Fifteenth Century Ottoman Realities Christian Peasant Life on the Aegean Island of Limnos

This work examines the manner in which the Ottomans established control, in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, over a largely Orthodox Christian population in the Balkans and Aegean basin. It argues that their success in ruling the multi-ethnic, multi-confessioanl state thus created was due less to force of numbers than it was o their granting a wide variety of concessions and privileges to their subjects. This policy, known as istimalet, or good will and accomodation, stemned, according to Lowry, from a combination of factors including a severe shortage of trained manpower to administer their ever-grawing politiy and an understanding, from a remarkably early period, that the fruits of conquest (booty and slaves) were no substitute for the steady flow of income (tax revenues) which could be obtained from a population whose support they enjoyed.