The subject class (re’aya) included everyone in the Ottoman Empire who did
not belong to the ruling class. Its function was to produce the wealth of the
empire. Herders and peasants, miners and builders, artisans and merchants,
were all re’aya. Their cohesion was strengthened by trade guilds, Sufi orders,
and athletic clubs (groups of men who did calisthenic exercises together). Their
political and social organization was the millet, or religious community.
Ottomans used it to give minority religious communities within their Empire
limited power to regulate their own affairs, under the overall supremacy of the
46
Ottoman administration