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.[590] 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 punishment for unrest, and was shared by the sultan with high officials.[591] 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 revenue.[592] The great treasure of the prince of Gujarat came to Suleiman after the prince’s death.[593] 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.[594] Fees connected with the administration of justice went directly to the support of the judges and other officials concerned.[595] With regular taxation nearly stationary, the increase from extraordinary sources did not keep pace with advancing expenditures.[596]
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 remainder of his troops came at their own expense.[597] 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;[598] and the luxury and splendor of the Magnificent Sultan’s court grew apace. In spite of fresh conquests and large confiscations, therefore, Suleiman learned to feel the need of money. He found it necessary to compel his great officials to help him, by exacting sums of money from them at the time of their appointment.[599] These sums were moderate, but, as already pointed out, they set a fatal example.[600]
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.[601] Junis Bey says: “The income of the Great Turk from kharâj 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 Porte or of the Seigneur’s court consume the entire income or a little less.”[602]
The total regular revenue of Suleiman would thus have been about four million ducats.[603] 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.[604] According to their estimated total of seven or eight million 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.[605] 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 specifically 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.[606] Allowing for all this, 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.[607]
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.[608]
In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Ottoman government had three ministers of state and six under-secretaries 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 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-bashi was at the same time second official in the grand vizier’s court of justice, minister of police, introducer of ambassadors, 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 Effendi, whose full title was Reis ul-Khuttab, “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 international 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 Ruus Kalemi made out certificates for the clerks of all bureaus, for Kapuji-bashis, professors in endowed colleges, administrators of religious endowments, pensioners on the treasury or on religious 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 Nishanji’s 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.[609]
The under-secretaries were attached by pairs to the ministers. The Teshrifatji, or master of ceremonies, and the Kiaya Katibi, or private secretary, of the Kiaya-bey were attached to the Kiaya-bey. The greater and lesser Teskerejis, or masters of petitions, were attached to the Chaush-bashi. The Beylikji, mentioned above as head of the three bureaus of the chancery, and the Mektubji, or private secretary of the grand vizier, in which office he was assisted by a bureau of thirty clerks, were attached to the Reis Effendi.
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 simplifies 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 department persisted from the time of Mohammed II to the end of the eighteenth century with few changes. Accordingly, the inference 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;[610] 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 little 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 formulation 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 department, and the recipient of a large salary. A description of about the year 1537 says of the Nishanji: “There is a Teskereji-bashi, who has the duty of engrossing the ordinances and commands 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 Teskereh; and it is also his duty, in consultation with the pashas, to revise the writings and take care that they contain no ambiguous 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.”[611]
The Reis Effendi was at that time, it would seem, little more than recording secretary of the Divan.[612] 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,[613] they were entrusted in later reigns to the Reis Effendi. 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 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;[614] in the time of Mohammed II the Nishanji might be drawn from the ranks of the Ulema.[615] 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.[616] Whether or not this be true, the books of the treasury department had been kept in Turkish from the first;[617] but it does not follow, of course, that the clerks of this department had always been Ottomans, or that, if they were, 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 such persons were more easily to be found in the Moslem-born population 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.[618] Undoubtedly 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 treasuries 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, nominations, 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.[619] 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 multiplicity of devices that order was lost in confusion.
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 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 Ruling Institution, but rather the cap-stone of both institutions, the body that gave final unity, immediately under the sultan, to the organization of the empire.
In former times the sultan had presided at the Divan. Suleiman did not, and he has been greatly blamed for discontinuing the custom.[621] 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. Nevertheless, it was a serious rift in both of the great institutions of the empire at the most dangerous place, and its effect was 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.[622] 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.[623] Probably they were not so elaborate in the time of Suleiman, but contemporary writings show them already considerably 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 officials 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.[624] Officials who might be summoned waited in antechambers 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.[625] The Beylerbeys of Anatolia and Greece, and, after Barbarossa’s appointment, 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 the Teskerejis, or masters of petitions. On the floor at his left sat the Reis Effendi. The Kapujilar-kiayasi, or grand chamberlain 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.[626] Great questions, like proposals of ambassadors, the condition of the provinces, and the possibility or desirability 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.[627] Lesser matters were decided by the viziers individually, or were referred by them to the other great officials present, or to an official 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,[628] a simple meal of bread, meat, rice, fruit, and water was served to all who were in attendance within and without the hall 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.[629] Order was kept most carefully 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 transaction 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 Defterdars regularly, and the Beylerbeys and the Agha of the Janissaries when they had business;[630] the Defterdars, however, received audience on Sundays and Tuesdays only. The Kaziaskers entered first, and when their business had been approved they went to the gate and held court. The Beylerbeys, the Defterdars, and the viziers entered the audience chamber together. The Beylerbeys transacted their business and departed; the Defterdars 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.[631] These the sultan usually approved as made, sometimes mitigating a decision or himself dictating a reply to an ambassador.[632] Suleiman was willing to give a free hand to Ibrahim, Rustem, and Mohammed Sokolli during their long periods of service.[633]
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 horseback.[634]
The Divan of Suleiman was a splendid ceremony, and it transacted a great amount of administrative and judicial business. 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 deliberation, 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;[635] yet it was unlike both. Its presiding officer was appointed; 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 lives. 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 despotically 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 intelligent 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 they imparted ideas and methods to each other, and made their abilities 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. Controlling administration and justice and influencing legislation, the Divan, under the leadership of the grand vizier, governed the Ottoman Empire for the sultan.
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 presentation 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 proportion 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 effort toward progress was not present. Change came, not by conscious striving toward betterment, 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 intelligently 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 succeed in accomplishing 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 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. Suleiman 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 to 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 nobility 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 lives 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 protégée 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 Ruling 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 Mohammedans. A twofold motive lay beneath this policy,—a desire to obtain single-hearted servants and to increase the number of believers in the Mohammedan faith. Sons of these 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 Ruling 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 provided 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 immediate 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 discipline was constantly maintained, slackness was severely punished, and industry and ability were richly rewarded. The results were well-nigh incredible; they constitute a wonderful demonstration of how little the human spirit is limited by the ignorance or the restricted and humble life of ancestors. With hardly an exception, the men who guided Suleiman’s empire to a height of unexampled glory were sons of peasants and herdsmen, of downtrodden 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, 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 inefficient.
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 separation 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 imperfections 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, proselytism, 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 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 institution in wealth, splendor, power, simplicity and rapidity of action, and respect at home and abroad.