Sheikh-ul-Islam is still a member of the Cabinet of the Porte, has lost many of the important official functions it once had. The position of the Sheikh-ul-Islam, the head of the _Ulema_, at present resembles that of the ecclesiastical head of a Christian country, though, as I stated before, no ecclesiastics could be recognised as such in Islam. The number of the students in the _madrassehs_ of Constantinople is estimated to be something between five and seven thousand. Originally the _madrassehs_ were founded on a system much resembling that of the colleges of the English Universities. They were built by the munificence of the Sultans and of private persons, and most of them were situated near mosques, to which they were attached, and were supported from the same endowments as the mosques themselves, for the charitable founders of these endowments aimed particularly at increasing the congregations that attend public worship, and devised that the students should also use the mosques as their lecture-halls. Even nowadays most lectures are given in the mosques. Each _madrasseh_ was self-governing, and the principals, or, so to say, the 'fellows,' used to look after its interests and decide its rules. All the students used to be regularly supplied with soup, bread, and, on certain days, with cooked rice, and a kind of sweet made of saffron, and also with olive oil for their lamps, from a sort of kitchen endowed for the purpose. Free 'commons' of this sort for students are supplied only occasionally and sparsely nowadays, as the revenues of the endowed estates and properties have long been put under the care and control of officialdom, and the income from charities is now abused and illegally appropriated by the corrupt and impious hands through which it passes. In consequence, members of the _madrassehs_ now can often not even raise funds to save their buildings from complete ruin. These buildings are mostly square in shape, with a courtyard in the middle, and have one and sometimes two stories. They are unhealthy, and cannot be properly ventilated. The students take their baths behind the doors of their rooms, cook their meals in the fireplace, and, as a rule, two or three sleep in one room, on the floor. The damp, fœtid smell in most of the rooms is terrible. My hard fate made me live five years in such a place, and they were the years which ought to be the best of one's youth.