Within a decade of Selim’s conquest, Egypt, Syria, and the Hijaz were firmly under Ottoman rule. Istanbul, the imperial capital, was home to both the decision takers and the law makers of the empire as a whole. At the top of the hierarchy was the sultan, an absolute monarch whose word was writ. He lived in the Topkapi Palace, behind great walls overlooking the imperial capital, the Straits of the Bosporus, and the Golden Horn. Downhill from the palace walls, behind an imposing set of gates, lay the offices of the grand vezir and his ministers. This center of government came to be known by its most distinctive feature—its gates. Referred to in Turkish as the Bab-i Ali, or “High Gate,” the expression was rendered La Porte Sublime in French and anglicized as the Sublime Porte, or just “the Porte.” These two institutions—the royal court and the Sublime Porte—set the new terms of government for the Arab provinces, as for the empire as a whole. With Ottoman rule came new administrative practices. Ottoman provincial government in the sixteenth century was a form of feudalism in which military commanders were awarded territory by the central government. The post holder would oversee the administration of justice and tax collection from his lands. He would also maintain a certain number of cavalrymen from the revenues of his lands and pay a fixed sum in taxes to the central treasury. Unlike feudalism in Europe, the Ottoman system was not hereditary and so did not produce an aristocracy to rival the power of the sultan. The system was ideally suited for a rapidly expanding empire, where territory was conquered faster than the state’s ability to produce a trained bureaucracy to administer it. The bureaucrats were left to bookkeeping, making an inventory of the wealth of the empire. Detailed tax registers were compiled listing the number of taxable men, households, fields, and revenues for each village of a given province. These registers were supposed to be updated every thirty years, though in the course of the sixteenth century the state began to neglect its bookkeeping; the practice died out altogether in the seventeenth century.¹⁸ The new Ottoman provinces in Syria—Aleppo, Damascus, and later the coastal province of Tripoli (in modern Lebanon)—were divided into smaller administrative units and placed under commanders. The provincial governor was given the largest fief, with a set number of troops and fixed taxes to deliver to the sultan for his campaigns and treasury. The military commander of the province was given the next largest fief, with lower-ranking commanders allotted lands in proportion to their rank and the number of troops they were expected to present for the sultan’s military campaigns.¹⁹ This modified feudal system was never applied to Egypt, which continued to be ruled in an uneasy partnership between Ottoman governors and Mamluk commanders. The men who came to fill the posts in the Arab provincial administration were appointed by the central government in Istanbul, and they tended to come from outside the Arab lands. Like the Mamluks, the Ottomans operated their own system of slave recruitment, primarily in their Balkan provinces. Young Christian boys were taken from their villages in an annual conscription known in Turkish as the devshirme, or “boy levy.” They were sent to Istanbul, where they were converted to Islam and trained to serve the empire. Athletic boys were sent for military training, to fill the ranks of the crack Janissary infantry regiments. Those with intellectual promise were sent to the palace to be trained for civil service in either the palace itself or the bureaucracy. By modern standards, the boy levy appears nothing short of barbaric: children sent into slavery to be raised far from their families and forcibly converted to Islam. At the time, however, it was the only means for upward mobility in a fairly restrictive society. Through the boy levy, a peasant’s son could rise to become a general or grand vizier. Indeed, entry to the elite ranks of the Ottoman military and government was more or less restricted to devshirme recruits. The fact that the Arabs, who in their great majority were free-born Muslims, were excluded from this practice meant that they were greatly underrepresented among the power elite of the early Ottoman Empire.²⁰ One of the great innovations of Sultan Sьleyman II’s reign was to define the administrative structure of each Ottoman province in law. Known in the West as “the Magnificent,” Sьleyman was known locally by the Turkish nickname Kanuni, or “the law-giver.” More than two centuries after Sьleyman’s death, the Egyptian chronicler al-Jabarti extolled the virtues of his legal and administrative reforms: “Sultan Sьleyman al-Kanuni established the principles of government administration, completed the establishment of the empire, and organized the provinces. He shone in the darkness, lifted up the shining light of religion, and extinguished the fire of the infidels. The country [i.e., Egypt] has continued to be part of their empire and obedient to Ottoman rule from that time until now.”²¹ The rules of government were set out for each province in a constitutional document known as a kanunname, or “book of laws.” These provincial constitutions made clear the relationship between governors and tax-payers and set down the rights and responsibilities of both sides in black and white. For its age, it represented the height of government accountability. The first provincial constitution was drafted in Egypt in the immediate aftermath of Ahmed Pasha’s rebellion in 1525. Sultan Sьleyman II’s grand vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, introduced the kanunname as a central part of his mission to restore the Sultan’s authority over Egypt. The document is remarkably comprehensive, setting out the administrative framework down to the village level. It establishes the responsibilities of office holders in the maintenance of security, the preservation of the irrigation system, and the collection of taxes. The rules for land surveys, for pious endowments, for the maintenance of granaries, and for the running of seaports are clearly explained. The constitution even notes how often the governor should meet with his advisory council of state (four times each week, just like imperial council in Istanbul).²² In order to enforce the law, Ottoman administrators needed disciplined and reliable troops. The provincial governors had under their command military forces composed of both Ottoman regulars and locally recruited irregular troops. The elite of the military were the Janissaries, whose commander was appointed by Istanbul. A city like Damascus would have an infantry consisting of between 500 and 1,000 Janissaries to uphold local order. There were also a number of cavalry forces, whose ranks were supported by the revenues of the province. According to Ottoman sources there were over 8,000 cavalrymen in the three provinces of Aleppo, Tripoli, and Damascus combined in the last quarter of the sixteenth century.²³ These forces were supplemented with locally recruited infantrymen and North African mercenaries. The judiciary was, along with the governors and the military, the third element of Ottoman administration. The central government in Istanbul dispatched a chief justice to each provincial capital, where he would preside over the Islamic courts. Though Christians and Jews were entitled to settle their differences in their own communities’ religious tribunals, many chose to pursue their complaints or to record their transactions in the Muslim courts. All imperial decrees from Istanbul were read publicly in court and inscribed in the court registers. In addition to criminal cases, the courts provided arbitration between disputing parties, served as notary public to record commercial contracts and the exchange of land, and registered the major transitions in life—marriages and divorces, settlements for widows and orphans, and the distribution of the personal effects of the deceased. All cases and transactions were duly inscribed in the court registers, many of which still survive, providing an invaluable window into the daily life of the towns and cities of the Ottoman Empire.