In reality, the _muftis_ occupied the most influential position in the Moslem Institution and perhaps in the Ottoman state. Usually inferior to judges and officers of government in income and display, and giving no direct impulse to affairs, they nevertheless wielded the greatest continuous power in the state,—the quiet, steady, almost changeless, almost irresistible, force of Mohammedanism. They were “guardians of the laws” in as full a sense as any Greek could wish. Their authority rested, first, on the acceptance by the entire Moslem population of the absolute supremacy of the Sacred Law, and, second, on the recognition by the same population that they, who had acquired learning in the Law by long years of arduous mental labor, and who had chosen to continue in its study rather than take up its more active and lucrative application in service on the bench, were the persons through whom its supremacy on earth was rightly to be maintained. Thus by popular consent the _muftis_ constituted the conservative, regulative force in the Ottoman state. They were destined to contribute very largely to the empire’s durability, which, despite frightful shocks, disasters, and losses, was to continue far beyond the expectation of the world. The _muftis_ did their work only too well. The idea of the changelessness of the Sacred Law was essentially hostile to progress. Although considerable flexibility was possible under its provisions, the flexibility lay in its application to particular cases, and hardly at all in the law itself. When the Ottoman power began to rise, scholasticism was at its height, both in Christianity and in Mohammedanism. From this blighting theological and philosophical bondage, which tended to extend its deadening sway over all the activities of the human spirit, Christendom was delivered by the Renaissance and the Reformation. The Ottoman mind, on the contrary, continued to be held under it till the most recent years. That it remained so long in bondage, with scarcely a struggle to escape, was due very largely to the authority of the _Ulema_. They who accomplished much toward building the Ottoman state into a solid structure, and toward maintaining it against foes without and within, also held it nearly stationary while the rest of the world moved on. THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM[675]