REBIRTH 179ing the Spanish Inquisition in Iberia, and discrimination hounded them
just about everywhere.
The Eastern Orthodox community was another millet, headed by the
patriarch of Constantinople (as Christians still called it), and he had au-
thority over all Slavic Christians in the empire, a number that kept in-
creasing as the Ottomans extended their conquests in Europe.
Then there was the Armenian millet, another Christian community
but separate from the Greeks because the Greek and Armenian churches
considered one another's doctrines heretical.
The leader of each millet represented his people at court and answered
directly to the sultan. In a sense, the Muslims were just another of these
millets, and they too had a top leader, the Sheikh al-Islam, or "Old Man of
Islam," a position created by Bayazid shortly before he was crushed by
Timur-i-lang. The Sheikh al-Islam legislated according to the shari'a and
presided over an army of muftis who interpreted the law, judges who ap-
plied the law, and mullahs who inducted youngsters into the religion,
provided basic religious education, and administrated rites in local neigh-
borhoods and villages.
The shari' a, however, was not the only law in the land. There was also
the sultan's code, a parallel legal system that dealt with administrative mat-
ters, taxation, interaction berween millets, and relationships among the
various classes, especially the subject class and the ruling class.
Don't try to follow this complexity: the complexity of the Ottoman sys-
tem defies a quick description. I just want to give you a flavor of it. This
whole parallel legal system, including the lawyers, bureaucrats, and judges
who shaped and applied it, was under the authority of the grand vizier,
who headed up the palace bureaucracy (another whole world in itself}.
This vizier was the empire's second most powerful figure, after the sultan.
Or was he third? After all, the Sheikh al-Islam had the right to review
every piece of secular legislation and veto it if he thought it conflicted with
the shari' a, or send it back for modification.
On the other hand, the Sheikh al-Islam served at the pleasure of the
sultan, and it was the sultan's code the grand vizier was administering. So
if the grand vizier and the Sheikh al-Islam came into conflict ... guess
who backed down. Or did he?
You see how it was: check, balance, check, balance ....