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48-510: Originally, the Imperial Council was probably an informal advisory body of senior statesmen, but also functioned as a court of law. In the 14th century and until the mid-15th century, it seems to have been headed by the Sultan in person, "suggesting that relations between sultan and viziers were still informal, with the sultan’s advisors in the role of allies as much as subordinates" according to

96-592: A grille-covered window ( kasr-ı adil ) overlooking the Council chamber and connected directly with the Sultan's private quarters in the harem , added either in the early reign of Süleyman the Magnificent or, according to another tradition, already by Mehmed II. It is clear, however, that each Sultan favoured a different style of government, and their roles changed even within the same reign: thus Ahmed I ( r.  1603–1617 )

144-547: A kind of moral authority or spiritual power (as opposed to political power), and it is used in this sense several times in the Qur'an . In the early Muslim world , ultimate power and authority was theoretically held by the caliph, who was considered the leader of the caliphate. The increasing political fragmentation of the Muslim world after the 8th century, however, challenged this consensus. Local governors with administrative authority held

192-462: A kind of prince. The best of sultans was elected as khan by people at Kurultai . In a number of post-caliphal states under Mongol or Turkic rule, there was a feudal type of military hierarchy. These administrations were often decimal (mainly in larger empires), using originally princely titles such as khan , malik , amir as mere rank denominations. In the Persian empire , the rank of sultan

240-557: A large part of the Council's actual business. The Grand Vizier's pre-eminence was formalized in 1654, when a dedicated building ( bab-i ali , the " Sublime Porte ", or pasha kapısı ) was constructed to serve the Grand Vizier both as a residence and as an office. The bureaucracy serving the Imperial Council was gradually transferred to this new location, and by the 18th century, the Imperial Council itself had, according to Bernard Lewis, "dwindled into insignificance". The reformist sultans of

288-430: A sultan, as well as his office, are referred to as a sultanate ( سلطنة salṭanah ) . The term is distinct from king ( ملك malik ), though both refer to a sovereign ruler. The use of "sultan" is restricted to Muslim countries, where the title carries religious significance, contrasting the more secular king , which is used in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Brunei , Malaysia and Oman are

336-537: Is known as Raja Isteri with the title of Pengiran Anak suffixed, should the queen consort also be a royal princess. These are generally secondary titles, either lofty 'poetry' or with a message, e.g.: By the beginning of the 16th century, the title sultan was carried by both men and women of the Ottoman dynasty and was replacing other titles by which prominent members of the imperial family had been known (notably khatun for women and bey for men). This usage underlines

384-403: Is recorded as refusing an audience with his Grand Vizier, demanding written reports instead, while Murad III ( r.  1574–1595 ) at first once more presided over Council meetings in person, but increasingly withdrew from active participation as his reign proceeded. By the mid-17th century, on the other hand, the former elaborate protocol at Council sessions had once more been relaxed, and it

432-674: Is reported by the Ottoman renegade Bobovi that the Sultan (possibly Murad IV , r.  1623–1640 ) once more presided over Council meetings in person. In addition, the courtiers and servants of the Inner Palace, or the members of the Imperial Harem such as the Valide Sultan (Sultana mother) or the Haseki Sultan (Sultana consort), who had direct and intimate access to the Sultan's person, often influenced government decisions bypassing

480-524: The Sultanate of Women , as the position of main consort eroded over the course of the 17th century, with the main consort losing the title of "sultan", which was replaced by "kadin", a title related to the earlier "khatun". Henceforth, the mother of the reigning sultan was the only person of non imperial blood to carry the title "sultan". In Kazakh Khanate a Sultan was a lord from the ruling dynasty (a direct descendants of Genghis Khan ) elected by clans, i.e.

528-488: The kadi'askers tended to come from a very limited circle of legal families), the viziers were, after 1453, mostly drawn from Christian converts. These were partly voluntary (including, until the early 16th century, members of Byzantine and other Balkan aristocratic families) but over time the products of the devshirme system, which inducted humble-born youths into the Palace School , came to predominate. An appointment to

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576-419: The verbal noun سلطة sulṭah , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who claimed almost full sovereignty (i.e., not having dependence on any higher ruler) without claiming the overall caliphate , or to refer to a powerful governor of a province within the caliphate. The adjectival form of the word is "sultanic", and the state and territories ruled by

624-678: The 16th century when the Ottoman Empire conquered the Mamluk Empire and became the indisputable leading Sunni Muslim power across most of the Middle East , North Africa , and Eastern Europe . The 16th-century Ottoman scholar and jurist, Ebüssuûd Mehmet Efendi , recognized the Ottoman sultan ( Suleiman the Magnificent at the time) as the caliph and universal leader of all Muslims. This conflation of sultan and caliph became more clearly emphasized in

672-598: The 19th century during the Ottoman Empire's territorial decline, when Ottoman authorities sought to cast the sultan as the leader of the entire Muslim community in the face of European ( Christian ) colonial expansion . As part of this narrative, it was claimed that when Sultan Selim I captured Cairo in 1517, the last descendant of the Abbasids in Cairo formally passed on the position of caliph to him. This combination thus elevated

720-654: The Council Chamber ( Arz Odası ) in the Topkapi Palace, where they were received by the chief usher ( çavuş başı ) and the intendant of the doorkeepers ( kapıcılar kethudası ). By the 16th century, however, the full Council met regularly on four days of the week, on Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, and sessions lasted from seven to eight hours, beginning at dawn and ending at mid-day in summer and mid-afternoon in winter. The members ate three times during each council session, breakfasting after their arrival, then after

768-533: The Council's membership was extended to include additional officials: In addition, a number of officials attended Council meetings but did not have seats in the chamber and did not take part in the discussions, such as the head of the scribes ( reis ül-küttab ), the çavuş başı , the kapıcılar kethudası , various financial secretaries and palace officials, interpreters ( tercüman , whence " dragoman ") and police chiefs, each in turn with his own retinue of clerks and assistants. An ever-expanding scribal service, under

816-481: The Grand Vizier—according to some 16th-century accounts, however, this was done by the entire Council—would go to report on proceedings to the Sultan in the Inner Palace. These interviews between the Grand Vizier and the Sultan were probably the main conduit of communication between the ruler and his government. At the same time, the Sultan could, if he wished, secretly listen in on the Council in session behind

864-408: The Imperial Council and the Grand Vizier altogether. Over time, as the importance of the Grand Vizier within the Ottoman system rose at the expense of the palace, it became common to hold an afternoon meeting ( ikindi divani ) to wrap up leftover issues, after the afternoon prayer ( ikindi ), at the Grand Vizier's residence. Eventually, the ikindi divani came to meet five times a week and took over

912-416: The Magnificent ( r.  1520–1566 ), who ceased to attend Council meetings altogether. Nevertheless Mehmed II's successor, Bayezid II ( r.  1481–1512 ) is still recorded as openly chairing sessions of the Council in person, although by this time, these occasions were involved in elaborate ceremonial, in stark contrast to the informality of such audiences before Mehmed II. After Edirne became

960-615: The Ottoman capital in the late 14th century, the Council met at the palace there or anywhere the Sultan currently resided. Following the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Council met initially at the Eski Saray (Old Palace), moving to the Topkapi Palace after its construction in the 1470s. There the Council had a dedicated building ( divanhane ) in the Second Courtyard. The present building

1008-425: The Ottoman conception of sovereign power as family prerogative. Western tradition knows the Ottoman ruler as "sultan", but Ottomans themselves used "padişah" (emperor) or "hünkar" to refer to their ruler. The emperor's formal title consisted of "sultan" together with "khan" (for example, Sultan Suleiman Khan). In formal address, the sultan's children were also entitled "sultan", with imperial princes (Şehzade) carrying

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1056-519: The Ottomanist Colin Imber . Meetings were often public or semi-public affairs in which the Sultan would appear surrounded by his senior advisors and hear grievances of his subjects, dispense justice and make appointments to public office. In the case of an interregnum between the death of a Sultan and the arrival of his successor from the provinces, the Council was held by the senior councillors on their own. Later Ottoman tradition held that it

1104-599: The Porte") corps, including the Janissaries , as well as for the formal reception of foreign ambassadors, and the ayak divani or "foot council", as everyone remained standing, an emergency session chaired by the Sultan or the army commander when on campaign. Although many decisions were taken outside the formal context of the Imperial Council, it was the main executive body of the Empire, conducting all kinds of tasks of government such as

1152-621: The Sunni Muslim world. As protectors of the line of the Abbasid caliphs, the Mamluks recognized themselves as sultans and the Muslim scholar Khalil al-Zahiri argued that only they could hold that title. Nonetheless, in practice, many Muslim rulers of this period were now using the title as well. Mongol rulers (who had since converted to Islam) and other Turkish rulers were among those who did so. The position of sultan and caliph began to blend together in

1200-646: The capital of the Abbasid caliphs . The early Seljuk leader Tughril Bey was the first leader to adopt the epithet "sultan" on his coinage . While the Seljuks acknowledged the caliphs in Baghdad formally as the universal leader of the Muslim community , their own political power clearly overshadowed the latter. This led to various Muslim scholars – notably Al-Juwayni and Al-Ghazali – attempting to develop theoretical justifications for

1248-443: The conduct of foreign relations, including the reception of foreign ambassadors, the preparation of campaigns, the construction of fortifications and public buildings, the reception of reports from the provincial governors and the appointments to state office, as well as continuing to function as a court of law, particularly for members of the military class. The inner workings of the Council are obscure, since no minutes were kept during

1296-553: The crisis that followed the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, which eliminated the remnants of Abbasid political power. Henceforth, the surviving descendants of the Abbasid caliphs lived in Cairo under the protection of the Mamluks and were still nominally recognized by the latter. However, from this time on they effectively had no authority and were not universally recognized across

1344-601: The early evolution of the term is complicated and difficult to establish. The first major figure to clearly grant himself this title was the Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud (r. 998–1030 CE) who controlled an empire over present-day Afghanistan and the surrounding region. Soon after, the Great Seljuks adopted this title after defeating the Ghaznavid Empire and taking control of an even larger territory which included Baghdad ,

1392-541: The largest Shi'a Muslim state of this era, mainly used the Persian title shah , a tradition which continued under subsequent dynasties. The term sultan , by contrast, was mainly given to provincial governors within their realm. A feminine form of sultan , used by Westerners, is sultana or sultanah and this title has been used legally for some (not all) Muslim women monarchs and sultan's mothers and chief consorts. However, Turkish and Ottoman Turkish also uses sultan for imperial lady, as Turkish grammar uses

1440-450: The late 18th/early 19th century replaced the Imperial Council by a new institution, as well as forming special councils to apply their reforms. This system gradually evolved into a Western-style cabinet government, the Council of Ministers . The principal members of the Council had become fixed by the time of Mehmed II at least. They comprised: The members of the Imperial Council represented

1488-452: The main discussion had been concluded and finally after hearing petitions. In earlier times, the Sultan often dined with the viziers after the Council, but Mehmed II ended this practice. In addition, there were extraordinary sessions of the Council: the ulufe divani or galebe divani , convened each quarter to distribute the quarterly salary ( ulue ) to the members of the kapıkulu ("slaves of

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1536-468: The one hand, all decisions were made in his name and on his authority, and Ottoman law codes foresaw that the Sultan could make his wishes known to the Council through the Kapi Agha . In Ottoman legal theory, however, as codified in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Grand Vizier was the Sultan's "absolute deputy" and the sole intermediary between the sovereign and the administration. Therefore after each meeting,

1584-511: The only sovereign states which retain the title "sultan" for their monarchs. In recent years, the title has been gradually replaced by "king" by contemporary hereditary rulers who wish to emphasize their secular authority under the rule of law. A notable example is Morocco , whose monarch changed his title from sultan to king in 1957. The word derives from the Arabic and Semitic root salaṭa "to be hard, strong". The noun sulṭān initially designated

1632-488: The pinnacles of their respective specialized careers: the viziers the military-political; the kadi'askers the legal; the defterdars the financial service; and the nişancı the palace scribal service. This was all the more the case after the 16th century, when these careers became—as a general rule—mutually exclusive. While the latter groups were from the outset recruited mostly from the Muslim Turkish population (although

1680-456: The political authority of the Seljuk sultans within the framework of the formal supreme authority of the recognized caliphs. In general, the theories maintained that all legitimate authority derived from the caliph, but that it was delegated to sovereign rulers whom the caliph recognized. Al-Ghazali, for example, argued that while the caliph was the guarantor of Islamic law ( shari'a ), coercive power

1728-461: The ranks of the Imperial Council was an avenue to great power, influence and enormous wealth, which was matched by equally ostentatious expenditure for, as Colin Imber writes, "the sign of a man's status in Ottoman society was the size of his household and the size of his retinue when he appeared in public", meaning that the members of the Council often kept hundreds, if not thousands, of slaves. Over time,

1776-529: The same words for both women and men (such as Hurrem Sultan and Sultan Suleiman Han ( Suleiman the Magnificent )). The female leaders in Muslim history are correctly known as "sultanas". However, the wife of the sultan in the Sultanate of Sulu is styled as the "panguian" while the sultan's chief wife in many sultanates of Indonesia and Malaysia are known as "permaisuri", "Tunku Ampuan", "Raja Perempuan", or "Tengku Ampuan". The queen consort in Brunei especially

1824-408: The service seems to have consisted solely of Muslims. The main branches of this secretarial service were: Sultan Sultan ( / ˈ s ʌ l t ən / ; Arabic : سلطان sulṭān , pronounced [sʊlˈtˤɑːn, solˈtˤɑːn] ) is a position with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from

1872-411: The sessions, but the wording of Council decrees indicates that most decisions were prompted by petitions addressing a specific problem. Later foreign observers reporting on Ottoman affairs also stressed that the council was "purely consultative, the final responsibility resting with the Grand Vizier" ( Bernard Lewis ). It is impossible to determine what role the Sultan played in the Council's workings. On

1920-570: The sultan's religious or spiritual authority, in addition to his formal political authority. During this later period, the title of sultan was still used outside the Ottoman Empire as well, as with the examples of the Somali aristocrats , Malay nobles and the sultans of Morocco (such as the Alaouite dynasty founded in the 17th century). It was, however, not used as a sovereign title by Shi'a Muslim rulers. The Safavid dynasty of Iran , who controlled

1968-617: The supervision of the reis ül-küttab , assisted the members of the Council, preparing the material for its sessions, keeping records of its decisions and creating the necessary documents. As their duties included drafting the state correspondence with other powers, initially they were probably drawn from various milieus, since until the early 16th century the Sultans corresponded with foreign rulers in their own language. After c.  1520 documents were only drawn up in Turkish, Arabic or Persian, and

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2016-559: The title before their given name, and imperial princesses carrying it after. For example: Şehzade Sultan Mehmed and Mihrimah Sultan , son and daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent. Like imperial princesses, the living mother and main consort of the reigning sultan also carried the title after their given names, for example: Hafsa Sultan , Suleiman's mother and first valide sultan , and Hürrem Sultan , Suleiman's chief consort and first haseki sultan . The evolving usage of this title reflected power shifts among imperial women, especially between

2064-469: The title of amīr ( أمير , traditionally "commander" or " emir ", later also "prince") and were appointed by the caliph, but in the 9th century some of these became de facto independent rulers who founded their own dynasties, such as the Aghlabids and Tulunids . Towards the late 10th century, the term "sultan" begins to be used to denote an individual ruler with practically sovereign authority, although

2112-464: Was Mehmed II ( r.  1444–1446, 1451–1481 ) who abandoned the practice of presiding over the council in person, instead relegating this responsibility to the Grand Vizier , ipso facto defining the latter as a distinct office from the other viziers. Mehmed II's law-code states that the Sultan would observe Council sessions behind a screen, a practice which lasted until the reign of Süleyman

2160-410: Was built in the early reign of Süleyman the Magnificent by Grand Vizier Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha , and renovated in 1792 and 1819. The council chamber proper was known as kubbealtı ("under the dome"). During campaigns, the Council met at the Grand Vizier's tent, which was always pitched near the Sultan's own. The law-code of Mehmed II stipulates that the Council had to meet daily, of which four times in

2208-528: Was required to enforce the law in practice and the leader who exercised that power directly was the sultan. The position of sultan continued to grow in importance during the period of the crusades , when leaders who held the title of "sultan" (such as Salah ad-Din and the Ayyubid dynasty ) led the confrontation against the crusader states in the Levant . Views about the office of the sultan further developed during

2256-613: Was roughly equivalent to that of a modern-day captain in the West; socially in the fifth-rank class, styled ' Ali Jah . Apparently derived from the Arabic malik , this was the alternative native style of the sultans of the Kilwa Sultanate in Tanganyika (presently the continental part of Tanzania). Mfalume is the (Ki) Swahili title of various native Muslim rulers, generally rendered in Arabic and in western languages as Sultan: This

2304-671: Was the native ruler's title in the Tanzanian state of Uhehe. In Indonesia (formerly in the Dutch East Indies ): In Malaysia : In Brunei : In China : In the Philippines : In Thailand : Sultans of sovereign states Sultans in federal monarchies Sultan with power within republics Bernard Lewis Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include

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