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Text File  |  1992-09-02  |  270b  |  8 lines

  1. A levy of one in four males aged 10-20 taken
  2. by the Ottoman rulers of their Balkan
  3. provinces. All were brought to Constantinople
  4. and converted to Islam before being trained
  5. for the army or the civil service. This
  6. practice lasted from the 14th to the mid-17th
  7. centuries.
  8.