Taxation in the Ottoman Empire

Taxation in the Ottoman Empire changed drastically over time, and was a complex patchwork of different taxes, exemptions, and local customs.

As the Ottoman Empire conquered new territories, it adopted and adapted the existing tax systems already used by the previous governments. For instance, at the conquest of Belgrade, the Sultan instructed an official to gather information on the pre-conquest tax system, which would be replicated post-conquest. At the start of each area's tahrir (a tax ledger) was an outline of the traditional tax laws in that area.

This led to a complex patchwork of different taxes in different parts of the empire, and between different communities. In the Fertile crescent, the Ottomans inherited muqasama (sharing), a proportional tax on agricultural output, from the Mamluks; it was distinctly different from the uniform tax rates in other newly conquered territories. As farmers reacted to locally varying taxes on different farm products, this increased variations in agricultural output between areas, or even between villages; farms subject to the highest taxes switched to alternative crops. Discriminatory rates tend to lead to production inefficiencies.

The defter was a tax register. It recorded names and property/land ownership; it categorised households, and sometimes whole villages, by religion. The names in defters names can give valuable information about ethnic background; these tax records are a valuable source for current-day historians investigating the ethnic & religious history of parts of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman double-entry accounting method, merdiban, was inherited from the Abbasid empire.

The primary role of the Timar system was to collect feudal obligations, before cash taxes became dominant. The Ottoman Empire had a hierarchy of different types of estate; a Hass was larger than a Zaim estate, which in turn was larger than a timar. In the Balkans, peasants on timars typically paid a tithe or a tax in kind, of around 10%–25% of their farm produce; they were also obliged to pay other charges and perform corvee for the landlord, although these obligations may have been a lighter burden than in some contemporary Western European states. This system closely resembles the medieval Serb feudal system, which in turn inherited from the Byzantine.

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