Free The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi by Jacqueline Park Page B

these respites, they were permitted to leave the confines of their dormitory and cross the waterway, awash with caiques and barges loaded with revelers. Once landed, they were free to roam the streets of the capital unhindered and unfettered.
    Other than the Bayram reprieves, it was all work and very little play for the Sultan’s pages. Seen through the eyes of someone like the Venetian bailo , the investment of thought, time, energy, and money needed to keep this training school running seemed excessive. But to the Ottoman sultans, this school was the bedrock of what foreigners called the Ruling Institution and what their subjects simply called the Sultan’s cul, a governing caste of slaves who owed allegiance strictly to him. This cul was the unique invention that had enabled an obscure mongrel nomadic tribe to conquer, hold, and expand a sphere of influence exceeding the Roman Empire in less than one hundred years.
    The speed of that transformation boggled the European imagination. Observing it from the west, it seemed as if one day the Osman tribe was a ragged band of ghazi march warriors and overnight became the scourge of Christian Europe. Having converted early on to Islam and changed their name from Osman to Ottoman, they attributed their remarkable rise to the beneficence of Allah. They saw their mission as a jihad against infidels. But they went at it with a stony pragmatism that owed more to Sun Tzu than to Mohammed. And like their Oriental forbears they seemed to have a gift for recognizing problems early and solving them without delay, often using methods borrowed from others, in particular their enemies.
    When, in the middle of the fourteenth century, the first Ottoman gave up being a march warrior in the style of Ghengis Khan, took on the title of Sultan, and set about to create an empire, he wasted no tears on the demise of his traditional tribal council. Clearly that instrument of clan life was inadequate to the tribe’s new ambitions. In what became a hallmark of Ottoman style, the new Sultan and his advisors began to look around — not only in Asia but in Europe as well — for models of how other great powers protected, maintained, and managed their greatness.
    To the west, the rapacious barons and rebellious dukes of Europe offered ample evidence that aristocracies of blood were breeding grounds for corruption and insurrection. So there would be nothing like a hereditary caste of nobles in the new Ottoman Empire, except for the heirs of the Sultan, the new title adopted for the former tribal chief.
    The very idea of a republic was completely alien to their tribal tradition. But Egypt provided a useful exemplar. The Egyptians had bought themselves an entire army in the slave markets of the Mediterranean, had trained them to the highest levels, and had gone on to win battles with them. Why not take this practice a step further? Why not expand the role of the slave caste beyond the military to cover service in the civil arm of government as well?
    Of course, certain small adjustments became necessary. The slave markets could and did supply soldiers and gardeners and grooms and hangmen, but they did not offer the superior types — boys of the highest intelligence and ability — who could be trained to run a world empire. For those candidates, the Ottoman Empire builders needed to cast their nets wider than the slave markets. As observant Muslims, they were prohibited from enslaving other Muslims. But the Koran had nothing to say about enslaving infidels.
    Tax levies are as old as time. All over the world, farmers give up a portion of their crops as fiefs. The church exacts tithes from its followers. It is an old idea. But the Ottomans bent it in a new direction. Their ingenious invention, the devshirme, was an impost not of taxes or crops but of manpower, specifically a levy of one son out of every thirty born to the conquered Christian families in the Ottoman Empire. Of the judges sent abroad to harvest