Timar
A timar was a
Timar system
In the Ottoman Empire, the timar system was one in which the projected revenue of a conquered territory was distributed in the form of temporary land grants among the
Power and conditions
Within the Timar system the state gave Timar holders, including the Sipahis, the authority to control of arable lands, vacant lands or land possessed by peasants, wastelands, fruit trees, forests or waters within the Timar territory.[9] The Sipahis employed agents or surrogates called Kethüda, Vekil, or voyvoda to collect revenues and exercise the delegated powers.[10] They had the right to collect certain parts of the tax revenue from arable lands in certain localities in return for service to the state.[11] They were responsible for supervising their Timar territory and the way it was cultivated and possessed by peasants. The Sipahi was rewarded if he procured the settlement of vacant land, but punished if he caused the abandonment of cultivated land.[12] Timar holders had police authority to pursue and arrest wrongdoers within their territories. However, they could not enforce penalties until they received a verdict from a local judge in accordance to imperial law.[9] Their duties were to protect peasants and persons in their territory and to join the imperial army during campaigns. The sultan gave Sipahis vineyards and a meadow for the needs of their families, retainers and horses.[13] One of the main conditions imposed by the state was that a Timar holder did not own the land, as ownership was held by the Ottoman state.[13] Another essential condition was that Timars could not be inherited but it was not uncommon for a Timar to be reassigned to a son provided they performed military service.[12] Holding a Timar was contingent on active military service and if a Sipahi failed to participate in military service for seven years he lost his authority over the land grant.[13] Nevertheless, a Sipahi retained his title and could be eligible for another Timar if he remained in the military class and participated in military campaigns.[13]
Origins
Due to the nature of the documentation of the early history of the Ottomans it is very difficult to assign the Timar system a concrete date. Elements of the Timar system however can be seen to have their origins in Pre-Islamic antiquity (Ancient Middle Eastern Empires, Rome, Byzantium, and pre-Islamic Iran).[14] Pronoia of the late Byzantine era is perhaps the immediate predecessor of the Timar system. However, it was not until the re-emergence of the empire under Mehmed I in 1413 that a tenure system that was distinctly Timar was developed. Before the collapse of the empire by Timur in 1402, Bayezid had granted quasi-Timar holdings to his own servants. With the reunification of the Ottoman lands under a Sultan, these men would once again have legal title to their holdings. Over the next fifty years this system of land tenure was largely expanded and standardized. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottomans turned once more to the familiar policy of expansion through conquest.[15] With the period of consolidation that followed there was a move towards total annexation and assimilation of the provinces into the Ottoman system. This meant the elimination of local dynasties and replacing them with the Timar system and other apparatuses of provincial administration.[9]
Surveying and distribution
By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the surveying and distribution of conquered territory among the Sipahi class had become a very complicated and highly bureaucratic process. In the survey, known as the Tapu-tahrirs, all the fiscal information about the territory would be collected and divided into Timar. The process went as follows:
1) appoint administrator (
Based on these fiscal projections, the Sultan would distribute the land and villages to the soldiers who had participated in the conquest. Initially the candidates for Timar were recommended individually to the Sultan. Upon receiving this recommendation, the Sultan commanded the provincial governor to award the candidate with Timar in the province. The candidate then, “with the Sultan’s order” (eli-emirlu), would go out and find a vacant Timar suitable for him.[17] It has been suggested that there was a regular rotation system so that Timar holders were dismissed after serving a defined period of tenure. This length would vary case to case. As long as the candidate participated regularly in the Sultan’s military campaigns who[clarification needed] would be eligible for a Timar grant. This made it so competing groups formed and were motivated to fight for the Sultan’s favouritism and patronage.[17]
Problems and decline
By the time
By the end of the sixteenth century the Timar system of land tenure had begun its unrecoverable decline. In 1528, the
See also
- Ottoman law & land administration
- Düstur, code of law
- Defter, land and tax registry
- Tanzimat, 19th-century reform movement
- Land ownership systems
- Chiftlik/Chiflik
- Ottoman Land Code of 1858
- Foreign purchases of real estate in Turkey
- Ottoman sultans
- Bayezid I (c. 1360-1403)
- Mehmed II (1432-1481)
- Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909)
- Pasha, high Ottoman rank, usually given to governors
- Agha (Ottoman Empire), or lord
- Agaluk, feudal unit governed by an Agha
- Ottoman military corps, part of feudal system
- Janissaries
- Sipahis
- Timariot, Sipahi cavalryman, beneficiary of a timar fief
- Byzantine administrative system
- Israeli land and property laws
- Fiefdom
- Land reform
References
- ISBN 978-0-7914-5993-5.
- ^ Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 99
- ISBN 978-0-307-42518-8.
- ^ Reindl-Kiel, 208
- ^ Ottoman
- ^ a b Ozel, 234
- ^ Wiesner-Hanks, 73
- ^ Lewis, 117
- ^ a b c Inalcik (1994) 114
- ^ Inalcik (1994) 74
- ^ Ozel, 230
- ^ a b Lewis, 118
- ^ a b c d Inalcik (1994) 115
- ^ Lewis, 112
- ^ Inalcik (1954) 106
- ^ Goffman, 77
- ^ a b Inalcik (1994) 116
- ^ Inalcik (1994) 73; 114–115; 116–117
- ^ a b Katircioglu, Nurhan Fatma (1984). The Ottoman ayan, 1550-1812: a struggle for legitimacy. University of Wisconsin--Madison. pp. 98, 99.
- OCLC 42854785, retrieved 29 December 2011
- ISBN 978-1-4617-3176-4.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4384-2475-0.
- ^ Inalcik (1994) 90
- ^ Inalcik (1994) 115; 117; 434; 467
- ^ Inalcik (1994) 73
- ^ Lewis, 122
Bibliography
- Gwinn, Robert P, Charles E. Swanson, and Philip W. Goetz. The New Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8, 11, 10. London: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1986
- Goffman, Daniel. The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2007
- Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter; Abdulfattah, Kamal (1977). Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. ISBN 3-920405-41-2.
- Inalcik, Halil. An Economic and Social history of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994
- Inalcik, Halil. “Ottoman Methods of conquest.” Studia Islamica. 2 (1954): 103–129
- Lewis, Bernard. “Ottoman Land Tenure and Taxation in Syria.” Studia Islamica. (1979), pp. 109–124
- Murphey, Rhoads. “Ottoman Census Methods in the Mid-Sixteenth Century: Three Case Histories.” Studia Islamica. (1990), pp. 115–126
- Ozel, Oktay. “Limits of the Almighty: Mehmed II’s ‘Land Reform’ Revised.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 42 (1999), pp. 226–246
- Reindl-Kiel, Hedda. “A Woman Timar Holder in Ankara Province during the Second of the 16th Century.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 40 (1997), pp. 2007–238
- Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E.Early Modern Europe 1450–1789. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006