This criticism of Ibrahim Pasha was later repeated in a more general form by one Kogabey, who presented to Sultan Mourad IV a memorial on the decadence of the Ottoman state. The two first reasons that he assigned for the deterioration were the sultan’s ceasing to preside over the divan in person, and the placing of favorites in the office of grand vizir, the latter custom having been started by Suleiman I, who raised his favorite Ibrahim from the palace to the divan. Such vizirs, Kogabey explained, had no insight into the circumstances of the whole nation. They generally were blinded by the splendor of their position and refused to consult intelligent men on affairs of government, and so the order of the state was destroyed through their carelessness.[86] The custom of appointing favorites to the most important office in the empire was certainly a bad one, but Ibrahim was a more efficient administrator than could have been expected from his training, and ranks among the great vizirs of the Ottoman Empire. CHAPTER III IBRAHIM THE DIPLOMAT We must now turn from Turkey’s internal affairs to her foreign relations. Turkish political history during the sixteenth century was so interwoven with that of the European states, the influence of Ottoman interference upon the wars and negotiations of Christian princes was so marked, that a study of Suleiman’s foreign relations becomes almost a study of contemporary Europe.[87] The two sultans who succeeded Mohammed the Conqueror had not extended Turkish power in Europe, Bayazid having failed in his attempts at conquest, and Selim having turned his attention from Europe to the East. This caused a period of transition and preparation for the great events of Suleiman’s reign. When Suleiman came to the throne, he found certain relations established with Ragusa and Venice, the two commercial cities of the Adriatic, whose large carrying trade made an _entente cordiale_ with the Porte very desirable.[88] Ragusa was the first foreign state to reach the new sultan with her congratulations on his accession,[89] and the sultan renewed with the Ragusan republic the commercial privileges it had enjoyed in Egypt.