The stable service was exceedingly important in a nation which relied so much upon cavalry, and which was still under the influence of the tradition of the steppe lands. The sultan for his own use kept a stable of two hundred horses tended by a hundred men, and for the use of his retinue four thousand horses tended by two thousand men.[466] Besides these, a thousand or more Bulgarian Christians known as Voinaks tended herds of horses on the great domanial pastures.[467] All these followed the army to war as grooms. They were under the control of a very great official, the _Emir-al-Akhor_,[468] or grand equerry, who, with the second equerry, also had oversight of the numerous saddlers, camel-drivers, and muleteers of the imperial service, and control of all the domanial pastures and forests of the empire.[469] The head gardener, the head gatekeeper, the grand equerry, the second equerry, and the _Mir-Alem_[470] or standard-bearer, constituted the special group of officers known as the _Rekiab-Aghalari_, or “generals of the [imperial] stirrup.” The _Mir-Alem_ had charge of the imperial standards and the six horsetails which were borne before the sultan. He distributed standards and horsetails to _Beylerbeys_ and _Sanjak Beys_, who thus in a way received investiture at his hands.[471] As a consequence he ranked first among the officers of the household as related to the government. He also had superior control over the gatekeepers, and he commanded the military music. The tent-pitchers, under a _Mihter-bashi_, cared for the sultan’s tents in peace and war. Similar groups were the _Veznedars_ (who weighed the money received by the sultan), the guards of the outside treasury, the purchasing agents of cloth and muslins for the palace, and the guardians of presents.[472] The masters of the hunt were important officials in the time of Suleiman, who practised the ancient royal custom of going with great state and numerous attendants to hunt over a large region.[473] Heads of the dog-keepers, falconers, vulturers, gerfalconers, and hawkers held honorable position. A number of the pages of the higher _odalar_ had subsidiary duties as falconers;[474] Ibrahim was chief falconer at the time of his promotion to the position of grand vizier. A part of the regular army aided in the hunts. The Janissaries show by the names of some of their chief officers that their corps grew in part out of the hunting organization of the early sultans.[475] The intendants, or _Umena_, had charge of various departments of supply and administration. They were the _Shehr-emini_, or intendant of imperial buildings; the _Zarabkhaneh-emini_, or intendant of mints and mines; the _Mutbakh-emini_, or intendant of the kitchen and pantry; the _Arpa-emini_, or intendant of forage for the stables of the palace; and the _Masraf-shehriyari_, or substitute for the intendant of the kitchens.