Suleiman’s authority rested actually and immediately upon the military might which he controlled. Psychologically, it was strongly supported by the ancient Turkish tradition of absolute obedience to the ruler who led and fed his people, and by the undying allegiance of the population of wide areas to the Caesar of New Rome, to whose seat and splendor Suleiman had succeeded. Theoretically, and, if a modern expression may be used, constitutionally, Suleiman’s power was that of the ancient caliphs of Islam. It is true that he suffered under one apparently complete disqualification. A tradition of high order asserted that the _Imâms_ must be of the Prophet’s tribe, the Koreish;[505] but by an extension of the principle of agreement (_ijma_) by which the consensus of the Islamic doctors of the law of any period may establish an interpretation of some passage of the Sacred Law, Suleiman’s father, after the acquisition of the Holy Cities and the resignation of the last Abbassid caliph at Cairo, had come into full rights as caliph. The title itself seems to have been known by none of the Western writers of the sixteenth century, nor was it commonly used by Suleiman in public documents. In his capacity as caliph, Suleiman was head of the Islamic state, defender, executor, and interpreter of the Sacred Law, and defender of the faith. He was under obligation to punish heretics and unsubmissive infidels, to protect true believers, and to extend the area of his divinely-appointed rule. To him, after Allah and the Prophet, was due the absolute obedience of all good Moslems within his dominions. As for his Christian subjects, they also regarded him as their lawful sovereign, given by God as a punishment for their sins. The Sacred Law recognized no power of legislation in the head of the state, since God through Mohammed had legislated once for all; but it entrusted to him the functions of administration and justice, to be exercised to the fullest possible extent, subject always to the prescriptions of the Law. The sultan being thus supreme, all the great institutions of the Ottoman Empire are to be thought of, not as built upward from a basis in the popular will, but as extended downward from the divinely-appointed sovereign at the top. To what extent the Ruling Institution held this relationship has been indicated already. Central and local government, household and court, standing, feudal, and irregular army, all depended upon the sultan. The Moslem Institution recognized him as its head, and the highest officials of the judiciary, chosen out of its membership, were appointed by him and removable at his will.[506] So also the _Mufti_, the chief of the jurists, was appointed by the sultan.[507] Even the ecclesiastical organizations of the subject Christians and Jews were likewise extended downward from his authority, since at the capture of Constantinople the Conqueror had at once assumed that temporal headship of the Christian