Note 138 — Chapter II · ORKHAN A NEW NATION IS FORMED AND COMES INTO CONTACT WITH THE WESTERN WORLD

I do not understand what Hammer means when he says, i. 116, that the Kanunnamé must be taken in the sense of political rather than ecclesiastical law. The two cannot be separated in Islam. Or, perhaps, it is better to say that there is no political law. The very word Kanun was taken from the Greeks, was used by them for ecclesiastical law, and its adoption by the Osmanlis (at a much later period than Orkhan) serves to emphasize the fact that there was no other land of law conceivable than the law of the Church. The word Kanun had of course other meanings, but in its collective legal sense it seems to have stood only for rules or laws that had to do with things ecclesiastical or religious. See the various meanings of this word in A. Souter’s Text and Canon of the New Testament (London, 1913), pp. 154-5.