Bostanci Basi, head of gardeners or superintendent of the gardens of the high lord. From a simple bostanci , or gardener, he earns this dignity, one of the highest of the Sublime Porte, and which he does not leave unless it is to be made a Pasha of Three Tails. Although he is an inspector born of the gardens of the seraglio and the palaces of the Sultan, his authority is not limited to this function; it extends from the depths of port Kassumpacha, Galata, Top-Hana, and the straights of Constantinople, all the way to the city of Varne on the Black Sea. Day and night he makes the rounds in all of these places in a gondola mounted with thirty bostanciyan to keep watch over the fire, surprise the drunkards, and the women of ill repute, whom he sinks sometimes to the bottom of the waterway, when he finds them in boats with men. He is also the high master of waterways and forests, and captain of pleasure hunting for the high lord. One cannot bring in a single hogshead of wine to Constantinople without his permission; this gives him a police jurisdiction over cabarets. He controls ambassadors' wines, and chases down their domestic servants to arrest them, if they do not have his consent. But his most honorable function is to support his highness, when he strolls in the gardens, to give him his hand when he steps into his gondola, to be therefore seated behind him, and to speak to him quietly while holding the rudder, and to serve as his valet on the day of his coronation.

Occasionally the bostanci basi goes ahead in his boat, to move aside all of those who are found in the path of the emperor. He must know not only all of the variations the sea can cause on its shores, but also all of the different edifices that embellish its banks, and the names of their owners, in order that he may respond exactly to the questions that the high lord could ask of him; in such a way that he must have run up and down for a long while the shores of this sea, in the function of a simple bostanci , to earn that of bostanci basi : this easy access to the company of the high lord grants this officer a very large credit, and sometimes makes him become his master's favorite: a dangerous place, and which in the frequent revolutions in Constantinople has more than once cost the head of those who got there.

As Ottoman emperors go sometimes to Adrianople, former captital of the Turkish monarchy, there is also in this city a bostanci basi , as in Constantinople. Their rank is equal, but their jurisdiction and their revenue are quite different. The one in Adrianople is only in charge of the imperial palace, when the sultan resides there, and of the minding of his sons; whereas the bostanci basi is the general superintendent over all of the leisure palaces of the prince, more or less as in France, the general director of buildings. Guer, Moeurs et usages des Turcs, volume 2.