churches which had been held by the Byzantine emperors.[508] The Greek Patriarch received from the sultan appointment and investiture, including a command to bishops, clergy, and people of his faith to render obedience to him in matters within his province; the other Christian groups and the Jews were likewise dependent. Finally, the privileges enjoyed by the foreign settlements all depended upon grants from the sultan or upon treaties made with him in his sovereign capacity.[509] As for the officials of the Ruling Institution, they were all either directly or indirectly the sultan’s appointees. Grand vizier, viziers, treasurers, chancellor, generals of the inside service, generals of the outside service and the army, _Beylerbeys_ and _Sanjak Beys_, all took their places at a word from him, and at a second word all left them without a murmur. THE SULTAN AS LEGISLATOR So far as legislation was possible under the Ottoman system, the sole power to issue it rested in the sultan. The law which demanded obedience within the Ottoman Empire was fourfold: the _Sheri_, or Sacred Law of Islam; the _Kanuns_, or written decrees of the sultans; the _Adet_, or established custom; and the _Urf_, or sovereign will of the reigning sultan.[510] The _Sheri_ was above the sultan and unchangeable by him; the _Kanuns_ and the _Adet_ were subordinate to the _Urf_; the _Urf_, when expressed and written, became _Kanun_ and annulled all contradictory _Kanuns_ and _Adet_. The _Sheri_ was the whole body of Islamic law as accepted by the Ottoman nation. Its long history cannot be detailed here. Based originally on the Koran, supplemented by traditions of Mohammed’s legal decisions and sayings, and by the decisions of the early caliphs and the interpretations of early judges,[511] it was first formulated by Abu Hanifa, who was the earliest of the four great orthodox Moslem doctors, and who became the accepted teacher of all Turkish peoples.[512] His code was worked over again and again in the course of six centuries, as new decisions of judges and interpretations of jurists accumulated. Mohammed II found it necessary to have a new code prepared, a task for which he chose Khosrew Pasha, who, singularly enough, was a Christian renegade, seemingly almost the only one who rose high in the Moslem Institution.[513] This work, finished in 1470,[514] was not sufficient in the days of Suleiman. At the time of its preparation the Ottoman Empire had been still wholly within territory that had remained Christian during all the early brilliant period of Islam; but since then the sultans had conquered three seats of the later caliphate, Damascus, Bagdad, and Cairo, and had come to hold the protectorate of the Holy Cities, where Mohammed and the early caliphs had ruled. A new code of law, therefore, better adapted to the more widely Moslem character which the empire had assumed, was demanded. Suleiman charged Sheik Ibrahim Halebi (of