Efficiency and continuity in public finance: The Ottoman system of taxation

International Journal of Middle East Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 567-586

  Coşgel, Metin M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL IDENTITY; ECONOMICS;

EID: 26844452433     PISSN: 00207438     EISSN: 14716380     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743805052207     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. Halil Inalcik [with Donald Quataert], An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914, 2 vols. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1:105.
2. For the relationship among Byzantine, Balkan, Islamic, and Ottoman taxation, see Ömer Lütfi Barkan, "Türkiye'de Toprak Meselesinin Tarihi Esaslari," Ülkü Halkevleri Dergisi 60 (1938): 51-63
3. ibid., 63:233-40
4. ibid., 64:339-46
5. Michael Boyd, "The Evolution of Agrarian Institutions: The Case of Medieval and Ottoman Serbia," Explorations in Economic History 28 (1991): 36-53
6. Halil Inalcik, "The Problem of the Relationship between Byzantine and Ottoman Taxation," Akten des XI. Internationalen Byzantinisten-Kongresses 1958 (Munich, 1960): 237-42
7. idem., Economic and Social History, 70, 149-53
8. Bernard Lewis, "Ottoman Land Tenure and Taxation in Syria," Studia Islamica 50 (1979): 109-24.
9. Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 7.
10. For other examples and discussion, see Alexander J. Field, "The Problem with Neoclassical Institutional Economics: A Critique with Special Reference to the North/Thomas Model of Pre-1500 Europe," Exploration in Economic History 18 (1981): 174-98
11. Kaushik Basu, Eric Jones, and Ekkehart Schlicht, "The Growth and Decay of Custom: The Role of New Institutional Economics in History," Explorations in Economic History 24 (1987): 1-21.
12. See, for example, Timur Kuran, "Why the Middle East Is Economically Underdeveloped: Historical Mechanisms of Institutional Stagnation" Journal of Economic Perspectives 18 (2004): 71-90
13. Avner Greif, "Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies," Journal of Political Economy 102 (1994): 912-50.
14. Halil Inalcik, "Ottoman Methods of Conquest," Studia Islamica 2 (1954): 103-30
15. idem., Economic and Social History, chap. 5
16. Douglas A. Howard, "The Historical Development of the Ottoman Imperial Registry (Defter-i Hakanî): Mid-fifteenth to Mid-seventeenth Centuries," Archivum Ottomanicum 11 (1986): 213-30
17. Metin M. Coşgel, "Ottoman Tax Registers (Tahrir Defterleri)" Historical Methods 37 (2004): 87-100.
18. 2) (Leiden: Brill, 1960), s.v. "Kânūnnâme" (Halil Inalcik)
19. Douglas A. Howard, "Historical Scholarship and the Classical Ottoman Kanunnames," Archivum Ottomanicum 14 (1995-96): 79-107.
20. For collections of tax codes, see Ömer Lütfi Barkan, XV ve XVI. Asirlarda Osmanli ̇ Imparatorluǧunda Zirai Ekonominin Hukuki ve-Mali Esaslari. Cilt 1: Kanunlar (Istanbul: Burhaneddin Matbaasi, 1943)
21. Ahmed Akgündüz, Osmanli Kanunnâmeleri ve Hukukî Tahlilleri (Istanbul: Osmanli Araştirmalari Vakfi, 1990).
22. Neşet Çaǧatay, "Osmanli ̇ Imparatorluǧunda Reayadan Alinan Vergi ve-Resimler," AÜDTCFD 5 (1947): 483-511.
23. Inalcik, Economic and Social History, 55-75.
24. For example, starting with this distinction, Ziya Kazici examines Ottoman taxes belonging in the Islamic category: See Ziya Kazici, Osmanlilarda Vergi Sistemi (Istanbul: Şamil Yayinevi, 1977).
25. For examples of problems related to the distinction, see Inalcik, Economic and Social History, 72-74
26. Lewis, "Ottoman Land Tenure and Taxation," 119-20.
27. In a study of Ottoman finance procedures, Linda Darling finds it more useful to classify taxes according to the recipient of the tax revenue: see Linda Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560-1660. (New York: E. J. Brill, 1996). Because of our focus on the generation of tax revenue, issues related to their distribution are omitted here.
28. For a study of how transaction costs affected the distribution of Ottoman tax revenues, see Metin M. Coşgel and Thomas J. Miceli, "Risk, Transaction Costs, and Tax Assignment: Government Finance in the Ottoman Empire," Journal of Economic History (2005).
29. For an economic analysis of Ottoman taxes in the 19th century, see Süleyman sudi, Osmanli Vergi Düzeni (Defter-i Muktesid) (Isparta, 1996).
30. Inalcik's seminal study of Ottoman personal taxes, however, was successful precisely because it considered the personal tax system as a whole and provided the broad categories of its framework: See Halil Inalcik, "Osmanlilarda Raiyyet Rüsumu," Belleten 23 (1959): 575-610.
31. Extraordinary levies to the state called avar iz-i divaniyye are also omitted because of their irregular nature during the 15th and 16th centuries. On Ottoman state revenues, see Inalcik, Economic and Social History, 55-76.
32. On revenues as fees and fines from marriages and misdemeanors, see Amy Singer, "Marriages and Misdemeanors: A Record of resm-i 'arūs ve bād-i havā," Princeton Papers in Near Eastern Studies 4 (1996): 113-52.
33. For a detailed account and the historical origins of personal taxes, see Inalcik, "Osmanlilarda Raiyyet Rüsumu."
34. Because the amount of land also affected these taxes, Inalcik insists that "[t]his was actually a system assessing peasants' labor and land in combination: See Inalcik, Economic and Social History, 149. That the tax rates also depended on one's age and marital status, however, suggests that the taxpayer himself was the broader tax base. Although those who owned land paid at a higher rate, even landless subjects were responsible for paying the personal tax.
35. For the complete tax codes of these and other districts, see Akgündüz, Osmanli Kanunnâmeleri;
36. Barkan, Kanunlar.
37. For urban taxes and activities in Anatolia, see Suraiya Faroqhi, "Taxation and Urban Activities in Sixteenth-Century Anatolia," International Journal of Turkish Studies 1 (1979-80): 19-53.
38. These figures have been calculated from the tax information on towns and villages. The information recorded for other potential sources of revenue, such as ruined mills or uninhabited lands, are omitted to keep figures comparable across districts.
39. The issue of taxes is analogous to the problem of choosing among the rich variety of contractual forms observed in history. On the contractual mix in agriculture in the U.S. South since the Civil War, for example, see Lee J. Alston and Robert Higgs, "Contractual Mix in Southern Agriculture since the Civil War: Facts, Hypotheses, and Tests," Journal of Economic History 42 (1982): 327-53.
40. On medieval contracts, see Metin M. Coşgel, "Risk Sharing in Medieval Agriculture," Journal of European Economic History 21 (1992): 99-110.
41. For reviews of the relevant literature, see Douglas W. Allen, "Cropshare Contracts," in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, ed. Peter Newman (New York: Stockton Press, 1998)
42. Keijiro Otsuka, Hiroyuki Chuma, and Yujiro Hayami, "Land and Labor Contracts in Agrarian Economies: Theories and Facts," Journal of Economic Literature 30 (1992): 1965-2018.
43. Eliyahu Ashtor, A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 40.
44. In fact, long before economists justified crop-sharing contracts and output taxes on risk-sharing grounds, the Muslim scholar Abu Yusuf had argued in favor of output taxes because input taxes (the misāha method) posed greater price risks. For a discussion, see Frede Løkkegaard, Islamic Taxation in the Classic Period, with Special Reference to Circumstances in Iraq (Copenhagen: Branner and Korch, 1950), 114.
45. On the different species of food plants, see Robert W. Schery Plants for Man (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972).
46. See also, for examples of crop production and field-crop ecosystems in this region, Itzhak Amon, Agriculture in Dry Lands: Principles and Practice (New York: Elsevier, 1992)
47. C. J. Pearson, ed., Field Crop Systems, Ecosystems of the World, vol. 18 (New York: Elsevier, 1992), chap. 14.
48. One can also propose an incentive-based explanation of production taxes based on the taxpayer's incentives to use resources efficiently under different categories of taxes and the possibility of misaligned incentives between the state and the taxpayers. But the incentive-based argument does not fit the evidence well, either. Although the state legally owned the land and retained the eminent domain, the possession and usufruct rights belonged to farmers. The taxpayers' interests in using the land (or trees, animals, and other natural resources) were thus aligned with those of the state.
49. For the importance of measurement costs in determining crop-sharing contracts in modern agriculture, see Douglas W. Allen and Dean Lueck, "Contract Choice in Modern Agriculture: Cash Rent versus Cropshare," Journal of Law and Economics 35 (1992): 397-426.
50. For the general importance of measurement cost for the organization of markets, see Yoram Barzel, "Measurement Cost and the Organization of Markets," Journal of Law and Economics 25 (1982): 27-48.
51. Court records show frequent disputes arising from the division of harvests, which supports the importance of measurement costs for division. On harvest-related disputes in the Jerusalem court records, see Amy Singer, Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman. Officials: Rural Administration around Sixteenth-Century Jerusalem (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 90-99.
52. On the relationship between the harvest and tax-collection schedules in the Aleppo region, see Margaret L. Venzke, "The Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Sanjaq of Aleppo: A Study of Provincial Taxation" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 1981), 135-39.
53. For evidence of increasing cost of measurement in distant villages, see Metin Kunt, The Sultan's Servants (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 19.
54. 2, s.v. "Kharādj" (A. K. S. Lambton)
55. on Islamic law on land taxes, see also Baber Johansen, The Islamic Law on Land Tax and Rent (New York: Croom Helm, 1988).
56. On the commonalities between the Byzantine and Ottoman taxes, see Inalcik, "Problem of the Relationship"
57. idem., Economic and Social History, 149-53
58. Anthony Bryer and Heath Lowry, eds., Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society. Papers Given at a Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks in May 1982 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1986).
59. On the tax systems of other contemporary Islamic states, the Safavid and Mughal empires, see also Shireen Moosvi, The Economy of the Mughal Empire c. 1595. A Statistical Study (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987)
60. Willem Floor, A Fiscal Study of Iran in the Safavid and Qajar Periods. 1500-1925 (New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 1998).
61. Inalcik, Economic and Social History, 112-14.
62. For a quantitative analysis of the efficiency and redistributive properties of the variable tax rates in this region, see Metin M. Coşgel, "Taxes, Efficiency, and Redistribution: Discriminatory Taxation of Villages in Ottoman Palestine, Southern Syria, and Transjordan in the Sixteenth Century," Explorations in Economic History (2005).
63. Ibid.
64. For analyses of the principles for the distribution of tax revenues in the Ottoman Empire, see Kunt, Sultan's Servants;
65. Coşgel and Miceli, "Risk, Transaction Costs, and Tax Assignment."
66. Kuran, "Why the Middle East Is Economically Underdeveloped."
67. Halil Inalcik, "Suleiman the Lawgiver and Ottoman Law," Archivum Ottomanicum 1 (1969): 108-11.
68. For Ottoman methods of conquest and assimilation, see Inalcik, "Ottoman Methods."
69. David F. Burg, A World History of Tax Rebellions: An Encyclopedia of Tax Rebels, Revolts, and Riots from Antiquity to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2003).