Note 107 — Chapter II · THE OTTOMAN RULING INSTITUTION: AS A SLAVE-FAMILY

Menavino’s translator says quasi decimatione (Lonicerus, i. 140). Postel, iii. 22-23, says expressly that the children were not tithed; Nicolay, 83, however, states that one in three were taken, as does J. Soranzo, 245. Morosini, 264, speaks of a tithe (decima). Gibbon (ed. Bury), vii. 79, says that a fifth of the boys were taken; see also Lavisse and Rambaud, iv. 758. The latter statements seem to be based theoretically on the fifth of the captives to which the sultan was entitled. The differences among those who profess to fix a proportion are evidence that there was none.