226 DESTINY DISRUPTED
To combat this gumming up of the works, the state raised salaries, so
that courtiers and bureaucrats wouldn't feel the need to take bribes. But the
state didn't have any source of extra funds based in real productivity, espe-
cially since, with the empire no longer expanding, the state did not have
the revenue that traditionally flowed into its coffers from conquest. In
order to raise salaries, pensions, and soldiers' wages, therefore, the empire
had to simply print money.
Printing money spurs inflation-which puts us back where we started!
Everything the Ottoman government did to stem corruption and promote
efficiency only aggravated the problem it was trying to solve. Eventually,
government officials gave up and decided to hire some consultants to
come in and help them set things in order. The advisers they hired were
management consultants and technical experts from the continent that
seemed to know how: western Europe.
Perhaps some brilliant executive could have done something about the
unraveling that led the Ottoman elite to this sorry state; but the very suc-
cess of the empire, and the very might of its ruling family, had transformed
its imperial culture and the life of its royal family in ways that pretty much
precluded any new Mehmet the Conquerors or Suleiman the Magnificents
from emerging. Specifically, the court had grown ever bigger, heavier, and
less productive until it was like some giant deformity that the whole soci-
ety was carrying on its back.
The archetypal symbol of this deformity was, perhaps, the so-called
Grand Seraglio, the Sultan's harem in Istanbul. Earlier dynasties around
the Muslim world had harems, of course, but in Ottoman society, this
grim institution grew to proportions never seen before, except perhaps in
China under the Ming dynasty.
Thousands of women from every conquered population lived in the
labyrinthine Grand Seraglio. Although steeped in an overall atmosphere of
wealth and luxury, most of these women lived in cubicles within the maze.
The women of the harem were supplied with cosmetics and all other sup-
plies useful to enhancing their adornments and had no other occupation
except for self-adornment: no useful work to do, no opportunity to study,
no call to produce anything, nothing to rescue them from a life of mean-
ingless boredom. They were prisoners in gem-crusted cells.