Reaya

The reaya, or rayah, were the tax-paying lower class of Ottoman society, as distinct from the askeri, the military class, and the kul, slaves including the Janissaries. The term was used for the tax-paying peasant subjects of the timariots, and an Ottoman principle held that "the son of a rayah is a rayah". Christian reaya faced legal and religious discrimination and paid a land tax and a poll tax on non-Muslims, the haraç and the cizye; by the end of the 18th century the word had come to mean Christians.