Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Legislation and the Legal System
One area of activity closely associated with the RomanByzantine heritage was codification. Muhammad II was the first Ottoman ruler to try to systematize and codify the different social and legal systems found in the conquered lands throughout the empire, incorporating specific practices into general patterns of government and society. In developing his centralized empire, Muhammad modified whatever contradicted his passion for control and then codified the results in a series of three codes of law (kanunname): The first, promulgated in 1453-1456, concerned the conditions and obligations of his subject; the second, in 1477-1478, concerned the organization of the Ottoman state and Ruling Class; and the third, introduced late in his reign, concerned economic organization, landholding, and taxes. Thus the laws, practices, and traditions developed during the previous centuries were brought together and institutionalized, marking the initial stages of a process that culminated a half-century later during the reign of Sulayman the magnificent (1520-1566).
While the law codes of Byzantine emperors such as Theodosius II (408-450), and Justinian (527-565) may have provided models for codification, Muhammad legislative activity also was based on the traditions of the great Turkish and Mongol empires of Central Asia, as introduced into the Middle East by the Seljuks. It was the Seljuks who fully developed the institution of the sultan as the secular ruler in Islam, standing beside the Caliph, who retained authority only in religious secular laws (kanun) in all those areas not covered in detail by the Islamic religious law. Muhammad II was the first Ottoman sultan to develop this right to legislate into full-fledged codes covering all aspects of government and society in a manner that previous Muslims rulers had never attempted or achieved.
Ottoman Empire 821
Of the many unique military and administrative forms evolved by the Ottomans, the most notable included the devsirme system, whereby Christian youths from the Balkans were drafted and converted to Islam for a lifetime of service. The military arm supplied by the devsirme system was the janissary corps, an infantry group attached to the person of the sultan. Muhammad II developed the practice of requiring all members of the government and army, Turkish or Balkan, Muslim or non-Muslim, to sultan. But that means he hoped to ensure the indivisibility of power, with the entire ruling class sworn to absolute obedience.”
According to Encyclopedia of Britannica, ”The conqueror reorganized the Ottoman government and, for he first time, codified the criminal law and the laws relating to his subjects in one code, whereas the constitution was elaborated in another, the two codes forming the nucleus of all subsequent legislation. In the utterly autocratic personality of the conqueror, the classical image of an Ottoman Badshah was born. He punished with the utmost severity those who resisted his decrees and laws, and even his Ottoman contemporaries considered him excessively hard.”
Nevertheless, Muhammad may be considered the most broadminded and freethinking of the Ottoman sultans. After the fall of Constantinople, he gathered Italian Humanists and Greek scholars at his court; he caused their patriarch Gennadius II Scholarios to write a credo of the Christian faith and had it translated into Turkish; he collected in his palace a library of works in Greek and Latin. He called Gentile Bellini from Venice to decorate the walls of his palace with frescoes as well as to paint his palace with frescoes as well as to paint his portrait (now in the National Gallery, London). Around the grand mosque that he constructed, he erected eight colleges, which for nearly a century, kept their rank as the highest teaching institutions of the Islamic sciences in the empire. At times, he assembled the ’ulama’, or learned Muslim teachers, and caused them to discuss theological problems in his presence. In his reign, mathematics, astronomy, and Muslim theology reached their highest level among the Ottomans. And Muhammad himself left a Divan (a collection of poems in the traditional style of classical Ottoman literature).12
” Encyclopedia of Britannica. Vol. IX. P 6

12 Encyclopedia of Britannica. Vol. VII. P 1014

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Political and Cultural History of Islam
Lane-Poole says, ”As a general he was superior even to his father; and his famous reply to one who asked him on a campaign
what were his plans ”If a hair of my beard knew them I would
pluck it out ” gives the keynote of his success: absolute secrecy
and heightening rapidity of action.11
Sultan Muhammad also invited to his capital many scholars and artists from the west and thus Istanbul became a cultural centre
for learning and arts indeed the most prominent one in the
contemporary world. As a result of the great merging here of East and West, the age of conqueror displays a characteristic originality of its own. Within a very short space of time Istanbul became a fine city with many mosques, inns, baths, palaces, market places and similar buildings. The rapidity with which not only the capital of the Byzantine Empire but other towns as well changed their character is another proof of the tremendous achievements of the conqueror.
The organization and provisioning of his armies in his numerous campaigns were specially worthy of notice. His soldiers were always well fed and were amply equipped with guns and armaments. He \uu> also the sole source of legislation for his Empire. He had supreme power over life and property of all his subjects. More than any of his predecessors and successors, he founded mosques, hospitals, colleges and schools in Constantinople and other cities of his Empire. He fully recognized the importance of science in education. He cultivates the society of learned men and loved to converse with them. He had some reputation as a poet. With all this he was notorious foe evil and sensual life in a direction which is held .< be infamous and degrading by all peoples. He was not only himself guilty of fratricide, but he prescribed it as a family law for his successors. He died at the age of fifty-one, after thirty years of reign. He had collected a great army for another campaign, but no one knew what his aims and intentions were, whether for another attack on Rhodes, or for the invasion of Candia, or to follow up his success in Calabria. His secret died with him. He was. the first Sultan to be buried at Constantinople, in the famous mosque which he built there. In spite of his cruelties and perfidies and of his evil life, he has been held in honour by successive generations of his countrymen, and has been rightly designated as ’the Conqueror.’14
Lane-Poole, P 70 Lord Eversely P HH
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