The Palace school was part of the House of Osman's system, designated to educate the Ottoman Empire's governing elite. It consisted of two distinct branches. The Madrasa (Ottoman Turkish: Medrese) for the Muslims, which educated the scholars and the state officials in accordance with Islamic tradition. Then there was the Enderun (Ottoman Turkish: Enderûn), a free boarding school populated by mostly the Christian youths, which annually recruited 3,000 students.[1] These were Christian young males between 8 and 20 years old, who came from one in forty families among the communities settled in Rumelia, a process named Devshirme.[2]
