The sultan’s household was divided in another way. By the maxims of despotic government it is forbidden that the ruler should associate on terms of intimate friendship with those who are his high officials of state. In order to avoid this regulation and yet provide his master with intelligent and amusing companionship, the _Nizam-al-mulk_ advised the Seljuk sultan Melik Shah to choose as boon companions a band of courtiers who would be allowed to have no share whatever in the conduct of affairs.[429] This resource was hardly open to the Ottoman sultans, first because the dignity and independence of Moslem-born Ottoman Turks deprived them of the pliancy which is expected from courtiers, and second because the sultan’s Christian-born slaves, who had been led onward by ambition ever since they had entered his service, and at the end of their education were ready to become men of affairs, were not fitted to be mere courtiers. The difficulty became greater after Mohammed II, filled with the Byzantine notion of imperial sacredness, ordered that no one should sit with him at table.[430] A sultan was thus practically forced by a combination of principles and circumstances to spend his leisure hours with boys, eunuchs, and women.[431] The only mature men with whom he could converse freely were a small and select group of religious advisers, astrologers, and physicians; all the other men of his household met him only formally and for the transaction of business. So great limitations on his companionship could not fail to influence his character, and in the course of a few generations to tend greatly toward the predominance of household over government. To confine the consideration of Suleiman’s court to his immediate household would be to narrow the discussion too much. The chief officers of government formed a part of his retinue on all ceremonial occasions, and had not ceased to be counted as his personal followers. In fact, all the members of the Ruling Institution, except the _Ajem-oghlans_ and young pages, may be regarded as belonging to the sultan’s court in that large sense of the term which includes all those individuals who are attached to the person of the monarch as his daily associates, his councillors, the officers and members of his household, his body-guard and palace-guard, and his retinue on ceremonial occasions and in camp. The splendid court of Suleiman the Magnificent is worthy of separate and special treatment for which there is no room here; in describing it, as in describing his army, only those aspects which are of a governmental nature can be considered. The topics that will claim attention are the subdivisions of his household and the main features of its organization, the importance given to personal and public ceremony, the splendor of the court, and the influence of the court on the destiny of the empire. ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD[432]