Topkapi Palace in the context of "Imperial Council (Ottoman Empire)"

Enderûn (Ottoman Turkish: اندرون, from Persian andarûn, lit. 'inside') was the term used in the Ottoman Empire to designate the "Inner Service" of the imperial court, concerned with the private service of the Ottoman sultans, as opposed to the state-administrative "Outer Service" (Birûn). Its name derives from the location of the sultan's apartments in the inner court of the Topkapi Palace, which in turn echoed the arrangements of the palace in Edirne, the Ottomans' second capital.

The Inner Service was divided into departments (termed oda, 'chamber'). Four were dedicated to the Sultan's personal service. In descending order of importance, these were the Privy Chamber (hass oda), the Treasury (hazine), the Privy Larder (kilar-ı hass), and the Campaign Chamber (seferli oda). The head of the Inner Service—and until the rise of the Kizlar Agha the most powerful person in the palace after the Sultan—was the Kapi Agha or chief white eunuch. After the Kapi Agha came a number of senior officers or aghas: the head of the Privy Chamber (hass oda başı), who on account of his permanent proximity to the Sultan was a very influential individual; the Sultan's stirrup-holder (rikabdar); the keeper of the Sultan's outer garments (çuhadar); the keeper of the Sultan's linen undergarments (dülbend oghlanı); and the Sultan's confidential secretary (sır katibi).

The Ottoman Empire was governed by different sets of laws during its existence. The Qanun, sultanic law, co-existed with religious law (mainly the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence). Legal administration in the Ottoman Empire was part of a larger scheme of balancing central and local authority (see Legal pluralism). Ottoman power revolved crucially around the administration of the rights to land, which gave a space for the local authority develop the needs of the local millet. The jurisdictional complexity of the Ottoman Empire was aimed to permit the integration of culturally and religiously different groups.

Saz style (Turk. saz yolu) is a style of vegetal ornament and an associated art style from the 16th-century Ottoman Empire.

Birûn (Ottoman Turkish: بیرون, from the Persian word for 'outside') was the term used in the Ottoman Empire to designate the "Outer Service" of the imperial court, concerned with the public affairs of the Ottoman sultans, as opposed to the private "Inner Service" (Enderûn). Its name derives from the location of its offices in the outer court of the Topkapi Palace, which in turn echoed the arrangements of the palace in Edirne, the Ottomans' second capital.

The scope of the Birûn was very extensive. As the Ottomanist Halil İnalcık writes, "The Outside Service comprised all the organizations regulating the sultan's relations with the outside world, comprising governmental and ceremonial offices and the sultan's standing army". The Birûn included a number of senior officials, who had typically previously been enrolled as pages, educated in the palace school, and served in the Enderûn. These were:

In architecture, pavilion has several meanings;

• It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia, there may be pavilions that are either freestanding or connected by covered walkways, as in the Forbidden City (Chinese pavilions), Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, and in Mughal buildings like the Red Fort.
• As part of a large palace, pavilions may be symmetrically placed building blocks that flank (appear to join) a main building block or the outer ends of wings extending from both sides of a central building block, the corps de logis. Such configurations provide an emphatic visual termination to the composition of a large building, akin to bookends.

The word is from French pavillon (Old French paveillon) and it meant a small palace, from Latin papilionem (accusative of papilio). In Late Latin and Old French, it meant both ‘butterfly’ and ‘tent’, because the canvas of a tent resembled a butterfly's spread wings.