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By the 17th century, Spanish dictionaries were now erroneously defining timawa as libres (freemen) and libertos (freedmen), and were equating them with plebeyos ("commoners") and tungan tawo (literally "people in-between", the middle class)—descriptions that used to refer to the serf and peasant class, the tuhay or mamahay (the Visayan ...
Contrary to modern definitions, it did not refer to the ruling class, but rather to a warrior class (which were minor nobility) of the Tagalog people, directly equivalent to Visayan timawa. Like timawa, the term also has connotations of "freeman" or "freed slave" in both Filipino and Malay languages. [7] [8]
In Visayas, the Visayans utilized a three-class social structure consisting of the oripun (commoners, serfs, and slaves), the timawa (warrior nobility), and at the top, the tumao (nobility). The tumao consisted of blood relatives of the datu (community leader) untainted by slavery, servitude, or witchcraft. [2]
The Timawa did not pay tribute or perform agricultural labor. The Boxer Codex calls them knights and hidalgos. The Spanish conquistador, Miguel de Loarca, described them as "free men, neither chiefs nor slaves". In the late 1600s, the Spanish Jesuit priest Francisco Ignatio Alcina classified them as the third rank of nobility (nobleza). [28]
In the Spanish colonial era, Philip II of Spain decreed that the nobility in the Philippine islands should retain their pre-hispanic honours and privileges. [ b ] In the modern times, these are retained on a traditional basis as the 1987 Constitution explicitly reaffirms the abolition of royal and noble titles in the republic.
For example, F. Landa Jocano, in his seminal work Filipino Prehistory: Rediscovering Precolonial Heritage, notes: Even if different Barangays entered into alliances with one another, there was no sovereign datu over them. Each datu ruled his barangay independently. The alliances were limited to mutual protection and assistance in times of need.
The early polities were typically made up of three-tier social structure: a nobility class, a class of "freemen", and a class of dependent debtor-bondsmen: [6] [7] Datu (ruling class) and Maginoo (noble class, where the datu ascends from) Maharlika [8] /Timawa (freemen; warrior class)
The partial alipin child of a timawa and an alipin, for example, will inherit half of their alipin parent's obligations, while the grandchild of an alipin will only owe a quarter. Half alipin whose services were scheduled alternately by months are referred to as bulan ("moon" or "month") or pikas ("half").