Provincial Governance (civil Administration)
Townspeople, villagers and farmers formed a lower class called the rayah. Both in contemporaneous and in modern usage, it refers to non-Muslim subjects in particular, also called zimmi.
Civil and judicial administration was carried out under a separate parallel system of small municipal or rural units called kazas administered by a qadi (kadı). Kazas in turn were subdivided into nahiyas. The qadis came from the ulema and represent the legal authority of the sultan. The civil system was considered a check on the military system since beys (who represented executive authority) could not carry out punishment without the sentence of a qadi. Likewise, qadis were not permitted to personally effect punishment. In the areas of sharia and kanun law, qadis were responsible directly to the sultan.
Read more about this topic: State Organisation Of The Ottoman Empire
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“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)