The Ottoman system incorporated young Christians not merely to obtain more faithful, more obedient, and more single-hearted servants, but, before and beyond this, to obtain new members of the Ottoman nationality, new believers in the Moslem faith, and new warriors for the Ottoman Empire as representing Islam. This missionary purpose stands out very clearly in the words attributed to Kara Khalil Chendereli, the traditional founder of the corps of Janissaries, by a poet-historian of the early sixteenth century, who no doubt here, as elsewhere in his writings, introduced the ideas of his own day: “The conquered are slaves of the conquerors, to whom their goods, their women, and their children belong as a lawful possession; in converting the children to Islam by force, and in enrolling them as soldiers in the service of the faith, one is working for their happiness in this world and their eternal salvation. According to the words of the Prophet, every infant comes into the world with the beginnings of Islam, which, developing in an army formed of Christian children, will encourage even in that of the infidels the ardor of conversion to Islam; and the new troop will recruit itself not merely with the children of the conquered, but also with a crowd of deserters from the enemy, united to the believers by common origin or pretended opinions.”[161] The sentiment of this declaration is woven of two strands, both ultimately religious,—a desire to convert great numbers to Islam, and a purpose to strengthen the army which wars for the faith.