n of various local duties that were paid by traders.
At first, the rule of the Ottoman sultans was insecure. To consolidate their Empire, the sultans formed groups of fanatical fighters called the janissaries. These were infantry troops composed of slaves and Christian converts to Islam. By 1400, the Ottomans had managed to extend their influence over much of Anatolia and even into Byzantine territory in Eastern Europe including Macedonia and Bulgaria. In 1402, the Ottomans threatened the last great stronghold of the Byzantine Empire, its capital Constantinople. In 1453, sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople and it became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Mehmet renamed Constantinople, Istanbul, meaning the city of Islam. Mehmet died in 1481. As was traditional, he named his eldest son Bayezid as the new sultan. The Shi'a Muslims in the Ottoman Empire revolted in favor of Bayezid's brother Jem. The janissaries suppressed the revolt and as a result became even more important in Ottoman politics. The economic strength of the Empire owed much to Mehmet's policy of increasing the number of traders and artisans in the Empire. He first encouraged merchants to move to Istanbul, and later forcibly resettled merchants from captured territories.
In the sixteenth century, strong government along with public order and flourishing trade led to a rapid growth in population in the Ottoman Empire. Hourani writes that the population increased by an estimated 50 percent in the course of one century
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