The Ottoman empire had attained under Sulaimān the Magnificent (1520–66) the summit of its power and splendour. Now, during the period that followed his death, strains and stresses originating both within and without the empire gave rise to notable changes in the structure of the Ottoman state. The general trend of events after 1566 cannot be understood, therefore, without reference to some at least of the essential characteristics of the Ottoman regime as it was in the reign of Sultan Sulaimān.

The household of the sultan was far more than a domestic organisation designed to meet the private and personal needs of the monarch. It included also much more than the apparatus and adornments of an imperial court. The household embraced within itself the personnel of the central administration and of the great executive offices of state; of the higher ranks in the provincial administration; and also of the armed forces of the central régime—the Janissaries, the mounted regiments of the household (sometimes known as the Sipāhīs of the Porte) and the various specialist corps such as artillerists and engineers. The numerous personnel of this household had in general the status of ghulām (pl. ghilmān), a term better interpreted as ‘man of the sultan’ than as ‘slave’, since it in no wise implied, as the English word ‘slave’ might suggest, a position of inferiority, but was on the contrary a mark of privilege and prestige within the state. A basic principle observed in recruitment to the household was the exclusion of Muslim Turkish subjects of the sultan from the ranks of the ghilmān.