slaves. Long before Suleiman's time, the sultans 
 had practically ceased either to obtain brides of royal rank, or 
 to give the title of wife to the mothers of their children.^ Sulei- 
 man, given to legahty and rehgious observance, and greatly 
 devoted to the lovely Roxelana, made her his lawful wife. Since, 
 by the Sacred Law, the status of the mother as wife or slave 
 does not affect the legitimacy of the children if the father acknowl- 
 edges them,^ all children born in the harem were of equal legiti- 
 macy and rank. 
 
 Other Ottoman Slave-Families 
 
 The ruling institution of any state is apt to be copied in 
 miniature by many organizations within the same state. The 
 municipalities of Rome, and the state and city governments 
 of the United States, were each modeled after the central govern- 
 ment. In a similar way, every great officer of the Ottoman 
 court built up a slave-family after the model of the Ruhng 
 Institution. The grand vizier had a very large estabUshment; 
 the viziers had somewhat smaller ones; the governors of prov- 
 inces had households in proportion to their incomes;'* and each 
 adult prince kept a miniature government. Not only the slave- 
 
 ^ Menavino, 143; " Schaiui chiamati Bascia [pasha]." 
 
 2 Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 112. Selim I, married a princess, daughter of the 
 Khan of the Crimean Tartars. This appears to have been the last of such alliances, 
 of which there were a number in earher times. 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, vi. 9. 
 
 ^ Ibid. vii. 177. In 1537, Junis Bey (below, p. 265) says that Ayas had 600 
 slaves, Mustapha 200, Kassim 150, Barbarossa 100. But this account must con- 
 tain misprints or errors; for Ramberti (below, p. 246) says that in 1534, Ibrahim 
 had more than 6000 slaves, Ayas 2000, Kassim 1500, and Barbarossa about 4000. 
 Bragadin, 103, said in 1526, that Ibrahim had 1500 slaves. Mustapha 700, Ayas 
 600. Junis Bey (256-258) says further that the Beylerbcys of Rumeha and Ana- 
 tolia and Caramania had 1000 slaves each, the Beylerbey of Syria 2000, the Beyler- 
 bey of Cairo 4000, etc. Iskender Chelebi had 6000 slaves (Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 
 144). GeuiJroy, 240, says of the viziers: " Tous ont saray de femmes et d'enfans 
 comme ledict grant Turc." See also Menavino, 143; and Ramberti's description of 
 Alvise Gritti's household at the close of his third book.
 
 THE SLAVE-FAMILY 59 
 
 family feature but all the other features of the Ruling Institution 
 were imitated. All deemed it meritorious to purchase Christians 
 and turn them into Moslems. Iskender Chelebi had a highly 
 successful educational system;^ he also kept a little standing 
 army, and at a later time so did Rustcm.'^ Each great officer 
 protected his slaves, each kept them about him like a court, 
 each used them as a little government to rule his affairs. Such 
 imitation might easily become a danger to the state, but ordinarily 
 a prompt remedy could be applied. Every such household was 
 strictly personal ; it was gathered about a living man; that man 
 was ordinarily himself a slave of the sultan: let him show the 
 least movement toward treason, and his head would be removed, 
 his property would come to his master, his household would be 
 incorporated with the central slave-family, all danger would 
 be at an end, and the sultan would only be the stronger. Further 
 safeguards lay in the close relations of the head of each slave- 
 family to the sultan, and in the fact that some Spahis of the 
 Porte and other imperial kullar of inferior position seem usually 
 to have been attached to the suite of each great official.' Moslem 
 private citizens also kept slave-families as numerous as they 
 could afford,'* but these could hardly become dangerous under 
 any circumstances. They might emulate the missionary and 
 educational character of the greater households, but they would 
 not dare attempt any imitation of the military features. Further, 
 the whole Ottoman system so discouraged great accumulations 
 of wealth that private citizens could never hope to compete 
 with the power of officials and of the sultan. 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 157. Seven of his slaves became viziers and grand 
 viziers, among them Mohammed Sokolli. 
 
 2 Iskender Chelebi was followed to war by 1 200 horsemen (Hammer, Geschichte, 
 iii. 144). Rustcm trained 200 carbineers as part of his household (Busbecq, Life 
 and Letters, i. 242). 
 
 ' Garzoni, 413, says that 1000 Spahis were assigned to the retinue of the grand 
 vizier, and 500 to those of each of the other pashas. 
 
 * Traclalus, ch. vii.
 
 6o THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 Character of Ottoman Slavery 
 
 Ottoman slavery was a very different institution from that 
 which Anglo-Saxons have practised. In it there could ordinarily 
 be no color-line, and therefore no ineffaceable distinction. Where 
 difference in color existed it counted for nothing, by old Islamic 
 customs. Nor did the fact of slavery impart any indeUble 
 taint. Islam knew slave and free; ^ in the Ottoman Empire, 
 at least, it knew no intermediate class of freedmen.^ The 
 sultan seems never to have emancipated his slaves, probably 
 because of a Hngering Oriental theory, foreign to Mohamme- 
 danism,^ that all his subjects were his slaves. Private citizens 
 had the power of emancipation,^ and they often exercised it as 
 a meritorious act. The slave who was set free was immediately 
 in possession of full rights.^ Slavery had therefore no inherent 
 quahty. It was merely an accidental misfortune from which 
 complete recovery was possible. The idea of Aristotle, that 
 some men are born to be slaves, was wholly absent. 
 
 Where no permanent wall of separation exists, natural human 
 affection can have free play. The Moslem religion teaches 
 kindness and benevolence to all but armed enemies of the faith.^ 
 Moslem masters, in constant personal association with persons 
 whose condition led them to strive to please, were apt to be- 
 come very friendly toward them. Such friendliness often led to 
 warm affection and the bestowal of benefits. Emancipation was 
 one of these; and, further, not only the sultan but many of 
 his subjects did not hesitate to give their daughters in mar- 
 riage to worthy slaves.'^ A slave was often beloved above a 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, i. 49. 
 
 2 In the early days non-Arab converts held a position of clientage, but they had 
 never been slaves. In the Ottoman Empire new converts were particularly honored, 
 so that this distinction was lost. A partial enfranchisement was possible, and might 
 sometimes resemble the condition of a Roman freedman. Cf. D'Ohsson, vi. 
 28 ff. 
 
 3 According to D'Ohsson, v. 86, no free-bom Moslem could ever lawfully become 
 a slave. 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, vi. 24. ^ Ibid. ^ Ibid. iv. 300 ff. 
 
 ^ Spandugino, 180. It may be observed that Ottoman slavery bore no slight 
 resemblance to the method of bondage which brought from Europe many ancestors 
 of present-day Americans. "In the year 1730," says Mrs. Susannah Willard
 
 THE SLAVE-FAMILY 6 1 
 
 son;^ it was felt that, while a son possessed a character which 
 was more or less a matter of chance, a slave had been selected. 
 Thus it is clear why the sultan's slaves were sometimes called 
 his children,^ and why the title of kul was prized.' Suleiman 
 was a stern, and sometimes a cruel parent to his great family; 
 but he was as just in rewarding as in punishing, and it is not 
 surprising that all his slaves were true to him.'* 
 
 Thus was woven what has well been termed " a wonderful 
 fabric of slavery." ^ History may have known as large a slave- 
 family, but certainly none that was more powerful and honorable, 
 better provided for and rewarded, more obedient and more 
 contented. 
 
 Johnson (in her Narrative of Captivity reprinted Springfield, 1907, pp. 5-6) " my 
 great-uncle, Colonel Josiah VVillard, while at Boston, was invited to take a walk 
 on the long-wharf, to view some transports who had just landed from Ireland; a 
 number of gentlemen present were viewing the exercise of some lads who were 
 placed on shore to exhibit their activitj' to those who wished to purchase. My 
 uncle spied a boy of some vivacity, of about ten years of age, and who was the only 
 one in the crew who spoke English: he bargained for him. I have never been able 
 to learn the price; but as he was afterwards my husband, I am willing to suppose it 
 a considerable sum. . . . He lived with Colonel Willard until he was twenty years 
 of age, and then bought the other year of his time." In this account a number of 
 the characteristics of the Ottoman system can be observed. Young boys of Cau- 
 casian blood are taken from their native land; they are bought and sold; they are 
 judged like young animals by appearance and physical activity; no taint attaches 
 to their bondage; they may marry into the master's family. The one noteworthy 
 difference is that the bondage terminates at a definite age. 
 
 1 rr(;r/a/«,y, " Oratio Tcstimonialis ": " Dcnique domino meo ita cams eram, 
 ut saepius in collocutione plurium, plusquam filium suum, quem unicum habebat, 
 me diligere assereret," etc. 
 
 2 Postel, iii. 20, says that all the pages were considered children of the sultan, 
 and were truly his adopted sons. 
 
 3 Ricaut, 14. * Postel, iii. 21. ^ Ricaut, 16.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS MISSIONARY 
 ENTERPRISE AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 
 
 I. The Missionary Motive 
 
 Although almost every member of the governing group in the 
 Ottoman Empire had been born a Christian, it was absolutely 
 necessary for his advancement that he should profess the Moslem 
 faith. A keen contemporary observer knew of only one Chris- 
 tian who had been entrusted with great power. Alvise Gritti 
 was allowed to hold special command in Hungary, but this 
 appointment was made outside the system, as a personal affair 
 of the grand vizier Ibrahim, without the concurrence of the 
 sultan.^ Various Christians were employed in such matters as 
 the superintendence of ship-building and cannon-founding ; ^ 
 but this was a purely commercial relationship, and such a man 
 had no place in the cursus honorum. The fundamental rule, 
 open to the few exceptions previously described, was very simple. 
 Every member of the Ruling Institution must have been born 
 a Christian and must have become a Mohammedan. 
 
 A number of questions arise at once. Why were none but sons 
 of Christians admitted ? Why was conversion essential to 
 promotion ? What was the process of accomplishing conver- 
 sion ? How thorough was the conversion ? Why were the 
 sons of most of the converts, and the grandsons of practically 
 all, carefully pushed out of the system ? 
 
 The first of these questions might be answered in terms of 
 poHcy of state; but since, in all Moslem thinking, church, state, 
 and society form one undivided whole, such an answer would be 
 inadequate. Conversion to Mohammedanism meant much 
 more than an inward change and an outward association for 
 rehgious purposes with a new group of worshippers. It meant 
 
 ^ Postel, Hi. 21. ^ Ibid. 71-72; Ramberti, below, p. 255, 
 
 62
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 63 
 
 the adoption of a new law for the whole of hfe, beginning with 
 the religious and ethical, but including as equally essential 
 portions the regulation of all social, commercial, military, and 
 political relationships.^ It meant admission to a new social 
 system, naturalization in a new nation, an entire separation 
 from the old life in all its aspects and a complete incorporation 
 with the new. Expansion of membership was always a cardinal 
 principle of Mohammedanism; and the expansion was to be not 
 merely by the aid of the sword, but far more by peaceful means. 
 The sword took the land and sometimes the body of the unbe- 
 liever; but his soul was to be won by the benefits of the system, 
 first religious, then social, financial, and political.^ Every 
 nation that has reached eminence has believed firmly that its 
 general system was immensely the superior of every other in the 
 world, and no nations have been more thoroughly convinced 
 of this than those of Moslem faith. Accordingly, their desire 
 to convert the unbehever was founded primarily on benevolence. 
 Closely connected with this motive was a burning interest in the 
 grandeur of Islam as a militant, expanding system; and subor- 
 dinate thereto was a purpose to increase the wealth, numbers, and 
 power of the state. 
 
 The Ottoman Attitude 
 
 The Ottoman system incorporated young Christians not 
 merely to obtain more faithful, more obedient, and more single- 
 hearted servants, but, before and beyond this, to obtain new 
 members of the Ottoman nationahty, new believers in the 
 Moslem faith, and new warriors for the Ottoman Empire as 
 representing Islam. This missionary purpose stands out very 
 clearly in the words attributed to Kara Khalil Chendereli, the 
 traditional founder of the corps of Janissaries, by a poet-historian 
 of the early sixteenth century, who no doubt here, as elsewhere 
 in his writings, introduced the ideas of his own day: '' The 
 
 1 HsimmeT, Staalsverfassung, 12. 
 
 2 According to Sale's translation, the Koran says (Sura 2: 257), "Let there 
 be no violence in religion." Palmer translates, " There is no compulsion in re- 
 ligion." See D'Ohsson, vi. 59; Schiltberger, 73.
 
 64 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 conquered are slaves of the conquerors, to whom their goods, 
 their women, and their children belong as a lawful possession; 
 in converting the children to Islam by force, and in enrolling 
 them as soldiers in the service of the faith, one is working for 
 their happiness in this world and their eternal salvation. Accord- 
 ing to the words of the Prophet, every infant comes into the 
 world with the beginnings of Islam, which, developing in an 
 army formed of Christian children, will encourage even in that 
 of the infidels the ardor of conversion to Islam; and the new 
 troop will recruit itself not merely with the children of the con- 
 quered, but also with a crowd of deserters from the enemy, 
 united to the behevers by common origin or pretended opinions. ' ' ^ 
 The sentiment of this declaration is woven of two strands, both 
 ultimately religious, — a desire to convert great numbers to 
 Islam, and a purpose to strengthen the army which wars for the 
 faith. 
 
 Mohammed the Conqueror expressed the same idea poetically 
 in a letter to Uzun Hassan: " Our empire is the home of Islam; 
 from father to son the lamp of our empire is kept burning with 
 oil from the hearts of the infidels." ^ This declaration seems to 
 reveal two things. First, the Conqueror asserts that, since by 
 Moslem theory there can be but one Dar ul-Islam, or land of 
 Islam, his empire is the sole lawful Moslem state; second, he 
 declares that, by the policy of his house, the empire derives its 
 strength from the ever-renewed supply of Christians. Whether 
 this exegesis be exact or not, the fact is indisputable that the 
 fundamental missionary spirit of Islam was strong in the Otto- 
 mans of the sixteenth century,^ and that the RuHng Institution 
 was deliberately conducted for the purpose, among others, of 
 transferring the ablest and most useful of the subject Christians 
 in each generation into the dominant nation. As the first 
 Western observer who comprehended the system remarked, 
 
 ^ Idris, fol. 107, quoted in Hammer's Geschichie, i. 91. 
 
 2 Quotedibid. ii. 117. 
 
 3 Ricaut, 147-148: " No people in the World have ever been more open to 
 receive all sorts of Nations to them, than they, nor have used more arts to encrease 
 the number of those that are called Turks."
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 65 
 
 " This comes from no accident, but from a certain essential 
 interior foundation and cause, which," he feels it his Christian 
 duty to say, with a helpless admiration, " is desperation of good, 
 and obstinacy in evil, and ... is the work of the devil." ^ 
 Not only did Mohammedanism encourage the practice of taking 
 in outsiders to serve, fight, and aid in ruling, but this practice 
 was thoroughly in harmony with the old Turkish spirit which 
 prevailed in the steppe lands, and a similar policy had been 
 followed by the Byzantine Empire. Thus, in encouraging the 
 incorporation of foreigners the three great influences which 
 met in the Ottoman state had exerted a combined activity as 
 perhaps in no other direction. The Ruling Institution acted 
 for centuries as a great steadily-working machine for conversion. 
 
 Other Motives for Incorporating Christians 
 
 Besides the combined religious and national purpose which 
 led to the introduction of Christian youth into the system, 
 other motives helped to give it definite shape. That purpose 
 alone would hardly have caused a rigid rule to be laid down 
 wliich would exclude Mohammedans. Here, undoubtedly,' 
 the well-known tendency of governments that rest on force to 
 rely upon servants brought from a distance and owing all to 
 their favor came strongly into play.^ The sultan's ktdlar were 
 uniformly faithful to the hand that had raised them from poverty 
 to high position. " Being all slaves by condition, and slaves of 
 a single lord, from whom alone they hope for greatness, honor, 
 and riches, and from whom alone on the other hand they fear 
 punishment, chastisement, and death, what wonder that in his 
 presence and in rivalry with each other they will do stupendous 
 things ? " ^ Having expected ill treatment from the enemies 
 of their nation, they were drawn by the surprising contrast to 
 deep gratitude and boundless devotion; ■* they were not attached 
 to interests and traditions of family and property which would 
 prevent full and loyal obedience; they learned what was taught 
 
 ' Tractdlus, ch. viii. ' Bernardo, 369-370, and see also 359. 
 
 ^ Ricaut, 46. * Postel, iii. 21.
 
 66 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 them by their master's command, and were not possessed by 
 ideas and prejudices that would make them independent in mind 
 and intractable. On the contrary, Moslems born and bred in 
 pride of religion and nationality could not easily be moulded to 
 the shape desired ; the very title of kul was out of harmony with 
 their beliefs; hence they were inherently unavailable for the 
 system, and the recognition of this fact led to their rigid exclu- 
 sion. An important reason for excluding children of renegades 
 was that heredity of privilege and office was against Ottoman 
 policy. The immunity from taxation that was enjoyed by the 
 sultan's officials would tend to the building up of vast fortunes 
 that would be beyond the reach of public taxation;^ and the 
 power of great families entrenched behind large property interests 
 would in time endanger the supremacy of the throne.^ 
 
 The Requirement of Conversion 
 
 Conversion was a principal object of the system, and favor 
 and promotion waited as rewards upon acceptance of the Moslem 
 faith. In fact, a young man was not fitted to participate in the 
 system until he had turned Moslem. He could not be an Otto- 
 man warrior and statesman and fail to profess and practise, in 
 most respects, at any rate, the system which inspired his fighting 
 and on whose principles the state rested. The garment was 
 seamless: it must be either worn or not worn. 
 
 At the same time, conversion of the neophytes of the Ruling 
 Institution seems not ordinarily to have been forcible.^ The 
 
 1 Ibid. 20. 2 Ricaut, 128 ff. 
 
 ^ The general Ottoman attitude on this point is shown by Schiltberger, 73: 
 Mohammed " has also ordered, that when they overcome Christians, they should 
 not kill them; but they should pervert them, and should thus spread and strengthen 
 their own faith." Tractalus, ch. xi, says, " Turci neminem cogunt Fidem suam 
 negare, nee multum instant de hoc alicui persuadendo, nee magnam aestimationem 
 faciunt de his qui negant." The last clause of this testimony, however, is contrary 
 to practically all other sources. Conversion seems sometimes to have been forced 
 as an alternative to death when a Christian had offended greatly against the 
 Mohammedan faith (Lonicerus, i. 123; see also D'Ohsson, vii. 327). Some writers, 
 however, assert that circumcision, the outward mark of acceptance of Islam, was 
 regiilarly enforced upon the tribute boys (Chesneau, 41 ; J. Soranzo, 245; Moro- 
 sini, as quoted above, p. 41). Heidbom, 128, says that conversion was not 
 anciently enforced on a large scale, except for the recruiting of Janissaries.
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 67 
 
 Ottomans were too wise to believe that the best results could be 
 accomplished by such means. Their policy was rather to throw 
 every difficulty in the way of remaining a Christian, and to offer 
 every inducement to make the Moslem faith and system seem 
 attractive. To this end their educational scheme helped greatly ; ^ 
 for it involved complete isolation from Christian ideas of every 
 sort, and complete saturation in all the ideas of Mohammedanism, 
 religious, moral, social, and poHtical. Even those whose educa- 
 tion was mainly physical were isolated from Christians in a 
 strict Moslem environment. No doubt there were special 
 rejoicings and rewards when a kul was ready to declare, " There 
 is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet," as there 
 were in like circumstances in the rest of the Ottoman world.^ 
 But the kullar seem not to have been urged to change their faith; 
 on the contrary, an attitude of apparent indifference was some- 
 times taken with them.'^ Probably, however, few who remained 
 long in the system failed to surrender sooner or later. Prej- 
 udices of childhood would in time be overcome; what the 
 majority did would tend to act powerfully upon the individual; 
 the reward of a brilliant career would take clearer and more 
 alluring shape, until in time, in the absence of all contrary sug- 
 gestion, the real truth and value of the Mohammedan religion 
 would make it appear to be the only worthy system. It is not 
 surprising that the scheme seemed to Christians one of diabolical 
 ingenuity. 
 
 What went on in the sultan's slave-family in regard to the 
 conversion of slaves went on in every Mohammedan household. 
 Conversion was desired but not compelled, and reward awaited 
 it.^ Among female slaves also, even in the imperial harem, the 
 same process was employed. Not merely the imperial slave- 
 family, but the entire system of slavery that existed in the Otto- 
 
 1 Ricaut, 46 ff. 
 
 "^ Schiltbergcr, 74; La Broquicre, 219; Spandugino, 249. Ricaut, 152, saj-s that 
 great inducement was offered the common people to become Turks; they obtained 
 honor and the privilege to domineer and injure with impunity, and they became 
 in the fashion. 
 
 ^ Tnictaliis, ch. xi, quoted above. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, vi. 59; Ricaut, 148.
 
 68 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 man Empire, was thus a great machine for the conversion of 
 Christians into Turks. 
 
 Sincerity of Conversion 
 
 It is not easy to learn what thoughts possessed the hearts of 
 the members of the Ruling Institution. Enough is recorded, 
 however, to show that not all who turned Moslem did so without 
 mental reservation, and to prove that it was possible to hold 
 fast to an inward belief in the superiority of Christianity through 
 many years spent in the sultan's ser\dce. It has been said 
 sometimes that the converted Christians were more severe than 
 the Moslems toward their brethren who remained steadfatet.^ 
 This would be natural both because of the zeal of new converts, 
 and because Christianity is intrinsically less tolerant than Mo- 
 hammedanism ; but the accusation does not seem to be supported 
 as against the members of the Ruling Institution. A distinction 
 must be drawn between behavior in time of war and in time of 
 peace. The Janissaries were fierce fighters and terrible enemies; 
 but religiously they belonged to a sect which was so liberal as to 
 be accused of rank heresy, and even, it is said, to have been 
 denied the name of true believers.^ Many of the renegades 
 were persons who held no sort of religion.^ The grand vizier 
 Rustem told Busbecq, after offering him great rewards if he 
 would turn Moslem, that he believed in the salvation of those of 
 other faiths;^ and a deli, or scout, in his service confided to a 
 French gentleman that, while he pretended to follow Mohamme- 
 danism, he was a Christian at heart.^ The fact that a Genoese 
 boy, taken at twelve years of age, educated as a favored page for 
 eight or nine years, and evidently trained carefully in Moham- 
 medan behefs, would seize the first opportunity to escape shows 
 what was possible beneath the surface.^ Two generations 
 earher there was a renegade who cursed the day when he had 
 
 ^ Tractatus, ch. v; Nicolay, 86. 
 
 * Ricaut, 284. 
 
 ' Bernardo, 367; Zane, as quoted above, p. 42. See also Jorga, iii. 188. 
 
 * Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 235. 
 
 ^ Nicolay, 160-161. ^ Menavino, 244.
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 69 
 
 turned Turk, but wh(3 felt that he could not go back.^ Nor 
 were the members of the system always submissive to the stricter 
 rules of Mohammedan ethics. The Janissaries, for example, 
 forced Bayezid II to reopen the wine shops of the capital, which 
 in the religious fervor of his later years he had ordered closed ; ^ 
 and the members of the government were led by fondness for 
 display and lavish expenditure into shameless venality, the 
 cause and the effect being equally contrary to the teachings and 
 example of Mohammed. The probability is that large numbers 
 of the sultan's slaves were merely nominal Mohammedans in 
 religious belief, though they necessarily followed the larger part 
 of the Moslem scheme of life. 
 
 Effect of the Process 
 
 Sons of Janissaries were not allowed to become Janissaries, 
 although the rule began to be infringed about the end of Sulei- 
 man's reign.^ Sons of Spahis of the Porte might be admitted 
 as pages and to the corps of Spahi-ogJdans, but their grandsons 
 were rigidly excluded.^ Sons of great officials were provided 
 with fiefs, or pensions, and so usually passed out of the Ruling 
 Institution into the territorial army.^ Thus few were allowed 
 in the scheme beyond the first generation in the Moslem faith, 
 and almost none beyond the second. The explanation of this 
 has been given already: descendants of renegades were Moslems, 
 and hence subject to the same disqualifications as members of 
 Mohammedan families of long standing. Not all Moslems of 
 the empire were counted Ottomans, or, as they called themselves, 
 Osmanlis, or, as they are commonly called nowadays, Turks; 
 
 ^ Tractatus, ch. xxi. 
 
 2 Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 351. 
 
 ' Georgevitz (before 1552), 40, " De Ordine Peditum "; Ranke, 19-20; Barbaro 
 (1573)? 3°5f 317- Selim II, on his accession granted to the Janissaries the formal 
 privilege of entering their sons in the corps; for the Persian war of 1594 the corps 
 was opened to other Turks and all Moslems. By 1592, the majority of the 
 Janissaries were said to be sons of Turks; Bernardo, 332. See also Knolles (ed. 
 
 1687), 985. 
 
 * Postel, iii. 20. 
 
 ' Kanun-nameh of Mohammed II, printed in Hammer's Staalsverfassung, 94.
 
 JO THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 for Arabs, Kurds, and other Mohammedans who had not adopted 
 the Turkish language did not bear the Turkish name. But all 
 the descendants of members of the Ruling Institution were 
 added to the Ottoman-Turkish nationality. The total number 
 of Janissaries in the three centuries during which they were 
 recruited from Christian children has been estimated at five 
 hundred thousand;^ but, as reckoned above, the tribute boys 
 furnished less than one-half of the recruits of the institution,^ 
 and the page system persisted in its original form after the 
 Janissaries had become hereditary. From one to two millions 
 of the flower of the Christian population must have been brought 
 into the Ottoman nation by the operation of the Ruling Institu- 
 tion. 
 
 It does not necessarily follow that a like number of new Turkish 
 families were thus founded. The Janissaries were not supposed 
 to marry, although the rule was not strictly enforced ; ^ a hundred 
 years later, at any rate, the majority are said to have been 
 unmarried.* As the Spahis of the Porte probably married late, 
 when they married at all, the whole system had thus something 
 of a monastic aspect.^ High officials, it is true, were apt to keep 
 harems of some size; yet the children even of these were ordi- 
 narily few in number.^ Furthermore, the frequent fierce wars 
 carried off many of the sultan's slaves, and the danger of execu- 
 tion and of confiscation of property put a check on their estab- 
 lishment of famihes. It is probable, therefore, that the Ruling 
 Institution, like most great slave-famihes, was wasteful of human 
 life.^ But although its Christian-born members may not have 
 
 ^ Hammer's Geschichte, i. 94. 
 2 See p. 49. 
 
 * Spandugino (15 17), 108, says that the Janissaries are not allowed to marry. 
 He was probably wrong. Certainly some were married soon after his time: Ram- 
 berti (1534), below, p. 249; Junis Bey (1537), below, p. 267; Nicolay (i55i),92. 
 
 * Ricaut, 366. 
 
 ^ The resemblance of the Janissaries to monks is noticed by Busbecq, Life aiid 
 Letters, i. 88, and Tavernier, 12. 
 
 * Ricaut, 151. 
 
 ^ One careful observer thought that this might be true of the whole Ottoman 
 nation. Ibid., but in the middle of the fifteenth century contrary testimony was 
 given {Tractatus, ch. xi).
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 7I 
 
 perpetuated their numbers, they nevertheless increased the 
 Ottoman nation by the addition of such children as were born to 
 them; and the Moslem descendants of these, sailing in quieter 
 waters, doubtless became, both numerically and otherwise, a 
 great strength to the nation. 
 
 II. The Educational Scheme 
 
 Plato would have been delighted with the training of the 
 sultan's great family, though his nature would have revolted 
 from its lowliness of birth. He would have approved of the 
 life-long education, the equally careful training of body and mind, 
 the separation into soldiers and rulers (even though it was not 
 complete), the relative freedom from family ties, the system's 
 rigid control of the individual, and, above all, of the govern- 
 ment by the wise. Whether the founders of the Ottoman 
 system were acquainted with Plato will probably never be known, 
 but they seem to have come as near to his plan as it is possible 
 to come in a workable scheme. In some practical ways they 
 even improved upon Plato, — as by avoiding the uncertainties 
 of heredity, by supplying a personal directing power, by insuring 
 permanence through a balance of forces, and by making their 
 system capable of vast imperial rule. 
 
 In the largest sense the Ruling Institution was a school in 
 which the pupils were enrolled for life. Constantly under 
 careful drill and discipline, they advanced from stage to stage 
 through all their days, rewarded systematically in accordance with 
 their deserts by promotions, honors, and gifts, and punished rigor- 
 ously for infraction of rules, while both rewards and punishments 
 increased from stage to stage until the former included all that 
 life under the Moslem scheme could olTer, and the latter threat- 
 ened to take away the life itself. The system also cared for all 
 sides of the nature of its pupils, subject to the considerable 
 limitation that it was especially a school of war and government. 
 The bodies of all were trained as thoroughly as were the minds 
 of the best. Though all received some mental training, includ- 
 ing at least an acquaintance with the Moslem mode of life, the 
 ablest were put through a severe course in Oriental languages
 
 72 THE GOVERNMENT OF TEE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 and Moslem and Ottoman law, which embraced ethics and theol- 
 ogy. Thus both body and mind, as well as the religious nature, 
 were provided for systematically and through hfe. Looked at 
 thus, the Ottoman educational scheme, in its relations to the 
 whole lives of those under instruction, was more comprehensive 
 than any Western institution of learning. The officers of a 
 Western army are educated and organized in a life-long system 
 which provides for both body and mind; but they do not learn 
 theology and they do not govern the nation. Great American 
 railroads and manufacturing corporations possess schemes of 
 education and advancement which bear comparison to the Otto- 
 man system in life-long scope, promotion for merit, and the 
 possibility of rising from the bottom to the top; but the mental 
 training which they give even to their ablest helpers is of a highly 
 technical sort, which bears no comparison to the general learning 
 and finished culture bestowed upon the most studious in the 
 Ottoman scheme. In general, Western universities and educa- 
 tional systems, although they far surpass the Ottoman scheme 
 in the scope and character of the intellectual training which they 
 give, do not provide a comparable systematic training of the body; 
 and their control over the lives of their students ceases early. 
 The superior comprehensiveness of the Ottoman system was, 
 of course, based upon the fact that its members were slaves. 
 Their master could keep them at school all their lives, in order 
 that they might become better and better trained to serve him. 
 At the same time, reward was considered more potent than the 
 rod. Unequalled prizes were offered in this school, so skilfully 
 disposed and graded as to call out the utmost strivings and the 
 best work of every pupil. 
 
 The first stages of the wide scheme, which constitute the 
 educational system in its narrower sense, were a fitting intro- 
 duction to the rest. All the recruits for the sultan's slave-family, 
 whether captured, bought, presented, or levied, to the number 
 of probably three or four thousand annually, with an addition 
 of ten or twelve thousand in the years of the devshurmeh,^ were 
 brought by a regular process before trained officials, carefully 
 
 ^ See the calculation above, p. 49.
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 73 
 
 registered, and divided into two classes.^ Those who best 
 satisfied the criterions of bodily perfection, muscular strength, 
 and intellectual ability so far as it could be judged without long 
 testing,^ — about one in every ten of the whole number, — were 
 chosen for a superior quality of training, especially on the intel- 
 lectual side. The remainder were destined for a different educa- 
 tion, which was mainly physical.^ The first regularly became 
 pages and Spahis of the Porte, and the ablest of them rose to the 
 great offices of the army and the government. The others 
 regularly became Ajem-oghlans and Janissaries, but the ablest 
 of these might also rise to positions as Spahis of the Porte and 
 even as generals and officers of state."* Failure to be selected for 
 the higher school was not, therefore, a final restriction to low 
 position. Merit was recognized everywhere, and regularly led 
 to promotion. At the same time, it was a distinct advantage 
 to a young man to be chosen for the higher training, since he 
 would receive greater care, would acquire more of both ornamen- 
 tal and useful learning, and would associate with those already 
 great, and perhaps with the sultan himself. 
 
 The Colleges of Pages 
 
 Of those selected for the higher training, a portion were dis- 
 tributed among the households of the provincial governors and 
 high officers at the capital.^ These were probably brought up 
 in much the same way as if they had remained with the sultan. 
 The very choicest of the recruits, to the number of perhaps two 
 hundred annually, or twelve to fifteen hundred in all,^ were 
 
 1 Navagero, 50; Barbara, 316; Nicolay, 84. J. Soranzo, 245, states that the 
 tribute boys were all brought to Constantinople, circumcised, and brought before 
 the Agha of the Janissaries. Record was made of the name of each, of his father's 
 name, and of his native place. Soranzo's accuracy is questionable, as when he 
 says that the greater part were put into palaces in Constantinople. 
 
 2 Postel, iii. 17; Ricaut, 46. 
 
 3 Ricaut, 74: " In whom appearing more strength of body than of mind, they 
 are set apart for labor and menial services." 
 
 * Busbecq, De Re MilUari, 260. 
 
 6 Spandugino, 104: the emperor chooses a few and sends the rest to the towns 
 of the Turks of Anatolia to live with the lords and gentlemen. 
 
 8 Spandugino speaks of 900; Junis Bey and Ramberti, 1400; Geuflroy, 1200; 
 Postel, 1300 to 1500.
 
 74 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 taken into three palaces of the sultan as Itch-oghlans, or pages. 
 Three or four hundred were in the palace at Adrianople/ a like 
 number in one at Galata,^ and from five to eight hundred in the 
 principal palace at Stamboul.'^ These were all handsome boys, 
 physically perfect, and of marked intellectual promise. An 
 excellent idea of the international character of the college is given 
 by a Venetian writer, who said that the pages of the palace 
 included Bulgarians, Hungarians, Transylvanians, Poles, Bohe- 
 mians, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, a few French, many 
 Albanians, Slavs, Greeks, Circassians, and Russians.^ 
 
 The Itch-oghlans were dressed in suitable raiment and were well 
 cared for without luxury.^ That the sultan took a particular 
 interest in the arrival of excellent specimens is evident from the 
 reception that Menavino received.^ The general Ottoman 
 attitude toward the pages, and indeed toward all recruits, has 
 been well expressed by a thoughtful observer: " The Turks 
 rejoice greatly when they find an exceptional man, as though 
 they had acquired a precious object, and they spare no labor or 
 effort in cultivating him; especially if they discern that he is 
 fit for war. Our plan [that is, in Western Europe] is very dif- 
 ferent; for if we find a good dog, hawk, or horse, we are greatly 
 dehghted, and we spare nothing to bring it to the greatest per- 
 fection of its kind. But if a man happens to possess an extraordi- 
 nary disposition, we do not take like pains; nor do we think 
 that his education is especially our affair; and we receive much 
 pleasure and many kinds of service from the well-trained horse, 
 dog, and hawk; but the Turks much more from a well-educated 
 man {ex homine bonis morihus informato), in proportion as the 
 nature of a man is more admirable and more excellent than that 
 of the other animals." ^ 
 
 1 Junis Bey and Ramberti, 300; Geuffroy, 300. 
 
 2 Junis Bey and Ramberti, 400; Geuffroy, 400; Postel (iii. 20), 600 or 700. 
 
 3 Junis Bey and Ramberti, 700; Geuffroy, 500; Postel (iii. 3), 700 or Soo. 
 * Navagero, 42. See also Tanco, 205. 
 
 ^ Menavino, 13. Postel, iii. 17, says that, when presented, they were clothed 
 in silk and cloth of gold or silver; but Ricaut, 49, says that their clothing and diet 
 were simple. 
 
 ® Menavino, 11 ff. 
 
 ^ Bushecq,DeReMilitari,262-26s.
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 75 
 
 That the primary object of the page system was educational 
 appears from all contemporary observations. Not merely are 
 their palaces termed " places for nourishing youths," ^ but 
 Menavino calls the place where he was taught " the palace 
 school." - Another writer gives chapters on " The Education 
 of Young Men in the Seraglio," and " The Studies and Learning 
 in the Seraglio," ^ and speaks of the young men as " designed 
 for the great offices of the empire." Another says, " And the 
 said emperor does this good for the profit of his soul, and when 
 they are grown up he takes them from there and gives them 
 dignities and offices, according as it seems to the emperor they 
 have deserved." ^ Some of the pages were the personal servants 
 of the sultan, and a band of thirty-nine constituted his gentlemen 
 of the bedchamber, or Khas Oda} These were the elite of all, 
 chosen by selection after selection; and, though young, they 
 ranked very high in the system. Since only a few of all the 
 pages could attain to this honor, the remainder were at school 
 for outside service.^ 
 
 Besides many less direct descriptions of the course of training, 
 two exist which are derived from men who passed through the 
 palace school. Menavino tells his own story ;^ and Ricaut 
 
 * Postel, iii. 2. 
 
 2 Menavino, 126. 
 ' Ricaut, chs. v-vi. 
 
 * Spandugino, 63. See also Nicolay, 84; and the quotations in the last section 
 of Chapter i, above. 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, vii. 34. 
 
 ' Hammer {Gcschichle, i. 232), by a singular perversion of the truth, asserts 
 that the page system had its origin and primary purpose in the satisfaction of 
 the unnatural lusts of Bayezid I and his successors. Not only does the whole 
 structure and organization of the system disprove this, but the absence of reference 
 to such a purpose in all contemporary writers is sufticicnt to settle the matter. The 
 vice which takes its name from Sodom was very prevalent among the Ottomans, 
 especially among those in high position (Spandugino, 186; Busbecq, Life and 
 Letters, I. 22,2; Ricaut, 151,211; D'Ohsson, iv. 473). The pages were apt to be 
 afiQicted by it, and were carefully watched to prevent it, and terribly punished 
 if discovered (Ricaut, 60). Occasionally a sultan became enamored of a page 
 (Ricaut, 61); but Suleiman seems to have been free from this vice (Busbecq, i. 
 159; Marini Sanuto, Diarii, December 6, 1523). 
 
 ' Menavino, 126-128. He was a page from about 1505 to 1514 {ibid. 
 243-245)-
 
 ']G TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 records what he learned from a PoHsh captive who had spent 
 nineteen years in the sultan's service and had reached high 
 position.^ Although these accounts were written one hundred 
 and fifty years apart, they agree in essentials. Menavino 
 does not refer to the physical training in arms and horsemanship ; 
 but at the time of his escape he showed himself, if not a coura- 
 geous, yet an accomplished horseman. Postel, some twenty 
 years after Menavino's time, describes this training in some 
 detail. He probably had his information from a French page 
 named Cabazolles, whom he quotes as authority on one point.^ 
 
 The pages were trained in the art of war, the use of all sorts of 
 arms, and good horsemanship.'^ Suleiman took especial delight 
 in watching their cavalry evolutions, and occasionally sum- 
 moned a page who pleased him, conversed with him, and dis- 
 missed him with presents.^ Also, by old Oriental custom, every 
 page was taught some handicraft useful in his master's service, 
 and, no doubt, intended to provide for his own support in case 
 of need.^ 
 
 Menavino describes the course of study in the so-called Yeni 
 Oda, or New Chamber, which contained from eighty to a hundred 
 boys. " When a boy has remained five or six days in that school, 
 they set him to learning the alphabet. There are four teachers 
 in the school. One drills the boys in reading during their first 
 year. Another teaches the Koran in the Arabic (Moresco) 
 language, giving explanations of the different articles of their 
 faith. After this a third teaches books in the Persian tongue, 
 and some write a little, but they do not teach writing willingly. 
 A fourth teaches Arabic books, both vulgar and literary." It is 
 interesting to notice that, from the first, rewards in the form of 
 
 ^ Ricaut, " To the Reader," 45-62. This describes the system as it was about 
 1650. 
 
 2 Postel, iii. 11. 
 
 * Ibid. 19; Ricaut, 50. 
 
 * Postel, iii. 10; Ricaut, 50. 
 
 ^ Ricaut, 51. The same custom was observed in the education of the princes 
 and of all children of great officials (Spandugino, 179). Tanco, 197-198, says he 
 has heard that Suleiman himself labored daily at a trade, so that even the Prince 
 should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow; see also Jorga, ii. 343.
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM JJ 
 
 pay were given for labor. " These boys," continues Menavino, 
 " have a daily allowance of two aspers during the first year, three 
 during the second year, four during the third year, and thus 
 their allowance increases each year. They receive scarlet gar- 
 ments twice a year, and some robes of white cloth for the sum- 
 mer." ^ Postel describes how they learned with great diligence 
 Arabic and Turkish letters and the law.^ Ricaut explains in 
 more detail that the chief object of the course of study was to 
 teach reading and writing for the purpose of giving inspection 
 into the books of law and religion, especially the Koran. He 
 says that Arabic was taught to enable the boys to inspect the 
 writings of the judges and to have knowledge of rehgion, Persian 
 to give them quaint words and handsome and gentle deportment, 
 and adds that both tongues might be needed in governing 
 Eastern regions. He gives a list of their text-books, and remarks 
 that those who wished to become men of the pen studied with 
 greater exactness. They were not, he says, taught logic, physics, 
 metaphysics, mathematics, or geography, and their knowledge 
 of ancient history was much mixed. " Yet as to the successes 
 and progress of Affairs in their own Dominions," he adds, " they 
 keep most strict Registers and Records, which serve them as 
 Presidents and Rules for the present Government of their Af- 
 fairs." ^ This shows that the pages were instructed in Turkish 
 history and the various Kanun-namehs , or imperial laws. Most 
 of the teachers were Anatolian Turks,'* chosen no doubt, as 
 imparting better pronunciation and more orthodox religious 
 views. 
 
 Discipline was severe,^ but was kept within bounds. A page 
 could be beaten on the soles of his feet with no more than ten 
 strokes, and not more than once on any one day.^ The boys, 
 organized in groups of ten, were watched carefully by eunuchs, 
 both day and night.^ Absolute obedience, modest behavior and 
 
 1 Menavino, 126, 127. ' Ricaut, 59. 
 
 2 Postel, iii. 10. * Navagero, 43. 
 
 * Ricaut, 48, says that in the three colleges of education the eunuchs exercised 
 >'ery severe discipline beyond that of monks. 
 ^ Menavino, 127. 
 " Ramberti, below, pp. 244, 245; Junis Bey, below, p. 263; Ricaut, 49.
 
 78 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 decorum, and good manners were taught with great insistency.^ 
 The two sections, or odalar, at the palace seem to have been of 
 equal rank,^ while the schools in Pera and Adrianople ranked 
 lower.' Select boys who had finished their studies were promoted 
 through the different chambers of the personal service of the 
 sultan to the Inner Chamber,* where twelve or fifteen of the 
 thirty-nine held titular ofiices.^ On reaching the age of twenty- 
 five every page was sent out from the school.^ Those from the 
 Inner Chamber passed at once to places in the Noble Guard 
 (Muteferrika), or to governorships of towns.^ Ibrahim passed 
 almost directly to the place of grand vizier; ^ but he was the first 
 to break the regular order of promotion, and in after times much 
 evil was held to date from the precedent.^ The majority passed 
 into the regular cavalry, or Spahis of the Porte.^^ Those who 
 left the school were honored by a ceremony of farewell. The 
 sultan personally commended each one, and gave him encourage- 
 ment for good conduct in his new position. He presented each 
 with an embroidered coat and one of his most beautiful horses, 
 and often a gift in money. The young man, with all the presents 
 he had received during his stay, was escorted to the great gate, 
 where he mounted his horse triumphantly, and departed from 
 the palace forever. ^^ 
 
 The Harem 
 
 Probably because of the tendency of the human mind to 
 construct along parallel lines, the imperial harem partook of 
 the characteristics of the schools of pages. There were two 
 
 1 Ricaut, 49: "Their first Lessons are silence, reverence, humble and modest 
 behaviour, holding their heads downwards, and their hands across before them." 
 
 2 Ibid. 48. ^ D'Ohsson, vii. 47. 
 
 * Ricaut, 51; D'Ohsson, vii. 34 ff. These chambers were the Kiler-odassi, or 
 Pantry; the Khazineh-odassi, or Treasure Chamber; the Khas-odassi, or Inner 
 Chamber. See below, pp. 126-128. 
 
 ^ Ricaut, 52. ^ Postel, iii. 11. ^ Spandugino, 62. 
 
 8 Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 32. ' Ibid. 490. 
 
 ^° Ramberti (below, p. 244) says that they became Spahi-oghlans, SUihdars, and 
 oflScials of higher degree according to their worth and to the favor which they had 
 gained with the sultan; Junis Bey, below, p. 263. 
 
 11 Menavino, 138.
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 79 
 
 odalar, or rooms, for the recruits of the harem, in which they were 
 taught housework, sewing and embroidery, manners and deport- 
 ment.^ They were organized in groups of ten, each group under 
 a matron. Those with a taste for music and dancing learned 
 those accompHshments, those who were studious learned to 
 read and write. All were carefully instructed in the system of 
 Islam. Like the pages, nearly all of them passed out of the 
 palace at the age of twenty-five, being given in marriage to 
 Spahis of the Porte or to other officials.^ Thus the harem might 
 be considered a training-school of slave-wives for the sultan 
 himself and for the most highly honored of his kullar. 
 
 The Ajem-oghlans 
 
 The term ajemi-oghlanlar signifies " foreign youth," and was 
 sometimes applied to all the young recruits. Ordinarily, how- 
 ever, it was given only to the remainder left after the pages 
 had been selected. These, for the most part destined to become 
 Janissaries, probably numbered about twenty thousand.^ Their 
 training was largely physical, industrial, and military, with 
 oral instruction in the Turkish language and the principles of the 
 Mohammedan system. The Ajcm-oghlans usually passed through 
 two or three stages. Unless they knew Turkish and something 
 of Turkish ways, they were first scattered through Asia Minor 
 in the service of Moslem country gentlemen.^ There they were 
 set at hard agricultural labor, to strengthen their bodies to the 
 utmost. They were expected to learn to speak and understand 
 the Turkish language and to learn the faith, the laws, and the 
 customs of the Turks. The sultan allowed them no pay. The 
 
 * Ricaut, 71; Postel, i. 33; Nicolay, 64; D'Ohsson, vii. 64. 
 
 ' Ramberti, below, p. 254 (" he marries them to Spahi-oghlans, or to others of the 
 slaves of the Porte according to the degree and condition of both parties " ); Junis 
 Bey, below, p. 269; GeulTroy, 244; Chesneau, 40; Nicolay, 64. 
 
 ' Trevisano, 130, speaks of 16,400; but this number does not seem sufBcicnt 
 to account for all. 
 
 * Chalcocondyles, 97; Spandugino, 103; Ramberti, 255; Junis Bey, 270; (they 
 are sent "to dig earth in order to learn Turkish"); Zcno, 127; GeutTroy, 243; 
 Navagero, 50. Chesneau, 44, states that those Ajem-oghlans who were levied in 
 Anatolia were sent to gentlemen in Rumelia.
 
 8o THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 gentlemen whom they served, responsible for them to the sultan, 
 supplied them with food and clothing and whatever else they were 
 pleased to give.^ The number of these Ajem-oghlans of the first 
 stage may be estimated as ten thousand.^ At the end of two or 
 three years, or perhaps at about the time for a new devshurmeh,^ 
 officers came to examine them. If they knew enough Turkish 
 and were strong and well-grown, they passed to the next stage. 
 
 Having been brought to Constantinople, and once more 
 carefully inscribed and estimated,^ the Ajem-oghlans were again 
 distributed, but now in groups. About two thousand were 
 assigned to service with the fleet at Gallipoli.^ Another two 
 thousand, probably the most intelhgent, were appointed as 
 gardeners, or Bostanjis, to the sultan's palaces in Stamboul, 
 Adrianople, Brusa, and Magnesia;^ and five hundred or more 
 served in other capacities about the palaces, as wood-cutters, 
 helpers in the kitchen, and the like.'' Five or six thousand were 
 kept in Constantinople and employed in the shipyards or on 
 pubhc buildings,^ or were hired out in bands of one hundred or 
 more to private citizens for hard labor of various sorts.^ Some 
 were hired out similarly in other cities.^" In the midst of such a 
 variety of occupations, two objects seem always to have been 
 kept in mind, — the Ajem-oghlans were to develop the utmost 
 strength of body, and they were to learn some trade useful in 
 war.ii jj-^ |-}-jJ5 stage they were normally organized in groups or 
 
 ^ Ramberti, below, p. 255; Junis Bey, below, p. 270; Nicolay, 86. 
 
 2 Giovio, Commentarius, 78; Junis Bey, as above. 
 
 3 Ramberti and Junis Bey, as above, say after three or four years; Geuffroy, 
 243, after four years. Navagero, 50, says that every two or three years, as the 
 service demands, an officer takes those who are ready; some have served two or 
 three, some four or five years. Trevisano, 130, says that they are left six or 
 seven years. 
 
 * Ricaut, 77. 
 
 ^ Chalcocondyles, 97; Spandugino, 104; Navagero, 52. 
 
 ^ Navagero, 52; Postel, iii. 22, 25. 
 
 ' Spandugino, 76. 
 
 8 Ramberti, 254, says 5000; Junis Bey, 269, says 4000 or 5000; Geuffroy, 242, 
 says 5000 or 6000; Trevisano, 129, says 6800; Garzoni, 415, says 6000; Postel, 
 iii. 25, says 5000 to 7000; D. Barbarigo, ^^, says 7600. 
 
 8 Junis Bey, 269; Navagero, 51; Trevisano, 129; Postel, iii. 25. 
 
 ^° Trevisano, 129. " Giovio, Commentarius, 77.
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 8 1 
 
 messes of ten. The gardeners were under the charge of an ofTicial 
 of high rank and great authority, who bore the humble title of 
 Bostanji-bas/ii, or head gardener; he was aided by under officers 
 and an administrative staff. Those in Constantinople were 
 under the orders of an Agha, or general officer, with a staff of 
 under officials, clerks, and accountants.^ Being filled with the 
 spirit of youth, conscious of their superior physical strength and 
 privileged position, gathered together in large groups, and 
 unrestrained by substantial mental instruction, the Ajem- 
 oghlans were by no means easy to manage. They frequently 
 raised great disturbances in the city, in emulation perhaps of 
 the Janissaries.- Those who wished were allowed to learn to 
 read and write, but they were not obliged to do so.^ They 
 received a small amount of pay, with food and clothing.* 
 
 After a certain time spent in this stage of development, the 
 majority of the Ajem-oghlans were assigned, one by one as each 
 seemed ready, to the service of the odalar, or messes, of the 
 Janissaries.^ The latter then became responsible for their 
 training in the art of war, and discharged this duty with much 
 zeal. In the course of time, as the Ajem-oghlans acquired suffi- 
 cient skill, and as vacancies occurred, they were enrolled as 
 full-fledged Janissaries.^ The gardeners of the sultan's palaces 
 and the palace servants seem not ordinarily to have become 
 Janissaries, but to have been advanced toward the directing 
 of the transport, commissary, and artillery services, the oversight 
 of the imperial stables, and like positions in the administration 
 
 1 Ramberti, below, p. 254; Junis Bey, below, p. 269; D'Ohsson, vii. 28. 
 
 2 Postel, Hi. 25. 
 
 * Postel, iii. 22, says that only those who had special privilege from the sultan 
 were allowed to learn letters. Ricaut, 76, sajs that some of those in the palace 
 service were taught to read and write. In D'Ohsson's time (vii. 327), each oda 
 had a hoja to teach reading and writing to those who wished. 
 
 * Junis Bey, 26g, 270, says that they had 2 or 3 aspers per day at first, and 
 more as they advanced, and that their chief was allowed 100,000 aspers a year for 
 their food and clothing. Postel, iii. 23, says that their chief was allowed 10,000 
 aspers a day to keep them and pay them, and other money for their clothing. 
 
 * Ramberti, 254; Junis Bey, 270; Postel, iii. 25. 
 
 * Spandugino, 104. Trevisano, 130, says that they became such at from 20 to 
 25 years old, according to their mind, value, or favor.
 
 82 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 of the army and the great household. ^ No doubt some of those 
 assigned to the fleet were promoted in the navy, but most of 
 them seem to have become Janissaries.^ Thus a large number 
 and variety of openings lay before the Ajem-oghlatis, who as 
 they became ready were advanced into them. The ordinary age 
 of graduation from the corps was twenty-five years,^ which may 
 be regarded as the age of majority for all the sultan's slaves. 
 At times war caused such depletion of the upper service that 
 Ajem-oghlans were promoted before they had reached the desired 
 age or were thoroughly ready.^ 
 
 Advancement Based on Merit 
 
 The entire system from start to finish was designed to reward 
 merit and fully to satisfy every ambition that was backed by 
 ability, effort, and sufficient preparation. Two parallel lines 
 of reward were established, the honorable and the financial. 
 In the page school the first was represented by promotion from 
 class to class, and, in the case of those who were observed to be 
 the most suitable, by advancement through the chambers of 
 personal service to the Khas Oda. In this oda they were pro- 
 moted in regular order through the twelve or more special 
 offices.^ 
 
 Among the Ajem-oghlans the process seems to have been carried 
 on by carefully observing and testing individuals, by advancing 
 them from stage to stage on this basis, and by entrusting them 
 in the later stages with greater and greater responsibilities. 
 The financial reward began for the pages immediately upon 
 admission to the school. It was then probably about equal to 
 the daily wages of an unskilled laborer. This was increased 
 regularly year by year, and in the Khas Oda reached the propor- 
 
 ^ Ricaut, 76. But those of the principal palace in Constantinople had greater 
 opportunities; they might become Janissaries, Solaks, Kapujis, etc. (Ramberti, 
 below, p. 245.) 
 
 2 Chalcocondyles, 97. 
 
 ' Trevisano, 130; Barbaro, 316; Garzoni, 397. 
 
 * Zinkeisen, iii. 228. 
 
 ^ Ricaut, 53; D'Ohsson, vii. 34-39-
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 83 
 
 tions of a handsome salary. ^ The Ajem-oghlans depended during 
 the first stage on the rewards assigned by their temporary 
 masters. After that stage they began to receive a small amount 
 of pay from the sultan, which was gradually increased.^ All 
 were provided with food, lodging, and at least a part of their 
 clothing, and individuals might hope to obtain special gifts. 
 
 This double system was continued without a break through 
 the entire institution. The lowest Janissary might hopefully 
 aspire to promotion, either through the hierarchy of office in his 
 own corps, or by being lifted out of it for service in the cavalry 
 or the active administration.^ The pages who had passed out 
 of the school were already well up in the scale of advancement, 
 and every place except the sultan's own was within their grasp. 
 The grand vizier, indeed, might wield almost the whole of the 
 sultan's power, a fact which Ibrahim, shortly before his fall, 
 realized so fully that he added to his title of Seraskier the word 
 Sultan.^ The losses occasioned by fierce and frequent wars, 
 and by not infrequent depositions and executions, gave abundant 
 opportunity for men to rise from below. Conquest was con- 
 tinually adding new offices and commands. The whole Ruling 
 Institution was, so to speak, in a constant state of boiling, in 
 which the human particles were rapidly rising to the top, and, 
 alas, disappearing, while others rose as rapidly behind them. 
 
 The figure just employed is applicable, however, only to the 
 mere phenomenon of rising: the upward movement was not in 
 the least accidental or automatic; it was conducted with keen 
 intelhgence at every stage. Now and then, as in the case of 
 Ibrahim, favor disturbed the scheme; but this happened very 
 seldom before the end of Suleiman's reign. Sometimes a tem- 
 porary confusion resulted from extraordinary losses in war, 
 but order was soon restored. There is reason to believe that 
 human history has never known a political institution which 
 during so long a period was so completely dominated by sheer 
 
 * Ramberti, below, p. 244; Junis Bey, below, p. 263; Ricaut, 53. 
 2 Junis Bey, as quoted above, p. 8i, note 4. 
 
 ' Chalcocondylcs, 171; Barbaro, 305; Nicolay, 89 ("the wages of each are 
 increased, according to the merit of their military valor "). 
 
 * Hammer, Geschichte, iii. i6o.
 
 84 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 intellect, and thereby so unerringly held to its original plan and 
 purpose, as was the Ottoman Ruling Institution. The democ- 
 racy of Athens attained an unexampled level of average intelli- 
 gence, but under its sway the exceptional mind received discour- 
 agement rather than exceptional training. The free democracies 
 of the present age allow the gifted individual opportunities to 
 fight his way upward, but against obstacles which sometimes 
 become insuperable. These systems are unquestionably superior 
 on the whole to the Ottoman scheme, because of their inclusive- 
 ness and individual freedom; but as regards sheer efficiency, 
 unobstructed opportunity, and certainty of reward, their opera- 
 tion is wasteful, clumsy, and blind by comparison. 
 
 Some testimonies of shrewd contemporary observers will 
 show how they regarded the Ottoman scheme of promotion 
 both in itself and in comparison with Western ways. The 
 intelHgent author of the Tractatus is impressed by the unity 
 and control of the scheme. " Out of the aforesaid slaves," 
 he writes, " promotions are made to the ofiices of the kingdom 
 according to the virtues found in them. Whence it comes about 
 that all the magnates and princes of the whole kingdom are as it 
 were officials made by the king, and not lords or possessors; 
 and as a consequence he is the sole lord and possessor, and the 
 lawful dispenser, distributer, and governor of the whole kingdom; 
 the others are only executors, officials, and administrators 
 according to his will and command. . . . Whence it follows 
 that in his kingdom, although there is an innumerable multitude, 
 no contradiction or opposition can arise; but, united as one 
 man in all respects and for all purposes, they look to his command 
 alone, they obey and serve unwear3dngly." ^ 
 
 Postel says: " The Seigneur [or sultan] has four or several 
 principal personages for all the business of his empire, whether 
 in war or justice, and they are promoted to this honor by degrees 
 from lower offices, always mounting and giving good examples of 
 living, unless by some extraordinary favor the prince raises 
 them from some low place, which is very perilous." ^ Speaking 
 of the pages in the palace, he adds: " When they have Hved 
 
 1 Tractatus, ch. viii. ^ Postel, i. 121.
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 85 
 
 there a long time and done well, they are given a place where they 
 receive pay, and they are made Castellans and given other offices 
 used among them. If there are some who have the ability to 
 make themselves known, they may have the best fortune in the 
 world, and become governors of the land and Pashas; for there 
 they judge of nobiHty by the worth which they see appearing 
 in a man, and they give honors according to the evidence of 
 his past." ^ Of Suleiman, Tanco says, " He sows hope of certain 
 reward in all conditions of men, who by means of virtue, may 
 succeed in mounting to better fortune "; and of the Janissaries, 
 " Each has his good and real fortune in his hand." ^ 
 
 Among all observers, Busbecq seems to have been most 
 impressed with the system of advancement by merit. " The 
 Turks," he tells us, " do not measure even their own people by 
 any other rule than that of personal merit. The only exception 
 is the house of Ottoman; in this case, and in this case only, does 
 birth confer distinction." ^ 
 
 Referring to his audience with Suleiman, he says: " There was 
 not in all that great assembly a single man who owed his position 
 to aught save his valour and his merit. No distinction is attached 
 to birth among the Turks; the deference to be paid to a man is 
 measured by the position he holds in the pubhc service. There 
 is no fighting for precedence; a man's place is marked out by the 
 duties he discharges. In making his appointments the sultan 
 pays no regard to any pretensions on the score of wealth or rank, 
 nor does he take into consideration recommendations or popu- 
 larity; he considers each case on its own merits, and examines 
 carefully into the character, ability, and disposition of the man 
 whose promotion is in question. It is by merit that men rise 
 in the service, a system which ensures that posts should only 
 be assigned to the competent. Each man in Turkey carries in 
 his own hand his ancestry and his position in life, which he may 
 make or mar as he will. Those who receive the highest offices 
 from the sultan are for the most part the sons of shepherds or 
 herdsmen, and so far from being ashamed of their parentage, 
 
 1 Ibid. iii. 19. ' Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 105. 
 
 2 Tanco, 197, 206.
 
 86 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 they actually glory in it, and consider it a matter of boasting 
 that they owe nothing to the accident of birth; for they do not 
 beheve that high qualities are either natural or hereditary, nor 
 do they think that they can be handed down from father to son, 
 but that they are partly the gift of God, and partly the result of 
 good training, great industry, and unwearied zeal; arguing 
 that high qualities do not descend from a father to his son or 
 heir, any more than a talent for music, mathematics, or the like; 
 and that the mind does not derive its origin from the father, so 
 that the son should necessarily be like the father in character, 
 but emanates from heaven, and is thence infused into the human 
 body. Among the Turks, therefore, honours, high posts, and 
 judgeships are the rewards of great ability and good service. 
 If a man be dishonest, or lazy, or careless, he remains at the bot- 
 tom of the ladder, an object of contempt; for such quahties there 
 are no honours in Turkey! 
 
 " This is the reason that they are successful in their under- 
 takings, that they lord it over others, and are daily extending 
 the bounds of their empire. These are not our ideas; with us 
 there is no opening left for merit; birth is the standard for every- 
 thing; the prestige of birth is the sole key to advancement in the 
 public service." ^ 
 
 Finally, Ricaut, after describing the Ajem-oghlans, declares 
 that this part of the system " is one of the most Politick Con- 
 stitutions in the World, and none of the meanest supports of the 
 Ottoman Empire." ^ 
 
 Financial rewards paralleled advancement in office with great 
 exactness. When a man came to high position, he was provided 
 with the means to Hve splendidly in proportion to his rank. 
 In addition to his salary, many opportunities of increasing his 
 income presented themselves; and though some of these would 
 be considered undignified in Western eyes,^ and others were 
 undoubtedly stained with rapacity and extortion,* they were 
 
 * Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 154-155. 
 
 2 Ricaut, 77. 
 
 3 Spandugino, 185; Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 108. 
 
 * Spandugino, 132.
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM Sj 
 
 allowed to be enjoyed under all ordinary circumstances. The 
 sultan's higher officials not only lived in great splendor, with a 
 numerous retinue, a large harem, and many costly garments, 
 dishes, gems, and the like, but they often accumulated great 
 wealth in money, houses, lands, mills, horses, cattle, sheep, and 
 everything else that is considered worth collecting.' Thus, as 
 men were promoted, they were enabled regularly to proportion 
 display of wealth to rank and office. 
 
 The example of one of Suleiman's chief servants will illustrate 
 the cursiis honorum in the Ottoman system. Ali Pasha was a 
 native of Dalmatia. Levied with the tribute boys, he was ad- 
 mitted to the principal palace at the time when Ibrahim was 
 Oda-hashi, or head of the Inner Chamber of pages. In the course 
 of time he was made Kapuji, or gatekeeper. When Ibrahim 
 became grand vizier, Ali became Chasnejir, or chief taster, to 
 Suleiman, and held that office during the expedition to Vienna 
 in 1529. In due course he was discharged from the palace, and 
 appointed to high office outside. He soon reached the grade of 
 Aglia, or general or the Ghurebas, the lowest of the four divisions 
 of the regular cavalry, and was then promoted to be AgJia of the 
 SpaJii-oghlans, the highest of the cavalry divisions. Next he 
 became second equerry and later first equerry {Emir-al-Akhor) , 
 then Agha of the Janissaries, then Beylerbey of Rumelia. In the 
 last capacity he attended the sultan in the Persian war of 1548- 
 1549. As a reward for special services in the war he was made 
 pasha of Egypt in 1549, and at the time of his departure was 
 
 ^ The grand vizier Rustem's wealth is summed up in detail in Hammer's 
 Geschichle, iii. 386: " He himself left at his death an immense fortune; no 
 grand vizier before him had amassed so much wealth. His estate consisted of 
 815 farms in Rumelia and Anatolia, 476 water mills, 1700 slaves, 2900 war horses, 
 1 106 camels, 5000 richly embroidered coats and robes of honor, 8000 turbans, iioo 
 caps of cloth of gold, 2900 coats of mail, 2000 cuirasses, 600 saddles finished in 
 silver, 500 others adorned with gold and precious stones, 1500 helmets plated with 
 silver, 130 pairs of golden stirrups, 760 sabres adorned with precious stones, 1000 
 lances trimmed with silver, 800 Korans, 130 of which were set with diamonds, 5000 
 volumes of various works, 78,000 ducats, 32 precious stones representing a value of 
 112 donkey-loads (that is to say, 11,200,000 aspers); the ready money which was 
 found in his house was estimated at 1000 loads (100,000,000 aspers, or 2,000,000 
 ducats."
 
 88 THE GOVERNMENT OF TEE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 nominated vizier. Returning to Constantinople in 1553, he 
 was made third vizier, and upon the death of Rustem in 1561, he 
 became grand vizier. Because of jealousies and enmities caused 
 by his promotions he had hardly a friend left; nevertheless, he 
 was able to hold the favor of Suleiman until his death in 1565.^ 
 
 Punishments 
 
 The system did not attempt to rely wholly upon the glittering 
 attractions of indefinite promotion and enormously increasing 
 wealth. Not all men can be allured to remain unswer\dngly 
 within a narrow path of strict obedience and whole-hearted 
 service. Pages and Ajem-oghlans were held to severe discipline 
 by sufficient and certain punishment; but their teachers and 
 eunuch masters were required to keep that punishment within 
 bounds by the certainty of yet severer punishment.^ Ajem- 
 oghlans might be beaten, or sold out of the sultan's service. 
 After the close of the strictly educational period, punishment, 
 like reward, followed continuously the law of proportionate 
 increase. The higher the position, the heavier the punishment 
 of being passed over in promotion, or of being actually degraded. 
 Fines and confiscations also grew with rank. At no great height 
 in the scale, the personal punishments reached that of death, 
 and death was always very near the highest officials. Any 
 tendency toward treason or revolt, any act of disobedience, 
 sometimes a plot against a higher official, sometimes even a 
 disagreement with the sultan in a matter of policy,^ would lead 
 to sudden execution. The viziers of Selim I carried their wills 
 in their bosoms; and well they might, since the heads of seven 
 are said to have fallen at his command.^ 
 
 Thus was the system carefully kept clear of all the human 
 material that seemed to endanger its working or threaten its 
 unity. There was no sympathy for weakness, no accepting of 
 excuses, no suspension of sentence, no mercy. Suleiman did 
 
 1 D. Barbarigo, 30-33. ^ Menavino, 128. 
 
 ^ The cause of the execution of Junis Pasha by Selim I. Cf . Hammer, Geschichte, 
 ii. 524. 
 
 ^ Halil Ganem, i. 169.
 
 MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 89 
 
 not always have the heart to execute promptly; but in the end 
 he had no alternative, so remorseless was the system. Even 
 his best friend, Ibrahim, went too far and had to be removed. 
 Two of his sons, the oldest and ablest, threatened the system 
 in turn, and one after the other suffered the bow-string. Small 
 wonder that Suleiman's soul was not filled with joy at the victory 
 of Jerbe. " Those who saw Solyman's face in this hour of 
 triumph," says Busbecq, " failed to detect in it the slightest 
 trace of undue elation. I can myself positively declare, that when 
 I saw him two days later on his way to the mosque, the expres- 
 sion of his countenance was unchanged; his stern features had 
 lost nothing of their habitual gloom; one would have thought 
 that the victory concerned him not, and that this startling 
 success of his arms had caused him no surprise. So self-contained 
 was the heart of that grand old man, so schooled to meet each 
 change of fortune however great, that all the applause and 
 triumph of that day wrung from him no sign of satisfaction." ^ 
 Arbiter of the destinies of so many men, compelled to be remorse- 
 less as fate, Suleiman could allow joy no place in his soul. He 
 who wielded as severe a rod as ever man held must maintain 
 over himself the sternest discipline of all. 
 
 ^ Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 322.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS AN ARMY 
 The Military Aspect 
 
 The Ottoman government had been an army before it was 
 anything else. Like the Turkish nations of the steppe lands, 
 the Ottoman nation was " born of war and organized for con- 
 quest." ^ Fighting was originally the first business of the state 
 and governing the second. As time went on, and particularly 
 after the capture of Constantinople, the necessity of administer- 
 ing immense territories transferred the preponderance to the 
 governmental aspect; but even in Suleiman's time the two great 
 functions of the Ruling Institution were very closely united. 
 War carried practically the whole government into the field. - 
 Of course substitute officials had to be left behind to attend to 
 what public business was absolutely necessary, but these were 
 paralleled by, and indeed were usually identical with, the ofiicers 
 and soldiers who had to be left behind to preserve pubhc order. 
 So completely was the government an army, that the more 
 important judges, who did not belong directly to the Ruhng 
 Institution, were taken into the field. Suleiman on his last 
 campaign had 48,316 men under pay.^ Acceptance of the sultan's 
 pay by ordinary usage signified that the recipient was a kul} 
 Evidently, then, almost the entire personnel of the Ruling 
 
 ^ Cahun, Introduction, li.wn: " Les Turcs et les Mongols . . . nees de la guerre 
 et organisees pour la conquete." 
 
 2 This was true even in D'Ohsson's time (vii. 399). 
 
 3 Jiammer, Staatsverwaltung, 181. 
 
 * Curiously enough, the oldest sense in which the Turkish word kid was used as a 
 term denoting relation to a prince, was in reference to soldiers (Vambery, Uigiirische 
 Sprachmonumente und das Kudatku Bilik, 113, stanza 12b). At that time the 
 word was applied to the foot-soldiers as distinguished from the cavalry, who were 
 then volunteer knights. This usage survived in the Ottoman system to the extent 
 that the regular infantry, including the Janissaries, artillerymen, and other lesser 
 permanent corps, were regarded as in a particular and special sense the sultan's 
 kullar (D'Ohsson, vii. 328; Djevad Bey, i. 15-18). 
 
 90
 
 THE ARMY 9 1 
 
 Institution, except the younger pages and the Ajem-oghlans 
 who were as yet unfit, accompanied the master to war.^ In fact, 
 army and government were one. War was the external purpose, 
 government the internal purpose, of one institution, composed 
 of one body of men. On the military side, this institution 
 carried on war abroad, repressed revolt at home, kept itself in 
 power, and preserved sufficient order in the empire to allow a 
 busy and varied economic and social activity. On the govern- 
 mental side, it supplied itself with funds, regulated its own work- 
 ings, — which was no small task, — kept the operations of the 
 other institutions of the empire in order, and enforced the law. 
 The high officials of government held high command in war. 
 The generals of the army had extensive administrative duties in 
 regard to the affairs of the troops under them, the management 
 of departments of state, or the government of provinces. 
 
 The scope of the present treatise confines the discussion of 
 the RuKng Institution as an army to those features which lie 
 nearest the governmental aspect. The great majority of its 
 members constituted the standing army of the empire, in the 
 two great sections of Janissaries, or infantry, and Spahis of the 
 Porte, or cavalry. Subordinate sections cared for the artillery 
 and transport services, and for other necessary adjuncts to cam- 
 paigning. Although the feudal SpaJiis did not receive pay from 
 the sultan, and hence were not properly kullar, their officers 
 were his slaves, even though many of them were supported 
 during their term of service from fiefs. Besides these regular 
 troops there were also attached to the Ottoman army certain 
 irregular bodies of a lower order, — the Akinji, the Azabs, the 
 Kurds, and so on. 
 
 The Janissaries 2 
 
 The body of regular infantry known as YenicJieri, or " new 
 troops," a name which the West has changed to Janissaries, 
 
 1 The Bostaujis, or gardeners, and other Ajem-oghlans of the palace service were 
 not left behind: D'Ohsson, vii. 326; Djevad Bey, i. 7. 
 
 * Extended accounts of the Janissaries may be found in D'Ohsson, vW. 310 fif.; 
 Hammer, Slaatsverwaltung, 192 ff.; Zinkeisen, iii. 201 fif.; Djevad Bey, vol. i, 
 book i.
 
 92 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 comes near to standing in the Western imagination for the 
 sultan's entire slave-family. ^ In the sixteenth century, however, 
 it formed not more than a fourth of the whole number; nor does 
 its importance seem to have been beyond its numerical propor- 
 tion, except in one or two respects. Since its members were 
 physically trained beyond comparison with their intellectual 
 education, since they were kept in poverty and hence were com- 
 paratively irresponsible, and since a large portion of them were 
 in comparative idleness in time of peace, they were liable to 
 act as an organized and very dangerous mob. They might 
 start a riot on short notice, or burn a section of the city in order 
 to pillage the neighboring houses, or rifle the shops of the Jews, 
 or plunder the grand vizier's establishment.^ They could not 
 easily be restrained from plundering cities which had capitulated 
 or from violating terms of surrender.^ They felt that the 
 death of a sultan gave them an interregnum of Hcense before the 
 accession of a new sovereign.^ They demanded donatives at 
 the succession of a new ruler with such increasing rapacity as 
 to embarrass the treasury;^ and they needed to be braced at 
 
 ^ For an example of the persistence of this idea, see Berard (1909), 12-13: 
 " La Turquie desormais subsiste par le janissaire et doit vivre pour le janissaire 
 d'abord. . . . depuis la prise de Rhodes (1522) jusqu'a I'apparition de la flotte 
 russe aux Dardanelles (1770), tant vaut le janissaire et tant vaut I'empire." Pro- 
 fessor A. C. Coolidge suggests that the hold which this remarkable organization 
 had upon the imagination of fellow-countrymen as well as of foreigners was in part 
 " due to the fact that in almost all Oriental history good infantr>'men have been 
 extremely rare, and the Janissaries were the only good infantr>'men in the Ottoman 
 Empire." It is also true that the Janissaries were that group within the Moslem 
 fold which came least under the taming and subordinating influence of the system; 
 they were a frontier province of Islamic society. "When in the seventeenth century 
 they ceased to be drawn directly from the Christian population and became a 
 variety of military aristocracy, not only did they remain in part a fighting infantry, 
 but their original freedom of spirit and action was by no means abandoned. 
 
 2 D'Ohsson, vii. 359-360; Hammer, Ceschichte, ii. 251, 361, iii. 45; Nicolay, 89. 
 
 ' Rhodes was pillaged after capitulation (1521), and so were Ofen (1529), and 
 Wychegrad (1544) : Hammer, Ceschichte, iii. 28, 83, 263. 
 
 * Ibid. ii. 252. Hence the death of a sultan was kept concealed until his 
 successor had assumed power {ibid. 535; iii. 449). 
 
 ^ Mohammed II gave them ten purses of gold (1451), ibid. i. 504; Bayezid II 
 gave them 2000 aspers each (1481), ibid. ii. 252; Selim I gave them 3000 aspers 
 each (15 1 2), ibid. 382; from Suleiman they asked 5000 aspers each, which he 
 compounded by giving them one-third in cash and increased pay (1520), ibid. iii. 6.
 
 THE ARMY 93 
 
 critical moments by liberal presents.' In time of battle, however, 
 they drew up an invincible line behind which the person of their 
 sovereign was as safe as in an impregnable fortress. Their 
 devotion to his person was the greater because they were in a 
 special sense his kullar, and because he was one of them, being 
 inscribed in one of their odas and receiving his pay regularly .^ 
 In small groups on garrison duty their severe training seems to 
 have made of them an efficient police.^ Yet their esprit de corps, 
 resting on consciousness of power, made them feared at all times. 
 They took an active part in determining the destinies of the 
 empire in two ways, — by limiting conquests, and by influencing 
 the succession to the throne.* They compelled the mighty 
 Selim to turn back from both Persia and Egypt. ^ They mur- 
 mured before Vienna, and without doubt hastened the raising 
 of the siege.^ 
 
 The Succession to the Throne 
 
 The Janissaries had no small influence in determining the 
 succession to the throne.^ There was no law fixing the succes- 
 sion, since neither the Sheri nor the Kanuns provided for such 
 things; ^ but it was a matter of fundamental custom that a prince 
 
 ^ Before Vienna (1529), ibid. 88; on march toward Persia (1534), ibid. 148; at 
 Tabriz {iszs),ibid. 158. 
 
 ^ This usage dates from Suleiman; D'Ohsson, vii. 354. 
 
 ' Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 86: the Janissaries " are scattered through every 
 part of the empire, either to garrison the forts against the enemy, or to protect 
 the Christians and Jews from the violence of the mob. There is no district with any 
 considerable amount of population, no borough or cit}', which has not a detachment 
 of Janissaries to protect the Christians, Jews, and other helpless people from 
 outrage and wrong." Janissaries might be detailed to attend on foreign ambassa- 
 dors, or to escort foreign travelers within the empire (Knolles, ed. 1687, p. 9S5). 
 
 * Nicolay, 89, was perhaps the first to point out the likeness of the Janissaries 
 to the Roman Pretorian Guard, and to see in them a great danger to the Ottoman 
 Empire. 
 
 ^ Hammer, GeschiclUc, ii. 420, 520. 
 
 8 7^)/^. iii. 88. 
 
 ' Trevisano, 129, says that they had sufficient authority on the death of a 
 sultan to give the empire to which of his sons they pleased. Cf. J. Soranzo, 248; 
 Morosini, 255; Garzoni, 432; Knolles (ed. 1687), 9S5 (" neither can any of 
 the Turks Sultans account themselves fully invested in the Imperial Dignity, 
 or assured of their Estate, until they be by them approved and proclaimed "). 
 
 * D'Ohsson, i. 278-284; Heidborn, 120.
 
 94 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 of the house of Osman should rule, and it was almost as funda- 
 mental that a son of a sultan should succeed him. Not until 
 1617 was the present rule established, by which the oldest male 
 of the royal house is heir apparent.^ Before that, when a sultan 
 had several sons, the eldest had no inherent right to succeed, 
 as is the practice in Western Europe. The Turkish father 
 naturally desired to choose which of his sons should follow him; 
 and to this end, when he gave them provincial governments, he 
 often placed the favorite nearest the capital. After Mohammed 
 II had issued his famous Kanun, by which the son who reached 
 the throne was legally authorized to execute his brothers,- a 
 situation of unstable equilibrium arose as soon as the sons of a 
 sultan began to grow up. Each knew that he must either 
 obtain the throne or die soon after his father; hence revolt was 
 almost forced upon a son who found himself placed farther from 
 the capital than a favored brother. When Bayezid II grew old 
 and feeble, his active and warlike son Selim opposed his wish 
 to leave the empire to Achmet; ^ in the end SeHm triumphed, 
 and Bayezid, forced to abdicate, met a death that was believed 
 by many not to have been natural.* The Janissaries turned 
 the scale in this struggle, and henceforth they were felt to be a 
 dangerous element whenever a sultan came to have more than 
 one growTi son. They had a great part in the death of both 
 Mustapha and Bayezid, the ablest sons of Suleiman; indeed, 
 their sympathy for the former was undoubtedly a chief reason 
 in determining Suleiman to execute him, since only thus could 
 his own safety be assured.^ In the case of Bayezid, the fact 
 that the Janissaries did not support him spelled his doom, even 
 though his father, beyond all precedent, pardoned his first revolt, 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, i. 284. This rule is sometimes stated erroneously as an old Turkish 
 custom, a provision of Mohammedan law, or an old Ottoman law or custom. 
 
 2 Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 98: " Kanun of the Security of the Throne: The 
 majority of Legists (Ulema) have declared it allowable, that whoever among 
 my illustrious children and grandchildren may come to the throne, should, for 
 securing the peace of the world, order his brothers to be executed. Let them 
 hereafter act accordingly." 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 352 flf. 
 
 ^ Menavino, 219; Trevisano, 129; Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 365. 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 314.
 
 THE ARMY 95 
 
 and though the influence of his mother Roxelana was strong in 
 his favor,^ Speculation is dangerous; but the Janissaries may 
 have done Western Europe a great service on these occasions. 
 Had either Mustapha or Bayezid come to the throne instead 
 of the drunken and dissolute Selim II, the issue of Lepanto 
 might have been difi'erent, a new expedition against Vienna led 
 by a vigorous and idohzed young monarch might have suc- 
 ceeded, the Ottoman power might have ruled more widely and 
 permanently than it did, and the decay of the Ruling Institu- 
 tion might have been long postponed.^ 
 
 The Janissaries in Suleiman's time numbered between twelve 
 and fourteen thousand ; ^ and this number probably did not 
 include the garrison which supported the power of the empire 
 in Egypt,^ still less that which upheld the corsair rule in North 
 Africa. Except in time of war many of the Janissaries were dis- 
 tributed in garrisons, so that probably not more than half resided 
 in the capital.^ Such of these as were married lived at home, and 
 the others were lodged in two great barracks.^ They were organ- 
 ized in messes of ten; ten messes constituted an orta or oda, of 
 
 1 Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 185-189. 
 
 ^ Postel, iii. 87, says, about 1537: Suleiman " has among others a son named 
 Mustapha, marvelously well educated and prudent and of the age to reign; for 
 he is 23 or 24 years old; and God grant that so great an atrocity may not come 
 so near us {Dieii ne permette qu'tote Barbarie si grande vienne si pres dc ftous)." 
 
 ' 10,000 is the number according to Bragadino, 106. 12,000 is given by almost 
 all contemporaries: Ramberti, below, p. 249; Junis Bey, below, p. 266; Giovio, 
 Commenlarius, y6; Geuffroy, 234; Navagero, 53; Trevisano, 128; Barbaro, 305; 
 Postel, iii. 30; Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 86; Nicolay, 88; Erizzo, 127. Nava- 
 gero, 56, says some think that 15,500 or 16,000 were inscribed; and Garzoni, 
 416, says that there were 13,000 or 14,000. Djevad Bey, i. 90, gives 12,000 in 
 1523, and 13,599 ii^ i574- I" 1564 D. Barbarigo, 33, gives a precise number, 
 13,502. D'Ohsson, vii. 330, says, without stating any authority and against the 
 above contemporary evidence, that Suleiman raised the number to 40,000. Ham- 
 mer {Geschichte, i. 95, and iii. 473) says, referring to D'Ohsson, that Suleiman had 
 20,000; hut inhi?, Staatsverwaltung, 195, he stales that Suleiman had only 12,000 
 before Szigets. Knollcs (ed. 1687, p. 990) says, about 1603, that the Janissaries 
 numbered not over 12,000 to 14,000. 
 
 * Junis Bey, 272, and Ludovisi, 17, give the number of this garrison as 3000. 
 Postel, 38, gives the number as 30,000; this must include the Mamelukes. 
 
 * Giovio, Commoitarius, 77: about 6000 of the older of them stay about the 
 Prince. Navagero, 55: 8000 to 10,000 are always ready. 
 
 6 Ramberti, 249; Junis Bey, 267.
 
 g6 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 which there were one hundred and sixty-five in Suleiman's time.^ 
 Each orta had its ofiEicers, who had been promoted from its ranks; 
 and above all the ortas was a graded set of officers, under the 
 Agha, or general, of the Janissaries.^ This official had never 
 been a Janissary, but had come through the colleges of pages.^ 
 He not merely commanded the Janissaries, but was a sort of 
 minister of war for them. Aided by his Kiaya, or lieutenant,* 
 his chief Yaziji, or scribe, and a bureau of clerks, he directed 
 their enrolment, the distribution of their pay, their promotions, 
 their location, the purchase of their supplies and clothing, and 
 all the other business of the corps. He was well paid and was 
 of great authority, outranking all other generals, though on 
 some occasions he was obliged to yield precedence to two of 
 the generals of cavalry, whose corps were older than those of 
 the Janissaries.^ 
 
 The Janissaries had a regular ladder of promotion through 
 the offices of their odas and above, as far as the position of 
 Segban-bashi, which was the office next below that of Agha.^ 
 One hundred and fifty of their best bowmen were honored by 
 being detailed to accompany the sultan on the march, as his 
 SolaksJ They might also for distinguished abihty or service 
 be taken into the regular cavalry, and have all its opportunities 
 open to them. No less than the rest of the army, they kept 
 
 ^ Hammer, Slaatsverwaltiing, 194; Ricaut, 365 (mentions 162 odalar); Djevad 
 Bey, i. 28. In Chalcocondyles's time (1465), 97, the strength of each oda seems to 
 have been of 50 men. In Suleiman's time it was less than 100. Later it became 
 much larger. 
 
 ^ Nicolay, 96-97; D'Ohsson, vii. 313-320; Hammer, StaatsverwaUiing, 201 ff.; 
 Djevad Bey, i. 35, 45. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, vii. 314; Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 428. This was the case only from 
 1515 to 1582. 
 
 * Kiaya is a word which offered infinite difficulties of pronunciation and spell- 
 ing; for example, gachaia, cacaia, checaya, quaia, queaya, caia, cahaia, chiccaia, 
 chechessi. Some authors employ a different spelling each time they use the word. 
 Trevisano, 118, gives chietcudasci. Kiaya represents the popular pronuncia- 
 tion. The more nearly correct form of the word, following the Turkish spelling, 
 is kelkhuda. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, vii. 353. 
 ^ Djevad Bey, i. 35. 
 
 ' Ramberti, below, p. 250; Junis Bey, below, p. 266.
 
 THE ARMY 97 
 
 marvellous order in camp, and, except at the crises above de- 
 scribed, were completely obedient to their officers. ' They were 
 punishable only by their own officers, not even the grand vizier 
 having direct jurisdiction over them.^ They had a strong sense 
 of maintaining their privileges and what they considered to be 
 their rights. Busbecq, who gives illumination at so many 
 points, shows how the grand vizier Rustem, and even Suleiman 
 himself, felt toward these men when they were all together and 
 their blood was hot. On one occasion Busbecq's servants 
 quarreled with some Janissaries, and he was disposed to back 
 his men up; whereupon Rustem sent a trusty messenger to 
 him with a verbal message, asking him " to remove every cause 
 of offence which might occasion a quarrel with those atrocious 
 scoundrels. Was I not aware," he asked, " that it was war 
 time, when they were masters, so that not even Solyman him- 
 self had control over them, and was actually himself afraid of 
 receiving violence at their hands ? " ^ Great care had to be 
 taken to keep the Janissaries under control, for they were capable 
 of wrecking the whole government. They were, to be sure, 
 constantly drained of their ablest men by promotion; but this 
 only left the others the more liable, like sheep, to follow a new 
 leader into evil. They could be repressed more or less by pun- 
 ishment: now and then an especially active promoter of trouble 
 was executed ; "* officers who offended were sometimes sent to 
 command distant garrisons, and sometimes they were stricken 
 from the roll.^ Suleiman succeeded, on the whole, in keeping 
 the Janissaries in hand, and he was able to lead them farther 
 east than could his father Selim. They never revolted against 
 him,® and they supported him against Bayezid. 
 
 1 Ludovisi (1534), 9, gives a pessimistic account of them; according to him, 
 they had not the order or the discipline or the astuteness which was found in the 
 Christian infantry. Postel, iii. 30, praises them greatly for order, frugality, and 
 temperance. Djevad Bey, i. 56-64, gives a favorable description; he says (p. 56) 
 that the first of their fundamental laws enjoined absolute obedience. 
 
 2 Postel, iii. 31; D'Ohsson, vii. 353; Djevad Bey, i. 66, 69. 
 ' Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 296. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, vii. 351; Djevad Bey, i. 56-59. 
 
 ' Ramberti, below, p. 249; Junis Bey, below, p. 267; D'Ohsson, vii. 352. 
 
 • Djevad Bey, i. 289.
 
 98 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 The Spahis of the Porte ^ 
 
 The regular cavalry were all included under the general name 
 of Spahis, or horsemen; but the name was also applied to one 
 of the four divisions into which Osman's corps of daring riders 
 had been organized after the model of the cavalry of the caliph 
 Omar I.^ Their organization was older than that of the Janis- 
 saries; it had come down continuously from the early days.^ 
 The members were not organized into a single body, they had 
 high pay, and they were in the presence of excellent opportuni- 
 ties to acquire wealth and to rise with rapidity. Accordingly, 
 they appear never to have caused Suleiman any special trouble.^ 
 
 The four corps were the Spahis in the narrower sense, often 
 called Spahi-Oghlans; the Silihdars, or weapon-bearers; the 
 Ulufajis, or paid troops, in two divisions, the left and the right-, 
 and the Ghurebas, or Foreign Legion, also in two divisions, the 
 left and the right.^ The Spahis were most honored and best 
 paid, but each had to bring with him to war five or six armed 
 slaves on horseback. The Silihdars had less pay and furnished 
 four or five horsemen. The Ulufajis furnished two or three 
 horsemen each.^ These three corps were recruited from the 
 pages and the Janissaries, the Ulufajis receiving also occasional 
 members by special promotions from the irregular troops.'' 
 The Foreign Legion had least pay of all, and its members came 
 alone; not having begun as the sultan's kullar, and often not 
 
 ^ This name for the sultan's paid cavalry is that regularly employed by the 
 Venetian writers of the sixteenth century: for example, Moro, 337; Bernardo, 330. 
 2 Hammer, Geschichte, i. 95. 
 ^ D'Ohsson, vii. 353. 
 
 * For the great disturbance which they raised in 1593, see Zinkeisen, iii. 79. 
 5 All of these names are spelled with an ingenious variety in contemporary 
 
 writings: — 
 
 Spahi: spai, spachi, sipahi, sipah, spacoillain (spahi-oghlan). 
 
 Silihdar: selicter, sillictar, sulastrus, suluphtar. 
 
 Ulnfagi: holofagi, allophase. 
 
 Ghureba: caripy, caripicus, ciarcagi, caripp (oglan) , gharib (oglan), capi (oglan) 
 
 The word Spahi is of identical derivation with Sepoy. 
 
 * Ramberti, below, p. 250; Junis Bey, below, p. 267; Postel, iii. 34. Giovio 
 {Commentarius, 75) says that some Spahis brought as many as ten horsemen. 
 
 ^ Giovio, 75; Postel, iii. 35.
 
 TUE AmiY 99 
 
 even as Ottomans, they enjoyed small honor.^ Each of the 
 first two corps, and each division of the last two corps of the 
 Spahis of the Porte, was organized separately after the fashion 
 of the Janissaries, with its own general, who supervised the 
 administration of all its affairs.^ The number of the Spahis 
 of the Porte is given on two bases. In Suleiman's time the actual 
 members of the four corps counted from ten to twelve thousand 
 men, or a little less than the number of the Janissaries; ^ but, 
 since most of them had each to bring from two to six additional 
 horsemen, the total force which they assembled was from forty 
 to fifty thousand.'* Whether the entire number or only the actual 
 members were regularly considered to be the sultan's kullar, 
 
 ' They were called " poor youth " by Menavino, 152; Junis Bey, 267; Ram- 
 bcrti, 251; Trevisano, 126; Postel, iii. 36. Spandugino, 97, says that they were 
 strangers from Asia, Egypt, and Africa. Giovio, 76, says that they were all 
 Moslems from Persia, Turcomania, Syria, Africa, Arabia, Scythia, and even India; 
 but he is wrong in confining them to Moslems in the sixteenth century. Trevi- 
 sano, 126, asserts that they were renegades from every nation; and on this 
 authority Zinkeisen falls into the opposite error of confining them to Christian 
 renegades. Postel, iii. 36, says that they were chosen from the Akinjl, Kurds, 
 and Azabs. Menavino, 152, declares that they were not slaves of the great Turk, 
 but that part were Turks, part Christian renegades, and part Arabs (Mori). 
 
 2 The Spaltis of the Porte are discussed at length in D'Ohsson, vii. 364 ff.; 
 Hammer, Slaatsvcrwaltung, 237 ff.; Zinkeisen, iii. 168 fT. 
 
 * Giovio {Cojnmentarius, 75) mentions 2000 in each of the first two corps, 
 and 1000 in each of the second two. Junis Bey (below, p. 267) puts 3000 in each 
 of the first two corps, 2000 in each of the second two. Ramberti (below, p. 250) 
 gives more than 3000 Spahi-oghlans, 3000 SUihdars, and 2000 in each of the other 
 corps. Ludovisi, 15, puts 3000 in each of the first two, 2500 in the third, and 
 2000 in the fourth. Trevisano, 125, puts 2000 in each but the fourth, which 
 contained 1500. D. Barbarigo, ^^, mentions 7095 Spahis. Barbaro, 304, says 
 that there were 15,000 Spahis of the Porte. There were under pay in 1660, 
 after serious changes, 7203 Spahis, 6254 SUihdars, 976 Ulufajis, and 722 Ghurebas: 
 Hammer, Staalsveruvltimg, 175. 
 
 * A calculation based on Junis Bey's statements gives a total of between 41,000 
 and 40,000. Garzoni, 413, says distinctly that there were 40,000 Spahis of the 
 Porte paid out of the sultan's treasury; that among these were 3000 Spahi-oghlans, 
 3000 SUihdars, 3000 Ulufajis, and 2000 Ghurebas (ciarcagi); and that the grand 
 vizier had 1000 Spahis assigned to his retinue, and the other viziers each 500. 
 D'Ohsson, vii. 364-365, states that the Spahis proper in the time of Moham- 
 med II, numbered 10,000, and that .Achmet III, raised their strength to 12,000; 
 like figures for the Silihdars were 8000 and 12,000. This estimate must include 
 the additional horsemen.
 
 lOO THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 under his pay, does not appear clearly. Probably he did not 
 pay the additional horsemen directly; for strictly speaking, they 
 were kullar of his kullar. In time of battle all the regular troops, 
 Spahis and Janissaries aUke, were drawn up to protect the sultan, 
 the Janissaries being aligned in front, the Spahis proper on the 
 right, the Silihdars on the left, and the Ulujajis and Ghurehas 
 in the rear.^ 
 
 The Feudal Spahis ^ 
 
 Outside the towns the greater part of the European dominions 
 of the sultan, and a large part of Asia Minor, were granted in 
 fief to Moslems who were for the most part not kullar of the 
 sultan. 3 They deserve to be considered in a discussion of the 
 government, however, not only because they collected the 
 revenues and exercised seigniorial jurisdiction in their estates,^ 
 but also because they were ofl&cered by the sultan's kullar. 
 The estates were of different sizes and were reckoned in three 
 classes: timars, when the yearly revenue was under twenty 
 thousand aspers; ziamets, when it was twenty thousand to one 
 hundred thousand aspers; khasses, when it was over one hundred 
 
 ' Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 57; Menavino, 148, 151. 
 
 2 See above, pp. 47 (note i), 91. The Ottoman feudal sj'stem is discussed at 
 length in Hammer, Staatsverfassttng, 337 ff.; D'Ohsson, vii. 372 ff.; Zinkeisen, iii. 
 145 ff.; Belin, Du Regime des Fiefs Militaires en Turquie; Tischendorf, Mos- 
 lemisches Lehnswesen. 
 
 3 Junis Bey (below, p. 271) says, shortly after describing the feudal Spahis of 
 Europe, that " all the Spahis are slaves and sons of slaves of the Seigneur (Tutti 
 It spachi sono schiaiii b° fgli de schiaiii del Sig[nor\);'^ but this statement is 
 incomplete. Ramberti (below, p. 256) adds, " and sons of Spahis." The latter 
 group undoubtedly contained the great majority of the feudal Spahis. Geuffroy 
 246, enlarges on the statement by saying that the 30,000 feudal Spahis of Europe 
 were all Ajem-oghlans and slaves of the great Turk. Xo other writer terms them 
 kullar. Garzoni, 412, calls them Turkish soldiers. The whole theory of the 
 Ottoman feudal system made them such; the smaller fiefs were hereditary from of 
 old, and gaps were filled from volunteers with the army, who must have been 
 Moslems, since Christians were not allowed to bear arms: Hammer, Staatsver- 
 fassung, 349 ff. (" Kanun-nameh of the granting of Timars and Ziamets ")■ 
 
 * Junis Bey, p. 271 (they collect the income from the Christians, etc.); Moro, 
 339 (they are appointed by the king to administer justice); Hammer, Ge- 
 schichte, iii. 478; D'Ohsson, vii. 373. Heidborn, 157, discusses their duties in 
 some detail.
 
 TEE ARMY lOI 
 
 thousand aspers.^ Timars might be united into a ziamet, but 
 
 ziamels could not be divided.- Every fief-holder must appear 
 
 in person when summoned to war. If the annual income of a 
 
 Timarji, or Timariote, reached six thousand aspers, he must 
 
 bring with him an armed horseman; and he must bring another 
 
 for each additional three thousand aspers of his revenue. The 
 
 holder of a larger fief must bring with him an armed horseman 
 
 if his income amounted to ten thousand aspers, and another 
 
 horseman for each additional five thousand aspers of income.^ 
 
 In the sixteenth century this service was strictly exacted, and the 
 
 fief-holders were held to residence on their estates. The principle 
 
 of heredity entered into the distribution of these estates, but 
 
 under limitations. One son of the holder of a small fief had a 
 
 right to the fief;'* not more than three sons of the holder of a 
 
 large fief were entitled to small fiefs.^ The sons of kiillar in 
 
 high position might receive fiefs large in proportion to the rank 
 
 of their father;^ by this means they were honorably conveyed 
 
 from the ruling Institution into the Moslem population. The 
 
 Zaims and Timariotes, as the holders of the corresponding fiefs 
 
 were named, were a class of country gentlemen, honest, sober, 
 
 true to the Moslem faith and to the sultan, better in morals than 
 
 the kullar if not so able of intellect, the substantial middle class 
 
 of the empire, ancestors of those who today give hope that 
 
 Turkey may become a modern nation. It was these who gave 
 
 the first training to the Ajem-oghlans, starting them well on the 
 
 road from Christianity to Islam, and preparing them to become 
 
 members of the Ottoman nation. 
 
 * Hammer, Staatsverwaltung, 275; Heidborn, 145, 
 2 Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 476. 
 
 ' Spandugino, 146, states that under Mohammed II, each fief-holder who had 
 5000 aspers of income was obliged to bring another with him to war; but in his 
 time (under Bayezid II) this obligation was imposed upon those who had 3000 
 aspers, unless retired on account of age. Rambcrti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 256- 
 271) say that for each 100 ducats a Spahi must keep an armed horseman, and 
 three or four servants, and a like number of hurses; see also D'Ohsson, vii. 373. 
 Heidborn, 145, states that holders of timars brought an additional warrior for 
 each 3000 aspers of income, and holders of ziamels an additional one for each 5000 
 aspers; but in any case the first 3000 aspers was exempt. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, vii. 374. 
 
 5 Hammer, Slaaisvcrfassufig, 352. • Ibid. 94.
 
 I02 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 In the time of Suleiman the system of fiefs had become greatly 
 disarranged. 1 The distribution of them had been left to the 
 local governors, and corruption had crept in; the frequent 
 wars also had led to rapid changes and consequent confusion. 
 Moreover, the army always contained a large number of Gon- 
 nullu, or volunteers, who came at their own expense, and fought 
 with the hope, often realized, of receiving the fiefs of slain men 
 as the reward of signally brave conduct.^ It is said that during 
 the course of a single bloody day one fief changed owners seven 
 times. If fiefs might thus be granted in the midst of battle, 
 it is not easy to see how a condition of reasonable order could 
 have been preserved in the feudal system. Suleiman, therefore, 
 by a Kanun of the year 1530, attached the granting of all fiefs 
 above a certain size once more to the central government.^ 
 Each holder of such a fief must obtain a teskereh, or document, 
 from Constantinople, in order to have good title.^ The central 
 treasury administered such estates during vacancies. Only 
 those fief-holders who held by teskereh were entitled to be called 
 Spahis;^ the others were known as Timarjis, or Timariotes. 
 The feudal Spahis of Anatolia were more under the authority 
 of the governor than were those of Europe; they were not so well 
 paid, did not have so much practice in fighting, and were not so 
 highly esteemed as soldiers.^ 
 
 Thus the country gentry were kept under good control; the 
 accumulation of estates was prevented, any tendency toward 
 independence could easily be thwarted, and the sultan obtained 
 regularly the service for which the lands were granted. In 
 addition, most of the subject Christian population was governed 
 locally without any trouble to the sultan, and was held down 
 well and uniformly by resident seigneurs. A great advantage 
 
 ^ Hammer {ibid. 143 ff.) describes Suleiman's legislation, giving translations 
 of much of it. 
 
 2 Ricaut, 343- 
 
 ' D'Ohsson, vii. 374; Hammer, Staalsverfassung, 352 ff. 
 
 ^ The limit differed according to region. In Rumelia a teskereh was required 
 for all timars of 6000 aspers and over, and for all ziamets: Hammer, Staalsverwal- 
 tung, 275. 
 
 ^ Ramberti (below, p. 256) gives this limit as 100 ducats, or 5000 aspers. 
 
 8 Garzoni, 413; Tanco, 209.
 
 THE ARMY IO3 
 
 of the system was that, by the granting of new fiefs in newly- 
 conquered lands, the territorial army was automatically increased 
 in proportion to the increase of the empire.' 
 
 Officers of the Feudal Spahis 
 
 Local government and the command of the feudal Spahis 
 was cared for by officials who belonged to the sultan's great 
 slave-family, and who brought with them to their posts a number, 
 proportioned to their rank, of Spahis of the Porte, pages, Ajem- 
 oghlans, and slaves of their own. The lowest of these officers 
 were the Subashis, or captains, who were in time of peace gover- 
 nors of towns, with enough Janissaries and Azabs, or irregular 
 infantry, to police the locality.^ Next above these were the 
 Alai Beys, or colonels, who in time of peace were ready with a 
 company of from two hundred to five hundred troops to pass 
 from place to place as there might be need.^ Above these again 
 were the Sanjak Beys, who governed important cities and held 
 superior rule over a number of towns and the district in which 
 they lay/ Finally, in the Balkan Peninsula and in Western 
 Asia Minor there was from of old a Beylerbey, who had authority 
 over all the Beys of his region. Incomes were provided by the 
 assignment of fiefs proportioned in size to each officer's impor- 
 tance.^ All of these officers of local government had a sufficient 
 staff of lieutenants, treasurers, book-keepers and clerks.^ The 
 Beylerbey of Rumelia resided in time of peace at Constantinople. 
 The Beylerbey of Anatolia seems to have spent much time in his 
 
 ^ Bernardo, 329; KnoUes (ed. 1687), 983. 
 
 2 Spandugino, 211; Zinkeiscn, iii. 129. The feudal Spain's had lower officers 
 who were not sent out from the capital, such as the Cheri-bashis. 
 
 ' The name means " ensign bey," and was translated flambole: for example, 
 Geuffroy, 246. 
 
 * Postcl, iii. 44; Ticpolo, 138. 
 
 * Heidborn, 140, says that the Subashis had ziamets, the Alai Beys had small 
 khasses, the Sanjak Beys had khasses of a million aspers or more, and the Beylerbeys 
 much more. The amount which he assigns to the Sanjak Beys is too large for 
 Suleiman's time. Ramberti (below, pp. 250-258) gives their income at from 
 4000 to 12,000 ducats, which would amount to from 200,000 to 600,000 aspers. 
 
 6 Ramberti, below, p. 256; Junis Bey, below, p. 271.
 
 I04 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 dominions/ though undoubtedly he was often at the capital, 
 since he had his regular place in the Divan. 
 
 In time of war this official scheme, detached from its function 
 of local government, drew together the feudal Spahis, section 
 by section, into a perfectly organized territorial army for each 
 of the two regions. Notice of time and place was sent round, 
 and within a month every man called had joined his proper 
 standard.2 After uniting with the sultan's regular army, the 
 army of Rumelia under its Beylerbey had the right of the battle- 
 line when fighting in Europe, and the army of Anatolia under 
 its Beylerbey had the right of the line when fighting in Asia.^ 
 The enrolled feudal troops of Europe numbered about fifty 
 thousand, and those of Asia, including Anatolia, Karamania, 
 Amasia, and Avandole, thirty thousand.^ In each case the 
 number should be doubled or tripled to allow for the additional 
 horsemen which all the Spahis were required to bring.^ On the 
 other hand, a considerable proportion of the feudal troops, 
 
 1 Menavino, i86, igo, says that in his time the Beylerbey of Anatolia resided 
 at Kutaia (Custage). Ramberti, 259, mentions the same place (Chiothachie) as 
 the seat of his sanjakate. Knolles (ed. i6S7,p. 986) says that all the Beylerbeys 
 except the Beylerbey of Rumelia were supposed to reside within their dominions. 
 
 2 Tractakis, ch. xi. ^ Trevisano, 132. 
 
 ^ In Europe 30,000 Spahis and 20,000 Timarjis; in Anatolia 12,000 Spahis; 
 in Karamania 7000, Amasia 4000, and Avandole 7000. This is the estimate of 
 Junis Bey and Ramberti, which Geuffroy, 247, follows, and which Postel, iii. 
 37 ff., changes a little (Karamania 5000 instead of 7000, Amasia omitted). 
 Ludovisi, 16, gives practically the same figures. Navagero, 41, gives 40,000 
 in Europe and 80,000 to 100,000 in Asia, the latter figure probably including the 
 troops of Syria and Mesopotamia, and of Egypt, which was not provided with fiefs 
 in the same way. Barbaro, 304, and Garzoni, 412, mention 80,000 in Europe 
 and 50,000 in Asia. D. Barbarigo (1558), 33, speaks of a sum total of 160,000 
 feudal Spahis. Tiepolo (1576), 140, speaks of 60,000 timars in Europe which sent 
 80,000 Spahis, and 50,000 Spahis from Asia. The number may have increased 
 about one-half during Suleiman's regin, but it is more likely that all the groups of 
 figures are only estimates. Ricaut, 341, after careful inquiry, gives the number 
 of Zaims in his time as 10,948, and of Timarjis as 72,436, for the whole empire 
 except Egypt. He thinks that this estimate should be increased to 100,000. The 
 total feudal contingent in the time of Achmet I, was by Turkish authority about 
 the same (Tischendorf, 57 ff.). D'Ohsson, vii. 375, estimates the feudal troops 
 at 200,000 in Suleiman's time; on p. 381, however, he speaks of more than 150,000 
 men. See below, p. 107, n. i. 
 
 ^ Postel, iii. 38 (" triple pour le moins ")•
 
 THE ARMY I05 
 
 sometimes estimated at one-half/ remained on duty at home 
 in time of war to protect the provinces and prevent uprisings. 
 The feudal troops, while brave, eager, and regardless of their 
 lives, had not the physical strength nor the practice of fighting 
 in squadrons which the regular troops had, and hence were not 
 their equals. 
 
 The Beylerbeys of Rumeha and Anatolia were called out with 
 their troops for every campaign. The eight other Beylerbeys 
 of Suleiman's time, — those of Karamania, Amasia, Avandole, 
 Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Hungary ,2 and Temesvar,^ — 
 who had fewer feudal troops at command and more need of them 
 at home, were summoned only when the war was in their region. 
 
 Other Bodies of Troops 
 
 There were three principal bodies of irregular troops, the 
 Akinji or cavalry, the Azahs or infantry, and the Kurds; besides 
 various smaller groups, such as the descendants of the ancient 
 corps of Yayas and Mosellems, who held fiefs of a sort in the 
 oldest sanjaks of the empire, and the Deli or " crazy " company 
 of scouts."* The Akinji numbered perhaps thirty thousand in 
 time of peace and were mainly near the European frontier, where 
 they made a living by raiding. They received no pay either in 
 peace or in war, but gathered booty and slaves and hoped for 
 promotion.^ The Azahs numbered perhaps ten thousand in 
 
 1 Chesneau, 46; D'Ohsson, vii. 381. KnoUes (ed. 1687, p. 990) says that not 
 over one-third could safely be called to arms. 
 
 2 After the year 1541: Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 232. 
 
 3 After the year 1552: Trevisano, 124. The number of the Beylerbeys was 
 greatly increased in the last third of the sixteenth century. KnoUes, 9S6-988, 
 mentions live in Europe, 30 in Asia, and 4 in Africa, besides the Bcylerbcy of the 
 Sea, whose office was created by Suleiman, but who is not mentioned above as having 
 no part in the army. 
 
 ^ Spandugino, 153; Nicoiay, 160. 
 
 ^ The name akinji is variously spelled: yachinji, alcanzi, alcangi, aconiziae, 
 alengi, aquangi, achiar, aghiar. Spandugino, 150, says that the sultan can collect 
 200,000 of these for the war; Rambcrti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 257, 271) men- 
 tion 60,000 as inscribed; Giovio {CommcnUiriits, 81) names 30,000; Garzoni, 414, 
 says 25,000 or 30,000; Postel, iii. 26, says 50,000 or 60,000. Ramberti, 271, tells 
 us that when in arms they were entitled to living expenses from the villages near 
 which they passed.
 
 Io6 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 peace and forty thousand in war.^ Some of them sensed in the 
 garrisons and some with the fleet.- The number of the Akinjis 
 and Azahs was greatly augmented in time of war by the addition 
 of volunteers, many of whom were criminals and rufiians.^ 
 The irregular troops were the terror of the invaded lands in war 
 time; for the regular army was held under iron discipline, but 
 these irresponsible creatures carried fire, rapine, and sword over 
 wide areas of country. In time of siege and battle the Azahs 
 were sent forward to break the charge of the enemy, or to aid in 
 filling the moats by their own bodies.^ Such as lived were 
 rewarded generously; the rest were believed to pass at once by 
 a martyr's death to heavenly reward.^ The Kurds lay near the 
 Persian frontier to the number of about thirty thousand. Indi- 
 viduals among the Akinji, Azahs, and Kurds might hope to 
 become gentlemen through distinguished bravery, by being made 
 Ulufajis among the Spahis of the Porte.^ 
 
 Attached to the regular army there were also various auxil- 
 iary corps of armorers, cannoneers, men of transport service, 
 musicians, commissaries, and the Hke, to the number of three 
 or four thousand in all.^ The Tartars of the Crimea, and the 
 Moldavians and Wallachians, were also obhged to furnish con- 
 tingents.^ All told, the enrolled strength of the entire army 
 was something more or less than two hundred thousand men. 
 But, since the Spahis were required to bring other fighting men 
 with them in proportion to their revenues, since numerous slaves 
 and private servants accompanied the soldiers, and since the 
 feudal and irregular troops were joined by great numbers of 
 volunteers, both horse and foot, high and low, the complete 
 
 1 Zinkeisen, iii. 203. 
 
 2 Spandugino, 152. Junis Bey, 270, mentions 1000 with the fleet, and Postel, 
 iii. 71, mentions 10,000. 
 
 * Postel, iii. 26. 
 
 * Chalcocondyles, 135; Giovio, Commentarius , 81, etc. 
 ^ Spandugino, 151. 
 
 6 See above, p. 98. 
 
 ' Junis Bey, below, p. 268. In addition were several thousand saddlers, etc., 
 who were not reckoned as regular troops: the Bostanjis, older pages, body-guards, 
 etc. 
 
 8 KnoUes (ed. 1687), 984.
 
 THE ARMY I07 
 
 army for the greatest expeditions probably numbered about 
 three hundred thousand men.' At the close of Suleiman's 
 reign the paid nucleus was about fifty thousand strong; the 
 feudal Spahis for a European campaign numbered about 
 sixty thousand, with perhaps a like number of helpers. The 
 remaining troops were of no great value in battle, unless to 
 break the first shock of the enemy's charge. They served 
 chiefly to lay waste the hostile country and to gather booty and 
 slaves. 
 
 ' Several contemporary estimates of the complete army may be compared: 
 Marini Sanuto, under date of October 26, 1529, gives an estimate of the Turkish 
 army then before Vienna as containing 305,200 men. The same writer {Diarii, 
 Ivi) gives three or four estimates from the year 1532, when Suleiman went forth 
 on the Giins campaign: on p. 768, Suleiman's army is said to contain 500,000 
 men; on p. 870 is found an account of Suleiman's entry into Belgrade, in which 
 170,300 men are mentioned, besides " adventurers " and " many others "; on the 
 same page is estimated the number with which the Sultan was to leave Belgrade, 
 which sums up 284,500, and does not seem to account fully for the territorial armies; 
 on p. 894 he summarizes a despatch from Ratisbon, dated August 23, 1532, which 
 relates the testimony of three Turkish prisoners to the effect that the Turkish army 
 numbers over 300,000 persons, but that not over 80,000 are good fighting men. 
 Postel, iii. 38, estimates the enrolled army at 218,000, and the whole at 500,000. 
 He states elsewhere that Suleiman took 500,000 men with him on the Persian 
 expedition of 1534-35. Chesneau's impression (pp. 106-108) of Suleiman's army, 
 when he saw it near Aleppo in the spring of 1549, was that it occupied 80,000 
 to 100,000 tents, on a plain eight to ten miles long; that it contained 300,000 to 
 400,000 fighting men, of whom all but 10,000 or 12,000 Janissaries were on horse- 
 back; and that the total number of persons assembled was about a million. Ches- 
 neau's chief, the ambassador D'Aramont, writing concerning the same expedition 
 from Esdron (Erzerum ?) a few weeks later, speaks of " the mass of his (Suleiman's) 
 army, which is by common estimate of 300,000 men, as may be Judged from the 
 extent of the camp, which extends ten or twelve miles in length, and contains at 
 least 60,000 tents or more, with such order and obedience that, considering the 
 great multitude, it is almost unbelievable " (Charriere, ii. 68). In the year 1558, 
 A. Barharigo, 150-151, estimated the cavalry alone at more than 300,000. 
 Twenty-six years after Suleiman's death Bernardo, 331, says that the paid troops, 
 in which he includes the sultan's household and the feudal army, amounted to 
 250,000 men. Zinkeisen, iii. 199, estimates the extreme total of the sultan's 
 cavalry alone at 565,000. Knolles (ed. 1687, p. 984), writing about 1603, says that 
 the sultan could always gather 150,000 Timariotcs for a great expedition. He 
 says that the Timariotes numbered in all 719,000 fighting men, of whom 257,000 
 were in Europe and 426,000 in Asia. The last two estimates are incredibly 
 large.
 
 Io8 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 Discipline and Ardor 
 
 Contemporary observers were strongly impressed with the 
 wonderful discipline and intense zeal for fighting that was seen 
 among the Turks. The silence, order, and cleanliness of the 
 camps, the absolute obedience, enforced if need be by severe 
 punishments and executions, the submissiveness to long marches, 
 hard labor, and scanty food, the eagerness for battle, the joy 
 in conflict, the recklessness of life, presented a perfection of 
 discipline, self-control, and single-hearted purpose that seemed 
 miraculous. A few of the many witnesses may be heard briefly: 
 
 " The Turks come together for war as though they had been 
 invited to a wedding." ^ 
 
 " The Great Turk is the best obeyed by his subjects of all the 
 lords that I know." 2 
 
 " I think there is no prince in all the world who has his armies 
 and camps in better order, both as regards the abundance of 
 victuals and of all other necessities which are usually provided, 
 and as regards the beautiful order and manner they use, in en- 
 camping without any confusion or embarrassment." ' 
 
 " Their military discipline has such justice and severity as 
 easily to surpass the ancient Greeks and Romans; the Turks 
 surpass our soldiers for three reasons: they obey their com- 
 manders promptly; they never show the least concern for their 
 lives in battle; they can live a long time without bread and wine, 
 content with barley and water." * 
 
 " Peace and silence reign in a Turkish camp. . . . Such is 
 the result produced by military disciphne, and the stern laws 
 bequeathed them by their ancestors." ^ 
 
 " It is marvellous how the force and rigor of justice increase 
 in war. ... If the soldiers rob or beat, the head comes off, 
 or they are so beaten that they can never be well again." ^ 
 
 ^ Tradalus, ch. xi, marginal summary. 
 2 La Broquiere, 273. 
 ^ Chalcocondyles, 135. 
 * Giovio, Commentarius, 83 (condensed). 
 
 ^ Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 293; on p. 221 he compares Turkish and 
 Western soldiers most unfavorably for the latter. 
 
 ^ Postel, i. 126; see also Dandolo, 166. Georgevitz, 45, says that he accom-
 
 THE ARMY IO9 
 
 " They keep the divinest order in the world." ^ 
 " In truth the disciphne could not be better, nor the obedience 
 greater." ^ 
 
 " For such as are acquainted with the Histories of the Turkish 
 affaires, and doe aduisedly looke into the order and course of 
 their proceedinges: doe well perceiue, that the chief est cause 
 of their sodaine and fearefull puissaunce, hath beene the excel- 
 lencie of their Martial discipline joyned with a singular desire 
 and resolution to aduaunce and enlarge both the bounds of their 
 Empire and the profession of their Religion. The which was 
 alwaies accompanied with such notable Policie and prudence, 
 that the singularitie of their vertue and good gouernment, 
 hath made their Armes alwaies fearefull and fortunate, and 
 consequently, hath caused the greatnesse of their estate." ^ 
 
 The Supreme Command 
 
 The sultan was commander-in-chief of the entire army, 
 standing, feudal, and irregular. When the army was summoned 
 for a great campaign, it gathered about him; on the march and 
 in camp every body of troops had its place with reference to him ; ^ 
 in formation of battle, he was the central point about which the 
 whole vast display was organized. When the army was assem- 
 bled, and then only, the sultan stood forth visibly and palpably 
 as the head and center of the Ruling Institution and of the 
 Ottoman nation upon which it rested. His kullar were gathered 
 about him in devotion of body and soul; they were going forth 
 under his leadership against the infidel or the heretic; they were 
 manifesting the results of the long and careful training that he 
 had given them; they marched, encamped, and fought under 
 his eye and command; they formed an honored and privileged 
 
 panied the Turkish army on an expedition against Persia (probably 1533 to 
 1536): " I saw a Spain decapitated together with his horse and servant, because 
 the horse, having been left loose, entered some one's field.'' 
 
 ^ Postel, iii. 31, speaking particularly of the Janissaries. 
 
 ^ Morosini, 261. 
 
 3 The Policy of the Turkish Empire, " To the Reader." 
 
 * Junis Bey (below, pp. 274, 275) gives the order of march; Postel, 29 ff., 
 describes the encampment.
 
 no THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 nucleus in the midst of a vast, loyal, and ambitious national 
 army; they surrounded and served him as monarch with a splen- 
 dor seen at no other time; ^ with complete apparatus of council, 
 ministry, treasury, and chancery, they carried on his govern- 
 ment from whatever city, valley, mountain, or plain he might 
 be occupying. Here was the Ruling Institution in being, ex- 
 hibiting in varying degrees all its aspects, revealing its essential 
 imity, enforcing the despotic will of its master, commander-in- 
 chief, and chief executive. 
 
 The very greatness and unity of the RuHng Institution as an 
 army was not without serious disadvantages. The power could 
 not wisely be delegated, and the army could not effectively be 
 divided. At the opening of the campaign of 1529 Suleiman 
 issued to Ibrahim a commission as Seraskier, or general of the 
 army, which placed the Ruling Institution, the Moslem Institu- 
 tion, the Ottoman nation and all the subject nations under his 
 command. The Sultan's order ran as follows: " My Viziers, 
 Beylerbeys, Judges of the Army, Jurists, Judges, Seids, Sheiks, 
 Dignitaries of the Court and Supports of the Empire, Sanjak 
 Beys, Generals of Cavalry or of Infantry, Alai Beys, Suhashis, 
 Cherihashis, and all the victorious Soldiery great and small, 
 high and low, the Officials and Appointees, all inhabitants of 
 My kingdoms and lands, the people of city and country, rich 
 and poor, distinguished and ordinary, and all men are to recog- 
 nize My above-named Grand Vizier as Seraskier . . . and to 
 consider all that he says and desires as a command from My 
 own mouth. . . ." ^ This was a delegation of the supreme 
 command of the army and all the human military resources of 
 the empire to Ibrahim. Since Suleiman himself went on this 
 campaign, the supreme command was not then exercised apart 
 from the sultan's presence. Four years later, however, Ibrahim, 
 clothed with the same authority, was sent ahead to open the 
 Persian campaign. On the return march he added the title of 
 Sultan to that of Seraskier in issuing his daily orders.^ Perhaps 
 
 ^ Chalcocondyles, 135, says that the Turks lodged more grandly in the field 
 than in peace at home. 
 
 2 Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 79. ' Ibid. 160.
 
 THE ARMY III 
 
 he felt like Pepin the Short, that he who had the power of king 
 should also bear the name. But Suleiman was no roi faineant; 
 Ibrahim had gone too far, the empire could have but one head, 
 and Ibrahim suffered the bow-string.^ Suleiman profited by 
 the experience; he appointed no more Seraskiers with such 
 exalted powers, but himself led the army when it was assembled 
 as a whole. The campaign of Szigeth was the thirteenth which 
 he directed in person.^ The precedent of delegating the supreme 
 command was, however, a fatal one; for Selim the Sot and all 
 his successors were to use this method to avoid the exertion of 
 campaigning, and from this step was to date the beginning of 
 the empire's downfall.'' " This so constituted organization had 
 need of two things: it needed for its animation a man filled him- 
 self with a vivid spirit and free and mighty impulses, and to give 
 it movement and activity it required continual campaigns and 
 progressive conquests; in a word, war and a warlike chief." ^ 
 When another than the sultan should become head of the Ruling 
 Institution as visibly assembled, and yet be only an official 
 removable at a cloistered monarch's caprice, the army would 
 lose the keystone of its organization, and ere long victory would 
 depart from its banners. 
 
 Indivisibility of the Army 
 
 The essential oneness of the army, based on the sultan's owner- 
 ship of the standing body of cavalry and infantry and its attach- 
 ment to his person,^ and on the incapacity of the territorial 
 armies to carry on great campaigns alone, was also a fact injurious 
 to the Ottoman power. At the accession of Selim I, the empire 
 had been nearly identical in territory with the Byzantine Empire 
 
 ^ Other reasons have been advanced to account for the fall of Ibrahim (cf. 
 Postel, iii. 48 ff.). The fact that he had became a danger to the throne is 
 sufficient. 
 
 2 Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 438. 
 
 ' Halil Ganem, i. 206. 
 
 * Ranke, 11. 
 
 s The Spahis of the Porte, and the Janissaries were not as a body put under a 
 Seraskicr's command until the time of Alurad III: D'Ohsson, vii. 30S; Djevad 
 Bey, i. 16.
 
 112 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 under the Macedonian dynasty. No great power had marched 
 with it. The conquests of Selim in the East and of Suleiman in 
 Hungary had pushed the frontiers to the borders of two great 
 powers: Persia on the east and Austria on the west remained 
 henceforth constantly hostile in feeling and often hostile in fact 
 to the Ottoman Empire.^ They were so far away from the Otto- 
 man capital that the road to either was a journey of months for 
 the army, and relations with both were often disturbed at the 
 same time; but there was only one great army, and there could 
 be only one serious war. If, while war was in progress on one 
 frontier, conditions became intolerable on the other, it was neces- 
 sary to make peace on what terms could be had, and carry the 
 army to the other extremity of the empire. Thus, Suleiman and 
 Ibrahim concluded the peace of 1533 with Charles and Ferdinand, 
 in order to be free to proceed against Persia at once ; ^ and thus 
 Suleiman was obliged to arrange terms with Ferdinand in 1547, 
 in order to march against Persia in 1548.^ Had a Cardinal Ces- 
 arini absolved Charles and Ferdinand from either treaty, and 
 had they been able to act, they could have marched to Constanti- 
 nople in 1534, 1535, or 1548 against practically no resistance.^ 
 On the other hand, had the Ottoman standing army been divis- 
 ible, and separable from the person of the monarch, the Sultan 
 could have kept a steady pressure at both frontiers; and by 
 taking advantage of opportunities he might have conquered far 
 to the west and north, and realized his ambition of adding all 
 the heretical Persian dominions to his empire so as to reach 
 
 1 Hammer, Gesckichte, iii. 141. 
 
 2 Final audience was given to the Austrian ambassadors on June 23 (ibid. 138), 
 and Ibrahim marched about September 21 (ibid. 143). 
 
 3 Ibid. 277. 
 
 * Postel, iii. 54, speaking of Charles V in 1535-36, says: "The Emperor had 
 and lost during the war against the Sofi the fairest opportunity that ever Prince 
 had in this world, to recover Constantinople: for at every shaking of a leaf, all the 
 people trembled, and there was no guard in the city except the inhabitants and ten 
 thousand Ajem-oghlans " [these from the time of Mohammed II had been commis- 
 sioned to guard the capital during the army's absence: D'Ohsson, vii. 348]. 
 Erizzo, 131, also discusses this danger, emphasizing the valor of the Persians and 
 the readiness of Asia Minor to revolt. The Turks in Constantinople in 1535 
 feared that the expedition which Charles V was preparing against Tunis was 
 intended for an attack upon their city (Revue Africaine, xix. 352).
 
 TEE ARMY II3 
 
 the Chinese frontier, and of sending the horsetail standards to the 
 Atlantic shore of North Africa.^ Or he might have carried out 
 the intention expressed through Ibrahim in 1533 — which was 
 quite in keeping with his character — of aiding the Emperor 
 Charles V to enforce unity of religious belief upon the Protestants 
 and the pope.^ It is interesting to notice that Austria possessed 
 two great advantages over Persia in the wars with Turkey. 
 The Ottomans did not wish to pass the winter in the cold north, 
 but they did not object seriously to staying in Aleppo or Bagdad. 
 This attitude probably saved Vienna for Austria and lost Bagdad 
 for Persia. Again, since the journey from Vienna to Constanti- 
 nople was much easier than that from Tabriz to Constantinople, 
 the Austrians could have reached Constantinople while the 
 Ottoman army was in the East, whereas the Persians could not 
 have reached Constantinople while the Ottomans were in Austria. 
 This advantage remained theoretical, however, in Suleiman's 
 time, since neither Austria nor Persia was ever able to attempt 
 invasion. 
 
 Thus the inherent character of the Ottoman Ruling Institu- 
 tion, as a single magnificent army united under the supreme 
 command of the sultan, made the institution incapable of adapta- 
 tion to an indefinitely expanding empire, and so set bounds, 
 certain as those of fate, to Ottoman conquest. The sultan had 
 but one arm; it was a long arm and a strong one, yet it could 
 reach only a fixed distance, and it could strike but one blow. 
 
 ^ Suleiman in his letter to Ferdinand, November 27, 1562, says, " I, Lord of the 
 Orient from the land of Tsin to the extremity of Africa " : Busbecq, De Re Militari, 
 272. 
 
 2 Ibrahim said, " I, if I now wished it, could place Luther on one side and the 
 Pope on the other, and compel them to hold a council; what Charles ought to have 
 done, the Sultan and I will now do ": Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 134.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS A NOBILITY 
 AND A COURT 
 
 I. Privileges of the Kullar 
 
 No disgrace was attached to the condition of being the sultan's 
 slave; on the contrary, the title of kul was felt to be an honor. 
 Boys longed to bear it.^ No one who had it desired to be rid 
 of it. It' carried marked distinction and secured deference 
 everywhere. Those who revealed by their costume, bearing, or 
 assertion that they were the sultan's property were treated with 
 the consideration always granted in monarchies to property and 
 persons closely related to the sovereign. 
 
 This honor shown to the kullar rested, however, on no mere 
 servile attachment to the sultan and on no mere fear of an 
 Oriental despot. The sultan's slaves from lowest to highest 
 were set off from his subjects by a distinct set of privileges which 
 in Western minds were associated only with nobility. Besides 
 a general protection over them all by means of careful registra- 
 tion and watchful organization, the sultan bestowed upon all 
 his kullar the personal rights of immunity from taxation, ^ and 
 responsibility to none but their own officials and courts and to 
 him.^ At the same time he freed them all from anxiety about 
 the necessities of life, and enabled most of them to enjoy its 
 luxuries, by regular pay from his treasury, or, in the case of some 
 high officials, by revenues from ample estates. In return for 
 these privileges they were all sternly required to render him 
 honorable service, usually of a mihtary character. This service 
 was not always of a character that the West considered honorable. 
 The labors of the Ajem-oghlans, and the foot service of the Janis- 
 saries and auxiliary corps were not noble in Christian feudalism, 
 
 ^ Gerlach, 257, quoted in Zinkeisen, iii. 222. 
 ^ Postel, iii. 19. 
 
 ^ Spandugino, 218; Postel, i. 126. 
 114
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT II5 
 
 which knew no implements but sword and spear and fought from 
 the back of a horse. But these humble slaves of the sultan 
 possessed the same privileges as the highest, and any service 
 was honorable which would make their muscles stronger for 
 fighting and teach them to contribute to the sultan's military 
 undertakings on sea and land. All members of the sultan's 
 family were supposed to use their income in strengthening his 
 military forces. Janissaries had pay for themselves alone. 
 Ghurebas had only enough to keep themselves and one horse 
 for each man. Other Spahis of the Porte brought additional 
 horsemen in accordance with their pay. Higher officials were 
 expected to support armed households large in proportion to 
 their revenues. After the model of the sultan's household, 
 every kul according to his means built up a military estabhsh- 
 ment which followed him and his master to war. 
 
 Immunity from taxation grew naturally out of the slave 
 status. There would be no advantage to the sultan in exacting 
 taxes from persons whom he supported and who were supposed 
 to devote all their energies to his service and use all their income 
 for him. As long as the Ruling Institution was kept firmly to 
 its purpose, pressure was applied, not so that successful kullar 
 would surrender part of their income to the master, but so that 
 they would bring as large a contingent as possible to fight his 
 battles. Suleiman's grand vizier, Rustem, following a long- 
 disused precedent of the time of Bayezid I,^ — a reign which had 
 in various ways fore-shadowed later evils, — established a tax 
 upon the greater offices of the empire ;2 but, since the sultan 
 did not receive the whole of such charges, the custom amounted 
 to the sale of offices. Not only was such a practice out of har- 
 mony with the theory of the Ruling Institution, but it proved 
 very injurious in operation, and was rightly accounted one of 
 the causes of the decay of the empire. The sultan took pay at 
 the granting of an office, and so presently did every official from 
 the men under him; until in time the practice became so sys- 
 
 * D'Ohsson, vii. 202. 
 
 * Suleiman permitted this because of the increase it produced in his income: 
 Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 114; Halil Ganem, i. 197.
 
 Il6 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 tematized that a regular tariff was arranged and brought into 
 use on the occasion of every appointment.^ Those who thus 
 were put to great expense on coming into office felt the necessity 
 of recouping themselves by whatever means lay in their power.^ 
 Hence arose not merely oppression of the sultan's subjects, 
 both Christian and Moslem, but also a partial recovery of losses 
 at the expense of the sultan himself. His servants were forced 
 to devote to personal affairs a large part of the attention that 
 should have been all his, and to curtail by various devices the 
 contingent which they furnished for his mihtary service. When 
 the members of the Ruling Institution began to prey upon 
 each other, the grand vizier, on behalf of the sultan, taking the 
 lead, the solidarity of the institution began to be broken. It 
 may be true that in the West, as Montesquieu said, the honor 
 of a monarchy was not inconsistent with the sale of ofl&ce ; ^ but 
 in the Ottoman Empire it opened the door to fatal corruption. 
 
 The members of the Ruling Institution had not always had 
 their own system of justice; they had long been under the 
 jurisdiction of the ordinary Moslem courts. This had led to an 
 essential difficulty; the ordinary courts were part of another 
 institution and were recruited in a wholly different way; their 
 judges had risen through a rival system of education, and were 
 men of letters rather than men of war; the favored kullar of 
 the sultan had, therefore, come to feel averse to obeying them.^ 
 Accordingly, Bayezid II had ordered that the members of his 
 family should be judged by their own officers.^ This was a 
 radical change; for it brought into prominence the distinction 
 between the two institutions, and had the further effect of setting 
 off the kullar from all the rest of the population of the empire, 
 and of constituting them almost a separate nationahty. Their 
 
 1 D'Ohsson, vii. 182, 202. 
 
 2 Ricaut, 140; D'Ohsson, vii. 287. 
 ^ Montesquieu, livre v, ch. xix. 
 
 ^ Postel, i. 126: " les gents de la court, qui ont leurs chefs Aga 6* Bassi pour 
 luges," etc. 
 
 ^ Spandugino, 214 S., relates how this came about, and says (p. 218), "No 
 Cadi can have power and authority over the slaves who receive pay from the 
 Seigneur."
 
 TUE NOBILITY AND THE COURT II7 
 
 position became one greatly to be desired. The Moslem-born 
 population came to feel that somewhere there was a great in- 
 justice. They whose ancestors had shed their blood for the faith 
 were, in the lands which their fathers had conquered, denied 
 admittance to the class which not only filled most of the offices 
 of army and state but enjoyed high privileges. Sons of the 
 conquered inhabitants, infidel-born, might alone become nobles, 
 paid by the state rather than contributing to its expenses, not 
 subject to the judges trained from boyhood in the Sacred Law; 
 while their own Moslem sons were rigidly excluded from the 
 honored class, were obliged to bear a part in the burdens of the 
 state with small hope of sharing its glory, and were expected to 
 take their chances before the same courts to which Christians 
 and Jews were brought for civil and criminal cases. The very 
 extent of the privileges of the kullar made toward the break-down 
 of the system. 
 
 Nobility not Hereditary 
 
 The privileges of the sultan's kullar fell short of those of 
 Western nobihty in one very important respect, namely, that 
 they could not normally be handed on to the descendants and 
 heirs of those privileged. This exception is so important that 
 various Western writers have affirmed that the Turks had no 
 nobles.^ As the word is used in this treatise, heredity is not 
 regarded as of the essence of nobility; the latter is considered 
 to lie in the possession of special personal privilege, recognized 
 in the structure of the state. 
 
 In the early Ottoman days, several of the high offices of state 
 became the appanages of particular famihes. The family of 
 Kara Khalil Chendereli held the office of grand vizier con- 
 tinuously for a century, and furnished an occupant of the office 
 at a later date.^ The descendants of Michael of the Pointed 
 Beard led the Akinjis until the time of the first siege of Vienna.^ 
 
 1 Zane, 407; Robertson, i. 249. 
 
 2 Hammer, Gcschichte, i. 176, 684; ii. 674. 
 
 ' Ibid. i. 96. The descendants of Michael have been among the very few 
 families who were constituted landed nobles in the Ottoman Empire. Seven 
 *' endowments of the Conquerors " still exist, one of which benefits his line: Heid- 
 born, 314.
 
 Il8 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 The family of Samsamat Chaush held the office of master of 
 ceremonies for generations.^ A descendant of the thirteenth- 
 century poet Jelal ad-din Rumi held office under Suleiman.^ 
 Some writers of the early sixteenth century said that, whereas 
 Osman had been aided in winning his dominions by two Greek 
 renegades, Michael of the Pointed Beard, and Malco, and by 
 Aurami or Eurcasi, a Turk, he had promised that he would 
 " never put hand in their blood or fail to give them a magis- 
 tracy." ^ The promise had been kept, and in 1537 one of the 
 Michaloglou was Sanjak in Bosnia and one of the Malcosoglou 
 was Sanjak in Greece. The other family was then extinct. 
 It is said that these were considered to be of royal blood, and that 
 in case of failure in the Hne of Osman the succession to the throne 
 would fall to them. 
 
 Apart from these few exceptions, the principle of heredity in 
 office had been excluded from the Ottoman system by the time 
 of Suleiman. The Ottomans, by old Turkish rule probably 
 derived from the Chinese, knew no nobility apart from office 
 and public service. An exception was introduced by Islam in 
 the case of Seids, or Emirs, descendants of the Prophet; but 
 this modification the Ottomans did not wholly respect.^ Accord- 
 ingly, Ottoman nobility became official,^ personal, and without 
 hereditary quahty. It was, in fact, the reverse of hereditary, 
 since nobility in the father was an actual hindrance to the son and 
 to all his descendants. But the kullar were not the only class 
 in the Ottoman Empire which enjoyed official, personal nobihty. 
 The members of the Moslem Institution were also exempt from 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichte, i. 96. 
 
 2 Ibid. iii. 18. 
 
 3 Spandugino, 13; Ramberti, below, p. 242; Junis Bey, below, p. 273. D. 
 Barbarigo, 19, names eight great families among whom the succession might fall 
 (he says that some thought it should pass through the female line) : in Rumelia 
 four, — Micali, ErsecH, Eurenesli, Egiachiali; in Anatolia, four, — Cheselamath, 
 Diercauli, Durcadurli, Ramadanli, formerly called Spendial. Ricaut, 107, says 
 that in his time there existed an " ancient compact " by which, in default of 
 heirs male in the Ottoman line, the empire was to descend to the Crimean Tartars. 
 
 * Ricaut, 211. 
 
 * Ibid. 129: "A Turk is never reverenced but for his Ofl&ce, that is made the 
 sole measure and rule of his greatness and honour, without other considerations 
 of Vertue or Nobility."
 
 THE NOBILITY AND TEE COURT II9 
 
 taxation, were supported out of public revenues, and were left 
 in enjoyment of their own government as a part of their general 
 jurisdiction in the empire. They had an advantage over the 
 kullar in that their property was not subject to confiscation. 
 Their position will be discussed later.' 
 
 In the program of the Ruling Institution the policy of avoiding 
 heredity of nobility fitted in exactly with the slave system, the 
 educational scheme, and the army arrangements; for the knowl- 
 edge that every man was considered to be " his own ancestry," 
 and that increased honor and privilege depended on achievement 
 alone, made every ambitious member a devoted slave, an inde- 
 fatigable learner, and a dauntless warrior. The reasons for this 
 policy, the method of applying it by advancement through 
 merit, and the vivid impression which it made on thoughtful 
 Western observers have been described already; ^ but for its 
 observance an additional reason of great weight may be men- 
 tioned. Not only did it prevent the accumulation of property 
 and power in the hands of the members of one family, but it 
 allowed no influence to become intrenched in the offices of central 
 and local government. No Beylerbey or Sanjak Bey could hope 
 to rebel successfully. All were " but strangers and foreigners in 
 the countries they ruled," ^ and held their positions by the most 
 insecure tenure. The Ottoman Empire was not destined to go the 
 way of that of Charlemagne or of the Seljuk Turks. Whatever 
 decay it might undergo, it could not break up into small inde- 
 pendent states under officials who had converted their governor- 
 ships into sovereignties, so long as its two great institutions were 
 maintained consistently.^ 
 
 ' Below, ch. vii. * 
 
 2 Above, ch. iii, under heads " Other Motives for Incorporating Christians," 
 " Advancement Based on Merit." 
 
 ' Ricaut, 129. 
 
 * About the year 1800, when the two institutions, and particularly the Ruling 
 Institution, had reached an extreme state of decay, and before new institutions 
 after Western models had yet been introduced, the Ottoman Empire was to come 
 very near to such a breaking-up. It seems actually to have been saved by the lin- 
 gering of the tradition against heredity in olTue; for, though Ufe-tcnure of purchased 
 governorships had become regular, no Pasha except the North African corsairs 
 of the seventeenth century, and Ibrahim in Egypt in the early nineteenth century,
 
 I20 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 Against this policy two main tendencies conspired, both based 
 on " human nature," the strife of favor against merit, and the 
 desire of the excluded to share in privilege. The first was liable 
 to disturb the order of promotion, the second to open the system 
 to the sons and descendants of the officials and to other IMoslems. 
 No one but Selim the Grim was fitted to maintain the policy 
 rigidly against such pressure. Suleiman yielded a Httle on the 
 first point, in such matters as the promotion of Ibrahim and 
 Rustem; ^ and the second began in his time to gain ground at 
 the bottom, by the admission of sons of Janissaries to the ranks 
 of the Ajem-oghlans. Within a generation after his death, 
 however, the flood-gates were to be opened.^ The body of Janis- 
 saries and the body of Spahis of the Porte were gradually but 
 swiftly to be made Moslem and so cut off from the Ruling In- 
 stitution; the age at which the pages passed out of the palace 
 was to be postponed; and in time the divided Ruhng Institution 
 was to cease to be the admiration of the West and was to become 
 its laughing-stock. But Suleiman was spared the sight of such 
 a decadence. Near the end of his reign, after Rustem and 
 Roxelana had ceased to disturb, the system brought to the top 
 one of the greatest of Ottoman statesmen, Mohammed Sokolli. 
 At about the same time the Moslem Institution also raised up 
 a great legist, Ebu su'ud.^ These two upheld the institutions 
 and the empire at the height of their glory for nearly thirty years, 
 of which fifteen lay after the death of Suleiman. 
 
 II. Character of the Sultan's Court 
 
 In the early stages of all monarchies the household of the 
 prince and the government of the state have probably been 
 identical.* After the period of estabHshment has come to an 
 end and settled institutions have been organized, the household 
 and the government have tended to draw apart into separate and 
 distinct systems under different officials. Which of the two 
 
 succeeded in founding a dynasty upon Ottoman soil. For the disorders about 
 1800, see Heidbom, 144. 
 
 1 Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 490-491, quoting Kochi Bey. 
 
 2 See above, p. 69, note 3. 
 
 2 Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 278. ^ Hammer, Slaatsverwaltung, 6.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND TEE COURT 121 
 
 has become of the greater importance in the eyes of the sov- 
 ereign and in influence upon the policy and destiny of the 
 nation has depended on circumstances, and particularly on the 
 character of individual monarchs. While such a state has been 
 in a period of increase of power and influence, the government 
 has regularly been the more prominent: men of practical expe- 
 rience in affairs and in the field have overshadowed the palace 
 servants. When decay and decline have set in, the household, 
 partly by way of cause and partly by way of effect, has risen to 
 supremacy: individuals of more or less secluded hfe, but possess- 
 ing opportunities for personal intercourse with the monarch, — 
 favorites, body-servants, women, and eunuchs, — have made 
 the men of affairs and of war dependent upon them for place and 
 authority. The Ottoman Empire came clearly into the stage of 
 differentiation between household and government after the 
 conquest of Constantinople in the reign of Mohammed II. In 
 the time of Suleiman the empire was still in the period when 
 government was greater than household; but clear signs were 
 appearing that a less active and more plastic sovereign would 
 turn the scale. 
 
 The household of the Ottoman sultan was curiously divided 
 and limited. An essential difference between the courts of 
 Christian and Moslem monarchs was created by the seclusion 
 of women in Mohammedan society. In the W^est, w^omen 
 appeared with the men of the court not only on occasions of 
 amusement and diversion, but also in public parades and cere- 
 monies of less and greater importance, and the ladies of the royal 
 family led the fashionable society of the land. In the East, on 
 the other hand, the visible court and retinue of the monarch 
 was wholly ungraced by the presence of the fair sex; all the great 
 ceremonies and cavalcades were participated in by men alone. 
 It seems to be a fact that, before the middle of the reign of Sul- 
 eiman, no woman resided in the entire vast palace where the 
 sultan spent most of his timc.^ The women of his family were 
 
 ^ Postel, i. 31, says that Suleiman occasionally sent for one of his women 
 to visit him in the principal palace. Nicolay, 62, reports that about 1551 Roxe- 
 lana was residing within the palace grounds. By 15S5 the principal ladies of the
 
 122 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 elsewhere, carefully guarded behind walls which with very few 
 exceptions no man but himself might pass.^ The men and the 
 women who were associated with the sultan constituted two 
 separate worlds, between which the only bond was himself. 
 
 The sultan's household was divided in another way. By the 
 maxims of despotic government it is forbidden that the ruler 
 should associate on terms of intimate friendship with those who 
 are his high officials of state. In order to avoid this regulation 
 and yet provide his master with intelligent and amusing com- 
 panionship, the Nizam-al-mulk advised the Seljuk sultan MeHk 
 Shah to choose as boon companions a band of courtiers who 
 would be allowed to have no share whatever in the conduct of 
 affairs.^ This resource was hardly open to the Ottoman sultans, 
 first because the dignity and independence of Moslem-born 
 Ottoman Turks deprived them of the pHancy which is expected 
 from courtiers, and second because the sultan's Christian-born 
 slaves, who had been led onward by ambition ever since they 
 had entered his service, and at the end of their education were 
 ready to become men of affairs, were not fitted to be mere courtiers. 
 The difficulty became greater after Mohammed II, filled with 
 the Byzantine notion of imperial sacredness, ordered that no 
 one should sit with him at table.' A sultan was thus practically 
 forced by a combination of principles and circumstances to spend 
 his leisure hours with boys, eunuchs, and women.^ The only 
 mature men with whom he could converse freely were a small 
 and select group of religious advisers, astrologers, and physicians; 
 all the other men of his household met him only formally and for 
 
 harem had been transferred to the new palace, leaving the old palace to the function 
 of a training-school for recruits. These steps illustrate the rapid increase of the 
 importance of the harem in the Ottoman scheme. 
 
 ^ Exceptions were made in case of the old Hojas, or teachers of the young princes, 
 the religious advisers of the queen mother, and physicians. See Postel, i. 35; 
 Ricaut, 68; D'Ohsson, vii. 11; Hammer, Staalsverwaltung, 73. 
 
 2 Siasset Nameh, 121, 123, 163. 
 
 3 " Kanun oi the Imperial Table," printed in Hammer's S taatsverf assung, g8: 
 " It is not my Kamin that any one should dine with my Imperial Majesty; it 
 might be some one not of Imperial blood." Suleiman did not always observe this 
 Kanun (cf. Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 99). 
 
 * Erizzo, 138; Morosini, 281.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT 1 23 
 
 the transaction of business. So great limitations on his com- 
 panionship could not fail to influence his character, and in the 
 course of a few generations to tend greatly toward the predomi- 
 nance of household over government. 
 
 To confine the consideration of Suleiman's court to his imme- 
 diate household would be to narrow the discussion too much. 
 The chief ofTicers of government formed a part of his retinue on 
 all ceremonial occasions, and had not ceased to be counted as 
 his personal followers. In fact, all the members of the Ruling 
 Institution, except the Ajem-oghlans and young pages, may be 
 regarded as belonging to the sultan's court in that large sense 
 of the termi which includes all those individuals who are attached 
 to the person of the monarch as his daily associates, his coun- 
 cillors, the officers and members of his household, his body-guard 
 and palace-guard, and his retinue on ceremonial occasions and 
 in camp. The splendid court of Suleiman the Magnificent is 
 worthy of separate and special treatment for which there is no 
 room here; in describing it, as in describing his army, only those 
 aspects which are of a governmental nature can be considered. 
 The topics that will claim attention are the subdivisions of his 
 household and the main features of its organization, the impor- 
 tance given to personal and public ceremony, the splendor of the 
 court, and the influence of the court on the destiny of the empire. 
 
 Organization of the Household ^ 
 
 The sultan's household may be considered in three principal 
 subdivisions, each of them composed of a number of parts: the 
 outside service of the palace, the inside service of the palace, 
 and the harem. The outside service was composed of men 
 and Ajem-oghlans, the inside service of white eunuchs and pages, 
 the harem of black eunuchs and women. The first two sub- 
 divisions were, in time of peace, in attendance at the principal 
 palace which had been built by Mohammed II on the site of the 
 
 ^ Extended descriptions of the household are found in D'Ohsson, vii and 
 Hammer's Slaalsverwultung. Lane-Poole, in his Story of Turkey, ch. xiv, gives a 
 good, clear summary of D'Ohsson. References to these authorities are here omitted 
 except in a few instances of special interest.
 
 124 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 acropolis of ancient Byzantium. The grounds of this palace 
 were extensive: within the first gate was a large open space 
 used on state occasions as a parade ground; within the second 
 gate were the buildings of the palace proper, a beautiful garden, 
 and an exercise ground for the pages. The members of the 
 outside service, except the gardeners, did not ordinarily pass 
 beyond the second gate of this palace. The harem was per- 
 manently located some distance away in the center of the city, 
 in the first palace occupied after the conquest, known in the six- 
 teenth century as the Old Palace.^ In time of war, practically 
 the entire outside service, and the principal officers and personal 
 attendants from the inside service, accompanied the sultan. 
 None of the women of the harem were taken with the army, as 
 this was against the Ottoman custom, though permitted by the 
 Sacred Law.^ In excursions during time of peace some of the 
 ladies might accompany their lord.^ The three subdivisions of 
 the household will be considered in the reverse order. 
 
 The Harem 
 
 The harem was so distinct in Suleiman's time from the rest 
 of his household, so little seen and known, so much his personal 
 affair, that it would seem scarcely to demand attention in a con- 
 sideration of his court. The importance of its officials and 
 personages was small as compared wdth later times, after the 
 harem had been removed to the principal palace and the sultans 
 had begun to spend a much larger portion of their time in its 
 society. Yet the influence of two of its ladies upon Suleiman 
 was so great as to give them a place in history and a relation to 
 the destiny of the nation. Accordingly, the harem cannot be 
 passed over without mention. Its organization has already been 
 sketched so far as regards the recruiting, conversion, and educa- 
 tion of the women ;^ its groupings and principal personages re- 
 main to be described. 
 
 1 Hammer, StaatsverwaUung, 71; Menavino, 179. The Eski Serai of the six- 
 teenth century stood where the Seraskierat, or War OfiSce, now stands. 
 
 2 D'Ohsson, V. 52. ^ Postel, i. 32. 
 4 See above, pp. 56, 57, 78, 79.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT 1 25 
 
 The guard and order of the palace of the harem was committed 
 to forty or more black eunuchs/ under an official known as the 
 Kizlar Aghast, or, literally, the *' general of the girls." This 
 Agha was held in great honor, and was made administrator of 
 many religious endowments for the benefit of various mosques, 
 and particularly of the vakfs of the Holy Cities of Mecca and 
 Medina. His importance in Suleiman's time bears no compari- 
 son with what it became later. Other black eunuchs held official 
 positions in the service of the principal ladies, and had the 
 oversight of the education of the young princes.^ 
 
 The greatest lady of the harem, while life was spared to her, 
 was the sultan's mother, the Sultana Valideh. Not only did 
 she receive great respect and deference from her son, but she 
 had a general oversight and authority over all his women. The 
 next lady in importance was the mother of the sultan's first son; 
 and after her came the mothers of other sons. Mothers of daugh- 
 ters enjoyed much less consideration. Each of these favored 
 ladies had her own suite of apartments, her business staff under 
 a woman known as her Kiaya, which may here be translated as 
 steward or housekeeper, and her group of personal and domestic 
 servants. The Kiaya of the queen mother enjoyed great im- 
 portance. The group of slave girls who were the sultan's personal 
 and domestic servants when he visited the harem were also 
 under a Kiaya with assistants. Sons of the sultan lived with 
 their mothers during their tender years. They were carefully 
 educated in letters and arms, much as were the pages, but with 
 greater deference.' At a suitable age they were sent out, with 
 carefully selected little courts, to the governorship of provinces. 
 Daughters were married at an early age to high officials of the 
 sultan.^ In later generations infant sons who might be born to 
 them were not allowed to live, lest they might become a menace 
 to the throne. This seems not to have been the case in the time 
 
 ^ Junis Bey (below, p. 269) says twenty, a number scarcely sufficient. Twenty 
 years earlier Menavino, 180, speaks of about forty. 
 2 Ricaut, 67-68, mentions several of these. 
 » Postel, i. 35. 
 * Ricaut, 73.
 
 126 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 of Suleiman, who avoided danger by excluding them carefully 
 from office.^ 
 
 Information about Suleiman's harem and family comes 
 guarded with explanations of the difficulty found in obtaining 
 trustworthy reports. Some facts are known, and probabilities 
 exist as to others. Suleiman's mother lived until far along in 
 his reign. The mother of his eldest son, Mustapha, held, accord- 
 ing to custom, the next place in his harem. After the year 1534 
 she divided her time between the palace at Magnesia, where her 
 son was Sanjak Bey, and the harem palace in Constantinople.^ 
 Khurrem, usually called Roxelana, had supplanted her in favor 
 at some previous date, and, being legal wife of the Sultan, held a 
 position superior to hers in some respects. Suleiman seems not 
 to have visited his harem very often.' Mihrmah, his daughter by 
 Roxelana, who became the wife of Rustem, was very dear to 
 him. 
 
 The Inside Service 
 
 The five chambers of pages, under the control of white eunuchs, 
 and the doorkeepers supphed the inside ser\'ice of the principal 
 palace. The head of this service was the Kapu Aghast, or " gen- 
 eral of the gate," a white eunuch, who was also charged with the 
 management of many reUgious endowments. He had the right 
 to speak to the sultan when he wished,^ and hence was very 
 highly regarded. The Kapuji-bashi, or head doorkeeper, was 
 also a white eunuch, who had charge constantly of the second 
 gate of the principal palace, with a company of twenty or more 
 white eunuchs who were guards under him.^ The pages have 
 already received attention from the educational point of view. 
 Nearest the person of the sultan were the pages of the Khas 
 Oda, or Inner Chamber, of whom there were probably thirty- 
 
 * Hammer (Geschichte, ii. 222) says that the custom of accomplishing the death 
 of sons of daughters of sultans (by neglecting to tie the navel cord) dates from 
 Mohammed II; but no contemporary authority appears to mention such a custom. 
 D'Ohsson, vii. 93, says that it was instituted in the time of Achmet I. The son of 
 a sister of Selim I was Beylerbey of Aleppo about 1550 ( .Alberi, Anonimo of 1553, 
 228). 
 
 2 Ludovisi, 29; Postel, i. 31. See p. 141, note 2. * Spandugino, 64. 
 
 3 Postel, i. 31. ^ Menavino, 137.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT 12/ 
 
 nine, the sultan himself being reckoned the fortieth.^ A number 
 of these pages later bore the title of Agha, but they seem not to 
 have done so in Suleiman's time. Their chief ofiEicer was the 
 Khas Oda-hashi, or head of the Inner Chamber, one of the pages 
 in Suleiman's day, but in later times a white eunuch. The 
 pages of highest rank were the Silihdar, who outside the palace 
 carried the sultan's weapons, the Cliokadar, who carried his gar- 
 ments, and the Sharabdar, or cup-bearer.^ The others took care 
 of his apartments and his wardrobe, and brought his food to 
 him. The second group of pages constituted the Khazineh 
 Odassi, or treasury, under a well-paid white eunuch, the inside 
 Khazinehdar-bashi. These, to the number of sixty or seventy, 
 cared for all the treasures in the sultan's palace, made all pay- 
 ments, and kept all accounts.^ Another Khazinehdar-bashi 
 took care of all the financial affairs of the inside service which 
 needed attention outside the palace walls. The Kiler Odassi, or 
 pantry, under a white eunuch called the Kilerji-bashi, cared for 
 the bread, pastry, and game of the sultan; their chief controlled 
 also the kitchen service of the palace. The pages of this chamber 
 seem not yet to have finished their education.'* They, together 
 with the pages of the Inner Chamber, rode with the sultan 
 whenever he left the palace. The remaining two chambers, the 
 Large and the Small, or the Old and the New, were concerned 
 wholly with the education of the pages.^ They were under the 
 
 ' D'Ohsson, vii. 34. Whether this number was fixed in Suleiman's time does 
 not appear from the records. Mohammed II had 32 officers of the Khas Oda 
 (Hammer, Staatsverfassiiiig, 96). Mcnavino, 121-1 23, names three special officers, 
 15 of second grade, and 35 of third grade, before mentioning the treasury. 
 Ramberti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 243, 263) name 6 principal officers, but do 
 not distinguish the odalar further. Chesneau, 39, saj's that 25 of the pages were 
 Suleiman's personal scr%'ants, and that 5 served him specially. Navagero, 45, 
 speaks of 25 or 30 in the Khas Oda. Ricaut, 52, speaks of 40. 
 
 * Ramberti and Junis Bey, as above; Postel, iii. 4; Navagero, 45. 
 ' Navagero, 44. 
 
 * The number of pages in the Kilcr Odassi is given by Menavino, 125, as 25, all 
 between 20 and 22 years of age. Navagero, 44, says that they numbered 300 or 
 400; but this is incredible. He gives no numbers for the purely educational odalar, 
 and evidently has counted them all in the Kilcr Odassi. 
 
 ' Hammer {Slaatsverd'altung, 30) erroneously says that the pages of these odalar 
 attended to the lowest duties of the palace, and were recruited from three palace 
 schools outside. Navagero, 44, disproves this.
 
 128 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 general direction of the Ikinji-Kapu-oghlan, or eunuch of the 
 second gate. ^ The entire personnel of the inside service amounted 
 to from six to eight hundred persons. The eunuch officers 
 maintained severe discipline, exact obedience, and perfect 
 order among them all.^ The groups of eunuchs who had charge 
 of the colleges of pages in Pera and Adrianople may also be 
 reckoned in the inside service. It would seem that the ac- 
 counts of all these palaces were kept as one, and that therefore 
 the chief officers of the principal palace must have supervised 
 the officers of the others.^ 
 
 The Outside Service 
 
 The members of the household who were not held within 
 the inner regions of the palace or near the person of the sultan 
 were far more numerous. Many stood in close relations to the 
 members of the inner service, either being under their authority 
 or having regular dealings with them. All, of course, served the 
 sultan, either directly or nearly so, through the mediation of 
 one or more officers. To describe at length their subdivisions, 
 duties, and officers would be to repeat an account which has been 
 given often by others. Only a general sketch will be attempted 
 here, by way of distinguishing the various groups of the service. 
 Beginning with those in closest relations to the sultan, they 
 were the learned associates of the master, the kitchen service, 
 the body-guard, the palace-guards, the gardeners, the stable 
 service, the tent-pitchers, the masters of the hunt, and the 
 intendants. 
 
 The learned associates of the sultan belonged chiefly to the 
 corps of the Ulema. They therefore represented the Moslem 
 Institution near the person of the monarch. Chief among them 
 was the sultan's Hoja, or teacher, a confessor or adviser in relig- 
 ious matters, who was held in very great esteem and was often 
 
 ^ An additional chamber, the Seferli Odassi, or Chamber of Campaign, was 
 instituted by Murad IV to attend to his laundry work and other special duties in 
 time of war. The membership was chosen out of the educational odalar, and it 
 ranked next after the Kiler Odassi. See Hammer, StaatsverwaUung, 28. 
 
 2 Ricaut, 47. 
 
 2 Ramberti, below, p. 255.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND TUE COURT IK) 
 
 advanced to high judicial office. Next came two Imams, or 
 preachers to the sultan, associated with whom were a number of 
 muezzins, or chanters. After these ranked the Ilekim-hashi, 
 or chief physician, who had ten or more associates; the Munejim- 
 bashi, or chief astrologer, whose services were believed to have 
 a very real value; and the Jerrah-bashi, or chief surgeon, with 
 ten or more helpers. 
 
 The kitchen service under the oversight of the Kilerji-bashi 
 comprised bakers, scullions, cooks, confectioners, tasters, and 
 musicians, each to the number of from fifty to one hundred.^ 
 Allied to these were the companies of tailors, shoemakers, fur- 
 riers, goldsmiths, and the like, who were employed exclusively 
 in the palace service.- Each group had its responsible head and 
 was subject to a thorough oversight, since even such remote 
 affairs, when under the care of the Ottoman Ruling Institution, 
 were regulated and ordered with great precision. A number of 
 these servants, such as the scullions, wood-cutters, and water- 
 carriers, were Ajem-oghlans. 
 
 The body-guards were three, the Muteferrika, the Solaks, 
 and the Peiks. The Muteferrika, or Noble Guard, consisted 
 of from one to two hundred of the choicest graduates from the 
 page schools and of sons of high officials.' Among them, in 
 1575, were brothers of the Voivodes of Wallachia and Moldavia. 
 The Muteferrika followed immediately after the sultan on horse- 
 back, and in time of battle were ready to defend him to the end. 
 The Solaks were veteran Janissary archers, to the number of 
 
 1 Ramberti and Junis Bey, below, pp. 245, 264. 
 
 2 Mcnavino, 160 ff. 
 
 3 Zinkeison, iii. 181, states erroneously on the authority of Trevisano, 125 
 (meaning p. 128), that these were all Turks and of noble blood. The fact 
 that Menavino, 146, calls them " schiaui " is sufficient disproof. Zinkcisen 
 also quotes Spandugino, 114, to the efToct that the Muteferrika were all lords, 
 or sons of princes or of lords; but Spandugino, 62, says that pages pass to the 
 office of Muteferrika from the highest four oftices at least. Trevisano, 127, says, 
 " Li quali sono giovani nati Turchi, e figliuoli d'uotnini di aulorild " (italics 
 not in original); but " men of authority " were practically all renegades. Moro, 
 341, calls them, in 1590, sons of the principal Turks. The fact seems to be that most 
 of the Muteferrika were Ottomans of the second generation (/. e., sons of renegades) 
 and that the rest were regarded as ennobled by passage through the high offices 
 of the Khas Oda.
 
 130 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 about one hundred and fifty, who marched on foot beside the 
 sultan wherever he went, with bows and arrows ready for instant 
 use. The Peiks were a picturesque company of halberdiers of 
 about one hundred men,^ which had been taken over, arms, 
 costumes, and all, from the Byzantine emperors. They ran 
 in front of the sultan when he rode, and were always ready to be 
 sent on missions. 
 
 The palace-guards were the Kapujis, the Chaushes, and the 
 Bostanjis. The Kapujis, or gatekeepers, were Ajem-oghlans 
 who, to the number of three or four hundred,^ watched the 
 outside gates of the principal palace and of the palace of the 
 harem. Like all the other guards, they accompanied the sultan 
 to war, where they were the guards of his tent. The Chaushes, 
 who numbered about one hundred,^ were ushers who acted as 
 marshals on the days of Divan and of state ceremony, and 
 who in time of war dressed the ranks of the troops.^ They also 
 acted as messengers of state within the empire. When a distant 
 officer had been condemned to death, a Chaush was sent to exe- 
 cute the sentence and bring back the offender's head.^ Since 
 among the Chaushes there were many renegades who knew 
 various European languages, they were useful as interpreters 
 and were sometimes sent as envoys on important missions.^ 
 The Bostanjis, or gardeners, were Ajem-oghlans, and as such 
 have been mentioned already. To the number of about four 
 hundred,^ they cared for the garden and grounds of the principal 
 palace, and rowed the sultan's caiques when he wished to enjoy 
 the matchless scenery of the Bosphorus. Their chief, the 
 Bostanji-hashi, who had risen from their ranks, seems to have 
 
 1 Menavino, 155 (he says they were Persians); Nicolay, 98; Ramberti, below, 
 p. 251. 
 
 2 Spandugino, 116, gives the number 300, and says that they became Janissa- 
 ries. Menavino, 140, mentions 500. Ramberti (pp. 246, 253) mentions 250 
 at the principal palace and 100 at the palace of the harem; the latter he calls 
 Janissaries. 
 
 ^ Junis Bey, below, p. 265. 
 
 * Spandugino, 125. 
 
 6 Postel, iii. 9. 
 
 ^ Ricaut, 373. In his time they numbered 500 or 600. 
 
 ^ Junis Bey, 263. Ramberti, 245, speaks of 35, which is clearly too few.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT I3I 
 
 been the only adult man besides the sultan who resided within 
 the inner regions of the palace.' His general charge over all 
 the sultan's gardens, wherever they might be, included oversight 
 of the banks and shores of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora, 
 and the Dardanelles.^ This gave him great power, and his favor 
 was much courted. 
 
 The stable service was exceedingly important in a nation which 
 relied so much upon cavalry, and which was still under the 
 influence of the tradition of the steppe lands. The sultan for 
 his own use kept a stable of two hundred horses tended by a 
 hundred men, and for the use of his retinue four thousand horses 
 tended by two thousand men.' Besides these, a thousand or 
 more Bulgarian Christians known as Voinaks tended herds of 
 horses on the great domanial pastures.* All these followed 
 the army to war as grooms. They were under the control of a 
 very great official, the Emir-al-Akhor,^ or grand equerry, who, 
 with the second equerry, also had oversight of the numerous 
 saddlers, camel-drivers, and muleteers of the imperial service, 
 and control of all the domanial pastures and forests of the em- 
 pire.^ 
 
 The head gardener, the head gatekeeper, the grand equerry, 
 the second equerry, and the Mir-Alem,'' or standard-bearer, 
 constituted the special group of officers known as the Rekiah- 
 Aghalari, or " generals of the [imperial] stirrup." The Mir- 
 Alem had charge of the imperial standards and the six horsetails 
 which were borne before the sultan. He distributed standards 
 and horsetails to Beylerbeys and Sanjak Beys, who thus in a way 
 
 * Postel, iii. 11. 
 
 2 Menavino, 129. In D'Ohsson's time (vii. 15) this ofBcial was also the jailer 
 and presiding executioner of the palace, inspector of the water supply and forests 
 near the capital, and overseer of hunting and fishing and of the trade in wine and 
 lime. How many of these functions he exercised under Suleiman seems not to 
 have been recorded. In Spandugino's time (p. n8) the chief Kapuji was presiding 
 executioner. 
 
 * Rambcrti, 251; Junis Bey, 268. 
 
 * Menavino, 150. They were not ^!<//dr. Cf. the Z(i;«og;7<T, below, pp. 252, 268. 
 ^ Shortened in use to Afiri-akhor, Imnikhor, Imbrahor, Imbroor, Imror, etc. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, vii. 17; Menavino, 148-150. 
 ^ A short form of Emir-Alem.
 
 132 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 received investiture at his hands. ^ As a consequence he ranked 
 first among the officers of the household as related to the govern- 
 ment. He also had superior control over the gatekeepers, and 
 he commanded the military music. 
 
 The tent-pitchers, under a Mihter-bashi, cared for the sultan's 
 tents in peace and war. Similar groups were the Veznedars 
 (who weighed the money received by the sultan), the guards 
 of the outside treasury, the purchasing agents of cloth and musUns 
 for the palace, and the guardians of presents. ^ 
 
 The masters of the hunt were important officials in the time 
 of Suleiman, who practised the ancient royal custom of going 
 with great state and numerous attendants to hunt over a large 
 region.^ Heads of the dog-keepers, falconers, vulturers, gerfal- 
 coners, and hawkers held honorable position. A number of the 
 pages of the higher odalar had subsidiary duties as falconers;* 
 Ibrahim was chief falconer at the time of his promotion to the 
 position of grand vizier. A part of the regular army aided in 
 the hunts. The Janissaries show by the names of some of their 
 chief officers that their corps grew in part out of the hunting 
 organization of the early sultans.^ 
 
 The intendants, or Umena, had charge of various departments 
 of supply and administration. They were the Shehr-emini, 
 or intendant of imperial buildings; the Zarabkhaneh-emini, or 
 intendant of mints and mines; the Mutbakh-emini, or intendant 
 of the kitchen and pantry; the Arpa-emini, or intendant of 
 forage for the stables of the palace; and the Masraf-shehriyari, 
 or substitute for the intendant of the kitchens. 
 
 This rapid survey, though by no means complete, shows 
 something of the comphcated organization, the numerous 
 personnel, and the various functions of the groups of the imperial 
 
 ^ Menavino, 145. 
 
 2 D'Ohsson, vii. 21. In his time these were under the " Chief of the Black 
 Eunuchs." It does not appear who controlled them under Suleiman. 
 
 * Postel, iii. 12; Hammer, Gesckichte, iii. 44. 
 
 ^ Hammer, Staatsverwaltung, 37. 
 
 5 Spandugino, 127-128, describes the hunting organization under Bayezid II. 
 Ramberti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 249, 266) state that 2700 or 900 Janissaries 
 served under the Scgban-bashi and Zagarji-bashi in the care of the dogs.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT 1 33 
 
 household. The number of individuals connected with it may 
 be estimated to have been between ten and fifteen thousand, 
 many of whom were not the sultan's slaves, but his servants 
 and employees in various capacities. All, however, except the 
 few members of the Ulema, were under the complete control 
 and command of members of the Ruling Institution. No 
 confusion resulted from such great complexity, for each group 
 of servants had its definite duties, and knew exactly from whom 
 to receive orders and to whom to report accomplishment. 
 
 It is clear that the functions of many of the officials of the 
 household, especially those of the head gardener, the grand 
 equerry, and the standard-bearer, intrenched upon the province 
 of government. The chief black eunuch and the chief white 
 eunuch collected and administered the revenues of many parcels 
 of land which were devoted to special purposes. The Umena 
 were so clearly recognized as exercising governmental functions 
 that they were regarded as chancellors, — an exception, made 
 for the sake of convenience, to the rule of separating household 
 and governmental officials. It resulted, therefore, that, while 
 order was maintained with comparative ease within the mech- 
 anism of the household and, as will be seen, of the government, 
 difficulty and confusion accumulated in the relations of the Ruling 
 Institution to the rest of the empire. The splendid organization 
 worked admirably down a certain distance from the top; but, 
 as the energy of the single will became mediated by many offi- 
 cials, and as the multiplex land-ownership and varied population 
 of the empire was approached, disorder to the extent of un worka- 
 bility was so constantly threatened that only more or less con- 
 vulsive readjustments, resorted to from time to time, enabled 
 the institutions of the empire to remain in being. 
 
 The Ceremonies of the Court 
 
 The Sacred Law, based on the practice of Mohammed and the 
 four early caliphs, discouraged display of every sort;^ nor did 
 the Seljuk Turks take readily to the magnificence which under 
 Persian influence had prevailed at the court of the Bagdad 
 
 » D'Ohsson, iv. 98 ff.
 
 134 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 caliphate.^ So, too, the early Ottoman sovereigns appear to 
 have maintained simpHcity of Hfe down to the time of Murad II. 
 A contemporary observer said: "The very Magnates and 
 Princes observe such simpUcity in all things, that they cannot 
 be distinguished from others. I saw the King going a long dis- 
 tance from his palace to Church accompanied by two youths. . . . 
 I saw him also praying in Church, not in a chair {cathedra) 
 or royal throne, but seated Hke the rest on a rug spread on the 
 ground; nor was there about him any ornament, either sus- 
 pended or exhibited or displayed. He used no singularity in 
 regard to his garments or his horse, by which he could be dis- 
 tinguished from others. I saw him at the funeral of his mother, 
 and I could not possibly have recognized him, had he not been 
 pointed out to me." ^ 
 
 In the understanding of Mohammed II, however, the capture 
 of the imperial city seems to have included the appropriation 
 of imperial forms and ceremonies; for no small number of his 
 Kanuns dealt with matters of rank and ceremony.^ By the time 
 of Suleiman the Kanuni Teshrifat, or Law of Ceremonies, had 
 become a collection of considerable magnitude.* It is significant 
 that the regulations concerning such matters as the color and 
 shape and material of robes and turbans, the order of precedence 
 on small as well as great occasions, and the observances proper 
 to each such occasion were made a matter of law. On the one 
 hand, a body of practice was set up which, though not distinctly 
 forbidden by the Sacred Law, was contrary to its essential spirit. 
 On the other hand, to rules of court etiquette, which in the West 
 are often unwritten and certainly have not similar standing 
 with acts of legislation, were given the rank and authority of 
 imperial laws. The Law of Ceremonies stood on a par with 
 the Law of Subjects, the Law of Fiefs, the Law of Eg}pt, and 
 the Law of Fines and Punishments. In fact, this law was 
 observed even more carefully than the others, since the matters 
 which it covered usually came under the eye of the sultan himself. 
 It was as much the duty of an officer to wear the proper costume, 
 
 ^ Siasset Nameh, i6i. * Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 88 ff. 
 
 2 Tractatus, ch. ix. * Ibid., 434 ff.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT I35 
 
 and to appear in the right place and at the right time at public 
 ceremonies, as to attend to the business connected with his 
 position. 
 
 All the classes of members of the sultan's household, all the 
 high officers of government, and all the separate bodies of troops 
 in the standing army were clearly distinguished from each other 
 by costume or head-dress or by both. Each group and every 
 officer in each group had his exact place in every ceremonial 
 assembly and his exact rank in every procession. Each great 
 official, beginning with the sultan, had his title for use in public 
 documents, a designation which, though not exactly fixed, 
 varied little from time to time.^ 
 
 Ceremonial occasions were numerous and splendid. All 
 were participated in by representatives from each division of 
 the Ruling Institution, and on the greatest occasions practically 
 its whole membership was present. The ceremonies may be 
 grouped as simple occasions, religious festivals, and extraordinary 
 ceremonies. Among the simpler ceremonial occasions were the 
 regular meetings of the Divan, which in time of peace took place 
 four times a week, on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. 
 On Fridays the sultan rode forth to mosque in magnificent state.- 
 On other days some of the officials made visits of state to their 
 superiors. Every three months the Janissaries were paid with 
 much ceremony in the parade-ground between the first and second 
 gates of the palace. For the sake of giving an impression of 
 wealth and magnificence, such occasions were frequently chosen 
 for the reception of ambassadors.' 
 
 The great religious festivals of Islam, in which all the Moslems 
 of the empire participated, were celebrated by the court with 
 great pomp. These were the two feasts of Bairam, one of which 
 comes at the close of the fast of the month of Ramazan, and the 
 
 * The statements of this paragraph are based upon the Kanuni Teshrifat as 
 given in Hammer, Slaatsverfassung, 434 ff. See Delia Valle, i. 45: " Tutti gli uffici, 
 e tutti gli ordini, tanto della militia, quanto della Corte, e d'ogni altra sorte di 
 persone, hanno qui il loro habito proprio, and in particolare al portamento della 
 testa, si cognosce ciascuno che cosa e." 
 
 ^ Postel, iii. 13; Hummer, Geschichle,ni. 18. 
 
 ' Ricaut, 156.
 
 136 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 other and greater seventy days later. ^ On the great day of 
 Bairam the ceremony of kissing the hand of the sultan was 
 performed by all the officials of the household and government. 
 
 The principal extraordinary ceremonies were those in celebra- 
 tion of the birth of sons or daughters to the sultan, of the cir- 
 cumcision of princes and the marriage of princesses, the accession 
 to the throne, and the going forth of the sultan to war. The 
 greatest of all Suleiman's celebrations was probably that of the 
 circumcision of his sons, Mustapha, Mohammed, and Selim, in 
 1530. Twenty-one successive days of display, feasting, games, 
 and formal presentation of gifts contributed to the unparalleled 
 grandeur of the occasion. ^ 
 
 It is not impossible to obtain an idea of the appearance of 
 the sultan's court and retinue at this time of the empire's greatest 
 splendor. One observer, often quoted already, who was gifted 
 with superb powers of expression, has left a clear record. Seer 
 and seen alike vanished from the earth more than three centuries 
 ago; yet through the keen eyes of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq 
 the world has ever since looked upon the great Suleiman as he sat 
 and rode in state. Busbecq, ambassador to the Ottoman court 
 from Emperor Charles the Fifth and his brother Ferdinand, 
 describes his first audience with Suleiman in camp at Amasia 
 in 1555, also the train that attended the sultan as he went forth 
 from Constantinople to war against his son Bayezid in 1559, 
 and a Bairam ceremony in camp near Scutari a few weeks after 
 the latter event. Some quotations from these descriptions will 
 give a better idea of Suleiman's court than any number of 
 statistics. The first describes the audience at Amasia : — 
 
 " The Sultan was seated on a very low ottoman, not more 
 than a foot from the ground, which was covered with a quantity 
 of costly rugs and cushions of exquisite workmanship; near 
 him lay his bow and arrows. . . . 
 
 ^ The festival of the Birth of the Prophet was not instituted until the reign of 
 Murad III (Hammer, Slaatsverfassung, 469). The sultan's annual visit to the 
 relics of the Prophet also became a great ceremony. 
 
 2 Hammer, Gesckichte, iii. 96-101. Only less splendid was the marriage of 
 Ibrahim to Suleiman's sister in 1524 {ibid. 38).
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT 1 37 
 
 " On entering we were separately conducted into the royal 
 presence by the chamberlains, who grasped our arms. This has 
 been the Turkish fashion of admitting people to the Sovereign 
 ever since a Croat, in order to avenge the death of his master, 
 Marcus, Despot of Servia, asked Amurath for an audience, and 
 took advantage of it to slay him. After having gone through a 
 pretence of kissing his hand, we were conducted backwards to 
 the wall opposite his seat, care being taken that we should never 
 turn our backs on him. . . . 
 
 " The Sultan's hall was crowded with people, among whom 
 were several officers of high rank. Besides these there were all 
 the troopers of the Imperial guard, Spahis, Ghourebas, Oulou- 
 fedgis, and a large force of Janissaries. . . . Take your stand 
 by my side, and look at the sea of turbaned heads, each wrapped 
 in twisted folds of the whitest silk; look at those marvellously 
 handsome dresses of every kind and every colour; time would 
 fail me to tell how all around is glittering with gold, with silver, 
 with purple, with silk, and with velvet; words cannot convey 
 an adequate idea of that strange and wondrous sight: it was the 
 most beautiful spectacle I ever saw. 
 
 " With all this luxury great simplicity and economy are 
 combined; every man's dress, whatever his position may be, 
 is of the same pattern; no fringes or useless points are sewn on, 
 as is the case with us, appendages which cost a great deal of 
 money, and are worn out in three days. In Turkey the tailor's 
 bill for a silk or velvet dress, even though it be richly embroidered, 
 as most of them are, is only a ducat. They were quite as much 
 surprised at our manner of dressing as we were at theirs. They 
 use long robes reaching down to the ankles, which have a stately 
 effect and add to the wearer's height, while our dress is so short 
 and scanty that it leaves exposed to view more than is comely 
 of the human shape; besides, somehow or other, our fashion of 
 dress seems to take from the wearer's height, and make him look 
 shorter than he really is. 
 
 " I was greatly struck with the silence and order that prevailed 
 in this great crowd. There were no cries, no hum of voices, the 
 usual accompaniments of a motley gathering, neither was there
 
 138 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 any jostling; without the slightest disturbance each man took 
 his proper place according to his rank. The Agas, as they call 
 their chiefs, were seated, to wit, generals, colonels (bimbaschi), 
 and captains (soubaschi). Men of a lower position stood. The 
 most interesting sight in this assembly was a body of several 
 thousand Janissaries, who were drawn up in a long line apart 
 from the rest; their array was so steady and motionless that, 
 being at a little distance, it was some time before I could make up 
 my mind as to whether they were human beings or statues; at 
 last I received a hint to salute them, and saw all their heads 
 bending at the same moment to return my bow.^ On leaving 
 the assembly we had a fresh treat in the sight of the household 
 cavalry returning to their quarters; the men were mounted on 
 splendid horses, excellently groomed, and gorgeously accoutred. 
 And so we left the royal presence." ^ 
 
 On the second occasion, when Suleiman was going forth to 
 war, Busbecq obtained a place at a window: — 
 
 " From this I had the pleasure of seeing the magnificent 
 column which was marching out. The Ghourebas and Oulou- 
 fedgis rode in double, and the Sihhdars and Spahis in single fiJe. 
 The cavalry of the Imperial guard consists of these regiments, 
 each of which forms a distinct body, and has separate quarters. 
 They are believed to amount to about 6000 men, more or less. 
 Besides these, I saw a large force, consisting of the household 
 slaves belonging to the sultan himself, the Pashas, and the other 
 court dignitaries. The spectacle presented by a Turkish horse- 
 man is indeed magnificent. His high-bred steed generally comes 
 from Cappadocia or Syria, and its trappings and saddle sparkle 
 with gold and jewels in silver settings. The rider himself is 
 resplendent in a dress of cloth of gold or silver, or else of silk or 
 velvet. The very lowest of them is clothed in scarlet, violet, 
 or blue robes of the finest cloth. Right and left hang two hand- 
 some cases, one of which holds his bow, and the other is full of 
 
 ^ Compare Gritti, 27: the Janissaries at the reception of ambassadors " stand 
 in such quiet and order as for war that it is a marvellous thing and not to be believed 
 by those who have not seen it with their own eyes." 
 
 * Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 152 ff.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT 1 39 
 
 painted arrows. Both of these cases are curiously wrouji^ht, and 
 come from Babylon/ as does also the targe, which is fitted to the 
 left arm, and is proof only against arrows or the blows of a mace 
 or sword. In the right hand, unless he prefers to keep it dis- 
 engaged, is a light spear, which is generally painted green. 
 Round his waist is girt a jewelled scimitar, while a mace of steel 
 hangs from his saddle-bow. . . . The covering they wear on 
 the head is made of the whitest and lightest cotton-cloth, in 
 the middle of which rises a fluted peak of fine purple silk. It is a 
 favorite fashion to ornament this head-dress with black plumes. 
 " When the cavalry had ridden past, they were followed by 
 a long procession of Janissaries, but few of whom carried any 
 arms except their regular weapon, the musket. They were 
 dressed in uniforms of almost the same shape and colour, so 
 that you might recognize them to be the slaves, and as it were 
 the household, of the same master. Among them no extraordi- 
 nary or startling dress was to be seen, and nothing slashed or 
 pierced. They say their clothes wear out quite fast enough 
 without their tearing them themselves. There is only one thing 
 in which they are extravagant, viz., plumes, head-dresses, etc., 
 and the veterans who formed the rear guard were specially 
 distinguished by ornaments of this kind. The plumes which 
 they insert in their frontlets might well be mistaken for a walking 
 forest.^ Then followed on horseback their captains and colonels, 
 distinguished by the badges of their rank. Last of all, rode their 
 Aga by himself. Then succeeded the chief dignitaries of the 
 Court, and among them the Pashas, and then the royal body- 
 guard, consisting of infantry, who wore a special uniform and 
 carried bows ready strung, all of them being archers.^ Next 
 came the Sultan's grooms leading a number of fine horses with 
 handsome trappings for their master's use. He was mounted 
 himself on a noble steed; his look was stern, and there was a 
 
 ^ A name for Cairo, used much from the time of the crusades onward. 
 
 * Nicolay, 88-89, explains that the wearing of ostrich plumes, attached in 
 a tube of jeweled gold to the front of the turban, and curving over the head and 
 down the back, was a highly-valued privilege accorded only to such Janissaries 
 as had distinguished themselves in action. 
 
 ' The iSolaks.
 
 140 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 frown on his brow; it was easy to see that his anger had been 
 aroused. Behind him came three pages, one of whom carried 
 a flask of water, another a cloak, and the third a box.'^ These 
 were followed by some eunuchs of the bed-chamber, and the 
 procession was closed by a squadron of horse about two hundred 
 strong [the Muteferrika]." ^ 
 
 Busbecq spent three months in Suleiman's camp near 
 Scutari : — 
 
 " I should have returned to Constantinople on the day before 
 the Bairam, had I not been detained by my wish to see that 
 day's ceremonies. The Turks were about to celebrate the rites 
 of the festival on an open and level plain before the tents of 
 Solyman; and I could hardly hope that such an occasion of 
 seeing them would ever present itself again. I gave my servants 
 orders to promise a soldier some money and so get me a place 
 in his tent, on a mound which commanded a good view of Soly- 
 man's pavilions. Thither I repaired at sunrise. I saw assem- 
 bled on the plain a mighty multitude of turbaned heads, at- 
 tentively following, in the most profound silence, the words of 
 the priest who was leading their devotions. They kept their 
 ranks, each in his proper position; the lines of troops looked like 
 so many hedges or walls parting out the wide plain, on which 
 they were drawn up. According to its rank in the service each 
 corps was posted nearer to, or farther from, the place where the 
 Sultan stood. The troops were dressed in brilliant uniforms, 
 their head-dresses rivalling snow in whiteness. The scene which 
 met my eyes was charming, the different colours having a most 
 pleasing effect. The men were so motionless that they seemed 
 rooted to the ground on which they stood. There was no cough- 
 ing, no clearing the throat, and no voice to be heard, and no one 
 looked behind him or moved his head. When the priest pro- 
 nounced the name of Mahommet all alike bowed their heads 
 to their knees at the same moment, and when he uttered the 
 name of God they fell on their faces in worship and kissed the 
 ground. . . . When prayers were finished, the serried ranks 
 
 ^ The Sharabdar, the Chokadar, and the SilHidar. 
 ^ Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 283 ff.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT 14I 
 
 broke up, and the whole plain was gradually covered with their 
 surging masses. Presently the Sultan's servants appeared 
 bringing their master's dinner, when, lo and behold! the Janis- 
 saries laid their hands on the dishes, seized their contents and 
 devoured them, amid much merriment. This licence is allowed 
 by ancient custom as part of that day's festivity, and the Sul- 
 tan's wants are otherwise provided for. I returned to Constanti- 
 nople full of the brilliant spectacle, which I had thoroughly 
 enjoyed." ^ 
 
 Influence of the Court 
 
 The influence of the Ottoman court may be looked at in three 
 ways, — as alTecting the sultan, the Ruling Institution, and the 
 destiny of the empire; but all three ultimately reduce to the last. 
 The sultan was influenced by his personal relationships with the 
 different individuals or groups which came into closest contact 
 with him. Reference has already been made to Roxelana. 
 Undoubtedly she had much influence over her imperial husband, 
 but to what extent she pushed him toward particular decisions 
 and actions cannot be known. It is improbable that she had 
 anything of consequence to do with the death of Ibrahim, since 
 the favorite's own actions had brought matters to such a pass 
 that he was a menace to the throne; moreover, her influence 
 in public affairs seems not yet to have become great. Some 
 writers of that date do not mention her at all, though she had 
 already won the supreme affection of Suleiman, and had, so to 
 speak, passed round the superior position of the mother of the 
 first-born son by being made a legal wife.^ Seventeen years 
 
 ^ Ihid., 302 ff. These quotations may profitably be compared with those 
 from the Tractaius in regard to the simplicity of Murad II (above, p. 134). Not 
 a few descriptions of court and camp ceremonies in the century following the 
 accession of Suleiman have been handed down. For example: Suleiman's entry 
 into Belgrade in 1532 (Marini Sanuto, Ivi. 870); Suleiman's entry into Aleppo, 
 1548 (anonymous report, in Alberi, 3d series, i. 224 ff.); Suleiman's reception of 
 Captain Pinon in 1544 (Maurand, 207-225); Selim IPs reception of Dc Xoailles in 
 1573 (t)u Fresne-Canaye, 59-72"*; Ahmed I's going to mosque, 1614 (Delia \'alle, 
 68-71); Ahmed I's reception of the Venetian Bailo, 1615 (ibid. 98 ff.). 
 
 * Postel, i. 31, speaks of the mother of Mustapha as having superior authority 
 about 1537, though residing much at Magnesia; and he docs not speak of Roxelana. 
 But Ludovisi, 29, shows that Roxelana was in 1534 the wife of Suleiman, and that
 
 142 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 later the situation was clear: Roxelana had triumphed completely 
 over the mother of Mustapha; her son-in-law Rustem, married 
 to Suleiman's well-beloved daughter Mihrmah, had held the 
 supreme office of grand vizier for nine years; her hump-backed 
 son Jehangir was Suleiman's favorite child. Nevertheless, 
 as late as the beginning of 1553 Suleiman seems to have intended 
 still that Mustapha should occupy the throne.^ 
 
 Mustapha became a victim less of Roxelana and Rustem 
 than of the indeterminate and dangerous condition of the rules 
 of succession to the throne.^ Had primogeniture been the estab- 
 lished order, Mustapha need only have been on his guard against 
 poison; he would have lacked motive for rebellion, and his father 
 would not have been in fear of deposition. Had not Moham- 
 med II established the terrible Kanun which ordered the execu- 
 tion of the brothers of a sultan at his accession, Roxelana need 
 not have feared for the lives of her own sons. Had not the 
 Janissaries helped Sehm to the throne ahead of time and against 
 the wishes of his father, their favor toward Mustapha would 
 not have forced a crisis. If Suleiman really desired Mustapha 
 to succeed him, he made a great mistake in sending him far away 
 to the governorship of Amasia. Bayezid, the ablest living son 
 of Roxelana, was in Karamania; and Selim, the least promising 
 of Roxelana's children, but apparently her favorite, was assigned 
 to the governorship at Magnesia. Selim was thus removed 
 from the capital by a journey of only five or six days, Bayezid 
 by a somewhat greater distance, and Mustapha by a journey of 
 twenty-six days.* Suleiman may have meant by these appoint- 
 ments only to promote his sons to more distant governorships 
 as they grew in experience and could be entrusted with greater 
 responsibilities; they, on the other hand, could hardly fail to 
 suspect that he had different intentions. Without further 
 discussion, suffice it to say that, with custom and law as it was, 
 
 the mother of Mustapha then resided with her son at Magnesia. For the decisive 
 quarrel between Roxelana and the mother of Mustapha, see Navagero, 75. 
 
 ^ Navagero, 79. 
 
 ^ Described above, pp. 93-95. 
 
 ^ Navagero, 76-77.
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT 1 43 
 
 the situation was untenable. First Mustapha, and later Roxe- 
 lana's own son Bayezid, became the victims of inexorable cir- 
 cumstances in which she undoubtedly played some part, though 
 exactly what it was cannot be known. ^ In so far as she contrib- 
 uted to the fatal outcome, she hastened the fall of the empire. 
 If ever a government demanded a strong man to keep it in opera- 
 tion, the Ottoman government needed one to maintain its 
 Ruling Institution. From the beginning there had been as yet 
 no failure; but after Suleiman the Magnificent, the Legislator, 
 was to come Selim the Sot, the Debauche! 
 
 Nor was the beloved and pious Mihrmah without her influence 
 on the fate of the empire, if it be true that she urged her father 
 on to the great expedition against Malta.^ His reign had opened 
 with two great triumphs: the fortresses that had defied the 
 great Conqueror, Belgrade and Rhodes, had fallen before his 
 troops. He had failed before Vienna, it is true; but in the 
 thirty-five succeeding years he had made large conquests, he had 
 strengthened his power, and his prestige had grown steadily. 
 Now, near the close of his life, his mailed fist was broken upon a 
 rocky isle in the Mediterranean. What but the confidence 
 gained by that successful resistance gathered and nerved the 
 Christian fleet that won the day at Lepanto ? The influence 
 of Roxelana and Mihrmah foreshadowed the power exerted 
 in later reigns by far inferior and far worse women. 
 
 The influence of Ibrahim, for whose promotion Suleiman 
 violated the rules of advancement in the government service, 
 and of Rustem, for whom he broke the rule of giving no high 
 place to relatives of the imperial family, has been discussed 
 already.^ In his late years the Sultan came greatly under the 
 influence of the Ulema, who had readier access to him than had 
 any other outside force,^ and whose power over him has been 
 thought by some to have been unfavorable. Just what ills it 
 
 * The unfortunate Jehangir also was thought to have come to his death from 
 shock at the death of Mustapha and fear of a similar fate for himself. See 
 Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 178; Navagero, 77. But see Alberi, Anonimo of 1553, 
 216, for another and more credible account. 
 
 2 Hammer, Gescliiclilc, iii. 425. ' See above, pp. 78, 120. 
 
 * Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 331; Halil Ganem, i. 199.
 
 144 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 brought about in his own time, however, are not easily to be 
 discovered. 
 
 The Ruling Institution was affected strongly by the splendor 
 and luxury of the court of Suleiman. The Sultan had so enor- 
 mous an establishment, and was so fond of display and ceremony, 
 that a similar spirit developed in all his kullar. Each officer 
 of position became inordinately ambitious to have a large house- 
 hold, many horses, much portable wealth, and superb equipment 
 for his horses and servants on state occasions and in time of 
 war. Just as Suleiman's splendor embarrassed his finances, 
 so that he was willing that Rustem should require payment for 
 office from newly-appointed great officials, so most of his kullar, 
 in order to keep up display, were led to undignified and extor- 
 tionate procedures. In the time of Suleiman's grandfather the 
 Ottomans of high position had already been excessively grasping. 
 " And to tell the truth," writes Spandugino, " in that country 
 they are more eager after money than devils after souls. And 
 one cannot accomplish anything with the princes of- lords except 
 by the power of money. In general, as well the emperor as his 
 princes and lords have mouths only for eating, for if you go to 
 them without giving them some present you will accomplish 
 nothing." ^ 
 
 That eagerness for wealth with which Spandugino reproached 
 the Turks became only worse under the Magnificent sultan's 
 example. The members of the Ruling Institution might prey 
 on each other to a certain extent by the sale of offices; but the 
 ultimate evil effect fell upon the subjects outside. They in the 
 end must pay for all the luxury and splendor of the great court 
 and the Httle courts. The pressure upon them tended to become 
 worse and worse. Lands began to grow less productive and to 
 pass out of cultivation. That dead blight began to descend 
 upon agriculture and trade which persists in Turkey to the present 
 day.^ Yet in the time of Suleiman this weakness hardly appeared. 
 
 ^ Spandugino, 185. A generation earlier still La Broquiere, 186, said: "No 
 one speaks to them [the pashas] unless he brings them a present, as well as one 
 for each of the slaves who guard their gate." 
 
 2 Spandugino, 145, relates how in his time the peasants were eaten, as it were, 
 all the year by tithes, compulsory presents, land-tax, and extortion. The earlier
 
 THE NOBILITY AND THE COURT 1 45 
 
 Although his best two sons had come to cruel deaths, although 
 twenty thousand of his troops had lately died in vain at Malta, 
 he went forth to his last campaign with a train which surpassed 
 in pomp and splendor all that he had led before.^ 
 
 sixteenth-century writers seem not to have observed that the sultan's subjects were 
 especially miserable. Morosini (1585), 272, remarks vigorously u{)on the tyranny 
 and oppression which were causing depopulation and destroying the incentive of 
 the farm-dwellers to produce more than a bare sustenance. Zane (1595), 395, 
 415, writes in a similar vein, (lerlach, 52 (quoted in Zinkeisen, iii. 361), found 
 those who lived at a distance from Constantinople in a wretched state of oppres- 
 sion. Knolles (ed. 1687, p. 982), writing about 1603, speaks of the desolate con- 
 dition of the empire, especially in those regions through which the army was 
 accustomed to pass. In Ricaut's time (pp. 124, 145, 323) agricultural decline, 
 accomjianicd by misery and depopulation, was apparent. 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichk, iii. 438.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS GOVERNMENT 
 
 Summary 
 
 The Ottoman Ruling Institution has now been considered in all 
 but the last of its aspects. The recruiting of its members from 
 Christian subjects and enemies, their conversion to Mohamme- 
 danism, and their training for the duties of war and government 
 were first explained; then the military duties and organization 
 of the sultan's kullar, their privileged and noble status, and their 
 organization and activity as a household and court were de- 
 scribed. Of the seven aspects in which the Ruling Institution 
 may be considered only one remains, that of government in 
 the narrow sense. 
 
 With certain exceptions, the Ruling Institution constituted 
 the government of the Ottoman Empire. According to the 
 Sacred Law, the rendering of justice belonged to the Moslem 
 Institution, and many internal matters were left to be regulated 
 by the subject nationalities, which were organized as churches, 
 and by the foreign colonies, which remained under their own 
 laws; but even over these bodies the Ruling Institution held the 
 sword, and in the case of the Moslem Institution it held the 
 purse-strings also. Aside from such exceptions, it attended to 
 all the functions of government that were performed within 
 the empire. These, however, as will appear, were by no means 
 so numerous and extensive as are the activities of a progressive 
 twentieth-century state. 
 
 Some of the functions of government cared for by the Ruling 
 Institution have already been described in the previous chapters. 
 The guidance of the educational system, the management of 
 the army of the empire, the conduct of local government, the 
 oversight of the household, the care of the sultan's gardens, 
 pastures, and forests, the regulation of ceremonies at his court, 
 may be all be regarded as tasks of government. To some of 
 
 146
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 47 
 
 them it will be necessary to refer again briefly; but the fact 
 that they have been described already simplifies the problem 
 of setting forth the plan of the government in its narrower 
 sense. 
 
 Functions of the Ottoman Government 
 
 All governments must in some fashion maintain themselves 
 in place and in operation; they must obtain means to meet 
 expenses, and they must keep some kind of record of their receipts 
 and expenditures and of their acts. They must alter and expand 
 the unwritten and the written rules under which they operate, 
 at least enough to keep their system workable. They must 
 protect their subjects sufficiently to enable them to earn a living 
 and the means to meet taxation. They must meet the efforts 
 of other governments of both a diplomatic and a military charac- 
 ter. All these things the Ottoman government did in its own 
 way. In addition, it remained in the sixteenth century strongly 
 under the ancient impulse to increase its bounds and the number 
 of its subjects, particularly at the expense of Christians and 
 Shiitcs and in the interest of Sunnite Islam. 
 
 The Ottoman government did not include among its functions 
 the building and maintenance of systems of roads, bridges, and 
 ferries, the conduct of a public postal service, the promotion 
 of agriculture, industry, and commerce, the organization of a 
 system of pubhc and universal education, the adjustment of 
 taxation and customs duties in the interest of the welfare of its 
 subjects, or an extension of the activities and liberties of its 
 subjects. Benevolence toward the common people had hardly 
 emerged into the consciousness of any sixteenth-century state. 
 Self-maintenance in power by the most available means, which 
 were usually military force; increase of power, authority, and 
 territory, by similar means; and, incidentally, an assurance of 
 the well-being of all the privileged persons who were connected 
 with the government, in proportion to their importance: these 
 were the chief objects aimed at by the governments of that day, 
 whether in the West or in the East. 
 
 Accordingly, the chief energies of the Ottoman Ruling Institu- 
 tion in its capacity as government were directed toward the
 
 148 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 smooth running of the machine. For this object the best and 
 most devoted men were obtained and trained. They, with as 
 many other members of the Ottoman nationahty as possible, 
 were organized into a magnificent army, which first of all 
 defended and maintained the government against enemies at 
 home and abroad, and then increased its dominions and greatness 
 by victorious campaigns in the " land of war." The rehgious 
 motive entered strongly here, since the power and conquests 
 of the Ottoman nation were felt to be the power and conquests 
 of Islam. The welfare and contentment of the members of the 
 government, beginning with the sovereign, were assured by ex- 
 clusive privileges, elaborate organization of personal ser\dce, 
 and ceremonies in which they could be flattered by opportunities 
 for display and by gradations of honor. 
 
 There remained as the special functions of government, 
 first, the careful elaboration and watchful improvement of the 
 regulations under which the Ruhng Institution and the state 
 were organized ; second, the keeping of every part of the admin- 
 istrative machinery in the best possible order and condition; 
 third, the acquisition of enough money and means to carry out 
 the purposes of the government, and the supplying of this money 
 and means in suitable quantity at the time and place needed 
 and to the proper persons; and, fourth, the preparing and record- 
 ing of all written acts necessary to the transaction of the business 
 of the government. A fifth function was the adjustment of 
 disputes between subjects of the empire who were not connected 
 with the government; this was attended to largely by another 
 institution, though supported and executed by the members 
 of the government itself. The first of these functions, that of 
 legislation, was cared for chiefly by the sultan himself; the second, 
 of administration, was controlled by his viziers; the third, of 
 finance, was managed by the Defterdars through twenty-five 
 departments; the fourth, of chancery, was under the power of 
 the Nishanjis; the fifth, of justice between the subjects, was, 
 in matters controlled by the Sacred Law, administered by the 
 Ulema, the learned men of the Moslem Institution, under the 
 headship of the Kaziaskers. These five functions were by no
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 49 
 
 means so clearly separated as were the groups of officials con- 
 cerned with them. A logical classification of duties would have 
 necessitated much readjustment. 
 
 The striking way in which the Ottoman Ruling Institution, 
 when regarded as a government, limited its operations almost 
 exclusively to its own afTairs seems to have resulted from its 
 character as a single slave-family. Although its essential char- 
 acter is somewhat obscured by the facts that it was by far the 
 largest slave-family in the empire, that it had ruhng authority, 
 and that some of its members exercised general governmental 
 functions, it is nevertheless true that the legislation of the sultans 
 and of Suleiman himself was largely directed to the regulation 
 of the institution itself, most laws of wider and deeper import 
 being included in the almost unchangeable Sacred Law. The 
 business of the viziers was also largely that of the institution, 
 aside from the fact that the grand vizier, as representative of 
 the sultan, headed also the justice of the empire. The imperial 
 treasury, again, was concerned, in the first place, with obtaining 
 the revenues due to the sultan, such of them as did not come 
 from his personal rights as the owner of domain lands being 
 farmed out, so that the government did not even here touch 
 the people directly. In the second place, the revenues were 
 paid out to the members of the institution as soldiers, servants, 
 officials, and members of the royal family. All who followed 
 the sultan to war without belonging to his great household 
 provided their own support. Even the officers of local govern- 
 ment, though appointed from his kullar, were supported by the 
 assignment of lands which they administered themselves by 
 means of the Ruling Institution. The sultan's chancery was 
 similarly confined in its operations to the preparation and regis- 
 tration of acts, decrees, commissions, and the like, most of which 
 were concerned with the adjustment and operation of the Ruling 
 Institution. Finally, the officers of the army and the govern- 
 ment rendered and administered justice to all the kullar, besides 
 deciding many law cases under imperial laws. To a very great 
 extent, then, the sultan's government was that of a large slave- 
 family, which secured its own interests and managed to the best
 
 150 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 advantage its own affairs, which cared Httle for the welfare of 
 the great majority of the people of the empire, and which had 
 dealings with them and attended to their affairs only when 
 obliged to do so by the pursuit of its own aims. 
 
 The Sultan as Head of the State and of the 
 
 Government 
 
 Suleiman's authority rested actually and immediately upon 
 the military might which he controlled. Psychologically, it 
 was strongly supported by the ancient Turkish tradition of 
 absolute obedience to the ruler who led and fed his people, and 
 by the imdying allegiance of the population of wide areas to the 
 Caesar of New Rome, to whose seat and splendor Suleiman 
 had succeeded. Theoretically, and, if a modern expression 
 may be used, constitutionally, Suleiman's power was that of 
 the ancient caliphs of Islam. It is true that he suffered under 
 one apparently complete disqualification. A tradition of high 
 order asserted that the Imams must be of the Prophet's tribe, the 
 Koreish ; ^ but by an extension of the principle of agreement 
 (ijma) by which the consensus of the Islamic doctors of the law 
 of any period may establish an interpretation of some passage 
 of the Sacred Law, Suleiman's father, after the acquisition of 
 the Holy Cities and the resignation of the last Abbassid caliph 
 at Cairo, had come into full rights as caliph. The title itself 
 seems to have been known by none of the Western writers of the 
 sixteenth century, nor was it commonly used by Suleiman in 
 public documents. 
 
 In his capacity as caliph, Suleiman was head of the Islamic 
 state, defender, executor, and interpreter of the Sacred Law, 
 and defender of the faith. He was under obligation to punish 
 heretics and unsubmissive infidels, to protect true believers, 
 and to extend the area of his divinely-appointed rule. To him, 
 after Allah and the Prophet, was due the absolute obedience of 
 all good Moslems within his dominions. As for his Christian sub- 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, i. 268; Heidbom, 112, note 11. Heidborn, 106-121, treats fully the 
 constitutional position of the sultan.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT I51 
 
 jects, they also regarded him as their lawful sovereign, given 
 by God as a punishment for their sins. The Sacred Law recog- 
 nized no power of legislation in the head of the state, since God 
 through Mohammed had legislated once for all; but it entrusted 
 to him the functions of administration and justice, to be exercised 
 to the fullest possible extent, subject always to the prescriptions 
 of the Law. The sultan being thus supreme, all the great institu- 
 tions of the Ottoman Empire are to be thought of, not as built 
 upward from a basis in the popular will, but as extended down- 
 ward from the divinely-appointed sovereign at the top. To 
 what extent the Ruling Institution held this relationship has 
 been indicated already. Central and local government, house- 
 hold and court, standing, feudal, and irregular army, all depended 
 upon the sultan. The Moslem Institution recognized him as 
 its head, and the highest officials of the judiciary, chosen out of 
 its membership, were appointed by him and removable at his 
 will.' So also the Mufti, the chief of the jurists, was appointed 
 by the sultan.^ Even the ecclesiastical organizations of the 
 subject Christians and Jews were likewise extended downward 
 from his authority, since at the capture of Constantinople the 
 Conqueror had at once assumed that temporal headship of the 
 Christian churches which had been held by the Byzantine 
 emperors.^ The Greek Patriarch received from the sultan 
 appointment and investiture, including a command to bishops, 
 clergy, and people of his faith to render obedience to him in 
 matters within his province; the other Christian groups and the 
 Jews were likewise dependent. Finally, the privileges enjoyed 
 by the foreign settlements all depended upon grants from the 
 sultan or upon treaties made with him in his sovereign capacity.* 
 As for the officials of the Ruling Institution, they were all either 
 directly or indirectly the sultan's appointees. Grand vizier, 
 viziers, treasurers, chancellor, generals of the inside service, 
 generals of the outside service and the army, Beylerheys and 
 Sanjak Beys, all took their places at a word from him, and at a 
 second word all left them without a murmur. 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschkhte, ii. 226. ' Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 1-3. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, iv. 482 fi. * Ibid. i. 557, iii. 159, etc.
 
 152 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 The Sultan as Legislator 
 
 So far as legislation was possible under the Ottoman system, 
 the sole power to issue it rested in the sultan. The law which 
 demanded obedience within the Ottoman Empire was fourfold: 
 the Sheri, or Sacred Law of Islam; the Kanuns, or written 
 decrees of the sultans; the ^(/d, or estabhshed custom; and the 
 Urf, or sovereign will of the reigning sultan.^ The Sheri was 
 above the sultan and unchangeable by him; the Kanuns and the 
 Adet were subordinate to the Urf; the Urf, when expressed and 
 written, became Kanun and annulled all contradictory Kanuns 
 and Adet. 
 
 The Sheri was the whole body of Islamic law as accepted by 
 the Ottoman nation. Its long history cannot be detailed here. 
 Based originally on the Koran, supplemented by traditions of 
 Mohammed's legal decisions and sa>ings, and by the decisions 
 of the early cahphs and the interpretations of early judges,^ 
 it was first formulated by Abu Hanifa, who was the earhest of 
 the four great orthodox Moslem doctors, and who became the 
 accepted teacher of all Turkish peoples.^ His code was worked 
 over again and again in the course of six centuries, as new deci- 
 sions of judges and interpretations of jurists accumulated. 
 Mohammed II found it necessary to have a new code prepared, 
 a task for which he chose Khosrew Pasha, who, singularly enough, 
 was a Christian renegade, seemingly almost the only one who rose 
 high in the Moslem Institution.^ This work, finished in 1470,* 
 was not sufficient in the days of Suleiman. At the time of its 
 preparation the Ottoman Empire had been still wholly within 
 territory that had remained Christian during all the early brilliant 
 period of Islam ; but since then the sultans had conquered three 
 seats of the later cahphate, Damascus, Bagdad, and Cairo, and 
 
 ^ Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 29. This use of the word Urf in Turkish is not 
 the same as that of its Arabic original (see Redhouse, 1294; Youssouf Fehmi, 237). 
 Heidbom, 37 flf., discusses the sources of Ottoman law, giving an especially 
 thorough and excellent treatment to the Sacred Law. 
 
 2 Macdonald, 71; D'Ohsson, i. 5 ff. 
 
 ' Macdonald, 94, 115; Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 4; D'Ohsson, i. 11 ff. 
 
 * Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 9. 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, 21.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 53 
 
 had come to hold the protectorate of the Holy Cities, where 
 Mohammed and the early caliphs had ruled, A new code of 
 law, therefore, better adapted to the more widely Moslem char- 
 acter which the empire had assumed, was demanded. Suleiman 
 charged Sheik Ibrahim Halebi (of Aleppo) with the task of pre- 
 paring such a code; and the result, prepared before 1549, was 
 the MuUeka ol-ebhar, the " Confluence of the Seas," which re- 
 mained the foundation of Ottoman law until the reforms of the 
 nineteenth century. * The MuUeka did not, however, entirely 
 replace the previous codes and collections oifetvas, or authorita- 
 tive juristic opinions, which continued to be used as law books of 
 less weight. 
 
 Early in the process of formulation, the Sacred Law was 
 separated logically into two great divisions, — matters of faith 
 and morals, and practical regulations, groups corresponding 
 more or less closely to the Western conceptions of theology and 
 law. The Moslems never made an actual separation of these 
 two divisions of the Sacred Law; both in education and in 
 practice they regarded them as parts of one great unity of ad\ice, 
 precept, and command, divinely sanctioned and binding upon 
 all true believers. The practical regulations, or the Law proper, 
 went by the Arabic name oijikh; it included both jurisprudence 
 and positive law.^ 
 
 A group of Dutch and German thinkers, led by Dr. Snouck 
 Hurgronje, has been so strongly impressed by the jurisprudential 
 side of the Sheri as almost to deny that it has or has ever had an 
 important practical side; ^ but a careful consideration of the early 
 history of the Ottoman Empire suggests that their view in its 
 entirety is not supported by the facts. Dr. Goldziher says: 
 " In later days, historical consideration has proved that only 
 
 * Hammer, Staalsverfassung, 10; D'Ohsson, i. 22-24. The MuUeka is the 
 basis of D'Ohsson's excellent work, which consists of a translation of the code 
 with its comments, to which he has added observations of great value based on 
 historical studies and on his own investigations during many years' residence in 
 Turkey. Heidborn, 44-69, gives a detailed account of the development of the 
 Sacred Law. He also (pp. 85-89) describes the MuUeka and gives a table of its 
 contents. 
 
 2 Heidborn, 40-41. This writer uses the iormfykyh. 
 
 ^ Snouck Hurgronje, in Revue de I'llislo'tre des Religions, xxvii. i fif., 74 ff.
 
 154 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 a small part of this system, connected with religious and family- 
 life, has a practical effect as of old, while in many parts of merely 
 juristical character this theological law is entirely put aside in 
 actual jurisdiction. . . . Snouck Hurgronje was really the first 
 who set forth with great acuteness and sure judgment the his- 
 torical truth, namely, that what we call Muhammedan law is 
 nothing but an ideal law, a theoretical system; in a word, a 
 learned school-law, which reflects the thoughts of pious theo- 
 logians about the arrangement of Islamic society, whose sphere of 
 influence was wiUingly extended by pious rulers — as far as 
 possible — but which as a whole could hardly ever have been 
 the real practical standard of public life. He finds there rather 
 a doctrine oj duties (Pflichtenlehre) of quite an ideal and theological 
 character, traced out by generations of religious scholars, who 
 wished to rule life by the scale of an age which in their idea was 
 the golden period, and whose traditions they wished to maintain, 
 propagate, and develop. Even the penalties for offenses against 
 religious laws are often nothing else but ideal claims of the pious, 
 dead letters conceived in studies and fostered in the hearts of 
 God-fearing scholars, but neglected and suppressed in Hfe where 
 other rules become prevailing. We find even in the oldest 
 literature of Islam many complaints about the negligence of the 
 religious law by Ulema in their struggle against the practical 
 judges, that is to say against the executors of actual law." ^ 
 
 The last sentence quoted contains by implication a genuine 
 distinction between the " religious law," which may be called 
 jurisprudence, and the " actual law." It is true that at the 
 present time " actual law " in all Mohammedan lands consists 
 only in a comparatively small proportion of precepts drawn from 
 the Sheri; yet a body of precepts which today requires an elab- 
 orate system of courts for its enforcement, and which offers a 
 career to many thousands of living men as teachers, advisers, 
 and judges, can hardly be adjudged a mere " doctrine of duties." ^ 
 
 1 Goldziher, in Zeilschrifl fur Vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, viii. 406 ff.; 
 Kohler, ibid. 424 ff.; JuynboU, 8, 310. 
 
 ^ In Turkey at the present day the courts of the Sacred Law (Sheriyek) have sole 
 cognizance of the following classes of cases: " in civil law, questions concerning
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 55 
 
 Undoubtedly the Sheri has suffered a gradual shifting of emphasis 
 from its practical to its jurisprudential side; undoubtedly it has 
 suffered progressive encroachment upon the area of its practical 
 application, beginning in very early times and leading up to an 
 invasion in force in the nineteenth century by the principles, 
 practice, and procedure of Western Europe. But in the Ottoman 
 Empire of the sixteenth century the Sheri had no such inferior 
 place. Even then, to be sure, it occupied by no means the whole 
 field of practical law; but an examination of the quotations 
 from the Venetian reports which were presented in an earlier 
 chapter is of itself sufficient to show that at that time the Sheri 
 held the place of overwhelming preeminence in legal matters, 
 in point of usefulness as well as of honor; that its practical 
 precepts to the full extent of their formulated scope were the 
 private law of the land; that its judges were of equal or greater 
 authority and repute than were the high officers of government; 
 that the latter were in most cases obliged to execute decisions 
 of the former, their independent jurisdiction being confined to a 
 limited class of persons, and to the decision of administrative 
 cases according to Kanuns outside the field of the Sacred Law.^ 
 
 marriage, alimony, education of children, liberty, slavery, inheritance, wills, 
 absence, and disappearance; in criminal law, suits concerning retaliation, the price 
 of blood, the price of laming a limb, the price of causing an abortion, damages 
 for disfigurements, the division of the price of blood" (Heidborn, 255). The 
 Nizamiyeh, or secular courts, have sole cognizance of commercial and penal cases, 
 and a few other groups. All other causes are taken before the Sheriyeh courts if the 
 parties agree; otherwise before the Nizamiyeh courts. Thus the courts of the 
 Sacred Law still retain a great deal of importance in Turkey. 
 
 1 See, in particular, above, pp. 40, 41, 42. See also Postel, i. 116 ff., 124 ff.; 
 Ricaut, 200 flf. Heidborn, 43, comments on this state of affairs, and explains 
 the comparatively recent further legal developments in Turkey as follows: — 
 
 " Durant de longs siecles Ic fykyh, tout petrifie qu'il etait, put suflire aux 
 besoins de la society islamique et son manque de souplesse fut d'autant moins 
 ressenLi, que revolution de cette soci^t^ elle-meme a 6te a peu pres nulle. As- 
 soupie dans une lethargic profondc, elle semble se recucillir de son immense effort 
 de jeunesse et contempler en spcctatrice indiflcrente ou dedaigneuse les progres 
 realises, depuis, par I'Occidcnt. En Turquie seulement, a mesure que se resser- 
 raient ses liens avec I'Europe, fut comprise I'imperieuse necessit6 de sortir de cet 
 isolcment et d'emprunter a la culture occidentale ccrtaines m6thodes susceptibles de 
 rajcunir le corps vicUi de I'empire. Par suite de cette orientation recentc, le fykyh a 
 subi, en Turquie, d'importantcs abrogations de fait sinon de droit, qui atteignent
 
 156 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 The Sacred Law reached out far beyond the conception of law 
 in the West. It was originally supposed to be sufficient for the 
 entire government of the Islamic state (of which there was 
 believed to be but one upon the earth)/ as well as for the minute 
 regulation of the social, ethical, and religious life of all its mem- 
 bers.2 From two circumstances, however, it rapidly became 
 inadequate as a political constitution: first, from the expansion 
 of the original simple Islamic society into a great world-power, 
 with interests and relationships far more complex than had been 
 dreamed of by the founders; and, second, from the fact that the 
 Law, believed to be of divine origin,^ was proclaimed unchange- 
 able by its own provisions, and hence could not, except with 
 extreme difficulty, be adapted to new responsibilities and times. 
 Judges and jurists labored manfully to provide elasticity by 
 interpretation, but the task was too great to be completely 
 successful. It became necessary, therefore, for princes to 
 supplement the Sacred Law by decrees of their own, a course 
 in which they could not transgress the positive commands of the 
 Sacred Law. But even within the Law itself the jurists had 
 allowed them considerable latitude, by classifying its provisions 
 under different heads as of various degrees of obligation: some 
 acts were forbidden, some were advised against, some were 
 considered indifferent, some were recommended, and some were 
 rigidly prescribed.^ Princes were compelled to keep hands oflf 
 all matters that were forbidden or prescribed; but in the wide 
 intervening field there was much that they might do, and an 
 even larger field was left open in matters that were not touched 
 at all by the Sacred Law because they had lain outside the 
 experience of the fathers of Islam or had developed since their 
 
 cependant plutot le domaine du droit public que celui du droit prive. Celui-ci 
 subsiste, dans une large mesure, malgre ses imperfections et son absence de plan et 
 de clarte. On s'est contente de combler ses lacunes les plus apparentes par des 
 lois empruntees a la legislation occidentale, sans se soucier de la complete disparate 
 creee par la reunion d'elements aussi heterogenes." 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, i. 261, v. 11. 
 
 2 Macdonald, 66; Hammer, Staatsverjassung, 12. 
 
 ' Heidborn, 69. 
 
 * Hammer, Staatsverjassung, 14; Heidborn, 71.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 5/ 
 
 time. In case of undoubted transgression of the Sacred Law, 
 the Moslem society, led by the Ulema, was considered absolved 
 from allegiance to the sovereign and justified in exercising the 
 right of revolution.' The Sheri was thus a written constitution 
 for the Ottoman Empire, not subject to amendment, but capable 
 of some sHght modification by judicial and juristic decision and 
 interpretation. 2 The sultan had no power over it except as 
 guardian, interpreter, and executor. The popular consent 
 which allowed him to remain in authority did not recognize 
 in him any right to amend or abolish any part of the Sacred 
 Law. 
 
 The Ottoman sovereigns at first issued their new legislation 
 as firmans, or ordinances,' but in the course of time they adopted 
 from the Greek word xavwv, or rule, the word kanun, which they 
 appHed to every general law. This Greek word as applied to 
 law thus came to be used in contrary senses in the East and the 
 West. To the canon law of the West corresponded the Sheri, 
 and to the civil or rather the national law of the West, the 
 Kamins. It is to be noted, however, that the Sheri had wider 
 sway in Turkey in the sixteenth century than the canon law ever 
 had in the West. Not only did it deal with a far larger field, 
 but its judges seem sometimes to have administered the Kanuns 
 also; they had, further, the support of the national government, 
 whereas the rival courts of the great officials had ordinarily a 
 very limited jurisdiction. The position of the ecclesiastical 
 courts of the Christian subjects was much more like that of 
 similar courts in the West."* 
 
 The Kanuns were issued in accordance with a general formula 
 of the Sacred Law. " The Imdm,'^ quotes Von Hammer, " has 
 the right to make all civil and pohtical regulations which are 
 demanded by prudence, the circumstances, and the public 
 
 ' Hammer, Staalsverfassung, 32; D'Ohsson, i. 291. 
 
 2 Ricaut, 202; Stecn de Jehay, 13 ff. 
 
 ' Hammer, Staalsverfassung, 31. 
 
 * In the course of time the development of civil courts in the Ottoman Empire 
 has relegated the former judicial system to the position of ecclesiastical courts with 
 jurisdiction similar to that of Christian church courts of the Middle Ages. See 
 Macdonald, 113; and above, p. 154, note 2.
 
 158 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 welfare of the administration and the highest executive power." ^ 
 The Kanuns of previous sultans were not binding upon a reigning 
 sultan, except so far as he chose to put them in force; ^ but the 
 necessity of preserving a continuous administration led ordinarily 
 to the carrying over to a new reign of all Kanuns that were actu- 
 ally in use. Reforms or readjustments were often accomplished 
 by the revival, with modifications, of old Kanuns, rather than 
 by wholly new legislation.^ 
 
 The Kanuns dealt with matters of military, financial, feudal, 
 criminal, and police law, and with the law of ceremonies.* All 
 these were also covered in a measure by the Sacred Law, with 
 two exceptions, — the feudal law and the law of ceremonies, 
 which had to do with matters non-existent in the early Islamic 
 state.5 Within these two fields the sultans had a free hand; 
 in all others their Kanuns were strictly supplementary and 
 administrative.^ 
 
 The Kanuns were issued separately to meet special circum- 
 stances. A number of them, when collected according to subject- 
 matter or under the name of the sultan who issued them, con- 
 stituted a Kanun-nameh, or book of laws. Each department 
 of the government had its own Kanun-nameh, and the laws of 
 taxation for each sanjak were collected into a separate group.^ 
 It is incorrect to think of a Kanun-nameh of Mohammed II or 
 of Suleiman as bearing any resemblance to the codes of Theo- 
 dosius or Justinian. Not in magnitude, scope, character of 
 contents, authorized unification, or prevaiHng authority can any 
 comparison be made. The Kanun-nameh of Mohammed II 
 seems from its opening words to have had his sanction as a 
 collected body: " This is the Kanun of my fathers and ancestors, 
 according to which my successors shall act from generation to 
 generation." ^ These words themselves show, however, that the 
 contents were not a unified body, but a collection of Kanuns 
 
 1 Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 30. ^ Ibid. 31. 
 
 ^ For an example of this practice, see ibid. 343. 
 * Ibid. 2. ^ Ibid. 29. ^ Heidbom, 90. 
 
 ' Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 31; in pages 219-327 are found the Kanun-namehs 
 of all the sanjaks. 
 8 Ibid. 87-101.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 59 
 
 issued at different times by former sultans as well as by the one 
 who was reigning; and an examination of the contents bears out 
 the statement. Nor does the collection possess completeness 
 in any sense. The first of the three parts deals mainly with the 
 relative rank of officials, the second with a miscellaneous lot of 
 usages, chiefly ceremonial, the third with fines for some serious 
 offenses and with the salaries of some great officials. The whole 
 code is brief and shows great economy of legislation. 
 
 The Legislation of Suleiman 
 
 Suleiman's laws are not contained in a single Kanun-nameh. 
 He is rightly named the Legislator by comparison with preceding 
 Ottoman sultans, who were men of the sword and not of the pen; 
 who, saying little, but doing much, had built up a great empire. 
 With the empire, institutions which started from small begin- 
 nings had also grown great; but, resting as they did on few writ- 
 ten laws or ordinances, they had tended to reach a confused and 
 complicated condition. The Ruling Institution itself, gathered 
 closely about the sultans and constantly amended by them, 
 was kept in excellent order; it needed no Kanun-nameh, and as a 
 whole never had one, though many Kanuns of rank, ceremony, 
 salary, and inheritance had reference to it. More remote 
 matters, however, could not have so much attention. By the 
 time of Suleiman's accession, for example, the feudal system, and 
 the bearing of the various forms of taxation and land tenure 
 on the subject population, had come into great disorder; criminal 
 law also needed further development, and the market and gild 
 regulations of the cities of the empire demanded attention. 
 Egyptian affairs were likewise in wild confusion. Already 
 disordered under the last Mameluke sultans/ they were now, by 
 reason of the many deaths and confiscations in the war of con- 
 quest and the setting-up of a new governing authority, impera- 
 tively demanding settlement. In accordance with the needs 
 of the time, therefore, Suleiman issued a large number of Kanuns, 
 dealing especially with timars or fiefs, rayahs or subjects, cere- 
 
 * Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 480.
 
 l6o THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 monies, and criminal and market regulations, and comprising a 
 constitution for Egypt, the Kanun-nameh Misr} The latter 
 appears to be the only body of Kanuns which the Legislator 
 published as a whole, and which formed a complete system; 
 issued in 1532,2 it was probably inspired by Ibrahim, following 
 up his visit to Egypt in 1524.^ The collection of the great 
 Mufti Ehu su'ud, which is called the Kanun-nameh of Suleiman, 
 contains chiefly his ordinances in regard to the land tenure and 
 taxes of the subject Christians, together with a number of laws 
 designed to regulate the feudal system, and a few relating to 
 judges and legal processes.* Suleiman was great as a legislator 
 only by comparison with his predecessors. He set nothing in 
 final order; and the ground had to be gone over again within 
 fifty years after his death, in the reign of Achmet I.^ His legisla- 
 tion was doubly hindered : first, by the conservatism of his people 
 and his religion, which alike believed that the old ways were 
 the best, and which made radical departures practically impos- 
 sible; and, second, by the weakness inherent in despotic legisla- 
 tion, in which the distance of the law-giver from the subjects 
 affected makes true adaptation to circumstances and complete 
 enforcement impossible of attainment. Because of the first 
 hindrance, most of Suleiman's laws professed an attempt to 
 restore a former better state of affairs. As a matter of fact, 
 
 ^ Hammer, Staatsverfassung: 101-143, the Kanun-nameh Misr; 143-162, police 
 and market laws of Suleiman; 187-211, Kanuni Rayah; 337-434, Kammi Timar. 
 Hammer does not make it clear where he found particular Kanuns, or how com- 
 pletely he has presented the originals; nor has he attempted to distinguish Kanuns 
 of Suleiman from those of earlier and later sultans. The Kanuni Rayah was not 
 made into a formal Kanun-nameh till 1614 {ibid. 211). See Heidborn, 91-92. 
 
 2 Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 142. 
 
 3 Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 39. 
 
 * A translation of a portion of the table of contents of this collection, as found in 
 the manuscript Fluegel No. 1816, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, is given in 
 Appendix iii, below. This shows by comparison with the headings in Hammer's 
 Staatsverfassung, 396-424, that Hammer has there translated at least one-half 
 of the manuscript, though he appears to attribute these sections to the Kanun- 
 nameh of Achmet I (ibid. 384). The table of contents of the latter collection of 
 laws is very different (see next note). 
 
 ^ The Kanun-nameh of Achmet I, issued in 1619, contained collections of 
 (i) feudal laws; (2) laws of the army, the navy, the outer and the inner service; 
 (3) laws of police, finance, and fiefs. See Hammer, Staatsverfassung, pp. xviii, xix.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT l6l 
 
 they probably did not contain much more than a statement in 
 black and white, with necessary simplifications, of a confused 
 body of practice that had grown up gradually, formulated in 
 parts by the ordinances of his predecessors. Because of the 
 second hindrance to his legislation, Suleiman was not able to put 
 into satisfactory and enduring order matters of such vital interest 
 to the people as the feudal and financial systems. Conferring 
 only with a few religious men and a limited number of high 
 officials, aside from the shut-in members of his inner service, 
 he could not possibly know how his regulations would bear 
 upon the holders of small fiefs and the Christian tenants and tax- 
 payers in remote parts of the empire. The officials who formula- 
 ted the Kanuns for him were only a little better able than he 
 to judge of such matters; and the persons chiefly affected by 
 the laws were not consulted at all. Moreover, after issuing 
 his laws the sultan could not follow them up to see to their 
 execution. In later times, orders to readjust land titles were 
 sometimes given, but with little further result than to enrich 
 officials by the bribes which they accepted for declaring titles 
 good, or by their confiscations of property on which the owners 
 could not pay enough.^ Although official corruption was un- 
 doubtedly not so bad under Suleiman as it became later, the sus- 
 piciously great wealth of high officials like Ibrahim and Rustem 
 and the fact that fiefs and finances were in worse disorder than 
 ever, after no great time had elapsed, gives evidence that his 
 laws were ngt faithfully enforced.- 
 
 Not much need be said about Adet and UrJ. Adet, or custom, 
 corresponds primarily to the body of unwritten regulations 
 under which the Turks of the steppe lands lived. As in most 
 semi-civilized societies, it was at once far wider in scope, more 
 rigid, and more binding, as enforced by popular opinion, than 
 written laws in more advanced societies usually are. Something 
 of these primitive characteristics were carried over into the 
 Ottoman nation, with all its acquisition of new membership and 
 
 ' This statement is based on information obtained from a gentleman long 
 resident in Turkey. 
 * Zinkeisen, iii. i6i ff.
 
 1 62 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 incorporation of useful ideas. The conservative character of 
 Islam strengthened the tendency to perpetuate established 
 custom. It has been remarked of the caliphate that in no other 
 state have little causes near the beginning produced such great 
 effects, because of the tendency to follow precedent minutely.^ 
 A very similar observation has been made in regard to the 
 Ottoman state: " The changeless perpetuity of a primitive 
 institution appears at every step in Ottoman history." ^ What 
 has been shall be, was a precept observed by the Ottomans 
 in matters small and great. The principles of the Sacred Law, 
 the accepted Kanuns, and the local Adet of towns, districts, 
 and manors had almost equally binding force. In fact, to the 
 unlettered citizen they probably formed one indistinguishable 
 whole, which seemed almost a feature of the ordering of nature. 
 Although such sentiments tended strongly toward stabihty, 
 they were a great hindrance to improvement. The early Otto- 
 mans had adopted new ideas and institutions with great readi- 
 ness; but, since they held to them with equal tenacity, in the 
 course of time they had no room left for the admission of more 
 novelties. As fusion and combination were processes little 
 understood, the tendency was thus toward stagnation, inter- 
 rupted violently and for short periods when evils became too 
 great to be endured. But, while the disposition to adhere 
 to the established order was exceedingly strong among the 
 Ottomans, Urf, the will of the sovereign was recognized to be 
 superior to Adet, much as the Creator was held to be superior 
 to the ordinary operations of nature. The sultan's will, however, 
 penetrated but seldom so far as to the masses of the people. 
 
 Adet supplemented the Sacred Law and the Kanuns in matters 
 which they did not cover.^ It differed from district to district, 
 as it does in the West. Urf was the sovereign will of the reigning 
 sultan ; it was the seat and organ of sovereignty, being absolute 
 to the full extent in which, according to the Sacred Law, God has 
 delegated the right of legislation and rule to human beings.* 
 The will of a past sultan could prevail only if it had been expressed 
 
 ^ Macdonald, lo. ' Hammer, Staaisverfassung, 32. 
 
 2 Hammer, Geschichte, i. 96. * D'Ohsson, i. 258 ff.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 63 
 
 in a Kanun and was enforced by the reigning sovereign. It was 
 by the expression of Urf that Kanuns were issued or annulled 
 and that Adet was replaced by Kanun. So long as the Sacred 
 Law was untouched, Urf might be exercised oppressively, 
 cruelly, or unworthily, without giving any one the right to 
 resist.' Against the Sheri, however, it had no force; any attempt 
 to exercise it thus was an invitation to disaster.^ 
 
 Suleiman was never in danger from transgression of the 
 Sacred Law. A devout Moslem, whose piety increased in old 
 age, he took seriously his duty of enforcing its provisions, not 
 even hesitating at such as were unpopular, like the prohibition 
 of wine-drinking,^ or at such as demanded self-sacrifice on his 
 part, like the disapproval of musical instruments and silver 
 plate.^ If he did not enact measures directly to increase the 
 welfare of the common people, his attempts to regulate the 
 tax and tenancy systems tended to hghten their condition. 
 Moreover, he used severe measures to put down extortion; 
 and he strove by his market and police regulations to maintain 
 justice, fairness, and order.* 
 
 The Viziers 
 
 Ottoman writers represented their government under the figure 
 of a tent supported by four lofty pillars,^ — the Viziers, the 
 Kaziaskers, the Dejterdars, and the Nishanjis. It is not safe 
 to press comparisons too far, however; for, as a matter of fact, 
 the pillars did not bear equal weight. All four groups of officials 
 were necessary, but they were not of Hke importance: the 
 
 1 " The dignity of the Imamate does not absolutely demand that the Imam be 
 just, virtuous, or irreproachable, or that he be the most eminent and the most 
 excellent of the human beings of his time " (from the Midteka, quoted by D'Ohsson, 
 i. 271); "Vices or tyranny in an Imam do not demand his deposition" (^ibid. 
 288). This is the doctrine of orthodox Islam, as the outcome of the early 
 Kharijite schisms. The Shiites are more critical as regards their sovereigns, who 
 are not regarded as Imams. 
 
 * 'Hdim.mtr, Staalsverfassitng, 32; D'Ohsson, i. 2gi. 
 
 ' Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 2>l^~Z2)Z\ D'Ohsson, iv. 50 fif. 
 
 * Busbecq, i. 331; D'Ohsson, iv. 103, 280. 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichtr, iii. 71, 486. 
 
 ' Ibid. ii. 216-217, 223.
 
 164 THE GOVERNMENT OF TEE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 Nishanjis were far less esteemed than the others; the grand 
 vizier, on the other hand, carried, from the time of Suleiman, 
 so much greater a burden than any one else that he might be 
 compared to a central pillar which supported the entire tent. 
 
 The viziers were the chief councillors of the sultan for peace 
 and war, administration and justice; and they dehberated all 
 important questions in the meetings of the Divan, which will 
 be described later. The word vizier means burden-bearer, the 
 idea being that an official so designated lifted from the shoulders 
 of the sovereign the burden of state, and bore it upon his own 
 shoulders. The number of viziers was not rigidly fixed, but in 
 the reign of Suleiman, there were ordinarily four, that being a 
 sacred number with both Turks and Moslems. ^ All bore the title 
 pasha, which was sparingly used in the sixteenth century. 
 Ordinary viziers had no regular responsibilities besides their 
 function as councillors; they had great incomes from both 
 regular and irregular sources, and kept large estabHshments 
 modeled on that of their master. ^ 
 
 In the time of Suleiman, the office of grand \dzier reached 
 the cHmax of a noteworthy development. Whereas formerly 
 this official had been the senior member of the sultan's board 
 of advisers, primus inter pares, he now became a personage far 
 above his fellow-viziers. His position came to differ from theirs 
 not merely in degree, but in kind, a difference typified by the 
 fact that, in reporting to Suleiman after the meetings of the 
 Divan, none spoke but the grand vizier.^ This development 
 of the office seems to have resulted from Suleiman's willingness 
 to entrust much power to a chosen instrument, who would thus 
 relieve him of many of the immense cares of empire. Ibrahim 
 first held his master's confidence for many years. Later 
 Rustem came to full power, supported by the wife and the 
 favorite daughter of the monarch. In Suleiman's last years 
 he left weU-nigh everything to Ali and to Mohammed SokolH.'* 
 
 1 lUd. i. 565, ii. 223. ^ See above, pp. 58, 59. 
 
 ' A. Barbarigo, 155; D. Barbarigo, 26; Bernardo, 326; Erizzo, 136. See also 
 Chesneau, 41. 
 * Barbaro, 319.
 
 TUE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 65 
 
 The grand vizier thus came practically to wield the sovereign 
 power of the Ottoman state: the sultan might almost discharge 
 his mind of public care. That is why it became easy for Selim II 
 and his successors to withdraw into the harem, and devote most 
 of their energies to carousing and debauchery. Had the position 
 of the grand vizier been more secure, this change might have 
 been for the good of the Ottoman state, as alTording a means 
 of supplementing the scanty abilities of weak sultans by those 
 of the ablest men of the empire. In the case of Mohammed 
 Sokolli, and of the Kiuprilis three generations later, such was 
 to be the fact. More often, however, the place of grand vizier 
 was to be so thoroughly at the mercy of harem intrigue that 
 only a master of this art could retain his precarious position by 
 immense efforts, such as would leave a mere remnant of his 
 energies free for the service of the state. The increase under 
 Suleiman of the relative power of the grand vizier was thus a 
 dangerous and eventually a disastrous development. 
 
 It is clear that the grand vizier fully deserved the name of 
 burden-bearer. Whereas even so earnest a sovereign as Sulei- 
 man appears to have had a sufficiently leisurely life in time of 
 peace, in spite of his great responsibilities as head of a despotic 
 government,^ his grand viziers must have been kept fully occu- 
 pied. He that has been called the greatest of all viziers, the 
 Nizam al-mulk, spoke out of his experience when he said: " It 
 is necessary that the sovereign consider with his vizier affairs 
 of state and all that concerns the army, the finances and general 
 prosperity. He must needs give attention to the measures 
 which should be taken against the enemies of the empire and 
 everything that relates to the subject. All these matters give 
 rise to a great many annoyances and preoccupations and put 
 the spirit to torture, for they do not leave a single instant of 
 repose." ^ 
 
 The grand vizier represented the sultan as head of the civil 
 and military administration and as supreme judge.^ He ap- 
 
 ^ Postel, iii. passim, gives various glimpses of his life. 
 ' Siasset Nanthh, 163. 
 
 ' The position and duties of the grand vizier at a later date are described at 
 length by Hammer, Staatsvenraltuug, 79-101, and by D'Ohsson, vii. 177-189.
 
 1 66 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 pointed the highest officials in these departments. He presided 
 over long sessions of the Divan four days in the week. Some 
 of his other duties, cares, and obligatory ceremonies appear in 
 the catalogue of his ten special prerogatives: ^ — 
 
 1. He had the care of the imperial seal, with which, on the 
 days of the Divan, the doors of the treasury and chancery were 
 sealed. The delivery of the seal was the symbol of investiture 
 with the office of grand vizier. 
 
 2. He might hold a Divan of his own at his palace in the after- 
 noon. This was an important session of court at which many 
 cases, both great and small, were decided.^ 
 
 3. He had the right to be escorted by the Chaush-hashi and 
 all the Chaushes from his palace to and from the sultan's palace. 
 
 4. He received visits of state from the Kaziaskers and DeJ- 
 terdars every Wednesday. 
 
 5. He was honored by the appearance of the officers of the 
 imperial stirrup every Monday in the Divan. 
 
 6. He went in solemn procession on Friday to the mosque, 
 escorted by the Chaushes, the Muteferrika, and others of the 
 outside service in turbans of ceremony. 
 
 7. He received a weekly visit from the Agha of the Janis- 
 saries, and a monthly visit from the other viziers. 
 
 8. He inspected the city of Constantinople and its markets, 
 escorted by the judge of Constantinople, the Agha of the Janis- 
 saries, the provost of the markets, and the prefect of the city. 
 
 9. He received a weekly visit of state from various magis- 
 trates and Sanjak Beys. 
 
 10. He was honored at the two Bairams with official felicita- 
 tions from the other viziers, the Dejterdars, the Beys, the magis- 
 trates, and the generals of the army. 
 
 Customary ceremonies alone were evidently enough to absorb 
 a very large part of the grand vizier's time; but they were a 
 mere incident to the vast amount of administrative and judicial 
 business that demanded his attention. It is not to be wondered 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 226; taken from the Turkish historian Aali and 
 referring to the time of Mohammed II. 
 ^ Postel, i. 123.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 67 
 
 at that the period of service in this office was short, on the aver- 
 age. The post was a dangerous one; for the possessor, with all 
 his greatness, was the sultan's kul, and liable to summary exe- 
 cution if he failed to give satisfaction. Of some two hundred 
 men who served as grand viziers in the course of five hundred 
 years, about twenty were executed at the time of their deposi- 
 tion.^ 
 
 Suleiman's grand viziers held office for comparatively long 
 periods.^ Seven, taken together, served him forty years; Mo- 
 hammed Piri Pasha, whom he found in office at his accession, 
 served in all six years, and Mohammed Sokolli, whom he left 
 in office at his death, served fifteen years. Thus in sixty-two 
 years there were only nine in all. Three of them deserve to be 
 called great, — Ibrahim for his splendor, his breadth of mind, 
 and his continuance in favor, Rustem for his financial shrewd- 
 ness, and Mohammed Sokolli for his statesmanship. These 
 three also served the longest, — Ibrahim thirteen years, Rustem 
 fifteen years in two periods, and Mohammed Sokolli fifteen 
 years without a break. Four of the nine ended their service at 
 death, two were deposed and executed, three were simply de- 
 posed. All except Mohammed Piri Pasha were Christian 
 renegades, who had risen as slaves to the highest honor of the 
 empire. 
 
 The Kaziaskers were, under the sultan and the grand vizier, 
 the heads of the judiciary of the empire. They sat in the Divan, 
 where they ranked next to the grand vizier. Since they belonged 
 to the Moslem Institution, discussion of their duties will be 
 postponed to the next chapter. 
 
 The Defterdars, or Treasurers ^ 
 
 The great labor of accounting for the receipts and expendi- 
 tures of the Ruhng Institution in practically all its capacities 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 5. 
 
 2 Ibid. iii. 793. 
 
 ' The position of the Dcflcrdars about the year 1800 is discussed in D'Ohsson, 
 vii. 261 ff., and in Hammer, Staatsvenualtung, 137 S. Contemporary accounts are 
 found in Menavino, 168; Ramberti, below, p. 247; Junis Bey, below, p. 265; 
 Pastel, iii. 66-70.
 
 1 68 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 was under the care of the two principal Defterdars, or treasurers, 
 one for RumeHa and one for Anatolia, aided by two of lower 
 rank, one for Aleppo and the southwest and one for the Danubian 
 countries.^ The principal Defterdars were men of great position, 
 with large incomes and households, and possessing the right of 
 audience with the sultan in regard to matters of revenue.- Under 
 them were twenty-five departments or bureaus, as instituted 
 by the Conqueror, each with a chief, or KJwjagan, who directed 
 a number of clerks of different grades. Between these and the 
 Defterdars were several intermediate officials, of whom the most 
 important were the two Rusnamehjis, or book-keepers. The 
 total personnel of the treasury department numbered more than 
 eight hundred.^ 
 
 A list of the twenty-five bureaus, or kalems, with a statement 
 of the provinces of each, will give an excellent idea of the com- 
 pHcated financial arrangements of the Ottoman government/ 
 Taken as a whole, they show in outline the economic substructure 
 of the Ruling Institution, as well as that of the Moslem Institu- 
 tion, with exception of the sultan's private treasury, out of 
 which most of the inner service of the court was paid, and of the 
 provisions for the officers and judges of local government : — 
 
 I. The Buyuk Rusnameh Kalemi, or greater book-keeping 
 bureau, was the central office to which all the accounts were 
 brought from the other bureaus. Once or twice a year it drew 
 
 ^ The word means primarily " book-keeper." It is derived either from the 
 Greek word 5i(pdipa or from a similar Persian word (Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 
 228). Ramberti (below, p. 247) mentions but two Defterdars, one who took care 
 of the revenue from all the Asiatic provinces, Egypt, and the Danubian countries, 
 and received ten thousand ducats a year, and perquisites, the other who took care of 
 the revenue from the rest of the European dominions, received six thousand ducats 
 and perquisites, and was governor of Constantinople in the sultan's absence. 
 
 2 Spandugino, 98. 
 
 ' Junis Bey (below, p. 265) says that the Defterdars had 200 slaves each for their 
 courts. Then he speaks of 50 scribes, each with 15 or 20 slaves, and of 25 secretaries 
 who must have been the heads of the bureaus, and who had slaves. Next he 
 mentions the two Rusnamekjis, who had 20 or 25 companions under them. Ram- 
 berti, 247, says that the first Defterdar had 1000 slaves in his household, 
 and the second 500. Postel, iii. 69, mentions only one Rusnamehji, but clearly 
 states that he is over the chiefs of the twenty-five bureaus. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, vii. 264-273; Hammer, Staatsverwaltung, 145-170.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 69 
 
 up a statement of the finances of the government. The income 
 of this bureau seems to have been the greatest of all.' 
 
 2. The Bash Miihasebch Kalemi, or head bureau of accounts, 
 was the largest of all in numerical strength, and the second in 
 income. It kept account of tithes and taxes from the sanjaks, 
 of munitions of war of all kinds, of the pay of the garrisons of 
 Rumelia and Anatolia, of the receipts and expenses of the intend- 
 ants of buildings, the admiralty, the kitchen, forage,^ the mint, 
 the three powder factories at Constantinople, Salonika, and 
 Gallipoli, and of the inspector of artillery. This bureau received 
 copies of all contracts made in the public service, and it registered 
 and countersigned the entire vast number of orders on the 
 treasury. 
 
 3. The Anatoli Muhasehesi Kalemi, or bureau of accounts 
 for Anatolia (though it was by no means confined to Anatolia 
 in its scope), kept accounts for certain domanial lands, for the 
 garrisons in the Aegean Islands, and for the pensions of veteran 
 soldiers. 
 
 4. The Suvari Mukahelesi Kalemi, or bureau of control for 
 the cavalry, kept account of the salaries of officials of the inner 
 service, of the Kapujis, of the imperial stables, and of all the 
 Spahis of the Porte. 
 
 5. The Sipahi Kalemi, or bureau of the Spahis, issued orders 
 for the pay of the Spahis proper, which required to be counter- 
 signed by the head of the fourth bureau. 
 
 6. The Silihdar Kalemi, or bureau of Silihdars, was similar 
 to the fifth bureau, except that it was concerned with the 5////;- 
 dars. 
 
 7. The Haremein Muhasebeh Kalemi, or bureau of accounts 
 of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, kept the books of the 
 religious endowments or vakfs of the imperial mosques, of the 
 salaries of all persons connected with these mosques, of all other 
 religious endowments in Constantinople and elsewhere in Rume- 
 lia, and of all Rumelian property dedicated to the Holy Cities. 
 All certificates of nomination to service in connection with 
 
 ' It certainly was in 1660. Cf. Hammer, Staalsvcrd'allinig, 170. 
 ^ D'Ohsson, vii. 265, omits the intendants of buildings and forage.
 
 lyo THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 mosques in Rumelia were prepared here, to be presented to the 
 tenth bureau for the issuance of diplomas. 
 
 8. The Jizyeh Muhasebesi Kalemi, or bureau of accounts 
 for the capitation tax, issued orders yearly for the payment of 
 this tax according to the estimated number of adult male subject 
 Christians. A specified number of these orders was sent to each 
 district, which was held responsible for a corresponding revenue.^ 
 The income of this bureau was only a little less than that of the 
 second bureau. 
 
 9. The Mevkufat Kalemi, or bureau of tributes, kept account 
 of taxes paid in kind, of the quantity of grain in the pubHc 
 storehouses of Constantinople and the border fortresses, and 
 of the grants of supplies from these stores to the several army 
 corps and to the households of mihtary and civil kullar who were 
 required to follow the army. 
 
 10. The Maliyeh Kalemi, or chancery bureau of the treasury 
 department, issued diplomas to all employees of mosques who 
 brought certificates of nomination from the seventh and twen- 
 tieth bureaus, and to all administrators of religious endowments 
 and pensioners upon such funds; and it drew up for the approval 
 of the sultan and the countersignature of the Dejterdars all 
 firmans, or administrative orders, that concerned the treasury 
 department. 
 
 11. The Kuchuk Rusnameh Kalemi, or lesser book-keeping 
 bureau, kept the accounts of the head Kapujis, the stewards, 
 and the marine. 
 
 12. The Piadeh Mukabelesi Kalemi, or bureau of control 
 for the infantry, kept the books of the Janissaries and the auxili- 
 ary corps of the standing army. 
 
 13. The Kuchuk Evkaf Muhasebesi Kalemi, or lesser bureau 
 of accounts of religious endowments, kept the accounts of all 
 pensioners and attendants of the endowed pubhc hospitals, 
 soup-kitchens, insane asylums, and the like. 
 
 14. The Buyuk Kalaa Kalemi, or greater bureau of fortresses, 
 kept record of the garrisons and of the mihtia who were liable 
 for the service of the fortresses of the Danube regions. 
 
 * D'Ohsson, vii. 236.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 171 
 
 15. The Kuchuk Kalaa Kalemi, or lesser bureau of fortresses, 
 kept like records for fortresses in Albania and the Morea. 
 
 16. The Maaden Mukalaasi Kalemi, or bureau of mine leases, 
 kept account of the tribute required from gipsies, of the receipts 
 from gold and silver mines in Europe and Asia, of the tributes 
 from Moldavia and Wallachia, and of the customs duties of 
 Constantinople, Adrianople, Smyrna, Gallipoli, Chios, and other 
 places.^ 
 
 17. The Saliyaneh Mukataasi Kalemi, or bureau of salaries, 
 arranged the yearly pay of the captains of the fleet, and of the 
 Khan of the Crimea and some of his officials. 
 
 18. The Khaslar Mukataasi Kalemi, or bureau of domanial 
 leases, kept the books of the domain lands whose revenues were 
 assigned to the chief ladies of the harem, including the Sultana 
 Valideh and the sultan's daughters, and to the high officials of the 
 government.^ 
 
 19. The Bash Mukataasi Kalemi, or head bureau of leases, 
 cared for the revenues from the domains in some lower Danubian 
 lands, from the rice fields of Eastern RumeUa, from various 
 salt works, from the fisheries of the Aegean and Black seas, 
 and from the forests. 
 
 20. The Haremein Mukataasi Kale?ni, or bureau of leases 
 of the Holy Cities, was charged with regard to Anatolia, as was 
 the seventh bureau with regard to Rumelia. 
 
 21. The Istambol Mukataasi Kalemi, or bureau of leases 
 for Constantinople, kept account of the domanial leases of 
 Salonika, Tirhala, and Brusa, the market dues of Constantinople 
 and Adrianople, the revenues from silk and from the manufacture 
 of articles in gold and silver. 
 
 22. The Brusa Mukataasi Kalemi, or bureau of the leases of 
 Brusa, kept account of the domanial leases in the neighborhood 
 of that city. 
 
 1 Charges for the right to plant and transport tobacco were later assigned to the 
 care of this bureau. See Hammer, Slaatsvcncalliiug, 156. 
 
 * At a later date, when the expenses of the harem became greater, the customs 
 duties of certain regions, the tobacco revenue from Syria and Arabia, and the tax 
 on wool and yarn were also assigned to this bureau {ibid. 158).
 
 172 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 23. The Avlonia Mukataasi Kalenii, kept similar accounts for 
 the island of Euboea, or Negropont. 
 
 24. The Kajffa Mukataasi Kalemi kept similar accounts for 
 Kaffa and certain domain lands of Anatolia. 
 
 25. The Tarishji Kalemi, or bureau of dates, dated all public 
 documents that came from the other bureaus, and, at least in 
 later times, prepared assignments on the pubhc revenues on 
 behalf of creditors of the government. 
 
 Supplementary bureaus, attached to some of the others, 
 were the bureau of confiscations and escheats to the crown, 
 the bureau of the tax on animals, and the bureau of the Christian 
 churches and monasteries. An additional office of great impor- 
 tance, called the Oda of the treasury department, attended to the 
 correspondance of the Defterdars, to their reports to the grand 
 vizier and the sultan, and to the forwarding of leases for sections 
 of the crown lands. Attached to the treasury department 
 was a special court under a judge appointed by the Kaziasker 
 of Rumeha, which was designed to adjust disputes between the 
 department and private citizens. 
 
 A Defter-emini, or book-keeper intendant, kept the records of 
 the fief-holders and administered their estates during vacancies. 
 He was well paid, and had a staff of clerks.^ He appears to 
 have been independent of the Defterdars. Two household 
 treasurers were in charge of the sultan's personal funds: the 
 eunuch Khazinehdar-bashi, already mentioned as chief of the 
 treasury chamber of pages, guarded the treasure stored there, 
 and paid the members of the inner service; a second official, 
 under the authority of the former and apparently called by the 
 same name, attended to the business of the sultan's private 
 purse outside the palace.- The sultan had in the castle of the 
 Seven Towers, or Yedi-kuleh, another deposit of treasure which 
 was supposed to be very large. ^ 
 
 1 Junis Bey (below, p. 266) and Postal, iii. 70, call this official Defterdar-emini . 
 His department, in three bureaus, became a record office of land titles (D'Ohsson, 
 vii. 193). It may have had this wider function in the sixteenth century. 
 
 2 Spandugino, 65, 119; Ramberti, below, pp. 244, 248. 
 ^ Menavino, 182; Postel, iii. 70.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 73 
 
 The characteristics of the treasury scheme give evidence 
 that it developed by a gradual growth without systematic 
 revision at any time. As new occasions for expenditure arose, 
 they were put in charge of various bureaus; as new provinces 
 or other sources of fresh income appeared, they were either 
 assigned to existing bureaus or given to new ones created for 
 the purpose. The bureaus of Istambol, Avlona, and Kaffa 
 evidently date from the time of the Conqueror; most of the 
 others must have been older. That the conquests of Selim 
 and Suleiman were not administered from Constantinople 
 is evident from a study of the bureaus, and from the separate 
 listing of the revenues from Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt in 
 contemporary estimates. Since the authorities give no source 
 of revenue for the first bureau, which nevertheless seems to 
 have had the greatest income of all, it is probable that the 
 tribute from the later conquests was paid into that department, 
 and by it apportioned to bureaus of expenditure, such as the 
 fourth, the eleventh, and the twelfth. It is worthy of notice 
 to what an extent the sources of revenue were ear-marked for 
 expenditure. The second bureau received the tithes and taxes 
 of the sanjaks, and paid them out for munitions of war, the 
 maintenance of garrisons, and the expenses of the intendants 
 of the outside service of the court. The third bureau received 
 the revenue from certain domanial lands, and supported the 
 garrisons of the Aegean Islands and soldiers who had been pen- 
 sioned. The eighteenth bureau administered domanial lands 
 for the support of the harem and high officials. The ninth 
 bureau received and delivered to the army taxes paid in kind. 
 The seventh, thirteenth, and twentieth bureaus took revenues 
 from lands assigned by religious endowment for the support of 
 the Moslem Institution and certain beneficiaries, and paid them 
 out as stipulated by the givers. 
 
 Instead of one treasury, into which all revenues should come 
 and out of which all disbursements should be made, there were 
 fifteen or more bureaus which received, and as many which spent; 
 and some of those which both received and spent were, except 
 for the oversight of the first bureau, practically independent
 
 174 ^^^ GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 institutions. A distinct tendency toward decentralization of 
 management is manifest. Whatever could be set off by itself 
 was made as nearly independent as possible, subject only to 
 inspection and supervision. This policy undoubtedly resulted 
 from the despotic character of the government. Since one 
 man, the founder of a despotic state, can attend to only a Hmited 
 number of duties, he is forced, as his power develops, to assign 
 more and more responsibilities to subordinates. The method 
 which most relieves the central management is to entrust definite 
 duties to definite groups of men, to support these with sufficient 
 revenues, and then to leave them to themselves. If things go 
 wrong in any department, the central authority intervenes, 
 punishes severely those who were responsible, sets things to 
 rights forcibly, and again leaves the department to itself. The 
 system is very dangerous unless the central management can be 
 kept constantly strong and able to assume full control promptly 
 and effectively. This was the case in the Ottoman Empire 
 until after the time of Suleiman. 
 
 A yet stronger tendency toward decentralization appeared 
 in connection with local government. Each Beylerbey had his 
 own mufti, reis effendi, and defterdar, with a considerable body 
 of clerks, who advised him, recorded his decisions, attended 
 to the revenues from the estates assigned for the support of his 
 household, and kept account of the fief-holders in his dominion. ^ 
 Each Sanjak Bey again had his group of assistants, with similar 
 duties on a lesser scale.^ Some generations later the extension 
 of this decentralization was to become a great evil. 
 
 The duties of the bureaus of the treasury department reveal 
 clearly the limited purposes and activities of the Ottoman 
 government. The support of the Ruhng Institution as standing 
 army, court, and government was provided for; the revenues 
 assigned by former sultans and by private individuals to the 
 support of the Moslem Institution in its religious and charitable 
 aspects were supervised; the navy was provided for; and the 
 
 1 Ricaut, 103, Ramberti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 256, 271) say that the 
 Beylerbey of Rumelia had 100 scribes. 
 
 2 Spandugino, 148; Postal, iii. 63.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 75 
 
 Khan of the Crimea was pensioned. But nothing was done for 
 the great mass of the population. They were expected to 
 furnish the means for these activities; and the duty of the most 
 conscientious sovereign was fully performed if he provided that 
 they should labor unmolested, and should not be burdened with 
 taxation beyond their ability to pay. Under a strong ruling 
 hand the Ottoman system easily maintained order through 
 the standing and feudal armies, but it did not so easily regulate 
 the burden of taxation. This subject deserves special considera- 
 tion. 
 
 Taxation in the Ottoman Empire^ 
 
 A distinction was drawn between taxes authorized by the 
 Sacred Law, which were called legal, and all others, which were 
 called arbitrary as depending on the will of the sovereign. The 
 early Islamic system of taxation, taken over, it would seem, 
 from the Sassanian Persian Empire,^ was extremely simple. 
 No taxes were laid except on land and on persons. The lands 
 of Arabia and Bosra were charged with a tithe, or ^ushr, of their 
 produce. Other conquered lands were more heavily burdened, 
 being assessed with a khardj, or tax payable in money, and with 
 a share of the produce, which might be from the tenth to the 
 half according to the fertility of the land. The tax on persons, 
 the jizyeh, was limited to a poll or capitation tax on adult male 
 subjects who were not Moslems. The ^ushr, the khardj, and the 
 jizyeh were the only taxes recognized by the Sacred Law. 
 
 Other methods of taxation were utilized almost from the 
 beginning. When, with the conquest of Syria and Egypt, the 
 Byzantine Empire was entered, it did not seem best to sweep 
 away the customs, tolls, and other impositions which drew 
 revenue from trade. As such taxes did not rest on a constitu- 
 tional foundation, they were discouraged by some legists; but 
 they became more and more necessary as a worldly government 
 developed, and as the revenues from a large part of the land 
 were set aside for religious foundations. 
 
 * This subject is treated in Hammer, Geschichle, iii. 478-4S3, and Staatsverfas- 
 sung, 180-337; D'Ohsson, v. 15-37; and, as concerns the legal taxes, in Belin, 
 La Propriety Foncicre. 
 
 * Hammer, Slaalsverfassiing, 37 ff.
 
 176 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 The early Islamic state also had a vast source of revenue 
 in booty. Four-fifths of this went to the generals and soldiers 
 actuall}^ concerned in conquest; the remaining fifth was sent to 
 Medina. After the capital had been removed from Arabia, 
 the " Prophet's fifth " was still claimed for the support of legists 
 and judges. 
 
 The Islamic system, with its distinction of legal and arbitrary 
 taxes, its rules regulating the distribution of booty, and its 
 custom of devoting revenues to religious foundations, was taken 
 up by the Ottoman state. At the same time the feudal system, 
 based upon both Seljuk and Byzantine example, was appUed 
 to a large part of the lands conquered from Christians, an ar- 
 rangement which yielded considerable revenue for the support 
 of individuals; and a host of Seljuk and Byzantine imposts 
 lengthened the list of arbitrary taxes. Much land was retained 
 as imperial domain, perhaps in many cases land that was already 
 domain of the Byzantine emperors and other rulers whom the 
 Ottomans dispossessed. The conquests in Cilicia, Syria, Mes- 
 opotamia, and Egypt were left under the old regulations, with 
 some clearing away of arbitrary taxes, and preparing of cadasters 
 in the Turkish language.^ Hungary was carefully cadastered, 
 to be administered thus during a century and a half.^ Special 
 arrangements and exemptions were made for the foreign colo- 
 nists, of a character similar to old Byzantine and Saracen treaties 
 and agreements. 
 
 As a result of all this, the system of taxation in the Ottoman 
 Empire was very complex. It contained a great variety of 
 taxes, — on persons, land, trade, animals, produce, mines, 
 markets, and the like, — differing from sanjak to sanjak and 
 from town to town; and it collected its income by various 
 methods and through various agencies. The details of the 
 system cannot be considered here, but a few general observations 
 may be made. 
 
 1 Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 523, iii. 65. 
 
 2 Ibid. iii. 266. According to Heidborn, 339, the registering of the lands of 
 the different regions of the Ottoman Empire, begun in 1548 by Suleiman's order 
 and completed after some 55 years, remains to the present time the basis of land 
 titles in Turkey.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 77 
 
 Until the time of Mohammed II the revenues were adminis- 
 tered directly by the treasury department, but this method led 
 to so many malversations at the cost of the government that he 
 changed the system to one of tax-farming. By this means the 
 government became sure of its money. The malversations 
 did not stop, however, but went on now at the cost of the tax- 
 payers.^ The taxes of regions of large size were sold by the 
 treasury, usually to high officers among the kullar, who did not 
 intend to collect the taxes themselves, but sold them again by 
 sections. This process might be repeated several times, till in 
 the end it would probably be, not Ottomans, but Christians 
 and Jews who applied the screws to the unfortunate subjects.- 
 The amount wrung from them might easily be double what 
 the government received. 
 
 The strongly conservative tendency of the Ottoman people 
 showed markedly in regard to taxation. The taxes that had 
 been agreed upon of old were paid, but a general revision of the 
 system in the direction of uniformity was never thought of. 
 The revenues of the empire were thus extremely inelastic.^ A 
 special war contribution might be laid, as was done by Suleiman 
 before Mohacs,^ and requisitions might be made upon the 
 inhabitants of a region through which the army passed; but a 
 permanent increase of revenue was practically impossible. 
 The tendency was in the other direction. As the value of money 
 declined, not without assistance from the sultans,^ all revenues 
 payable in agreed sums declined likewise. Payments in kind 
 from agricultural products may have increased for a time under 
 local peace and security, but in the end they were to diminish 
 also. Treaties with Western nations were so favorable to the 
 latter commercially as to prevent the receipt of extensive rev- 
 
 ' D'Ohsson, vii. 242. 
 
 2 Spandugino, 144. Postel, iii. 65, says that the tithes (apparently those reve- 
 nues not sold in the lump or left for individual collection) were collected by 
 Christian receivers {Ioks Chresliens), who delivered them to the Kadis, and these 
 to the Sanjak, he to the Beylerbey, and the Beylerbcy to the Dejterdars. 
 
 » D'Ohsson, vii. 258. 
 
 * Hammer, Geschichle, iii. 471. It was a poll-tax of 15 aspers on each male 
 inhabitant. 
 
 ^ Spandugino, 57.
 
 178 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 enues from foreign customs duties; and such trade must have 
 increased with the growth of the empire and the increasing 
 luxury of the court. But on the whole the sultan's receipts 
 from taxation, aside from the effect of new conquests, and allow- 
 ing for the fluctuations in tithes due to good and bad harvests, 
 were probably not far from stationary. 
 
 The receipts from the sultan's fifth of booty taken in war, 
 which included slaves, must have been considerable up to the 
 end of Suleiman's reign. They were all devoted, however, 
 to the support of the Moslem Institution. ^ Tribute came in 
 from several countries, as Moldavia, Wallachia, Transylvania, 
 Ragusa, from Venice for Cyprus, and after 1547 from Austria 
 for Hungary. This was forced up whenever possible as punish- 
 ment for unrest, and was shared by the sultan with high officials.^ 
 Confiscations of the property of executed persons brought 
 several great sums to Suleiman. The estates of kullar who 
 died without children, and the tithes of the estates of those 
 who left children, constituted a valuable though irregular rev- 
 enue.^ The great treasure of the prince of Gujarat came to 
 Suleiman after the prince's death.* Something was realized 
 from the administration of the estates of fief-holders who died 
 without sons; but the lands of these had to be granted again 
 before long in order to keep up the strength of the feudal army.^ 
 Fees connected with the administration of justice went directly 
 to the support of the judges and other officials concerned.^ 
 With regular taxation nearly stationary, the increase from extra- 
 ordinary sources did not keep pace with advancing expendi- 
 tures.^ 
 
 Suleiman's expenses grew particularly in regard to the fleet 
 and the household. Some Western writers remarked that the 
 sultan was put to no expense by war, since his standing army 
 required to be paid in peace as well as in war, and since the 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichle, i. 167, 592. 
 
 2 By Kanun of Mohammed II: Hammer, Slaatsverfassung, 99. 
 
 3 Postel, iii. 68. 
 
 * Hammer, Ceschichte, iii. 472. ^ Hammer, Geschichle, i. 23/. 
 
 6 Postel, iii. 70. ' Ibid. iii. 471.
 
 TEE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 179 
 
 remainder of his troops came at their own expense.' It is true 
 that his additional expenditure was small as compared with 
 that for a contemporary Western army, built from a small 
 permanent nucleus by the hiring of mercenaries and the levy 
 of national troops which had to be supported by the treasury; 
 but the sultan had to replace large quantities of munitions of 
 war that were used up or destroyed, and great numbers of 
 animals of transport. Moreover, the Janissaries and Spahis 
 had to be placated at times by presents, and it was more expensive 
 to feed the army in the field than in the barracks. But the 
 fleet was a great and growing expense, despite the extent to 
 which it was supported by raiding and by revenues from North 
 Africa; ^ and the luxury and splendor of the Magnificent Sultan's 
 court grew apace. In spite of fresh conquests and large confisca- 
 tions, therefore, Suleiman learned to feel the need of money. 
 He found it necessary to compel his great ofiicials to help him, by 
 exacting sums of money from them at the time of their appoint- 
 ment.^ These sums were moderate, but, as already pointed 
 out, they set a fatal example.** 
 
 Suleiman's Income 
 
 Suleiman's revenues have been variously estimated. The 
 lowest, and probably the most accurate for the field which it 
 covers, during the years between 1530 and 1537, is that given 
 by Junis Bey, chief interpreter of the Ottoman court, and Alvise 
 Gritti, natural son of the Doge of Venice, and business partner 
 of the grand vizier Ibrahim.* Junis Bey says: " The income 
 of the Great Turk from khardj or tribute amounts to 1,300,000 
 ducats from Anatolia and Greece, and 1,600,000 ducats from 
 Egypt, and 700,000 ducats from Syria and 150,000 ducats from 
 Mesopotamia and 250,000 ducats from his farms, the islands 
 which are under him, and the customs of Constantinople and 
 Pera. Signor Alvise Gritti says that the income is rather more 
 than less than I have stated, and I think that the expenses of the 
 
 1 La Broquicre, 182; Ricaut, 404. 
 
 * Ricaut, 404. 
 
 ' Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 472. 
 
 * See above, pp. 115, 116. 
 
 * Postel, iii. 49.
 
 l8o THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 Porte or of the Seigneur's court consume the entire income or a 
 little less." ^ 
 
 The total regular revenue of Suleiman would thus have been 
 about four million ducats.^ Two estimates made twenty-five 
 or thirty years later differ notably, however. They indicate 
 about half as much revenue from Syria and Egypt, allow several 
 times as much from the farms and the customs duties, and 
 introduce taxes on mines and salt works, tithes paid in kind, 
 the animal tax, tributes, escheats, and document fees.^ Accord- 
 
 ^ Below, p. 273. 
 
 2 La Broquiere, 182, estimated the sultan's revenue in 1433 at 2,500,000 
 ducats. Chalcocondyles, 171, overestimated it at 8,000,000 ducats about the 
 year 1465. Alvise Sagudino (quoted in Schefer's edition of Spandugino, p. Iv) 
 reckoned it in 1496 at 3,300,000 ducats; Andrea Gritti, father of Alvise, made 
 it 5,000,000 in 1503 {ihid. Iviii); Spandugino's estimate, under Bayezid, was 
 3,600,000 {ihid. 132). Mocenigo, 54, set Selim I's income at 3,130,000, besides 
 800,000 from the Persian conquests, all spent in Persia. Minio (1522), 71, 
 estimated the revenue as 3,000,000. Zeno (1524), 95, called it 4,500,000, and 
 the expenses 3,000,000. Bragadin (1526), 106, says that the treasury had an 
 income of 12,000,000, of which the siJtan took 4,500,000 (the larger amount would 
 no doubt include the feudal income). Minio (1527), 115, states the income as 
 7,000,000. Zeno (1530), 121, gives 6,000,000 or more for the income, 4,000,000 
 for the expenses. Giovio {Connnejitaries, 73) sets the revenue at 6,000,000, 
 and the expenses at 4,000,000 or 5,000,000, Postel, iii. 68, gives 4,000,000 on 
 Alvise Gritti's authority, though he apportions it differently from Junis Bey. 
 D'Ohsson, vii. 258, says that Suleiman's revenues rose to 26,000,000 piasters. 
 At 40 aspers to the piaster and 50 aspers to the ducat, this gives about 20,000,000 
 ducats, which is far too much. 
 
 3 Navagero (1553), 37-39, estimates 7,166,000 ducats; Trevisano (1554), 
 149-150, says 8,196,000 ducats. Navagero seems to overestimate the mines 
 (1,500,000 ducats) and the duties (1,200,000); Trevisano's estimate of 2,000,000 
 from the animal tax seems unwarranted. Erizzo (1557), 130, claims to give an 
 authentic statement of the sultan's income and expenditure; the former he sets at 
 4,600,000 ducats and the latter at 3,600,000. A. Barbarigo (1558), 150, gives 
 7,740,000 ducats as income and 4,100,000 as expenditure. Donini, 190, says 
 that after great efforts he knows most certainly that the income of the treasury for 
 1561 was 216,519,826 aspers, or 4,330,396 ducats and 26 soldi, and the expenditure 
 206,581,957 aspers, or 4,131,639 ducats and 7 soldi. He states that this income is 
 less by 400,000 ducats than usual, because of the prohibition of wine. Erizzo does 
 not include the tax on mines and salt works, and the income from Mesopotamia and 
 the domain lands, in his list of sources of revenue; and Donini does not specify the 
 sources. Bernardo, 347, says that the income in his time of service (1584-87) 
 was 9,000,000 ducats, and that by 1592 it was 10,000,000. Knolles (ed. 1687, 
 p. 982) estimates the sultan's ordinary revenues about 1603 as 8,000,000. This 
 does not, however, include confiscations, fines, tribute, customs, booty, etc., which
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT l8l 
 
 ing to their estimated total of seven or eight niilh'on ducats, 
 it would seem that a million ducats ought to be added to Junis 
 Bey's estimate for the mines, salt works, and tributes, and a 
 million for the other revenues mentioned. This would give an 
 estimate of six million ducats for Suleiman's revenues in the 
 early part of his reign. Toward the close of his reign, after 
 large territories in Europe and Asia had been incorporated, and 
 after Rustem had made new arrangements, the total amount 
 was probably seven or eight million ducats.^ The bullion value 
 of six million ducats is less than fourteen million dollars. If, 
 then, the purchasing power of money be estimated at five times 
 what it is now, the regular revenue of Suleiman's government 
 was equivalent to less than seventy million dollars nowadays, 
 no large sum for so great an empire. It is necessary to remember, 
 however, that this by no means covers all the expenses for public 
 purposes within the empire. It probably includes none of the 
 revenues devoted to the Moslem Institution, nor those specifi- 
 cally assigned by feudal grant to the officers of local government; 
 certainly it does not include those gathered by the permanent 
 fief-holders and used for their own support, which probably 
 amounted to about twice as much more.^ Allowing for all this, 
 
 Knolles (p. 983) believed to exceed the ordinary revenue. Hammer, Slaats- 
 verwalluug, 170, gives oflicial figures for a hundred years hiter (1660) : the income of 
 the treasury tlien was 600,000,000 aspers, or 11,000,000 to 12,000,000 ducats at 
 sixteenth-century valuations; capitation was nearly 2,000,000, land tax about as 
 much, mines 1,000,000, etc. 
 
 1 The extensive notes given above show clearly that from 1433 to 1660 there was 
 a progressive increase in the sultan's income, as measured in aspers or ducats. 
 Brosch (in Camhridge Modern History, iii. 130) accuses Suleiman of raising by 
 taxation double the amount exacted by Mohammed II, and thus bringing undue 
 pressure to bear. This statement fails to take account of the fact that Suleiman's 
 empire was about double that of Mohammed 11 's in area, population, and wealth. 
 Also it seems to have been the case that the value of gold and silver fell greatly after 
 the discovery of the American mines (Day, 135). If these etTects were felt 
 promptly in the Levant, Suleiman's income in the last years of his life may have had 
 little more purchasing power than Mohammed II's. Distributed over a wider 
 area, the pressure of taxation in iiis lime may easily have been lighter than it was 
 three generations before. 
 
 2 Postel, iii. 67, says that it docs not include the Ulnars. He says (iii. 16S) 
 that some call the total revenue 12,000,000 ducats, in which they must include 
 the income of the fief-holders. Eragadin, 106, says that the income is 12,000,000.
 
 1 82 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 the sum total, the equivalent of perhaps two hundred million 
 dollars, for all the expenses of central and local government 
 was small in proportion to population, according to modern 
 standards. Had there been no extortion, the people of the 
 empire would not have been burdened heavily. Even with it, 
 as indicated already, they probably did not suffer greatly in 
 Suleiman's time.^ 
 
 The Nishanji or Chancellor 
 
 The chancery department of the Ottoman government seems 
 not to have reached such a stage of development in the sixteenth 
 century as had the treasury department; certainly it was not so 
 conspicuous. Contemporary writers give so little information 
 about it that it is hard to draw a reasonably complete picture 
 of it. They mention several of the officials who were prominent 
 in the department in later times; but evidently those of the 
 earlier period were not under the same relationships to each 
 other as were later ones who bore the same titles. The 
 Nishanji-bashi, often called simply the Nishanji, was clearly 
 the chief, but other details are not easily to be ascertained. 
 It seems necessary, therefore, to describe the Ottoman chancery 
 as it was two centuries after Suleiman's death, and then to 
 endeavor to conjecture what it was in his time.^ 
 
 In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Ottoman 
 government had three ministers of state and six under-secre- 
 taries of state. The three ministers were the Kiaya-bey, the 
 Chaush-bashi, and the Reis Effendi, the last named being by far 
 the most important. The Kiaya-bey was the substitute or 
 
 Ramberti (below, p. 261) estimates it at 15,000,000, of which 5,000,000 goes into 
 the treasury and 10,000,000 remains for the " servants of war." 
 
 1 Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 472; and see above, p. 144 and note 2. 
 
 2 Accounts are given in D'Ohsson, vii. 159-172, and in Hammer, Staatsverwalt- 
 ung, 101-137. References to the Nishanji are found in Spandugino, 99; Mena- 
 vino, 168; Ramberti, below, p. 248; Ludovisi, 14; Navagero, 94; Trevisano, ir8; 
 Garzoni, 430; Junis Bey (below, p. 266) and Postel, iii. 63, speak of a Teskereji- 
 bashi, giving a description which applies exactly to the Nishanji as represented by 
 contemporaries. Since the word means merely " chief of document- writers," it 
 refers without doubt to the Nishanji.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 83 
 
 lieutenant of the grand vizier, and attended especially to affairs 
 of the interior and of war; under him were a number of officials 
 who formed connecting links between the grand vizier and the 
 various groups of kullar in the household and the army. The 
 Chaush-hashi was at the same time second official in the grand 
 vizier's court of justice, minister of police, introducer of ambas- 
 sadors, grand marshal of the court, and chief of the Chaushes. 
 To assist him in the execution of these varied functions, he had a 
 large number of under officers and clerks. The Reis EJJendi, 
 whose full title was Reis ul-KhuUab, " Chief of the Men of the 
 Pen," was minister of foreign affairs, secretary of state, and 
 chancellor. In the first capacity he was prominent in inter- 
 national relations; in the second he was responsible for the 
 preparation of the addresses and reports which the grand vizier 
 made to the sultan; in the third, he was head of the three bureaus 
 of the chancery. In charge of these under him were a Beylikji, 
 or general director of the three bureaus, a Terjuman Divani 
 Humayun, or chief interpreter, and an Ameji, who drew up the 
 grand vizier's reports to the sultan for the inspection of the 
 Reis Effendi. 
 
 Of the three bureaus, the Beylik Kalemi prepared, recorded, 
 or transmitted, as was proper in each case, Kanuns, treaties, 
 and all firmans that did not concern the treasury department. 
 The Tahvil Kalemi prepared the diplomas of governors, of judges 
 of large towns, and of fief-holders. The Rims Kalemi made out 
 certificates for the clerks of all bureaus, for Kapuji-hashis, pro- 
 fessors in endowed colleges, administrators of religious endow- 
 ments, pensioners on the treasury or on rehgious benefactions, 
 and soldiers of the auxiliary corps of the regular army. Together 
 the three bureaus kept employed about one hundred and fifty 
 clerks of three grades, provided for by fiefs. The NishanjVs 
 sole duty was to authenticate firmans sent to the provinces, 
 by tracing at the head of each document the sultan's tughra, 
 or official signature. He had no influence on the conduct of 
 business, but, as evidence of past greatness, he ranked above 
 even the Reis Effendi on ceremonial occasions.^ 
 
 * Hammer, Slaatsverwaltung, 133.
 
 184 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 The under-secretarles were attached by pairs to the ministers. 
 The Teshrifatji, or master of ceremonies, and the Kiaya Katihi, 
 or private secretary, of the Kiaya-hey were attached to the 
 Kiaya-bey. The greater and lesser Teskerejis, or masters of 
 petitions, were attached to the Chaush-hashi. The Beylikji, 
 mentioned above as head of the three bureaus of the chancery, 
 and the Mektuhji, or private secretary of the grand vizier, in 
 which office he was assisted by a bureau of thirty clerks, were 
 attached to the Reis Efe^idi. 
 
 It is evident that all the functions of the officials and bureaus 
 described above must have been performed in some fashion in 
 the time of Suleiman. The conservative character of Turkish 
 institutions simphfies the problem of determining how they 
 were performed. It has been seen, partly by external and partly 
 by internal evidence, that the bureaus of the treasury depart- 
 ment persisted from the time of Mohammed II to the end of the 
 eighteenth century with few changes. Accordingly, the infer- 
 ence may fairly be made that the same was true of the chancery 
 department. Moreover, the chief officials of the later date are 
 mentioned in sixteenth-century writings, among them the 
 Kiaya of the grand vizier, the Chaush-bashi, and the Reis Effendi; 
 Junis Bey held the position of chief interpreter; ^ and the duties 
 of Suleiman's master of ceremonies must have been important. 
 The great change in the chancery in the interval was the decline 
 of the Nishanji from the highest place in the department to one 
 of httle importance, and the rise of the Reis Effendi from a 
 subordinate place to the top. From of old the Nishanji had had 
 the duty of affixing the sultan's signature to documents; but in 
 early Ottoman days, when the pen was of very little consequence 
 in comparison with the sword, he had been held in small esteem. 
 He was responsible, however, for the accurate and legal formula- 
 tion of the papers which he signed; and as the nation grew his 
 importance increased, till by the sixteenth century he had 
 become a great official, clearly the head of the chancery depart- 
 ment, and the recipient of a large salary. A description of 
 about the year 1537 says of the Nishanji: " There is a Teskereji- 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 54.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 85 
 
 hashi, who has the duty of engrossing the ordinances and com- 
 mands of the prince and the court, when it has transmitted them 
 to him, and is like a general secretary of the commands, or 
 recorder of the documents of the prince, which are called Tes- 
 kereh; and it is also his duty, in consultation with the pashas, 
 to revise the writings and take care that they contain no ambig- 
 uous expressions, as though he were a keeper of the seals. 
 The present occupant of the office has seven thousand ducats 
 of revenue from fiefs, and a large number of slaves, and other 
 lesser recorders who also prepare commands, licenses, safe- 
 conducts, and other letters as there may be need. These are 
 paid here for their trouble, and they may receive three or four 
 hundred livres. It is said that the present [Nishanji] is so 
 just a man, that he has never in his life received a sou from any 
 one with whom he has transacted business." ^ 
 
 The Reis Effendi was at that time, it would seem, little more 
 than recording secretary of the Divan.^ The reasons for the 
 later change in the relative importance of these two officials 
 probably lay in the withdrawal of the sultan into his inner palace, 
 and the development of foreign relations. As the sultan became 
 more sequestered, the Nishanji's personal relation to him was 
 gradually cut off; for the same reason the grand vizier came to 
 be more heavily burdened, and left more responsibility on the 
 Reis Effendi. Beginning with Suleiman's reign, relations with 
 the Western European nations became ever closer and more 
 complicated. Cared for in his time by the grand viziers Ibrahim, 
 Rustem, and Ali,^ they were entrusted in later reigns to the Reis 
 EJfendi. Presently, then, this official displaced the Nishanji at 
 the head of the chancery, and the latter was gradually reduced 
 almost to the functions of a name-stamp. Aside from this 
 important difference, and the general fact that the business of 
 the chancery was not so extensive in Suleiman's time as it became 
 
 * Postel, iii. 63. See also Ramberti, below, p. 248. 
 
 '^ Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 229, iii. 796. The first Reis EJfendi whose name is 
 known was Haider Effendi, executed in 1525 on the charge of promoting an uprising 
 of the Janissaries. The office is mentioned in the Kanun-nameh of Mohammed II 
 (Hammer, Slaatsverfassimg, 90). 
 
 ' Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 126 ff.; Busbecq, Life and Letters, passim.
 
 1 86 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 later, and that the functions of separate officials had not come 
 to be so rigidly defined, the inference may be made that the 
 description of the late eighteenth century holds good generally 
 of the Ottoman chancery of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Little evidence appears as to the status of the personnel of 
 the treasury and chancery departments. The upper officials 
 were drawn from the quieter and more studious members of the 
 school of pages; ^ in the time of Mohammed II the Nishanji 
 might be drawn from the ranks of the Ulema? Junis Bey 
 refers to the employees of the bureaus sometimes as slaves and 
 sometimes as companions or scribes. They were paid not in 
 money but by fiefs. Near the close of Suleiman's reign, it is 
 said, the chancery clerks were Turks, whereas they had been 
 Christians and Greeks not long before, and had written their 
 documents in Greek.^ Whether or not this be true, the books 
 of the treasury department had been kept in Turkish from the 
 first;* but it does not follow, of course, that the clerks of this 
 department had always been Ottomans, or that, if they werf, 
 they had been regularly either Moslem-born or renegades. 
 The general reasons which led the sultan to build the Ruling 
 Institution out of slaves in its other aspects would tend to 
 operate here also; on the other hand, the nature of the work 
 demanded persons of quiet tastes and, for many positions, 
 those of considerable learning in language and law, and suck 
 persons were more easily to be found in the Moslem-born popula- 
 tion than among the Christian subjects or renegades. It would 
 seem that in Suleiman's time, or shortly before, the personnel 
 of the chancery changed from Christian-born to Moslem-born. 
 Naturally, then, the personnel of the treasury would have 
 been likely to undergo a similar transformation at the same time. 
 
 It has been said that when Turks dismount from their horses, 
 they become bureaucrats and paper-scribblers.^ Undoubtedly 
 
 ' Ricaut, 57. 2 Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 90. 
 
 ^ Trevisano (1554), 118. Morosini (1585), 266, says that the employees of the 
 chancery were then native Turks. 
 
 * Hammer, Geschichle, i. 35. 
 
 * Cahun, Inlroduction, 82, speaking of Turks of the steppe lands: " Des qu'ils 
 descendaient de cheval, c'etaient des barbares bureaucrates et paperassiers."
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 87 
 
 the Ottoman government gave evidence of the truth of this 
 statement. The twenty-five bureaus of the treasury and the 
 appended bureaus, the three bureaus of the chancery, the treas- 
 uries and chanceries of Beylerbeys and Sanjak Beys, the offices 
 of the generals of cavalry and infantry, and of the Umena and 
 other household officials without and within, contained some 
 thousands of men whose whole time was occupied in writing, 
 recording, and transmitting laws, ordinances, diplomas, nomina- 
 tions, projects, deeds, grants, orders for pay, receipts, reports, 
 addresses, petitions, answers, and the like. The existence of 
 so many component institutions, connected only at the top and 
 paralleling each other's activities both near and far, together 
 with the custom of verifying, authenticating, and recording 
 many papers in different bureaus and by different officials, 
 created a vast and growing amount of red tape that in time was 
 greatly to hinder all government business. Even in Suleiman's 
 day it seems to have been the practice on the part of clerks and 
 officials to demand a private fee for each act of writing or signing 
 or stamping or recording or approving or inspecting.^ In the 
 time of prosperity, however, this practice can hardly have been 
 so vexatious and dilatory as it became later. The bureaucratic 
 tendency was no doubt based on a desire to keep everything in 
 order by checks and cross-recording; but in the end it defeated 
 its object by employing such a multiphcity of devices that order 
 was lost in confusion. 
 
 The Divan or Council ^ 
 
 In a land where the law was nearly fixed, and where whatever 
 power of legislation was allowed was definitely lodged in one 
 man, the only deliberation possible was on administrative and 
 judicial subjects. The oversight of these matters was given in 
 charge to a council, the Divan, which held long sessions four 
 
 ' Spandugino, 185. 
 
 2 The Divan, as it was about 1800, is described in D'Ohsson, vii. 211-232; and 
 in Hammei, Staatsverwaltung, 412-436. Contemporary references are Menavino, 
 169; Postel, i. 122; Navagero, 93; Trevisano, 117; Garzoni, 430. Zinkcisen, iii. 
 117-125, has pictured the Divan in the sixteenth century.
 
 1 88 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 times each week throughout the year in time of peace, unless 
 perhaps in the month of fasting. This council was composed 
 of ex officio members who represented (when those who came 
 only on special days are added to those who came each day) 
 all the great component parts of the Ruling Institution. The 
 Moslem Institution also was represented in the two Kaziaskers; 
 for the grand vizier and the Divan constituted not only the 
 supreme council of administration but the supreme court of the 
 empire. It was thus not strictly a part of the RuHng Institution, 
 but rather the cap-stone of both institutions, the body that 
 gave final unity, immediately under the sultan, to the organiza- 
 tion of the empire. 
 
 In former times the sultan had presided at the Divan. Sulei- 
 man did not, and he has been greatly blamed for discontinuing 
 the custom.^ It is not impossible to sympathize with him, 
 however, for he thus freed himself from a great burden ; to spend 
 several hours in deliberation on four days of each week during a 
 lifetime is a prospect from which any man would shrink. Never- 
 theless, it was a serious rift in both of the great institutions of 
 the empire at the most dangerous place, and its effect v/as 
 decidedly to hasten their disintegration. Suleiman kept the 
 Divan under control by means of a grated window in the wall 
 of the room where it met.- Not knowing when he might be 
 listening there, his councillors had always to speak as if he were 
 present with them. 
 
 The arrival of the councillors at the hall of the Divan, their 
 entry, their places for sitting or standing, their rank at the simple 
 meal of which they partook while there, the order of their going 
 in to audience with the sultan afterward, and the manner of their 
 departure, were all according to Kanun or equally rigid custom. 
 At a later time the details of these ceremonies were all minutely 
 specified.^ Probably they were not so elaborate in the time of 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 489. This is the first of the reasons given by Kochi 
 Bey for the decline of the empire after Suleiman. 
 
 2 Postel, i. 123; Trevisano, 119; Garzoni, 431. D. Barbarigo, 32, gives an 
 instance in which Suleiman made use of this means of information, and in conse- 
 quence ordered the execution of the grand vizier Achmet. 
 
 ^ Hammer (Slaatsverwaltung, 412-436) gives them with great exactness.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 89 
 
 Suleiman, but contemporary writings show them already con- 
 siderably developed. 
 
 The sessions of the Divan have been described so often that 
 it is not necessary to go into detail here. Soon after sunrise 
 on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday the ofificials who 
 were to participate came to the palace, accompanied by their 
 secretaries, ushers, body-guards, and other attendants. They 
 passed the second gate of the palace in the inverse order of rank, 
 and waited at their prescribed places in the hall of the Divan 
 until the grand vizier approached, accompanied by his retinue, 
 when all came out and took places according to rank in two 
 lines, between which the grand vizier entered. Those who had 
 the right then followed him in by pairs, and once more took 
 their places.' Officials who might be summoned waited in ante- 
 chambers near; and attendants, guards, and soldiers, stood at 
 suitable distances. 
 
 The grand vizier sat Turkish fashion in the middle of a long 
 sofa which extended round three sides of the hall. On his right 
 sat the other viziers (unless one or more happened to be absent 
 on a special mission), and beyond them, on the sofa at the end 
 of the room, the Nishanji. On the grand vizier's left were the 
 two Kaziaskers, and beyond them the Defterdars.- The Bey- 
 lerbeys of Anatolia and Greece, and, after Barbarossa's appoint- 
 ment, the Kapudan Pasha, sat beyond the viziers on the right. 
 The Agha of the Janissaries also had a place, and the chief 
 interpreter was often needed. Other generals and high officials 
 might be summoned; heads, officials, and clerks of bureaus 
 were at hand; and Chaushes, Kapuji-bashis, and Kapujis were 
 in readiness to be sent on errands and missions. Before the 
 grand vizier, when judicial business was being considered, stood 
 
 * In the time of Mohammed II a procession was formed by the members of the 
 Divan, the men of the lowest rank in front, and the grand v-izicr last. On reaching 
 the door of the hall, the lesser ofliciais stopped and separated into two lines, between 
 which the grand vizier advanced. The greater officials followed, so that the hall 
 was entered in the order of rank. See Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 225. 
 
 * From the Kauiin of Mohammed II: Hammer, Slaatsvcrfassuui^, 89. .-\ali 
 (used by Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 225) gives a different arrangement, which can 
 hardly have been correct.
 
 190 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 the Teskerejis, or masters of petitions. On the floor at his left 
 sat the Reis Effendi. The Kapujilar-kiayasi, or grand chamber- 
 lain of the household, was present; and the Chaush-bashi, as 
 grand marshal of the court, here bearing the additional title 
 of Bey of the Divan, saw that all went according to rule. After 
 greetings and other formalities the business was taken up in order 
 of importance.^ Great questions, like proposals of ambassadors, 
 the condition of the provinces, and the possibility or desira- 
 bility of war were discussed briefly by the viziers, the others 
 present being called upon to speak if their views were desired. 
 The grand vizier either declared the decision on such matters, 
 subject to the sultan's approval, or reserved the decision for the 
 master.- Lesser matters were decided by the viziers individually, 
 or were referred by them to the other great officials present, or 
 to an ofiicial in attendance outside. Much of the time there was 
 no general deliberation, but several affairs might be considered 
 by different members of the Divan simultaneously. Lawsuits 
 were presented to the grand vizier by the masters of petitions, 
 and the parties might appear to plead their own cases, bringing 
 witnesses. The grand vizier turned over many cases to the 
 Kaziaskers. All business was done with despatch, and a large 
 amount was accomplished. Decisions were briefly formulated, 
 without discussion of the reasons for action. The Reis Effendi 
 and lesser secretaries and clerks wrote down carefully all that 
 was decided upon. After the sultan had signified his approval 
 at the close of a Divan, the decisions were irrevocable. 
 
 During and also at the close of the session, which might last 
 seven or eight hours,^ a simple meal of bread, meat, rice, fruit, 
 and water was served to all who were in attendance within and 
 without the haU of the Divan. To meet the expense of this, 
 four days' pay was reserved each year from the salaries of all 
 who were expected to attend.'* Order was kept most carefuUy 
 among all who were present within and without the hall of the 
 Divan, and absolute silence was preserved, except for such 
 movements and conversation as were necessary to the transac- 
 
 ^ Postel, 1*. 123. ' Postel, i. 123. 
 
 * Garzoni, 431. * Garzoni, 431.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT I9I 
 
 tion of business. Any disturber of order and quiet was taken 
 away and immediately bastinadoed. 
 
 After the day's work was done, which might be about noon 
 in summer time or toward sunset in the winter, those officials 
 of the Divan who had the right of audience went to the hall of 
 audience to meet the sultan. They were the viziers, Kaziaskers, 
 and Deflerdars regularly, and the Beylerbeys and the Agha of the 
 Janissaries when they had business; ^ the Deflerdars, however, 
 received audience on Sundays and Tuesdays only. The Kazi- 
 askers entered first, and when their business had been approved 
 they went to the gate and held court. The Beylerbeys, the 
 Deflerdars, and the viziers entered the audience chamber together. 
 The Beylerbeys transacted their business and departed; the 
 Deflerdars did likewise, and went to the door of the treasury to 
 give audience. The ordinary viziers, left behind in the presence 
 of the sultan, usually said nothing unless asked; the grand 
 vizier alone reported on the decisions of the day.- These the 
 sultan usually approved as made, sometimes mitigating a deci- 
 sion or himself dictating a reply to an ambassador.^ Suleiman 
 was willing to give a free hand to Ibrahim, Rustem, and Moham- 
 med SokoUi during their long periods of service.* 
 
 In time of war the Divan was held in the grand vizier's tent, 
 which was usually pitched near the sultan's. As all the high 
 officials, and the heads of bureaus with at least part of their 
 clerks, were present with the army, much the same ceremony 
 could be gone through with as in the capital. When the sultan 
 was absent from the city on campaigns, the few officials of 
 government who were left behind held a secondary Divan on 
 Saturdays and Sundays. In case of emergency during war-time, 
 or for some other special reason, a Divan might be held on horse- 
 back.^ 
 
 The Divan of Suleiman was a splendid ceremony, and it 
 transacted a great amount of administrative and judicial busi- 
 
 * Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 89; Trevisano, 1 18-1 19. 
 
 2 Navagcro, 98; D. Barbarigo, 26. See also above, p. 164 and note 3. 
 
 * Postel, i. 123. 
 
 * Trevisano, 120. See above, p. 164. 
 ^ Zinkeisen, iii. 125; Tiepolo, 164.
 
 192 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 ness. A large proportion of the duties of the principal officials 
 was attended to in its sessions rather than in private offices; 
 and on particular matters there was a certain amount of delibera- 
 tion, though the Ottomans were not a people of many words. 
 The Divan was by no means a legislative chamber. It was in a 
 sense a combination of a president's cabinet and a supreme 
 court; ^ yet it was unlike both. Its presiding officer was ap- 
 pointed; all its decisions required the approval of the sultan, 
 who was not present at its sessions; and all its members were 
 responsible to him for good behavior on penalty of their Hves. 
 It was the highest court in the land, yet not so much a court of 
 appeal as a court of first instance. It had no power to judge the 
 validity of laws; yet it was not restricted in its jurisdiction, 
 since it had cognizance of all civil and criminal cases that might 
 be presented to it from any part of the empire. In its judicial 
 aspect, again, its decisions had no validity without the approval 
 of the sultan. With all its limitations, however, it was of great 
 value to the Ottoman government. Below the sultan, but above 
 all institutions of the empire, it bound together at the top the 
 Ruling Institution and the Moslem Institution, and it united 
 similarly all the component divisions of each; it was the pivot 
 from which were suspended all the separate parts of the despoti- 
 cally constructed government. In it met the ablest men of the 
 empire, chosen by selection after selection, each one charged 
 with great responsibilities and possessing power to execute 
 without delay what might be agreed upon. The Divan was 
 excellently adapted to the general Ottoman system. It enabled 
 the ruler, with a minimum of care, to keep the closest control 
 over every part of the empire through extremely intelhgent 
 and capable agents, who were bound to him by gratitude, self- 
 interest, ambition, and fear. It was a training-school of judges, 
 administrators, and statesmen, since men ordinarily rose from 
 place to place among its offices as they gained experience; here 
 
 1 Heidbom, 141: " Le divan etait a la fois une sorte de Conseil d'Etat, ou se 
 discutaient les affaires politlques importantes, et une Cour supreme autorisee a 
 evoquer tout litige devant elle et a connaitre notamment des proces entre Ottomans 
 et etrangers qui depassaient la valeur de 3000 aspres."
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT I93 
 
 they imparted ideas and methods to each other, and made their 
 abihties known to the highest officials, the grand vizier and the 
 sultan, with whom lay the power of promotion. Nor was the 
 Divan wholly destitute of legislative influence. All Kanuns 
 were issued in the sultan's name and after his definite approval; 
 yet the information on which they were based must regularly 
 have come through members of the Divan, and members of the 
 Divan with their subordinates must certainly have drawn them 
 up and revised them into shape. ControUing administration 
 and justice and influencing legislation, the Divan, under the 
 leadership of the grand vizier, governed the Ottoman Empire 
 for the sultan. 
 
 The Ruling Institution as a Whole 
 
 That which for want of a better name has been called in this 
 treatise the Ottoman Ruling Institution has now been discussed 
 in all its general aspects. Space has been lacking for the presen- 
 tation of many details, though the attempt has been made to 
 introduce all such as would give necessary evidence or useful 
 illustration. A few statements intended to summarize and bind 
 together what has been said will complete the discussion of the 
 institution. 
 
 The Ottoman Ruling Institution was in its most essential 
 aspect a government for the Ottoman Empire. In this respect 
 its form was a despotism, centered in one man, the sultan. Yet 
 the despotism was greatly circumscribed by a rigid constitutional 
 law, which was firmly grounded in strong religious belief and 
 intense national conservatism. This law held the sultan within 
 limited functions, but at the same time it gave him his right to 
 rule. As a government under this law, the Ottoman Ruling 
 Institution maintained public order, defended the empire against 
 its enemies, and endeavored by conquest to enlarge its possessions 
 and with them the domain of the Sacred Law. A large propor- 
 tion of its energies was devoted to obtaining and distributing the 
 means of its own support, to keeping its own machinery in order, 
 and to maintaining its authority within the empire. The idea of 
 labor for the public welfare or of efTort toward progress was not
 
 194 ^^^ GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 present. Change came, not by conscious striving toward better- 
 ment, but by growth, development, and decay, the effects of 
 which were adjusted when it became necessary. But within such 
 limits, there was in the sixteenth century a distinct desire, 
 founded on consciousness of greatness, pride of power, and 
 loyalty to Islam, to have the government well-ordered and 
 intelUgently directed, and to cause it to bear upon its subjects 
 as evenly and lightly as possible. Suleiman laid hold of many 
 problems which had arisen, and through the agency of his ablest 
 servants strove to set his house in order. That he did not suc- 
 ceed in accompHshing more permanent results was due to the 
 fact that the task was too great for any man. The institution 
 was too artificial to endure indefinitely. 
 
 The whole institution kept itself in power, and defended and 
 enlarged the empire, by being organized as an army. With 
 exceptions, all its officers of government were soldiers and all 
 its army officers had governmental duties. It constituted a 
 standing army of cavalry and infantry, aided by artillery, 
 commissary, and transport services; and it controlled a much 
 larger feudal and irregular army. Through the feudal army it 
 kept the country in subjection. By garrisons it held the towns 
 quiet. In case of rebellion, it threw a great force upon the 
 insurgents, and beat them down with cruel and resistless energy. 
 For foreign wars it gathered an enormous but well-controlled 
 host, which was victorious in battle throughout the reign of 
 Suleiman. It took by siege Belgrade and Rhodes, but it failed 
 at Vienna and Malta. The weakness of the Ruling Institution 
 as an army was its essential indivisibility. Only one great 
 war could be waged at a time, although there were great enemies 
 in two directions ; hence an overwhelming defeat of the principal 
 army would have been irreparably disastrous. But the army 
 was to suffice for a long period; and for generations its worst 
 foes were to be, not foreign armies, but internal rivalries and 
 departures from its constitutive principles. 
 
 To maintain the pomp and ceremony which are attached 
 to the idea of an empire, especially in the East, and to supply 
 the sultan on a large scale with all the enjoyments which were
 
 TUE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT I95 
 
 considered due to his state, the Ottoman Ruling Institution 
 was in another aspect a great court and household. Nearly- 
 all its members shared in the display of grand occasions, many- 
 went to the hunt with the sultan, and a large proportion of them 
 had constant duties of ceremonial and personal service. Sulei- 
 man was known as the Legislator and the Conqueror, but beyond 
 both these titles as the Magnificent; he shone as head of the 
 government and the army, but still more as head of the court. 
 Splendor and luxury, however, are expensive, and in the end 
 his example was to be ruinous. 
 
 All the members of the Ruling Institution were set off as a 
 nobility by exemption from taxation and by special jurisdiction; 
 but, lest they might prove a danger tp the institution, they were 
 not allowed to transmit their nobility to their descendants. 
 In the end, however, their special privilege was to become so 
 desirable that the walls of separation would be invaded and the 
 institution would be wrecked. 
 
 The Ottoman Ruling Institution, at once the government, 
 the army, and the nobihty of a great nation, was at the same 
 time a genuine slave-family. Almost all its members were 
 recruited as slaves and remained slaves throughout their days; 
 their Hves and their property were at the disposal of the sultan; 
 they must obey without hesitation, as all slaves must obey. 
 Yet their condition was far from being miserable. Their slavery 
 conveyed no taint: one of them might be married to a protegee 
 or even a daughter of the great master; their children would 
 never be reproached because of the father's status. It was an 
 honor to be the sultan's kul. Vast wealth and almost royal 
 power and rule might be theirs; yet each member of the RuHng 
 Institution was actually a slave. 
 
 The most characteristic feature of this institution lay in the 
 fact that its recruits were almost all drawn from children (born 
 within or without the empire) of Christian parents, and that 
 before they were advanced they were expected to become IMo- 
 hammedans. A twofold motive lay beneath this poHcy, — a 
 desire to obtain single-hearted servants and to increase the 
 number of believers in the Mohammedan faith. Sons of these
 
 196 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 converts were sometimes admitted to the Ruling Institution, 
 but their grandsons practically never. Thus a constant stream 
 of the ablest and fittest Christian children who were born in or 
 near the Ottoman dominions were brought into the Ruling 
 Institution, the Ottoman nation, and the Mohammedan fold. 
 
 The next most characteristic and the most abiding feature 
 of the Ottoman Ruhng Institution was its educational quality. 
 The Christian slaves were all acquired while young, and were 
 trained with the greatest care to become useful members of the 
 institution, each in the capacity for which nature had best 
 fitted him. They were pro\dded with an education which, 
 if not so general or so advanced as the usual training of modern 
 times, was more nearly complete. Body and mind, social, 
 moral, and religious nature, all received attention. The imme- 
 diate object of this education was to fit the boys for the sultan's 
 service in war and government; but they were also trained to 
 adorn his ceremonies and his court, and to live by the principles 
 and in the faith of Mohammed. When they were first admitted, 
 their training was more or less like that in schools of an industrial, 
 military, and cultural character; but it did not stop with the 
 attainment of majority. Army, household, bureaus, local 
 government, and Divan, all were conducted much like schools. 
 Strict disciphne was constantly maintained, slackness was se- 
 verely punished, and industry and abihty were richly rewarded. 
 The results were well-nigh incredible; they constitute a wonder- 
 ful demonstration of how little the human spirit is limited by the 
 ignorance or the restricted and humble Hfe of ancestors. With 
 hardly an exception, the men who guided Suleiman's empire 
 to a height of unexampled glory were sons of peasants and herds- 
 men, of do\vntrodden and miserable subjects, of unlettered and 
 half-civilized men and women. It is not easy to decide which 
 is more to be admired, the ability by which such young men rose, 
 or the confidence with which they were chosen and expected 
 to rise. If these men had not really risen, if they had remained 
 boorish, ignorant, and narrow, though elevated to high position 
 and authority, the facts would be less remarkable than they are. 
 The evidence is, however, that they really became educated,
 
 THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 1 97 
 
 cultured, and polished men: to this day their descendants have 
 a manner and charm that can rarely be found among Western 
 peoples. It is much easier to understand the whole process and 
 its results in a modern democratic age and land than it was in 
 feudal Europe of the sixteenth century. The Ottoman Ruling 
 Institution was from start to finish ingeniously contrived to 
 develop its members, within the limits of its purposes, to their 
 utmost capacity. Great authority, great position, great financial 
 rewards, were offered. Great punishments were not far away 
 from those who might prove dangerous, treacherous, or even 
 incompatible and ineflicient. 
 
 As a result of its careful selection and training of men for 
 society, war, and government, the Ottoman Ruling Institution, 
 allowing for all imperfections of structure, was a very efficient 
 and permanent entity. It was later to endure terrible shocks 
 and losses without destruction; it was to suffer a partial separa- 
 tion of its component institutions into hostile bodies, and to 
 witness serious departures from its rules and principles. But, 
 despite attack from without and disintegration and decay within, 
 it long stood firm; and, together with its dissimilar companion, 
 the Moslem Institution of the Ottoman Empire, it has kept the 
 vital spark of that empire alive for more than two centuries 
 after extinction began to be thought imminent. Even today 
 its abiding spirit gives promise of lighting a new and very different 
 torch, which, having burned away the limitations and imper- 
 fections that caused the ruin of the older institution, will yet 
 be the brighter for preserving a democratic faith in the capacity 
 of the able individual, and a disposition to help him forward by 
 education and to trust him with all the responsibility that he 
 is able to bear. Most features of the Ottoman Ruling Institution 
 cannot live in the twentieth century. Despotism, military 
 rule, personal privilege, excessive imperial splendor, prosely- 
 tism, and slavery have been dethroned in favor of political 
 and religious liberty, equality, fraternity, separation of church 
 and state, and government by the people. But the idea of an 
 education which will develop the individual to the full extent 
 of his capacities is thoroughly modern; and the disposition to
 
 198 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 entrust high offices to those who, without regard to ancestry, 
 are the ablest, and who become by their own efforts and by 
 carefully supervised training the best equipped, is in advance 
 of the ordinary practice of Western democracies. Herein lies 
 one of the strongest elements of hope for the future of the new 
 Turkey, which may thus preserve continuity with the past. 
 
 The Ottoman Ruling Institution, still thus capable of imparting 
 valuable ideas, was in its halcyon days a thing of immense 
 moment in the world. Out of carefully selected but most 
 heterogeneous materials it had built itself up as a firm, strong, 
 and simple structure, which had gathered a chaotic mass of petty 
 states and hostile peoples into a great and, by comparison, a 
 well-governed and durable empire. In the reign of the great 
 Suleiman no human structure existed which equalled this institu- 
 tion in wealth, splendor, power, simpHcity and rapidity of action, 
 and respect at home and abroad.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 General Description 
 
 In a survey of the institutional history of the Ottoman Empire, 
 a study of the complex organization which was based upon and 
 inspired by the Mohammedan religion would demand as large 
 a space as that given to the Ruling Institution. In a discussion 
 of the government of the empire, however, a much briefer treat- 
 ment will suffice. The Moslem Institution as a whole will 
 be sketched rapidly; fuller consideration will be given to its 
 juristic and judicial features, which especially affected and 
 entered into the government of the nation. 
 
 The structure of the Moslem Institution of the Ottoman Em- 
 pire, as of the corresponding institutions in all Moslem lands, 
 was and remains to the present time wholly different from that 
 of any of the Christian ecclesiastical organizations. As a mere 
 church it claimed far less place and influence than they do, but 
 in other aspects it reached out far more widely. It included 
 all those Mohammedans in the Ottoman Empire, outside of the 
 Ruling Institution, who were in any way lifted above the level 
 of the ordinary believer. Islam recognized no organized priest- 
 hood, no aristocracy, and no monks; yet the Ottoman Moslem 
 Institution possessed groups that were much like each of the 
 three. In addition it had a graded educational system, with a 
 graded corps of teachers, it contained a hierarchy of jurist- 
 theologians, and it supplied a classified body of judges, whose 
 combined jurisdictions covered the whole empire. That which 
 all persons who constituted this institution had in common 
 was a special relationship to the Mohammedan religion, some- 
 times based on birth or piety, but usually established by intel- 
 lectual training in connection with the Book and the Law of 
 Islam. In contrast with the Ottoman Ruling Institution, the 
 Moslem Institution cannot as a whole be regarded under several 
 
 19Q
 
 200 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 aspects. Like the former, it included component institutions; 
 but these all grew up from the Mohammedan population and 
 rested on one broad base, instead of being extended downward 
 from the top. At the same time, the sultan was the head of this 
 institution, whether it be considered as a whole or in reference 
 to each of its component institutions. He and his government 
 appointed its most influential personages, maintained careful 
 oversight of its financial support, and kept record of the appoint- 
 ments of all its members who shared in this support. The two 
 great institutions of the Ottoman Empire were therefore joined 
 together at the top, and, as will appear, they touched at every 
 other level both in financial and in governmental relations. 
 
 The fundamental difference of the two institutions lay in 
 the fact that the members of the RuHng Institution were drawn 
 almost exclusively from Christian families, and the members 
 of the Moslem Institution even more exclusively from Moham- 
 medan families. While it is likely that the majority of the 
 Mohammedan famihes had sprung from Christian ancestors 
 not many generations back, it is also true that Islam acts rapidly 
 upon the spirit of converts. Accordingly the two institutions 
 were very differently constituted. Between them arose a 
 rivalry of tendency and influence which was to become extremely 
 harmful to the Ottoman state. 
 
 In this treatise the financial side of the Moslem Institution 
 will be considered, the four great groups of its membership will 
 be discussed in the proportion of their relation to the govern- 
 ment, and some attention will be given to the institution as a 
 whole. 
 
 Financial Support of the Moslem Institution ^ 
 
 As already stated, a large proportion of the land of the Otto- 
 man Empire, perhaps one-third,^ was set aside as vakf, or rehgious 
 
 1 Although this and other features of the Moslem Institution will be spoken of 
 throughout this chapter in the past tense, much that is mentioned remains in 
 existence in Turkey at the present time. The vakfs are discussed at length in 
 D'Ohsson, ii. 437-567; and more briefly in Belin, La Propriete Foncicre, 74-104. 
 Heidbom, 306 ff., gives a well-analyzed account; and on p. 306, note 245, he 
 mentions additional authorities. 
 
 2 Ricaut, 213.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 20I 
 
 endowment. Much of this had been so devoted by sultans, 
 and in such cases the imperial treasury could use for its own 
 purposes none of the revenue or income from these lands. Other 
 parcels of land had been set apart by private individuals, in 
 these instances the treasury receiving for its own use the same 
 revenues as before the endowment, while the surplus income 
 from the land was devoted to the purposes specified by the giver. 
 Each tract of such land was by the original act of endowment 
 assigned to a particular object, and a Muteveli or administrator 
 and a Nazir or inspector were appointed to take care of it. In 
 a large proportion of cases a high ofificial of the government or 
 household, such as the grand vizier, the Mufti, the Kapic Agha, 
 or the Kizlar Agha, was put in charge ex officio in one or the other 
 capacity, on the theory that, being near the person of the sultan, 
 he would be subject to constant control. In course of time the 
 Kizlar Agha, the grand vizier, and the Mufti found it necessary 
 to organize the properties under their charge by holding private 
 Divans of the subordinate administrators and inspectors, and by 
 appointing Mufettishes, or special judges, each with a staff of 
 subordinates and traveUing inspectors.^ 
 
 Although every tract of land was assigned for a definite object 
 and placed under specified guardians, the vakfs were a matter 
 of pubhc record, and the accounts of all were kept by the treasury 
 department in the appropriate bureaus. The subjects who lived 
 on vakf lands seem to have been better treated than those on 
 lands of other sorts, just as in the West in the Middle Ages the 
 serfs of the church were often better off than other serfs.- There 
 were three classes of vakfs, — the regular vakfs of the mosques, 
 the vakfs for charitable purposes, and the customary vakfs of 
 the mosques. The last were chiefly in the nature of investments 
 of the funds of the mosques, and were according to Kanun 
 rather than Sheri.^ In the second class were included endow- 
 ments of schools, libraries, hospitals, bridges, fountains, caravan- 
 
 ^ D'Ohsson, ii. 540. 
 
 2 Ricaut, 217. D'Ohsson, ii. 532, expresses a different opinion. 
 ' Interest was allowable on the funds belonging to mosques, though otherwise 
 forbidden: Ricaut, 218; D'Ohsson, ii. 550.
 
 202 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 serais, public baths, convents for dervishes, and the like. The 
 narrow provision of the Ruling Institution for public service 
 was in this way supplemented.^ The first class deserves further 
 attention. 
 
 The chief material unit in connection with the Moslem Institu- 
 tion was the mosque. Each great mosque was a large house of 
 worship, with a group of smaller institutions clustered about it, 
 such as colleges, law schools, hospitals, insane asylums, and soup- 
 kitchens. For the support of these and of all persons who con- 
 ducted them, the income from the vakjs of the mosque was 
 appUed. In many cases the lands which had belonged to Chris- 
 tian churches before the Ottoman conquest were assigned as 
 vakJs for the support of the mosques into which the churches 
 were converted. For example, the grounds of the sultan's 
 principal palace had belonged to the church, and were assigned 
 as vakf to the mosque of Aya Sofia. When Mohammed II took 
 them for his palace he pledged a revenue of one thousand and 
 one aspers a day to the great mosque." This church was one 
 of eight in the city of Constantinople which were so treated.^ 
 The revenue of Aya Sofia was estimated at two hundred thousand 
 ducats a year.^ The income of the principal mosques being 
 much larger than the expenses, a considerable portion of the 
 surplus was used by the guardians for their own benefit, although 
 they were supposed to receive no compensation, but to labor 
 for the love of God. The fact is that many of the sultan's 
 kullar provided an inheritance for their sons and descendants 
 by setting apart for specific purposes lands in vakf, of which the 
 desired persons should be administrators, it being clearly under- 
 stood that a portion of the income should be retained by them.^ 
 The remainder of the surplus was held in a special treasury by 
 the appropriate bureaus, or was reinvested in customary vakfs, 
 or was lent to the government. The vakfs as a whole supported 
 
 ^ See below, p. 234, note i. 
 "^ Ramberti, below, p. 243; Ricaut, 215. 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 237. 
 
 ^ Ricaut, 215. In D'Ohsson's time (ii. 538) it was estimated at 1,000,000 
 aspers. Nicolay, 68, says that it had been 300,000 ducats before the conquest. 
 * Morosini, 267; Zane, 406; Heidborn, 309.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 203 
 
 all the official members of the Moslem Institution, except that 
 the judges derived much of their income from fees and fines. ^ 
 The treasury department received and controlled all the revenues 
 from vakfs, and paid from the appropriate funds all who were 
 duly certified as recipients of salaries and pensions. 
 
 All the Ulema, in connection with their support from semi- 
 public funds, possessed the noble privilege of immunity from 
 taxation. Since the rendering of justice was in their hands, 
 they had their own justice. In addition, their property was not 
 subject to confiscation; and, since they were not kullar, it passed 
 by inheritance to their relatives and never to the sultan. All 
 these privileges gave the learned class in the Ottoman Empire 
 the prestige of nobility, besides great financial advantage.^ 
 
 The Educational System 
 
 Like the Ruling Institution, the Moslem Institution contained 
 and embodied an educational system which was of its essential 
 structure. Through it, from the time of Mohammed II, the 
 great majority of the members of the institution, including all 
 who expected promotion, were required to pass; accordingly, 
 they bore as a body the name of the Ulema, or learned men.^ 
 The schools, supported by vakfs and attached to mosques, were 
 in three grades: the mektebs or primary schools, known in the 
 sixteenth century as okimiak-yerleri or reading-places; the 
 ordinary medressehs or colleges; and the higher medressehs or 
 law schools, of university grade. The mektebs taught Arabic 
 reading and writing and the Koran ; the medressehs gave a course 
 of ten studies resembling the Seven Arts of the West; ^ the law 
 
 ^ Mohammed II fixed these fees: for example. 7 aspers for sealing a document, 
 12 for a signature, 32 for the marriage contract of a virgin, 15 for that of a widow, 
 etc. See Hammer, Slaalsverfassung, 100. 
 
 2 D'Ohsson, iv. 599. 
 
 ' The Ulema and other members of the Moslem Institution are described in 
 D'Ohsson, iv. 482-686. Hammer, Staatsverwaltitng, 372-412, gives a summary of 
 D'Ohsson 's treatment. Heidborn, 208-210, describes the educational system 
 summarily. 
 
 * The ten studies were grammar, syntax, logic, metaphysics, philology, tropics, 
 stylistics, rhetoric, geometry, and astronomy: Hammer, Geschkhtc, ii. 238.
 
 204 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 schools taught the group of sciences connected with the Koran 
 and the Sheri and including both law and theology.^ 
 
 There was no compulsory education; nor could the system, 
 by reason of the individual character of its foundations, be 
 universal for Mohammedan children, But it may be supposed 
 that any Moslem parent, the inhabitant of a town of some size, 
 who desired his son to learn the rather difiEicult art of reading 
 and writing Turkish and Arabic, or even to enter upon a learned 
 career, was not devoid of an opportunity. Furthermore, where 
 primary schools existed the instruction was free, and some 
 students were even fed and lodged ; ^ the students in the med- 
 ressehs were also partially supported, and those in the law 
 schools received a sufficiency. This system, which dated back 
 at least to the twelfth century in Moslem lands, probably in the 
 Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century gave better opportunity 
 for education to Moslem boys than was afforded to Christian 
 children in any land until a much later date. The Ottomans 
 believed thoroughly in education; but, unfortunately, their 
 conservatism was in course of time to turn a beneficent institu- 
 tion into a harmful one. No change of consequence, either in 
 methods of teaching or in subjects of study, was permitted 
 from century to century; hence the training that had once 
 carried its earnest pupils to the forefront of human knowledge 
 was in time to hold them firmly at a stage which the rest of the 
 world had long passed through and left far behind. 
 
 The medressehs were very numerous in the empire; ^ the mosque 
 of the Conqueror had eight, that of Suleiman five. It was 
 Suleiman who set the gradations of the system in their final 
 
 1 Among these studies were advanced rhetoric and metaphysics, dogmatics, 
 civil law, exegesis, jurisprudence, oral tradition, and written documents (Hammer, 
 Ceschichte, ii. 239). All schools above the mektcbs came under the name viedresseh. 
 Heidbom distinguishes eight classes to which Suleiman added four colleges of yet 
 higher degree. His implication (p. 210, note 5) that the student who aimed at the 
 highest judgeships must study through eight or more medressehs, and then teach 
 through a like series, can hardly be correct, since the ordinary human life would be 
 too short for such a double round. Probably the steps of progress were not so 
 precisely regulated or so numerous. 
 
 2 D'Ohsson, ii. 464. 
 
 2 Hammer (Geschichle, ix. 145-163) found 275 in Constantinople alone, of which 
 50 had been founded before the death of Suleiman.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 205 
 
 form. All who aspired to any official position in the Moslem 
 Institution must pass through a medresseh of some degree. 
 On first entering they were called Softas, or more properly 
 Sukhtas, as those who were inflamed with the desire for learning. 
 The students were in different grades, but there seems to have 
 been no fixed number of years of study; the instruction being 
 largely individual, each could proceed as rapidly as he was 
 able. On finishing, they received a sort of master's degree and 
 were called Danishmend, which appears in several of the early 
 sources as Talisman} Such students as were content to teach 
 primary schools, or to attend to ecclesiastical duties, needed to 
 study no longer. 
 
 Those who aspired to become jurists or judges had to pursue 
 a long course in law in the higher medressehs. At the end of this 
 time they were examined personally by the Mufti, or chief 
 jurist, and if successful they were dignified with the title of 
 Muldzim, or candidate. Those who did not aspire to the higher 
 judicial positions ended their preparation at this point. The 
 more ambitious sought appointment, for which they were now 
 qualified, as Muderisler, or professors, in medressehs of low grade. 
 The Muderisler received large salaries, which increased as they 
 rose. They were in three classes, — the Muderisler of Con- 
 stantinople, of Adrianople and Brusa, and of the other cities 
 of the empire. The Muderisler of Constantinople numbered 
 about four hundred; they were in ten grades, distinguished 
 according to the subjects which they taught. Those of other 
 cities than the capital, and those at the capital who did not pass 
 through all the grades, became either jurists or judges of lesser 
 degrees. Those who wished to reach the higher judgeships were 
 obliged to pass through all ten grades. Since this was so long 
 a process as regularly to bring a man to gray hairs before he 
 reached the top, the rigid grading early began to be circumvented 
 by the practice of inscribing the sons of Ulema as Muderisler 
 while they were very young, substitutes being hired to teach 
 in their places.- By the age of thirty or forty they would thus 
 
 ' Chalcocondyles, 53; Ramberti, below, p. 244; Junis Bey, below, p. 265; etc 
 ' D'Ohsson, ii. 477; Heidborn, 213.
 
 206 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 be able to attain high position. A continuance of this process, 
 combined with the immunities and privileges of the Ulema, 
 was in time to lead to great accumulations of wealth in the hands 
 of a few families, who would be able to keep most of the high 
 judicial offices within their own numbers. 
 
 Clergy, Seids, and Dervishes 
 
 The clergy of the Ottoman nation were, as has been shown, 
 of no great education, and they seem to have possessed less 
 influence than the priests of any other religion.^ They were in 
 five classes: the Sheiks, or preachers; the Khatihs, or leaders of 
 Friday services; the Imams, or leaders of daily services; the 
 Muezzins, who intoned the call to prayer; and the Kaims, or 
 caretakers of the mosques. 
 
 The Seids, also known as Emirs or Sherifs, were a class apart 
 among the Ottomans. They were not properly members of the 
 Ulema, unless, like others, they passed through the schools; 
 they owed their distinction rather to a real or assumed genealogy 
 which carried their ancestry back to the Prophet Mohammed. 
 They alone were privileged to wear a green turban. They were 
 numerous; but the claims of many were doubted, and some of 
 them seem to have possessed reputations that were far from 
 savory.^ They constituted the only hereditary nobiUty among 
 the Ottomans, but their privileges appear to have been personal 
 rather than financial: they were not to be struck, for example, 
 on penalty of severe punishment, and they had their own justice. 
 Great honor was shown to two members of this nobility, descend- 
 ants of the Prophet: to the Mir-Alem, the sultan's standard- 
 bearer, who was regularly a Seid, and had precedence of all 
 the officers of the army; and to the Nakih ol-EsJiraf, head of 
 the Seids, who ranked second in the Moslem Institution, and 
 at the ceremonies of Bairam had precedence even of the Mufti. 
 The Nakib ol-Eshraf was appointed by the sultan for fife; that 
 
 ^ Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 236: "The priesthood proper ... is perhaps in no 
 other state of less influence, but the teaching body is in no other kingdom 
 (except China) of greater weight and political importance." 
 
 ^ Ricaut, 211.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 20J 
 
 member of the Ulema who was a Seid and who ranked highest 
 when the place fell vacant was ordinarily chosen. He had a 
 staff of officers and clerks in the capital and the provinces, and 
 was head of the separate jurisdiction of the Seids. Under the 
 sultan he held despotic authority over all Seids; and, when 
 the sovereign ordered the punishment or death of one of them, 
 the Nakib ol-Eshraf was commissioned to carry out the execu- 
 tion. 
 
 Dervishes also were not members of the Ulema. They were 
 of many orders, though sixteenth-century observers seem to 
 have been impressed with but four.^ They represented in Islam 
 the monks, the hermits, and the begging friars of Christianity. 
 Through them heresies spread, uprisings were concocted, mobs 
 were gathered, and holy war was preached. On more than one 
 occasion they endangered the power of the government.^ Many 
 were honest, God-fearing folk, while others were scarcely more 
 than tramps and wandering thieves. 
 
 Clergy, Seids, and dervishes represented the merely religious 
 side of the Moslem Institution. Islam was fundamentally a 
 rehgion without priests, monks, or nobles; and these persons 
 never grew to possess permanent influence and power in the 
 Ottoman state.^ 
 
 Jurists and the Mutti 
 
 A number of the Ulema who had finished the law course, 
 and who at some previous time had chosen to become counsellors 
 and jurists rather than to take up the severer and more active 
 judicial career, constituted a distinct body, the muftis, who were 
 held in high esteem. One of these was assigned as associate 
 to the judge of every important city, to the number of about 
 two hundred in all, while others were counsellors for the Bcylcr- 
 beys and Sanjak Beys. Appointed for Ufe, they lived in retire- 
 men L, having no initiative of action. When the judge, Bey, 
 or any private citizen, confronted by a case or other matter 
 
 ^ Spandugino, 219; Menavino, 72 fl.; Nicolay, 121. Ricaut, 261 £F., knew 
 eight or ten orders, which he describes at some length. 
 - Hammer, Geschichte, i. 154, ii. 357, iii. 67; Postel, i. 112. 
 * Heidborn, 269-274.
 
 208 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 which involved a learned knowledge of the Sacred Law, sub- 
 mitted to one of them a question in writing, usually in the form 
 of a hypothetical case, it was the duty of the mufti, after careful 
 consideration of the question in the light of the law books of 
 the school of Abu Hanifa, to give an answer that apphed the 
 Sacred Law to the matter concerned. These answers, which 
 were called fetvas, were usually extremely concise and unaccom- 
 panied by reasoning; they were prepared and sealed in solemn 
 form.^ When a judge or a Bey proposed to his rmifti a question 
 touching a pending law case, the muJtVs response ordinarily 
 settled the case. Private citizens who obtained /etoa^ ordinarily 
 did so to help their causes in pending law suits; here again 
 a pertinent question and answer would usually settle the case. 
 Since there was no class of professional lawyers, the muftis were 
 a necessary and very useful body. 
 
 In ordinary cities the mufti ranked after the judge. This 
 was not the case in Constantinople, where the sultan and his 
 ofhcers of government frequently had questions to present 
 which touched matters of the highest public importance. As a 
 consequence the mufti of Constantinople became par excellence 
 the Mufti. Mohammed II assigned to him also the title of 
 Sheik ul-Islam, the Ancient of Islam, which in later times was 
 to become his ordinary title. The Mufti was not regularly 
 chosen from among his fellows, but was usually advanced by 
 the sultan from the active judicial service.^ He had the right 
 to appoint and promote all the other muftis of the empire. A 
 special bureau called the Fetva-khaneh was created by Suleiman 
 to assist the Mufti in preparing decisions. 
 
 The Mufti was definitely constituted by Suleiman the head 
 of the Ulema; ^ and as such he outranked all officials of govern- 
 
 ^ Ricaut, 20I. 
 
 2 In Ricaut's time (p. 204) one of the Kaziaskers was regularly chosen for this 
 position. 
 
 ' D'Ohsson, iv. 500. Heidbom, 215, says that the title Sheik ul-Islam was first 
 bestowed by Murad II upon the mufti of Adrianople, who was removed to Con- 
 stantinople by Mohammed II after the capture; that Mohammed assigned the 
 title Reis ul-ulema, or chief of the Ulema, to this ofi&cer, but that he reached 
 great dignity only under Suleiman.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 209 
 
 ment, except that he yielded place to the grand vizier on ordinary- 
 occasions. He was almost the equal of the sultan himself, since 
 he was the expounder and representative of the Sacred Law, 
 which was above the sultan. Bayezid II was accustomed to 
 stand to receive the Mufti, and to give him a seat above his own.^ 
 Early in Suleiman's reign it was said, " The Turk shows his 
 [Mufti] the greatest reverence of any man in his realm, because 
 he represents justice and the image of God." ^ Sixteenth-century 
 Westerners compared the Mufti with a '* very great cardinal," ' 
 but more often with the pope.'* The Mufti had, however, no tem- 
 poral authority and no active part in affairs; like his brethren in 
 lesser cities, he could give responses only when his opinion was 
 asked. He could, however, rightly be compared with the pope 
 in dignity and in the magnitude of the matters with which he 
 dealt. His alone was the right to proclaim that war should be 
 begun, and to send out preachers to declare that the war was holy 
 and incumbent on all Moslems. He was frequently consulted 
 by the sultan as to the conformity of proposed Kanuns with the 
 Sacred Law.^ In his hands rested the extreme responsibility 
 of pronouncing that a sultan had transgressed the Sacred Law 
 and ought to be deposed. In short, though he could claim no 
 divinely delegated power to create new rules of faith or law, he 
 was the final earthly authority in the interpretation of the 
 Sacred Law as completed by Mohammed the Prophet. He 
 exercised a function similar to what in the United States of 
 America is the highest office of the Supreme Court, — the power 
 of defending the Constitution. In this capacity the Mufti 
 often withstood the sultan. Urf was subordinate to Sheri, and 
 in case of conflict the former must yield; therefore the sultan, 
 who embodied the former, could not override the Mufti, who 
 represented the latter. A century after the time of Suleiman 
 it was said : — 
 
 ' Spandugino, 113. 
 2 Postel, i. 118. 
 ■• Spandugino, 112. 
 
 * La Broquiere, 181; Ramberti, below, p. 247; GeufiFroy, 241; Trcvisano, 122; 
 Busbccq, Life and Letters, i. 116; Bernardo, 364. 
 ' Heidborn, 216.
 
 2IO THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 " The Mufti is the principal head of the Mahometan Religion 
 or Oracle of all doubtful questions in the Law, and is a person 
 of great esteem and reverence amongst the Turks; his Election 
 is solely in the Grand Signior, who chuses a man to that Office 
 always famous for his Learning in the Law, and eminent for his 
 vertues and strictness of Life: his Authority is so great amongst 
 them, that when he passes Judgment or Determination in any 
 point, the Grand Signior himself will in no wise contradict or 
 oppose it. . . . 
 
 " In matters of State the Sultan demands his opinion, whether 
 it be in Condemnation of any great man to Death, or in making 
 War or Peace, or other important Affairs of the Empire; either 
 to appear the more just and religious, or to incline the People 
 more willingly to Obedience. And this practice is used in busi- 
 ness of greatest moment; scarce a Visier is proscribed, or a 
 Pashaw for pretence of crime displaced, or any matter of great 
 alteration or change designed, but the Grand Signior arms 
 himself with the Mufti's Sentence; for the nature of man reposes 
 more security in innocence and actions of Justice, than in the 
 absolute and uncontroulable power of the Sword. And the 
 Grand Signior, tho he himself is above the Law, and is the 
 Oracle and Fountain of Justice, yet it is seldom that he proceeds 
 so irregularly to contemn that Authority wherein their Religion 
 hath placed an ultimate power of Decision in all their Contro- 
 versies." ^ 
 
 The power of the Mufti in the sixteenth century may be 
 illustrated by one or two instances. In the early years of the 
 century, shortly before the appearance of the Reformation 
 movement in Western Europe, the Ottoman Empire was threat- 
 ened by the presence of large numbers of heretics in Asia Minor, 
 simultaneously with the rise of a strong Mohammedan heretical 
 power in Persia. Selim the Grim disposed of the heretics in his 
 dominions by wholesale execution,^ and punished, though he 
 failed to crush, the Persians by the defeat of Khaldiran and the 
 annexation of a large part of their territory. After he had got 
 rid of Mohammedan heresy in his dominions, he was impressed 
 
 * Ricaut, 200-202. 2 Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 401.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 211 
 
 with the absence of unity occasioned by the presence of the 
 Christian subjects.^ Accordingly he decided to order all these 
 Christians to accept Islam on pain of death. To say that he 
 desired to execute the Christians of his dominions would be to 
 put the emphasis in the wrong place. He seems rather to have 
 had in mind such a process as was carried through in Spain 
 in the course of the sixteenth century, as a result of which none 
 were left in that land who professed another than the dominant 
 reHgion. 
 
 But here the Mufti Jemali intervened decisively. He had 
 readily given a fetva authorizing the extermination of the 
 heretics as in accordance with the Sacred Law, and he was 
 later to sanction the Persian and the Egyptian wars. In this 
 case, Selim, it is said, deceived him by a hypothetical question 
 into giving a response which might be interpreted to authorize 
 the forcible conversion of the Christians. After the order was 
 issued, however, Jemali, awakened to the situation, put the Greek 
 Patriarch in possession of a sufficient defence by showing him 
 that the Sacred Law provided that Christians who had accepted 
 Mohammedan rule and agreed to pay khardj and jizyeh (land 
 tribute and poll-tax) were, aside from certain regulations, to be 
 left unmolested in the exercise of their religion. This provision 
 the Patriarch, as instructed by the Mufti, claimed to be an 
 irrevocable and eternal compact; therefore, he urged, since 
 Selim's intention was contrary to it, his purpose was unlawful 
 and must be abandoned. The argument prevailed, and the 
 Christians were not disturbed as to their faith. 
 
 It may be remarked that Sehm's idea was an excellent one 
 from the point of view of statesmanship, and would, in the end, 
 have resulted in a great advantage to the Moslem Institution. 
 As pointed out in the first chapter, the Christian churches in the 
 Ottoman Empire constituted a group of organizations that were 
 parallel and rival to the Moslem Institution; hence their removal 
 would have left it a free field. Whether its unopposed action 
 would, in the long run, have been an advantage to the empire 
 and to the world is a matter for speculation which would be out 
 
 ^ Ibid. 536 ff.; Heidborn, 215, note 16.
 
 212 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 of place here; but as a state the Ottoman Empire would have 
 been notably unified by the clearing away of these institutions. 
 They were old, strong, and of a tenacious vitahty; in them 
 centered the hopes and aspirations of the subject Christians; 
 while they persisted, complete amalgamation of the population 
 was impossible ; they were to keep ahve a sentiment of nationality 
 and separatism that three centuries later was to break off great 
 sections from the empire. It seems clear, then, that, had Sehm 
 been able to carry out his purpose, the history of the Levant 
 since his time would have been very different from what it has 
 been. But the Mufti, as guardian of the Sacred Law, was right. 
 The position of the Christian subjects rested on a firm constitu- 
 tional foundation.^ The Prophet Mohammed himself, nine 
 centuries before Selim, had made the religious and social unity 
 of the Ottoman Empire forever impossible. He had also made 
 pohtical unity impossible at that time; for in the sixteenth 
 century political, apart from religious, unity was not understood 
 in either the East or the West. Only in the twentieth century 
 was Turkey to arrive at a new hope of political unity through an 
 attempt to remove religious differences from a position of great 
 influence upon the state. 
 
 Another instance of the MuftVs power occurred in the reign of 
 Suleiman, who, as a willing servant of the Sacred Law, freely 
 recognized the greatness of the Mufti's position. The Mufti 
 Ebu su'ud was one of the most distinguished ornaments of the 
 Legislator's reign. He had passed through all the stages of 
 advancement among the Ulema, and had been Kaziasker eight 
 years when he was constituted Mufti. He wrote a great com- 
 mentary on the Koran, and it was he who collected the best- 
 known Kanun-nameh of Suleiman.^ This man was closely 
 connected with one of those sorrowful events which made the 
 
 1 D'Ohsson, V. 104 £f. 
 
 2 See Hammer, Ceschichte, iii. 278 ff.; and Appendix III below. Heidbom, 
 215, contributes further details as to the great Mufti's advance in the cursus 
 honorum of the Moslem Institution. He shows that he began his legal studies 
 at 27 years of age, continued them until his 45th year, was made Kazi of 
 Brusa, then of Constantinople, and in his 50th year (944 A.H.) Mufti. The last 
 statement seems to be erroneous; for Hammer (as above) says that he became
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 21 3 
 
 reign of Suleiman, great as it was in victory, splendor, and 
 learning, equally great in tragic ruin of hope. Suleiman must 
 have passed through many hours of torturing indecision before he 
 determined upon the execution of his eldest son, Mustapha; 
 and in so great a matter he needed to consult the guardian of the 
 Sacred Law. The story of the part which the Mujli played 
 shall be told by Busbecq, who appears for the last time in the 
 pages of this treatise: — 
 
 " Solyman had brought with him [to Amasia, where he joined 
 the army] his son's death doom, which he had prepared before 
 leaving home. With a view to satisfying religious scruples, he 
 had previously consulted his mufti. This is the name given to 
 the chief priest among the Turks, and answers to our Pope of 
 Rome. In order to get an impartial answer from the mufti, he 
 put the case before him as follows: — He told him that there was 
 at Constantinople a merchant of good position, who, when about 
 to leave home for some time, placed over his property and house- 
 hold a slave to whom he had shown the greatest favour, and 
 entrusted his wife and children to his loyalty. No sooner was 
 the master gone than this slave began to embezzle his master's 
 property, and plot against the lives of his wife and children; 
 nay, more, had attempted to compass his master's destruction. 
 The question which he (Solyman) wished the mufti to answer 
 was this: What sentence could be lawfully pronounced against 
 this slave ? The mufti answered that in his judgment he de- 
 served to be tortured to death. Now, whether this was the 
 mufti's own opinion, or whether it was pronounced at the instiga- 
 tion of Roostem or Roxolana, there is no doubt that it greatly 
 influenced Solyman, who was already minded to order the execu- 
 tion of his son; for he considered that the latter's oflfence against 
 himself was quite as great as that of the slave against his master, 
 in the case he had put before the mufti." ^ 
 
 The Mufti's power in reahty went beyond the field of inter- 
 pretation and entered upon that of legislation. It is well known 
 
 Mufti in 952 (1545 A. D.), after eight years' service as Kaziaskcr. Probably, 
 then, he was made Kaziaskcr in 944 and MuJli in 952. After thirty years in that 
 eminent position, he died in 982 (1574). 
 ^ Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 116-117.
 
 214 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 how much the Supreme Court of the United States of America 
 has extended the powers of the federal government by the 
 interpretation of the Constitution. The Mufti acted similarly, 
 though with less freedom, in interpreting the Sacred Law. 
 His power in this direction was recognized by some Ottoman 
 Mohammedans: "The Mujti hath a spacious Field for his 
 Interpretation; for it is agreed that their Law is temporary, and 
 admits of Expositions according to times and state of things. 
 And though they Preach to the People the perfection of their 
 Alchoran; yet the wiser men hold, that the Mufti hath an exposi- 
 tory power of the Law to improve and better it, according to 
 the state of things, times and conveniencies of the Empire; for 
 that their Law was never designed to be a clog or confinement to 
 the propagation of Faith, but an advancement thereof, and there- 
 fore to be interpreted in the largest and farthest fetched sense, 
 when the strict words will not reach the design intended." ^ 
 
 The fetvas of the muftis amounted in practice to a body of 
 legislation which was intermediate between the Sheri and the 
 Kanuns: they partook of the sacred character of the former, as 
 being based directly upon it; they were, like the latter, of a 
 modern and practical nature derived from recent application 
 to actual cases. In the fetvas, however, nothing radical or 
 startling could ever be attempted; novel features were obHged 
 to be of a most inconspicuous character. The fetvas as a whole 
 caused some development in the Sacred Law, but their combined 
 additions were altogether too sHght to keep it abreast of the 
 march of events. 
 
 In reality, the muftis occupied the most influential position 
 in the Moslem Institution and perhaps in the Ottoman state. 
 Usually inferior to judges and officers of government in income 
 and display, and giving no direct impulse to affairs, they never- 
 theless wielded the greatest continuous power in the state, — 
 the quiet, steady, almost changeless, almost irresistible, force of 
 Mohammedanism. They were " guardians of the laws " in as 
 full a sense as any Greek could wish. Their authority rested, 
 
 ^ Ricaut, 202.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 21 5 
 
 first, on the acceptance by the entire Moslem population of the 
 absolute supremacy of the Sacred Law, and, second, on the 
 recognition by the same population that they, who had acquired 
 learning in the Law by long years of arduous mental labor, and 
 who had chosen to continue in its study rather than take up its 
 more active and lucrative application in service on the bench, 
 were the persons through whom its supremacy on earth was 
 rightly to be maintained. Thus by popular consent the muftis 
 constituted the conservative, regulative force in the Ottoman 
 state. They were destined to contribute very largely to the 
 empire's durabihty, which, despite frightful shocks, disasters, and 
 losses, was to continue far beyond the expectation of the world. 
 The muftis did their work only too well. The idea of the 
 changelessness of the Sacred Law was essentially hostile to 
 progress. Although considerable flexibility was possible under 
 its provisions, the flexibihty lay in its appHcation to particular 
 cases, and hardly at all in the law itself. When the Ottoman 
 power began to rise, scholasticism was at its height, both in 
 Christianity and in Mohammedanism. From this blighting 
 theological and philosophical bondage, which tended to extend 
 its deadening sway over all the activities of the human spirit, 
 Christendom was delivered by the Renaissance and the Reforma- 
 tion. The Ottoman mind, on the contrary, continued to be 
 held under it till the most recent years. That it remained so 
 long in bondage, with scarcely a struggle to escape, was due very 
 largely to the authority of the Ulema. They who accomplished 
 much toward building the Ottoman state into a solid structure, 
 and toward maintaining it against foes without and within, also 
 held it nearly stationary while the rest of the world moved on. 
 
 The Judicial System ^ 
 
 The judges who belonged to the corps of the Ulema had 
 jurisdictions that were based upon territory, and that covered 
 
 ^ This description, based on D'Ohsson's account, may represent at some points 
 a development later than the time of Suleiman. No sixteenth-century writer 
 seems to have gone into the organization of the system in detail. Heidborn, 220 ff., 
 treats with fulness the past and present judicial system of the Ottoman Empire.
 
 2l6 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 the whole empire to an even wider extent than did the adminis- 
 tration of the government. The Crimea and North Africa, 
 though under vassal governments, formed part of the Ottoman 
 judicial system.^ The tribunals of the judges seem to have been 
 competent for all kinds of cases, whether civil or criminal, and 
 whether covered by the Sheri, the Kanuns, Adet, or none of these.^ 
 But, as has been seen, they were not competent to try all persons. 
 The kullar, the Seids, and the members of the foreign colonies 
 had their separate systems of justice; even the subject Christians, 
 in matters between themselves, had their own ecclesiastical 
 tribunals to which they regularly resorted. Cases concerning 
 the administration of certain groups of vakf lands were tried in 
 special courts, which were, however, presided over by members 
 of the regular judicial body. The fief-holders had seigniorial 
 jurisdiction in certain matters; and the ofiicers of local govern- 
 ment seem also to have had independent right to decide cases 
 outside the sphere of the Sacred Law, whether covered by Kanun, 
 Adet, or unprovided for.^ The judges of the Moslem Institution, 
 therefore, tried all cases involving the Sacred Law which arose 
 within the empire, and which were between IVIoslem and Moslem 
 or between Moslem and Christian (except when the Moslem was 
 a kul of the sultan or a Seid) , as well as a large proportion of the 
 cases which were outside the sphere of the Sacred Law. 
 
 Nearly all judges were judges of cities, having jurisdiction 
 also over the surrounding territory ; * exceptions were the Mufet- 
 
 1 Hammer, Staatsverwallung, 380. ^ Postel, i. 117. 
 
 ' The Subashis in particular were closely connected with the administration of 
 justice. Postel, i. 120, saj's loosely that Pasha, Kazi, and Subashi all mean 
 the same thing. Chesneau, 47, says that the sultan had two judges in every 
 city, a Kazi for civil cases and a Subashi for criminal cases. This is certainly 
 incorrect, for the Sacred Law provided for many criminal cases, while Kanuns 
 dealt with many civil cases. The Sanjak Beys and Beylerbeys held Divans, or 
 councils, resembling on a lesser scale the sultan's Divan (Heidborn, 143, note 17); 
 following the analogy of the Kaziaskers, the Kazi of the city in which each such 
 officer resided would sit in his Divan and decide the cases that came up touching 
 the Sacred Law, and would also hold independent court at other times. In cities 
 of lesser importance, the Kazis appear to have been the heads of the restricted 
 mimicipal governments (ibid., note 16). 
 
 * A scheme of the higher offices in the judicial system in the early nineteenth 
 century is given in Hammer's Ceschichle, ix. i-io.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 21/ 
 
 tishes of the vakf lands, the judge who accompanied the Kapudan 
 Pasha on his annual cruise to the Aegean Islands, the two Kazi- 
 askers, and the grand vizier. The judges were all carefully 
 graded in five principal classes, three of which were each again 
 subdivided into several groups. By another grouping, on a 
 geographical basis, they were in two divisions under the Kazi- 
 askers of Europe and Asia. The five classes were the greater 
 Mollas, the lesser Mollas, the Mufettishes, the Kazis, and the 
 Naibs. The general name for judge was Kazi, and the popular 
 title of respect for them all was Molla; * but the official titles 
 were as described above. In general, a Danishmend who aspired 
 to the judicial career chose while in the law course, according 
 to his ambition or ability, which of the five classes he would 
 strive to enter and after entering one of them he could not pass 
 to another. Each had its ladder of promotion. 
 
 The greater Mollas were in six groups: the Kaziasker of 
 Rumeha; the Kaziasker of Anatoha; the judge of Constanti- 
 nople; the judges of Mecca and Medina; the judges of Adrian- 
 ople, Brusa, Cairo, and Damascus; and the judges of the three 
 suburbs of Constantinople, — Galata, Scutari, and Eyub, — 
 and of Jerusalem, Smyrna, Aleppo, Larissa, and Salonica. These 
 seventeen were in later times nominated by the Mujli for approval 
 by the grand vizier and confirmation by the sultan; in Sulei- 
 man's time the members of the last four groups were nominated 
 by the Kaziaskers subject to the approval of the pashas.'^ Their 
 positions were originally held for life, or until promotion, or dur- 
 ing good behavior; and they rose by promotion from group to 
 group. Each had a number of assistants, clerks, book-keepers, 
 treasurers, and the like. They seem to have had superior juris- 
 diction over the inhabitants, and control of the lesser judges, in 
 
 ^ Kazi is the Turkish pronunciation of the Arabic word kadi, judge; Molla is 
 the Turivish form of the Arabic word vtaitld, lord. 
 
 2 Junis Bey (below, p. 265) and Postel, i. 119, state that the Kaziaskers 
 nominated all Kazis. Junis Bey says: " Two Cadilesclier talismans, one of Greece 
 and the other of Natolia or Asia, and they each have revenues of 6 or 7 thousand 
 ducats a year: who are executors of their law. ... it is they who appoint the 
 Kadis or podestas of all the lands of the Seigneur." Ramberti (below, p. 247) 
 and Nicolay, 119, say that the consent of the pashas was necessary also.
 
 2l8 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 the entire dominion of the officer of local government — Beylerhey 
 or Sanjak Bey — who resided in their city.^ The Kaziaskers had 
 each a large corps of subordinate officials. They controlled the 
 appointment of the judges of all other classes, subject to the con- 
 firmation of the sultan. The five Ulema who held high office near 
 the person of the sultan — his Hoja or teacher, the head phys- 
 ician, the head astrologer, and the two imperial Imams — were 
 reckoned as adjunct members among the Mollas of the first class. 
 They had no small influence on the destiny of the empire, as 
 being the most disinterested and trusted persons who had the 
 ear of the monarch. 
 
 The lesser Mollas were the judges of the ten cities of second 
 rank, — Marash, Bagdad, Bosna-serai, Sofia, Belgrade, Aintab, 
 Kutaia, Konia, Phihppopohs, and Diarbekr. 
 
 The Mufettishes were five in number, three representing the 
 vakfs in Constantinople that were under the Mufti, the grand 
 vizier, and the Kizlar Agha, and two representing all three of 
 these exalted officials in Adrianople and Brusa. Cases concern- 
 ing vakfs that might arise elsewhere were taken before the nearest 
 Kazi. 
 
 The Kazis proper included the vast majority of the judges, 
 to the number, in D'Ohsson's time, of about four hundred and 
 fifty, who were stationed in smaller cities. About two hundred 
 in Europe, in nine groups, and those in the Crimea and North 
 Africa, were under the authority of the Kaziasker of RumeHa. 
 About two hundred and twenty-five in Asia, in ten groups, and 
 thirty-six in Egypt, in six groups, were under the control of the 
 Kaziasker of Anatoha.^ 
 
 The Naibs were in several groups, as judges of villages, lesser 
 judges of cities, temporary substitutes for higher judges, and the 
 like. They ordinarily had no salaries, but lived upon fees and 
 
 1 Ricaut, 205. 
 
 2 Hammer (as above, p. 216, note 4) gives a list of 39 judges of rank above the 
 Kazis proper, and 243 Kazis of Rumelia, 280 of Anatolia, and 34 of Egj-pt. The 
 total is thus 557 Kazis proper, and 596 judges in all. In the subsequent list of 
 247 positions in Rumelia as rearranged under Mahmud II, five places in the Crimea 
 are mentioned as seats of Kazis in parlibus, but neither list appears to mention 
 any in North Africa.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 219 
 
 irregular earnings. A group of these were important in the 
 sixteenth century as a kind of inspectors of public morals. 
 They purchased their places, and lived upon fines — and some- 
 times, it is said, upon extortions — from persons who did not 
 wish their private lives exposed.' 
 
 Exercising many of the functions of police and market judges, 
 but not belonging to the Ulema, were the Muhtesibs, or lieutenants 
 of police, of the various cities. Accompanied by soldiers and 
 attendants, they patrolled the streets and inspected the markets, 
 giving special heed to weights and measures. If they found 
 that the law had been infringed, they inflicted punishment, 
 whether financial or corporal, on the spot.^ By reason of the 
 duty of applying sumptuary regulations, the office was often 
 lucrative.^ 
 
 In every court a single judge sat, with his clerks and other 
 subordinates. Cases were presented by the parties concerned, 
 and decisions were usually rendered immediately and in very 
 concise form. The judge cooperated with the Siihashi of the 
 city, who brought before the judge persons that were summoned 
 and who executed the sentences of the judges,* an arrangement 
 in which lay a certain likeness to the ecclesiastical courts of the 
 West, which might condemn, but left the execution to the secular 
 arm. Appeal went up to judges higher in the scale, and finally 
 to the grand vizier.* Costs and fines were moderate, and were 
 fixed by Kanun; ^ they constituted, however, a large part of the 
 income of the judges and their subordinates. The judges were 
 salaried, and some of them had in addition large amounts of 
 irregular earnings. The judges attended to all the notarial 
 work of the empire. 
 
 The Stibashis, Sanjak Beys, and Beylerbeys had complete 
 jurisdiction over all members of the Ruling Institution who 
 
 1 Spandugino, 188; Postal, i. 127. 
 
 * Spandugino, 213; D'Ohsson, vi. S33- 
 
 ' Postci, i. 126. This oflicer is called by Postel Mortasi. 
 
 * Menavino, 66; Spandugino, 211. 
 
 ^ Postel, i. 120, 124; Nicolay, 119. There was no regular organization of the 
 procedure of appeal; nevertheless it was allowed (Hcidborn, 389). 
 ' Hammer, Slaatsverfassung, 100. See above, p. 203, note i.
 
 220 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 resided in their districts, as well as a more or less undefined au- 
 thority in cases controlled by Kanun, Adet, or otherwise outside 
 the sphere of the Sacred Law.^ In capital cases they never 
 proceeded to execution without obtaining the approval of the 
 judge of the city, in order to have the sanction of the Sacred 
 Law.^ The decisions of the judges in criminal cases were regularly 
 submitted to without a murmur, since it was felt that the judges 
 represented Mohammed, " wore the robe of God," and had power 
 of " sovereign sentence." * 
 
 The highest courts were those of the Kaziaskers, the grand 
 vizier, and the Divan. The Kaziaskers, besides attending to 
 the cases that were brought before them in the Divan and at the 
 palace gate after its close, held court at all other times in their 
 own houses.^ Mohammed II had provided that, when cases 
 were brought primarily to them in the city of Constantinople, 
 those which concerned Moslems should come before the 
 Kaziasker of Rumelia and those which concerned non-Moslems 
 before the Kaziasker of Anatolia. The titles of these judges 
 show their original functions as judges of the armies of Rumelia 
 and Anatolia, offices which they continued to exercise in time of 
 war. In this capacity, also, appeals came up to them in time of 
 peace from the Subashis and Sanjak Beys in matters touching 
 kullar. The power of the Kaziaskers had been extended to 
 include the headship of all the judges of their respective regions, 
 and the appointment of all judges, subject to the approval of the 
 pashas. In the Divan, and as " Pillars of the State," they 
 ranked next to the viziers; they had the first right of audience 
 with the sultan at the close of each Divan; and until the reign 
 of Suleiman they had had all the authority over the Ulema that 
 later came to the Mufti. They had immense incomes and were 
 highly honored and esteemed. 
 
 ^ See above, p. ii6. 
 
 2 Spandugino, 211. 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
 * The Arabic words kadi al asker signify judge of the army. In the sixteenth 
 century the pronunciation seems to havi been kadi I'esker; nowadays it is kazi 
 asker. The burdensome duty of holding court continually is mentioned in Span- 
 dugino, 96; D'Ohsson, iv. 581.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 221 
 
 The grand vizier was actual head of the Moslem Institution 
 as substitute for the sultan; accordingly his court was the 
 highest court of appeal for all ordinary civil cases. It was also, 
 however, like all other courts in the empire, a court of first 
 instance. He decided great numbers of cases, large and small, 
 for rich and poor alike. Justice was refused to no one; it was 
 rendered either by the grand vizier's own decision, or by reference 
 for prompt settlement to one of the Kaziaskers or to some other 
 judge.' 
 
 The Divan's principal deliberative business as a court was the 
 trial of capital cases of great officials. Although many such 
 persons were executed, it is strenuously denied that Suleiman 
 ever ordered death without a trial.^ Nevertheless, the process 
 was usually held in the absence of the accused person and with- 
 out his knowledge; he might be at the end of the empire. In 
 case of conviction a Chaush was sent to the condemned man's 
 place of residence, bearing secretly a written commission, which 
 was given to the nearest official who had power to execute. The 
 condemned man had at best a few hours in which to settle his 
 affairs and make his peace with God; then he was executed, and 
 his head was given to the Chaush to be taken to the sultan as 
 proof that the mission had been faithfully accomplished. It is 
 said that forty or fifty heads sometimes reached the court of 
 Suleiman in a single day.' 
 
 Early in his reign, when filled with pride by his victory over 
 the rebel Ghazah, and feeling warm friendship toward Doge 
 Loredano of Venice, he wished to send the rebel's head to the 
 Doge by a special embassy, and was dissuaded only with great 
 difficulty by the Bailo of Venice in Constantinople.'* After 
 Mohacs two thousand heads were set on poles about his tent.^ 
 To Western eyes it seems a blot upon the noble and generous 
 character of Suleiman, that he treated the heads of his enemies 
 and of condemned criminals after the fashion of his time and 
 
 1 Postel, i. 123. Heidborn, 141-143, note 15, quotes from Ypsilanti an inter- 
 esting description of a session of the grand vizier's court. 
 
 2 Postel, i. 127, iii. 8. ■* Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 11. 
 
 3 Ibid. iii. 9. ^ Ibid. 6i.
 
 222 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 country. Aside from the question of barbarity and cruelty, 
 however, the poHcy of summary and certain execution of offen- 
 ders was essential to the maintenance of the Ottoman Ruling 
 Institution in power. It was a process of pruning, by which 
 every dangerous growth was cut away. Had it not been done, 
 the system would have seemed today more commendable, but 
 it could hardly have failed to perish quickly. A century after 
 Suleiman the remark was made that what preserved the Ottoman 
 state was the quickness and severity of justice for crimes which 
 had relation to the government.^ 
 
 What was the general character of Ottoman justice ? It is 
 to be feared that it was often venal. A few years after Suleiman's 
 death a Western writer expressed the opinion that the only 
 incorruptible courts were those of the grand vizier and the 
 Divan.2 Another charged that Christian subjects had unfair 
 treatment before the courts, in which they were not allowed 
 to testify, since some of the Moslems considered it almost a 
 meritorious religious act to turn a case against a Christian by 
 false testimony.^ It is probable, however, that the Ottoman 
 courts in Suleiman's time were reasonably just. The judges 
 were well-paid, highly honored, and carefully inspected by honest 
 men who were sent out annually by the Kaziaskers; * neverthe- 
 less, many of them no doubt yielded to the same desire for money 
 that afflicted the kullar. In at least one respect the Ottoman 
 courts were highly to be commended: there was a minimum of 
 trouble because of the " law's delay." Cases were always 
 decided promptly, and in clear and simple terms. An unjust 
 decision quickly given is often less expensive and less annoying 
 in the long run than tardy justice.^ 
 
 Some Western observers were as strongly impressed with the 
 superiority of Ottoman justice over that in their own lands as 
 they were with the superiority of discipline in the Ottoman 
 
 * Ricaut, 3. 
 
 2 Garzoni, 430. See also Morosini, 273. 
 
 ' Postel, i. 124. Matters were distinctly worse in Ricaut's time (pp. 140-141). 
 
 * Spandugino, 114. 
 
 * It has been suggested (Morosini, 273) that the promptness of justice had a 
 connection with the early military character of the Moslems.
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 223 
 
 camp, or of promotion by merit in the Ottoman government 
 service.' One of them said: "To understand at length their 
 diligence in justice, it would be necessary to write more than I 
 have done; and further, since there is nothing here [that is, in 
 P'rance] so near immortality as the processes and extortions 
 which men do, it gives me shame to recite so great diligence 
 among people proclaimed wicked; this it is, without any doubt, 
 which makes them so to rule, conquer, and keep. ... Of 
 Sultan Suleiman, who rules at present, I do not wish to speak, 
 for his deeds are not yet accomplished, and he cannot yet be 
 praised, except for his humanity, justice, and fidelity." ^ 
 
 The law which the judges administered was primarily the 
 Sacred Law, as given in the Koran and the traditions of Moham- 
 med, but especially as codified by the great doctors of the school 
 of Abu Hanifa, and as interpreted in collections of the fetvas of 
 great jurists. Next the judges applied the Kanuns of the sultans, 
 and the customs and immunities of the regions in which they 
 served.^ Finally, they had a considerable field in which to make 
 use of equity: " The good sense and prudence of judges trained 
 in reasoning," says Postel, " supplies and decides many things 
 that are not written." •* The only resemblance to the Anglo- 
 Saxon system of case law seems to have been the use of the 
 fetvas of the muftis. Since the hearing of ordinary cases was 
 summary and decisions were rendered very briefly, no extended 
 reports were possible. The absence of printing, which was not 
 introduced into Turkey until the eighteenth century, aided 
 further toward making a general use of the decisions of judges as 
 precedents practically impossible. In those days judges relied 
 upon their own knowledge of law and custom, on the few books 
 they might possess, on their sense of equity, and, in matters of 
 difficulty, on the opinions of the local fnuftis. Since the judges 
 were not each surrounded by a group of trained and keenly 
 watchful lawyers, but acted alone except for their own sub- 
 ordinates, there was more opportunity for unjust decisions by a 
 dishonest judge than among English-speaking peoples. Or, to 
 
 * Spanduejino, 211, 255. ^ Ibid. i. 117. 
 
 2 Postel, i. 127, iii. 87. * Ibid.
 
 224 THE GOVERNMENT OF TEE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 state the matter differently, Ottoman justice depended more 
 upon the integrity of judges than does Anglo-Saxon justice. 
 Although the Sacred Law was rigid, its appKcation to the indi- 
 vidual case was adjustable, and adjustment was ordinarily 
 accomplished by the decision of one man. Judges therefore 
 possessed great power over the fortunes of individuals, a fact 
 which in part explains the great deference and honor that was 
 shown them. 
 
 The Moslem Institution as a Whole 
 
 A few words of summary will sketch the outlines of the com- 
 plete Moslem Institution in the Ottoman Empire. It repre- 
 sented and maintained the entire system that was based upon 
 the life and work of the Prophet Mohammed. This system 
 claimed to be sufficient for all sides of the temporal, as well as 
 for the eternal, life of all individuals, and for the life of the state 
 which they constituted; it also provided a place for subject 
 peoples and resident foreigners of other rehgious affiliations. 
 The power of the institution extended over the whole empire, 
 even beyond the limits of political control. 
 
 The Moslem Institution was firmly grounded in the allegiance, 
 the fundamental beliefs, and the affections of the entire Moslem- 
 born population of the empire. It is true that not all Moslems 
 believed exactly alike, nor did they all practise the Sacred Law 
 according to the system of Abu Hanifa. But they were all 
 fiercely and proudly Moslems, and devoted to the supremacy of 
 the Mohammedan system in this world, as expressed in an insti- 
 tution which might not be what every one wished, but which 
 revealed and maintained the power of Islam. All the Moslems 
 of the empire were in a sense members of the institution. In the 
 sixteenth century any one of them might hope to see his son 
 mount to a very high place within the organization, since indus- 
 trious study combined with native ability was all that was 
 demanded. Opportunities in the way of schools were present 
 nearly everywhere; and a student who once had shown his 
 aptitude would be carried forward, without expense to his rela- 
 tives, by funds which had been provided by sultans and pious
 
 THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 22 S 
 
 individuals " for the good of their souls." The Moslem Institu- 
 tion was fundamentally democratic. It was united in complete 
 solidarity and perfect harmony with all in the empire who were 
 attached to the doctrines of the Prophet. All believers were 
 equal before God, and all were supposed to have equal opportu- 
 nity to rise to places of honor in the system. 
 
 Distinction and membership in the institution proper rested 
 upon birth in the case of the descendants of Mohammed, upon 
 profession of piety and special religious service in the case of the 
 dervishes, but upon learned knowledge of the Sacred Law in all 
 positions of public influence and importance. The three highly- 
 honored classes of teachers, jurists, and judges were trained in 
 the same superbly-planned educational system, in the same 
 text-books and the same ideas. Whether in Constantinople or 
 Cairo, the Crimea or Algiers, Budapest or Bagdad, old, grave, 
 wise, and learned professors, jurists, and judges taught, inter- 
 preted, and enforced the same wide-reaching and changeless 
 Sacred Law. As teachers, the Ulema conveyed to children and 
 youth, in impressible years, that which they had themselves 
 received. The same learned persons, after fixing each part of 
 the whole round of legal studies in their minds by periods of 
 teaching, were advanced to places where they dealt not with 
 boys, but with men, where their work affected not the fortunes 
 of individuals, but the destinies of the empire. Yet their influ- 
 ence was exerted strenuously in the same direction throughout, 
 to impress and perpetuate the changeless body of ideas in the 
 Sacred Law. Professors, jurists, and judges alike were, in all 
 that they did and throughout their lives, fundamentally teachers. 
 The Ulema taught all the Moslems of the empire, from the young 
 child to the aged sultan. They maintained schools for the young; 
 places of worship, courts, and offices of consultation for adults. 
 Every important officer of administrative government had a 
 judge and a mufti at his elbow. Not only was the sultan himself 
 in close relations with the Kaziaskcrs and the Mufti, but he had 
 always a spiritual adviser to whom he showed great deference, 
 and who bore the significant title of the sultan's Hoja, or teacher. 
 There was an aspect in which the Moslem Institution, based
 
 226 TEE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 upon the Moslem population of the empire, fitted the govern- 
 ment as hand fits glove. This figure, moreover, can be pressed 
 beyond the mere comparison of shape; the hand is of much the 
 same efiiciency with or without the glove, while the glove is 
 useless without the hand; furthermore, the hand may live to 
 wear a succession of gloves.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 COMPARISON OF THE TWO GREAT INSTITUTIONS 
 
 The Ottoman Ruling Institution, and the Moslem Institution 
 of the Ottoman Empire might be compared, contrasted, and 
 reflected upon at great length. In this discussion, however, 
 it must suffice to select and comment upon a few of their salient 
 likenesses, differences, and interactions, without attempting 
 to separate such features sharply. 
 
 Likenesses 
 
 Both institutions were constructed out of old and well-seasoned 
 materials. Many of the ideas in each can be followed back until 
 their origin is lost in prehistoric obscurity; hardly a feature in 
 either but had a clear derivation from, relationship to, or sug- 
 gestion in, some prototype of pre-Ottoman days. Only the final 
 structure of each, the proportion and composition of its parts, 
 and the effect of the completed whole was worked out in the 
 Ottoman Empire. If an attempt be made, in a very general way, 
 to distinguish the main hnes of influence which led up to the two 
 institutions, it may be said that the Ruhng Institution had its 
 nucleus of ideas from the Turks of the steppe lands. Influenced 
 by old Persian neighbors and Chinese rulers, the original group 
 of ideas was brought into the Moslem Empire and Asia Minor 
 by the predecessors of the Seljuk Turks and by the Seljuk Turks 
 themselves. Coming into contact in Asia Minor with the ideas 
 of the Byzantine Empire, and to some extent with those of the 
 crusaders from the West, the system took on a large number of 
 new features; and the Ottomans continued the process in Asia 
 Minor and Southeastern Europe until the time of Suleiman. 
 The Moslem Institution began with the ideas of the Arabs as 
 combined by Mohammed with Jewish, Middle Persian, and 
 Christian influences. Political notions were rapidly incorporated 
 from those prevailing in Byzantine Syria and Eg}pt, and perhaps 
 
 227
 
 228 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 to a greater extent from those in the Sassanian Persian Empire. 
 A compact system of ideas began early to be developed, and in the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries it reached final scholastic shape. 
 Together with its institutional embodiments, it began to pass to 
 the Ottomans in their earliest days; and, as the nation grew, it 
 grew into the Moslem Institution of the Ottoman Empire, fresh 
 power being given to it by Selim's conquest of the old Moslem 
 lands, and especially by his acquisition of the over-lordship of 
 the Holy Cities. The two lines of tendency which led to the two 
 great Ottoman institutions were first brought into contact when, 
 in the seventh century, the Arab conquest of Persia advanced 
 the Moslem frontier into Central Asia. From that time to the 
 reign of Suleiman reciprocal influence was exerted, although the 
 Moslem ideas affected the Turkish much more than the Turkish 
 did the Moslem. 
 
 Both of the great Ottoman institutions were founded upon 
 groups of ideas and not upon racial descent. This subject, 
 discussed above in the Introduction, has been shown to be true 
 to an extreme in the Ruling Institution, which drew its members 
 from every direction except from the existing stock of the nation. 
 The Moslem Institution embodied a religion of universal claim. 
 Though originally given to the Arabs, the Moslem faith was 
 intrinsically independent of race, as its subsequent history 
 revealed. Belief, and not blood, became the sole test of member- 
 ship. This common hospitality of its two great institutions 
 to all who might wish to join them laid firmly the foundation of 
 the Ottoman nation, and made possible the greatness and the 
 permanence of its dominion. 
 
 Both Ottoman institutions were self-perpetuating through 
 education. Each had a great educational system which was 
 adapted to its special character, and which was life-long in extent. 
 The Ruhng Institution trained its pupils physically as well as 
 mentally, whereas the Moslem Institution neglected physical 
 education in favor of a greater amount of intellectual training. 
 Otherwise their work was largely parallel. One institution took 
 its pupils from the children of Christian subjects and neighbors, 
 and trained them to conquer and to rule. The other took its
 
 COMPARISON OF THE TWO INSTITUTIONS 229 
 
 pupils from the children of Moslems and trained them to know, 
 practise, teach, and enforce the Moslem rules of law and life. 
 The one system raised the ablest Christian-born individuals to 
 the highest positions, and the other raised the ablest Moslem- 
 born individuals similarly. Both continually brought in new 
 material at the bottom, and continually worked upon all their 
 material to increase its value. Each offered such rewards and 
 promotions as to induce its members to put forth their most 
 strenuous exertions, that they might develop their own powers 
 and visibly help their institution. Whatever faults of plan and 
 structure the institutions may have had, they were able to survive 
 all dangers and disasters largely through the trained ability of the 
 individuals whom their educational systems had brought to the 
 front. 
 
 Both institutions rose to an apex, through the Divan and the 
 grand vizier, in the sultan, who was the head and center of each. 
 Yet the ideas by which the two institutions were joined to their 
 head were in striking contrast. The sultan was master and owner 
 of the Ruling Institution; he was the divinely-appointed chief 
 of the Moslem Institution, The members of the former obeyed 
 him as slaves; the members of the latter obeyed him as free 
 Moslems commanded by the Sacred Law to render allegiance 
 to the chief interpreter and defender of that law. The former 
 knew no power greater than the sultan's; the latter relied upon 
 the Sacred Law as above the sultan. The RuHng Institution 
 was extended downward in each of its parts from the sultan's 
 authority, and in organization and membership depended for 
 existence upon his will. The Moslem Institution rose upward 
 from the people, and was attached almost artificially to the 
 sultan's authority, Suleiman regulated the grades of higher 
 advancement in it, but the sultans who came after him touched 
 the organization of the institution scarcely at all. Very seldom, 
 moreover, by comparison, did the sultans punish the members 
 of this institution; for the most part its work went on quite 
 independently of them. But the sultan was the head of both 
 institutions: every member of each looked upward along con- 
 verging lines which met at the foot of his throne. The highest
 
 230 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 promotions in each were made by him directly, the honored 
 men being put into positions near their sovereign. 
 
 Differences 
 
 The fact that the Ruhng Institution was recruited from 
 Christian slaves and the Moslem Institution from Moslem free- 
 men led to a profound difference of spirit. The Christian slaves, 
 newly converted to Mohammedanism, were not as a body so 
 closely attached to the Sacred Law as were the Moslem freemen. 
 Their loyalty being rather to one man, their master and bene- 
 factor, they felt a servile devotion which was very different 
 from the reasoned allegiance of those who had always been free. 
 A Mufti, fortified by the Sacred Law, would firmly oppose the 
 will of the sovereign in a case where a grand vizier would scarcely 
 dare venture a mildly contrary suggestion. The Sacred Law, 
 despite the introduction of all later influences, still breathed 
 forth something of the freedom of the Arabian desert: in one 
 or two generations, as has been seen, it could render its fol- 
 lowers unfit to be slaves. Thus the spirit of the Ruling Institu- 
 tion was far less independent of personal authority than that 
 of the Moslem Institution. 
 
 As to the authority of old ideas the contrary was true. The 
 fundamental distinction of parties in modern states seems to 
 rest upon a greater or less relative inclination to follow old paths 
 or to enter upon new ones. Both institutions of the Ottoman 
 state would in modern times be classed as strongly conservative, 
 but of the two the Moslem Institution was by far the more so. 
 Conservatism, in fact, was of the very essence of the Sacred Law. 
 The early Turks had also loved their Adet, but not so much as 
 to be unwilhng quickly to adopt the new if they saw in it distinct 
 advantage; the rise of the Ottoman power was, indeed, marked 
 by the constant incorporation of new ideas, devices, and methods.^ 
 As the Moslem influence grew, however, changes became increas- 
 ingly more difficult to make; and when they were made it was by 
 the activity of the RuUng Institution, usually against the resis- 
 tance or the inert passivity of the Moslem Institution. 
 
 1 The use of cannon is perhaps the most conspicuous example.
 
 COMPARISON OF THE TWO INSTITUTIONS 23 1 
 
 The fact that the Ruh'ng Institution fought and governed 
 while the Moslem Institution thought and judged was, of course, 
 highly significant: the former embodied the active, the latter 
 the contemplative, principle of the nation. Here again is invol- 
 ved a difference of Turk and Saracen. In the steppe lands the 
 Turk fought, obeyed, and gave orders; after the fever of conquest 
 was abated, the Saracen, under Islam, thought, preserved 
 intellectual independence, and worshipped. With the two 
 characters placed side by side, it was in the nature of things 
 that in the long run muscle would be controlled by mind. 
 
 By comparison with the Moslem Institution, the Ruling 
 Institution possessed a great structural disadvantage, in that 
 it was much more artificial and therefore much less stable. 
 It admitted its members as slaves, but they were not hereditary 
 slaves; most of them were free-born subjects of the empire or 
 of the neighboring Christian states. A class of hereditary slaves 
 would not have possessed the requisite mettle. Now, the acquisi- 
 tion of a large number of free-born children who can be made 
 into slaves is hardly a process that can be continued indefinitely. 
 Conquest had its limits for the Ottoman Empire, for boundaries 
 were reached beyond which lay states whose powers of self- 
 defense developed increasingly; accordingly, recruiting by cap- 
 ture became increasingly difficult. But the levying of children 
 as tribute was strongly against human nature; and in the long 
 run it, too, must lead to decline, for under its operation the best 
 were taken and inferiors were left. Furthermore, not only 
 were children separated from their parents against the wishes of 
 the parents, but the recruits, when they grew up, were not 
 encouraged to form family ties. Even when they did so, they 
 were unable to advance their children as they had been advanced 
 themselves, and they could not be sure of conveying their prop- 
 erty to their descendants. Thus in several respects the Ruling 
 Institution ran counter to the idea of the family. On the other 
 hand, the advantages given to the sultan's kullar became too 
 great not to be coveted; and it was not natural that the free- 
 born Moslems should continue to let outsiders be the only 
 recipients of so much wealth, power, and privilege. The Moslem
 
 232 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 population forced its way in, and the plan of the RuUng Institu- 
 tion was upset. The Moslem Institution, on the contrary, was 
 recruited voluntarily from an increasing population; hence, as 
 its advantages became attractive, it was benefited rather than 
 harmed by pressure for admission. Its able men, while they must 
 labor if they would advance, were free, unhindered in their 
 family relationships, and under little fear of being deprived of 
 property or Ufe. 
 
 Interactions 
 
 The two institutions, running everywhere parallel, with their 
 members in constant association one with the other, could not 
 fail to act reciprocally upon each other. It is not easy, however, 
 to discriminate likenesses that were due to mutual influence 
 from those that were caused by common circumstances; nor 
 is it easy to distinguish pre-Ottoman interactions from those 
 which operated after the beginning of the fourteenth century. 
 A few probabilities may be expressed, however. 
 
 It is a matter of frequent remark that men, institutions, and 
 peoples are apt to impart to each other their faults and vices 
 more readily than their good qualities. Whether or not this be 
 true, the two Ottoman institutions certainly seem to have 
 taught each other some evil qualities. Luxury, venality, and 
 unnatural vices were all strongly discountenanced by the Sacred 
 Law ; but all were fostered in the members of the RuUng Institu- 
 tion by the very conditions of the system, and by the sixteenth 
 century all had come to be charged against the members of the 
 Moslem Institution as well. On the other hand, the conserva- 
 tism of the Moslem Institution and its resistance to progress 
 came more and more to characterize the Ruling Institution. 
 Members of the Ulenia taught even the pages of the palace and 
 the princes on the intellectual side of their training, thereby 
 exerting a constant influence which in the course of time operated 
 powerfully on the Ruling Institution from top to bottom, till it, 
 too, began to acquire a changelessness which resisted improve- 
 ment and progress. With such a character once established, 
 the end of the empire's greatness was at hand. In a rapidly 
 progressing world, a stationary position means a relative decline.
 
 COMPARISON OF THE TWO INSTITUTIONS 233 
 
 The two institutions contributed strongly to each other's 
 power and permanence. The RuHng Institution defended the 
 Moslem Institution by the sword, and carried out among the 
 people the decisions of its wise men. It also protected the latter's 
 sources of regular revenue, and thus enabled the Ulema, secure 
 of a living, to devote themselves to the study and teaching of 
 the Sacred Law. The Moslem Institution, on the other hand, 
 kept the Moslem population obedient and submissive to the 
 sultan's authority as expressed in the Ruling Institution. It 
 taught that the Sultan was divinely appointed and therefore 
 always to be obeyed, no matter what his character was or how 
 oppressive his rule might become, so long as he did not transgress 
 the Sacred Law; and that it was for the Ulema alone to decide 
 when he had made such a transgression. Accordingly the two 
 institutions, so long as they acted in harmony, were absolutely 
 impregnable in their position among the Moslems of the empire. 
 
 The Relative Power of the Institutions 
 
 These two institutions constituted, as it were, the two great 
 parties in the Ottoman state.^ The Moslem Institution was 
 always strongly Islamic, and extremely conservative in all 
 respects. The Ruling Institution was originally Uberal both 
 religiously and in its receptivity of new ideas, but it departed 
 from its liberal tendency in much the same proportion that the 
 Moslem Institution increased in power. 
 
 To trace the ups and downs of the influence of the two institu- 
 tions from the beginnings of Ottoman history would be an inter- 
 esting problem. Much depended of course, as must always be 
 the case in a despotic state, on the character of the sultan. 
 With an active conquering sultan like Mohammed II or Selim I, 
 the Ruling Institution would gain upon its rival; with a pious or 
 mild sultan like Murad II or Bayezid II, the Moslem Influence 
 would increase in importance. Selim I's vast conquests in 
 Moslem territories, and his acquisition of the protectorate of the 
 Holy Cities and of the title of caliph, prepared the way for a 
 
 ^ Halil Ganem, i. 201.
 
 234 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 later advance in the power of the Moslem Institution which was 
 not in harmony with his own personal influence. Suleiman had 
 a fiery active period of youth when the liberal policy was stronger 
 in his mind, and a quieter old age when the Moslem influence 
 became predominant; it is not unHkely that a consciousness of 
 his position as caliph grew upon him with advancing years. 
 But in general, through all the reigns, the power of the Moslem 
 Institution grew; the only difference from reign to reign was 
 in the rate of speed. The Ruling Institution also grew in power 
 before the world and the Ottoman nation as long as the empire 
 continued to expand rapidly; but it did not grow relatively so 
 fast as did the Moslem Institution. 
 
 The reasons for the more rapid growth of Moslem influence lay 
 chiefly in the fact that that influence was cumulative. As to its 
 financial basis, the Moslem Institution, like the Christian church 
 in the West, gained lands and wealth continuafly, and never lost 
 any ; for sultans took great pride, and high officials vied with each 
 other, in founding mosques, schools, colleges, and other charitable 
 and semi-public institutions supported by vakjs} In general 
 moral and political influence, also, the institution gained rapidly 
 through its system of education; for, like the medieval Christian 
 church again, it held in its hands all the means and methods of 
 intellectual development. Every new primary school, college, 
 and law school, — and they were many in the days of glory, — 
 strengthened the influence of this institution. In this field, 
 indeed, its power acted constantly upon its rival. Old Hojas 
 taught the pages in the palace, advised the sultan's mother, and 
 trained the young princes and the sons of high officials. Thus 
 within the nation the external show of the Moslem Institution, 
 and its sway over the minds of men, grew without ceasing. 
 
 1 Spandugino, 207: " And the Turkish lords generally, as well great as small, 
 study only to build churches and hospitals and to enrich and make hostelries for 
 lodging travelers, to improve the roads, to build bridges, to construct baths, and 
 several other charitable works which they do in such a way that I suppose the 
 Turkish lords are beyond comparison greater alms-givers than our Christian lords; 
 and in proportion as they have good zeal, they use great hospitality. They volun- 
 tarily lodge Christian, Turk, and Jew alike." See also Morosini, 270.
 
 COMPARISON OF THE TWO INSTITUTIONS 235 
 
 The Ruling Institution, on the other hand, lost rehitivcly. 
 In the early clays, when recent converts were exceedingly nu- 
 merous and the religious spirit of the young nation was weak, the 
 Turkish-Aryan organization was far stronger than the Semitic 
 influence. Sultans, however, were constantly giving away state 
 lands as endowment for new mosques and colleges; and, worse 
 still, so much of the educational system of this institution as was 
 not controlled by its rival was directed only toward its own 
 membership and not toward the nation at large. Accordingly, 
 although the Ruling Institution grew in wealth and power, it 
 did not keep pace with the Moslem Institution, which, after 
 two and a half centuries of gain, was able to overtake it about 
 the time of Suleiman's reign. His gifts of great mosques, 
 numerous colleges, and vast endowment,^ his arrangement in 
 final perfection of the ciirsus honorum which led up from the 
 primary schools to the office of Mufti, and the personal leaning 
 of his later years toward the influence of the Ulema, settled 
 permanently the preponderance of the Moslem Institution. 
 
 At the same time, the Moslem Institution could never destroy 
 its rival. Theoretically it had no need of such a counterpart. 
 Mohammed and the early caliphs had no such institution. The 
 Sacred Law developed with no mention of a secular government, 
 and with no hint of any deficiency in its own provisions that would 
 make it inadequate to guide a nation by its own strength; but, 
 within thirty years from the death of Mohammed, Muavia had 
 set up a secular government at Damascus, and since then every 
 Moslem state had had one. Many a Moslem state, also, had 
 had a ruler who was not of lawful blood; for the Sacred Law 
 affirmed that the Imam, or divinely appointed ruler, must be of 
 the tribe of the Koreish.^ According to that unenforced provi- 
 sion, Suleiman himself had no right to the throne. The fact is 
 that the Moslem Institution very early became too unworldly 
 to live unsupported by a secular power. It was a strong but 
 
 * He built seven mosques (Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 456), four colleges at Mecca 
 {ibid. 459), four colleges around the Suleimanieh Mosque {ibid. 470), and endowed 
 them all, etc. 
 
 2 See above, p. 150.
 
 236 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
 
 tender hand, which must always wear a glove. After it had 
 acquired a permanent ascendency in the state, therefore, the 
 Moslem Institution was compelled to keep its rival in place, and 
 to allow it always strength enough to defend and support the 
 empire which nourished both. 
 
 Bound together closely in an alliance which neither enjoyed, 
 but which was necessary for the preservation of both, the Ruling 
 Institution and the Moslem Institution constituted the twofold 
 inner framework of the Ottoman Empire, to which it owed all its 
 might and energy, its grandeur and repute, its continuity and 
 durabiUty.
 
 APPENDICES
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 THE SECOND BOOK OF THE AFFAIRS OF THE TURKS 
 
 Written in 1534, supposedly by Benedetto Ramberti 
 Translated from the Italian 
 
 [From Libfi Tre delle Cose de Turchi, as printed in Viaggi . . . alia tana, Venice, 1543, pp. 131-146.] 
 
 As from a laborious and very dangerous sea into a safe and very 
 quiet port, one enters the city of Constantinople, after the great 
 trouble and inconvenience of the ride which he has endured over the 
 long road.' This city (to continue until I have here made an end of 
 particular description) was anciently called Byzantium, and after- 
 wards was called New Rome, and then Constantinople from the first 
 Constantine. Byzantium, as it is reported, was in the region where 
 Pera is now, and was so named from the river Byzantium, which after- 
 ward, by reason of an earthquake such as are frequent in that region, 
 changed its course elsewhere. But I do not believe this, nor does it 
 seem to me to agree with the description of Polybius and other writers, 
 who call those here Chalcedonians; these, when they might themselves 
 in ancient times have built upon this site, did not care for it, but built 
 in Asia, not having discerned the convenience and beauty they were 
 leaving to others; who might deprive them even of their own site, 
 as indeed happened. 
 
 The city is 18 miles in circuit. It has seven Uttle hills, not very 
 high. It is surrounded by wretched walls, and is full of houses, not 
 many of which are good, being made of clay and wood and only a few 
 of stone. It is full of groves, that is, of places wild and uninhabited, 
 where cypresses grow, and other such trees.^ In Constantinople, 
 then, is the palace of the Turkish Signor, which is a singular structure 
 and very large, as will be told later. 
 
 There is the palace of the ladies of the Signor, the palace of the 
 Janissaries, the Patriarcate, the palace of the Emperor Constantine, 
 which is in part ruined, the church of St. Sophia, which is a structure 
 most beautiful and divine; this was built by the Emperor Justinian 
 from the oldest and finest columns and marbles, as one can see now; 
 
 ^ Ramberti came overland from Ragusa on his journey from Venice to Con- 
 stantinople. 
 
 2 The writer seems not to have observed that these groves were cemeteries. 
 
 339
 
 240 APPENDIX 
 
 in part of it the Turkish Signer has made stalls for his horses. There 
 is the mosque of Sultan Mohammed, which has an Imaret attached 
 to it that is like a hostel ; in which they lodge any one, of any nation 
 or law, who may wish to enter, and they give him food for three days, — 
 honey, rice, meat, bread, and water, and a room in which to sleep. 
 They say that from day to day there are more than a thousand guests 
 from various nations. Near this they have baths and some fountains, 
 most beautiful and delightful to behold. There are the mosques of 
 Sultan Bayezid, Sultan Selim, and other Signors, which are very 
 beautiful and exceedingly well-built. This makes it clear that, when 
 they wash, they know also how to build houses and palaces that are 
 magnificent and sumptuous. 
 
 There is the Hippodrome, that is, the place where in ancient times 
 horses were made to run as in a theater and circus: in the center of 
 this Hippodrome there stands a needle, which is a column made in 
 the form of a needle, very beautiful and wrought very well and wathout 
 mortar, made of Uving rocks joined together in such a manner that 
 they rise through more than fifty cubits, tapering in the shape of a 
 needle, which rests on four marble balls.i There is a column of bronze 
 in the shape of a serpent with three heads.^ There is a bronze Her- 
 cules brought from Himgar}',' and in the center there is a colossal 
 structure made of different beautiful marbles, in which is engraved 
 the history of all the above-mentioned objects, and of other things 
 which used to stand in the Theater and Hippodrome. There are 
 throughout the city many vestiges of antiquities, such as aqueducts, 
 arches, porphyry columns, fountains brought from the Danube and 
 other near-by rivers.^ Many gardens about the houses of the great. 
 Many mosques of private lords, and baths which are attached to the 
 mosques of private men and of public magistrates. 
 
 On the other side of the sea from the Seraglio Point are the hills of 
 Asia, and the journey is of a little more or less than two miles; this 
 Asia is to-day called by a single name Anatolia ; and there are on the 
 shore there some fortresses called Scutari. Then Kadikeui, situated 
 
 ^ The writer evidently did not know that this Egyptian obelisk consists of a 
 single stone. It actually rests on four bronze cubes. 
 
 2 This was the support of the tripod of the priestess at Delphi. The heads have 
 been broken off, and are now in the treasury of the Old Seraglio at Constantinople. 
 
 2 This was overthrowTi at the downfall of Ibrahim in 1536. 
 
 * This remarkable statement is probably the source of Nicolay's similar idea 
 (p. 77). The Danube is more than two hundred miles distant from Constantinople.
 
 APPENDIX 241 
 
 on a bay of the Hellespont/ where one can see many vestiges of antiq- 
 uities; and I, when I went there, saw underground where men were 
 working, a well of the finest marble with an aqueduct which came to 
 the center of the well, and a canopy of fine marble supported by four 
 beautiful columns. And in other places there appear many vestiges 
 of old churches, both of Christians and of heathen, places indeed most 
 beautiful, most pleasant, most fruitful. The situation of Constanti- 
 nople is such that not only can it not be described adequately, but it 
 can hardly be grasped in thought because of its loveHness. Cer- 
 tainly it is rather to be considered divine than otherwise. Nor is there 
 any one who has seen it who has not judged it worthy to be ranked 
 above all other situations in the world. 
 
 There are in the city besides the Turks, countless Jews, or Marrani 
 expelled from Spain; 2 these are they who have taught and who are 
 teaching every useful art to the Turks; ^ and the greater part of the 
 shops and arts are kept and exercised by these Marrani. There is a 
 place which is called Bezestan, where they sell and buy all sorts of 
 cloth and Turkish wares, silks, stuffs, linens, silver, wrought gold, 
 bows, slaves, and horses; and in short all the things that are to be 
 found in Constantinople are brought there to market: this, except for 
 Friday, is open every day. 
 
 Constantinople is in Thrace: this has as its boundaries on the east 
 the Propontis and the mouths of the greater sea, on the west part of 
 Bulgaria and part of Macedonia, on the north Bosnia, on the south 
 the Aegean Sea with part of Macedonia which lies toward the river 
 Nishava, called in ancient times the Nesus."* 
 
 This most noble city is inhabited by Turks: these as the more 
 reliable authors have written, and as many of the Turks themselves 
 have confirmed to me, had their origin in Scythia, which now is a 
 part of Tartary, a northern region divided into two parts by the 
 river Don: one of these parts is in Europe, and one in Asia.^ The 
 European part is bounded on one side by Pontus, and on the other by 
 the Riphean Mountains, and at the back by Asia proper and the river 
 
 * Rather, of the Sea of Marmora. 
 
 2 Marrani: Jews and Moors of Spain, baptized, but remaining true to their own 
 religion. 
 
 * This statement and the following one are certainly exaggerations. 
 
 * Either the writer's geographical knowledge or the te.\t is in confusion. The 
 description here, as well as that which follows, cannot be made to fit the map. 
 
 ^ The boundary between Europe and Asia is now, of course, placed far to the 
 east of the Don.
 
 242 APPENDIX 
 
 Taspus. In Ptolemy these two Scythias are called the one intra 
 Imaum moniem, and the other extra Imaum. They departed then 
 from Scythia (as is said above) and began to make invasions and raids 
 into their present confines: then proceeding farther, in a short time 
 they became lords of a good part of Asia, but because they did not 
 know how to keep only one chief among them, they had no foundation 
 or firmness. This circumstance having been considered by one who 
 was called Othman, a man of low rank among them, but of lofty and 
 valorous mind, he thought that, by having the arm and the favor of 
 some men of intelligence and authority, he could easily rule all this 
 people and the conquered territory, and increase it further upon good 
 opportunity: then having revealed this his thought to three persons, 
 who seemed more suitable than others for this business, he promised 
 that those by means of whom he might acquire the dominion to which 
 he aspired, he would always maintain, both themselves and their 
 descendants, in great state and dignity, and smtably to the great 
 benefit which he had received from them: besides this that he would 
 never harm their blood nor that of their posterity through laws that 
 would lay hands upon them even if they should transgress grievously. ' 
 They accepted the condition and conspired together for the sover- 
 eignty ; which they obtained by astuteness, artfulness, threats, and the 
 slaughter of many. These three were called, the one Michael, a 
 Greek who had turned Turk; from him the Marcalogli 2 are descended; 
 one of them is now Sanjak in Bosnia. The second was Malco, a 
 Greek renegade; from him have come the Malcozogli, and there is 
 now only one, who is Sanjak in Greece. The third was Aurami, a 
 native Turk; his descendants were called the Eurcasli; it is not now 
 known that any of these remain. In case the Ottoman family should 
 fail, these would pretend to the sovereignty, and therefore they are 
 highly respected. 
 
 This Othman came to power about the year 1300, and lived in 
 lordship twenty-eight years: ^ Orchan succeeded him and lived 
 twenty-two years in the kingship. Then Murad who reigned twenty- 
 three years. Then Bayezid. Then Chiris Celeby, or, as others wish, 
 
 ^ Compare Junis Bey, below, pp. 272, 273. 
 
 2 Michaloghli. 
 
 ' More accurately, Othman, beginning in 1299, ruled 27 years; Orchan, 33 
 years; Murad I, 30 years; Bayezid I, 13 years; Mohammed I (Chelebi) in undis- 
 puted rule 8 years, after 11 years of civil war; Murad II, 30 years; Mohammed II, 
 30 years; Bayezid II, 31 years; Selim, 8 years, until his death in 1520, when 
 Suleiman came to the throne.
 
 APPENDIX 243 
 
 Calepino, who lived about six years. Then Mohammed, who reigned 
 fourteen years. ' Then Murad II who reigned 31 years. Then 
 Mohammed II who reigned 32 years and was the first Emperor of Con- 
 stantinople. Then Bayczid II who reigned 31 years. Then Selim 
 eight years: to him succeeded Sultan Suleiman, his only son, who 
 reigns at present. Of this succession it is written otherwise in some 
 histories, where they treat of wars and peaces, which have been made 
 by our republic in times past with this family: but since I have 
 recounted these in other places, it now suffices to have noticed the 
 common opinion of those who have written of the affairs of the Turks 
 up to this time. And so I will go on to describe the court of this 
 Signor: it is arranged in the following manner.^ 
 
 Sultan Suleiman has a palace in the angle of Constantinople 
 by the two seas: ^ this is in circuit about three miles: and in it are his 
 residence and his court, which is called the PORTE. This palace, 
 because it was begun to be built by Sultan Mohammed, he willed 
 when dying that it should be rent-paying property of his mosque, 
 and that it should pay a thousand aspers a day, which are twenty 
 ducats; and this has been observed to the present.'' 
 
 He has in the aforesaid palace countless highly ornamented cham- 
 bers, but one among the others is set apart for himself: in this he sleeps, 
 and he has there six youths who serve his person.^ Of these six, two 
 are deputed for the serv^ice of the chamber and the Signor during the 
 day, and then in the night the same ones come to keep guard when he 
 sleeps: these stand ever vigilant, the one at his head and the other at 
 his feet, with two lighted torches in their hands: these two then in 
 the morning when they clothe the aforesaid Signor, put into one of 
 the pocket-purses of his caftan a thousand aspers, and into the other 
 twenty golden ducats; whatever of this money is not given away by 
 the Signor during the day, remains to those who undress him at night; 
 they never find much in the garments, according to report. And 
 always when he goes forth to enjoy the chase or for some other purpose, 
 besides the aforesaid money which he carries, he is accustomed always 
 
 * Celeby and Calepino are forms of Chelebi, the Gentleman, which was an appella- 
 tion of Mohammed I; these three names, therefore, refer to the same person. 
 
 2 At this point the writer begins to follow the pamphlet of Junis Bey. 
 ' Seraglio Point is thrust out into the Bosphorus just before it meets the Sea of 
 Marmora. 
 
 * The land on which Mohammed's palace was built had belonged to the church 
 of St. Sophia under the Byzantine Empire. See above, p. 202. 
 
 ^ Junis Bey speaks of eight youths, but names six, as below.
 
 244 APPENDIX 
 
 to have behind him the Khazinehdar-bashi, or chief treasurer; this 
 man carries with him a great sum of money to be given away. 
 
 The duty of the aforesaid six youths, who are changed according to 
 the will of the Signor, is: of one to be Papuji,^ or him who bears the 
 shoes, of another Silihdar, who bears the bow and arrows, of another 
 Chokadar, who bears the garments, of another Sharabdar, who bears 
 the pitcher of water, of another Iskemleji, who carries the stool, and 
 then of the sixth to be Oda-bashi, or chief of the Chamber. These have 
 a fixed salary of 15 to 20, and the Oda-bashi of 30 aspers per day. 
 Next comes 
 The eunuch Kapu Aghast,^ or chief of the gate, who has 60 aspers per 
 
 day. 
 The Khazinehdar-bashi, a eunuch, chief treasurer, 60 aspers.^ 
 The Kilerji-bashi, chief of the butlers, 40 aspers. 
 The Seraidar-bashi,^ a eunuch, chief of the palace when the Signor 
 is away; he has 50 aspers. Twelve eunuchs subject to the aforesaid, 
 with 10 to 15 aspers each. 
 
 There are next about five hundred youths aged from eight to 
 twenty years, who reside in the palace and are the delight of the 
 Signor: they have each from ten to twelve aspers per day ; they are 
 instructed in various arts according to their genius, but especially 
 in reading, writing, and in the doctrine of their laws, and in riding. 
 The masters are old Danishmends,* called Hojas, or doctors of the 
 laws. These boys at the season of Bairam, which is like our Easter 
 day, are clothed by the Signor, some with silk and some with cloth, 
 without any uniformity; and each has a golden bonnet, a scimitar, 
 and a bow: they never leave the aforesaid palace until they have 
 reached the age when the Signor thinks them fit for offices: and 
 then he makes them Spahi-oghlans, or Silihdars, or of higher degrees 
 according to their worth and the favor which they have gained with 
 the Signor. Each ten of them are guarded by a eunuch called Kapu- 
 oghlan, or chief of youths,^ and each has a slave's frock, in which 
 he sleeps rolled up in such a manner that he does not touch another 
 
 ^ After Junis Bey. The word here is " Chiuchler.^' 
 
 2 There were two treasurers of the household, bearing the same name. One 
 labored within the palace, and one without. See above, p. 127 
 
 3 There is confusion here. The Kapu Aghasi and the Seraidar-bashi were the 
 same person. The chief of the gate is rightly called the Kapuji-bashi. Junis Bey 
 shows similar confusion (below, p. 263). See above, p. 126; and Redhouse, 1435. 
 
 ^ " Talismani." See above, p. 205. 
 
 6 " Capoglano." The derivation is faulty; the literal meaning is " gate-youth."
 
 APPENDIX 245 
 
 who may be near him. They reside in a large hall, full of great 
 lights and spacious, and their eunuchs sleep in the middle of this 
 hall. They have a garden in the palace, which extends more than a 
 mile, in which reside about thirty-five gardeners, called Bostanjis, 
 who are Ajem-oghlans: » these gardeners have from three to five 
 aspers each per day; they are clothed in blue cloth, and given a shirt. 
 Then when they leave the palace, they become Janissaries, or 
 Solaks, or Kapujis, or something else according to their quality. 
 
 The Bostanji-bashi, or chief gardener, has fifty aspers a day and 
 many perquisites. 
 
 The Kiaya,- who is, as it were, a lieutenant for the gardeners, has 
 20 aspers per day; and each ten [gardeners] have a chief called 
 Boluk-bashi. From this garden, which is very large and well- 
 tended, full of excellent fruit-trees of every sort, they obtain so 
 much every year that from the product of it alone they make the 
 living expenses of the Signor, and also get something more. Near 
 the garden are always stationed two small galleys ; these are rowed 
 by the gardeners when the Signor goes on a pleasure-trip, and the 
 Boluk-bashi holds the helm.^ 
 
 The Ashji-bashi, chief cook, with fifty cooks under him. He has 
 40 aspers per day, the cooks under him four, six, or eight aspers 
 each. 
 
 The Helvaji-bashi, or chief confectioner, with 40 aspers, and he has 
 thirty companions with five to six aspers per day each. 
 
 The Chasnijir-bashi,* chief of the cupboards, with eighty aspers: 
 morning and evening he brings with his owti hand the dish of the 
 Signor, and he has under him a hundred Chasnijirs with from three to 
 seventy aspers each.^ 
 
 The Mutbakh-emini,^ or steward, with 40 aspers. He has a secretary 
 with 20 aspers a day. 
 
 A hundred Ajem-oghlans, who transport on carts the wood of the 
 palace. They have three to five aspers, and are provided with 
 clothing. 
 
 '»• 
 
 * " GlanizzeroHi." Junis Bey, below, p. 263, speaks of 400 gardeners, which is 
 probably more nearly correct. 
 
 ^ " Protogcro." Kiaya, or by transliteration Kelhhuda, is the Turkish word. 
 See above, p. q6, note 4. 
 
 3 This should read " the Bostanji-bashi ": Junis Bey, 263. 
 
 * The chief taster. 
 
 ^ Junis Bey, 264, says five to six aspers each. 
 ^ Intendant or steward of the kitchen.
 
 246 APPENDIX 
 
 Ten Sakkas, who carry water on horse-back in leathern sacks, with 
 three to five aspers each. 
 
 The expenses for the table of the Signor, and of the youths with 
 their eunuchs and others to about a thousand, amount to five 
 thousand aspers a day. 
 
 Three Kapuji-bashis, or captains of the gate, who have a hundred 
 aspers a day and are clothed every year: and they have under 
 them two hundred and fifty Kapujis, who have five to six aspers 
 each; and each Kapuji-bashi with a third of the Kapujis is obliged 
 to keep guard at the gate of the Signor, changing from day to day. 
 And when any ambassador or other person goes to kiss the hand of 
 the Grand Signor, all these are given presents of clothes or of money 
 according to the degree of him who is introduced. 
 
 A Kapuji-kiaya, who is, as it were, a lieutenant of the Kapujis, has 
 forty aspers a day. 
 
 Four Vizier Pashas, or chief counsellors : the greatest has ordinarily 
 twenty-four thousand ducats a year and the others sixteen to 
 eighteen thousand; but they have also so much feudal income that 
 they receive three times as much as the provision in money. ^ To 
 this should be added the garments which the Signor gives them, the 
 presents of ambassadors and of others, the perquisites of the ol3ice 
 they hold, which are unlimited. At present they are only three. 
 The first is Ibrahim, born a Christian at Parga. The second Aias 
 of Khimara. The third Kassim of Croatia, a kidnapped Christian. 
 To these there is added a fourth at present,^ who is Khaireddin Bey 
 Barbarossa of the Albanian nation, formerly a corsair and now 
 king of Algiers in Barbary. These Pashas live and dress very 
 superbly. They have: Ibrahim six thousand and more slaves, 
 Aias two thousand, Kassim fifteen hundred, and Barbarossa about 
 four thousand. To all these slaves they give pay, horses, garments, 
 golden bonnets and silver chains,* according to their oflSces and 
 degrees. And these serve their Pashas under the same arrangements 
 by which the Signor is served by his [slaves]. They have also 
 twenty-five or thirty chancery secretaries to the Signor, men of great 
 repute, with twenty-five to thirty aspers per day each: they keep 
 
 ^ The word translated " feudal income," or " feudal grant," is " timar." See 
 above, p. 100 ff. 
 
 2 This sentence was evidently inserted after the previous part of the paragraph 
 had been written. See below, p. 255. 
 
 3 " Centola."
 
 APPENDIX 247 
 
 more or fewer slaves as they can. These Pashas have entry to the 
 Signer for affairs of state; and it is in fact they who govern the whole 
 after their own fashion. 
 
 There is next the Mufti, or the interpreter and chief of the laws; 
 they do not trouble him about anything except the affairs of relig- 
 ion and their faith, and he has the position which our Pope had in 
 ancient times.^ 
 
 Two Kaziasker Danishmends, or doctors of the laws for the army, 
 one for Greece, the other for Anatolia. Their position is of great 
 importance. They sit at the Porte and have precedence of the 
 Vizier Pashas: on this account they are much esteemed. They 
 are executors of the laws, and with the consent of the Pashas they 
 appoint and remove the Kazis, who are like podestas for the whole 
 country. They have feudal income of about six thousand ducats 
 a year each. They keep two hundred to three hundred slaves each, 
 and they are accompanied by ten secretaries appointed by the Signor 
 and two Mochtur-bashis, who hold the office of ushers: ^ these live 
 from perquisites, of which they have a great many. 
 
 Two Defterdars, or treasurers, or rather, as we would say, gover- 
 nors of the revenues. One of these has the receipt and the care of 
 those revenues which come from a third of Greece, or from that part 
 which is toward the Danube, and besides, from Asia, from Syria, 
 and from Egypt, with feudal income of ten thousand ducats a year, 
 although with the perquisites he gets twice as much. The other has 
 the care of the other two-thirds of Greece: but when the Signor 
 takes the field this man remains in Constantinople as his vicar and 
 lieutenant; and he has six thousand ducats of feudal income, but 
 gets three times as much; and their position is of great dignity. 
 They have under them fifty clerks with many helpers: these keep 
 the accounts of the Khazineh, or treasury of the Signor; and these 
 clerks are appointed by the Signor with pay of fifteen to fifty aspers 
 per day each. The Defterdars have, the first a thousand slaves and 
 the second five hundred, and the clerks from two to twenty slaves 
 each.' 
 
 Two Rusnamehjis, chief clerks, who receive the money and disburse 
 it as needed, with twenty-five companions besides themselves. 
 
 * This remark seems to contain a comparison between the relation of the pope 
 to the Roman emperor and that of the Mufti to the sultan. Such a comparison 
 would, however, be inexact. See above, p. 209. 
 
 * " Cavalleria." Junis Bey, below, p. 265, calls them cursori. 
 
 * Junis Bey, 266, says 15 to 20 slaves each.
 
 248 APPENDIX 
 
 The two have forty aspers each, and the twenty-five have eight to 
 ten aspers a day. 
 
 Two Veznedars, or weighers of aspers and ducats, with twenty-five 
 to thirty aspers each. 
 
 Six Sarrafs, or bankers, who know gold and silver [coins], and they 
 have ten to fifteen aspers each. 
 
 One Nishanji-bashi, who signs the ordinances and public writings 
 with the monogram of the Signor. His position is Hke that of 
 grand chancellor and is of great repute. He sits at the Porte 
 below the Beylerbeys. He has eight thousand ducats of feudal 
 income, and travels in great honor with more than three hundred 
 slaves. 
 
 An outside Khazinehdar-bashi, or household treasurer, with ten 
 Khazinehdars under him. He has fifty aspers, and they ten to 
 fifteen per day. 
 
 A Defter-emini, who has charge of the feudal grants: he keeps the 
 register of those who receive feudal grants. He has forty aspers a 
 day, and under him are ten clerks with ten to fifteen aspers per day 
 each. 
 
 Eighty Muteferrika, or lancers of the body-guard 1 of the Signor, 
 these always carry lances when he takes the field; they recognize 
 no other head than the Signor himself. And when by artifice or 
 merit they acquire favor, they are made Aghas, or generals. The 
 least has ten, the greatest eighty, aspers per day. 
 
 A Chaush-bashi, or chief sergeant of the army. He is of so great 
 credit with every one, that when he is sent by the Signor to some 
 Pasha, Sanjak, or Kazi, with the order to have the head of such and 
 such a one cut off, he is obeyed without their requiring a letter from 
 him, or a command in writing; not otherwise than if the Signor 
 himself were there, and gave command. He has a hundred aspers a 
 day, and under him he keeps a hundred slaves,^ with twenty-five to 
 forty aspers each. 
 
 The Mihter-bashi, or chief of those who pitch the tents and spread the 
 rugs, who sweep the court-yards and attend to other similar duties; 
 he has forty aspers, a Kiaya with twenty-five aspers, sLxty Mihters 
 with five to eight aspers each; and they are clothed every year by 
 the Signor. 
 
 1 " Spezzale." 
 
 2 That the other Chaushes were slaves not of the Chaush-bashi, but of the sultan, 
 is shown by the amount of their pay. See Junis Bey's testimony below, p. 265.
 
 APPENDIX 249 
 
 An Agha, or general of the Janissaries. He has for pay a thousand 
 aspers and over per day, and six thousand ducats of feudal grant 
 per year. When this Agha holds court, which is two or three times 
 per week, he is obliged to give the Janissaries to eat, a meal of bread, 
 rice, mutton, honey, and water. He has under him a Kiaya or 
 Secretary of the Janissaries, who is, as it were, a vicegerent; he has 
 two hundred aspers per day of pay in cash, and thirty thousand of 
 feudal grant per year.' And there is a clerk of these Janissaries, 
 called the Yaziji of the Janissaries,- with a hundred aspers a day. 
 
 A Seymen-bashi, chief of the harriers."^ He has a hundred aspers and 
 has from the number of the Janissaries about two thousand under 
 him. 
 
 A Zagarji-bashi, head of the hounds.'' He has fifty aspers a day, 
 and has under him about seven hundred of the Janissaries. 
 
 The Janissaries number about twelve thousand: they have each 
 from three to eight aspers of pay per day. Each ten has its Oda- 
 bashi, and each hundred has its Boliik-bashi. And these heads of 
 ten or of a hundred go on horseback. And the Oda-bashis have 
 forty, and the Boluk-bashis sixty aspers a day. The remainder of 
 the Janissaries go on foot. They are clothed once a year by the 
 Signor with coarse blue cloth. They have their residence in two 
 barracks in Constantinople given by the Signor. Those who have 
 no wives reside in these. Those who are married reside at various 
 places in the city. For their living expenses each contributes so 
 much a day, and they have a steward and a cook, who provide their 
 necessary living: and those who have less pay than the others are 
 obliged to serve those who have more pay than they. Every 
 hundred of them when they take the field transport a tent. They 
 go on foot, and part of them are musketeers, and part halbardiers, 
 and part use the scimetar alone. Every three lead a horse which 
 carries their clothing. And when they come to old age, or when for 
 some other reason the service of one of them does not please the 
 Signor, they are stricken from the book of the Janissaries, and are 
 sent as Hissarlis ^ or castle guards ; and those of their officers who are 
 deposed for such a reason, are sent as castellans with a feudal grant 
 equivalent to the pay which they had previously, in such a way that 
 
 * Junis Bey, below, p. 266, says that the Kiaya of the Janissaries has 300 
 ducats of feudal grant per year, which would equal about 15,000 aspers. 
 2 " Giannizzeriasis." * " Bracchi." 
 
 » " Livreri." ' " Assareri."
 
 250 APPENDIX 
 
 none of them suffers hardship. Such of them as succeed in war are 
 made Voivodes,^ and raised to high positions. They come as boys 
 to this soldiery and are taught by the experienced ones. They 
 choose healthy ones, well-built, but nimble and dextrous, lively 
 above all, and more often cruel than compassionate. In them rests 
 the force and all the firmness of the army of the Turk; they, because 
 they are always exercising and living together, all become as it were 
 a single body, and of a truth they are terrible. ^ 
 
 From the Janissaries are chosen a hundred and fifty Solaks, who 
 are footmen of the Signor, with fifteen to twenty aspers a day 
 each: they march surrounding the person of the Signor every time 
 he goes forth. 
 
 Two Solak-bashis, chief ofi&cers of the Solaks, who go on horse- 
 back, with thirty aspers per day. And these and the Solaks are 
 in obedience to the Agha of the Janissaries. 
 
 An Agha of the Spahi-oghlans, an oflace of great honor. He has 
 from feudal grant and pay ten ducats a day, and he has a large 
 number of slaves, with a Kiaya under him, or lieutenant: this man 
 has from feudal grant and pay a hundred aspers a day. And also a 
 Yaziji, or secretary, with thirty aspers, and with large perquisites. 
 
 The Spahi-oghlans, or youths on horseback, who may be called Spahi- 
 oghlan, are more than three thousand; and they have twenty 
 to forty aspers each ; and every twenty have a 5o/M^-ia5/«'. These 
 serve on horseback, each with five or six slaves and a like number of 
 horses. And they always journey, and also encamp, at the right 
 hand of the Signor. They are great people. From them the Signor 
 is wont to choose his chief men. They are first put as boys into the 
 palace, and when they grow up they succeed well if they attain this 
 grade: it is like a ladder to mount to higher positions. 
 
 An Agha of the Silihdars, who has thirty thousand aspers a day ,3 
 and under him a lieutenant, a secretary, a Kiaya,^ with thirty 
 aspers and more each. 
 
 There are three thousand Silihdars. They moreover ride and 
 encamp at the left hand of the Signor. They have twenty to 
 
 * This Slavonic word seems to be used here simply in the sense of " army officers." 
 2 " Immensi." 
 
 ' This is an error. Probably the number intended is three hundred. Junis 
 Bey, below, p. 267, gives two hundred and fifty. 
 
 * Only two ofiScers should be named here. The lieutenant (Protogero) and the 
 Kiaya were the same. Junis Bey gives this correctly.
 
 APPENDIX 251 
 
 twenty-five aspers per day each, and they have four or five slaves 
 and a like number of horses, with feudal income for their living. 
 They are trained by the same education with which the Spahis 
 are brought up: nor is there any difTerence between them, except 
 that the Spahis go on the right, and these on the left, of the Signor. 
 
 Two Ulufaji-baslns, or chief officers of soldiers, with two thousand 
 Ulufajis, who go on the right hand and the left of the Signor. The 
 chief officers have a hundred and twenty aspers, and the others eight 
 to sLxteen aspers; then under them ^ they have a Kiaya, a secretary, 
 and a lieutenant,^ with slaves and with horses, some more and some 
 fewer. 
 
 Two Aghas, chief officers of the Ghureha-oghlans, or poor youths^ 
 with eighty aspers each. Kiayas, thirty aspers. Secretaries, 
 twenty-five. And they have under them about two thousand 
 Ghureba-oghlans with seven to fourteen aspers per day: these have 
 slaves and horses. 
 
 Two Emir-al-Akhors* or masters of the stable, a greater and a 
 lesser. The greater has five hundred aspers, the lesser two hundred, 
 with lieutenant and Kiaya ^ and others, who have thirty to forty 
 aspers each. 
 
 Sixteen thousand altogether of Serraj, who have charge of bridles ® 
 and saddles; Ceyssi, or stable servants; Carmandari, who take 
 care of the mules; Deveji, who take care of the camels, and Cavriliji, 
 who herd the cattle and horses in various places. These have 
 two to twenty aspers per day each. 
 
 Thirty to forty Peiks, or runners on foot, men who when boys have 
 had their spleens removed:^ and they run post on foot with great 
 speed. These when the Signor goes forth remain continually near, 
 so that he may employ them according to his needs. 
 
 Select horses about four thousand for the person of the Signor; 
 on these the pages of the palace and the eunuchs ride for exercise in 
 their turns. 
 
 * Under each Agha, or chief officer. 
 
 2 The Kiaya and the lieutenant are the same. 
 
 ' This derivation is from a secondar>' meaning; the primary meaning is " foreign 
 youth." See above, pp. 98, 99, note i. 
 
 * " Bracor-hasJti." 
 
 * This should read " Kiaya and secretary." 
 6 " Brene." 
 
 '' This is the common report in Western writers as regards the Peiks. See 
 Menavino, 155; Nicolay, 100.
 
 252 APPENDIX 
 
 A Chakirji-bashi, chief Vulturer, and a Shahinji-bashi, chief Falconer. 
 The first has a hundred and fifty aspers, and the other has eighty; 
 with Kiayas, Heutenants/ and others, with ten to twenty-five aspers 
 each per day. Under these are about two hundred Zanijiler,^ 
 only a hundred of whom have ten aspers a day, and the others 
 have feudal income, or exemption from taxation. And they take 
 the field when the Signor has need. 
 
 A Jebeji-bashi, chief armorer. He has sixty aspers, a Kiaya and 
 a secretary with twenty aspers each. He has under him about one 
 thousand five hundred jc^e/f 5, with seven to twelve aspers. These 
 all go on foot when the Signor takes the field. 
 
 A Topji-bashi, chief of artillery. He has seventy aspers, a Kiaya 
 [and] secretary with twenty aspers: and under him are two thou- 
 sand Topjis with six to ten aspers, and they go on foot. 
 
 An Arabaji-bashi, chief wagoner. He has forty aspers, a Kiaya 
 [and] secretary with twenty aspers: and under him three thousand 
 Arabajis with three to six aspers each. 
 
 A Mihter-bashi, or chief of trumpeters and drummers. He has thirty 
 [aspers] per day, and under him two hundred Mihters, part of them 
 on foot and part on horseback with three to five aspers per day. 
 
 An Emir-Alem Agha, who carries the standard of the Signor. He has 
 two hundred aspers a day, and is captain of all the musicians. 
 
 An Arpa-emini, who is Provider of the grain, with a Lieutenant 
 and a Chancellor.^ He has sLxty aspers, the Lieutenant thirty 
 and the Chancellor twenty: this Arpa-emini has under him twenty 
 persons who receive among them all about eight hundred aspers. 
 
 A Shehr-emini,* or Commissioner of public works, who takes care 
 of the streets of Constantinople, and also of the road when the 
 Signor goes forth to war: and he has charge also of public buildings, 
 fountains, and aqueducts. He has fifty aspers, and keeps under him 
 four hundred men: among all of these is given a thcusand aspers. 
 He has also a Kiaya and secretary with about thirty- eight aspers 
 each.^ 
 
 1 Kiayas and secretaries. 
 
 2 This refers to those whom Junis Bey, below, p. 268, calls Zainogiler, a body of 
 lancers, who are here erroneously classed with the falconers. Junis Bey's figures are 
 20,000 in all, 1000 receiving pay in money. Are they the Voinaks (above, p. 131) ? 
 
 * Junis Bey, " cursor, ^^ a messenger or porter. 
 
 * Literally, " intendant of the town." 
 ^ Junis Bey says 57.
 
 APPENDIX 253 
 
 A Berat-emini, who is deputed to distribute the ordinances of the 
 Signor in writing and who receives the fees; and he has forty aspers, 
 with two secretaries, and two superintendents with twenty aspers 
 each, 
 
 A Terjuman,^ or interpreter of all the languages. This position is 
 highly reputed in proportion to the worth and intelligence of him 
 who holds it. He has five hundred ducats of fixed income each year, 
 and has also a like sum from feudal grant, and more than four 
 times as much of extraordinary income; and he is wont to be highly 
 respected. 
 
 Proceeding now further as I have begun, I shall leave it for another 
 time and eye to reduce this Porte to better order and put every- 
 thing in its proper place. I find that to all the above-mentioned 
 things should be added a Palace of the ladies of the Signor.2 
 This is very large, with a circuit of about a mile and a half; and it is 
 provided with different chambers and other rooms, where the sons 
 of the Signer reside separately with their mothers, and with a great 
 number of eunuchs for their guard and service. There also reside 
 the Sultanas, that is the mothers and the wives of the Signors; and 
 there are three hundred damsels, placed there virgins, and given to 
 the government of many matrons. To all of these damsels the 
 Signor has it taught to embroider different designs, to each he gives 
 pay of ten to twenty aspers per day; and twice every year at the 
 two Bairams he has them clothed in stuffs of silk. And when one 
 of these pleases him he does what he wishes with her, and when he 
 has Iain with her he gives her a golden bonnet and ten thousand 
 aspers, and has her placed in a separate apartment from the others, 
 increasing her ordinary pay.' In the aforesaid Palace there is an 
 Agha of the Eunuchs: to these are given a hundred and twenty 
 aspers for all. Three Kapiiji-bashis, and with them a hundred 
 Kapujis and Janissaries at the gate: among all these is given six 
 hundred aspers a day. Ten Sakkas, who carry water, forty aspers 
 in all. And the damsels are served and educated up to the age of 
 twenty-five years. The teachers are the matrons, the servants are 
 the youngest among them ; and when they have arrived at twenty- 
 
 1 Usually called by Western writers " Dragoman." 
 
 2 This was the " Old Palace " of Mohammed the Conqueror, and stood where 
 the Seraskicrat, or War Office now stands. 
 
 » Suleiman is said to have been faithful to Roxelana after he had made her his 
 wife. See above, p. 56.
 
 254 APPENDIX 
 
 five years, if it does not please the Signer to keep them for his own 
 use, he marries them to Spahi-oghlans, and to others of the slaves of 
 the Porte according to the degree and condition of both parties; 
 and in their place he substitutes others. 
 
 There is also a palace near Pera for about four hundred boys, 
 who have pay of six to ten aspers, and are clothed with silk twice 
 a year. These have an Agha and eunuchs, as have those in the 
 great palace, [and] Kapujis, Ajem-oghlans and a hundred teachers 
 of various arts. Among all these is distributed eight hundred 
 aspers a day. They are not so noble, or of so beautiful appearance 
 or show of intelligence as are those who reside with the Signor; 
 but from these also many become great, and some of them are taken 
 into the great palace. And similarly in Adrianople there is a palace 
 of three hundred boys under pay, an Agha, eunuchs, Kapujis, 
 Janissaries, and teachers, about two hundred in all, who have all 
 together two thousand eight hundred aspers a day. These are of 
 third grade, but they are carefully taught and well kept Hke all 
 the others, and from them according to the spirit and worth which 
 they show promotions are made. There is also in that region 
 another palace, recently built, with a large and beautiful garden: 
 this is located on the river Maritza, and in it reside about three 
 hundred Ajem-oghlans; on these [palaces] they spend every year 
 two hundred thousand aspers for each, and they have an Agha with 
 forty aspers and a lieutenant and secretaries with thirty aspers each 
 per day. In various other places in Adrianople there are gardens: 
 in these reside continually as on deposit one thousand five hundred 
 Ajem-oghlans with Agha and secretaries, and on these they spend 
 six thousand aspers a year i or a little more. 
 
 There is also an Agha of the Ajem-oghlans, or Janissary recruits, 
 who resides in Constantinople; he has sixty aspers per day, and 
 under him are about five thousand Ajem-oghlans: these they clothe 
 twice a year, and on their teachers and chiefs they spend ten thou- 
 sand aspers ^ a year. They put them on ships and buildings to carry 
 wood and perform other tasks. They become cooks or servants 
 of the Janissaries, and finally they become Janissaries. 
 
 And every four years the Turkish Signor sends into Greece and 
 into Anatolia to seize boys, sons of Christians, ten or twelve thou- 
 sand each time : these he sends into Anatolia in the region of Brusa 
 
 ^ This should read " per day." Junis Bey, below, p. 269. 
 ^ This should read 100,000: ibid.
 
 APPENDIX 255 
 
 or Caramania to dig the earth, so that they will become accustomed 
 to hard labor, and so that there they may learn the Turkish lan- 
 guage. These boys remain in such a place and occupation three or 
 four years: then they are ordered to be gathered again, and are 
 given to the government and discipline of the Agha of the Ajem- 
 oghlans. For these the Signer does not have any expenses so long 
 as they reside in Anatolia, because they are clothed and have their 
 living from those whom they serve by plowing the ground and doing 
 other work for them. 
 
 It seemed best to me to make mention in this place of all the 
 palaces, because they are as it were of the same body as that of the 
 Signor, and all the expenses of these are computed in the book of the 
 expense of the great palace, or that of the Signor. To these expenses 
 are added those, which are incurred in clothing twice each year the 
 Pashas, the Kaziaskers, the Defterdars, the Beylerbeys, and the 
 Nishanji, and the expenses which are incurred for the extraordinary 
 presents of the Signor. These in all amount to and go beyond a 
 million aspers a year. 
 
 There is also an Arsenal in the region of Pera, small and of short 
 circuit: this has on the sea-front ninety-two vaults, and so little 
 area and ground within that not merely no galleys but not even 
 materials and timbers can be contained there. In it usually work 
 each day about two hundred men; although there are under pay 
 two hundred patrons with two thousand aspers per day for all.* 
 A thousand Azabs, who have among them four thousand aspers. 
 Foremen, or masters fifty in number, who have in leisure, that is, 
 when not working, six aspers, and when working, twelve aspers 
 each. An Intendant, forty aspers. A Secretary, twenty-five 
 aspers, with ten clerks under him, who have a hundred aspers. All 
 these fulfil their duties when there is great need; but they under- 
 stand ill the trade and art of building galleys. For this reason they 
 do not turn out good and ready ones like ours; and what few there 
 are are overseen by Christians, who are well paid. 
 
 Over this Arsenal and all these persons, there is one who is called 
 the Beylerbey of the sea; that is to say. Lord of lords, an office 
 created at the time when I was in Constantinople; since in the past 
 he who was Sanjak of Gallipoli was wont to be called Captain of the 
 Sea. And Khaireddin Bey called Barbarossa was the first who had 
 this title; he was then made fourth Pasha. To him is given the 
 
 1 Junis Bey, below, p. 270, says 200,000 per year.
 
 256 APPENDIX 
 
 government of all the fleets, and he has for income every year a 
 feudal grant of fourteen thousand ducats, besides that from Rhodes, 
 Euboea, and Mytilene; so that he receives twice as much more. 
 
 I find nothing else that pertains to arrangements for the rule and 
 watch of the sea which are worthy of note: wherefore I will now 
 come to those of the land; these are in truth well and usefully 
 ordered. 
 There is first one called the Beylerbey of Greece: in this are in- 
 cluded all the lands which the Turkish Signor possesses in Europe: 
 this Beylerbey is greater than all the others. He has from feudal 
 grant sixteen thousand ducats a year, and gets more than double 
 this. He sits at the Porte after the Pashas, ' and is of great repute 
 with everybody. He has under him besides his slaves, who number 
 more than a thousand, a Defter dar with feudal income of three 
 thousand ducats a year; a hundred clerks who keep the books and 
 accounts of the feudal grants assigned to Subashis, Kazis, Spahis, 
 and others ; among all of whom are distributed ten thousand ducats 
 a year. 
 Thirty-six Sanjaks: these are in obedience to him, and have for 
 feudal income from five to twelve thousand ducats a year each. 
 They are distributed through the provinces: in these they reside 
 only so long as pleases the Signor: he changes them, as seems best 
 to him, from one province to another. Their duty is to rule the 
 Spahis, and to have them trained in arms, and to keep them in 
 obedience. 
 
 Four hundred Subashis, who have among them all from feudal 
 income four hundred thousand ducats, and have about five hundred 
 slaves each.2 
 
 Thirty thousand Spahis: these are horse soldiery set apart some 
 to the service of the Beylerbey, and some to that of all the Sanjaks 
 of Greece. They have from feudal grant two hundred ducats each, 
 and each of them, for every hundred ducats of feudal income, is 
 obliged to maintain an armed man, with horse and lance. And 
 then they have besides the armed man two or four or five servants 
 and horses. These Spahis are all slaves of the Signor, and sons of 
 slaves, and of Spahis. 
 
 Twenty thousand Timarjis who have ten to forty ducats of 
 feudal income each year, and because they do not reach a hundred 
 
 ^ At the meetings of the Divan. 
 
 2 This should read fifty each: Junis Bey, below, p. 271.
 
 APPENDIX 257 
 
 ducats, they are not called Spahis. These have each a horse and 
 two or three servants, and they serve distributed through all the 
 Sanjaks of Greece. The feudal grants are by assignment of land; 
 the income of this assignment they get partly from rent, but the 
 greater part from the tithes of all the income, which Turks as well 
 as Christians pay, and from the poll-tax, which is twenty-five 
 aspers per head from Christians alone, and from the imposts laid 
 on animals, fruit-trees, and other things. These imposts, moreover, 
 are in addition to those which they pay ordinarily to the Signer. 
 
 Sixty thousand Akinji, or mounted adventurers, inscribed for 
 the lands of Greece and obliged to go to war without payment. 
 But they are exempt from any burden, and cities and villages are 
 bound to give them, when they pass through, living expenses 
 only. 
 
 There are in all Greece, that is, in all the countries which the 
 Turkish Signor possesses in Europe, sixty-eight thousand villages 
 of Turkish and Christian people, subject to public burdens. ^ 
 
 There follow next six Beylerbeys of Asia, and a separate one of 
 Egypt. The first of these is called the Beylerbey of Anatolia which 
 was anciently Asia Minor: he has from feudal income fourteen 
 thousand ducats, but gets a great deal more. This man has under 
 him and in his government Pontus, Bithynia, Asia proper, Lydia, 
 Caria, and Lycia: these provinces under a single name are called 
 at present Anatolia. This man's place at the Porte is after the 
 Beylerbey of Greece. And he has under him, besides his own slaves, 
 who are more than a thousand, twelve Sanjaks with feudal income 
 of from four to six thousand ducats each. Ten thousand Spahis, 
 with five to ten aspers a day, and also more or less feudal income 
 according to their degree. Next after these follows 
 
 The Beylerbey of Caramania, which was anciently Cilicia and 
 Pamphylia, with feudal income of ten thousand ducats. This man 
 has under him seven Sanjaks with four to six thousand ducats of 
 feudal income each, and five thousand Spahis, with five to ten aspers 
 a day each and feudal income besides. 
 
 The Beylerbey of Amasia and Tokat, which was Cappadocia and 
 Galatia, with feudal income of eight thousand ducats. Four 
 Sanjaks with four to six thousand ducats of feudal income each. 
 Four thousand Spahis with five to ten aspers a day each and feudal 
 income. 
 
 1 " Che fanno fattione."
 
 258 APPENDIX 
 
 The Beylerbey of Anadole, which is a region between Syria, 
 Caramania, and Tokat, which was anciently Paphlagonia, and is 
 the half of Armenia Minor. He has ten thousand ducats of feudal 
 income, and under him seven Sanjaks with four to five thousand 
 ducats of feudal income. Seven thousand S pah is, with five to ten 
 aspers per day and feudal income. In this province of Anadole, 
 they say that when the Signor is there, besides the paid troops thirty 
 thousand persons are obliged to ride without any pay, but only 
 with expenses from the villages. 
 
 The Beylerbey of Mesopotamia, under whom is the remainder of 
 Armenia Minor and part of the Major, the other parts belonging 
 to the Persians and the Kurds. This borders with Bagdad, or 
 Baldach, which was anciently Babylonia. He has of feudal income 
 thirty thousand ducats: and besides his own slaves, who number 
 two thousand, he has under him twelve Sanjaks with feudal income 
 of four to six thousand ducats a year, and ten 1 Spahis with ten to 
 fifteen aspers per day each, and with large feudal income because 
 of being at the confines of the Persians: with these they are contin- 
 ually in conflict. 
 
 A Beylerbey of Damascus and Syria and Judea, with feudal income 
 of twenty-four thousand ducats; he has more than two thousand 
 slaves, and under him twelve Sanjaks with feudal income of five to 
 seven thousand ducats, and twenty thousand Spahis with ten to 
 fifteen aspers per day each and with good feudal income. 
 
 A Beylerbey of Cairo: he holds jurisdiction as far as Mecca, or 
 as far as into Arabia: this Arabia is possessed by the Turkish 
 Signor in the way in which he possesses Albania, where he is not 
 yielded such obedience as he is accustomed to receive from all his 
 other states and countries. But [Arabia] Felix stands in somewhat 
 greater obedience than the rest. He has for feudal income thirty 
 thousand ducats, with numerous slaves: these amount to more than 
 four thousand; sixteen Sanjaks with feudal income of six to eight 
 thousand ducats each; and sixteen thousand Spahis with fifteen to 
 twenty aspers each per day. 
 
 Near Mecca, and the countries of the Persians, are some Arabic 
 lords who do not obey any one. The rest ^ then borders the 
 Persians as far as Mesopotamia, in which is Bagdad.^ Passing 
 
 ^ This should read " ten thousand " : Junis Bey, below, p. 272. 
 
 2 Of the Turkish possessions in Asia. 
 
 3 " Maldac"
 
 APPENDIX 259 
 
 Mesopotamia it borders the Persians again to the plain of Naximan, 
 then touches Erzinjan • and Erzerum, which are the chief places 
 of Armenia Major. This Armenia borders with the Iberians and 
 Georgians. In these Armenias, Major and Minor, are many- 
 Kurds, people of the mountains and warlike, those of [Armenia] 
 Major obedient partly to the Turkish Signor, and partly to the 
 Persian; those of [Armenia] Minor to no one. Next Trebizond 
 borders with the Georgians and Mingrelians, and with part of 
 the Iberians, which people were anciently called Colchians. And 
 Ajemia,2 which anciently was Assyria, belongs to the Persian: he is 
 absolute master of it. 
 
 There are in all Anatolia, or in all the countries which the Turkish 
 Signor possesses in Asia, villages of Turks and Christians to the 
 number of more than seventy-two thousand, not counting those 
 which are in Egypt, which are many. 
 
 The Sanjaks truly [set forth]: these (as I said above) have under 
 government the provinces entrusted to the Beylerbeys; they are 
 men of much and very great reputation and esteem, especially in 
 the affairs of war; they are named as below by the names of the 
 places which are given to their government. And first the Beylerbey 
 of Greece holds as his sanjakate the places about Salonika. Then 
 follow the others of Kaffa, Silistria, Nicopolis, Vidin, Semendria, 
 Servia and Belgrade,' Zvornick, Bosnia, Hersek, which is the Ser\aa 
 called the Duchy,'* Scutari, Avlona, Yanina, KarU IH, Lepanto, 
 Morea, Negropont, Trikkala, Gallipoli, Kirk-Kilisse or Forty 
 Churches, Viza, Chirmen, Kostendil, Vishidrina, Prisrend, Okhrida, 
 Alaja Hissar, Elbassan, Voinuch, Chiuchene, Zaiza. These are 
 usually counted thirty-five, but five are regions united to neighbor- 
 ing places, namely PhilippopoHs, Sofia, Durazzo, Albania, and Uskup. 
 
 Anatolia, or Asia Minor: Pontus, Bithynia, Lydia, Caria, and 
 Lycia. The sanjakate of the Beylerbey is at Kutaia. And the 
 others are in Hoja-ili, Boli, Kastamuni, Angora, Kanghri,^ Tekke- 
 ili, Menteshe-iH, Aidin-ili, Alayeh,*' Bigha, and Manissa,^ which is 
 that of Sultan Mustapha, the oldest son of the Signor. This place 
 is opposite the middle of Chios near the sea. 
 
 ^ " Esdum." Junis Bey, below, p. 272, has " exdrun." 
 
 ^ More correctly, Irak Ajam, north-central Persia. 
 
 ' Junis Bey, 273, counts these as two, and the whole number as thirty-six. 
 
 * Herzegovina. « " Hallnyce " or " Allaye." 
 
 ^ " Cangri." '' The ancient Magnesia.
 
 26o APPENDIX 
 
 Amasia, and Tokat, which is Paphlagonia, Galatia, and Cappa- 
 docia. The sanjakate of the Beylerbey is in Amasia, of the others 
 in Chorum, Janik, Kara-hissar, Samsun, Trebizond. 
 
 Caramania, which is CiUcia opposite Cyprus and PamphyUa. The 
 sanjakate of the Beylerbey is in Konia. The others have theirs in 
 Naranda, Hissar, Eski-hissar, Versag-iH, Sivri-hissar. 
 
 Anadole, or Armenia Minor. The sanjakate of the Beylerbey is 
 in Marash. Those of the others in Sarmussacli, Albistan-ovassi,^ 
 Adana, Tarsus. 
 
 DiARBEKiR, or Mesopotamia, and part of Armenia Major, of which 
 the remainder belongs to the Persians and the Kurds. The san- 
 jakate of the Beylerbey is in Diarbekir, And the others have 
 theirs in Kara Amid, Arghana, Toljik, Hassan-Kief, Mardin, 
 Kharput, Mosul, Erzerum, Baiburt, BitHs, and Naximan-ovassi. 
 
 Syria, and Judea. The sanjakate of the Beylerbey is in Damas- 
 cus. Of the others in Malatia, Divirigi, Aintab, Antioch, Aleppo, 
 Tripoli, Hama, Homs, Safita, Jerusalem, Gaza. 
 
 Egypt, with part of Arabia Deserta as far as Jeddah; 2 Mecca, 
 with all of Arabia Felix, where are many Arab lordlings, who are 
 partly in devotion to the Turkish Signor, partly to no one. The 
 sanjakate of the Beylerbey is in Cairo, and of the others. . . .^ 
 
 All the aforesaid Sanjaks, Beylerbeys, Pashas, and other officials have 
 salary or feudal income, as I have said above, by fixed arrangement, 
 that is, regularly: but they obtain from extraordinary sources 
 about as much more. And they Hve with very great expenses for 
 slaves : these they are accustomed to clothe and they give them also 
 wages besides, so that they will not steal. 
 
 How great the revenues of this Signor are, may be estimated 
 from the expenses. These revenues are obtained from the Kharaj, 
 which is paid by the non-Turkish subjects; this gives a million and 
 a half ducats: from the tax on animals, which gives eight hundred 
 thousand ducats: from mines, which give six hundred thousand 
 ducats: from countless other duties, salt-taxes, commendations, 
 inheritances, gifts, the revenues of Egypt over and above the 
 expenses, rents, and tributes. And they are so great that they not 
 only meet the expenses, which amount besides the feudal income in 
 ready money drawn from the Treasury to more than twelve thou- 
 
 ^ The plain of Albistan. 
 
 2 " Alziden." 
 
 ^ Evidently the writer intended to fill these in, but failed to secure the names.
 
 APPENDIX 261 
 
 sand ducats a day; > but there remains over a great sum of money 
 from the surplus of each year. And it is beheved that all the reve- 
 nues amount to fifteen millions in gold; five of which enter the 
 Treasury, and the other ten remain for the servants of war.^ 
 
 ^ This amounts to about four million ducats a year. 
 
 '^ The reference is, of course, to the feudal Spuliis and their officers, who then 
 received according to this estimate two-thirds of the revenues of the empire.
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 PAMPHLET OF JUNIS BEY AND AL\aSE GRITTI 
 Printed in 1537. Presented in the original Italian. 
 
 OPERA NOUA LA QUALE DECHIARA 
 
 tutto il gouerno del gran Turcho & tut- 
 ta la Spesa che il gran Turcho ha sot- 
 to di lui cosi in pace como in guerra 
 & il numero de le Persone & no- 
 me & gouerno de le sue Don 
 ne & Garzoni che lui tene 
 nel Serraglio serrati & 
 de tutta la Entrata che 
 lui ha a lanno & no 
 mina tutti li Si- 
 gnori de le sue 
 prouincie: 
 E il nome de tutte le sue terre chelha 
 sotto se : & la ordinaza del suo Cam 
 po quado ua ala guerra como 
 ua in ordinanza tutte le 
 persone a sorte per 
 sorte & come 
 uanno e 
 che arme portano. Nouamente stam- 
 pata nel M D X X X V I I. 
 
 Il Signor grade cioe il gra Turcho ha uno serraglio principale doue 
 tene la sua sedia, & ha una camera deputada per lui doue dorme, 
 & al gouerno dessa ha 8. gioueni ch' lo uestano e sue stano doi al 
 giomo deputati ala guardia, & seruitii suoi, & la notte li fanno la 
 guardia uno da capo, laltro da piede con due torce accese: & ql 
 li doi che li hano fatto la guardia la notte lo uestano la mattina, & 
 li mettano ne la Scarsella del dulimano cioe de la casacha sua aspri 
 Mille uno aspro ual soldi do di Milano, & in laltra duchati 20 doro: 
 questi dinari sel Signor no li dona uia quel giomo restano a colori 
 
 262
 
 APPENDIX 263 
 
 chio spogliano la sera, & qsti giouani hano uno capo ch'si domada 
 Oddabassi cioe capo de li camarieri uno Papugi che li porta le 
 scarpe, laltro Selictare che porta larco & frezze, laltro Ciochadar 
 ch'li porta le ueste, laltro Seracter che li porta il mastrapa zoe il 
 rami dalacq, laltro scheni ch' porta la sedia questi sono li nomi che 
 hanno li otto gioueni, & il capo de questi cioe Oddabassi ha aspri 30. 
 al di di soldo, & li altri 8. gioueni hano chi 15. chi 20. aspri per uno 
 secondo il loro grado. 
 
 El Capagasi e monuco cioe castrato & e portinaro de la porta del gran 
 Turco ha aspri 60. di soldo. 
 
 El Capiagabasi cioe il capo del Serraglio doue sta il Turcho quado 
 il Signor e fora de Costantinopoli ha aspri 50. & ha sotto lui 12 
 mouchi cioe castrati che hano aspri 16. al di per uno di soldo & 
 spesa. 
 
 El Casnadarbasi e monucho, cioe Tesorero de la Saluaroba del Signor 
 ha aspri 60, al di di soldo. 
 
 Ha in el serraglio il Sgnor gioueni de anni 8. fino in 20. numero 700. 
 che hano di soldo al giorno chi 10. chi 14. secondo il suo grado & 
 sono uestiti dal Signor qsti hano maestri che li insegnano a legere e 
 scriuere & la lege loro, & como escano del serraglio hanno nella 
 porta cioe ne la sua corte officii chi Spacoglai chi Selictari chi Sola- 
 chi & altri stipedii secondo gratia e ualore loro. 
 
 Spacoglani sono getilhomini che cortigiano il Signor quado caualca: 
 & li Sehctari sono qlli che uano alia ma sinistra del Signor qndo ua in 
 campo: & li Solachi sono stafTeri del Signor, & li suoi maestri sono 
 Talasimai uecchi detti Cogia dotti nella lege loro, cioe sacerdoti & 
 questi putti sono ogni 10. in gouemo d'uno monucho detto Ca- 
 pogliano, ognuno ha imo schiauinotto nel qual dormino detro la 
 notte de sorte che non si toccano insiemo & stanno in uno salotto & 
 li Monuchi dormeno in mezo desso salotto & stanno le lume accese 
 tutta la notte. 
 
 Ha uno giardino nel serraglio che uolge circa doi miglia doue stanno 
 circa 400, putti giardineri detti Bustagi sono lanicerotti, & hanno 
 uno capo che si domanda Bustagibassi che e sopra tutti li giardini 
 del Signor ch' sono moltie lui ha aspri 40. il di di soldo & altre molte 
 regalie & a li giardineri chi 3. chi 5. aspri al di & sono ognuno ue- 
 stiti del Signor di pano azuro turchesco & una gamisa e uno paro 
 di braghe do uolte a lanno & quado escano del serraglio che sono 
 gradi diucntano lanizari cioe guardiani del Signor. Solachi 
 cioe staffieri & Capigi cioe Portinari: & il ditto Bonstagibassi e
 
 264 APPENDIX 
 
 qllo ch'e timonero quado al Signer ua in Fusta hano uno ptoiro 
 cioe loco tenente che ha aspri 20. al di & ogni 10 de detti hano uno 
 capo ditto Balucasi che ha aspri 20. il di & questi putti uano 
 per tutto dentro del SerragKo & mai escano fino che non sono 
 homeni. 
 
 El Signor ha due Fuste che li nauegano li sopraditti giardineri, & lo 
 capo loro sta al timone con le quale il Signor ua a spasso assai per 
 canale & a li giardini lor. 
 
 El calualgibasi capo de le cofettioni ha aspri 40. il di con 30. homini 
 sotto di lui & hanno chi 5 chi 6, aspri al di. 
 
 El Vechilargibasi capo deli despesieri ha aspri 40. il di c6 uno scriuano 
 CO aspri 20 il di di soldo. 
 
 El Cessignirbassi capo de li cardeceri ha aspri 80. il di & questo porta 
 la sera & mattina il piato al Signore & ha sotto di lui homini 100. 
 che hanno chi 5 chi 6. aspri al di di soldo. 
 
 Vno Asgibassi capo de li coghi ha aspri 40. al di & ha da circa 80. 
 coghi sotto di lui che hano chi 5. chi 6. chi 8. aspri il di, & ha da 
 80. lanicerotti da 10. in 20. anni ditti baltagi cioe taglia legne 
 che tagliano le legne per la cucina del signore & per tutto il serraglio 
 che hanno da 3. in 5. aspri il di per uno & sono uestiti dal Signore. 
 
 Ha circa 20. garzoni lanicerotti carretteri che portano con li carri le 
 legne nel serragUo & hanno aspri 3. in 5. al di & sono uestiti dal 
 Signore. 
 
 Sacha 10. cioe acquaroli che portano lacqua con li caualli nel serraglio 
 hanno 3. in 5. aspri il di & uestiti dal Signore. 
 
 Vna stalla con 200. caualli per la psona del Signore con 100. homini al 
 gouemo suo che hanno aspri 5. in 8. al di soldo per uno. Vnaltra 
 stalla con 4000. caualli per li scliiaui soi con 2000. homini al suo 
 gouemo che hano da 3 in 5 aspri di di soldo & spesa. 
 
 II gran Turcho ha molti giardini & si uendano 11 frutti & del tratto di 
 essi si fa le spese a lui per essere entrate licite, & il suo serraglio 
 paga di liuello aspri 1000. al giomo a la moschea cioe a la gesia del 
 padre de suo padre Soltan memet. 
 
 Spesa nel piato del Signor aspri 5000. & per li garzoni soi aspri 2500. 
 ogni giomo. 
 
 Vno Capigilarchi caiasi idest gouemator & capo de tutti li capigi cioe 
 di portineri de la porte ha aspri 500. il di: & 3 capigibassi de la 
 porta del signore hanno aspri 100. il di & uestiti, sotto qste sono 
 Capigi cioe Portinari numero 250. chi hanno aspri 57. il di per uno, 
 & questi fanno la guardia a la porta del Signor di 24. in 24. hore, &
 
 APPENDIX 265 
 
 quando qualche Ambasciator ua a basciare la mano al Signor 
 bisogna chel presenta tutti costori. Vno Capigi la che chi si 
 Protoiro idest locotenente di Capigi ha aspri 40. il giomo, 
 
 El Ciausbasi capo de li ciausi c6 100. ciausi sotto lui qsti sono homini 
 gradi & quado uano pfare morire alcuno sia dassai quato si uoglia 
 sono obediti senza altra comissione in scritto, & qndo il Signor 
 caualca uano semp' inaci a ui faciado fare largo, hano di soldi da 
 aspri 25. sino in 40. al di secudo lor grado & il ciaubasi ha aspri 200. 
 
 El Mecterbasi capo de quelli che destendano li padiglioni & tapedi & 
 spazzar la porta & altre simile cose ha aspri 40. il di con il sue 
 Protoiro che ha aspri 20. il di con 60. homini sotto di lui che si 
 domandano Mecteri che hanno aspri 5. in 6. il di per uno & sono 
 uestiti. 
 
 Sono ordinatamete 4. Bascia soi cazelleri e coseieriel primo ha duchati 
 24000 di entrata a lanno: li altri tre hano chi 16000. chi 18000. 
 duchati a lanno & li sono date entrate doue cauano il tutto, & hano 
 molte altre regalie & psenti. 
 
 Abrain eora de la pargha albaneso e morto, hora li e Aiisbassa de la 
 sinita ch' e il pricipale Albaeso uno altro mostafa bas cia che 
 mamalucho di Alchayro & uno Casin bascia ch'e Crouato & 
 Cayradibeii cioe Barbarossa ch'era greco di meteli Isola & niuno 
 puo essere bascia se non Christiani renegati. Ayas ha numero 
 600. schiaui. Mostafa ne ha numero 200: Casin crouato ne ha 
 numero 150. Barbarossa ne ha da numero 100. A liquali danno 
 soldo caualli scutie doro & spade fornire dargento & di questi essi 
 Bascia fanno la corte loro & sono uestiti da essi Bascia. 
 
 Doi Cadilescher talasimani uno de la Grecia laltro de la natolia cioe 
 Asia, & ha di entrata ducati 6 in 7 milia a lanno per uno : qsti sono 
 executori de la lege loro & hano 10. homini executori per uno dati 
 dal Signor sono qlli che metteno li Cadi cioe podesta per tutto il 
 paese del Signor & quado uanno dal Signor entrano auanti deli 
 Bascia hanno per uno mocturbasi cioe cursor, & como cauallieri 
 de li executori & questi tutti uiuano di regahe, hano lo Cadile- 
 scheri 200. in 300. schiaui per uno che se ne fanno la lor corte. 
 
 Doi Defterderi cioe thesoreri uno di Asia laltro di Europa che scodano 
 tutte le entrade del Signor & gouemano quasi il tutto hanno di 
 entrada ducati sie in sette milia a lanno per uno, & hanno 200. 
 schiaui per uno & ne fanno la lor corte. 
 
 Hanno qsti Defterderi 50. scriuani per uno con li cogitori quali tengano 
 conto del thesoro del Signor, questi scriuani sono posti dal Signor
 
 266 APPENDIX 
 
 con soldo di 15. in 50. aspri al di per imo secondo il grado loro & 
 
 hano 15. in 20. schiaui per uno. 
 Secretarii 25. posti dal Signer che hanno 25. in 30. aspri il di & suoi 
 
 schiaui sono doi Rosanamagi idest capi de li scriuani che reuedano 
 
 li coti & ch' receuano dano fora con 20. copagni sotto loro doi, 
 
 hanno aspri 40. il di & li 25. compagni hano aspri 8. in 10. al di per 
 
 imo di soldo. 
 Cinque Seraferi idest Bancheri che uedano tutto li danari che si 
 
 scodano hanno aspri 10, in 15. al di di soldo. 
 Vno Tescheregibassi che segna tutti li commandamenti del Signor ha 
 
 di entrata ducati 7000. & 300. in 400. schiaui. 
 Vno Casmandarbassi di fora con 10. Casandari il capo ha aspri 50. 
 
 il di & ha aspri 10. in 15. al di di soldo sintede sopra la saluaroba 
 
 del Signore di fuora del serraglio. 
 Vno Defterdaro emino cioe douanero sopra le intrade & tene il libro 
 
 de li timarati ha aspri 40. il di con lo scriuano che ha aspri 10. in 15. 
 
 al di. 
 Vno Agha de laniceri cioe Capitano de tutti li laniceri che ha intrata 
 
 duch. 7000. lano, & ha aspri loooo. per far pasto a li lanizari 
 
 quado el da audietia in casa sua che 2.03. uolte la settima na le da 
 
 & ha 400. schiaui sotto se questi lanizari sono la guardia del Signor 
 
 tutti schiopetteri & uanno a piede. 
 Vno Gachaia de lanizari cioe locotenete ha 200 aspri di & ducati 300. 
 
 di timaro cioe entrata a lanno con 25. schiaui suoi. 
 Vno Scriuan di lanizari che tien contro de loro lanizari ha aspri 100. 
 
 al di & circa a 200 schiaui. 
 Secmebassi capo di brachi da caza ha aspri 100. il di & ha del numero 
 
 di laizari 200 sotto di lui. 
 D Zarcagibassi capo de li liureri da cazza ha aspri 50 il di & ha del 
 
 numero di lanizari 700. sotto di se che menano li cani a spasso 
 
 quado bisogna. 
 Sono li lanizari numero 12000. li quah hanno da 3. sino in 8. aspri il di 
 
 di soldo & ogni 10. hanno il suo Odabassi cioe capo de numero dece 
 
 & ogni cento hanno il suo capo che si domanda Bolucbassi, & li 
 
 capi loro quando uanno in capo uano a cauallo & hano aspri 40. 
 
 in 60. al* di per vno secondo il grado loro. 
 De li lanizari si caua da 150 solachi che sono staferi dil Signor & 2 
 
 solachibassi capi de qlli & tutti sono sotto lagha de lanizeri, & 
 
 sono vestiti vna volta alanno dil Signor di pano azuro, & hano le 
 
 * At this point the smaller type begins. See below, p. 315.
 
 APPENDIX 267 
 
 stantie loro in 2 lochi in Constantinopoli fatto fabricare dil Signer 
 & li stano qlli che non hano moglie li maritati stano sora c6 le 
 done loro, & nel vitto ogniuno mette tato al di & hano dispesieri 
 choghi & qlli che hano pocho salario seruan al altri, & ogni 100 di 
 loro quado vano in capo portano vno padiglione, & sono soldati 
 apedi schpeteri & alabarderi e simitarre. Quado li ditti venghano 
 in desgratia dil Signoro in veghieza si madan a sario zoe castelli che 
 sono guardiani & si cassano del libro de lanizari & hano entrate 
 equalmente al suo primo soldo & li capi loro similmente vano 
 castellani con timaro vtsupra. 
 
 Vno agha di Spachoglani capo cioe di destri giouene gentilhomo che 
 a tra timaro e soldo ducat 10 il di con reghalie & 400 schiaui. 
 
 Vno laxagi scriuano de questi spacoglani ha aspri 30 il di con reghalie 
 & 30 schiaui. 
 
 Vno Cacaia de ditti zoe protoiro a tra timaro soldo aspri 100 al di. 
 
 Sono li Spachoglani 3000 che hano aspri 20 in 40 il di secondo il grade 
 loro & ogni 20 hano vno capo domandato Bolucbassi & questi 
 seruano a caualo con 506 schiaui & altri tanti caualli per vno 
 questi vano sempre ala man destra dil Signor, & alogiano appresso 
 a lui in campo. 
 
 Vno Agha deto Selicterbassi capo de li sinistri che sono ala ma sinistra 
 dil Signor ha aspri 250 il di & vno Protoiro cioe loco tenete & vno 
 scriuano co aspri 30 il di per vno questo Aga e capo di 3000 Selictari 
 a cauallo che stano a la man sinistra dil Signore & hano aspri 20 
 in 25 al di p vno & hano 4. o. 5. schiaui & altri tanti caualli & lui 
 capo a 200 schiaui soi. 
 
 Doi Holofagibassi da la man destra & sinistra uno per banda capi de li 
 soldatia aspri 120 al di & hano 200 Holofagi sotto se c6 aspri 16 
 il di pervno il suo logo tenente co aspri 20 e vno scriuano co aspri 
 20 & vano a cauallo con 2.03. caualli & tanti schiaui. 
 
 Doi Aga capo de li carippoglani zoe poueri gioueni che hano aspri 30 
 il di per vno co il suo protoiro & scriuano con aspri 1 5 in 30 al di & 
 sono li Carippoglani numero 2000 che hano da 7 sino in 14 aspri al 
 di per vno li capi hano 25 schiaui per vno. 
 
 Doi Bracorbassi zoe maestri di stalla vno grande vno picolo il grade 
 a aspri 500 il di, & il picolo ne a 200 al di di soldo con protoiro & 
 scriuano con 30 sino in 40 aspri il di per vno. 
 
 Sedici milia Sarachi zoe famigli che cozano brene & selle Caysli zoe 
 fanti di stalla Carmadari zoe mulateri deuegi zoe gabeleri che vano 
 dreto a gambeli circirgli zoe mandreri che pascolano le madre de li
 
 268 APPENDIX 
 
 caualli in varii lochi hano di soldo da 2 sine i 20 aspri il di pervno 
 secodo il grado lore chi pui che meno. 
 
 Caualli da caualcare per il Signor & soi puti & monuchi zoe castrati 
 numero 4000. 
 
 Vno Zarchigibassi capo de li astori che al di soldo apri 150 il di & 
 schiaui & vno Zarchigibassi capo di falconeri che a aspri 80 il di & 
 schiaui con il sou protoiro & scriuano con aspri 25 per vno al di. 
 
 Vintimilia zainogiler homini a cauallo di laza & mill soli de questi 
 hano soldo aspri 10 il di & resto hano timari o vero exemption di 
 angarie per essere homeni dil Signor & vano in campo. 
 
 Vno hebegibassi capu de le armature a aspri 60 il di con il suu protoiro 
 & scriuan con aspri 20 per vno di soldo & a da 160 Ebegi zoe famigli 
 sotto se con 7 fino in 10 aspri il di per vno, & vano a pede. 
 
 Vno Topgibassi capo de li bombarderi che ha aspri 60 il di con protoiro 
 & scriuan con aspri 20 pervno & a 2000 Topgi sotto se zoe bom- 
 barderi CO 6 sino in 10 aspri il di soldo per vno o vano a pede, 
 
 Vno Arabagibassi capo de li careteri a aspri 40 il di con protoiro & 
 scriuano con aspri 20 per vno & a 1000 Arabagi zoe careteri sotto 
 se con 3 sino in 6 aspri il di per vno. 
 
 Vno Mecterbassi capo de li trombeteri & tamburini a aspri 30 il di 
 con protoiro & scriuan con aspri 12 p vno di soldo al di & a 12 
 millia compagni sotto se che hano di soldo 3 sino in 5 aspri il diper 
 vno parti vano a piedi & parti a cauallo & altre regalie. 
 
 Imralem aga Capitanio che porta il stendardo dil Signor a di soldo 
 aspri 200 al di & e sopra tutti li mecteri zoe trombetti & tamburini 
 & banderali. 
 
 Vno Arpaemin prouiditore de le biaue per il campo con vno protoiro 
 & vno cursor le emin a aspri 60 il di protoiro a aspri 30 il cursor 
 aspri 20 al di di soldo & a 20 persone sotto di lui con aspri 800 al di 
 fra tutti quelli 20 persone. 
 
 Vno Saremin prouiditore de comun a cozare le strade & fabricare in 
 Constantinopli a aspri 50 il di, & a sotto di lui 400 homeni co aspri 
 1000 al di fra tutti co protoiro & scriuano co aspri 57 il di per vno. 
 
 Vno Baratemin che dispensa tutti li comandameti & che scode li 
 denati de li ditti a aspri 40 il di & a 2 scriuani & doi soprastanti con 
 aspri 60 il di per vno di soldo. 
 
 Vno Seraglio di donne in Constantinopli che circoda vno migUo e 
 mezo CO stantie & camere done stano li figlioli separati luno da 
 laltro CO loro madre & monuchi, & soltane zoe molier dil Signor & 
 li sono da 200 in 300 dozelle sotto la custodia di molte matrone
 
 APPENDIX 269 
 
 veghi alequa il Signer fa inscgnare a arica mar diuersi lauori & a 
 cadauna li da di soldo asp 10 fino in 20 per vna secondo il grado 
 loro & ogni anno doi volte a li bairami zoe a le sue pasque li veste 
 tutte di setta, & lequal donzelle quado place alcuna desse al Signore 
 lui sta con lei & fa il fatto suo, & como la hauta li dona vna schufia 
 doro che val due. 200 & aspri 10 millia di cotadi & la fa stare in vna 
 camera separata da le altre & li cresse i soldo suo & qlla che fa 
 prima fioli quella e la sua moglie prima. 
 
 In ditto seraglio & de tutti li altri monuchi zoe castrati che sono in 
 detto seraglio a aspri 60 il di di soldo & stano in questo seraglio 20 
 monuchi & hano aspri 120 il di tra capigibassi zoe portinari & 
 lanizari nu. 100 a le porte p guardia hano aspri 500 al di fra tut- 
 ti & numero 10 Sacha che portano laqua detro zoe aquaroli & 
 hano aspri 40 al di fra tutti di soldo. 
 
 Quando le donzelle sono in eta de anni 25 il Signor le maritta a li 
 schiaui di la porta zoe di la sua corte & in loco loro ne mete de le 
 altre & le piu giouan e seruano a le altre. 
 
 A vno seraglio appresso a perea de garzoni nu, 400. in circa che hano 
 di soldo da 6 fin in 10 aspri il di p vno & li veste doi volte alanno 
 di panno di seda si como fa a le done & vno Agha zoe capo del 
 seraglio & 20 monuchi como nel altro seraglio & capigi & lanizeri 
 & maestri che imparano voltegiare a cauallo & Iparano a sonare in 
 tutto numero 100 homeni che hano aspri 600 al di di soldo tra tutti 
 & laga a aspri 60 il di di soldo & 10 sacha con aspri 40 il di di soldo 
 fra tutti li aquaroli. 
 
 Vno Seraglio in Andranopoli nouo con vno bel giardino appresso a 
 la mariza fiumera nel qual stano lanizerotti numero 300 & hano 
 aspri 1 2 al di per vno Andranopoli e 5 zornate lotan da Constanti- 
 nopoli. 
 
 Vno capo de detti zardineri a aspri 40 il di con vno protoiro & vno 
 scriuano che tengono coto de ditto zardino con aspri 30 per vno al 
 di. 
 
 In diuersi lochi il Signor ha piu giardini in liquali son asai lanizerotti 
 garzoni & soi capi hano di soldo aspri 6000 al di fra tutti questi 
 giardini. 
 
 Vno aga de agiamoglani Capitanio zoe gioueni greci in Costatinopoli 
 a aspri 60 il di & a 4 in 5000 lantizerotto sotto lui & li da di soldo 
 tra tutti alano ne a di spcsa aspri 100 millia & liveste due hate 
 alanno & hano li loro capi como li altri & questi se metano sopra 
 fabriche & condutte legne co nauigli in ConstantinopoU per il
 
 270 APPENDIX 
 
 Signor & altre stente poi si fano coghi & famegli di lanizeri & in 
 fino si fano lanizeri. 
 
 Ogni 4 anni il Signor manda a tore di gretia & di Natolia piu figlioli 
 de christiani per il paxe zoe p leville & doue vno padre ha 2 fioli 
 li piglian vno fiol p forza & lo fano turco & cosi a ognuno christiani 
 p il suo paese fano zoe soi subditi & ne piglia 10 i 12000 a la volta 
 hquali puti li sano stare in la Natolia zoe in asia a zapare la terra 
 acio imparano la lingua turcha & cosi stentano 3. o vero 4. anni & 
 poi li manda a scriuere sotto laga di agiamoglani ditto vtsupra 
 & di questi il Signor non ne a spesa alcuna per che sono vestiti & 
 fatto le spese da quelli a che seruano per che li mete a stare co 
 altri sino chano imparato la lingua & poi quando sono scritti li da 
 soldo per la prima 2. in 3 aspri per vno & secodo li mete in altri 
 ofl&cii li cresce il salario. 
 
 Ha di spesa in li altri seragli di viuere aspri 5000 il di ditto di sopra. 
 
 Veste due fiate alanno li Bassa zoe confieri defterderi zoe texoreri 
 beglerbeii zoe Signor de Soignori nesangibei zoe quello che sopra 
 di frutti dil Signor & presenti di spexa aspri 5000 per volte. 
 
 Vna Arsenale doue ten le sue galere che a voiti 100 zoe 30 di galere 
 grosse che si domandano maone p portare caualli & il resto sono 
 galere futile. 
 
 Tene continuamenti numero 200 patroni de galere pagati che hano 
 soldo fra tutti aspri 200000 alanno di spexa. 
 
 Tene continuo mille homeni axapi zoe marinero di galeri & ne a di 
 spexa alano fra tutti aspri 400000. 
 
 Maistri ouero proti numero 50 che sono sopra a far lauorare le galere 
 zoe farle chi inocio hanno soldo aspri 6 il di & quando lauorano 
 hano aspri 12 il di. 
 
 Emino zoe capo de questi a aspri 40 il di vno scriuan che ten conto 
 ha aspri 28 al di con 10 scriuani sotto lui con aspri 80 al di fra 
 tutri. 
 
 El Zustiniano zoe vno zentilomo Venetiano che serue il Turcho & e 
 sopra a far fare galere ancora lui spexe straordinaria ha di soldo 
 aspri 50 il di. 
 
 Vno Beglerbei dil mar zoe Signor de Signori capo sopra le terre mari- 
 time che a di entrata due, 14000 & traze piu dil duplo sopra rodi 
 metelino negropote & il tribute di sio isole in mar. 
 
 II Beglerbei di la gretia zoe capo di tutto il paese di la gretia magior 
 de tutti li altri a di entrada ducati 260 millia a lanno & traze il 
 duplo & a schiaui 1000.
 
 APPENDIX 271 
 
 Vno protoiro zoe loco tenente di la gretia a ducati 4000 di entrada a 
 lanno & a schiaui 300. 
 
 Vno Deftero zoe texorero de le entrate di la gretia che loro domandano 
 timari a ducati 3000 de entra da a lanno & ha 900 schiaui soi 
 seruitori. 
 
 Cento scriuani che tengono li libri & coti dil Signor a di entrada fra 
 tutti a lanno ducati loooo. 
 
 Trentasette Sanzachibei zoe contadi Signori per il paese che han di 
 entrada di 5 in 12 millia ducati a lanno secondo il grado loro chi 
 piu chi meno & hano vno per laltro in tutto duca, 260 millia a 
 lanno & 300 schiaui per vno. 
 
 Quatrocento Subasi per il paxe dil Signor zoe Capitanio di lustitia 
 che hano due. 100 alanno per vno di entrada & hano 50 schiaui 
 per vno soi famigli. 
 
 Trenta millia Spachi che hanno di entrada luno per laltro ducati 200 
 per vno alanno & ciaschaduno de ditti per ogni ducati 100 che 
 hano di entrada deue tener vno homo armato di lanza a cauallo 
 & oltra le lanze hanno tre o 4 famigli per vno & altri tanti caualli 
 zoe li Spachi. 
 
 Vintimillia Trimarati zoe qlli che scodano le entrate per il paese hano 
 due 40 de di entrata alanno p vno & per che non ariuano a li 100 
 ducati dintrada no si chiamano spachi & sono homeni a cauallo & 
 vano in campo. 
 
 Li Spacoglani li sopradetti timari cioe entrade de le decime de tutte 
 le entrade cosi de christiani como di turchi splenza aspri 25 per 
 testa da li christiani & da langaria de li animali & altra quanto 
 pagano dil Signor zoe piu o meno secondo diuersi paesi. 
 
 Sesantamillia laching zoe ventureri scritti per il paese obligadi andare 
 in campo quando place al Signor senza soldo & quando vano a la 
 guerra le ville & cita li dano il modo dil viuere. 
 
 Tutti li spachi sono schiaui & figli de schiaui del Sig. 
 
 Sette Beglerbei zoe Signor de signori sopra bassavno che se chiama 
 di la natolia ilquale era antichamete in assia minore il qual a di 
 entrata ducati 24000 & ne traze assai piu & a sotto se il ponte 
 labitinia azia ppia Lindia carian, licia prouincie & a schiaui 1000 
 soi seruitori & a sanzachi 12 sotto lui zoe Signoroti co entrada da 
 4 in 6000 ducati alanno per vno & schiaui 500 pervno & Spachi 
 1000 sotto se CO soldo da 5 in 10 aspri al di pervno secodo la codi- 
 tion loro & qste Beglerbei e di piu authorita de li altri & e forte 
 nominato per il paese questi Spachi no hano tanta entrata como 
 vtsupra per essere piu abondantia la.
 
 272 APPENDIX 
 
 Beglerbei de caramania chera silicia & pamlilia prouincie ha di en- 
 trata ducati lo millia & a 7 sanzachi sotto se con soldo ditte & 
 spachi numero 500 sotto c6 soldo como laltro beglerbei & schiaui 
 mille. 
 Beglerbei di auadoule che e tra la soria & Caramania & tocato era gia 
 Pamphlagonia che e la mita di larmenia minore ha di entrada 
 ducati 10 millia alanno & sette sanzachi che hano di entrada da 
 4 in 5000 ducati alano & a schiaui 100 & Spachi 700 sotto lui quan do 
 11 Signor hera fora si dice questo Beglerbei faceua persone da 
 caualcare senza soldo numero 30 millia. 
 Beglerbei di la mexopotania sotti ilqual e il resto di larmenia minor 
 & parte di la magiore che laltra parte e dil Sophi & dacordo a di 
 entrata ducati trenta miUia 8: schiaui due milUa & sanzachi 12 con 
 entrada vt supra & spachi diece milHa co soldo vtsupra & confina 
 con baldach zoe la babilonia vera. 
 Baglerbei di Damascho & Soria & Giudea a di entrada ducati 24 
 milha & schiaui due millia & sanzachi 12 con entrada vtsupra & 
 a Spachi numero vintimillia sotto di lui. 
 Beghlerbei di Alcario ha di entrada ducati trentamiUia & schiaui 
 quarto millia Sazachi 16 con entrada vr supra per\Tio & Spachi 
 sedeci miUia sotto lui & lanizeri tre millia & va fina alamecha cioe 
 fina a la arabia liquali ello possede como si fa deli albanesi per 
 forza benche la arabia felize stia in magior obedientia. 
 Tra lamecha h Sophi sono alcuni Signori arabi poi il resto confina 
 con il Sophi fina in la mexopotania in laqual e baldach zoe Babi- 
 lonia poi passato la mexopotania cofina il Suphi ne la pianura di 
 nassimo poi exdrun & extum che sono in la armenia mazore 
 laqual cofina con Zorgiani & hiberi & ne larmenia mazor & 
 minor sono assai cordi obedienti quelli de la mazor parte al Signor 
 Turcho & parte al Sophi Re di persia & trabixonda lucho de Im- 
 perio in mar magior cofina con mengreli zoe mengrelia doue non 
 si spende danari & ancora confina co giorgiani che antichamente 
 si dimandauano colchi azamia chera asiria e dil Sophi. 
 Armenia magior e minor sono christiani assai di quelH di san Thomaso 
 trabixonda sono greci & mengreli sono christiani & giorgiani sono 
 christiani. 
 Ottoma hebe in sua copagnia ad acqstare il dominio vno michaU greco 
 fatto turco dal qual son dissexi li mazalogh zoe mamaluchi de 
 laqual stirpe ne vno hora sanzaco in bosina zoe Conte devna pro- 
 uiucia.
 
 APPENDIX 273 
 
 Malco greco renegato alqual sono nasiuti li malcozogli, & di quella 
 stirpe ne vno & e Sanzaco in gretia. Aurami che si chiamano 
 Eurcassi de laqual stirpe non si sa che ne sia alcun hora. 
 
 Tutti questi generatione promisse ottoman di no mettere mai mane 
 nel sangue loro ne mancharli mai di magistrato & ancora si con- 
 serua la promessa fatali & questi furono quelli che aiutomo la 
 caxa ottomana. 
 
 Intrada dil gran Turcho de caragi zoe tributatii caua ducati 1300000 
 da la Natolia & grecia caua ducati 1600000 di Egipto caua due. 
 700000 de Soria caua ducati 150000 de mexopotania ducati 
 250000 questi danari caua si non di terra ferma senza le Isole che 
 sotto lui & li douane di Constantinopli e pera. 
 
 Le entrate che se dice disse il Signer Aluise Gritti che sono piu presto 
 piu che mcno & la spexa di la porta zoe di la corte dil Signor penso 
 che cosuma tutta la entrada o poco mono. 
 
 Li Beglerbei di egitto stano sotto il beglerbei di Alcairo per la magior 
 parte & li sono Sanzachi sino in lamecha doue sta larcha de macomet 
 Zingil Ghebur lurcan & Tibris fiumi dil Paradiso Terestro. 
 
 Li Beglerbei & li Sanzachi a chi piu chi meno secodo la autorita sua 
 & son pagati de li territori doue st no escetto quelli che pigliano 
 soldo dil gran Turcho la entrada de li ditti non si po sapere a ponto 
 bisogna per arbitrio pensarla zoe de quelli di egitto. 
 
 QVI SI DICHIARA TVTTI LI SANZACHI 
 
 zoe contadi che sono sotto li Beglerbei & si nomina li paexi doue sono & 
 Prouincie doue stano e prima. 
 
 Li Sanzachi zoe Contadi che sono 14 Carlali. 
 
 sotto il Beglerbei di la Gretia 15 Negroponte. 
 
 prima. 16 Lepanto. 
 
 1 Gretia. 17 Morea. 
 
 2 Cafa. 18 Trighala. 
 
 3 Silistria. 19 Galipoli. 
 
 4 NicopoH. 20 Quaranta Giexie. 
 
 5 \'idin. 21 Vissa. 
 
 6 Suornich. 22 Crimen: 
 
 7 Bossina. 23 Ochria. 
 
 8 Ersech del Ducato. 24 Giostaudil. 
 
 9 Samandria bclgrado. 25 Mzitrin. 
 
 10 Seruia. 26 Pisdren. 
 
 11 Belgrade. 27 .\lzasar. 
 
 12 Schutari. 28 .\lbasan. 
 
 13 Valona. 29 V'oinuch.
 
 274 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 30 Ciuchene. 
 
 Durazo. 
 
 31 Zaiza. 
 
 Albania. 
 
 Filipopoli. 
 
 Schopia. 
 
 Sofia. 
 
 
 Li Sanzachi che sono sotto il Beg- 
 
 6 Caugri. 
 
 lerbei di la Natolia zoe Asia 
 
 7 Tescheli. 
 
 minor. 
 
 8 Metesseli. 
 
 I Giotachie. 
 
 9 Haeid neli. 
 
 2 Cogia oUi. 
 
 10 Allaye. 
 
 3 Bolli. 
 
 II Buga. 
 
 4 Castamoni. 
 
 1 2 Manguixa il statto. 
 
 5 Anghori. 
 
 
 Li Sanzachi che sono sotto il Beg- 
 
 3 Giauich. 
 
 lerbei di Cappadocia. 
 
 4 Caraister. 
 
 I Amassia. 
 
 5 Sauisum. 
 
 2 Cioriun. 
 
 6 Trapixonda. 
 
 Li Sanzachi che sono sotto il Beg- 
 
 2 Naranda. 
 
 lerbei di Caramania. 
 
 3 Assar. 
 
 I Siogna. 
 
 4 Eschi assar. 
 
 Li Sanzachi che sono sotto il Beg- 
 
 3 Albistanouasi, 
 
 lerbei di Auandoule. 
 
 4 Adaria. 
 
 I Maras. 
 
 5 Tersis. 
 
 2 Sarmus Sachi. 
 
 
 Li Sazachi che sono sotto 
 
 6 Meridim. 
 
 il beglerbei di mesopotaia. 
 
 7 Carput. 
 
 I Dierbech. 
 
 8 Mussul. 
 
 2 Carachmit. 
 
 9 Exrun. 
 
 3 Argni. 
 
 10 Haiburth. 
 
 4 Solgich. 
 
 Dittilis. Nassim nouasi 
 
 5 Casangieph. 
 
 
 Li Sanzachi che sono sotto il Beg- 
 
 Aleppo. 
 
 lerbei di Soria. 
 
 Tripoli. 
 
 Damasco. 
 
 Cama ama. 
 
 Malatia. 
 
 Cams. 
 
 Dirmighi. 
 
 Sefetto. 
 
 Antep. 
 
 leroxalem. 
 
 Antiocha. 
 
 Gazara. 
 
 Questi sono i lochi che ha sotto il Turco. 
 
 Questo sie la ordenanza dil Capo dil Signore zoe dil gran Turcho quado 
 va a la guerra primamente vna quatita di spacoglani getilomini con 
 lanza & spada. 
 
 Inanze al primo bassa li va numero 15 caualli ornati p la sua persona con 
 vno lanizero per banda.
 
 APPENDIX 275 
 
 E poi tre garzoni vcstiti doro con schufie doro rosse vno H porta larcho 
 
 vno li porta le vcste & vno li porta il ramin da laqua. 
 E poi vno Aga con schufia doro zoc Capitanio. 
 E poi doi garzoni senza milza arente al bassa. 
 E poi mille lanizeri schopeteri a piedi. 
 E poi da 60 Sanzachi zoe stcndardi a cauallo. 
 E poi trombetti e tamburin insiema a cauallo. 
 E poi il campo a refuso de diuersi generationi e de diuersi lanze tutti a 
 
 cauallo. 
 E poi gambelli muli bagaie del campo. 
 
 E poi Gentilomeni Spachi a cauallo con spada & archo e frize solle. 
 E poi li cari de lartelaria. 
 
 E poi caualli numero 30 con briglie doro per la persona dil Signor. 
 E poi tutti li capi de li lanizari zoe Boluchbassi Odabassi a cauallo con 
 
 barete doro aguze con vno penagio di garzette bianche in zima con 
 
 lanze & con le banderolle zalle. 
 E poi 12 milia lanizeri con schiopetti alabarde apedi. 
 E poi li solachi apedi staferi dil Signor cd archi e frize 
 E poi il gran Turcho sollo in mezo di Solachi. 
 E poi 3 garzoni con schufie doro vestiti di pano doro che li portano archo 
 
 e frize e laqua & veste. 
 E poi 2 monuchi seza coioni a cauallo dreto al signor 
 E poi Imralemaga ch' porta il stedardo dil Signor tutto verde sollo. 
 E poi 6 Sanzachi zoe bandere vna rossa vna biacha vna verde due diuixa 
 
 vna rossa e bianca & vna verde e rosso a cauallo. 
 E poi trombeteri & tamburi a cauallo. 
 E poi il campo arefuxo con li dulipante a cauallo co lanze e spada con le 
 
 banderole rosse. 
 A la banda destra dil Signor Spacoglani a cauallo co lanze con banderole 
 
 zalle. 
 A la banda sinistra dil Signor Selictari a cauallo con lanze con banderolle 
 
 rosse e bianche. 
 E poi gambelli & mulli e bagaie dil campo e pagi. 
 E poi Spachi con lanze a cauallo con dulipati biachi. 
 E poi vno bassa solo con soi Stafeti. 
 E poi 22 Sanzachi zoe stendardi a cauallo. 
 E poi trombeteri tamburi a cauallo. 
 E poi il campo a refuso de diuerse sorte con dulipant & barette rosse de piu 
 
 sorte generatione. 
 E poi gambelli e muli e bagaie dil campo insema. 
 E poi tutti li lachingi zoe ventureri. 
 
 Questo libro e stato cauato da lonus bei il qual era greco & hora e 
 turcho & e interpetro grande dil Signor & dal Signor Aluise grit- 
 ti fiol dil Duxo di V'enctia & tutto e vero.
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 INCOMPLETE TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE KANUN-NAMEH, 
 OR COLLECTION OF EDICTS, OF SULEIMAN THE MAG- 
 NIFICENT AS ARRANGED BY THE MUFTI EBU SU'UD 
 
 Translated from the Turkish 
 
 [From folios 6Q-70 of the Turkish MS. Fluegel No. 1816, Imperial Library, Vienna: "Funda- 
 mental Laws of Sultan Suleiman, according to the arrangement of the Mufti Ebu-Su'ud." The 
 table does not begin till folio 27 of the manuscript. The page references are to Hammer's Slaats- 
 ver/assung, where a translation of the paragraphs may be found.) 
 
 FOLIO 
 
 27. Law concerning mortgage and loan contracts. p. 396 
 
 28. Law concerning fallow fields. p. 397 
 
 29. Law concerning uncultivated lands. p. 398 
 
 29. Law concerning absent and missing [tenants]. p. 398 
 
 30. Law concerning the hereditary tenancy of land (tapu), and 
 
 regulations determining what sort of lands are given in 
 hereditary tenancy. p. 399 
 
 31. Regulations for the case when a SpaJii of either a large or a 
 
 small fief possesses his fief in common ownership. p. 401 
 
 32. Regulations for the case when a Spahi dies or is dispossessed 
 
 before the delivery of the hereditary lease. (In Hammer 
 
 the heading is different and is not logically placed.) p. 403 
 
 2,:^. Regulations for the case when the tenant dies before the 
 
 expiration of the hereditary lease. p. 404 
 
 ^2,- Law concerning the giving out of the winter and summer 
 pastures and concerning the legal relationships of meadow 
 lands. p. 199 
 
 34. Law concerning the ground tax, concerning the taxes upon 
 
 state-lands, sandy fields, peasants' houses, etc. p. 406 
 
 35. Law concerning the tenth, the tax upon vineyards, leased 
 
 vineyards, the bushel, and the bushel-tax. p. 407 
 
 36. Law concerning the tenth, the fifth, and the fodder tenth 
 
 {salariyeh). p. 407 
 
 37. Regulations for the case of joint ownership when more than 
 
 the tenth of the crop, namely, the half or the fifth, is 
 demanded from the Spahi. (Not found in Hammer.) 
 
 38. Special regulations regarding the tenths of the Spahis. (Not 
 
 found in Hammer.) 
 
 39. Law concerning the taxes on mills and green produce. p. 408 
 
 39. Law concerning the landlord's share, the tenths and the 
 
 fruits. p. 408 
 
 40. Law concerning the tenths [of honey, the tax on] bees, 
 
 other taxes, etc. p. 409 
 
 276
 
 APPENDIX 277 
 
 FOUO 
 
 41. Law concerning the sheep-tax and the fold-tax. p. 410 
 
 42. Law concerning the obligations of subjects and the tax on 
 
 prisoners. (Hammer, the slave-tax.) p. 410 
 
 42. Law concerning the half-hide-tax. (Hammer, the bride-tax.) p. 411 
 
 43. Law concerning the hide-tax and the ta.xes on abandoned 
 
 lands. p. 411 
 
 44. Law concerning fleeing the country. P- 412 
 
 45. Law concerning the wandering hordes. p. 413 
 
 46. Law concerning the wagoners. p. 413 
 
 47. Law concerning the irregular cavalry. (Hammer, fiefs for 
 
 public service.) p. 414 
 
 48. Law concerning the Yayas and Moscllcms (free foot-soldiers) . p. 4 1 5 
 
 49. Law concerning the imperial foundations and the vakjs. p. 416 
 49. Regulations concerning lawsuits over land. p. 417 
 
 51. Law concerning the time of the harvest. p. 418 
 
 52. Law concerning the harvest and the designation of those 
 
 persons who receive their income out of landed property 
 but not at the time of harvest. (Not a separate heading 
 in Hammer.) p. 419 
 
 53. Special regulations concerning fiefs in regard to dating, 
 
 registering, etc. (Not found in Hammer.) 
 
 54. Law concerning the intendants of the fiscus, the receivers of 
 
 taxes, and regulations concerning the revenues of the 
 
 court. p. 419 
 
 55. Law concerning the holders of great and small fiefs, and 
 
 concerning the freedom of some military persons from 
 certain occasional taxes. p. 421 
 
 56. Law concerning the Beylerbeys, the Sanjak Beys, and the 
 
 Kapuji-basliis. p. 422 
 
 57. Law concerning the fees of judges, p. 423 
 
 57. Law concerning the contents of the berats of the judges 
 
 (their diplomas of appointment). (Omitted in Hammer.) 
 
 58. Regulations concerning lawsuits between Spahis and non- 
 
 Mohammedans or between two Spahis. p. 424 
 
 60. Law concerning taxes which are demanded from leased land 
 when the tenth alone is insufficient. (Not found in Ham- 
 mer.)
 
 APPENDIX IV 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE MOGUL EMPIRE IN INDIA' 
 
 " The uncommon abilities of most of the princes, with the mild and humane character of all, 
 rendered Hindostan the most flourishing empire in the world during two complete centuries." — Dow. 
 
 General Comparison of Ottoman and Indian Conditions 
 
 When Baber first rode do\vTi through the grim gates of India's 
 northwest mountain-wall, the accession of Suleiman lay but a year in 
 the future; the Mogul won the battle of Panipat but four months 
 before the Turk was victorious at Mohacs, Thus the founding of the 
 Mogul Empire nearly coincided with the meridian splendor of the 
 Ottoman power, and its decisive battle of establishment W'ith the 
 victory which led to the last great extension of Ottoman authority 
 into Europe. Not Baber or even Akbar, Suleiman's contempo- 
 raries, but Aurangzeb, whose reign began a century after Suleiman's 
 death, affords the closest comparison with the Turkish monarch; 
 yet the third battle of Panipat in 1761 marked the \drtual destruction 
 of the Mogul Empire, whereas the second battle of Mohacs in 1687 
 meant but the first noteworthy step of the Ottoman retreat. The 
 house of Timur has disappeared from history, while the house of 
 Osman still reigns over wide territories; less than two and a half 
 centuries of genuine sovereign rule were enjoyed by the Moguls, 
 while six centuries have not sufficed to measure the independent 
 existence of the Ottomans. 
 
 The Mogul emperors perhaps never ruled so large a territory as the 
 Ottoman sultans, but their lands were far more productive ; moreover, 
 having from five to ten times as many subjects as their Western 
 cousins and an income in proportion, they could surpass even the 
 Magnificent Suleiman in display and largesse. The inferior persistence 
 of their dominion, therefore, suggests inferior strength and stability in 
 their institutions, a suggestion to which even a limited investigation 
 lends much support. 
 
 ' The object of this appendix is to set forth in outline the features of the Mogul 
 government, in order to suggest comparison with that of the Ottoman Empire. 
 Completeness neither of research nor of exposition has been attempted. A list 
 of the authorities consulted, most of which are secondary, will be found at the end 
 of the appendix. 
 
 278
 
 APPENDIX 279 
 
 The Moguls shared with the Ottomans their relation to the ideas 
 of the Mongol and Turkish Tatars of the steppe lands, and to those of 
 the Persians and the Arabs. They were more directly and vitally 
 influenced by the Tatars and Persians, and less directly by the Arabs. 
 Farther than this their relations were not to the comparatively 
 organized and energetic civilization of the Mediterranean but to the 
 more speculative and passive culture of India. Over the lands into 
 which they entered as conquerors lay the shadow not of sternly practi- 
 cal Roman legalism, but of Hindu and Buddhist contempt for things 
 mundane. 
 
 They founded a despotism, but one that was never, even under 
 Aurangzeb, so closely related to the Sacred Law of Mohammed as was 
 the government of Suleiman. They ruled a variety of lands in a 
 variety of relationships, but never with the stern control exercised by 
 the Kaisar-i-Riim (Roman emperor), the name which they ga\e to 
 the Turkish ruler at Constantinople. They enforced the obedience of 
 many peoples, who spoke many languages and practised many forms 
 of religion; yet they never held these peoples under any such iron 
 system of subjection as that which dominated the Christian subjects 
 of the sultan, even to the seizure of their children for tribute. 
 
 Since the passing of those prehistoric times when all human ideas 
 were solidified together into a single " crust of custom," every nation 
 has probably had two leading institutions, more or less closely con- 
 nected, — the one of religion and the other of government. The 
 foregoing pages have shown how powerful and pervasive were the 
 Ottoman Ruling Institution and the Moslem Institution in the Otto- 
 man Empire. In the parallel organizations of the empire of the 
 Moguls, however, it is not possible to discern comparable unique 
 individuality, systematic structure, and ordered efhciency. Some 
 allowance must be made for a comparative lack of information, since 
 not many Western observers have described the more distant empire; 
 but this fact can hardly alter the conclusion materially. The institu- 
 tional structure of the Mogul Empire was decidedly inferior to that of 
 the Ottoman Empire in solidity, system, and persistent energy. 
 
 The Personnel of the Mogul Government 
 
 Baber's following consisted of the comrades of his many years of 
 fighting, an army of cavalry, artillery, and musketry composed in 
 ancient Turkish fashion of high-spirited men attached to their chief 
 by impressive leadership and open-handed generosity. Courage,
 
 28o APPENDIX 
 
 military prowess, and the nominal profession of Islam were the 
 necessary qualifications; differences of race, education, and Moslem 
 doctrine were disregarded. Warriors of Turki stock, Persians of 
 Shiite leanings, hardy Afghans, " Roman " artillery engineers from 
 Stambul, were equals in the rough brotherhood of Baber's camp. 
 The principle of subordination, at least among persons of consequence, 
 was not that of slaves to their master, but of tribesmen to their chief, 
 of vassals to their honored suzerain. 
 
 When Turks had first invaded India, five centuries before, slavery 
 as a means of recruiting and training soldiers and governors was in full 
 swing. Mahmud of Ghazni was the son of a father who had risen 
 through slavery. The thirteenth century saw enthroned at Delhi a 
 dynasty of slave kings which antedated by several decades the Mame- 
 lukes of Egypt. Late in the fourteenth century Firoz III owned 
 180,000 slaves, of whom 40,000 constituted his household. The 
 Mameluke government endured for more than two and a half cen- 
 turies, until overthrown by the more centralized and efl&cient slave 
 system of the Ottomans; but in Central Asia and ultimately in India 
 a new force speedily rendered the slave method, save for some 
 survivals, antiquated and impossible. 
 
 The dominance of the Mongols was based on the discipline of an 
 army of freemen who were intelligent enough willingly to render 
 absolute obedience to their officers as the well-tested condition of 
 certain success. With the break-up of the vast Mongol Empire, the 
 lands now in Russian Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Persia lapsed 
 toward the horde organization of nomad Tatars, but became more and 
 more modified by Moslem feudalism. Under such conditions, Timur, 
 high-born and adventurous, chivalrous and literary, fanatical and 
 cruel, achieved an empire that was large and splendid, but personal 
 to himself, and destined to vanish almost with its founder. Yet he 
 presaged a time when in Asia and Europe alike there should come, 
 after the disintegrating individualism of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, a period of the gathering together of lands and peoples 
 into large units under strong personal governments. 
 
 Baber, descendent of Timur in the sixth generation, descendant also 
 of Genghis Khan, came at the beginning of the new era. Less ruthless 
 than either of his great ancestors, less legal than the " Inflexible One," 
 less Moslem than the " Scourge of Asia," but possessed of much of 
 the leadership and military genius of both, he stands forth, by reason 
 of his memoirs, as one of the best known conquerors of history. His
 
 APPENDIX 281 
 
 love of carousing, his family afTcction, his literary bent, his toleration 
 of heretics and infidels, his bold leadership, his liberality in dividing 
 spoil, presented qualities and suggested modes of activity which were 
 to characterize all his descendants down to the puritanical Aurangzeb. 
 
 Thus the family life of the house of Baber was far more normal than 
 that of the house of Osman. In contrast with an almost unbroken 
 line of Ottoman slave mothers and wives, whose names with those of 
 their daughters have hardly survived, many of the Mogul imperial 
 ladies are well known. Witness the princess Gul-Badan, daughter 
 of Baber, who like her father wrote memoirs; the empress Nur-Jehan, 
 who ruled India for a time; and the empress Mumtaz-Mahal, for whom 
 her devoted husband built the fairest of all mausoleums. Turki 
 princesses, ladies of high Persian descent, and daughters of Hindu 
 Rajahs, were taken into the imperial harem, where, though women 
 and eunuchs were present " from Russia, Circassia, Mingrelia, Georgia, 
 and Ethiopia," no emperors sprang from slave mothers during the 
 period of greatness. With such a policy in the family which con- 
 stituted a chief element in the unity of the Mogul Empire, it was but 
 natural that officers and soldiers, statesmen and public servants, 
 should be accepted with a like catholicity. The best fighters, of 
 course, continued to be those who came down newly from the high 
 country beyond the northwest passes; and since such of these as met 
 success were apt to send for relatives and friends, there was continual 
 recruiting from among Tatars, Persians, Afghans, and Arabs, — all 
 Moslems, but of various sects. " Rumis " from the Ottoman Empire 
 were especially useful in the artillery service. Some of them were 
 doubtless European renegades, but " Firinjis " or Franks were likely 
 to come more directly from Portugal and other European countries. 
 Yet by no means all the brave were from foreign lands. Many 
 Rajputs under their own Rajahs served the Mogul emperors most 
 acceptably, and when treated without prejudice they were faithful. 
 The high officers of government were usually Persians; but Akbar 
 was nobly served by the great Todar Mai, and appointed Rajahs to 
 govern the Punjab and Bengal. About one in eight of his paid 
 cavalry chiefs was a Hindu; and of the lesser civil-service positions 
 the mere necessity for numbers, aj')art from superior skill and training, 
 required that many should be held by Hindus. 
 
 It is not that slavery had disappeared from the INIogul system. 
 Traces of the old method can be discerned as late as the eighteenth 
 century. In fact, Muhammad Khan, a Bangash Xawab of Far-
 
 282 APPENDIX 
 
 rukhabad, maintained what was practically a replica in miniature of 
 the Ottoman system. Hindu boys between the ages of seven and 
 thirteen, some of them sons of Rajputs and Brahmins, were seized, 
 bought, or accepted as chelas or slaves to the number of one or two 
 hundred a year. They were taught to read and write, and were 
 specially rewarded when the task was completed. Five hundred 
 chelas from eighteen to twenty years of age were trained as a regiment 
 of musketeers. From among the older chelas were chosen the officers 
 of the household, generals of the army, and deputy governors of 
 provinces. The Nawab arranged marriages between chelas and the 
 daughters of chelas. He encouraged them to acquire personal prop- 
 erty, which he could claim in time of need; but he forbade them to 
 found towns or build masonry structures, lest occupying these they 
 might tend toward independence. IVIuhammad Khan did not, how- 
 ever, depend exclusively on his Hindu slaves; he sent money to his 
 own Bangash tribe, and thus obtained a colony of Afghans to whom he 
 gave high military positions and upon some of whom he bestowed his 
 daughters in marriage. Other vassals of the emperor made use of a 
 similar slave system; and it is not unUkely that the emperor himself 
 recruited his permanent infantry with the help of slavery, and that he 
 promoted some slaves to high positions. But the absence of definite 
 information in this direction is in most striking contrast to its abundant 
 presence in the records which deal with the Ottoman Empire in the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 In theory the officers of government were so far the ser\'ants of the 
 emperor that their accumulated personal property belonged to him 
 at their death ; but in practice the opulence and the generosity of the 
 sovereign led him often to leave such wealth in the hands of the 
 officers' children. When this was not done, employment in the 
 public service was assigned to sons and pensions were granted to 
 wddows. 
 
 Titles of nobihty were awarded for life to distinguished officials; 
 the chief officers of the central government and governors of great 
 provinces were called Emirs {Omrahs in many Western writings, 
 probably a plural of majesty), generals of the army were Khans, 
 and distinguished soldiers of lesser rank were Bahadurs or knights, 
 Khondamir says that Humayun organized a system of twelve 
 orders or arrows, according to which the entire imperial house- 
 hold was graded. " The twelfth arrow, which was made of the 
 purest gold, was put in the auspicious quiver of this powerful king,
 
 APPENDIX 283 
 
 and nobody could dare to touch it. The eleventh arrow belonged 
 to His Majesty's relations and brethren, and all the sultans who were 
 in the government employ. Tenth, to the great miishaikhs, saiyids, 
 and the learned and religious men. Ninth, to the great nobles. 
 Eighth, to the courtiers and some of the king's personal attendants. 
 Seventh, to the attendants in general. Sixth, to the harems and to the 
 well-behaved female attendants. Fifth, to young maid-servants. 
 Fourth, to the treasurers and stewards. Third, to the soldiers. 
 Second, to the menial servants. First, to the palace guards, camel- 
 drivers, and the like. Each of these arrows or orders had three grades; 
 the highest, the middle, and the lowest." Appointments and pro- 
 motions were, as at Constantinople, based upon valor and manifest 
 ability. Through all the period of greatness the ladder of advance- 
 ment was kept so clear that vigor, courage, and prowess could mount 
 from the lowest ranks to the steps of the throne. 
 
 Relation of Government to Religious Propagation 
 
 When the Ottoman Turks conquered their European territories, 
 as well as parts of their Asiatic dominions, they for the first time 
 introduced the Moslem religion. This was not the case with the 
 Mogul advance into India. Beginning with Mohammed ben Kasim's 
 invasion of Sind in 712 A.D., and starting afresh with Mahmud of 
 Ghazni in 1000 a.d., the Moslem political control, accompanied by the 
 conversion of a portion of the native population, had spread step by 
 step until, when Baber came after eight centuries, there remained 
 little of India that was not actually or had not at some time been under 
 Moslem rule. No data appear to exist for determining the actual 
 proportion of the total population that was Moslem during the Mogul 
 period. Guesses have been made ranging from a possible one in 
 four to Bernier's estimate of one in hundreds. The only basis of 
 any value would perhaps be that obtained by working backward 
 from the British censuses. In 191 1 the Mohammedans constituted 
 about twenty-one per cent of the population of India, and their number 
 was increasing at a slightly more rapid rate than the average. It 
 maybe supposed that the increase of the Moslem proportion was greater 
 during the days of the Mogul Empire, when it was especially profit- 
 able to change, and when there was a strong inward flow at the 
 northwest; but since the Mogul decline the rate of relative progress 
 has probably always been slow. Perhaps the proportion about 1761 
 was somewhat less than one in five, and in 1526 it may have been not
 
 284 APPENDIX 
 
 more than one in from ten to twenty. Bemier's guess would certainly 
 seem to have been wild, for it is inconceivable that so small progress 
 would have been made in a thousand years and so great in the next 
 two hundred. No doubt the Moslem contingent was then, as it is 
 now, unevenly distributed, being in high proportion in the northwest 
 and diminishing gradually with the distance from the mountain passes. 
 At points on the seacoast where trade had been active, the Moslem 
 influence had come early by way of the sea; hence there also the 
 percentage was greater. In Suleiman's empire, comprising as it did a 
 large amount of old Moslem territory and including even the Holy 
 Cities, the proportion of Moslems was, of course, much higher; but 
 it diminished rapidly from south to north, until in Hungary it must 
 have been extremely attenuated. 
 
 In the absence of an elaborate slave system in India, there was 
 not the steady public machinery of conversion which operated power- 
 fully in the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, it would seem that before 
 the reign of Aurangzeb no emperor cared to promote conversion to 
 Islam by financial or political rewards. Akbar, in fact, removed the 
 jizyeh, or poll-tax, which had previously, as in all other truly Moslem 
 lands until recent times, laid special burdens upon unbelievers, and 
 the tax was not reimposed until the time of Aurangzeb. Akbar also 
 forbade the enslavement of captives and of their wives and children. 
 For a century, therefore, the government lent little encouragement to 
 change of faith. Down to the accession of Aurangzeb there was a 
 clear contrast between Ottoman and Mogul policy in the attitude 
 toward the Moslem religion: the Moguls held far less than the 
 Ottomans to the idea of the conquest of the world for Islam, or to 
 the conversion of unbelievers, as an object of governmental endeavor. 
 Aurangzeb alone had such zeal as characterizes the average descendant 
 of Osman; he desired no infidels in his service, and regarded the 
 Deccan as the Dar-ul-harb which he wished to make part of 
 the Dar-ul-Islam. There can be no doubt, however, that under all the 
 Mogul emperors the social pressure usual in Moslem lands continued 
 to encourage conversion privately, while the slavery which Islam 
 normally sanctions was also contributing to the increase of the faithful. 
 Moreover, it is not likely that all the officers of the liberal emperors 
 were as tolerant and as indifferent to Moslem progress as were their 
 superiors.
 
 APPENDIX 285 
 
 The Army 
 
 At Delhi, as at Constantinople, no sharp line could be drawn 
 separating government and army. The Mogul conquest was achieved 
 by an army, and the army became a government. Amalgamation 
 with older systems of course introduced groups of under-officials 
 who had no military duties; but those who would be great had to be 
 capable of military command, men who might be familiar with the 
 pen but who must know how to wield the sword. 
 
 The Mogul army organization seems, in the midst of confused 
 testimonies, to have borne a considerable resemblance to that of the 
 Ottomans. The emperor was commander-in-chief, and as late as 
 Aurangzeb regularly commanded in person in great campaigns. He 
 had a personal army of 12,000 to 15,000 paid infantry and 12,000 to 
 40,000 paid cavalry. These corresponded in number and function, 
 but not at all in political importance, to the Janissaries and Spahis 
 of the Porte among the Ottomans. In great campaigns the standing 
 army was supported by the feudal cavalry, estimated at from 200,000 
 to 400,000, and by indelinite numbers of irregular infantry, drawn 
 from a mass estimated at four millions. The army was strong in 
 artillery, and possessed in trained elephants a force of which the Otto- 
 mans could not make use. 
 
 The emperor's infantry were, at least from Akbar's time, match- 
 lockmen; they seem to have been the only trustworthy and efficient 
 foot-soldiers. It would appear that their clumsy weapons, improved 
 by Akbar himself, were not changed up to the time of Aurangzeb; 
 for Bernier reports that in his day the muskets were rested on forks 
 and fired by men who squatted on the ground, and who feared that 
 the flash might damage their eyebrows and beards. On account of 
 the method of payment it is not possible to estimate closely the number 
 of the emperor's cavalry, or Mansabdars. Men who agreed to furnish 
 from five to five thousand troopers were taken into his service, and 
 pay {mansab) was assigned for the stipulated number; but even in 
 Akbar's time, according to Badauni, it was possible to present fol- 
 lowers hired only for the occasion, and yet to draw lifelong pay for 
 their services. In later years there ceased to be even approximate 
 correspondence between the amount of pay and the number of troops 
 furnished. The mansab was then regarded as a salary, or even as a 
 pension. 
 
 The more numerous feudal cavalry consisted of the holders (with 
 their followers) oijagirs, or grants, of the revenue of districts of larger
 
 286 APPENDIX 
 
 or smaller size, in return for which they served without other pay, 
 except in case of unduly prolonged campaigns. Holders of large 
 areas were accustomed to administer them in person, whereas those 
 who held smaller sections would often leave the administration to the 
 governors of provinces, who in time tended to appropriate the revenues. 
 Aurangzeb, however, pursued the policy of assigning service in 
 regions remote from the appointee's jc^zr, and of retaining wives and 
 children at the court as pledges of fidelity. Hindu Rajahs were 
 easily brought into the system by being invested with analogous 
 rights in their hereditary territories. Apart from these cases, the 
 appointments, as in Turkey, were not regarded as hereditar\% but 
 were apt to be given to fresh recruits of ability from beyond the 
 mountains. It was customary to make small assignments to sons of 
 dead Jagirdars, and to increase their allowances upon proof of merit. 
 Jagirdars and Rajahs, like Timariotes and Zaims, had jurisdiction 
 and other governmental duties in the areas assigned to them, and thus 
 carried a large part of the task of local government. Ultimately 
 many of the higher positions became hereditary in families which 
 worked toward independence in the days of decline. 
 
 The artillery seems to have been surprisingly strong under Baber 
 and Humayun, and to have declined later. Baber is said to have 
 had seven hundred guns at Panipat, which he chained together after 
 the method employed by Selim I at Kaldiran. Humayun is reported 
 to have had at Kanauj seven hundred guns discharging stone balls 
 of five pounds weight, and twenty-one guns discharging brass balls 
 ten times as heavy. Aurangzeb, it is said, transported seventy pieces 
 of heavy artillery and two or three hundred swivel guns, mounted on 
 the backs of camels. For fortress defence and siege operations the 
 Moguls had a few enormous guns, some of which are said to have 
 required for transport two hundred and fifty and even five hundred 
 oxen! In addition to these resources, it appears, if testimonies can 
 be trusted, that Akbar kept five thousand war elephants, each of 
 which was accounted equal in time of battle to five hundred horsemen ; 
 and Hawkins says that Jehangir had twelve thousand elephants of 
 all descriptions. Aurangzeb is reported to have maintained in the 
 palace stables the more modest number of eight hundred elephants. 
 
 The early Mogul armies were efficient and successful. Aurangzeb, 
 however, conducted about the Deccan in his twenty-four years' war 
 of conquest a horde that resembled a migration rather than an army. 
 For each fighting man there were at least two camp-followers; the
 
 APPENDIX 287 
 
 march was without discipline and order, like the movement of a herd 
 of animals; and the camp was a city five miles long, or, as others say, 
 seven and a half miles, or twenty miles in circumference. One Euro- 
 pean observer even reported that the encampment was thirty miles 
 about, and contained five million souls! Among these he counted 
 seven hundred thousand soldiers, of whom three hundred thousand 
 were cavalry. With all due allowance for exaggeration, the Mogul 
 army clearly tended to become exceedingly numerous, but of in- 
 creasing weakness and inefficiency. A battle in 1526 between Baber 
 and Suleiman would have been a worthy contest, but the army of 
 Aurangzeb would probably have been defeated easily by the Ottoman 
 troops which bit the dust before Prince Eugene. 
 
 The Court 
 
 Splendid as was the display of Suleiman's entourage, it lacked the 
 financial basis which the Moguls possessed from Akbar to Aurangzeb. 
 Gold and silver, gems, silks and muslins, were far more abundant in 
 the eastern land. A more highly developed architecture, showing 
 far greater richness of detailed ornamentation, served in India to 
 construct not only temples of religion and tombs of great personages, 
 but also marvellous palaces and pleasure-houses for the emperors. 
 Many thousands of attendants suppHed every possible luxury and 
 rendered every conceivable service. 
 
 No systematic description of the organization of the imperial house- 
 hold has come to hand. Scattered allusions reveal the presence of 
 very numerous groups of officials, agents, and servants of all grades. 
 Teachers, physicians, scholars, valets, chamberlains, butlers, cooks, 
 kitchen servants, musicians, poets, generals, captains, guards, 
 equerries, hostlers, herdsmen, elephant-drivers, and stablemen, 
 ministers of state, judges, treasurers, secretaries, swarmed about the 
 great halls and myriad chambers of the palaces at Agra, Delhi, and 
 Fatehpur-Sikri. These, with the tradespeople who made their living 
 by supplying the household but who were less directly attached to 
 the emperor, constituted a migratory city of large size, which followed 
 the emperor from residence to residence and in time of campaign 
 swelled almost unbelievably the following of his enormous army. 
 
 As for the court life which went on at the center of this vast and 
 multi-colored setting, this was necessarily twofold, by that custom 
 of all Moslem lands according to which the sexes must be segregated. 
 Daily assemblages, gatherings at the mosques on Fridays, great
 
 288 APPENDIX 
 
 ceremonies for special occasions, and the imperial hunts contained 
 none but men as participants. If women saw any part of such festiv- 
 ities, it was from a distance and through thick veils or close-wrought 
 lattices. Khondamir says that Humayun divided his attendants into 
 three great classes, concerned respectively with government and war, 
 with learning and literature, and with music and personal grace and 
 beauty. The latter were called " people of pleasure . . . because 
 most people take great delight in the company of such young-looking 
 men, of rosy cheeks and sweet voices, and are pleased by hearing their 
 songs, and the pleasing sound of the musical instruments, such as the 
 harp, the sackbut, and the lute." Humayun devoted Sundays and 
 Tuesdays to dealings with the first class, holding audience and attend- 
 ing to government duties on those days. Saturdays and Thursdays 
 were days when " the tree of the hope " of literary and religious 
 persons " produced the fruit of prosperity by their obtaining audience 
 in the paradise-resembling court." Mondays and Wednesdays were 
 devoted to pleasure parties, when old companions and chosen friends 
 were entertained by musicians and singers. On Fridays w^ere con- 
 vened " all the assemblies," whatever this may mean; and the em- 
 peror sat with them as long as he could. 
 
 The splendor of the court may be illustrated by two or three 
 extracts. Nizam-uddin Ahmad relates that Akbar, journeying in 
 the fifteenth year of his reign, accepted an invitation to rest at Dipal- 
 pur, " For some days feasting went on, and upon the last day splendid 
 offerings were presented to him. Arab and Persian horses, w^ith 
 saddles of silver; huge elephants, with chains of gold and silver, and 
 housings of velvet and brocade; and gold and silver, and pearls 
 and jewels, and rubies and garnets of great price; chairs of gold, and 
 silver vases, and vessels of gold and silver; stuffs of Europe, Turkey, 
 and China, and other precious things beyond all conception. Presents 
 of similar kind also were presented for the young princes and the 
 emperor's wives. All the ministers and attendants and dignitaries 
 received presents, and every soldier of the army also participated in 
 the bounty." 
 
 Sir Thomas Roe describes a curious annual ceremony of the Mogul 
 emperors as carried through by Jehangir. " The first of September 
 was the King's Birth-day, and the solemnitie of his weighing, to which 
 I went, and was carryed into a very large and beautiful Garden, the 
 square within all water, on the sides flowers and trees, in the midst a 
 Pinacle, where was prepared the scales, being hung in large tressels,
 
 APPENDIX 289 
 
 and a crosse beame plated on with Gold thinne: the scales of massie 
 Gold, the borders set with small stones, Rubies and Turkeys, the 
 Chaines of Gold large and massie, but strengthened with silke Cords. 
 Here attended the Nobilitie, all sitting about it on Carpets until the 
 King came; who at last appeared clothed or rather loden with Dia- 
 monds, Rubies, Pearles, and other precious vanities, so great, so 
 glorious; his Sword, Target, Throne to rest on, correspondent; his 
 head, nccke, breast, armes, above the elbows, at the wrists, his fingers 
 every one, with at least two or three Rings; fettered with chaines, 
 or dyalled Diamonds; Rubies as great as Wal-nuts, some greater; 
 and Pearles such as mine eyes were amazed at. Suddenly he entered 
 into the scales, sate like a woman on his legges, and there was put in 
 against him many bagges to fit his weight, which were changed six 
 times, and they say was silver, and that I understood his weight to 
 be nine thousand rupias, which are almost one thousand pounds 
 sterling: after with Gold and Jewels, and precious stones, but I saw 
 none, it being in bagges might be Pibles; then against Cloth of Gold, 
 Silk, Stuffes, Linen, Spices, and all sorts of goods, but I must believe 
 for they were in sardles. Lastly against Meale, Butter, Come, which 
 is said to be given to the Banian." The extract neglects to state 
 that the ceremony was followed by the distribution as largesse of all 
 the valuables weighed against the royal person with its heavy adorn- 
 ments. 
 
 Bernier describes an audience of Aurangzeb. *' The king appeared 
 seated upon his throne at the end of the great hall in the most magnif- 
 icent attire. His vest was of white and delicately flowered satin, 
 with a silk and gold embroidery of the finest texture. The turban 
 of gold cloth had an aigrette whose base was composed of diamonds 
 of an extraordinary size and value, besides an oriental topaz which 
 may be pronounced unparalleled, exhibiting a lustre like the sun. A 
 necklace of immense pearls suspended from his neck reached to the 
 stomach. The throne was supported by six massy feet, said to be of 
 solid gold, sprinkled over with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. It 
 was constructed by Shah-Jehan for the purjiose of displaying the 
 immense quantity of precious stones accumulated successively in the 
 Treasury from the spoils of ancient Rajahs and Pathans, and the annual 
 presents to the monarch which every Omrah is bound to make on 
 certain festivals. At the foot of the throne were assembled all the 
 Omrahs, in splendid apparel, upon a platform surrounded by a silver 
 railing and covered by a spacious canopy of brocade with deep fringes
 
 290 APPENDIX 
 
 of gold. The pillars of the hall were hung with brocades of a gold 
 ground, and flowered satin canopies were raised over the whole expanse 
 of the extensive apartment, fastened with red silken cords from which 
 were suspended large tassels of silk and gold. The floor was covered 
 entirely with carpets of the richest silk, of immense length and 
 breadth." 
 
 As regards the female side of the court, although this had almost 
 a separate organization and was, in keeping with Moslem and Indian 
 tradition, to a large extent secluded, yet the imperial ladies possessed 
 a measure of freedom through two centuries which allowed several 
 of them to stand forth as distinct individuals, and a few to influence 
 affairs profoundly. Jehangir assigned to the women of the household 
 the sixth and fifth orders, or arrows, of rank. Akbar is said to have 
 kept five thousand women in his harem. As usual, however, only a 
 few of these were wives or votaries of the imperial pleasure; most of 
 them constituted an elaborate organization for the housekeeping and 
 entertainment of the few great ladies, the mother, aunts, sisters, wives, 
 and favorites of the emperor. As already indicated, these women 
 were of all kinds, — free-born and slave, Moslem, Christian, and pagan, 
 Turki, Afghan, Persian, Hindu, Armenian, Slavic, Circassian, Georg- 
 ian, and Ethiopian. Their communication with the outside world 
 was kept up through their relatives and through eunuchs. 
 
 A few of the imperial ladies may be mentioned. The princess 
 Gul-Badan, third daughter of Baber and Dil-Dar, wrote a history of 
 the deeds of her half-brother, Humayun. In her later life she went 
 with other great ladies on pilgrimage to Mecca, taking seven years 
 for the journey; one-half of this time she spent in Arabia, where 
 she performed the rites of the pilgrimage four times. After twenty 
 more years filled with works of piety and charity she died at the age 
 of eighty. Her nephew, Akbar, with his own hand helped bear her 
 to the tomb. 
 
 Most powerful of all the Mogul imperial ladies was the Persian 
 Nur-Jehan, or Nur-Mahal, wife of Jehangir. Born in poverty and 
 actually cast away by her parents, she rose to the throne of command. 
 Mohammad Hadi says that " by degrees she became, in all but name, 
 undisputed sovereign of the empire, and the king himself became a 
 tool in her hands. He used to say that Nur-Jehan Begam has been 
 selected, and is wise enough, to conduct the matters of state, and that 
 he wanted only a bottle of wine and a piece of meat to keep himself 
 merry. Nur-Jehan won golden opinions from all people. She was
 
 APPENDIX 291 
 
 liberal and just to all who begged her support. She was an asylum 
 for all sufferers, and helpless girls were married at the expense of her 
 private purse. She must have portioned above five hundred girls 
 in her lifetime, and thousands were grateful for her generosity." 
 Not only could she rule the empire effectively, if not always wisely 
 and impartially, but she could lead armies. Defeated at last by 
 Shah-Jehan, she put on perpetual robes of mourning for her dead 
 husband and spent her last eighteen years in devoted seclusion. 
 
 Mumtaz-Mahal, niece of Nur-Jchan and wife of Shah-Jehan, did not 
 aspire to political control. She held fast the heart of her imperial 
 husband and became the mother of his fourteen children. The 
 incomparable Taj Mahal, built by the emperor after her untimely 
 death, bears eternal witness to great love followed by great grief. 
 
 Last may be mentioned two of the daughters of Mumtaz-Mahal, 
 Jehan-Ara and Raushan-Ara. These ladies, like Charlemagne's 
 daughters too great for matrimony, stirred up much trouble in the 
 imperial household. Jehan-Ara was her father's favorite in his 
 decadent old age, and an active partisan of her brother Dara. Of 
 vast influence for many years, she was at length overshadowed by 
 Raushan-Ara, who supported Aurangzeb and rose to greatness with 
 his advancing fortunes. Bernier was well-nigh overcome by a distant 
 view of this lady's majesty. " I cannot avoid dwelling on this pom- 
 pous procession of the Seraglio. Stretch imagination to its utmost 
 limits, and you can imagine no exhibition more grand and imposing 
 than when Raushan-Ara Begam, mounted on a stupendous Pegu 
 elephant, and seated in a megMambhar blazing with gold and azure, 
 is followed by five or six elephants with meghdambhars nearly as re- 
 splendent as her own, and filled with ladies attached to her household 
 (and succeeded by the most distinguished ladies of the court) until 
 fifteen or sixteen females of quality pass with a grandeur of appear- 
 ance, equipage, and retinue, more or less proportionate to their rank, 
 pay, and office. There is sometliing very impressive of state and 
 royalty in the march of these sixty or more elephants; in their solemn 
 and as it were measured steps, in the splendour of the megMaynbhars, 
 and the brilliant and innumerable followers in attendance; and if I 
 had not regarded this display of magnificance with a sort of philosoph- 
 ical indifference, I should have been apt to be carried away by such 
 flights of imagination as inspire most of the Indian poets, when they 
 represent the elephants as conveying so many goddesses concealed 
 from the vulgar gaze."
 
 292 . APPENDIX 
 
 The Government Proper 
 
 " The authority of the Great Mogul was despotic by all its origins: 
 by the fact of the conquest, by the Turkish tradition, by the tradition 
 of the old royalties of the country "; 1 and also, it may be added, by 
 the practice of Islamic governments since the abandonment of Medina 
 as the seat of the caliphs. The conquering chief owned all the con- 
 quered land, and the wealth and labor and hves of its inhabitants 
 were at his disposal. As for the restriction of despotism by the 
 Sacred Law, the house of Baber did not feel this strongly until late. 
 On the other hand, even a drunkard like Jehangir had a keen sense 
 of the responsibility of his high position. The emperor considered 
 it his duty to maintain order, reward faithful service, and sit daily 
 on the bench of justice to redress the wrongs of his people. Aurang- 
 zeb is reported by Bemier to have expressed his feeling of responsi- 
 bihty by saying: " Being born the son of a king and placed on the 
 throne, I was sent into the world by Providence to live and labour, 
 not for myself, but for others; . .. it is my duty not to think of my 
 own happiness, except so far as it is inseparably connected with the 
 happiness of my people. It is the repose and prosperity of my sub- 
 jects that it behoves me to consult; nor are these to be sacrificed to 
 anything besides the demands of justice, the maintenance of the 
 royal authority, and the security of the State." One of his letters 
 to his imprisoned father contains these words: " Almighty God 
 bestows his trusts upon him who discharges the duty of cherishing 
 his subjects and protecting the people. It is manifest and clear to 
 the wise that a wolf is no fit shepherd, neither can a faint-hearted 
 man carry out the great duty of government. Sovereignty is the 
 guardianship of the people, not self-indulgence and profligacy. The 
 Almighty will deliver your humble servant from all feeling of remorse 
 as regards your Majesty." The sole fountain of legislation, the 
 emperor observed economy in the issuance of it, making use, so far 
 as possible, of established Islamic practice and immemorial custom. 
 Yet from time to time, by administrative regulations, ordinances, 
 and decrees, he sought to improve the methods of government. 
 Aurangzeb, so much like Suleiman in many other respects, like him 
 also ordered and financed the compilation of a code of the Sacred Law. 
 It does not appear, however, that any such quantity of personal 
 
 1 Lavisse and Rambaud, Hisloire Generale, vl. 879.
 
 APPENDIX 293 
 
 legislation was issued by him or by any other Mogul emperor as by 
 the great Ottoman. 
 
 The succession to the Mogul throne never became regular, since 
 neither by Mongol nor by Moslem custom was any one method 
 prescribed. Nor did the more kindly disposition of the house of 
 Baber ever permit the publication of such a decree as that of Mo- 
 hammed II for the execution of brothers upon the accession of a 
 sovereign. Accordingly the resources of the empire were apt to be 
 wasted in civil wars between father and son, and between older and 
 younger brothers. Even the sons of Baber engaged in civil war: 
 Kamran, aided by Askari and Hindal, fought against Humayun. 
 Akbar's brothers were so young that he had no rival at the time of 
 his accession. His two elder sons drank themselves to death; but 
 this did not prevent Selim, who became the emperor Jehangir, from 
 rebelling against his father and hastening the latter's death. Jehan- 
 gir's two sons rebelled against him in turn. Shah-Jehan's four sons, 
 Dara, Shuja, Murad, and Aurangzeb, fought together until the last 
 encompassed the death of the others, besides keeping his father a 
 prisoner during the last seven years of life. The mournful story need 
 not be carried beyond the fierce civil war which followed the death 
 of Aurangzeb, in which two of his sons were slain. Clearly, the 
 Ottoman method was more practical if less humane. So unstable 
 was the personal situation of the emperor that, if he failed to show 
 his face in public daily, the empire fell into commotion and civil war 
 became imminent. From the uncertainty of the succession the state, 
 at least, derived this benefit, that the fittest of the candidates for 
 power was likely to obtain the throne. Nevertheless, as Dow says, 
 " to be born a prince " of the Mogul Empire was " a misfortune of the 
 worst and most embarrassing kind. He must die by clemency, or 
 wade through the blood of his family to safety and empire." 
 
 As the army was the defence and prop of the Mogul government, 
 so finance was its sustenance. Here again the regulations of the 
 Sacred Law were but scantily observed. Akbar, aided by Todar 
 Mai and extending the methods of the Afghan Sher Shah, reduced 
 to order and regularity the existing revenue system, which in the 
 course of centuries of varj'ing rule had become much confused. By 
 ancient custom of India, the sovereign as primary owner of the land 
 was entitled to one-third of the crops in kind. It was Akbar's task 
 to change the system to a more modern money regime, a step in 
 progress which the Ottomans have not been able to take even to the
 
 294 APPENDIX 
 
 present day. In classical times as in late years, India, importing less 
 of other commodities than she exported, steadily absorbed gold and 
 silver. It is likely that a large share of the wealth of the newly- 
 discovered Americas had already by Akbar's day made its way to India 
 through the increasing Portuguese trade, and that Columbus, Cortes, 
 and Pizarro thus unwittingly gave him the means of modernizing his 
 land revenue. Several great tasks were involved in the change. All 
 the cultivated land of India had to be measured, its quality judged, its 
 average annual produce for the first nineteen years of Akbar's reign 
 calculated, and the amount of the government's share for each tract 
 reduced to current money. At first, it was attempted to renew the 
 settlement annually; but, since this proved very difficult in a large 
 and conservative land, a ten-year basis was eventually adopted. 
 When the British came to power they found the revenue in a state 
 of confusion which indicated that at some time during the Mogul 
 period the evaluation had ceased to be made regularly, modifications 
 of the last assessment having then been introduced successively, 
 until all system had disappeared. 
 
 The imperial revenue was collected by a separate hierarchy of 
 ofl&cials. The great provinces were divided into districts, or sirkars, 
 in each of which a Diwan was chief financial agent. His office was 
 the Defter ali, and his clerks were Mutasidis. In lesser districts the 
 collectors were Amils or Karoris, the treasurers Fotadars. Karkums 
 were appointed to settle disputes and audit accounts. The crown 
 revenue might be farmed out, in areas of a size comparable to the 
 jagirs, to officials known as Zamindars or Talukdars, who in the days 
 of decline strove to make their position hereditary. In the local unit, 
 or pargana, the government was represented by a Kanungo, who kept 
 the records of assessments and payments. Akbar took measures 
 also to bring under cultivation waste and abandoned lands, and 
 appointed for this purpose Karoris, whose efforts were attended with 
 much success. In the best days the imperial financial officers acted 
 as a check upon the civil and miHtary officials, upholding ahke the 
 interests of emperor and common people. Evidence exists, however, 
 that even in the time of Akbar there was financial corruption, and 
 that revenue officials were not lacking who plundered the people and 
 defrauded the emperor. 
 
 The granting oi jagirs to officers and Rajahs, of pensions to learned 
 men and others, and of land in full title, free from revenue, for relig- 
 ious foundations seems to have diverted from the royal treasury
 
 APPENDIX 295 
 
 about two-thirds of the possible land revenue. On the other hand, 
 it has been estimated that the emperor received from customs, tolls, 
 miscellaneous taxes, and presents an amount equal to what he got 
 from the land. Careful calculations have resulted in ascribing to 
 Akbar a revenue of over two hundred million dollars annually, and 
 to Aurangzeb as much as four hundred and fifty million dollars. 
 Suleiman's revenue would then have been not the tenth part of 
 Akbar's and Louis XIV's not the tenth part of Aurangzeb's, 
 
 This revenue was expended upon the standing army, the court, 
 the support of learned and religious persons, a series of building 
 operations which were perhaps costly beyond parallel, bountiful gifts 
 at certain seasons, and regular charities. It would appear, farther, 
 that the expenses of the provincial governments were deducted from 
 the imperial land revenue after it had been estimated but before it 
 was paid into the treasury. In spite of the lavish outflow, however, 
 an enormous treasure seems to have been accumulated. By Man- 
 delslo it was estimated in 1638 at the incredible sum of one and a 
 half billion crowns, equivalent to about the same number of dollars! 
 
 It was probably because of the greatly increased revenue which 
 Akbar obtained by his new method that he found it possible to remit 
 the jizyeh or capitation tax on non-Moslems, and also the tax on pil- 
 grims, which had made the earlier Moslem rule obnoxious to the Hindu 
 population. On the other hand, it may have been not merely religious 
 zeal, but also financial stress caused by the civil wars preceding his 
 accession, by the Rajput revolt, by the long struggle in the Deccan, 
 and by the pious remission of many taxes not authorized by the 
 Sacred Law, including the tax on Hindu temple lands, that influenced 
 Aurangzeb to reimpose the capitation tax, and thus open wide the 
 rifts in his disintegrating empire. 
 
 In the days of its greatness, the budget of the Mogul Empire, alike 
 in income and expenditure, reached a height which had rarely if ever 
 been attained before. That of the East Roman Empire under the 
 Macedonian dynasty, and of the Saracen Empire in the days of 
 Harun Al-Rashid, may have rivalled it; but it is probable that only 
 the great Western powers, enriched by the industrial revolution in 
 the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, have ever reached 
 a financial magnitude beyond that of the empire of Aurangzeb. 
 
 Humayun divided the responsibilities of government among four 
 ministers, and a fourfold division persisted at least as late as Aurang- 
 zeb. By a curious form of logic the ckissification of duties and the
 
 296 APPENDIX 
 
 names of the four departments were based, not on convenience, but 
 on relation to the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. The 
 Khaki department had the care of agriculture, buildings, and domain 
 lands; the Hawai, of the wardrobe, the kitchen, the stables, and the 
 like; the Ateshi, of the artillery and the making of war material and 
 other things in which fire was employed; and the Abi, of the emperor's 
 drinks, and canals, rivers, and water-works. When Khondamir 
 wrote, about 1534, one man had oversight of all four departments; 
 but the development of a regular supreme official of great power, like 
 the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire, seems never to have taken 
 place, no doubt because the imperial house did not abandon the 
 tradition of personal government. 
 
 Humayun set aside two days of the week for business of state. 
 Drums were beaten to summon ofl&cials and give notice that the hall 
 of audience was open. Any subject might appear and ask for justice. 
 Suits of fine apparel and purses of money were at hand to reward 
 the worthy, and executioners stood by with drawn swords to punish 
 the guilty. Guns were fired at the close of the audience to notify 
 officials that they might retire. Aurangzeb held general court in the 
 great hall of audience for two hours on regular days. Persons who 
 had petitions to present held them up, and these were taken by the 
 emperor, read by him, and often granted on the spot. On at least 
 one day in the week he sat with the two Kazis of the city, and on 
 another day he heard privately ten cases of persons of low rank. In 
 the evening the chief ofiicers were commanded to be present in a smaller 
 hall, where Aurangzeb sat to " grant private audiences to his officers, 
 receive their reports, and deliberate on important matters of state." 
 This gathering resembled the Divan of Suleiman, but it lacked most 
 of the latter 's judicial work; in India such work was done by the 
 chief judges sitting separately, or by the emperor in the great audi- 
 ences. Furthermore, it was the sovereign and not a grand vizier 
 who presided in this council. The assembly was deliberative in 
 matters of policy and general administration, and judicial in that it 
 had jurisdiction of cases which involved ofiicers of high rank. 
 
 For purposes of local government the empire was divided into 
 subahs, or provinces, each under a Nawab (a plural of majesty, 
 from naib, often called "nabob" by Westerners), or governor. 
 Under Akbar the number of subahs varied from fifteen to eighteen. 
 Like the Beylerbeys of the Ottoman Empire, the Nawabs tended to 
 increase in number, the size of their provinces diminishing accordingly.
 
 APPENDIX 297 
 
 The Nawab was almost a little emperor in his province. He held 
 audiences, commanded the army, conferred lesser titles, appointed 
 and dismissed most officials, and was the highest judicial authority. 
 His power was limited, however, by the emperor's right to recall him, 
 by the right of apjx'al in judicial cases from him to the emperor, 
 and by the fact that the financial and judicial officers were separately 
 appointed and were responsible only to the throne. The Nawab 
 and his court were supported by lands granted in jagir. He might 
 suspend the jagirs of officers pending imperial decision. He was 
 responsible for the security and order of his province, and had Faujdars 
 under him in the several districts, who exercised military command 
 and the powers of chief of police and police judge, their position 
 resembling somewhat that of the Sanjak Beys of the Ottoman system. 
 The chief financial officers in each province were the Diwans, who, 
 as explained above, collected the imperial revenue and had oversight 
 of all lesser revenue officers. They and their deputies possessed 
 judicial powers in cases concerning finance and land titles. The 
 chief judge of the province, subject however to appeals to the governor, 
 was the Nizam. He heard the serious criminal cases, and his deputy, 
 the Daroga Adaulat al Aulea, attended to most of the important civil 
 ones. Local Kazis, aided by Muftis, Mohtesibs, and Kuhvals or 
 mayors, kept order in the smaller cities and districts. Rajahs who 
 had made terms with the emperor exercised powers very similar to 
 those of the Nawabs. Their positions were secured by heredity, 
 however, and in their provinces the imperial financial and judicial 
 officers had no jurisdiction. They simply owed military service and a 
 certain amount of tribute, failing in which they might be reduced by 
 force of arms. The Ottoman system contained no subjects who were 
 at once so secure of their positions, so nearly independent, and so 
 powerful as the Rajahs. Kurdish, Albanian, and Arabian chieftains 
 were perhaps as secure and as independent, but they were of very 
 small wealth and might; while the Voivodes of Wallachia and ^lol- 
 davia were not so secure or so independent. 
 
 The condition of the common people under this government is to be 
 known mainly by inference. Various documents and acts show the 
 benevolent intentions of emperors and high officials toward the 
 masses. Whether from wise prevision or from genuine charitable 
 feeling, there appears to have been much solicitude lest the cultivators 
 of the soil should be reduced to utter penury or driven from their 
 lands. Akbar, for instance, issued strict orders that on military
 
 298 APPENDIX 
 
 expeditions nothing should be taken from the people without careful 
 assessment and immediate or subsequent payment. Nevertheless, 
 at the best the result of the general policy was to leave the cultivator 
 little more than a bare living. The whole system drained away wealth 
 to a few great cities and a comparatively few persons. If but few 
 complaints rose from the masses, it was because their lot was no 
 worse than that of their forefathers had been for many generations. 
 Aside from the periods of civil war, the Moguls gave peace and order. 
 Akbar removed internal tolls two centuries before such a thing was 
 accomplished in France, and thus made of the land a single economic 
 unit, with the result that in his reign India as a whole enjoyed 
 such prosperity as she has known at very few other periods in her 
 history. 
 
 Before the time of Aurangzeb special care was taken to conciliate 
 the Hindus. Akbar adopted definitely the policy of equal treatment 
 for all, a degree of toleration not to be found in the contemporary 
 Europe of William the Silent and Henry of Navarre. The government 
 strove to abolish or mitigate such Hindu practices as were abhorrent 
 to Mohammedanism, and at least one Moslem practice which offended 
 the Hindus. Child-marriage, the ordeal, and animal sacrifice were 
 forbidden. Widows were to be burned on the funeral pyres of their 
 husbands only with their own full consent, and those who preferred to 
 live might marry again. In the Rajput tributary states Hindu law of 
 course prevailed. Probably in the regions under direct Mogul rule 
 Hindus were judged by their own law when Moslems were not con- 
 cerned and perhaps even by their own judges. It is true that the 
 Hindus had to wait until Akbar came to be released from the personal 
 disabilities imposed by earlier Moslem conquerors, that their temple 
 lands were taxed until the time of Aurangzeb, and that Brahmans, 
 pundits, and fakirs were perhaps only in Akbar's presence treated with 
 respect equal to that accorded Sheiks, Seids, and Ulema. But the 
 emperors and their officers gave like justice to all; they permitted 
 every man to worship according to the rites of his forefathers, and 
 apparently never had a thought, as had Selim the Cruel, of giving to 
 all non-Moslem subjects the choice between Islam and death. There 
 was little ground for discontent until Aurangzeb began to apply a 
 harsher policy.
 
 APPENDIX 299 
 
 The Moslems and the Moslem Church 
 
 In comparison with conditions in the Ottoman Empire, Moslems 
 and non-Moslems in the India of the early Moguls were far more 
 nearly on a level. This was due not merely to the toleration and 
 indifference of the emperors, but even more to the circumstances of 
 the conquest, under which both groups were treated alike, since Baber 
 at Panipat in 1526 subdued the Moslem Lodi Sultans of Delhi, and at 
 Kanwaha in 1527 the Hindu Rajj)ut confederacy. Indian-born 
 worshippers of Allah and of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva were mingled 
 in the same vast mass of conquered subjects, equally separated from 
 the victorious invaders. There was also, in all probability, a much 
 greater diflerence of race between Baber's highlanders and the Mos- 
 lems that he found in India than between the latter and the Hindus; 
 for many inter-marriages had taken place, and many natives of India 
 had joined the followers of the Prophet. Time, of course, diminished 
 this distinction. 
 
 Suleiman was distinctly the head of the Moslems of his empire. 
 Through his appointee the Sheik-ul-Islam, through his Hoja, the 
 Kaziaskers, the Nakib-ol-Eshraf, and other learned and saintly per- 
 sonages, he kept in close touch with the religious chiefs of the Moham- 
 medan population. All who prayed toward Mecca, at least from the 
 older portions of the Ottoman Empire, were attached by many ancient 
 ties to the house of Osman. Their ancestors had perhaps been con- 
 verts through its activities, had certainly fought for it, and had seen 
 its gradual and vigorous rise to greatness. No such vital bonds joined 
 to the Moguls the great mass of their Moslem subjects. These 
 remembered the glories and fa\'ors of lost d\Tiasties, and were indebted 
 to the new sovereigns only for defeats and humiliations which depressed 
 them toward the level of the Hindus, whom they had for centuries 
 held to be far inferior to themselves. They had no Shcik-ul-lslam, 
 honored by the sovereign with a seat above his own, whose decisions 
 might determine the fate of the ruler or of the empire. Almost as 
 much to them as to the Hindus the emperor was a stranger and a 
 foreigner, to whom should be rendered, because of his power, full 
 submission and instant obedience, but not loyal affection and whole- 
 hearted devotion. There was ever an absence of solidarity between 
 the house of Tlmur and those Moslem subjects who had not come 
 into India in the service of that house, and this was not least among 
 the elements of weakness that shortened the life of the empire. When
 
 300 APPENDIX 
 
 Rajputs had been stirred to revolt, when Mahrattas had gro\Mi 
 great, when bronzed and capable Moguls had been supplanted by 
 " pale persons in petticoats," who were left to rally about the tottering 
 throne ? More than two and a half centuries have elapsed since the 
 Ottomans ceased to draw systematically from the strength of the 
 Christian population, and yet the fighting stock of their Moslem 
 subjects has never failed or grown weak or faltered in its loyalty; 
 but Aurangzeb's successors found few upon whom to rely, and of this 
 few a very small proportion who would sacrifice their own fortunes 
 freely, who would be faithful unto death. 
 
 The Moguls found in India Sheiks, Dervishes, Seids, and Ulema, 
 mosques, schools, and pious foundations in abundance. In fact, 
 the developed system of Mohammedanism had extended itself over 
 India with visible results very much like those in all other Moslem 
 lands, among them the Ottoman Empire. From the ranks of those 
 educated in Moslem lore were taken teachers, judges, and counselors- 
 at-law. 
 
 There must have existed for the children of the Moslem population 
 mektebs, ordinary medressehs, and law schools, in which the Arabic 
 language and the sciences built upon the Koran, as well as the Persian 
 language and literature were taught. No doubt, also, the imperial 
 household contained systems of education, arranged for the two sexes 
 separately and prepared to train imperial and noble children and 
 young attendants, servants, and slaves in the knowledge which was 
 thought best adapted to fit them for life. It is interesting to notice 
 what impression the teaching regularly given to a young prince made 
 (if Bernier can be trusted) upon the keen intellect of Aurangzeb. 
 When the latter became emperor, his old teacher, it appears, con- 
 fidently presented himself at Delhi for reward. What, then, must 
 have been his surprise to receive such a deliverance as this from the 
 lips of majesty! 
 
 " Was it not incumbent upon my preceptor to make me acquainted 
 with the distinguishing features of every nation of the earth; its 
 resources and strength; its mode of warfare, its manners, religion, 
 form of government, and wherein its interests principally consist, 
 and, by a regular course of historical reading, to render me familiar 
 with the origin of States; their progress and decline; the events, 
 accidents, or errors, owing to which such great changes and mighty 
 revolutions have been effected ? . . . A familiarity with the language 
 of surrounding nations may be indispensable in a king; but you would
 
 APPENDIX 301 
 
 teach me to read and write Arabic; doubtless conceiving that you 
 placed me under an everlasting obligation for sacrificing so large a 
 portion of time to the study of a language wherein no one can hope to 
 become proficient without ten or twelve years of close application. 
 Forgetting how many important subjects ought to be embraced in the 
 education of a prince, you acted as if it were chiefly necessary that he 
 should possess great skill in grammar, and such knowledge as belongs 
 to a Doctor of Law; and thus did you waste the precious hours of my 
 youth in the dry, unprofitable, and never-ending task of learning 
 words! . . . Ought you not to have instructed me on one point at 
 least, so essential to be known by a king, namely, on the reciprocal 
 duties between the sovereign and his subjects ? Ought you not also 
 to have foreseen that I might at some future period be compelled 
 to contend with my brothers, sword in hand, for the crown, and for 
 my very existence ? Such, as you must well know, has been the fate 
 of the children of almost every king of Hindustan. Did you ever 
 instruct me in the art of war, how to besiege a town, or draw up an 
 army in battle array ? Happy for me that I consulted wiser heads 
 than thine on these subjects! Go! withdraw to thy village. Hence- 
 forth let no person know either who thou art or what is become of 
 thee." 
 
 In this rebuke, whether it comes chiefly from Bernier or from 
 Aurangzeb, is excellent criticism upon the stereotyped Moslem educa- 
 tion, and material enough to cheer the hearts of modern advocates 
 of a closer relation between subjects of instruction and the business 
 of life. 
 
 The lack of solidarity between the mass of the Moslems of India 
 and the Mogul government, together with the religious indifference of 
 several emperors, prevented the Moslem church there from reaching 
 the full measure of the dignity, influence, and authority of the Moslem 
 Institution in the Ottoman Empire. Humayun's division of the 
 household into three classes shows that he gave highest rank not to 
 the clergy but to princes of the blood, with nobles and ministers of 
 state and military men. " The holy persons, the great Muslieiks 
 (religious men), the respectable Seids, the literati, the law officers, 
 the scientific persons, poets, besides other great and respectable men 
 formed the second class." The orders, or arrows, of nobility show a 
 little more definitely the place of the Moslem learned men, since they 
 are assigned to the tenth order, after the monarch and the princes 
 of the blood and the Rajahs.
 
 302 APPENDIX 
 
 In the palace-city of Fatehpur-Sikri, Akbar built a great hall, the 
 Ibadat-Khana, to which he repaired on holy nights with Sheiks, 
 Seids, Ulema, and nobles. Finding that his followers could not keep 
 the peace when mingled indiscriminately, he assigned one of the four 
 sides of the hall to each group. Here he was accustomed to hsten to 
 theological discussions; and it appears that what he heard tended to 
 destroy his respect for the faith of the Prophet, and to predispose his 
 mind toward the eclectic religion which he instituted later. Says 
 Badauni: "The learned doctors used to exercise the sword of their 
 tongues upon each other, and showed great pugnacity and animosity, 
 till the various sects took to calling each other infidels and perverts." 
 In course of time Akbar obtained a document signed by the principal 
 Ulema, to the effect that a just ruler is higher in the eyes of God than 
 a doctor of the law (Mtijtahid), that Akbar was a just ruler, and that 
 therefore his decrees in matters of religion were binding upon the 
 world. This declaration placed Akbar distinctly above the Moslem 
 church and at least on a level with the prophet Mohammed; and he 
 seems even to have played with the idea that he was himself God. 
 Certainly he hoped to unify all creeds by his " di\'ine faith." His 
 son and grandson were not much interested in religion, and not at all 
 inclined to assume actively the religious headship of the empire; 
 under them, the Moslem church had to take care of itself. Religious 
 interest appeared again in Aurangzeb, not in any spirit of free inquiry, 
 but in a rigid conformity to the rules of the Sacred Law. From those 
 youthful days when he preferred the meagre Hfe of a saint to the 
 splendors of princely state, down to the long-deferred close of his 
 troubled career, Islam knew no more faithful observer of its rites and 
 prescriptions. In Aurangzeb 's reign and in his alone did the Mos- 
 lem rehgion take such a place in India as in the Turkey of Suleiman's 
 time. 
 
 The learned Moslems of the Mogul Empire never had as the head 
 of their hierarchy a personage of such dignity and power as the Sheik- 
 td-Islam of Constantinople. The Sadr Jehan appears to have been 
 concerned chiefly with the granting of land from the treasury to 
 learned and religious persons in lieu of pensions. The hierarchy of 
 judges seems to have been complete, at least in territory that was 
 directly administered, with two officials at court who corresponded 
 to the Kaziaskers of Suleiman, and with Kazis of high rank in the chief 
 city of each province and of lesser rank in other cities ; but the func- 
 tions of these officers appear to have been more closely restricted
 
 APPENDIX 303 
 
 than in the Ottoman Empire, by reason of the superior jurisdictions of 
 the em[)eror and the governors, and of the criminal and financial 
 jurisdictions of the Nizams and Diwans and their deputies. As there 
 is little mention of the muftis, it would seem that their role was not 
 very important. 
 
 The Moslem church in India was not of the very fabric of empire. 
 The imperial family and most of their associates in government ad- 
 hered to it; but it had no thorough control of education and justice, 
 and no power to sanction war or pronounce the deposition of an em- 
 peror. It did not curb the spirit of the nation or lay a hea\y hand 
 upon progress; but, as it w'as relatively unable to hinder by its weak- 
 nesses, so it could not contribute its abiding strength. The Mogul 
 Empire is but a memory. The Moslem church of India thrives and 
 grows under the rule of aliens of another faith. 
 
 Books Consulted in the Preparation of Appendix IV 
 
 Baden-Powell, B. H. A short account of the land revenue and its ad- 
 ministration in British India. 2d edition. Oxford, 1907. 
 
 Bayley, Sir E. C. The local Muhammadan dynasties. Gujarat. Lon- 
 don, 1886. — A sequel to Elliot's History of India. 
 
 Bernier, Francois. Travels in the Mogul empire, a.d. 1656-1663. 
 Westminster, 1891. — [As quoted by Lane-Poole and others.] 
 
 Crichton, A. S. The Mohammedans as rulers of India. In The Moslem 
 World, i. 99-116. London, 191 1. 
 
 Dow, Alexander. The history of Hindostan. 3 vols. London, 1770- 
 1772. 
 
 Elliot, Sir H. IVI., and Dowson, John. The history of India, as told 
 by its own historians. 8 vols. London, 1867-1877. — \'ol. v (1873) 
 contains extracts from Khondamir, Badauni, Nizam uddin Ahmad, 
 etc. 
 
 Gul-badan Begam. The history of Humayun (Humayun-nama). Trans- 
 lated by Annette S. Beveridge. London, 1902. 
 
 Holden, E. S. The Mogul emperors of Hindustan. New York, 1895, 
 
 Hunter, Sir W. W. A brief history of the Indian peoples. 23d edition. 
 [Oxford, 1903.] 
 
 Irvine, William. The army of the Indian Moghuls; its organization 
 and administration. London, 1903. 
 
 The Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad. J. R. A. S., Bengal, 1878, 
 
 340 ff. 
 
 Keene, H. G. The fall of the Moghul empire of Hindustan. New edition. 
 London, 1887. 
 
 The Turks in India. London, 1S79. 
 
 Lane-Poole, Stanley. Aurangzlb. (Rulers of India series.) O.xford, 
 1893.
 
 304 APPENDIX 
 
 Lane-Poole, Stanley. Babar. (Rulers of India series.) Oxford, 1899. 
 Mediasval India under Mohammedan rule (a.d. 712-1764). New 
 
 York, 1903. 
 Lyall, Sir A. C. The Moghul empire. In Cambridge Modern History, 
 
 vi. 506-529. New York, 1909. 
 Malleson, G. B. Akbar. (Rulers of India series.) Oxford, 1908. 
 Rambalt), Alfred. Organisation de I'empire mongol. In Lavisse and 
 
 Rambaud's Histoire Generale, vi. 878-883. Paris, 1895. 
 Ritchie, Leitch. A history of the oriental nations. 2 vols. London, 
 
 1848. 
 Roe, Sir Thomas. Journal of his embassy to the court of the Great Mogul. 
 
 1615-1619. In Hakluyt Society's publications, 2d series, vols. i-ii. 
 
 London, 1899. — [As quoted by Lane-Poole and others.]
 
 APPENDIX V 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 I. Sources of Ottoman Governmental Ideas 
 
 Three traceable lines of influence can be followed from the earliest 
 times until their appearance in the Ottoman government of the six- 
 teenth century. The oldest began in Egypt, and continued down 
 through various dynasties until the Roman conquest, after which it 
 began to enter the Roman imperial government. From this it passed 
 to the Byzantine and thence to the Ottoman system. Locally again 
 it followed a more direct course through the Fatimides and Mame- 
 lukes until the time of Selim I's conquest of Egypt. The slave 
 government of the Mamelukes offers an interesting subject for com- 
 parison with the Ottoman Ruling Institution. It would be super- 
 fluous to give references for this line of development, except perhaps to 
 mention Sir William Muir's book, The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty of 
 Egypt (London, 1896), and Stanley Lane-Poole's Egypt in the Middle 
 Ages (London, 1901). 
 
 The second line, which seems to have contributed a greater number 
 of elements, came down in the Bagdad-Euphrates valley through 
 various governments to the Saracen and Seljuk empires, from which 
 it passed to the Ottomans. Here again no general references need be 
 given. Perhaps the most useful book in connection with the subject 
 is D. B. McDonald's Moslem Theology, Jurisprudence, and Constitu- 
 tional Theory (New York, 1903). 
 
 The third and most direct line of influence is through the Tatars of 
 the steppe lands. In A. H. Keane's Man, Past and Present (Cam- 
 bridge, England, 1899) there is a full and clear discussion of the 
 anthropological relationships of the Turks. E. H. Parker's A Thou- 
 sand Years of the Tartars (London, 1895) gives an account which is 
 based closely upon the Chinese sources, but which would be helped 
 by the addition of as many of the two or three thousand notes which 
 he did not print as w^ould show the sources of his information. The 
 Chinese story of the great Tatar empire of the sixth century a.d. 
 may be found in Stanislas Julien's Documents Historiques sur les 
 
 30s
 
 3o6 APPENDIX 
 
 Tou-Kious (Paris, 1877). W. Radloff's AlUilrkischen Inschriften der 
 Mongol ei (Leipsic, 1894-95) discusses the earliest knowTi Turkish 
 monuments, which date from the eighth century. Emil Bretsch- 
 neider's Medieval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources (2 vols., 
 London, 1888, new edition, 1910) gives an account of the Uigurs, 
 whose greatness came in the eighth and ninth centuries and whose 
 name persisted until at least the twelfth century, as is shown by the 
 oldest known Turkish book, which is in their dialect. 
 
 This old book has been printed, with original Syriac text, translitera- 
 tion into Roman characters, and German translation, by Arminius 
 (Hermann) Vambery, under the title Uigurische Sprachmonu?nente und 
 das Kudatku Bilik (Innsbruck, 1870). The Kudatku Bilik, the " Wis- 
 dom that Blesses," written at Kashgar in 1068 by Yusuf Khass Hajil, 
 is really an " Art of Government," composed for the instruction of a 
 Turkish prince. It contains in rhymed couplets, arranged in chapters, 
 a large amount of advice on governmental matters, much of it being 
 in the form of proverbs. The book throws a great deal of light on 
 the fundamental Ottoman character. Vambery has also made a 
 study, on a philological basis, of the civilization of the Tatars, entitled 
 Die Primitive Cultur des Tiirko-tatarischen Volkes (Leipsic, 1879). 
 
 A book equally remarkable with the Kudatku Bilik is the Siasset 
 Nameh, written in 1092 for the Seljuk sultan Melek Shah by the great 
 vizier Abu 'Ali al Hasan b. Ishaq (known better by his title, the 
 Nizam al-Mulk), and printed in the original Persian, with a French 
 translation, by Charles Schefer, Paris, 1893. This " Book of Govern- 
 ment " reveals to some extent three things, — the methods of govern- 
 ment of Sassanian times, the actual government under Melek Shah, 
 and the Seljuk government as the Nizam al-Mulk would have it. 
 It also sheds much light upon Ottoman institutions. 
 
 The best general book on the Turks in Central Asia and their activi- 
 ties down to the occupation of Asia Minor is undoubtedly Leon 
 Cahun's Introduction a VHistoire de VAsie: Turcs et Mongols (Paris, 
 1896). The same ground is covered briefly by Cahun in Lavisse and 
 Rambaud's Histoire Generale, vol. ii. ch. xvi. There is a great deal 
 of information about the Persians and the Seljuk Turks in E. G. 
 Browne's Literary History of Persia (2 vols., London, 1902-1906). 
 Maximilian Bittner has made a valuable study of the Turkish language, 
 entitled Der Einfluss des Arabischen und Persischen auf das Tiirkische 
 (Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsberichte der 
 Philosophisch-Historischen Classe, vol. cxlii. pt. iii. Vienna, 1900).
 
 APPENDIX 307 
 
 Sir W. M. Ramsay's books are valuable for a study of the settlement 
 of the Turks in Asia Minor, particularly his Historical Geography of 
 Asia Minor (London, 1890), llie Geographical Conditions determining 
 History and Religion in Asia Minor (with comments by D. G. Hogarth, 
 H. H. Howorth, and others, Geographical Jimrnal, September, 1902, 
 XX. 257-282), and Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern 
 Provinces of the Roman Empire (Aberdeen, 1906). Volume v of 
 H. F. Helmolt's Weltgesckichte (Leipsic, etc., 1905) is useful for its 
 attempt to trace the elements of Ottoman culture which were derived 
 from Byzantine and other sources. William Miller's The Latins in 
 the Levant (New York, 1908) gives a clear picture of the confused and 
 divided state of affairs to which the Ottomans put an end in their 
 rough way. 
 
 II. The Ottoman Government in the Sixteenth 
 
 Century 
 
 Abundant material for a study of the sixteenth-century Ottoman 
 government has been provided and preserved; for the great place 
 which the expanding empire held in the world developed an immense 
 interest in its affairs on the part of the West, and made it worth the 
 while of many of its Western residents to prepare descriptions of its 
 outstanding features, among which its peculiar government was 
 treated with special fulness. The writings of these men of various 
 Western nationalities are in a way more helpful than a similar number 
 of books from native writers would be, because the foreigners could 
 usually take nothing for granted, but were compelled to draw a com- 
 plete picture. They could not, on the other hand, get at the inner 
 springs of the Ottoman activity as well as natives could; nor do 
 any of them, with the exception of Menavino, seem actually to have 
 read and knowTi the Ottoman laws. Fortunately, Ottoman his- 
 torians began to write abundantly shortly before the reign of Suleiman. 
 For Suleiman's own time, the collections of his Kanuns (since he was 
 noted as a legislator) contain much material which helps toward an 
 understanding of his government; moreover, writers of a later date 
 have been drawn with special interest toward his reign, as the cUmax 
 of Ottoman greatness. At the same time, no one but Zinkeisen has 
 attempted to give an extended account of the Ottoman government as 
 it was in the sixteenth century. 
 
 No reasonably complete bibliography of books relating to Turkey 
 has been made. The following lists are worthy of mention as giving
 
 3o8 APPENDIX 
 
 information in regard to the material for a study of Turkish history 
 and institutions before the year 1600: — 
 
 Richard Knolles gives a bare list of his authorities, to the number 
 of about twenty-five, at the beginning of his Generall Historie of the 
 Turkes, London, 1603. 
 
 J. H. Boeder published at Bautzen in 171 7 a Commentarius His- 
 torico-Politicus de Rebus Turcicis, in which he gives, at pp. i4~4i) a- 
 list of 317 works on Turkish history and affairs, including 45 folio 
 volumes, 128 quartos, 98 octavos, and 45 duodecimos. 
 
 Joseph von Hammer discusses his authorities in the preface to 
 volume i of his Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (Pest, 1827); and 
 in volume x, pp. 57-336 (1835), he prints a hst containing 3,025 titles 
 of works relating to Ottoman history which were to be foimd in Europe 
 outside of Constantinople. 
 
 Amat'di San Filippo, in his Biografia dei Viaggiatori Italiani, etc. 
 (2 vols., Rome, 1882), gives accounts of many of the early Italian 
 writers on Turkish affairs. 
 
 Henri Hauser, in his edition of Du Fresne-Canaye, described below 
 (p. 319), prints as Appendix II an Essai d'une Bibliographie des Ouv- 
 rages de XV le Siecle relatifs au Levant. The list, which does not 
 pretend to completeness, contains about 60 different titles. 
 
 The catalogue of the library of Count Paul Riant, pubHshed in two 
 parts at Paris in 1899, also contains the titles of a great number of 
 books and pamphlets which relate to the subject under discussion. 
 Most of this material has been transferred to the Ottoman collection 
 of the Library of Harvard University, through the generosity of 
 Messrs. J. R. Coolidge and A. C. Coolidge, — a gift, it may be added, 
 that has made the preparation of the present treatise possible. There 
 are also many titles on early Ottoman history in the catalogue of 
 Charles Schefer's Oriental library (published at Paris in 1899), from 
 which the same donors have contributed 445 volumes to the Harvard 
 Ottoman collection. 
 
 The list given in the Cambridge Modern History, i. 700-705, 
 in connection with Professor J. B. Bury's chapter on " The Ottoman 
 Conquest," is fuller than most of those just mentioned. It omits 
 some valuable authorities, however, such as Schiltberger, Menavino, 
 Ramberti, and Busbecq. 
 
 It is possible to get contemporaneous views of the Ottoman Empire 
 at a date earlier than the beginning of the sixteenth century, though 
 they are all incomplete. The first accoimts go back to the battle of
 
 APPENDIX 309 
 
 NicopoHs in 1396. Froissart (Chroniques, ed. Lettenhove, xv. 319 ff., 
 Brussels, 1871), in a description of the battle and succeeding events 
 which was based on accounts given by Jacques du F"ay and Jacques de 
 Helly, gives some idea of the Turkish army and the sultan. A better 
 account for the present purpose is that by Johann Schiltberger (trans- 
 lated into English by J. B. Telfer, and published by the Hakluyt 
 Society as The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, London, 
 1879). Schiltberger, then a youth of sixteen, was taken prisoner at 
 Nicopolis, and after serving as slave to Bayezid I for six years, was 
 captured by Timur at the battle of Angora, 1402. He was retained 
 as captive, not without important responsibilities and wide journeys, 
 for twenty-five years longer, when he succeeded in escaping. It is a 
 matter for regret that he says very little of his life at the sultan's court, 
 since he held a position which corresponded to that of page in later 
 times. 
 
 Another general account of the Turkish polity comes from the pen 
 of Bertrandon de la Broquiere, first gentleman-carver (ecuyer tran- 
 chant), councillor, and chamberlain of Duke Philip the Good of 
 Burgundy. In the course of a trip through the Levant he met Murad 
 II in Rumelia in 1433. ^^^ observations show that many features 
 of the Turkish system were then already in operation, — as the four 
 pashas, the slave system, the pages, the imperial harem, the Janissaries 
 (Jehaniceres), the feudal army, the Divan, etc. La Broquiere's 
 memoirs are edited by Charles Schefer, under the title Le Voyage 
 d'Outremer, as volume xii of Recneil de Voyages et de Documents pour 
 servir a VHistoire de la Geographic depuis le Xllle jusqu'd la fin du 
 XVIe Steele (Paris, 1892). The same volume contains an opinion in 
 regard to the military power of the Turks by Jehan Torzelo, dating 
 from the year 1439. 
 
 Still another report was written by a Transylvanian whose name 
 remains unknown, but who was a slave in Ottoman private families 
 from 1436 to 1453. Evidently he had before his capture been a 
 theological student who held some of the ideas that preceded the 
 Reformation movement. His book had a great vogue after the year 
 1509, under various titles, such as: Ricoldus, De Vita et Moribus 
 Turcarum, Paris, 1509 (the attachment to the name of Ricoldus is 
 purely accidental); LibcUiis de Ritu et Moribus Turcarum, Witten- 
 berg, 1530 (with a preface by JMartin Luther); S. Frank, Cronica- 
 Abconterfayung, etc., Augsburg, 1531; Tractatus de Moribus, etc. 
 The Wittenberg edition has been used in this treatise, and is referred
 
 3 lO APPENDIX 
 
 to as Tractatus. Although most of the book is theological and argu- 
 mentative, it affords a great deal of information. Among other things, 
 it contains what is probably the earliest mention of the tribute children 
 as the regular means of recruiting the Janissaries (Ginnitscheri) . 
 
 The next good contemporary account of the Ottoman system is 
 given in the history of Chal(co) condyles (written in Greek), of which 
 there are many editions and translations. The one used here is the 
 French translation, Histoire de la Decadence de V Empire Grec et Etab- 
 lissement de celui des Turcs, Rouen, 1670. This writer, whose story 
 comes down to 1465, speaks out of his own observ^ation in describing 
 the Ottoman camp and government. 
 
 The oldest authentic Kanuns are in the Kanun-nameh of Mohammed 
 II, which is translated by Hammer in his Staatsverjassung (Vienna, 
 1815), 87-101. 
 
 The earliest book that was devoted to a description of Ottoman 
 manners, religion, and government is by Teodoro Spandugino Canta- 
 cusino. Born of an Italian father and a Greek mother, he spent his 
 life alternately in the East and the West. His book describes the 
 empire as it was under Bayezid II, who died in 15 12, his information 
 about the government being obtained from two very high renegade 
 officials, probably Messih Pasha and Hersek-Zadeh Ahmed Pasha. 
 The earliest edition was printed in French at Paris in 1 519 under the 
 title Petit Traicte de VOrigine des Turcqz; later editions, with and \Ndth- 
 out his name, or under the name of B. Gycaud, bear the title La 
 Genealogie du Grant Turc a Present Regnant, etc. The edition used 
 here is a reprint of the first French issue, edited with notes by C. 
 Schefer, Paris, 1896. This writer is sometimes quoted as Spandugino, 
 and sometimes as Cantacusino. The first form is used in the present 
 treatise. 
 
 A book that is even more valuable in some ways is Giovanni An- 
 tonio Menavino's Trattato de Costumi et Vita de Turchi. The edition 
 used here was printed in Florence in 1548. Mena\-ino came of a 
 wealthy Genoese family. About the year 1505, when he was twelve 
 years of age, handsome, bright, and well educated for his years, he was 
 captured near Corsica by corsairs, and set aside as a gift suitable for 
 the sultan. Taken to Bayezid II, he pleased the old sultan greatly, 
 and was placed at once in the school of pages, where, as his book shows 
 throughout, he must have profited greatly by the teaching that he 
 received. He describes the religion, customs, and government of the 
 Ottomans in much detail. In 15 14 he was taken by Selim I on the
 
 APPENDIX 311 
 
 expedition against Persia; but he managed to escape to Trebizond, 
 whence he made his way to Adrianople, Salonika, and thence home 
 to Genoa. 
 
 A group of excellent sources for studies of both the government 
 and the history of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century is 
 found in the reports which the Venetian Bailos and orators extra- 
 ordinary presented to their Senate. 
 
 Venice, says Ranke, " frequently sent her most experienced and 
 able citizens to foreign courts. Not content with the despatches on 
 current afTairs regularly sent home every fourteen days, she further 
 required of her ambassadors, when they returned after an absence of 
 two or three years, that they should give a circumstantial account of 
 the court and the country they had been visiting." ^ Since Con- 
 stantinople was in the sixteenth century the station of first importance 
 in the Venetian dii)lomatic service, it is safe to assume that the sons 
 whom she sent there w^ere her most intelligent. 
 
 A number of these Venetian reports, which do not, however, reach 
 far into Suleiman's reign, are summarized by Marini Sanuto the 
 Younger in his volumious Diaril, 1496-1533 (58 vols, in 59, Venice, 
 1879-1903). The reports of Alvise Sagudino in 1496, and of Andrea 
 Gritti in 1503, are quoted by Schefer in the introduction to his edition 
 of Spandugino's work, noticed above. Rinaldo Fulin, in his Diarii e 
 Diaristi Veneziani (Venice, 1881) reprints Sanuto's abstract of the 
 Itinerary of Pietro Zeno, orator at Constantinople in 1523. 
 
 The Venetian reports for the reign of Suleiman are all, so far as 
 preser\'ed and known, collected in the invaluable work of Eugenio 
 Alberi, Relazione degli Ambasciatori Vencti al Senato (15 vols., Florence, 
 1839-1863). The three volumes of the third series (pubHshed 1840, 
 1844, 1855, respectively), as well as a portion of the fifteenth volume 
 or Appendix, are devoted to Turkish reports. Volume i of this series 
 is also separately printed as Doaimenti di Storia Ottomana del Secolo 
 XVI (Florence, 1842). A few writings are included in these volumes 
 which were not reports to the Venetian senate. 
 
 In all, thirty-nine documents are thus presented, of which sixteen 
 fall wichin the reign of Suleiman. Unfortunately there is a gap 
 between the years 1534 and 1553, a period for which there should be 
 eight or ten documents of great value bearing on the Ottoman dealings 
 with France, Austria, Spain, and Persia. 
 
 ' Leopold Ranke, The Ottoman and the Spanish Empires, Preface, i.
 
 312 APPENDIX 
 
 These volumes contain much helpful apparatus, such as a glossary 
 of Turkish words (vol. 1); notes on the Venetian embassies to the 
 Porte in the sLxteenth century, with a list of the Venetian representa- 
 tives (vol. ii); biographical notes concerning the writers (all three 
 volumes); chronological tables, genealogies, etc. (Appendix). The 
 Venetians were particularly interested in the financial side of the 
 Ottoman government, its mechanism, its army, and its fleet. Many 
 character descriptions of great personages enliven the pages. The 
 last pages of the Appendix contain a chronological index of the Re- 
 lazione and the other writings included; also an alphabetical list of 
 them by authors, and chronological lists by countries. The sub- 
 joined list of reports from Constantinople is taken from page 435, 
 and will serve as a means of locating many references in the foregoing 
 pages. The more valuable reports are distinguished by asterisks. 
 
 Venetian Reports from Constantinople 
 
 as given in Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 3 vols, and Appendix 
 
 (Florence, 1840- 1863) 
 
 Writer Date Volume Page 
 
 Gritti, Andrea 1503 iii i 
 
 Giustiniani, Antonio 15 14 " 45 
 
 Mocenigo, Alvise 1518 " 53 
 
 Contarini, Bartolomeo 1519 " 56 
 
 Minio, Marco 1522 " 69 
 
 Zen, Pietro 1524 " 93 
 
 Bragadino, Pietro 1526 " 99 
 
 Minio, Marco 1527 " 113 
 
 Zen, Pietro 153° " ^ ^9 
 
 *Ludovisi, Daniello 1534 i i 
 
 *Navagero, Bernardo 1553 " 33 
 
 A nonimo " " i93 
 
 *Trevisano, Domenico 1554 " m^ 
 
 *Erizzo, Antonio 1557 "i 123 
 
 *Barbarigo, Antonio 1558 " 145 
 
 Cavalli, Marino 1560 i 271 
 
 Dandolo, Andrea 1562 iii 161 
 
 Donini, Marcantonio " " i73 
 
 *Barbarigo, Daniele 1564 ii i 
 
 Bonrizzo, Luigi 1565 " 61 
 
 Ragazzoni, Jacopo 1571 " 77 
 
 *Barbaro, Marcantonio 15 73 i 299 
 
 Barbaro, Marcantonio " Append. 387 
 
 Badoaro, Andrea " i 347 
 
 *Garzoni, Costantino " " 3^9
 
 APPENDIX 313 
 
 Venetian Reports from Constantinople {continued) 
 
 Writer Date Volume Page 
 
 Alessandri, Vincenzo 1574 ii 103 
 
 Anonimo 1575 " 309 
 
 *Ticpolo, Antonio 1576 " 129 
 
 *Soranzo, Giacomo " " 193 
 
 Venier, Maffeo 1579 i 437 
 
 Anonimo 1582 ii 209 * 
 
 Anonimo " " 427 
 
 Contarini, Paolo 1583 lii 209 
 
 *Morosini, Gianfrancesco 1585 " 251 
 
 Michiel, Giovanni 1587 ii 255 
 
 Venier, Maffeo " " 295 
 
 *Moro, Giovanni iSQO iii 323 
 
 *Bernardo, Lorenzo 1592 ii 321 
 
 *Zane, Matteo 1594 iii 381 
 
 An interesting small pamphlet is the Auszug eines Brief es . . . das 
 Tiirckich Regiment unn Wesen sey, which was printed in a South- 
 German dialect in 1526. It purports to be a letter from a German 
 settled at Adrianople to his cousin in Germany, telling of his life as 
 subject Christian under the sultan. The literary arrangement is so 
 good, and the statements diverge so uniformly toward the dark side, 
 that this would seem to be a pamphlet written in Germany for the 
 purpose of arousing alarm and activity after the battle of Mohacs. 
 
 Hieronymus Balbus, bishop of Gurk, published at Rome in 1526 a 
 Uttle book of two essays addressed to Clement VII. The second part, 
 " continens Turcarum Originem, Mores, Imperium," etc., was also 
 commended to the Archduke I'erdinand. The work makes up for a 
 conspicuous lack of definite and accurate information by means of 
 abundant scriptural and classical quotations and allusions, vitupera- 
 tion of the Turks, and assertion of their military ineffectiveness. It is 
 chiefly valuable as an evidence of the " Turkish fear." 
 
 A book that had a wide influence is Turcicarum Renim Commentarius 
 addressed by Paolo Giovio, or Paulus Jovius, bishop of Nocera, to 
 Emperor Charles the Fifth, and dedicated at Rome in 153 1. It was 
 published in several languages; the edition used here is the Latin one, 
 Paris, 1539. The book is historical except for the last ten pages, 
 which contain a description of the Ottoman government with partic- 
 ular reference to its military resources. Giovio published also in 
 
 » The report at this page, though ascribed to Jacopo Soranzo, 1581, and so referred to in the 
 foregoing footnotes, was really written in 15S2 by some one in his suite.
 
 314 APPENDIX 
 
 two volumes at Florence, in 1550-1552, Historiarum sui Teniporis 
 Tomtis Primus [et Secundus]. 
 
 V. D. Tanco, or Clavedan del Estanco, a Spanish gentleman, wrote 
 in his native tongue a book that was translated into Italian and 
 published at Venice in 1558 under the title Libro dell' Origine et Suc- 
 cessione delV Imperio de' Turchi. The basis of the work is the Com- 
 mentarius of Jovius, just noticed; but this has been intelligently 
 combined with information from Froissart, Aeneas Sylvius, and others. 
 The latest date mentioned is 1537, and the death of Ibrahim in 1536 
 is not known. 
 
 A very valuable and interesting work is the Libri Tre delle Cose de 
 Turchi, etc., pubUshed by Aldus in Venice in 1539, and reprinted 
 often thereafter. It appears also as one of the component parts of the 
 work puhlishedhy Aldus in I ^4T,,Viaggifatti da Vinetia, alia tana . . . 
 in Costantinopoli, known sometimes simply as Viaggi alia tana, or 
 " Travels to the Don." The book appeared anonymously, but it has 
 been attributed with much confidence to Benedetto Ramberti (see 
 Alberi, Relazione, 3d series, iii. 8; Archiv fiir Oesterreichische Geschichte, 
 1897, Ixxxiii. 9; Revue Critique, 1896, i. 20-21). Ramberti accom- 
 panied Ludovisi to and from Constantinople during the first six 
 months of 1534. The book was written in the same year; for it 
 shows that Barbarossa was made pasha while it was in process 
 of composition (see above, Appendix I, p. 246, and, for the fact that 
 Barbarossa was back in Algiers, May 9, 1534, see Ursu, La Politique 
 Orientale de Francois I, Paris, 1908, p. 79), and in a long characteriza- 
 tion at the close of the third book it represents Luigi (Alvise) Gritti, 
 who was assassinated in Hungary late in 1534, as still living. 
 
 The first book of the three describes the journey overland from 
 Ragusa to Constantinople; the third book contains observations of 
 no great value on the power and policies of the Turks. The second 
 book is the piece de resistance. It opens with a brief description of 
 Constantinople and a rapid sketch of the origin and history of the 
 Ottoman Turks. An account of the Turkish government follows, 
 beginning with the inside service of the household of the sultan, 
 proceeding to the outside service, then taking up the chief officers of 
 government, the Janissaries, the Spahis of the Porte and the auxiliary 
 branches of the army. The harem, the palaces of the pages, the 
 Ajem-ogklans, and the arsenal are next described; then the feudal 
 army is explained as it was constituted in Europe and in Asia; and, 
 finally, a Hst of the sanjakates of the empire is given. The Italian
 
 APPENDIX 3 1 5 
 
 used is fairly good, and the style is very simple, often degenerating to 
 the mere cataloguing of ofTicers. Throughout the book the financial 
 aspect of the government is emphasized strongly, the incomes of all 
 persons mentioned being carefully stated. This second book of 
 Ramberti is of so great im{)ortance to the present treatise that it 
 is given in translation as Appendix I. The text used is that of the 
 Viaggi . . . alia tana (Venice, 1543). 
 
 Standing in exceedingly close relationship to the second book of 
 Ramberti is a twenty-two page pamphlet bearing the name of Junis 
 Bey (lonus Bei). Written in broad Venetian dialect and printed on 
 coarse paper in type of a poor quality, not kept clean, it is in two 
 portions, respectively of eight and fourteen pages, which are distin- 
 guished by the use of larger and smaller type. The title-page bears 
 the inscription " reprinted in 1537." The sixth page begins the list 
 of pashas with the statement that " Ibrahim of Parga is dead," and 
 then gives the name of his successor in the office of grand vizier. 
 On the seventeenth page it is said that the territories of the Beylerbey 
 of Mesopotamia " border " those of Bagdad which belong to Persia 
 (Bagdad was taken by Suleiman in the winter of 1535 and 1536); 
 on the eighteenth occurs the remark that Alvise Gritti " says " such 
 and such a thing; and at the close the book is attributed to " lonus 
 bei " and " Signor Aluise gritti." Now, Junis Bey was in Venice 
 from December 6, 1532, to January 9, 1533 (thesis of Theodore F. 
 Jones, p. 168, Harvard College Library); Gritti was assassinated in 
 1534; Junis Bey was again in Venice from January 15 to February 17, 
 1537 (Jones, 2og). It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that 
 the first edition of the pamphlet was printed at Venice in 1533 at the 
 time of Junis Bey's first visit, and that at the time of his second visit 
 in 1537 the first eight pages were recast with a few changes, and in 
 certain unsold copies substituted for the older pages, the remainder 
 being left as it stood originally, despite the erroneous reference to 
 Gritti. 
 
 It is very clear that Ramberti had before him while preparing his 
 " second book " a document almost identical with this pamphlet. 
 Beginning with his description of the sultan's household service, the 
 order of treatment is practically the same, and even the words and 
 phrases are often the same, except for differences of dialect. His 
 language frequently suggests that he is expanding on some material 
 before him. It is worthy of note, however, that not only Rambcrti's 
 use of ItaUan, but also his use of Turkish, is frequently better than
 
 3l6 APPENDIX 
 
 that of Junis Bey. Moreover, in his list of officials he includes the 
 Mufti and the chief dragoman (Terjuman), whom Junis Bey leaves 
 out, the latter omission being the more remarkable in that Junis Bey 
 held that office himself. On the other hand, where there are dif- 
 ferences in numbers, Junis Bey is more apt to be correct than Ramberti. 
 It seems not unlikely that both works were derived from a manuscript, 
 more nearly complete and correct than either, in the possession of 
 Alvise Gritti, which the latter allowed the two writers to use, Junis 
 Bey probably in 1532 and Ramberti in 1534. Al\dse Gritti was well 
 known to both. Natural son of the doge Andrea Gritti, he had won 
 high favor with Ibrahim, who entrusted him with great responsibilities. 
 In fact, it may not be too bold a conjecture to suggest that some of the 
 information contained in his manuscript came from the celebrated 
 Grand Vizier himself. Aside from this possibility, a minute survey 
 of the Ottoman government, prepared by Gritti himself or with his 
 collaboration, either for his own use or for the information of his 
 kinsfolk the Venetians, possesses a presumption in favor of its accuracy 
 and truthfulness. Accordingly the closing words, " all is true," 
 may be accepted with Httle reserve. 
 
 These two works, by Ramberti and Junis Bey, were much used by 
 other writers on Turkish affairs. Postel shows a close acquaintance 
 with them, and Geuffroy frequently does little more than present a 
 translation. Ramberti was incorporated into a number of the col- 
 lected works in regard to the Turks which appeared in various lan- 
 guages after the middle of the sixteenth century and thus entered into 
 systematic histories. Since the pamphlet of Junis Bey is very rare, 
 its text is presented in Appendix II, above. Besides matter very 
 similar to that of Ramberti, it contains near the end an account of 
 the order of march of the sultan's army when he went to war. 
 
 Guillaume Postel is perhaps the broadest-minded of the sixteenth- 
 century observers. He gives evidence of ha\ang had a legal 
 training, and of having reflected along political and constitutional 
 lines. Nicolay, in his preface, informs us that Postel knew Latin, 
 Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, and Arabic, as well as the principal 
 Western languages. He was sent by Francis I with the momentous 
 embassy of La Foret, and was therefore in Constantinople about the 
 year 1535. He seems to have made a later visit for the purpose of 
 acquiring manuscripts; but the substance of his book, as appears 
 from numerous references, dates from the first visit. The volume 
 was printed at Poitiers in 1560, but was not published till 1570. It 
 contains three parts, separately paged: —
 
 APPENDIX 317 
 
 I. De la Repuhlique des Turcs; II. Ilistoire et Consideration de 
 VOrigine, Loy, et Coustume des Tartares . . . Turcs, etc., III. La 
 Tierce Partie des Orientales Histoires, ou est exposee la Condition, 
 Puissance, b° Revenue de VEmpire Turquesque, etc. The first part 
 gives, among other things, an excellent account of the page system 
 and of Ottoman law and justice. The third part is built upon the 
 information in Ramberti and Junis Bey; it describes the page system 
 further, and adds a good account of the Ajem-oghlans and the Janis- 
 saries. By a reference it shows acquaintance with Giovio. 
 
 Antoine Geuflroy, knight of St. John, issued in 1542 his Briefve 
 Description de la Court du Grand Turc. Four years later this was 
 published in English by R. Grafton under the title The Order of the 
 Great Turcks Court of Eye Menne of War; and from thirty to fifty 
 years later it appeared, combined with other material, in large volumes 
 in the Latin and German tongues under the name of N. Honigerus or 
 Haeniger, with a Latin translation by G. Godelevaeus, entitled Aulae 
 Turcicae, Othomannicique Imperii Descriptio, etc. The work of 
 Geuflfroy thus had a great vogue. It was a sound, intelligent descrip- 
 tion of the empire, built upon the information in Ramberti and Junis 
 Bey. By references and allusions it shows acquaintance with Froissart, 
 Spandugino, and Giovio. The references to Geuflroy in the foregoing 
 pages are to the reprint in Schefer's edition of Jean Chesneau, de- 
 scribed below. 
 
 Bartholomew Georgevitz, pilgrim to Jerusalem, issued a small 
 book, De Turcarum Moribus Epitome, which passed through many 
 editions in two or three languages, the first dating not later than 1544, 
 and the latest not earlier than 1629. The chapters are on various 
 topics and from various sources. The first, on the rites and cere- 
 monies of the Turks, is abridged from Spandugino. The second, on 
 the Turkish soldiery, is by Georgevitz himself; it is perhaps the most 
 valuable, and shows by the age assigned to Prince Mustapha that 
 it was written about 1537. The fourth chapter gives useful Turkish 
 phrases, and is interesting as showing how Turkish words were pro- 
 nounced in the sixteenth century. The fifth chapter gives a full 
 account of the treatment of slaves of private citizens, written by one 
 who had been a slave, apparently Georgevitz himself. The edition 
 referred to in this treatise was printed at Paris in 1566. 
 
 Jerome Maurand accompanied Captain Pinon on his mission to 
 Constantinople in 1544. A few years later he wrote, in Italian, 
 an account of his journey, which was translated by Leon Dorez as
 
 3l8 APPENDIX 
 
 Itineraire de Jerome Maurand d'Antibes a Constantinople, and pub- 
 lished at Paris in igoi as vol. xvii of Recueil de Voyages, etc. 
 
 Before 1549, Ibrahim Halebi, the jurist, prepared by command of 
 Suleiman the codification of the Sacred Law which bears the name of 
 Multeka ol-ehhar, and which formed the foundation of D'Ohsson's 
 great work. 
 
 Jean Chesneau went to Constantinople with D'Aramont, ambassa- 
 dor of Henry II of France, and accompanied him on Suleiman's 
 campaign against Persia in 1549. His narrative, which is not very 
 illuminating or accurate, was edited by Charles Schefer and published 
 at Paris in 1887, under the title, Le Voyage de Monsieur d'Aramon, 
 as vol. viii of Recueil de Voyages, etc. Boimd in the same volume are 
 five letters in the Italian language, written from Constantinople in 
 1547 by the ambassador Veltwyck to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria; 
 there is also (at pp. 227-248) a reprint in French of the first edition of 
 Geuffroy. 
 
 Nicolas de Nicolay of Dauphine, royal geographer and extensive 
 traveler, who wrote a book called Discours et VHistoire Veritable des 
 Navigations, Peregrinations et Voyages f aids en la Turquie, is not the 
 least interesting of sixteenth-century authorities on Turkey. His 
 account of his voyage from Marseilles to Constantinople in the year 
 1551 in the train of the Seigneur d'Aramont, ambassador of Henry II, 
 and the drawings from life with which he embellishes his book, show 
 his capacity for exact observation. In his descriptions of the customs 
 and government of the Ottoman Empire, however, he does not reveal 
 the possession of much first-hand information. Menavino is here his 
 principal source of knowledge. The first edition of his book appeared 
 at Lyons in 1567; it was translated into several languages and repro- 
 duced often. An enlarged edition, published at Antwerp in 1586, 
 is the one referred to in the foregoing pages. The plates in the book, 
 about sixty in number, have been said to be the work of Titian ; but 
 this is apparently incorrect, for the preface merely states that Nicolay 
 drew from life on the spot and afterwards had the drawings reproduced 
 *' avecfraiz b° labeur incroyable.^' 
 
 From a literary point of view, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq is by all 
 odds the most interesting of sixteenth-century sources for the study of 
 Ottoman history and government. The charm of his style should not 
 obscure the facts that he was a keen and exact observer possessed of a 
 true scientific spirit, and that he reflected carefully on what he saw. 
 He wrote on Turkey during his period of service as ambassador from
 
 APPENDIX 319 
 
 Charles V to Suleiman between 1555 and 1562. One of his four 
 Turkish letters was printed in Antwerp in 1581, and since that time at 
 least twenty-seven editions and reprints have appeared in seven 
 languages. The edition of his Life and Letters, in two volumes, 
 translated from the original Latin by C. T. Forster and F. H. B. 
 Daniell (London, 1881), has been used in this treatise, as has also his 
 De Re Mililari contra Turcam instituenda Consilium, as printed in a 
 complete edition of his writings published at Pest in 1758, pp. 234- 
 277. 
 
 Philippe Du Fresne-Canaye, a young Huguenot gentleman, was 
 sent by his family to Venice for safety in the troubled days after the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew; and he took advantage of his nearness 
 to the Levant to visit Constantinople in 1573. He had prepared 
 himself for his visit by reading Ramberti, Postel, Nicolay, and others, 
 but he does not seem to have learned much that was not in those 
 authorities. His Voyage du Levant was edited for publication in 
 Paris in 1897 by Henri Hauser, as vol. xvi of Recueil de Voyages, etc. 
 Hauser's Appendix II contains the bibliography of sixteenth-century 
 works relating to the Levant which is mentioned above (p. 308). 
 
 The Kanun-nameh of Suleiman, collected by the Mufti Ebu su'ud, 
 who died in 1574, contained a number of the Sultan's Kanuns relating 
 mainly to financial and feudal matters. A translation of the incom- 
 plete table of contents of the Turkish manuscript copy of this Kanun- 
 nameh (which is in the Imperial Library at Vienna, Fluegel No. 1816) 
 is given above as Appendix HI. Many of the Kanuns are translated 
 in Hammer's Staatsverfassung, pp. 396-424, where they are erroneously 
 attributed to Achmet I. 
 
 A little anonymous book. The Policy of the Turkish Empire, 
 published at London in 1597, contains an interesting preface. The 
 remainder of the book deals only with the Turkish religion, and is 
 drawn mainly from Menavino, with some incorporation from Spandu- 
 gino and Georgevitz. 
 
 At the conclusion of Richard Knolles's Generall Ilistorie of the 
 Turkes (London, 1603), is to be found "A Briefe Discourse of the 
 Greatnesse of the Turkish Empire," written probably in the year 
 of publication, since the story comes down to the accession of 
 Achmet I in 1603. The lands of the empire, "of all others now upon 
 earth farre the greatest," are described, its revenues are set forth, the 
 Timariotes, the Janissaries, the chief officers of state, and the fleet 
 receive notice, and the Turkish power is compared with that of all
 
 320 APPENDIX 
 
 states which touch its frontiers. It is to this part of Knolles's work 
 (as printed in the 6th edition of his History, with Ricaut's con- 
 tinuation, London, 1687, ii. 981-990) that most of the references in 
 the foregoing pages are made. 
 
 Pietro Delia Valle, known as II Pellegrino, or The Pilgrim, wrote 
 Viaggi . . . in la Turchia, la Persia, e V India, which was pubUshed in 
 two volumes (four parts) at Rome in 1658-1663. He was in Con- 
 stantinople in 1614 and 161 5, and took advantage of every opportunity 
 to witness a ceremony. Observant of costumes and jewels, he could 
 not esteem the Turkish officials highly, because they were all slaves. 
 The references in this treatise are to the second edition of the first 
 part, published in 1662. 
 
 Many collections based on the above-mentioned writings and on 
 others were issued after the middle of the sixteenth century, and many 
 surveys of the Ottoman Empire were prepared as time went on. Of 
 the latter, three stand forth as of sufficient importance to throw light 
 on sixteenth-century conditions : — 
 
 Sir Paul Ricaut, a resident of Turkey for many years, issued late 
 in the seventeenth century The History of the Present State of the Otto- 
 man Empire. He explains that he obtained his information from 
 Turkish records from high officials, from members of the Ulema, and 
 from a Pole who had passed through the school of pages and had spent 
 nineteen years in all at the Ottoman court. Ricaut was evidently a 
 student of political philosophy; he seems to have relied especially 
 upon Tacitus, the ci\dl law, MachiavelH, and Lord Bacon. His book 
 was printed in several languages, has been much quoted since, and 
 deserv^es the fame it received. The sixth Enghsh edition, pubHshed 
 in London in 1686, is used here. The book is also printed at the end 
 of the second volume of his edition of Knolles's Turkish History, 
 London, 1687. 
 
 Ignatius Mouradgea D'Ohsson, born in Turkey and long a resident 
 there, prepared between 1788 and 1818 his great Tableau General de 
 VEmpire Othoman. He based his work on the Multeka ol-ebhar (see 
 above, p. 318) which with its comments he rearranged and translated, 
 adding to it a great many observations of his O'wti. The book appeared 
 in two forms, the huge folio edition being a magnificent example of the 
 bookmaker's art. The smaller edition of the book (7 vols., Paris, 
 1788-1824) has been used here. The last three volumes were published 
 under the supervision of his son after his death. SLx of the seven 
 volumes are based on the Multeka; the seventh contains a full descrip-
 
 APPENDIX 321 
 
 tion of the government, including the court, the ministers, the bureaus, 
 the army, etc. 
 
 Joseph von Hammer j^ublishcd at Vienna, in 181 5, Des Osmanischen 
 Reichs Staatsvcrjassung und Staalsvcrwallung, in two volumes. The 
 former is very largely a collection of documents, such as Kanuns, 
 fetvas, and extracts from the Multeka. A large amount of valuable 
 material is presented; but it is only partly digested, and the author 
 often does not indicate clearly whence he drew his extracts. The 
 second volume goes over much the same ground as D'Ohsson's seventh 
 volume. Another work of Hammer's, his Geschichte des Osmanischen 
 Reiches (10 vols., Pest, 1827-1835), has furnished the historical 
 background for this treatise. This work is extremely valuable from 
 the fact that it is based upon numerous inaccessible Turkish sources; 
 but it is largely uncritical, and it does not make sufficient use of West- 
 ern authorities. 
 
 Leopold Ranke published at Hamburg in 1827 the first volume of 
 his excellent work, Fiirsten und Volker von Sud-Europa. He was the 
 first to discern the value of the Venetian reports, and by their aid he 
 reached far greater accuracy than had yet been attained in attempts 
 to describe these great South-European empires when at the height of 
 their power. The English translation by W. K. Kelly, entitled 
 The Ottoman and the Spanish Empires in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth 
 Centuries (London, 1843), has been used in the present treatise. 
 
 The third volume of J. W. Zinkeisen's Geschichte des Osmanischen 
 Reiches in Europa (Gotha, 1855) has been used for its discussion of the 
 Ottoman government in the sixteenth century. It is based too 
 exclusively on the Venetian reports, which Zinkeisen seems to have 
 regarded as always trustworthy, and it makes little or no use of Turkish 
 sources. 
 
 Stanley Lane-Poole, in his Story of Turkey, London, 1886, chapters 
 xiv and xvi, gives a very good summary of the structure of the Otto- 
 man household and administration, condensed from D'Ohsson's 
 seventh volume. 
 
 In Lavisse and Rambaud's Histoire Generate, iv. 747 f!., there is 
 a brief account, by Rambaud, of the organization of the Ottoman 
 Empire in general. Though not accurate in every respect, it gives, 
 on the whole, an excellent picture. 
 
 A. Heidbom published at Vienna and Leipsic in 1909 a careful, 
 well-planned, and extremely valuable work entitled Manuel dc Droit 
 Public et AdministratiJ de V Empire Ottoman. Although the principal
 
 322 APPENDIX 
 
 purpose of the book is to explain present-day conditions, the historical 
 background is outlined at many points. Unfortunately there is 
 neither table of contents nor index; but perhaps these will be supplied 
 when the work is extended farther. The chapters of the present 
 volume deal with the territory of the state, the sources and funda- 
 mental principles of the legislation in force in the Ottoman Empire, 
 the head of the state, nationality, the administrative organization, 
 and justice. The chapter on justice occupies more than half the book, 
 and treats fully the judicial organization, civil and criminal law, and 
 procedure. 
 
 In addition to the works described above, the appended alphabetical 
 list contains the names of a few authors whose works, though occa- 
 sionally quoted in this treatise, call for no special comment; and also 
 the names of a number of writers who have dealt with the government 
 of Turkey, but who have not been quoted because their information 
 either is of secondary importance or derivation, or deals with a later 
 time, when conditions had been changed. 
 
 III. Alphabetical List of Works Cited 
 
 AcHMET I. See Kanun-nameh of Achmet I. 
 
 Albert, Eugenio. Relazione degli ambasciatori Veneti al senate. 15 
 
 vols, (in 3 series). Florence, 1839-1863. — See pp. 311-313. 
 Alessandri, Vincenzo. Relazione, 1574. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d 
 
 series, ii. 103-127. Florence, 1844. 
 Angiolello. Mss. in Bibliotheque Nationale, Fends Italien, Ne. 1238. 
 AuszuG eines briefes . . . das turckich Regiment und Wesen sey. n. p. 
 
 1526. — Seep. 313. 
 [AvENTiNUS, Johannes.] Tiirckische Historien, eder Warhaftige Besch- 
 
 reibunge aller Tiircken Ankunfft, Regierung, u. s. w. Translated 
 
 from the Italian by Heinrich Miiller. Frankfort, 1570. — Earlier 
 
 edition, with slightly different title, i563-[i56s]. 
 Badoaro, Andrea. Relazione, 1573. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 
 i. 347-368. Florence, 1840. 
 Balbus, Hieronymus. H . . .B. . . . ad Clementem VII . . . de civili 
 
 & bellica fertitudine liber . . . cui additus est alter continens Tur- 
 
 carum originem, mores, imperium, etc. Rome, 1526. — See p. 313. 
 Barbarigo, Antonio. Sommarie della relazione, 1558. In Alberi's 
 
 Relazione, 3d series, iii. 145-160. Florence, 1S55. 
 Barbarigo, Daniele. Relazione, 1564. Ibid. ii. 1-59. Florence, 1844. 
 Barbaro, Marcantonio. Relazione, 1573. Ihid. i. 299-346. Florence, 
 
 1840. 
 
 Relazione, 1573. Ibid. Appendix vol., 387-415. Florence, 1863. 
 
 Bassano, Luigi. See Du Zare.
 
 APPENDIX 323 
 
 Baudier, Michel. Histoire gencralle du scrrail, ct dc la cour du grand 
 
 seigneur empereur des turcs. Paris, 1626. 
 Belin, A[lphonse]. Du regime des fiefs militaires dans I'lslamisme, et 
 
 principalement en Turquie. Journal Asiatique. 6th series, xv. 187- 
 
 301. Paris, 1870. 
 £tude sur la propriete fonciere en pays musulman, et specialement 
 
 en Turquie. Paris, 1862. 
 Berard, Victor. La revolution turque. Paris, iQog. 
 Bernardo, Lorenzo. Relazione, 1592. In Alberi's Rclazione, 3d series, 
 
 ii. 321-426. Florence, 1844. 
 BiTTNER, Maximilian. Der Einfluss des Arabischen und Persischen auf 
 
 das Tiirkische. Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaflen. Sit- 
 
 zungshrrichte der Philosophisch Uislorischcn Classe, vol. c.xlii. pt. iii. 
 
 Vienna, 1900. — See p. 306. 
 BOECLER, J. H. Commentarius historico-politicus de rebus Turcicis. 
 
 Bautzen, 1717. — See p. 308. 
 Bon, Ottaviano. II serraglio del gransignore (1608). [Edited by Gu- 
 
 glielmo Berchet.] Venice, 1865. 
 BoNRizzo, LuiGi. Relazione, 1565. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 
 ii. 61-76. Florence, 1844. 
 Bragadino, Pietro. Sommario della relazione, 1526. In Alberi's Re- 
 lazione, 3d series, iii. 99-112. Florence, 1855. 
 Bretschneider, E[mil]. Medieval researches from Eastern Asiatic 
 
 sources. 2 vols. London, iSSS; another edition, 1910. — See p. 306. 
 Broscii, Moritz. The height of the Ottoman power. Cambridge Modern 
 
 History. Vol. iii. ch. iv. London, 1904. 
 Browne, E. G. A literary history of Persia. [2 vols.] London, 1902- 
 
 1906. — See p. 306. 
 Bury, J. B. The Ottoman conquest. Cambridge Modern History, vol. i. 
 
 ch. iii. London, 1902. 
 Busbecq, Ogier Ghiselin De. E.xclamatio: sive De re militari contra 
 
 Turcam instituenda consilium, etc. In Augcrii Gisknii Busbequii 
 
 Omnia quae extant, 234-277. Pest, [1758]. — See p. 319. 
 Life and Letters. Translated by C. T. Forster and F. H. B. Daniell. 
 
 2 vols. London, 1881. — See p. 318. 
 Cahun, Leon. Introduction a I'histoire de I'Asie: Turcs et Mongols. 
 
 Paris, 1896. — See p. 306. 
 Les revolutions de I'Asie. In Lavisse and Rambaud's Histoire Generate, 
 
 vol. ii. ch. xvi. Paris, 1893. — Formation territoriale de I'Asie. Ibid., 
 
 vol. iii. ch. xix. Paris, 1894. 
 Cambridge medieval history (The). Planned by J. B. Bury; edited by 
 
 H. M. Gwatkin and J. P. Whitney. Vol. i. Cambridge, England, 
 
 191 1. — See Peisker. 
 Cambridge modern history (The). Edited by A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero, 
 
 and Stanley Lealhes. 12 vols, and Index. London, 1902-1911. — 
 
 See Brosch, Bury. 
 Cantacusino. See Spant^ugino. 
 Cavalli, Marino. Relazione, 1560. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 
 i. 271-298. Florence, 184a
 
 324 APPENDIX 
 
 Chal(co)condyles, L[aonicus]. Histoire de la decadence de rempire 
 grec et establissement de celui des Turcs. Translated from the Greek 
 by B[laise] de Vigenere. Rouen, 1670. — See p. 310. 
 
 Chardin, Sir John. Travels into Persia and the East-Indies. London, 
 1686. 
 
 Charriere, E[rnest]. Negociations de la France dans le Levant. 4 vols. 
 Paris, 1 848-1 860. 
 
 Chesneau, Jean. Le voyage de Monsieur d'Aramon (1549). Edited 
 by Charles Schefer, in Recueil de Voyages, etc., vol. viii. Paris, 1887. 
 
 — See p. 318. 
 
 CoNTARiNi, Bartolomeo. Sommario della relazione, 1519. In Alberi's 
 
 Rclazione, 3d series, iii. 56-68. Florence, 1855. 
 CoNTARiNi, Paolo. Relazione, 1583. Ibid. 2og-2 so. Florence, 1855. 
 Cronica — Abconterfayung, etc. Augsburg, 1531. — The same as 
 
 Tractatus, q. V. 
 Dandolo, Andrea. Relazione, 1562. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 
 iii. 161-172. Florence, 1855. 
 Day, Clive. A history of commerce. New York, 1907. 
 Della Valle, Pietro (II Pellegrino). Viaggi . . . in . . . laTurchia, 
 
 la Persia, e I'lndia. 4 pts. in 2 vols. Rome, 1658-1663 (pt. i. La 
 
 Turchia, 1662, is 2d edition). — See p. 320. 
 DjEVAD Bey, Ahmed. Etat militaire ottoman. Vol. i. bk. i. Le corps 
 
 des Janissaires. Translated from the Turkish by Georges Macrides. 
 
 Paris, etc., 1882. 
 Documenti di storia ottomana del secolo XVI. Vol. i. Florence, 1842. 
 
 — The same as Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, i (1840). See p. 311. 
 D'Ohsson, Ignatius Mouradgea. Tableau general de I'empire othoman. 
 
 7 vols. Paris, 1 788-1824. — See p. 320. 
 Donini, Marcantonio. Relazione, 1562. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d 
 
 series, iii. 173-208. Florence, 1855. 
 Dorez, Leon. See Maurant). 
 Du Fresne-Canaye, Philippe. Le voyage du Levant (1573). Edited 
 
 by Henri Hauser in Recueil de Voyages, etc., vol. xvi. Paris, 1897. 
 
 — Seep. 319. 
 
 Du Zare, Luigi Bassano. Consuetudines & ratio vitae Turcorum. Rome , 
 
 1545- 
 Ebu su'ud. See Kanun-nameh of Suleiman. 
 Eliot, Sir Charles. Turks. Encyclopedia Britannica. nth edition, 
 
 xxvii. 468-473. Cambridge, 191 1. 
 Erizzo, Antonio. Relazione, 1557. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 
 iii. 123-144. Florence, 1855. 
 Estanco. See Tango. 
 
 Febure, Michele. L'etat present de la Turquie. Paris, 1675. 
 Froissart, Sir John. Oeuvres (chroniques). Edited by Kervyn de 
 
 Lettenhove. 25 vols, (in 26). Brussels, 1867-1877. — See p. 309. 
 Fulin, Rinaldo. Diarii e diaristi veneziani. Venice, 1881. — See p. 311. 
 Garzoni, Costantino. Relazione, 1573. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d 
 
 series, i. 369-436. Florence, 1840.
 
 APPENDIX 325 
 
 Georgevitz, Bartholomew. De Turcarum moribus Epitome. Paris, 
 
 1566. — See p. 317. 
 Gerlacii, Stephan. Tage-buch (1674). Quoted in Zinkeisen's Ges- 
 
 chichte dcs Osmanischcn Reiches, iii. 222 ff. Gotha, 1855. 
 Geuffroy, Antoine. Bricfve description de la court du grand Turc 
 
 (1542). Edited by Charles Schefer in Rcciicil dc Voyages, etc., viii. 
 
 227-248. Paris, 1887. — See p. 317. 
 Gibbon, Edward. The history of the decline and fall of the Roman em- 
 pire. Edited by J. B. Bury. 7 vols. London, 1906. 
 Giovio, Paolo (Jovius, Paulus). Historiarum sui temporis tomus primus 
 
 [et secundus]. 2 vols. Florence, 1550-1552. — See p. 314. 
 
 Turcicarum rerum commentarius. Paris, 1539. — See p. 313. 
 
 Giustinlxni, Antonio. Sommario della relazione, 1514. In Alberi's 
 
 Relazione, 3d series, iii. 45-50. Florence, 1855. 
 GoDELEV^us, G. [translator of Geuffroy, q. v.]. Aulae Turcicse, Otho- 
 
 mannicique imperii descriptio. Basel, 1569. — See p. 317. 
 Goldzuier, Ign[atius]. Muhammedanisches Recht in Theorie und 
 
 Wirklichkeit. Zeiischriflfiir Vcrgleichendc Rechtswisscnschajl, viii. 406- 
 
 423. Stuttgart, 1889. 
 The progress of Islamic science in the last three decades. Congress 
 
 oj Arts and Science, St. Louis, igo4 (ed. H. J. Rogers), ii. 497-517. 
 
 Boston, etc., 1906. 
 Grafton, R. [translator of Geuffroy, q. v.]. The order of the great 
 
 Turcks court of hye mcnne of war. London, 1546. — See p. 317. 
 Grassi, Alfio. Charte lurque, ou organisation religieuse, civil et mili- 
 
 taire, de I'empire ottoman. 2 vols. Paris, 1825. 
 Gritti, Alvise (or Luici). See Junis Bey. 
 Gritti, Andrea. Relazione, 1503. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, iii. 
 
 1-43. Florence, 1855. 
 Gycaud, B. La genealogie du grant Turc a present regnant. — The same 
 
 as Spandugino, q. v. 
 Halil Ganem. Les sultans ottomans, (fitudes d'Histoire Orientale.) 
 
 2 vols. Paris, 1901-1902. 
 Hammer, Joseph Von. Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches. 10 vols. 
 
 Pest, 1827-1835. — See p. 321. 
 Des osmanischen Reichs Staatsverfassung und Staatsverwaltung. 
 
 2 vols. (vol. i, Staatsverfassung; vol. ii, Staatsverwaltung). Vienna, 
 
 1815. — See p. 321. 
 Hauser, Henri. Essai d'une bibliographic des ouvrages de XVIe siecle 
 
 relatifs au Levant. In Recucil dc Voyages, etc., xvi. 316-320. Paris, 
 
 1897. — See p. 308. See also Du Fresne-Canaye. 
 Heidborn, a. Manuel de droit public et administratif de I'empire otto- 
 man. Vienna, etc., 1909. — See pp. 321, 7,22. 
 Helmolt, H. F. Weltgcschichte. 9 vols. Leipsic, etc., 1899-1907. — 
 
 See p. 307. 
 Holdich, T. H. Asia. Encyclopaedia Brilamiica. nth edition, ii. 74S- 
 
 749. Cambridge, 1910. 
 Honigerus (or Haeniger),Nicolaus [German translator of Geuffroy, g.».].
 
 326 APPENDIX 
 
 Huntington, Ellsworth. The fringe of verdure around Asia Minor. 
 
 National Geographic Magazine, xxi. 761-775. Washington, 1910. 
 Ibrahim Halebi. Multeka ol-ebhar. See Multeka. 
 Idris, Turkish poet-historian. Quoted in Hammer's Geschichte, i. 91. 
 
 Pest, 1827. 
 lONUs Bei. See Junis Bey. 
 Johnson, Mrs. [Susannah Willard]. Narrative of . . . captivity. 
 
 Springfield, 1907. — ^ Reprinted from the 3d edition, Windsor, Vt., 
 
 1814; ist edition, Walpole, N. H., 1796. 
 Jones, Theodore F. Venice and the Porte, 1 520-1 542. Thesis in the 
 
 Library of Harvard University. 
 JORGA, N[icolae]. Geschichte der Tiirkei. Vols. i-iv. Gotha, 1908- 
 
 1912. 
 Jovius, Paulus. See Giovio. 
 Julien, Stanislas. Documents historiques sur les Tou-Kioue (Turcs), 
 
 traduite du chinois. Paris, 1877. — See p. 305. 
 Junis Bey (Ionus Bei), and Alvise Gritti. Opera noua la quale dechiara, 
 
 etc. Venice, 1537. — See pp. 315, 316, and Appendix II. 
 JuYNBOLL, T. W. Handleiding tot de Kennis van de mohammedanasche 
 
 Wet. Leyden, 1903. 
 Kanun-nameh, of Achmet I. In Hammer's Staatsverfassung, pp. xvii-xix. 
 
 Vienna, 181 5. 
 of Mohammed II. Translated ibid. 87-101. Vienna, 1815. — 
 
 See p. 310. 
 of Suleiman. Collected by the Mufti Ebu su'ud, 1574; translated 
 
 in part, ibid. 384-427. Vienna, 1815. — See p. 319 and Appendix IH. 
 Keane, a. H. Man, past and present. Cambridge, England, 1899. — ■ 
 
 See p. 305. 
 Keene, H. G. The Turks in India. London, 1879. 
 Knolles, Richard. Generall historic of the Turkes. London, 1603. — 
 
 Seep. 319. 
 The same, entitled " Turkish History," with continuation by Paul 
 
 Ricaut. 3 vols. London, 1687-1700. — Knolles's work runs, with 
 
 continuous pagination, a little way into vol. ii (pp. 837-990). — See 
 
 p. 320. 
 KocHi Bey. Turkish historian. Quoted in Hammer's Geschichte, iii. 490, 
 
 etc. Pest, 1835. 
 K.OHLER, J. Die Wirklichkeit und Unwirkhchkeit des islamitischen Rechts. 
 
 Zeitschrijt fiir Vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, viii. 424-432. Stutt- 
 gart, 1889. 
 Klt)atku Bilik (Art of Government). By Yusuf Khass Hajil, 1068. See 
 
 VAiiBERY, Uigurische Sprachmonumente, etc. 
 La Broquiere, Bertrandon De. Le voyage d'outremer (1433). Edited 
 
 by Charles Schefer, in Recueil de Voyages, etc., vol. xii. Paris, 
 1892. — See p. 309. 
 Lane-Poole, Stanley. A history of Egypt in the Middle Ages. London, 
 
 1901. Seep. 305. 
 The story of Turkey. London, 1886. — See p. 321.
 
 APPENDIX 327 
 
 Lavisse, Ernest, and Rambaud, Alfred. Histoire generale du IVe siecle 
 a nos jours. 12 vols. Paris, 1893-1901. — See Cahun, Rambaud. 
 
 Lefevre, M. See Febure. 
 
 LiBELLUS de ritu et moribus Turcarum. Wittenberg, 1530. — The same 
 asTRACTATUS, etc., q. v. 
 
 Lodge, Richard. The Close of the Middle Ages, 1273-1494. London, 
 1906. 
 
 LONICERUS, Philippus. Chronicorum Turcicorum. 2 vols, (in one). Frank- 
 fort, 1584. 
 
 LuDOvisi, Daniello. Relazione, 1534. In Alberi's Rclazione, 3d series, 
 i. 1-32. Florence, 1840. 
 
 Macdonald, D. B. Moslem theology, jurisprudence, and constitutional 
 theory. New York, 1903. — See p. 305. 
 
 M.'^RSH, H. A new survey of the Turkish empire. London, 1664. 
 
 Maurand, Jerome. Itineraire d'Antibes a Constantinople (1544). Edited 
 and translated by Leon Dorez, in Recueil de Voyages, etc., vol. xvii. 
 Paris, 1901. — See p. 317. 
 
 Maurer, Caspar. Tiirckishe chronica, oder historische Beschreibung von 
 der Tiircken Ursprung. Nuremberg, 1660. 
 
 Mena\7no, Giovanni Antonio. Trattato de costumi et vita de Turchi. 
 Florence, 1548. — See p. 310. 
 
 Merriman, R. B. Gomara's annals of Charles V. Oxford, 191 2. 
 
 Meyer, Eduard. Geschichte des Altertums. 2d edition. Vol. i (in 
 2 pts.). Stuttgart, etc., 1907-1909. 
 
 Persia. Encyclopedia Britannica. nth edition, xxi. 202-224. Cam- 
 bridge, 191 1. 
 
 Michel:, Giovanni. Relazione, 1587. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 ii. 255-294. Florence, 1844. 
 
 Miller, William. The Latins in the Levant. New York, 1908. See 
 
 P-307- 
 MiNio, Marco. Relazione, 1522, 1527. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 
 iii. 69-91, 113-118. Florence, 1855. 
 Mocenigo, Al\t:se. Sommario delle relazioni, 1518. Ibid. 51-55. 
 
 Florence, 1855. 
 Mohammed II. See Kanun-nameh of Mohammed II. 
 Montesquieu, Baron de. Esprit des lois. 
 MoRO, Giovanni. Relazione, 1590. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 
 iii. 323-380. Florence, 1855. 
 MoROSiNi, GiANFRANCESCO. Relazione, 1585. Ibid. 251-322. Florence, 
 
 1855. 
 
 MuiR, Sir William. The Mameluke or slave dynasty of EgjT^t, 1260-1517. 
 London, 1896. — See p. 305. 
 
 MiJLLER, Heinrich. See Aventinus. 
 
 MuLTEKA OL-EBHAR. By Ibrahim Halebi, 1459. — See p. 318. 
 
 Myers, P. V. N. Medieval and modern history. Revised edition. Bos- 
 ton, [1905]. 
 
 Navagero, Bernardo. Rclazione, 1553. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d 
 series, i. 33-110. Florence, 1855.
 
 328 APPENDIX 
 
 NiCOLAY, Nicolas De. Discours et histoire veritable des navigations, 
 peregrinations, et voyages faicts en la Turquie. Antwerp, 1586. — 
 See p. 318. 
 
 Nizam Al-Mulk. See Siasset Nameh. 
 
 Parker, E. H. A thousand years of the Tartars. London, 1895. — See 
 
 P- 305- 
 
 Peisker, T. The Asiatic background. Cambridge Medieval History, 
 i- 323-359- Cambridge, 191 1. 
 
 Pelissie Du Rausas, G. Le regime des capitulations dans I'empire otto- 
 man. 2 vols. Paris, 1902-1905. 
 
 Peschel, Oscar. The races of man and their geographical distribution. 
 New York, 1882. 
 
 Policy (The) of the Turkish empire. [Anonymous.] London, 1597. — See 
 
 P-3I9- 
 PosTEL, Guillaume. [Pt. i] De la repubhque des Turcs; [pt. ii] Histoire 
 
 et consideration de I'origine, loy, et coustume des Tartares . . . 
 
 Turcs, etc.; [pt. iii] La tierce partie des orientales histoires, etc. 
 
 3 pts. in I vol. Poitiers, 1560. — See pp. 316, 317. 
 Radloff, Wilhelm. Die alttiirkischen Inschriften der Mongolei. Leip- 
 
 sic, 1894-1895. — See p. 305. 
 Ragazzoni, Jacopo. Relazione, 1571. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 
 ii. 77-102. Florence, 1844. 
 Rambaud, Alfred. L'empire ottoman (1481-1566). In Lavisse ani 
 
 Rambaud's Histoire Generale, vol. iv. ch. xix. Paris, 1894. — 
 
 See p. 321. 
 [Ramberti, Benedetto.] Libri tre delle cose de Turchi. Venice, 1539. — 
 
 See pp. 314-316, and Appendix I. 
 Ramsay, Sir W. M. Geographical conditions determining history and 
 
 religion in Asia Minor. Geographical Journal, xx. 257-282. London, 
 
 1902. See p. 307. 
 
 Historical geography of Asia Minor. London, 1890. 
 
 Studies in the history and art of the eastern provinces of the Roman 
 
 empire. Aberdeen, 1906. 
 Ranke, Leopold. The Ottoman and the Spanish empires in the sixteenth 
 
 and seventeenth centuries. Translated by W. K. Kelly. London, 
 
 1843. — Seep. 321. 
 Rawlinson, George. The story of Parthia. New York, 1893. 
 
 The seventh great oriental monarchy. 2 vols. New York, 1882. 
 
 The sixth great oriental monarchy. London, 1873. 
 
 Recueil de voyages et de documents pour servir a I'histoire de la geog- 
 
 raphie depuis le xiiie jusqu'a la fin du xvie siecle. Edited by Charles 
 
 Schefer and Henri Cordier. 21 vols. Paris, 1882-1907. — See 
 
 Chesneau, Du Fresne-Canaye, Geuffroy, Hauser, La Broquiere, 
 
 Maurand, Torzelo. 
 Redhouse, Sir J. W. A Turkish and English lexicon. Constantinople, 
 
 1890. 
 Revue Africaine: journal des travaux de la societe historique algerienne. 
 
 55 vols. Alger, [i856]-i9ii.
 
 APPENDIX 329 
 
 Riant, Count Paul. Catalogue de la bibliotheque. Prepared by L. de 
 
 Germon and L. Polain. 2 pis. Paris, 1899. — Sec p. 308. 
 RiCAUT, Sir Paul. The history of the present state of the Ottoman empire. 
 
 6th edition. London, 1686. — See p. 320. 
 RiCOLDUs. De vita et moribus Turcarum. Paris, 1509. ^ The same as 
 
 Tractatus, etc., q. v. 
 Robertson, William. The emperor Charles V. 4 vols. London, 1811. 
 San Filippo, Amat Di. Biografia del viaggiatori italiani. 2 vols. Rome, 
 
 1882. — See p. 308. 
 Sanuto, Marino (the younger). Diarii [1496-1533]. 58 vols., with an 
 
 additional volume of Prcfazione. Venice, 1879-1903. 
 SCHEFER, Charles. Catalogue de la bibliotheque orientale. Paris, 1899. 
 
 — See p. 308. See also Chesneau, La Broqulere, Siasset Naueh, 
 
 Spandugino, Torzelo. 
 Schiltberger, Johann. Bondage and Travels. Translated by J. B. 
 
 Telfer. Hakluyt Society. London, 1879. — See p. 309. 
 Siasset Nameh, traite de gouvernement compose pour le sultan Melik- 
 Chah par le vizir Nizam oul-Moulk [1092]. Translated by Charles 
 
 Schefer. Paris, 1893. — See p. 306. 
 Snouck Hurgronje, G. Le droit Musulman. Revue de VHistaire des 
 
 Religions, xxxvii. i ff., and 174 flf. Paris, 1898. 
 SORANZO, GiACOMO. Relazione, 1576. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 
 ii. 193-207. Florence, 1844. 
 [SoRANZO, Jacopo.] Relazione e diario, 15S1. Ibid. 209-253. Florence, 
 
 1844. — See p. 313, note i. 
 Spandugino Cantacusino, Teodoro. Petit traicte de I'origine des Turcqz 
 
 [Paris, 1519]. Edited by Charles Schefer. Paris, 1896. — See p. 310. 
 Steen de Jehay, Le Coatte F. Van Den. De la situation legale des sujets 
 
 ottomans non-musulmans. Brussels, 1906. 
 Suleiman. See Kanun-nameh of Suleiman. 
 Tanco, V. D. (Estanco, Clavedan Del). Libro dell'origine et successione 
 
 dell'imperio de' Turchi. Venice, 1558. — See p. 314. 
 Ta vernier, J. B. Nova ed esatta descrizione del seraglio del gran Turco. 
 
 Milan, 1687. 
 TiEPOLO, Antonio, Relazione, 1576. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, ii. 
 
 1 29-191. Florence, 1844. 
 Tischendorf, p. a. \^on. Das Lehnswesen in den moslemischen Staaten, 
 
 insbesondere im osmanischen Reiche. Leipsic, 1872. 
 Torzelo, Jeilan. [Opinion on the military power of the Turks, c. 1439.] 
 
 Edited by Charles Schefer, in Rccueil de Voyages, etc., xii. 263 flf. 
 
 Paris, 1892. 
 [Tractatus.] Libellus de ritu et moribus Turcorum ante LXX annos 
 
 aeditus[i46o]. Wittenberg, 1530. — See pp. 300, 310. 
 Trevisano, Domenico. Relazione, 1554. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, 
 
 i. 111-192. Florence, 1840. 
 TtJRCKEN, Bernardin. Getrewe und wolmeynende kurtze Erinnerung 
 
 von der Turcken Ordnung, in ircn Kriegen vn Veldtschlachten. Burgel, 
 
 1542-
 
 330 APPENDIX 
 
 Ubicint, A[bdolonyme]. fitat present de I'empire ottoman. Paris, 1876. 
 Urbinus, Theophilus. Tiirckisches Stadt-Biichlein. Nuremberg, 1664. 
 Ursu, J[on]. La politique orientale de Francois I (1515-1547). Paris, 
 
 1908. 
 Vambery, Hermann (Arminius). Die primitive Cultur des turko-tatari- 
 
 schen Volkes auf grund sprachlicher Forschungen. Leipsic, 1879. — 
 
 See p. 306. 
 Uigurische Sprachmonumente und das Kudatku Bilik. Innsbruck, 
 
 1870. — See p. 306. 
 Venier, Maffeo. Relazione, 1579, 1587. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d 
 
 series, i. 437-468, ii. 295-307. Florence, 1840-1844. 
 ViAGGi fatti da Vinetia, alia tana ... in Costantinopoli. Venice, 1543. 
 
 — Contains Libri Tre, etc., of Ramberti, q. v. 
 YoussouF Fehmi. Histoire de la Turquie. Paris, 1909. 
 YusuF Khass Hajil. Kudatku Bilik (Art of Government) . See Vambery, 
 
 Uigurische Sprachmonumente, etc. 
 Zane, Matteo. Relazione, 1594. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, iii. 
 
 381-444. Florence, 1855. 
 Zen (or Zeno), Pietro. Itinerario, 1523. In Fulin's Diarii, 104-136. 
 
 Venice, 1881. 
 Relazione, 1524, 1530. In Alberi's Relazione, 3d series, iii. 93-97, 
 
 119-122. Florence, 1855. 
 Zinkeisen, J. W. Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches in Europa. 7 vols. 
 
 and Index, Hamburg and Gotha, 1840-1863. — See p. 321.
 
 GLOSSARY OF TURKISH WORDS 
 
 The pronunciation of the words defined should be approximately 
 phonetic, the vowels by the continental system, the consonants as 
 usually in English. Forms not defined are variant Western spel- 
 lings. Gh is silent except at the beginning of a word. Plurals of 
 nouns originally Turkish are formed by affixing -ler or -lar. The 
 plurals in -s used in the foregoing pages are Anglicized. 
 
 Achiar, or Aconiziae, see Akinji. 
 Adet, established custom, 152, 161. 
 Agha, a general officer. 
 Aghiar, see Akinji. 
 Agiamoglani, see Ajem-oghlan. 
 Ajem-oghlan (untrained youth), a cadet 
 
 or apprentice Janissary, 79 ff. 
 Akinji, the irregular cavalry, 105. 
 Alai Bey, a colonel of the feudal cavalry, 
 
 103. 
 Alcangi, Alcanzi, or Alengi, see Akinji. 
 Allophase, see Ulufagi. 
 Ameji, a receiver of petitions, etc., 183. 
 Aquangi, see Akinji. 
 Arpa-emini, intendant of forage, 132. 
 Ashji-bashi, a chief cook, 245. 
 Azab, the irregular infantry, 105. 
 
 Bailo (Italian), a Venetian minister resi- 
 dent at Constantinople. 
 
 Bairam, the name of two great Moslem 
 festivals, 136. 
 
 Balucasi, see Boluk-bashi. 
 
 Bascia, see Pasha. 
 
 Bash, a head, a chief. 
 
 Bassa, see Pasha. 
 
 Berat, an ordinance, or document con- 
 ferring a dignity or privilege. 
 
 Berat-emini, a distributor of ordinances, 
 
 253- 
 Beylerbey (lord of lords), a general of 
 feudal cavalry and governor of a prov- 
 ince or group of provinces, 103. 
 
 Beylikji, a director of the three chancery 
 bureaus, 183. 
 
 Beylik Kalemi, a bureau of the Chancery, 
 183. 
 
 Bezestan, a market house in Constanti- 
 nople, built by Mohammed II. 
 
 Bin(m)bashi (chief of a thousand), a 
 colonel. 
 
 Boluk-bashi, a captain of the Janissaries, 
 249. 
 
 Bostanji, a gardener. 
 
 Bostanji-bashi, the head gardener of the 
 Sultan's palace — a high official, 130. 
 
 Cacaia, see Kiaya. 
 Cadilescher, see Kaziasker. 
 Cahaia, or Caia, see Kiaya. 
 Calvalgibassi, see Helvaji-bashi. 
 Capagasi, see Kapu-aghasi. 
 Capiagabasi, see Kapuji-bashi. 
 Capi (oglan), see Ghureba (oghlan). 
 Caragi, see Kharaji. 
 Caripicus, see Ghureba. 
 Caripp (oglan), see Ghureba (oghlan). 
 Caripy, see Ghureba. 
 Carmandari (Italianized), muleteers, 251. 
 Carzeri, see KJiaraji. 
 Casnandarbasi, see Khazinchdar-bashi. 
 Cavriliji (Italianized), a herdsman, 251. 
 Ceyssi, see Seis. 
 Chakirji, a vulturer, 252. 
 Chasnejir, a taster, 245. 
 Chasnejir-bashi, a chief taster, 245. 
 331
 
 332 
 
 GLOSSARY OF TURKISH WORDS 
 
 Chaush, an usher, 130. 
 
 Chaush-bashi, chief of the Chaushes — 
 
 a high official, 183. 
 Checaya, or Chechessi, see Kiaya. 
 Chelebi, a gentleman. 
 Cheri-bashi (chief of soldiery), a petty 
 
 officer of feudal cavalry. 
 Chiccaia, or Chietcudasci, see Kiaya. 
 Chokadar, a page of high rank, 127. 
 Ciarcagi, see Ghureba. 
 Ciaus, see Chaush. 
 Cogia, see Hoja. 
 Coureyschs, see Koreish. 
 
 Danishmend, a master of arts, 205. 
 Dar ul-harb, home or land of war, 29. 
 Dar ul-Islam, home or land of Islam, 64. 
 Defterdar, a treasurer, 167 ff., 174. 
 Defter-emini (intendant of account- 
 books), a recorder of fiefs, 172. 
 Deli, crazy (appellation of a scout or a 
 
 captain of the Akinji). 
 Dervish, a member of a Moslem rehgious 
 
 order, 207. 
 Deveji, a camel-driver, 251. 
 Devshurmeh, a gathering or collecting 
 
 (of the tribute boys), 51. 
 Divan, the Ottoman council of state, 
 
 187 ff.; a council of a great officer, 
 
 216, note 3. 
 Dulbend, or Dulipante (Italianized), a 
 
 turban. 
 
 Emin (plural Umena), an intendant, 132. 
 Emir, a descendant of the prophet 
 
 Mohammed, 206 ff.; a commander, a 
 
 governor. 
 Emir-al-.\khor, a grand equerr>', 131. 
 Ersi kharajiyeh, tribute lands, 31. 
 Ersi memleket, state lands, 31. 
 Ersi 'ushriyeh, tithe lands, 31. 
 Eski, old. 
 
 Fetva, a response from a Mufti, 208, 223. 
 Fetva-khaneh, the drafting bureau of the 
 
 Sheik ul-Islam, 208. 
 Fikh, the practical regulations of the 
 
 Sacred Law, 153. 
 
 Firman, an administrative ordinance' 
 157. 
 
 Gachaia, see Kiaya. 
 
 Gharib(oglan), see Ghureba (oghlan). 
 
 Ghureba (foreigner), a member of the 
 
 lowest corps of the standing cavalry, 
 
 98 and note 5. 
 Gonnullu, a volimteer soldier or sailor, 
 
 102. 
 Gul-behar, rose of spring (a feminine 
 
 proper name), 57 note 3. 
 
 Hebegibassi, see Jebeji-bashl. 
 Hekim-bashi, a chief physician, 129. 
 Helvaji-bashi, a chief confectioner, 245. 
 Hoja, a teacher; the Sultan's adviser, 
 
 128. 
 Holofagi, see Ulufagi. 
 Humayim, imperial. 
 
 laching, see Akinji. 
 
 lanicerotti (Italianized), the Ajem-ogh- 
 
 lans. 
 laxagi, see Yaziji. 
 Ikinji Kapu-oghlan, a white eunuch in 
 
 charge of the second gate of the plac^ 
 
 128. 
 Imam, the Caliph or lawful successor of 
 
 Mohammed, 28, 150, 235; a leader of 
 
 daily prayers, 206. 
 Imbrahor, Imbroor, Imrakhor, or Imror, 
 
 see Emir-al-Akhor. 
 Iskemleji, a page of high rank, 244. 
 Itch-oghlan (inside j'outh), a page in one 
 
 of the Sultan's palaces, 73 ff. 
 
 Jebeji-bashi, a chief armorer, 252. 
 Jerrah-bashi, a chief surgeon, 129. 
 Jizyeh, a poll or capitation tax on non- 
 Moslems, 175. 
 
 Kadi, see Kazi. 
 
 Kadi al asker, or Kadi 1' esker, see Ka- 
 
 ziasker. 
 Kaim, a caretaker of a mosque, 206. 
 Kalem, a bureau of the Treasury, 168 ff. 
 Kanun, an imperial decree, 152, 158.
 
 GLOSSARY OF TURKISH WORDS 
 
 333 
 
 Kanuni, legislator, 27. 
 
 Kanun-nameh, a book or collection of 
 laws, 158 ff. 
 
 Kapu Aghasi (general of the gate), the 
 white eunuch in charge of the principal 
 palace, 126. 
 
 Kapudan Pasha, an admiral, 189. 
 
 Kapuji, a gatekeeper, 130. 
 
 Kapuji-bashi, a head gatekeeper, 126. 
 
 Kapujilar-kiayasi, a grand chamberlain, 
 190. 
 
 Kazi, a judge, 215 fl. 
 
 Kaziasker (judge of the army) , one of the 
 two chief judges of the Ottoman Em- 
 pire, 220 S. 
 
 Ketkhuda, see Kiaya. 
 
 Kharaj, a tax or tribute in money or 
 kind on lands belonging to non-Mos- 
 lems, 175. 
 
 Kharaji, a non-Moslem who pays the 
 kharij, 41. 
 
 Khass Oda (private chamber), the high- 
 est chamber of pages, 75, 126. 
 
 Khass, a very large fief, 100. 
 
 Khatib, a leader of Friday prayers, 206. 
 
 Khazinehdar-bashi, a treasurer-in-chief, 
 127. 
 
 Khazineh-odassi (chamber of the treas- 
 ury), the second chamber of pages, 
 127. 
 
 Khojagan, a chief of a treasury bureau, 
 168. 
 
 Khurrem, happy, joyful (a feminine 
 proper name), 57. 
 
 Kiaya (common form of ketkhuda), a 
 steward or lieutenant, 96 note 4, 125. 
 
 Kiaya-bey, the lieutenant of the grand 
 vizier, 182 fT. 
 
 Kiaya Katibi, a private secretary of the 
 Kiaya-bey, 184. 
 
 Kilerji-bashi, a chief of the sultan's 
 pantry, 127. 
 
 Kiler-odassi (chamber of the pantry), 
 the third chamber of pages, 127. 
 
 Kizlar Aghasi (general of the girls), the 
 black eunuch in charge of the palace 
 of the harem, 125. 
 
 Koreish, the Arabian tribe of which 
 
 Mohammed the prophet was a mem- 
 ber, 150, 235. 
 Kul, a slave; one of the sultan's slave- 
 family, 47 ff. 
 
 Masraf-shehriyari (imperial steward), 
 substitute for the intendant of kitchen, 
 132. 
 
 Mawuna, or Maone (Italianized), a 
 sailing vessel. 
 
 Mecter, see Mihter. 
 
 Medresseh, a secondary school or college, 
 203 ff. 
 
 Mekteb, a school, 203. 
 
 Mektubji, a private secretary of the 
 grand vizier, 184. 
 
 Mihter, a tent-pitcher; a musician. 
 
 Mihter-bashi, the chief tent-pitcher, 132. 
 
 Mir Alem, the imperial standard bearer, 
 131, 206. 
 
 Miri-akhor, see Emir-al-Akhor. 
 
 MoUa, a judge of high rank, 217. 
 
 Mosellem, a fief holder by ancient tenure, 
 105. 
 
 Muderis, a professor in a Medresseh, 205. 
 
 Muezzin, one who calls Moslems to 
 prayer, 206. 
 
 Mufettish, a special judge dealing with 
 endowments, 201, 218. 
 
 Mufti, a Moslem legal authority; in 
 particular, the Sheik ul-Islam, 207 ff. 
 
 Muhtesib, a lieutenant of police, 219. 
 
 Mujtahid, a doctor of the Sacred Law. 
 
 Mulazim (candidate), a graduate of the 
 higher Medressehs, 205. 
 
 Mulk, land held in fee simple, 31. 
 
 Munejim-bashi, a chief astrologer, 129. 
 
 Muste emin, a resident foreigner, 34. 
 
 Mutbakh-emini, intendant of the kitch- 
 en, 132. 
 
 Muteferrika, the Noble Guard, 129. 
 
 Muteveli, an administrator of an en- 
 dowment, 201. 
 
 Naib, an inferior judge, 218. 
 
 Nakib oI-Eshraf, the chief of the Seids or 
 descendants of the prophet Moham- 
 med, 206.
 
 334 
 
 GLOSSARY OF TURKISH WORDS 
 
 Nazir, an inspector of an endowment, 
 
 20I. 
 
 Nishanji, a chancellor, 182 ff. 
 
 Nizam al-mulk, basis of the order of the 
 
 kingdom (title of a vizier of Melek 
 
 Shah), 306. 
 
 Oda (a room), a chamber of the pages 
 or of the harem recruits; a company 
 of the Janissaries. 
 
 Oda-bashi (head of chamber), the page 
 of highest rank, 244; a corporal of the 
 Janissaries, 249. 
 
 Oghlan, a youth. 
 
 Okumak-yerleri (reading-places), prim- 
 ary schools, 203. 
 
 Orta, a company of the Janissaries. 
 {See also Oda.) 
 
 Ouloufedgis, see Ulufaji. 
 
 Papuji, a page of high rank, 244. 
 
 Pasha, a very high official. 
 
 Peik, a member of the body-guard of 
 
 halbardiers, 130. 
 Podesta (Italian), a municipal judge. 
 
 Quaia, or Queaya, see Kiaya. 
 
 Ramazan, the Moslem month of fasting. 
 Rayah, non-Moslem Ottoman subjects, 
 
 159- 
 
 Reis Effendi, or Reis ul-Khuttab, a re- 
 cording secretary, 174; a recording 
 secretary of the Divan, later an im- 
 portant minister of state, 182 ff. 
 
 Reis ul-Ulema (head of the Ulema), an 
 early title of the Sheik ul-Islam, 208 
 note 3. 
 
 Rekiab-Aghalari (generals of the stirrup) , 
 a group of high officers of the outside 
 ser\ice of the palace, 131. 
 
 Rusnamehji, a chief book-keeper of the 
 Treasury, 168. 
 
 Ruus Kalemi, a bureau of the Chancery, 
 183. 
 
 Sakka, a water-carrier. 
 
 Sanjak, a flag or standard, a district. 
 
 Sanjak Bey, a high officer of feudal, 
 cavalry and governor of a Sanjak, 103. 
 
 Saremin, see Shehr-emini. 
 
 Sarraf, a banker. 
 
 Scheni, see Iskemleji. 
 
 Seferli-odassi (chamber of campaign), 
 the fourth chamber of pages, 128 note 
 I. 
 
 Segban-bashi (master of the hounds), 
 the second officer of the corps of Janis- 
 saries, 96, 132 note 3. 
 
 Seid, a descendant of the prophet Mo- 
 hammed, 206. 
 
 Seis, a groom, 251. 
 
 Selicter, see Silihdar, 
 
 Seracter, see Sharabdar. 
 
 Serai, a palace. 
 
 Seraskier, a commander-in-chief. 
 
 Serraj, saddlers, 251. 
 
 Seymen-bashi, a popular form of Segban- 
 bashi, q. V. 
 
 Shahinji, a falconer, 252. 
 
 Sharabdar (drink-bearer), a page of high 
 rank, 127. 
 
 Shehr-emini, intendant of imperial build- 
 ings, 132. 
 
 Sheik, a preacher; a head of a religious 
 community, 206. 
 
 Sheik ul-Islam, the Mufti of Constanti- 
 nople and head of the Moslem Institu- 
 tion, 208 flf. 
 
 Sheri (or Sheriat), the Moslem Sacred 
 Law, 152 ff. 
 
 Sherif, a descendant of the prophet 
 Mohammed, 206. 
 
 Sihhdar (sword-bearer), a member of 
 the second corps of standing cavalry, 
 98 and note 5; the page who carried 
 the sultan's arms, 127. 
 
 Sillictar, see Silihdar. 
 
 Sipah, or Sipahi, see Spahi. 
 
 Sofi, woolen; a dervish (an appella- 
 tion of the Shah of Persia). 
 
 Softa, an undergraduate in a Medresseh, 
 205. 
 
 Solak (left-handed) , a janissary bowman 
 of the sultan's personal guard, 129. 
 
 Spachi, see Spahi.
 
 GLOSSARY OF TURKISH WORDS 
 
 335 
 
 Spacoillain, see Spahi-oghlan. 
 
 Spahi, a cavalry soldier; a member of 
 
 the standing or feudal cavalry, 47, 
 
 q8 flf., 100 ff. 
 Spahi-oghlan (cavalry youth), a member 
 
 of the highest corps of the standing 
 
 cavalr>', 98 and note 5. 
 Spai, see Spahi. 
 Subashi, a captain of the feudal cavalry 
 
 and governor of a town, 103. 
 Sukhta (inflamed), see Softa. 
 Suiastrus, see Silihdar. 
 Sultana, a princess or queen mother, 
 
 125; (the true Turkish form uses a 
 
 proper name or the word Valideh, 
 
 followed by Sultan). 
 Suluphtar, see Silihdar. 
 
 Tahvil Kalemi, a bureau of the Chancery, 
 183. 
 
 Talisman, see Danishmend. 
 
 Tapu, a tenant's lease or title deed, 31. 
 
 Terjuman, an interpreter (dragoman). 
 
 Terjuman Divani Humayun, a chief in- 
 terpreter of the sultan, 183. 
 
 Teshrifat, ceremony, 134. 
 
 Teshrifatji, a master of ceremonies, 184. 
 
 Teskereh, a document. 
 
 Teskereji, a master of petitions, 184. 
 
 Teskereji-bashi (chief of document- 
 writers), the Nishanji, 184, 185. 
 
 Tim.ar, a fief of small income, 100; feudal 
 income. 
 
 Timarji, the holder of a Timar. 
 
 Tughra, the sultan's monogram, 185. 
 
 Ulema (plural of dlim, a learned man), 
 the whole body of Moslems learned in 
 the Sacred Law, 203 ff. 
 
 Ulufaji (paid troops), a member of the 
 
 third corps of the sultan's standing 
 
 cavalry, q8 and note 5. 
 Umena, plural of Emin. 
 Urf, the sovereign will of the reigning 
 
 sultan, 152, 162. 
 'Ushr, a tithe on lands belonging to 
 
 Moslems, 175. 
 
 Vakf, a religious endowment, 31, 201 ff. 
 
 Valideh, a mother. 
 
 Veznedar, an official weigher of money, 
 
 132. 
 Vizier (burden-bearer), a minister of 
 
 state, 163 ff. 
 Voivode (Slavic), an oflScer, a governor. 
 
 Yachinji, see Akinji. 
 
 Yaya, a fief holder by ancient tenure, 
 owing infantry service, 105. 
 
 Yaziji, a scribe or secretary. 
 
 Yedi-kiileh (seven towers), a strong 
 castle against the land wall of Con- 
 stantinople, 172. 
 
 Yeni-cheri (new soldiery), the corps of 
 the Janissaries, 91 ff. 
 
 Yeni Oda (new chamber), the lowest 
 chamber of pages in the principal 
 palace, 75, 127. 
 
 Zagarji-bashi (master of the harriers), 
 
 a high ofiQcer of the Janissaries, 132 
 
 note 5. 
 Zanijiler (Italianized), lancers or Voi- 
 
 naks (?), 252. 
 Zarabkhane-emini, intendant of mints 
 
 and mines, 132. 
 Ziam, the holder of a Ziamet. 
 Ziamct, a large fief, 100. 
 Zimmi, a tributary non-Moslem subject, 
 
 34.
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 AcHMET I, 126 note i, 160 and note 5. 
 
 Advancement based on merit, 82-86; 
 in Mogul Empire, 283. 
 
 Adviser of sullan {Iloja), 128, 218, 225. 
 
 Afghans, in Mogul Empire, 280, 282. 
 
 Agra, 287. 
 
 Agricultural conditions, 144 and note 2, 
 163, 177; under Moguls in India, 297, 
 298. 
 
 Akbar, Mogul emperor, 278, 281; re- 
 moved poll-tax on non-Moslems, 284; 
 army of, 295; presents made to, 188; 
 harem of, 290; revenue system of, 
 293, 294; amount of revenue of, 195; 
 policy of, toward cultivators of soil, 
 297; removed internal tolls, 298; tol- 
 erated Hindus, 298; relation to Mo- 
 hammedanism of, 302; " divine faith " 
 of, 302. 
 
 Albania, status of, 30, 33, 258, 297; 
 furnished tribute boys, 52, 74. 
 
 Ali Pasha, grand vizier of Suleiman, 
 steps in promotion of, 87, 88; great 
 authority, 164. 
 
 Anatolia, 77, 79 note 4, 102, 104, 168, 
 169, 220; Beylerbey of, 103-105, 189. 
 
 Arabia, status of, 6, 30; rendering of 
 justice in, 37; taxation in, 175, 176. 
 
 Arabic language, 21, 77. 
 
 Arabs, influence on Ottoman Empire, 
 4, 20, 23; in Foreign Legion, 50; re- 
 lation of, to Ottoman government, 
 227, 258, 297; service of, to Mogul 
 emperors, 281. 
 
 Arbitrary taxes, 175, 176. 
 
 Architecture, in Ottoman Empire, 23, 
 24, 239-241; in Mogul Empire, 287, 
 295- 
 
 Armenian subjects, a separate organiza- 
 tion, 34, 37; not liable to tribute of 
 boys, 34. 
 
 Arms, of Spahis of the Porte and Janis- 
 saries, 138, 139; of Mogul infantry, 
 285. 
 
 Army — 
 Of Ottoman Empire, 90-113, 194; 
 principal subdivisions of, 91; the 
 territorial army, 104, 105; numbers 
 in, 106, 107 and note i; the supreme 
 command of, 109-111; indivisibil- 
 ity of, 111-113. 
 Of Mogul emperors, 279, 285-287; 
 compared with Ottoman army, 285. 
 
 Artillery of Mogul emperors, 286. 
 
 Asia Minor, Occidental influence in, 7; 
 occupation of, by Turks, 5, 14 £f., 35, 
 227; defined, 14 note i; teachers 
 from, 77; Janissary apprentices sent 
 to, 79; heretics in, 210. See Anatolia. 
 
 Astrologer of sultan, 129. 
 
 Audiences, of Suleiman, loi; of Aurang- 
 zeb, 289, 296; of Humayun, 296. 
 
 Aurangzeb, Mogul emperor, compared 
 with Suleiman, 278, 302; a zealous 
 ^Moslem, 284, 298, 302; army of, 286, 
 287; audiences of, 289, 296; sisters 
 of, 291; views on government of, 292; 
 in civil wars, 293; revenue of, 295; 
 reimposed capitation tax on non-Mos- 
 lems, 295; education of, 300, 301. 
 
 Austria, raided, 29, 50; paid tribute 
 to Suleiman, 30, 177; wars of, with 
 Ottoman Empire, 112, 113. 
 
 Baber, founder of Mogul Empire, house 
 of, compared with house of Osman, 
 278, 292, 293, 299 {see Timur, house 
 of); followers of, 279; character of, 
 280; family life of, 281; treatment of 
 Moslem subjects by, 298. 
 
 Babylon, 4. 
 
 Bairam, feast of, 135, 136, 140. 
 
 339
 
 340 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Balkan peninsula, 6, 51, 103. See Al- 
 banians, Bulgarians, Rumelia, Ser- 
 \nans, 
 
 Bangash tribe of Afghans, 281, 282. 
 
 Battle, order of, 100, 104. 
 
 Bayezid II, circumstances of deposition 
 of, 94; gave kiillar their own justice, 
 116; honor shown the Mufti by, 209. 
 
 Bayezid, son of Suleiman, execution of, 
 94, 95, 142, 143; war against, 136. 
 
 Bedchamber, gentlemen of the, 75-78, 
 126, 127. 
 
 Body-guards, 129. 
 
 Bondage, American colonial, compared 
 with Ottoman slavery, 60 note 7. 
 
 Booty, 176, 178. 
 
 Bosra, 31. 
 
 Brahmins, 282, 298. 
 
 Buddhist influence on Mogul Empire, 
 279. 
 
 Bulgarians, 16, Z2>, 35, 74- 
 
 Bureaucratic tendencies, 19, 32, 186, 
 187. 
 
 Bureaus, of the Treasur>^, 168 ff.; of 
 the Chancery, 183; of the Mufti, 208. 
 
 Busbecq, opinion of, on Ottoman educa- 
 tion, 74, 86; dealings with Janissaries, 
 96; witnessed ceremonies, 136-141; on 
 execution of Mustapha, 213. 
 
 Byzantine Empire, disintegration of, in 
 13th century, 6; bequest of, to Otto- 
 man Turks, 4, 21, 24, 227. 
 
 Caliph, as Imam, 28, 157, 163 note i; 
 
 the sultan as, 150; Suleiman as, 234. 
 Canon law, of Roman Catholic Church, 
 
 157; of Moslems, see Sacred Law. 
 Capitation tax, 21, 170, 175, 284. 
 Caucasus, slaves from, 16, 34, 50, 57, 
 
 281 . See Circassia, Georgia, ]Mingrelia. 
 Cavalry — 
 
 Of Ottoman Empire, regular, see 
 Spahis of the Porte; feudal, 100- 
 105; irregiilar, 105-107. 
 
 Of Mogul Empire, regular, 285; feudal, 
 285, 286. 
 Ceremonies of the Court, 133-141; law 
 
 of, 134, 158. 
 
 Chancellor, 182-187, 189, 248. 
 Chancery, bureaus of, 183; personnel 
 
 of, 186, 187. 
 Charles V, Emperor, relations of, with 
 
 Suleiman, 112, 113 and note 4. 
 China, influence of, on Turks and Mon- 
 gols, 5, 19, 118. 
 Christians, converted and incorporated 
 as Turks, 8, 14-17, 63-68; not entrusted 
 with great power, 62; right to practise 
 their religion, 211, 212. See Renegade 
 Christians. 
 Christian subjects of Ottoman Empire, 
 protected by Sacred Law, 26, 212; 
 position of, 34; subject to levy of 
 male children, 51-55; relation of, to 
 Sultan, 151; legislation regarding, 
 159, 160 note i; taxation of, 170, 175; 
 church lands of, 172; Selim I's attempt 
 to convert forcibly, 211, 212; treat- 
 ment of, in courts, 222. 
 Circassia, slaves from, :^2> i^ote 2, 57, 74, 
 
 290. 
 Civil war, in Ottoman Empire, 94; in 
 
 Mogul Empire, 293, 301. 
 Clerg}', Moslem, 206. 
 Codifications, of ^Moslem Sacred Law, 
 152, 153, 292; of sultans' legislation, 
 158-161. 
 Colleges, of pages, 73-79; of education, 
 
 203-205. 
 Comparison of the Ruling Institution 
 and the Moslem Institution, 227-236; 
 likenesses, 227-230; differences, 230- 
 232; relative power, 232-236. 
 Confiscations, 55, 172, 178, 179. 
 Conservatism, in regard to taxation, 
 177; in education, 204; of the two 
 great institutions compared, 230, 232, 
 233. See Custom. 
 Constantinople described, 239-241. 
 Constitution, the Sacred Law a form of, 
 27, 28, 150, 156, 157, 175, 193, 209, 
 214. 
 Conversion to Mohammedanism, in Asia 
 Minor, 15 ff.; by Ottoman Turks, 33, 
 67; by the Ruling Institution, 62-71; 
 meaning of, 62, 63; why encouraged,
 
 INDEX 
 
 341 
 
 63-66; not usually forcible, 63 and note 
 2, 66 and note 3, 67; sincerity of, un- 
 certain, 68-69; in India, 284. 
 
 Corruption, official, 32, 39, 86, 144, 161, 
 177; judicial, 222. 
 
 Costumes, 134, 135. 
 
 Counsellors-at-law, see Jurists. 
 
 Court — 
 Of the sultan, 120-145; separation of 
 men and women, 121; organization j 
 of household, 123; the harem, 124- 
 126; the inside service, 126-128; 
 the outside service, 128-133; cere- 
 monies of, 133-141; influence of, 
 141-145. 
 Of Mogul emperors, 287-291. 
 
 Courts of justice, the Divan, 187-193, 
 221; of the Grand Vizier, 166, 221; 
 of the Kaziaskcrs, 220; of present-day 
 Turkey, 154 note 2; procedure of, 
 219-221; venality of, discussed, 222, 
 223; the law administered by, 223. 
 
 Crimean Tartary, status, 30; rendering 
 of justice in, 37, 216; slaves sent from, 
 50; Selim I married princess from, 
 58 note 2; contingent furnished by, 
 106; Khan of, pensioned, 171. 
 
 Croatians, 34. 
 
 Crusades, 6-9, 227. 
 
 Cursus honortitn, of Ruling Institution 
 illustrated, 87, 88; of Moslem Insti- 
 tution, 212 and note i, 235. 
 
 Custom, power of, 19, 21, 27, 230. 
 
 Customary law, 152, 161, 162, 223. 
 
 Decentralization, tendency toward, 
 
 32,38, 174. 
 Delhi, Moslem capital of India, 280, 
 
 285, 287, 299, 300. 
 Dem.ocracy, 84, 198, 225. 
 Dervishes, 37, 207, 300. 
 Descendants of Mohammed the Prophet 
 
 (Seids), 37, 206, 207, 225, 300. 
 Despotism, in Ottoman Empire, 25-27, 
 
 46,48,55,151,159,174,193; in Mogul 
 
 Empire, 279, 292. 
 Dil-Dar, wife of Baber, 290.. 
 Discipline, of Janissaries, 96, 97 and 
 
 note i; of army generally, 108, 109; 
 of Ruling Institution, 196. 
 
 Divan, 135, 166, 187-193; membership 
 of, 188-190; sessions of, 189-191; 
 general character of, 191-193; com- 
 parison with audiences of Aurangzeb, 
 296; of the Grand Vizier, 166; of 
 lesser officials, 216 note 3. 
 
 Domain lands, 31, 169, 171, 172, 176. 
 
 Donatives to Janissaries, 92 and note 5. 
 
 Ebu su'ud, the Mufti, 120, 212 and 
 note 2, 213; table of contents of his 
 collection of Suleiman's laws, 276, 
 277. 
 
 Education — 
 Of members of Ruling Institution, 
 71-88, 196, 197; comprehensiveness 
 of, 71, 72; classification of, 73. 
 Of members of ^Moslem Institution, 
 203-206, 225; comparison of above 
 systems, 228, 229, 234, 235. 
 Of Moslems in India, 300. 
 
 Egypt, unable to unify Levant, 10; 
 status of, 30; inhabitants of, 33; Janis- 
 saries of, 95; legislation for, 159, 160; 
 taxation of, 176; Mamelukes of, 280. 
 
 Emancipation of slaves, 48, 60. 
 
 Endowments, religious and charitable, 
 31, 32, 200-203, 234 and note i, 235, 
 300. 
 
 Equerries, 131. 
 
 Equity in Turkey, 223. 
 
 Eugene, Prince, 287. 
 
 Eunuchs, 57, 125-128. 
 
 Execution, grounds of, 88; of Mustapha, 
 89, 94, 95, 142, 213; of Bayezid and 
 Ibrahim, 89, 94, in, 141, 142; of 
 grand viziers, 167; process of, 210, 
 221; policy of, 222. 5ec Fratricide. 
 
 Expenditures of government, 178, 179. 
 
 E.xtortion, 32, 86, 144, 163, 182. 
 
 Fatehpcr-Sikri, 287, 302. 
 
 Ferdinand I, Archduke and Emperor, 
 
 30, 1X2. 
 
 Feudal cavalry — 
 Of Ottoman Empire, 100-105; rights
 
 342 
 
 INDEX 
 
 of, loo; obligations of, loi; officers 
 of, 103-105. 
 Of Mogul Empire, 280, 285, 286. 
 
 Feudal system of Ottomans, 21, 24, 100- 
 105, 176, 181 and note 2; law of, 152, 
 159-161; of Mogul Empire, 285, 286. 
 
 Fiefs, origin of, 21, 24, 31, 32; reorgan- 
 ized by Suleiman, 102; vacancies, 178. 
 
 Fleet, 171, 178, 179. 
 
 Foreign affairs, minister of, 183-185. 
 
 Foreign Legion, 50, q8, 99 note i. 
 
 Foreigners in Ottoman Empire, privi- 
 leges of, 35, 37, 38; relation of, to sul- 
 tan, 151; taxation of , 176, 177. 
 
 Foundations, see Endowments. 
 
 Fratricide of Ottoman sultans, 27 and 
 note 2, 94 and note 2; not authorized 
 in Mogul Empire, 293. 
 
 Gardener, the head, 81, 130, 131. 
 
 Generals {Aghas), of the Janissaries, 
 96; of the Spahis, 99; of the army, 
 no; of the sultan's harem, 125; of 
 the imperial stirrup, 131 ; in the Divan, 
 189, 191. 
 
 Genghis Khan, 280. 
 
 Georgia, status of, 30; ?'aves furnished 
 
 by, 33- 
 
 Ghazali, 221. 
 Government — 
 Of Ottoman Empire, described, 146- 
 198; rested on old political ideas, 4; 
 functions of, 147, 148; limitation 
 to its own affairs, 149, 174, 175; 
 compared with Mogul govenmient, 
 278 ff. 
 Of Mogul Empire, of inferior strength 
 and durabiUty, 278-279; described, 
 292-298. See Local government. 
 Governors of provinces, in Ottoman 
 Empire (Beylerbeys), 103, 174, 187, 
 189, 191, 207, 216, 219, 220; in Mogul 
 Empire (Naibs), 296, 297. 
 Grand vizier, 164-167, 189-191, 220, 
 221, 229; none in Mogul Empire, 296. 
 Greek Orthodox subjects, a separate 
 organization, 34, 37; the sultan their 
 temporal head, 151. 
 
 Gritti, Alvise (or Luigi), household of, 
 58 note 4; given command in Hun- 
 gary, 62; testimony of, as to Sulei- 
 man's income, 179; pamphlet of (with 
 Junis Bey), 262-275. 
 
 Gul-Badan, daughter of Baber, 281, 290. 
 
 Hantfa, Abu, 152, 224. 
 
 Harem — 
 Of Suleiman, organization of, 56; 
 recruited from slaves, usually Chris- 
 tian, 56, 57; number of women in, 
 56; education of recruits for, 78, 
 79; officers of, 125; Suleiman's 
 mother, consorts, and daughter, 
 126. 
 Of Mogul emperors, 290, 291. 
 
 Harem intrigue, 121, 165. 
 
 Harun Al-Rashid, 295. 
 
 Heads of executed persons, 221. 
 
 Heredity of privilege and office dis- 
 couraged, 66, 1 1 7-1 20; how permitted 
 to feudal cavalry, loi; in Mogul 
 Empire, 286. 
 
 Heretics, Moslem, 210, 211. 
 
 Hindus, influence of, on Mogul Empire, 
 279; in service of Mogul emperors, 
 281, 286; their religion tolerated, 
 298; condition of, compared with that 
 of Moslem subjects, 299. 
 
 Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, 30, 
 125, 153, 169, 171, 228, 284. 
 
 Holy war, 209. 
 
 Household of the sultan, 123-133; or- 
 ganization of, 123; the harem, 124- 
 126; the inside service, 126-128; the 
 outside service, 128-133; number in, 
 
 133- 
 
 Humayun, Mogul emperor, orders of 
 nobility of, 282, 283; artillery of, 286; 
 attendants of, at court, 288; in civil 
 war, 293; ministers of state of, 295; 
 audiences of, 296. 
 
 Hungary, 30, 33, 51, 74, 178; adminis- 
 tration of, 176; small proportion of 
 Moslems in, 284. 
 
 Huns, 10, 20. 
 
 Hunting organization, 132.
 
 INDEX 
 
 343 
 
 iBRAimi Halkbt, 153. 
 
 Ibrahim Pasha, grand vizier, treatment 
 of parents, 53; estate of, taken by 
 Suleiman, 55; vast power of, 83, 164, 
 167; made Seraskicr, no; execution 
 of, 89, III, 141; proposes to settle 
 Lutheran controversy, 113; chief 
 falconer, 132; marriage of, 136 note 
 2; other references, 62, 246, 265. 
 
 Ideas, not racial descent, the basis of 
 Ottoman Empire, 3 ff., 228; illus- 
 trated in Mogul Empire, 279-283. 
 
 Immunity from taxation, of the kullar, 
 35, 66, 114, lis; of the Ulema, 35, 
 118, 119, 203, 206. 
 
 Imperial family, in Ottoman Empire, 
 56-58; in Mogul Empire, 281, 290, 
 
 293- 
 
 Income of Suleiman, 179-182, 260; of 
 Mogul emperor, 293-295. 
 
 Incorporating spirit, of early Ottomans, 
 16; of Tatars, 18; of Ottoman Turks, 
 64 and note 3; of Moslems and By- 
 zantines, 65; of Ruling and Moslem 
 Institutions, 228. 
 
 India, absorbs gold and silver, 294; 
 influence of, upon Mogul Empire, 279; 
 prosperity of, under Akbar, 298. 
 
 Infantry — 
 
 Of Ottoman Empire, regular, see 
 
 Janissaries; irregular, 105-107. 
 Of Mogul Empire, 285. 
 
 Inside service, 126-128. 
 
 Institutions of government in Ottoman 
 Empire, 25, 35-38; compared with 
 Mogul institution, 278, 279. Sec 
 Moslem Institution, and Ruling In- 
 stitution. 
 
 Intcndants, 132. 
 
 Interest, lawful only for funds of mos- 
 ques, 201 note 3. 
 
 Interpreters, 130, 183. 
 
 Iranians, 13 and notes 3, 4. 
 
 Irregular troops, 50, 105-107. 
 
 Iskender Chelebi, Dcfterdar, estate of, 
 taken by Suleiman, 55; educational 
 system and armed household of, 59. 
 
 Issus, battle of, 7. 
 
 Janissaries, described, 47, 91-97; re- 
 ligious character of, 68, 69; rule 
 against admission of their sons broken 
 down, 69 note 3; not supposed to 
 marry, 70; uprisings of, 92; conquests 
 limited by, 93; influence of ujion suc- 
 cession to the throne, 93-95; number 
 of, 95 and note 3; organization and 
 officers of, 95, 96; promotions of, 96; 
 appearance of, 138, 139; finances of, 
 169, 179; other references, 249, 250, 
 266, 267. 
 
 Janissary apprentices {ajem-oghlans), 
 education of, 79-82; rewards of, 82, 
 83; punishments of, 88; other refer- 
 ences, 47, 73, 129, 254, 255, 269, 270. 
 
 Jehan-Ara, daughter of Shah-Jehan, 
 291. 
 
 Jehangir, son of Suleiman, 142, 143 note 
 I. 
 
 Jehangir, Mogul emperor, elephants of, 
 286; ceremony of weighing of, 288, 
 289; harem of, 290; sense of respon- 
 sibility of, 292; in civil war, 293. 
 
 Jelal ad-din Rumi, 118. 
 
 Jemali, the Mufti, 211, 212. 
 
 Jerbe, victory of, 89. 
 
 Jewish subjects, not liable to tribute of 
 boys, 34; have separate organization, 
 34, 37; the sultan their legal head, 
 151; Ramberti's testimony regarding, 
 241. 
 
 Judges — 
 
 General description of, 216-223; clas- 
 sification of, 216-219; venality of, 
 discussed, 222, 223; the law ad- 
 ministered by, 223; power of, over 
 individuals, 224. 
 Grand vizier, 165, 189-191, 220, 221. 
 Kaziaskcrs, in Divan, 167, 189-191; 
 duties, 217-220; other references, 
 225, 247, 263. 
 Special, for endowments, 201, 218. 
 In Mogul Empire, 297, 300. 
 
 Junis Bey, chief interpreter of Suleiman, 
 testimony of, as to Suleiman's income, 
 179; pamphlet of (with .AJnse Gritti), 
 262-275.
 
 344 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Jurisconsults or jurists {muftis), 207- 
 2i5> 225, 303; their chief {Sheik ul- 
 Islam), 151, 208 S., 247, 299. 
 
 Jurisprudence, Moslem, 153-155. 
 
 Justice, systems of, in general, 34-36, 
 216; of the Janissaries, 97; of the 
 kidlar, 116; of the Ulema, 203; of the 
 Seids, 206, 207; of the Moslem In- 
 stitution, 215-224; in India, 297, 300. 
 
 Justinian, 6, 158. 
 
 Kara Khalil Chendereli, traditional 
 founder of Janissaries, 63, 64, 117. 
 
 Khaireddin Barbarossa, 246. 
 
 Khosrew Pasha, 152. 
 
 Khurrem (or Roxelana), wife of Sulei- 
 man, 56-58, 95, 126, 141-143, 213- 
 
 Kitchen service, 129. 
 
 Kiuprilis, 165. 
 
 Koran, 40, 42, 152, 214, 223, 300. 
 
 Koreish, 150, 235. 
 
 Kurdistan, 30. 
 
 Kurds, 105, 106, 296.. 
 
 Land system, outline of, 28-32; com- 
 plication of, 32, 175, 176. 
 
 Law, classification of, 152; of Cere- 
 monies, 134; of Subjects, Fiefs, Egypt, 
 and Fines and Punishments, 159, 160. 
 See also Sacred Law. 
 
 Law schools, 203-205. 
 
 Lawyers, none in Turkey, 208, 223. 
 
 Learned associates of sultans, 128, 129, 
 218, 225. 
 
 Legislation, 27, 150-163; of the sultans 
 generally, 157-158; of Mohammed 
 II, 158, 159; of Suleiman, 32, 159- 
 161; of the jurists through /e/zja^, 214. 
 
 Lepanto, battle of, 95, 143. 
 
 Local government — 
 
 In Ottoman Empire, officers of, 103- 
 105, 256-260, 270-272; justice in, 
 216-220. 
 In Mogul Empire, 294, 296, 297. 
 
 Mahmud of Ghazni, 280, 283. 
 Malta, 143, 145. 
 Malversations, 177, 294. 
 
 Mamelukes of Egypt: how recruited, 
 Sy, duration of rule, 280. 
 
 March, order of, 274, 275. 
 
 Master of ceremonies, 184. 
 
 Masters of the hunt, 132. 
 
 Mediterranean civilization, 7, 279. 
 
 Menzikert, battle of, 7. 
 
 Merit the basis of advancement, 82-86; 
 also in Mogul Empire, 283. 
 
 Mesopotamia, 31. 
 
 Michael of the Pointed Beard, 117, 118. 
 
 Mihrmah, daughter of Suleiman, 126, 
 142, 143. 
 
 Mines, 132, 171, 176. 
 
 Mingrelia, status of, 30; slaves fur- 
 nished by, 33, 57, 289. 
 
 Missionary motive of Ruling Institu- 
 tion, 62-71. 
 
 Mogul emperor's authority, original 
 feudal bond, 279, 280; commander- 
 in-chief of army, 285; despot, 298. 
 
 Mogul Empire, less durable than Otto- 
 man, 278, 279; government of, 278- 
 303; financial greatness of, 295. 
 
 Mohacs, battles of, 177, 278. 
 
 Mohammedanism, relation to Christian- 
 ity, 8, 68; effect on Turkish character, 
 8; bequest of, to Ottoman Turks, 21, 
 227 ff.; missionary energy of, 63, 64, 
 284. 
 
 Moldavia, 30, 52 note i, 106, 129, 178, 
 297. 
 
 Mohammed II, the Conqueror, quota- 
 tion from letter of. to Uzun Hassan, 
 title page, 64; his Kaniin of fratricide, 
 94 and note 2, 142; dined alone, 122 
 and note 3; built palace, 123; adopted 
 ceremonies, 134; ordered Sacred Law 
 codified, 152; legislation of, 158, 159; 
 organized the Treasury, 168; insti- 
 tuted tax- farming, 177; regulated 
 education of Moslem Institution, 203; 
 rule of as to jurisdiction of Kaziaskers, 
 220. 
 
 Mohammed Piri Pasha, grand vizier, 
 167. 
 
 Mohammed Sokolli, grand vizier, 120, 
 164, 165, 167.
 
 INDEX 
 
 345 
 
 Mohammed the Prophet, tradition of, 
 152; descendants of, 206, 225, 300; 
 completed Sacred Law, 209; granted 
 toleration to Christian subjects, 212; 
 represented by judges, 220; founder 
 of Moslem system, 224, 235; deriva- 
 tion of ideas, of, 227. 
 
 Mongols, relation of, to Turks, 12; in- 
 vasion of, 15; empire of, 280. See 
 Tatars. 
 
 Morocco, 30. 
 
 Moslem-bom subjects, not admitted 
 to high office, 40-44, 66; pressure of, 
 to enter Ruling Institution, 69 note 
 3, 117, 120, 195, 231; persistent loyalty 
 of, 300. 
 
 Moslem Institution of the Ottoman 
 Empire, antecedents of, 21; general 
 description of, 36, 37, 199, 200, 224- 
 226; institutions parallel to, 37; re- 
 lation of, to Ruling Institution, 38; 
 contemporary descriptions of, 38-44; 
 Suleiman its head, 151; received sul- 
 tan's fifth of booty, 178; the Divan 
 its cap-stone, 188; financial support 
 of, 200-203; educational system of, 
 203-206; clergy, seids, and dervishes, 
 206, 207; jurists and the Mufli, 207- 
 215; democratic spirit of, 225; com- 
 parison of with Ottoman Ruling In- 
 stitution, 227-236; cumulative in- 
 fluence of, 234; needed support of 
 Ruling Institution, 235; comparison 
 of, with Moslem church in India, 300- 
 
 303- 
 Moslems in India, 283, 284, 299-303; 
 
 not in dose touch with emperors, 299, 
 
 300; had no powerful chief, 299, 302; 
 
 their educational system, 300. 
 Mosques, 24, 202, 240, 300. 
 Muhammad Khan, Nawab of Famikha- 
 
 bad, 2S1, 282. 
 Mumtaz-Mahal, empress of India, 281, 
 
 291. 
 Murad II, sultan, appearance, 17 note 
 
 4; simplicity of life, 134. 
 Mustapha, eldest son of Suleiman, 
 
 mother of, 57 note 3, 126; execution 
 
 of, 89, 94, 95, 142, 213; character of, 
 95 note 2; ceremony at circumcision 
 of, 136. 
 
 Neniiphar, or Nilufer, bride of Orchan, 
 
 17- 
 
 Nobility, of the kullar, 84, 85, 1 14-120; 
 of the Seids, 118, 206, 207; of the 
 Ulema, 118, 119, 203; in the Mogul 
 Empire, 282. 
 
 Noble Guard (Mukferrika), 78, 129, 140, 
 248. 
 
 Non-Moslem subjects, 34. See Chris- 
 tian subjects, Jewish subjects, etc. 
 
 North Africa, status of, 6, 30, 38; in- 
 habitants of, S3'y rendering of justice 
 in, 37, 216; Janissaries of, 95; Sulei- 
 man desires to unify, 113 and note i. 
 
 Notarial work, 219. 
 
 Nur-Jchan (or Nur-Mahal), empress of 
 India, 281, 290, 291. 
 
 Old Testament, ideas of, in Moham- 
 medanism, 8. 
 
 Orchan, sultan, 17 and note 4. 
 
 Osman I (Othman), sultan, 4, 6, 16 and 
 note I, 242, 272, 273; house of , com- 
 pared with that of Timur, 278, 281, 
 299. 
 
 Ottoman Empire, based on ideas, not 
 race, 4; rapidity of growth, 6; char- 
 acter and mission, 7-10; definition, 
 25; lands comprised in, 6, 28-32; 
 peoples governed by, 33-35; compari- 
 son of, with Mogul Empire, 278 ff. 
 
 Ottoman Ruling Institution, see Ruling 
 Institution. 
 
 Ottoman Turks, racial descent of, 10- 
 18; unification of Levant by, 9; early 
 history of, 15 ff.; a mixed race, 16, 
 17; sources of culture of, 18-24. 
 
 Outside service, 128-133. 
 
 Pages, the colleges of, 73-79; the three 
 palaces of, 74; course of training of, 
 75-78; graduation of, 75; rewards of, 
 82; punishments of, 88; age of their 
 dismissal postponed, 120; duties of,
 
 346 
 
 INDEX 
 
 in the palace service, 126, 127; Ram- 
 
 berti's description of, 244. 
 Palace-guards, 130. 
 Palaces of Suleiman, principal palace, 
 
 74, 79, 123, 124, 243, 262; palace of 
 
 the harem (Old Palace), 124, 253, 268, 
 
 269; other palaces, 74, 79, 254, 269; 
 
 accounts of the palaces, 128. 
 Panipat, battles of, 278, 299. 
 Parthians, 4, 11 note i, 13 and note 4. 
 Patriarch of Constantinople, 151. 
 Pensions, in Ottoman Empire, 32, 183; 
 
 in Mogul Empire, 285, 294, 302. 
 Persian language, 21, 77. 
 Persians, bequests of, to Ottoman Turks, 
 
 4, 20, 21, 23, 33, 175; blockade of 
 Ottoman trade-routes by, 7; could 
 not lawfully be enslaved, 29; wars 
 of, with Ottoman Empire, 112, 113; 
 support of Mogul emperors by, 280, 28 1 . 
 
 Personality of law, 28, 34, 35. 
 
 Physicians of sultan, 129. 
 
 Plato, 45, 71. 
 
 Police, Janissaries as, 93; minister of, 
 
 183; lieutenants of, 219. 
 Poll-tax, see Capitation tax. 
 Pope, compared with Mufti, 42, 209, 213. 
 Portuguese blocked Ottoman sea-trade, 
 
 7 ; served Mogul emperors, 281 ; 
 
 brought gold and silver to India, 294. 
 Primary schools, 203, 204. 
 Printing in Turkey, 223. 
 Punishments, in Ruling Institution, 88, 
 
 89, 197. 
 
 Queen mother, 56, 57, 122 note i, 125. 
 
 Ragusa, 30, 178. 
 
 Rajputs, in service of Mogul emperors, 
 
 281, 282; at war, 295, 299, 300; their 
 
 Rajahs, 281, 286, 207, 301. 
 Raushan-Ara, daughter of Shah-Jehan, 
 
 291. 
 Reformation, 9, 10, 113. 
 Religious " communities," origin of, in 
 
 Turkey, 20; when organized, 34 note 
 
 5. See Armenian subjects, Greek 
 subjects, and Jewish subjects. 
 
 Renegade Christians, given chief ofl&ces 
 of Ottoman Empire, 39-44, 62-71; 
 unfavorable view of thv^ir character, 
 42; counted as Turks, 70; total num- 
 ber made by Ruling Institution, 70; 
 KLhosrew Pasha learned in Moslem 
 law, 152; other references, 167, 186. 
 
 Revenues, of Suleiman, 179-182 ; of 
 Mogul emperors, 293-295. 
 
 Revolution, right of, 26, 157, 209, 233. 
 
 Rivalry of Ruling and Moslem Institu- 
 tions, 38, 233-236. 
 
 Roman Empire, 6; its influence on 
 Turks, 150, 279-281. See Byzantine 
 Empire. 
 
 Roumania, 52 note i. See Moldavia, 
 and Wallachia. 
 
 Roxelana, see Khurrem. 
 
 Ruling Institution, antecedents of, 23; 
 general description of, 36, 45-47, 193- 
 198; institutions parallel to, 37; re- 
 lation of, to Moslem Institution, 38; 
 not clearly understood by certain 
 historians, 38, 39; contemporary 
 descriptions of, 39-44; component 
 parts of, 47; number of personnel of, 
 49 and note 4; advancement by merit 
 in, 82-88; break-down of system of, 
 43, 69 note 3, 120; relation of, to rest 
 of Empire, 133; influenced by Sulei- 
 man's splendor, 144; the Divan its 
 cap-stone, 188; comparison of, uith 
 Moslem Institution, 227-236; arti- 
 ficiahty of, 231; support of Moslem 
 Institution by, 233, 235. See also 
 chapter headings. 
 
 Rum, Seljuks of, 6, 16. 
 
 Rumelia, 104, 168, 169, 220; Beylerbey 
 of, 103, 105, 189. 
 
 Russia, 29, 57, 74. 
 
 Rustem Pasha, grand vizier, armed 
 household of, 59; liberal religious 
 views of, 68; wealth of, 87 note i; 
 attitude of, toward Janissaries, 97; 
 sale of offices by, 115, 116; suspected 
 of influencing Mustapha's execution, 
 213; other references, 53 note 3, 142, 
 164, 167.
 
 INDEX 
 
 347 
 
 Sacred Law of Islam, scope of, 21, 
 156, 235; limitation of despotism by, 
 257 26, 157; character of, 152-157; 
 sketch of history of, 152, 153; lacic of 
 elasticity of, 27, 156, 157, 215; Sulei- 
 man's observance of, 163; how de- 
 veloped by fdvas, 214; precei)ts of, 
 both ciril and criminal, 216; relation 
 of, to Moslem Institution, 225; spirit 
 of freedom in, 230; not so much re- 
 garded in Mogul Empire, 279, 292, 
 293, 302. 
 
 St. Sophia, church of, 24, 202, 239. 
 
 Sale of office, 115, 116, 179. 
 
 Saracens, Empire of, 5, 6, 14; bequest 
 of, to Ottoman Empire, 21-23; com- 
 parison of, with Turks, 231. 
 
 Scholasticism, Moslem, 8, 9, 215, 228. 
 
 Scouts, 105. 
 
 Scytliians, 11 note i, 12, 13 note 3. 
 
 Seal, the imperial, 165. 
 
 Selim I, the Cruel, or the Grim, not 
 given to sensuality, 56; said to have 
 executed seven viziers, 88; circum- 
 stances of accession of, 94, 142; effect 
 of conquests of, 112, 228, 233, 234; 
 punishmentof heresy by, 210; attempt 
 of, to convert Christian subjects for- 
 cibly, 211, 298. 
 
 Selim II, the Sot, 95, in, 136, 143, 165. 
 
 Seljuk Empire, 5, 7, 119; occupation 
 of Asia INIinor by, 14 ff.; bequest of, 
 to Ottoman Turks, 4, 23, 227; sim- 
 plicity of life in, 133. 
 
 Ser\'ians, 34. 
 
 Shah-Jehan, Mogul emperor, constructs 
 Peacock Throne, 289; defeats Nur- 
 Jchan, 291; civil war of sons of, 293. 
 
 Sher Shah, 293. 
 
 Simplicity of life among Seljuks and 
 early Ottomans, 133, 134. 
 
 Slave-Families of Ottoman subjects, 58, 
 59; conversion encouraged in, 67. 
 
 Slave-Family of the sultan, 36, 39-44, 
 47-58; age of admission to, 48; 
 methods of recruiting for, 49-53; 
 number of members of, 49 and note 4; 
 status of members of, 55; faithfulness 
 
 of, 65; education of, 71 CF.; constituted 
 standing army, 90 and note 4; honors 
 and privileges of, 1 14-120; influence 
 of, upon government, 149. 
 Slavery — 
 
 Of Turks in Saracen Empire, 22. 
 In Ottoman Empire, sources of supply 
 for, 29, 30; mainly of European 
 Christians, 33; provided high ofli- 
 cials, 39-44; character of, 60, 61; 
 comparison of, with American colo 
 nial bondage, 60 note 7; color line 
 not drawn, 60; emancipation fre- 
 quent, 61; attitude of converted 
 slaves to Sacred Law, 230. 
 In Mogul Empire, 280-282, 284. 
 Slavs, Southern, 33, 52, 74. See Bul- 
 garians, Croatians, and Serxaans. 
 Sovereign will of sultan, 162, 163. 
 Spaliis of the Porte, described, 47, re- 
 cruiting of, from pages, 78, 98-100; 
 organization of, 98, 99; number of, 
 99 and notes 3, 4; appearance of, 138, 
 139; finances of, 169, 179; other ref- 
 erences, 250, 251, 267. 
 Splendor — 
 Of Suleiman, 133-141, 195; its effect, 
 
 144, 145- 
 Of Mogul emperors, 287-291; its 
 effect, 297, 298. 
 
 Stable ser\ace, 131. 
 
 State lands, 31, 32. 
 
 Steppe lands, 5, 11, 231. 
 
 Stirrup, generals of imperial, 131. 
 
 Studies — 
 In the colleges of pages, 76, 77. 
 In the imperial harem, 79. 
 Of the Ajem-oghlans, 81 and note 3. 
 In schools, 203; in colleges, 203 and 
 note 4; in law schools, 204 and note 
 I. 
 Of Aurangzeb, 300, 301. 
 
 Succession to throne, in Ottoman Em- 
 pire, 93-95; in Mogul Empire, 293. 
 
 Suleiman the Magnificent, limitations 
 on despotic power of, 26-28; family 
 life of, 56-58; said to have labored at 
 a trade, 76 note 5; self-command of.
 
 348 
 
 INDEX 
 
 89; execution of Mustapha by, 89, 
 94, 142, 312; execution of Bayezid 
 and Ibrahim by, 89, 94, iii, 141, 142; 
 reorganization of feudal system by, 
 102; appointment of Ibrahim as 
 Seraskier by, no; relations of, to 
 Charles V and Ferdinand of Austria, 
 112, 113; promotion of Ibrahim and 
 Rustem by favor of, 120; mother, 
 consorts, and daughter of, 126; au- 
 thority of, as caHph, 150; head of all 
 institutions, 151; legislation of, 32, 
 152-163; attitude of, to Sacred Law, 
 163; ceased to preside at Divan, 188; 
 treatment of criminals by, 221, 222; 
 relation of, to power of great institu- 
 tions, 234; endowments of, 235 and 
 note i; head of Moslems of Empire, 
 299. 
 
 Sultan's authority, head of Ruling 
 Institution, 46; master of slave- 
 family, 55; commander-in-chief of 
 the army, 109, no; head of state and 
 government, 150, 151; head of Mos- 
 lem Institution, 151; subject to 
 Sacred Law, 157; legislative power, 
 i57j 158; unworthiness of character 
 irrelevant, 163 note i, 233; consulta- 
 tion with the Mufti, 210-214; com- 
 parison of relations to the two great 
 institutions, 229; supported by Sacred 
 Law, 233. 
 
 Syria, 31. 
 
 Szigeth, campaign of, in. 
 
 Taj Mahal, 291. 
 
 Tartars of the Crimea, see Crimean 
 Tartary. 
 
 Tatars, definition, 11, 12; bequests to 
 Ottoman Turks, 18; political organi- 
 zation, 19; influence on Mogul Em- 
 pire, 279, 280. 
 
 Taxation, 175-182; inelasticity of, 177. 
 
 Tent-pitchers, 132. 
 
 Theodosius I, 9, 158. 
 
 Timariotes, see Feudal cavalry. 
 
 Timur (Tamerlane), character of, 280; 
 house of, compared with that of 
 
 Osman, 272, 281, 299. See Baber, 
 
 house of. 
 Tithe lands, 31, 32. 
 Todar Mai, 281, 293. 
 Transylvania, 30, 178. 
 Treasure, of Suleiman, 172; of Prince 
 
 of Gujarat, 178; of Mogul emperors, 
 
 295- 
 Treasurers, of the household, 127; of 
 
 the Empire (Defterdars) , 167-172, 
 
 189, 191, 247, 265; in Mogul Empire, 
 
 294, 297. 
 Treasury, twenty-five bureaus of, 168- 
 
 172; characteristics of, 173, 174; 
 
 personnel of, 186, 187. 
 Tributary provinces, 30; condition of 
 
 inhabitants of, 33; government of, 
 
 37. 
 
 Tribute, 178. 
 
 Tribute boys, increased the number of 
 Turks, 16, 70; regions from which 
 taken, 34, 51; process of levying, 51, 
 52; estimate of the system, 53, 54; 
 ultimate effect, 69-71, 231; not levied 
 by Mogul government in India, 279, 
 281, 282. 
 
 Tribute lands, 31, 32. 
 
 Tit-kiu, Empire of, 13, 14, 19. 
 
 Turanians, 12, 13 note 3. 
 
 Turki followers of Mogul emperors, 280, 
 281. 
 
 Turkish language, 18, 77, 79. 
 
 Turks, in Western Asia, 5, 14 ff.; re- 
 lation of, to Mongols, 12; relation of, 
 to Caucasians, 11 and note 2; com- 
 parison of, with Saracens, 231; Ram- 
 berti's account of origin of, 242; in- 
 fluence of, on Mogul Empire, 279. 
 See Ottoman Turks, and Seljuk 
 Empire. 
 
 Unification of territories by Ottoman 
 Turks, 9, 10. 
 
 United Greek subjects, a separate or- 
 ganization, 34. 
 
 United States of America, compared 
 with Ottoman Empire, 3, 28, 45, 58, 
 209, 213.
 
 INDEX 
 
 349 
 
 Unnatural vices, 75 note 6, 232. 
 Uses (legal term), 32, 202, 
 Ushers, 130, 
 Uzun Hassan, 64. 
 
 Vassal states, of Ottoman Empire, 29, 
 
 30; of Mogul Empire, 297. 
 Venality, of Ottoman oflicials, 39, 69; 
 
 of Ottoman justice, 222. 
 Venice, 30, 178, 179. 
 Vienna, siege of, 93, 143. 
 Viziers, 163-167, 189-191 ; Ramberti's 
 
 account, 246. 
 Voinaks, 131. 
 Volunteer soldiers, 102, 106. 
 
 Wallachia, 30, 52 note i, 106, 129, 
 178, 297. 
 
 War, declaration of, 26, 209. 
 
 Wealth, accumulation of, discouraged, in 
 private citizens, 59; allowed to high 
 officers, 86, 87, 260; of Rustem Pasha, 
 87 note I, 161; of Mogul Empire, 
 278, 287, 295. 
 
 Western Europe, not interested in East 
 after Crusades, 10; comparison with 
 Ottoman Empire, 35, 36, 74, 94, 121, 
 157, 179, 204, 222. 
 
 Women, had no part at Ottoman Court, 
 121; more prominent in Mogul Em- 
 pire, 281, 290, 291.
 
 f^ciuri,,
 
 .^i. ixiaBtaiiiaataiaaSfcfagiaiWHati™'-'-^''^''-'-^ 
 
 IS|iliSii|Pi|l^^^^^^^^