Page 8 - ISLAM Rock n Roll

Sunni law applied only to Muslims. Christians, Jews and other religious minorities continued to administer their internal a airs based on as system known as taʾifa or millet. Thus, non-Muslims were protected from the varying judgements of Islamic jurists in a dual system of law that was one of the most distinctive features of Ottoman rule.
The rmans issued by Sulayman, were meticulously prepared in
the royal chancery. The rman documents were rendered authoritative by the sultan’s stylised insignia (tughra), a unique form of signature devised
by the chancery scribes for each sultan. Later a cursive Arabic script known as diwani, was developed for the records of the bureaucracy and the sultan’s o cial documents by the great Ottoman calligrapher, Ha z Osman (d. 1698), an indication of the importance given to the work of the chancery and the scribes employed there.
Yet, nowhere was Sulayman’s concept of his reign more apparent than in Istanbul, and no single person is more associated with rendering Sulayman’s vision a reality than the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan (d. 1588), who was responsible for the erection of numerous mosques, madrasas, mausolea, hospitals, caravanserais, palaces, private houses, baths and bridges across the city. But it is arguably in the minarets and domes of the Süleymaniye Mosque complex (built 1550–1557) that Sinan’s genius is most evident, his architecture taking advantage of the city’s hilly landscape and a site between the Bosporus and the Golden Horn to create a uni ed capital whose vistas looked both
out towards the water and in towards each other, reinforcing the idea of concentrated imperial power.
Soldiers and Su s
Central to maintenance of Ottoman imperial power was a new type of military. Initially, the Ottomans had continued many of the Turko-Mongol military traditions of Central Asia such as the recruitment of slaves into the army. Later they adopted a new system, known as the devshirme, in which non-Muslim boys, mainly from the Balkans, were enslaved, converted to Islam and trained at the palace in the arts of war and administration. The
new military elite that was formed by this system became known as the Janissaries, the rst organised and paid infantry army of modern Europe.
A loyal imperial guard for the sultans, the Janissaries soon became the backbone of the military and some even married into the Ottoman household, while others lled important positions as viziers to the sultan and as governors of provinces. Indeed, as their chief, Sulayman himself is reported to have become a member of the Janissary order.
Painting of a Janissary with a lion by Jacopo Ligozzi (d. 1627, Italy), ca. 1577–1580. The soldier holds
an axe with a crescent-shaped blade. Such weapons, originally designed for use in battle, also came to represent religious piety when carried by the Janissaries. The Janissaries also carried banners like the 19th-century red silk banner (sanjak) shown le . Inscribed with the names of God, the Prophet Muhammad and the Rashidun Caliphs, the banner
also has an image of a two-bladed sword. In Islamic iconography,
the two-bladed sword represented Dhu’l-faqar, a legendary sword that in Sunni and Shiʿi traditions
is associated with ʿAli. The Prophet is said to have given Dhu’l-faqar
to ʿAli at the Battle of Uhud in 625 saying, ‘There is no sword but Dhu’l-faqar and no hero but ʿAli’.
270