sultan's crescent

Chapter 56 Land System
Here's another important part of this meeting, folks.

You must also know the situation of the empire. The Jerali rebellion more than 100 years ago (some provincial governors wanted to fight against the central government with the support of landless peasants and urban unemployed groups) caused unbearable damage to the empire.

Today, such a situation will never be allowed to happen again.

For this reason, Timar and Zamit (both are the grassroots administrative units of the Ottoman Empire) you hold on hand, I hope you can hand over control as soon as possible.

As for the support of the related army, the empire no longer needs a large number of local armed forces, and the professional army will be the main force of the empire.

After hearing this, the officials talked a lot, but the voices of most people finally became quieter.
Only a few voices were still murmuring.

"It's been like this for hundreds of years."

"The law of the ancestors is immutable"

"Indiscriminate reform, the empire will perish."

"No sultan would take these without compensation."

Listening to the whispers of the group below, a sneer appeared on Selim's smiling face.

He said lightly.

"Have you forgotten, who owns these lands?"

Obviously Sudan is still smiling, but it gives people an extremely dangerous feeling.

After hearing Sudan's words, the officials below were completely silent, because from a legal point of view, these lands were indeed not theirs.

This has to mention one of the few achievements of the Ottoman Empire, that is, the nationalization of land.

Before talking about this issue, we must first understand the social form of the Ottoman Empire.

In fact, the Ottoman Empire was mainly an agricultural society, with farmers and herders making up the majority of the population.

Farmers can be organized in many ways, ranging from small conjugal families with a pair of oxen farming a small plot of reclaimable land to large clans collectively cultivating adjacent land.

These farmers belong to sharecroppers or owner farmers, and most of them are distributed in the Balkans.

But this is not the case everywhere in the Ottoman Empire. In the eastern mountains of Anatolia, there is still serfdom.

This is the Ottoman Empire, let’s not talk about it first, the diversity is indeed very diverse.

Here comes the question, why are there a large number of peasants supporting Gerary's rebellion.

This is due to fluctuations in population due to poor harvests or political instability.

The lack of labor and the displacement of farmers are thus common themes in the rural economy.

Back to the topic, in order to avoid the chaos caused by landless farmers wandering around.

The land system of the Ottoman Empire was consolidated in the 16th century with the integration of the law by Ottoman jurists.

It defines most arable land as state land, strictly restricts private ownership to urban properties, orchards in and around the city, properties related to charities are known as wahfu, and accounts for about 15.00% of all cultivated land .

According to this reform that began in the sixteenth century, peasant households on state-owned land were hereditary tenants, who could freely organize production and transfer the land to heirs or others.

However, in this order, it is not the country that benefits, let alone the landlords or fiefs.

Rather, it is paid officials or contractors who collect these surpluses.

Beneficiary officials collect taxes in the provinces in the form of currency, in kind or labor from the administrative units assigned to them - Timar and Zamit.

At the same time military service in return, with their retinues, took part in military campaigns under the command of provincial governors, which overstretched local powers.

Officials or contractors as holders of timar and zammit, they usually had administrative and taxing powers over a village and its fields and farms.

But their administrative and security powers do not include judicial power, which rests in the hands of kadi (judges) appointed by the ulema.

In the 16th century, the holders of Timar and Zamit maintained a large number of local cavalry units, the famous Sipahi cavalry.

These units are mobilized in a hierarchical fashion for seasonal military campaigns.

Throughout the 17th century, however, these units were marginalized in combat due to changes in military technology.

This change favored infantry with muskets rather than cavalry with swords.

By the 18th century, the holders of Timar and Zammit did not disappear, but became out-of-land holders or chiefs of reinforcements, providing logistical services to the imperial army in time of war.

They often outsource the taxation and jurisdiction of their units to intermediaries.

The governors of the empire were of various ranks, served short terms, and often traveled from province to province with their families and armed retinues.

Their taxes were usually collected by their agents from their pensions, the so-called Hass, rural or urban units scattered throughout the provinces they administered.

The centrally appointed governors were one of the main pillars of the administrative integration of the Ottoman Empire, while the centrally appointed kadi was the representative of the judiciary.

During the war, armed groups of peasants and city dwellers, known as sekbans, were commanded by local military chiefs and fought to be included in the governor's suite.

Although the boundary between sekban and bandits is usually not very clear locally, for many young people who hope to make a living in the army, sekban has become their profession.

In the 18th century, provincial strongmen would gather the sekbans around them to compete for imperial positions, first as lieutenants and then gradually as governors.

This is also a major feature of the Ottoman Empire, the local confrontation with the central.

Except for these fiefs held by the military elite in the provinces.

The royal family and central elite of the Ottoman Empire could hold income units in name only by virtue of their status or birth, without providing any services.

These imperial dignitaries managed their units and communities through agents and local contractors.

Therefore, the reforms Selim envisages actually have to abolish his own "Huangzhuang".

Similar to Timar and Zamit, the Empire Waqf has agricultural units spread across the empire.Waqf's management agency usually operates the units and collects taxes through local contractors and subcontractors.

In addition, in each region, some units are defined as separate urban or rural tax districts, including mines, workshops and customs.

The state either outsources the short-term taxation rights of these districts to contractors or manages them directly through paid supervisors.

The contractor collects taxes in these enterprises, remits the sum contracted to the state or the original holder, and the rest is profit.

Like other early modern polities, the central government of the Ottoman Empire had limited revenues.

Most of the surplus collected in the name of the state was either spent on local military or administrative needs, or was taken by officials as salaries for their military-administrative duties and by contractors as their profits.

This is one of the reasons why the Ottoman Empire is declining day by day.

Obviously, the land has been nationalized in the form of law, but there is no effective administrative organization. If the Ottoman Empire is not dead, who will die?

(End of this chapter)