The Ottoman Empire ••• 147Political Institutions
The strength and efficiency that awed the sixteenth-century Europeans were
made possible by the ruling class, the so-called Osmanlilar ("Ottomans"). As
was standard in Islam, the functions of the ruling class were to expand and
defend the lands of the Ottoman Empire and to ensure the maximum ex¬
ploitation of its sources of wealth. The main competing groups in the ruling
class were the landowning aristocracy, made up of conquered Christian
princes in the Balkans and Turkish amirs in Anatolia, and a group of slaves
taken by force from their families as boys, converted to Islam, and trained
for military or administrative service. The system of recruiting and training
this group was called the devshirme ("boy levy"). The same word can also
mean the group of soldiers and bureaucrats produced by this system.
In theory, any male Ottoman subject could ascend to the ruling class by
taking on three attributes: (1) complete dedication of his life and worldly
goods to the sultan's service; (2) acceptance and practice of Islam, al¬
though this rule seems not to have been enforced until the sixteenth cen¬
tury; and (3) learning and practicing the elaborate system of customs,
behavior, and language known as the Ottoman way. As in the Mamluk sys¬
tem, special schools were set up in the capital and the main provincial cen¬
ters to train youths for Ottoman government service. Nearly all of these
boys were taken from Christian families under the devshirme system. Al¬
though some families resisted this apparent theft of their préadolescent
sons (whom they could protect by arranging early marriages for them),
others brought them to the recruiters, for the devshirme enabled the lads
to rise as high in the government as their talents and aspirations might
take them.
The ruling class contained four branches: administrative, military,
scribal, and cultural. The administrative branch was the palace; it included
the sultan's wives, children, and household servants (sometimes called the
inner service) and the cabinet (divan), which supervised all the other
branches of the Ottoman government (and hence was called the outer ser¬
vice). Its chief administrator was the grand vizier, who was authorized to
replace the sultan on military campaigns or in the divan. By Suleyman's
time, the viziers often did both and were second in power and prestige to
the sultan himself. The early viziers were usually Turkish princes or ad¬
ministrators from older Muslim states; Christian converts to Islam first
became chief ministers under Mehmet the Conqueror and almost mo¬
nopolized the post by the reign of Suleyman.
The military branch was important, too, for the Ottoman Empire often
resembled an army camp. Many subdivisions, both administrative and
functional, existed, but we limit ourselves here to the horse soldiers