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The timawa were the privileged intermediate class of ancient Visayan society, in between the uripon (commoners, serfs, and slaves) and the tumao (royal nobility). [1] The timawa class included former slaves and illegitimate children of the maginoo class. [2]
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]
Unlike the timawa, however, the maharlika were more militarily-oriented than the timawa nobility of the Visayas. [4] While the maharlika could change allegiances by marriage or by emigration like the timawa , they were required to host a feast in honor of their current datu and paid a sum ranging from six to eighteen pieces of gold before they ...
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. [4] [5] [6] [7]
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 ranks in nobility were also reduced to practically the lowest one based on the truly common designation of "datu" equating it fully to being a "cabeza de barangay" or head of a barangay or town district, with an opportunity for a noble to be elected as "gobernadorcillo" or town governor by the same nobles.
The roughly three-tiered Tagalog social structure of maginoo (royalty), timawa/maharlika (freemen usually of lower nobility), and alipin (bondsmen, slaves, debt peons) have almost identical cognates in Visayan, Sulu, and Mindanawon societies.