The Expense Of Such An Enterprize Would Hardly Be
Counterbalanced By The Profits Of Its Success; For The Janissaries,
Pushed To Extremities, Would Leave The Town And Find A Secure Retreat
For Themselves And Their Treasures In The Mountains Of The Druses:
Both
parties therefore endeavour to avoid an open rupture; it is well known
that the chief Janissaries send considerable
Presents to Constantinople
to appease their master’s anger, and provided the latter draws supplies
for his pressing wants, no matter how or from whence, the insults
offered to his supreme authority are easily overlooked.
The Janissaries chiefly exercise their power with a view to the filling
of their purses. [p.654] Every inhabitant of Aleppo, whether Turk or
Christian, provided he be not himself a Janissary, is obliged to have a
protector among them to whom he applies in case of need, to arrange his
litigations, to enforce payment from his creditors, and to protect him
from the vexations and exactions of other Janissaries. Each protector
receives from his client a sum proportionate to the circumstances of the
client’s affairs. It varies from twenty to two thousand piastres a year,
besides which, whenever the protector terminates an important business
to the client’s wishes, he expects some extraordinary reward. If two
protectors happen to be opposed to each other on account of their
clients, the more powerful of the two sometimes carries the point, or if
they are equal in influence, they endeavour to settle the business by
compromise, in such a way as to give to justice only half its due.
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