Considering then the importance attached to the study of the Koran, and the benefit derived from a full knowledge of its spirit and contents, which constitute the basis of the law and government, many have been induced to adopt it as a profession.
There are no less than forty thousand of these Ulema in Constantinople.
These men are of very low origin, and are generally the sons of poor peasants. They come to Constantinople and enlist themselves as Softas, or students of divinity or law, which are synonymous terms, in one of the principal mosques, where they go through a regular course of study.
They receive no salary, but are allowed one loaf of bread a day, and partake of such food as is gratuitously distributed to the poor from the Imarets, or charitable institutions, which are attached to all the principal mosques.
When they are proficients in writing, they are allowed to copy the Koran in the original Arabic, which it has hitherto been considered sacrilege to print or translate. And by the sale of these copies they gain a livelihood.
They are afterwards promoted either to the office of Imams, officiating priests, or to that of Kadis and Mollahs, district judges, or Muftis, or expounders of the law. The acme of their ambition is to become either Molla-Hunkiar, chaplain to his majesty, Kazy-ul-Asker chief justice, or Sheikh-ul-Islam, high pontiff of the realm. This latter personage is considered by the Mussulmans as an undoubted oracle in all instances.
Though the sultan is the head of both church and state, yet the Sheikh-ul-Islam being appointed for life, and exempted from capital punishment, his authority, through the superstition of the people, has been most arbitrary, and even sometimes controlled the actions of the executive; and it has only happened in our day, that in order to assert the entire supremacy of the sultan, the Sheikh-ul-Islam has, for the first time in the annals of the nation, been deposed from his sacred office, and another substituted in his place.
The Ulema are not supported by the government, but by the income of the mosques, which are largely endowed by religious devotees. Those who are in the civil employment, receive, however, fixed salaries from the state, in addition to their own ecclesiastical income.