Aleppo) with the task of preparing such a code; and the result, prepared before 1549, was the _Multeka ol-ebhar_, the “Confluence of the Seas,” which remained the foundation of Ottoman law until the reforms of the nineteenth century.[515] The _Multeka_ did not, however, entirely replace the previous codes and collections of _fetvas_, or authoritative juristic opinions, which continued to be used as law books of less weight. Early in the process of formulation, the Sacred Law was separated logically into two great divisions,—matters of faith and morals, and practical regulations, groups corresponding more or less closely to the Western conceptions of theology and law. The Moslems never made an actual separation of these two divisions of the Sacred Law; both in education and in practice they regarded them as parts of one great unity of advice, precept, and command, divinely sanctioned and binding upon all true believers. The practical regulations, or the Law proper, went by the Arabic name of _fikh_; it included both jurisprudence and positive law.[516] A group of Dutch and German thinkers, led by Dr. Snouck Hurgronje, has been so strongly impressed by the jurisprudential side of the _Sheri_ as almost to deny that it has or has ever had an important practical side;[517] but a careful consideration of the early history of the Ottoman Empire suggests that their view in its entirety is not supported by the facts. Dr. Goldziher says: “In later days, historical consideration has proved that only a small part of this system, connected with religious and family life, has a practical effect as of old, while in many parts of merely juristical character this theological law is entirely put aside in actual jurisdiction.... Snouck Hurgronje was really the first who set forth with great acuteness and sure judgment the historical truth, namely, that what we call Muhammedan law is nothing but an _ideal_ law, a theoretical system; in a word, a learned _school-law_, which reflects the thoughts of pious theologians about the arrangement of Islamic society, whose sphere of influence was willingly extended by pious rulers—as far as possible—but which as a whole could hardly ever have been the real practical standard of public life. He finds there rather _a doctrine of duties_ (_Pflichtenlehre_) of quite an ideal and theological character, traced out by generations of religious scholars, who wished to rule life by the scale of an age which in their idea was the golden period, and whose traditions they wished to maintain, propagate, and develop. Even the penalties for offenses against religious laws are often nothing else but ideal claims of the pious, dead letters conceived in studies and fostered in the hearts of God-fearing scholars, but neglected and suppressed in life where other rules become prevailing. We find even in the oldest literature of Islam many complaints about the negligence of the religious law by _Ulema_ in their struggle against