86. [86.] I spoke as well with some who serve as the military guards of their sultan, called Janissaries,* who had been first born of Christians, and became Muslims. They said that they were still Christian at heart, and that others were in between, and some Muslim. * Members of an elite military unit of the Turkish army established in the 14th century by the sultan Orkhan and recruited originally from Christian youths and other war captives who were converted to Islam. They eventually made and unmade sultans, became ungovernable, and in 1826, after revolting against the sultan Mahmud II, were massacred by his agents in their barracks and the unit abolished.