The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 91)

غرض

عنوان
The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 91)
المحتوى
75
increase of prices and thus cultivating part of the land themselves, a practice they
were not involved in previously. In addition, the sipahis increasingly avoided
military service, the mainstay of their function for the central government.'®
Although the timari system was not formally abolished until 1831,'' the process of
converting lands administered by emins and sipahis into tax farms (iltizam) was
already in motion by the end of the sixteenth century.
The iltizam was a contractual agreement, normally for one year, whereby
the central government awarded the right to tax farm to individuals (multazims) in
return for a payment to the state determined in advance, usually by auction. The
multazim was required to collect the taxes on the assigned land for the state, cover
the expenses of local administration, and retain the remainder. Under iltazam, as
under the timari system, the amount of taxes collected from peasants was supposed
to be the ushr (i.e., tithe). In practice, however, the taxes actually collected across
the empire varied from one-eighth to one-fifth of gross production.’ This practice
was more pronounced during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a time of
weaker central government control over the provinces, a condition that encouraged
OIncalik, “Land Problems,” 224; Owen, Middle East, 12; Issawi, Economic
History, 71.
Kemal Kerpat, “The Land Regime, Social Structure, and Modernization in
the Ottoman Empire,” in Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East, eds.
William Polk and Richard Chambers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1969), 81.
Tnalcik, “Land Problems,” 226.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
تاريخ
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المنشئ
Riyad Mousa

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