Again, few other peoples in the world, perhaps, have been so much under the power of custom as was the Ottoman nation.[39] That which had been once done in a certain way must always be done in the same way, or in what was believed to be the same way, unless a change had been accomplished by the distinct intervention of fully recognized authority. The inertia of the people was so marked that the sovereign power seldom found it worth while, and then only when driven by necessity, to put forth the great exertion required to make a change in the established order. Restricted thus by an unchangeable constitution, by the presence of deep-rooted laws and institutions, and by the settled customs of a highly conservative people, the power of the Ottoman sultan could be exerted freely in certain directions only. What these were will appear as the scheme of the government is unfolded. THE TERRITORIAL BASIS A fundamental characteristic of the modern state is considered to lie in the fact that its power is territorial, that it exerts equal authority over every part of a certain territory, and over every human being and every material object upon, above, or under the surface of that territory. Although an authority so evenly applied may be possible theoretically, it is never in actual existence in any particular state; for special laws and arrangements always modify the situation. For example, lands and property devoted to religious or educational uses, or owned by a foreign nation for its ambassador, are regularly exempted from taxation. Or, again, the government of the United States of America stands in different relations toward the soil of the District of Columbia, the state of Massachusetts, the territory of Alaska, the Philippine Islands, and the Panama Canal Zone. By the laws of Islam the soil of a conquered land is granted by God as the absolute possession of the _Imâm_, or divinely commissioned prince, who commands the conquering army.[40] Apart from the question as to where the sovereignty rests, this theory of ownership is substantially that of the modern state. The fact that the soil of the Ottoman Empire came into highly complex relationships with the government, therefore, arose not so much from a different fundamental theory as from a greater number of special arrangements based on circumstances and on the personality of religion and law.