Distinction and membership in the institution proper rested upon birth in the case of the descendants of Mohammed, upon profession of piety and special religious service in the case of the dervishes, but upon learned knowledge of the Sacred Law in all positions of public influence and importance. The three highly-honored classes of teachers, jurists, and judges were trained in the same superbly-planned educational system, in the same text-books and the same ideas. Whether in Constantinople or Cairo, the Crimea or Algiers, Budapest or Bagdad, old, grave, wise, and learned professors, jurists, and judges taught, interpreted, and enforced the same wide-reaching and changeless Sacred Law. As teachers, the _Ulema_ conveyed to children and youth, in impressible years, that which they had themselves received. The same learned persons, after fixing each part of the whole round of legal studies in their minds by periods of teaching, were advanced to places where they dealt not with boys, but with men, where their work affected not the fortunes of individuals, but the destinies of the empire. Yet their influence was exerted strenuously in the same direction throughout, to impress and perpetuate the changeless body of ideas in the Sacred Law. Professors, jurists, and judges alike were, in all that they did and throughout their lives, fundamentally teachers. The _Ulema_ taught all the Moslems of the empire, from the young child to the aged sultan. They maintained schools for the young; places of worship, courts, and offices of consultation for adults. Every important officer of administrative government had a judge and a _mufti_ at his elbow. Not only was the sultan himself in close relations with the _Kaziaskers_ and the _Mufti,_ but he had always a spiritual adviser to whom he showed great deference, and who bore the significant title of the sultan’s _Hoja_, or teacher. There was an aspect in which the Moslem Institution, based upon the Moslem population of the empire, fitted the government as hand fits glove. This figure, moreover, can be pressed beyond the mere comparison of shape; the hand is of much the same efficiency with or without the glove, while the glove is useless without the hand; furthermore, the hand may live to wear a succession of gloves. CHAPTER VIII COMPARISON OF THE TWO GREAT INSTITUTIONS The Ottoman Ruling Institution, and the Moslem Institution of the Ottoman Empire might be compared, contrasted, and reflected upon at great length. In this discussion, however, it must suffice to select and comment upon a few of their salient likenesses, differences, and interactions, without attempting to separate such features sharply. LIKENESSES