During the rule of Sultan Murad I in the late 14 th century, the Ottoman Empire did not have a treasury

system in place and taxes were not that high. Afterwards, when the text was compiled rulers had
surrounded themselves with greedy scholars and officials. When Hayreddin Pasha came to power,
greedy scholars became the norm of the ottoman empire. The scholars were greedy and influenced the
rulers to set up a treasury for the Ottoman Empire. According to the document the scholars were the
source of corruption and oppression of the empire. During the reign of Sultan Murad I the taxes of the
Ottoman Empire was not that high but afterwards it became higher due to the greed of the scholars. . A
scholar named Kara Rustem instructs Chandarli Halil who was a judge to tax prisoners who were
captured in war and the judge agrees with taxing the prisoners.

The judicial system of the Ottoman Empire went through various stages through its history. Judges
tended to be educated but scholars did not like to be judges and they had a saying about being a judge
“Judgeship is a matted seat in hell” In the past officials used to seek out scholars and learned men to be
judges but in the time when the document was written and complied most of the judges were
uneducated and could not even write or read their own names. When Ali Pasha became Grand Vizier of
the Ottoman Empire, he appointed many of his pages in government jobs such as scholars and judges.
There was corruption among the judges and Bayezid Khan ordered all of the judges to be burnt alive in a
house. Later on, the Sultan promoted his own judges by selecting his own servants because most of the
former judges were corrupt.

Molla al-Fanari, Islamic legal scholar and professor gave Tuesdays and Fridays off for his students
because they had to copy books of the famed al-Taftazani, who wrote numerous of books on various
subject regarding Islam among other subjects. Molla al-Fanari’s class had to copy the textbooks by hand
because they only had a few limited copies. Also, it was extremely rare for books such as recent works
to have numerous of copies because every book during that era was hand copied by scholars and clergy.
The source also describes that the textbooks were not available for sale in stores because far too few of
the books were in circulation during that time. Seeing that his students had not enough time to hand
copy their textbooks word for word Molla al-Fanari gave his students Mondays off in order to have them
sufficient time to copy their textbooks for the next class.

During Crusade of Varna in August of 1444 the Ottoman sultan Murad II signed the Treaty of Edirne with
Hungarian king, Władysław III. The treaty placed a ten-year truce between the Ottoman Empire and the
Kingdom of Hungary. In 1444, the sultan of Ottoman Empire Murad II resigned his throne to his young
son who was 12 at that time, Mehmed II. Hungary’s king at that time King Władysław III seeing that the
Ottoman Empire was weak and was ruled by a young and inexperienced ruler saw this as an opportunity
to curb the Ottoman Empire’s power in Eastern Europe. King Władysław III amassed a great army with
the help of Venice and Pope Eugene IV that consisted of various European states that included the Papal
knights, Teutonic Knights, Czechs, Croatians, Bulgarians, Bosnians, Lithuanians, Germans and Saxons.
The crusader army was led by Hungarian nobleman John Hunyadi and King of Hungary King Wladyslaw
III.