Wallachian boyars

The boyars of Wallachia and Moldavia were the nobility of the two Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. The title was either inherited or granted by the Hospodar, often together with an administrative function. The boyars held much of the political power in the principalities and, until the Phanariote era, they elected the Hospodar. As such, until the 19th century, the system oscillated between an oligarchy and an with the power concentrated in the hospodar's hands.

Romanians lived in autonomous communities called "obște," which mixed private and common ownership, employing an open field system. With time, in the 14th and 15th centuries, the private ownership of land gained ground, leading to differences within the obște, towards a stratification of the members of the community.

The name of the "boyars" (boier in Romanian; the institution being called boierie) was borrowed from the Slavs, with whom the Romanians had a close relationship early in the Middle Ages. Ultimately, the word is of Turkic origin, from Bulgar or Pecheneg.

The creation of the feudal domain, in which the landlords were known as boyars, was mostly through danii (literally "donations") system: the hospodars gave away whole villages to military servants, usurping the right of property of the obște. By the 16th century, many of the still-free villages were forcefully taken over by boyars, while some people were forced to agree to become serfs (see Serfdom in Wallachia and Moldavia) due to hunger, invasions, high taxes, debts, which further deteriorated the economic standing of the free peasants.

Apart from the court boyars and the military elite, some boyars (called "countryside boyars") arose from within the villages, when a leader of the obște (usually called knyaz) swore fidelity to the hospodar and becoming the landlord of the village.

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