 A number of Christian nobles, however, were able to retain their estates early on in the Ottoman rule by fighting on behalf of the Empire, suggesting that holding on to their property was not a major incentive for early conversions to Islam.At a lower socioeconomic level, most new converts to Islam were able to turn their holdings into freehold farms.At the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder were the serfs, who constituted the majority of the population and were predominantly Christians.