Some scholars point out that the early Ottoman empire did not care about the details of sharia and thus did not see any problems with devshirme. During this time, the Ottomans believed that the Qanun, the law enacted by the Sultan, superseded sharia, even though the latter was treated with respect. The devshirme was just one example where the Sultan's wishes superseded the sharia (another example is that Ottoman sultans set maximum interest rates, even though sharia totally prohibits all interest). James L. Gelvin explains that Ottoman jurists were able to get around this injunction with an extraordinarily creative legal manoeuvre, arguing that although Islamic tradition forbade the enslavement of Christians, Balkan Christians were different because they had converted to Christianity after the advent of Islam. William Gervase Clarence-Smith points out that this reasoning is not accepted in the Hanafi school of law, which the Ottoman Empire claimed to have practiced.