II. CHARACTER OF THE SULTAN’S COURT In the early stages of all monarchies the household of the prince and the government of the state have probably been identical.[426] After the period of establishment has come to an end and settled institutions have been organized, the household and the government have tended to draw apart into separate and distinct systems under different officials. Which of the two has become of the greater importance in the eyes of the sovereign and in influence upon the policy and destiny of the nation has depended on circumstances, and particularly on the character of individual monarchs. While such a state has been in a period of increase of power and influence, the government has regularly been the more prominent: men of practical experience in affairs and in the field have overshadowed the palace servants. When decay and decline have set in, the household, partly by way of cause and partly by way of effect, has risen to supremacy: individuals of more or less secluded life, but possessing opportunities for personal intercourse with the monarch,—favorites, body-servants, women, and eunuchs,—have made the men of affairs and of war dependent upon them for place and authority. The Ottoman Empire came clearly into the stage of differentiation between household and government after the conquest of Constantinople in the reign of Mohammed II. In the time of Suleiman the empire was still in the period when government was greater than household; but clear signs were appearing that a less active and more plastic sovereign would turn the scale. The household of the Ottoman sultan was curiously divided and limited. An essential difference between the courts of Christian and Moslem monarchs was created by the seclusion of women in Mohammedan society. In the West, women appeared with the men of the court not only on occasions of amusement and diversion, but also in public parades and ceremonies of less and greater importance, and the ladies of the royal family led the fashionable society of the land. In the East, on the other hand, the visible court and retinue of the monarch was wholly ungraced by the presence of the fair sex; all the great ceremonies and cavalcades were participated in by men alone. It seems to be a fact that, before the middle of the reign of Suleiman, no woman resided in the entire vast palace where the sultan spent most of his time.[427] The women of his family were elsewhere, carefully guarded behind walls which with very few exceptions no man but himself might pass.[428] The men and the women who were associated with the sultan constituted two separate worlds, between which the only bond was himself.