SYSTEMS OF LAW 39

mained Christian during all the early brilliant period of Islam';1 and
Sultan Mehmed's choice of a Christian renegade, Khosrev Pasha,* as
his codifier of the SharVah for the use of an Iranic Muslim community
in partibus Christianorum was a characteristic stroke of the Ottoman
political genius in its pre-Selimian Age, however inappropriate the
choice might look from a conservative Hanafite SunnI Muslim stand-
point. Since Mehmed IFs day, however, the 'Osmanlis

'had conquered three seats of the later Caliphate—Damascus, Baghdad, and
Cairo—and had come to hold the protectorate of the Holy Cities, where
Muhammad and the early Caliphs had ruled, A new code of law, there-
fore, better adapted to the more widely Muslim character which the
Empire had assumed, was [now] demanded. Suleymsin charged Shaykh
Ibrahim Halabi with the task of preparing such a code; and the result,
prepared before A.D. 1549, was the Multeqd el-Ebh&r ('the Confluence of
the Seas')* which remained the foundation of Ottoman Law until the
reforms of the nineteenth century.*3

It was no accident that the work of replacing a redaction of the SharVah
which had been made for Sultan Mehmed II by a Christian renegade
should have been entrusted by Sultan Suleyman I to a Muslim-born
doctor of the Islamic Law whose home was Aleppo—an Arabic-speaking
Muslim city which was the nearest of all the seats of theological learning
in an Arabic Muslim World to the new domain in Anatolia which had
been won by Turkish Eurasian Nomad converts to lalam for an Iranic
Muslim World at the expense of Orthodox Christendom.

This progressive renaissance of the Islamic Law in an expanding
Ottoman Empire was achieved, as has just been observed, on the
initiative of converted descendants of the local Eurasian Nomad bar-
barian interlopers when these 'Osmanlis eventually extended their rule
over the Arabic-speaking portion of the former dominions of the
'Abbasid Caliphate. In the Transoxanian marches of a defunct 'Ahbasid
Caliphate and a nascent Iranic Muslim World the local Eurasian bar-
barian interlopers became converts to Islam in their turn in the four-*
teenth century of the Christian Era;4 but this tardy conversion of the
Mongols of the Chaghatily Horde was not sufficiently thorough or whole-
hearted to reconcile their sedentary Iranic Muslim subjects to an
oppressive Nomad domination; and accordingly in Transoxania, in
contrast to the course of events in the Ottoman World, the local re-
naissance of the Shan*ah was achieved in the teeth of the converted
descendants of the barbarian conquerors, and not through their agency,
In a previous context5 we have noticed that Timur Lenk rose to power
by becoming the military leader of an anti-Nomad cultural reaction on

* Lybywr, loc. cit.

a Bee 1 lammer-Purgstall, J. von; DCS Osmanischen Rcichs Staatsverfasswig und Staats-
vartvattunf! (Vienna 1815, Camesinaaehe Huchhandlunft, 2 vols.), vol. i, p. 9,

* Lyhyer, op, cit,, pp. 152-3 (cp, p. 318), following d'Ohsaon, op. cit., vol. i, pp*
aa-34, and Hammer-rurgiitaH, J. von: Des Osmaninenen Rtichs Staatsvgrftissung und
Staatsverwuttung (Vienna xHx*, Camewinnache Buchhandlung, % vola.)» vol. i, p. 10,
'Tho MMtLteqti i» the basis of trQhMon'ft excellent work, which consists {in vols, i«vi-—
A.J.T.] of a translation of the code with its comments, to which he han added [in vol.
vii—AJ,T.J observations of great value baaed on historical studies and on hu own
investigations during many years' residence in Turkey' (Lybyer, op. cit., p. 153, n. i).

4 See II, ii. 145. « In II. ii. 147-8.