Two or three less numerous but highly important groups may properly be discussed in the present connection. The imperial harem and the imperial family itself were virtually parts of the same slave system.[126] The harem of Suleiman was not the large and costly institution that was maintained by some of his successors; like his father Selim,[127] he was not given to sensuality, but is said to have been faithful to Khurrem from the time that he made her his wife.[128] The character of an Oriental royal harem has often been set forth incorrectly. While it may contain hundreds or even thousands of women, a very few of these are the actual consorts of the monarch. A large number are the personal servants and entertainers of himself, his mother, his consorts, his daughters, and his infant sons. Another section consists of those who are being educated for the same personal service. A fourth group, probably the great majority, are mere house-servants, who attend to all the domestic labors of the harem and are seldom promoted to more honorable positions. There is, finally, a group of older women who preserve order and peace, teach, keep accounts, and manage the establishment generally.[129] Suleiman’s harem contained about three hundred women, who were kept in a separate palace well fortified and guarded.[130] His harem fully deserves to be reckoned as part of the great slave-family, since all its inmates except his children were purchased or presented slaves.[131] These women, brought for the most part from the region of the Caucasus,[132] and including in their number some of the fairest female captives of many lands, were nearly all daughters of Christians. Khurrem herself was a Russian, while the rival of her youth seems to have been a Circassian.[133] In another respect the harem deserves to be reckoned with the Ruling Institution, in that its inmates, upon attaining the age of twenty-five, were, if they had not attracted the sultan’s special attention, as a rule given in marriage to distinguished _Spahis_ of the Porte.[134] A comparatively small group, not hitherto mentioned, of the attendants at the sultan’s palace and harem belong within the slave-family. Although the Sacred Law strongly disapproved of the employment of eunuchs, that unfortunate class was thought too useful to be dispensed with entirely. Some were white, brought mainly from the Caucasus region; but the great majority were negroes brought from Africa. Tribute children seem rarely to have been made eunuchs.[135] The class deserves mention because several of the important offices of state among the “men of the pen” were held by eunuchs, and now and then one rose to high place in the army or the administration.[136]