Note 422 — Chapter V · THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS A NOBILITY AND A COURT
Reading edition
About the year 1800, when the two institutions, and particularly the Ruling Institution, had reached an extreme state of decay, and before new institutions after Western models had yet been introduced, the Ottoman Empire was to come very near to such a breaking-up. It seems actually to have been saved by the lingering of the tradition against heredity in office; for, though life-tenure of purchased governorships had become regular, no Pasha except the North African corsairs of the seventeenth century, and Ibrahim in Egypt in the early nineteenth century, succeeded in founding a dynasty upon Ottoman soil. For the disorders about 1800, see Heidborn, 144.