the practical judges, that is to say against the executors of actual law.”[518] The last sentence quoted contains by implication a genuine distinction between the “religious law,” which may be called jurisprudence, and the “actual law.” It is true that at the present time “actual law” in all Mohammedan lands consists only in a comparatively small proportion of precepts drawn from the _Sheri_; yet a body of precepts which today requires an elaborate system of courts for its enforcement, and which offers a career to many thousands of living men as teachers, advisers, and judges, can hardly be adjudged a mere “doctrine of duties.”[519] Undoubtedly the _Sheri_ has suffered a gradual shifting of emphasis from its practical to its jurisprudential side; undoubtedly it has suffered progressive encroachment upon the area of its practical application, beginning in very early times and leading up to an invasion in force in the nineteenth century by the principles, practice, and procedure of Western Europe. But in the Ottoman Empire of the sixteenth century the _Sheri_ had no such inferior place. Even then, to be sure, it occupied by no means the whole field of practical law; but an examination of the quotations from the Venetian reports which were presented in an earlier chapter is of itself sufficient to show that at that time the _Sheri_ held the place of overwhelming preëminence in legal matters, in point of usefulness as well as of honor; that its practical precepts to the full extent of their formulated scope were the private law of the land; that its judges were of equal or greater authority and repute than were the high officers of government; that the latter were in most cases obliged to execute decisions of the former, their independent jurisdiction being confined to a limited class of persons, and to the decision of administrative cases according to _Kanuns_ outside the field of the Sacred Law.[520]