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seat of government, Mnzaffar, a Paslia of three tails, and of higher rank than the others. To him was entrusted the general government of the island. Mustafa now returned to Levkosia, and ordered that a census should at once be taken of the inhabitants (in Turkish rPaya or left) remaining in Cyprus. Tn making this census of the villages and their inhabitants, he not only used the books and accounts of the Latin sovereigns, to discover how much revenue the island yielded to the royal treasury, but examined certain nnhappy Cypriots, once chiefs among their fellows, who after the sack of Nicosia came down from the mountains, and surrendered as rî'aya, to wit—Scipio Caraffa, Feter Paul Syncleticos, Tazio Constanzo, Livio Podocntaro, Giovanni Mnseorno, Orsatto Lusignan or La za nia, Giannetto and Ettore de Nores, and others who had been captured and freed on payment and on condition of remaining rVaya. To these, the story goes, he left their property, and even enrolled some in the army, though it is doubtful indeed if he would have taken Greeks as sipahi, for we know"îhe hatred the Turks bear to other races, and their distrust of Christians, especially such as they have conquered in war. Nevertheless the Parici and Perpiriarii, who were slaves of the chiefs and upper classes, who could not own land, and whose very selves and children were their masters' property, never ceased to help the Turks, for they hoped under their yoke to find freedom and rest. They made known to the commission of enquiry and to the Pasha the revennes, estates, villages, and even in detail the families in each village and their houses. And the Levkarites, who were among the first to submit, paid this homage of their own accord, and received, it is said, certain exemptions therefor. When the enquiry was complete there was found a taxable population, from fourteen years old to fifty, Greeks, Armenians, Maronites, Copts and other races, of about 85,000, not reckoning women, children and old men. Before the capture there was a total population, as we learn frein the historian Corenelli, of 197,000 souls, so that we may accept the statement that after the Turkish occupation 18,000 taxable males were entered in the registers. Leave then was given to these people at a very small ransom to hold land, and to cultivate it as their own, and without further charge to hand it down to their children, being bound only to pay the so-called third of the produce, which varied according to the locality, and might be a fifth or seventh or eighth or tenth. The inhabitants were further divided into three classes, as the order stands now, and (as many believe) has stood from of old. Men of the first class paid each a yearly poll-tax or kharaj of eleven piastres. Those of the second and less prosperous class paid five and a half : the poorest or third class three piastres only. Bnt Fra Vincenzo Coronelli, the official geographer of Venice, writing of the island after the Turkish conquest, say* that the Cypriot rayah was made to pay six piastres for the privilege of following his religion. And Fra Angelo Calepio, a native of Levkosia, who was taken captive in the siege of that city, and wrote an account of the two sieges, says much the same, it appears that over eight hundred villages were entered on the list, probably as thinly inhabited then as we have known them. And as at that time there was great dearth in the island, because the land was left unsown on acconut of the war, and especially the Mesaorian plain, whieh had been wasted by the enemy's forays, Mustafa Pasha, by command of the Sultan, disbanded his numerous regiments, and sent the men to their homes; those only remained who were rewarded for their bravery with pensions, and others who wished to settie in Cyprus : and, as Calepio says, and as he heard from others while a slave in Constantinople, abont 20,000 Turks remained as settlers: perhaps he means that, seeing the island so scantily inhabited, the Pasha left so many men as a colony rather than a garrison. c. 44 CYPRIANOS. 345

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