The Sacred Law, based on the practice of Mohammed and the four early caliphs, discouraged display of every sort;[476] nor did the Seljuk Turks take readily to the magnificence which under Persian influence had prevailed at the court of the Bagdad caliphate.[477] So, too, the early Ottoman sovereigns appear to have maintained simplicity of life down to the time of Murad II. A contemporary observer said: “The very Magnates and Princes observe such simplicity in all things, that they cannot be distinguished from others. I saw the King going a long distance from his palace to Church accompanied by two youths.... I saw him also praying in Church, not in a chair (_cathedra_) or royal throne, but seated like the rest on a rug spread on the ground; nor was there about him any ornament, either suspended or exhibited or displayed. He used no singularity in regard to his garments or his horse, by which he could be distinguished from others. I saw him at the funeral of his mother, and I could not possibly have recognized him, had he not been pointed out to me.”[478] In the understanding of Mohammed II, however, the capture of the imperial city seems to have included the appropriation of imperial forms and ceremonies; for no small number of his _Kanuns_ dealt with matters of rank and ceremony.[479] By the time of Suleiman the _Kanuni Teshrifat_, or Law of Ceremonies, had become a collection of considerable magnitude.[480] It is significant that the regulations concerning such matters as the color and shape and material of robes and turbans, the order of precedence on small as well as great occasions, and the observances proper to each such occasion were made a matter of law. On the one hand, a body of practice was set up which, though not distinctly forbidden by the Sacred Law, was contrary to its essential spirit. On the other hand, to rules of court etiquette, which in the West are often unwritten and certainly have not similar standing with acts of legislation, were given the rank and authority of imperial laws. The Law of Ceremonies stood on a par with the Law of Subjects, the Law of Fiefs, the Law of Egypt, and the Law of Fines and Punishments. In fact, this law was observed even more carefully than the others, since the matters which it covered usually came under the eye of the sultan himself. It was as much the duty of an officer to wear the proper costume, and to appear in the right place and at the right time at public ceremonies, as to attend to the business connected with his position.