As head of the Empire, the Sultan’s various titles are significant of the progressive stages of Ottoman development from a tribe to a great world power. The sovereign was still called Khan, as the head of a Turkish nomadic horde. When the Turks were converted to Islam, there was first added the title emir, an Arabic word, Chief of Believers; then came the name sultan, king; after the conquest of Constantinople, the Persian term padishah, king of kings, came into use. As we have seen, the conquest of Syria, of Egypt, and Arabia, made the Sultan defender of the holy cities and khalif. After the conquest of the capital of the Cæsars, the influence of Byzantine traditions introduced a rigid system of court ceremonial; the days of patriarchal simplicity were closed; the person of the Sultan was raised in dignity. The change is clearly indicated in an edict by Mohammed: “It is not my will that anyone should eat with my imperial majesty; our ancestors were wont to eat with their ministers, but I have abolished it.” The influence of the Byzantine bureaucratic hierarchy can be traced in the method of Ottoman administration; even in small details the permanence of the Roman imperial tradition is noteworthy. The sovereign’s documents were, like those of his Greek predecessors, written in gold, purple, and azure. His letters of victory are but a continuation of the “litterae laureatae,” while the bakkchich given to the Janitschars is but a reminiscence of the Imperial donation. But actual assimilation between the Turks and their subject peoples was prevented by difference of religion. Racial differences made no distinction between Greeks, Albanians, Slavs, and Roumanians; they were all orthodox Christians, while the same people, if they became converts to Islam, were turned into Ottomans. The two types of religious allegiance were mutually irreconcilable. The peculiarity of Ottoman absolutism is to be found in the exclusion from governmental offices both of the free Moslem and the free Christian subjects of the Empire. The administration from top to bottom was in the hands of slaves, and these slaves were largely recruited from the children of Christian families of the subject races, who were constantly exposed to a detestable and unnatural form of oppression. The conquered populations were ruled despotically by men of Christian birth, who, during their initiation into slavery, had become Moslems. The famous Admiral Dragut was the son of a Christian of Asia Minor. Many of the famous generals were taken from Christian Albanian, Bosnian, and Dalmatian families. Of forty-eight grand viziers, only twelve were of Moslem birth.