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.