Machine summary:
The feudal lords received their fiefs as reward for services to the Sultan ; some of them were given for a life-time, some in perpetuity but transferable at decease.
Perfect organisation of the work in the ship-yards enabled the Ottomans to turn out a fleet fullv manned with specially trained sailors and soldiers, a group of which had to serve on the feudal land-tenure system.
Besides their comprehensive histories, there are a number of valuable monographs on biography, literature and palace-life, like Mustafa Pasha 's Netaiiju'l-u:·uqu'at, Ata Bey's Anderun Torikhi, 'Ali Efendi's Menaqib-i• Hunenceran.
Literature, for the Ottomans, meant only this stilted, artificial style, following Persian models very closely ; the inspiration of the people found vent in cradle-songs, stories of the meddah, and the stage-play Orta Oyn~, which, though influenced by the Byzantine mimes, thoroughly depicted the life and mentality of the common people.
In the time of Suleyman the Magnificent this literary school produced its first great representative, Fuzuli of Baghdad, who, in spite of his coarse provincial Turkish, gave evidence of a first-rate poetic talent in his Diwan and Leylah i:e Jlejnun.
From the time of the great reformer Sultan Mahmud II, it became generally felt that the mental and physical structure of the Ottoman empire was debilitated.
Another great factor which changed the aspect and taste of literature was the influence of Europe, with which Turkey came into more direct touch from the time of Napoleon.