[BLANK_AUDIO] Moving into politics in the Middle East of the 19th century, I refer again to the British historian Malcolm Yapp, who spoke about politics being governed by two main characteristics. Government was diverse. And minimal, he said. The government says we have not recognized the existence of groups and not individuals. Muslims and non-Muslim subjects were governed in different ways and by different laws. Muslims followed the Sharia, and Christians and Jews followed their ecclesiastical or legal frameworks. Tribesmen had their own modes of settling disputes. Foreigners were also granted special legal privileges; they were called the capitulations. Foreigners were governed by the laws of their own countries, implemented by their respective consular representations. Government was minimal, as was taxation. Services like law and education were not supplied by the central government, but by the various communities. To outside observers, this gave the impression of a decentralized and even ineffective government in decline. But as another British historian, Albert Hourani, has noted, these were actually adaptations in the style of governance, according to changing circumstances. And they were and remained quite effective. The locus of power shifted from the sultan to the higher [FOREIGN] of the bureaucracy in the office of the Grand Vizier, the chief minister. Provinces were often controlled by local [UNKNOWN] as was the case in Egypt and in other parts of the empire. In the Arab cities of the empire, there were notable families, some Arab, some Turkish, that assumed positions of wealth and power. But because of the importance of religion, notable families tended to send their children to obtain religious education and to become functionaries in the religious and legal establishment. Through this kind of employment, they gained control of religious endowments, awqaf as they are known in Arabic, which were sources of great wealth and political control. Boys but not girls, were schooled in the traditional schools, the Qutb and the Madrasas, where they learned the Quran and religious jurisprudence, as well as some secular subjects like mathematics and astronomy.