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An iltizam (Arabic: التزام, romanized: iltizām) was a form of tax farm that appeared in the 15th century in the Ottoman Empire.The system began under Mehmed the Conqueror and was abolished during the Tanzimat reforms in 1856.
Farms subject to the highest taxes switched to alternative crops. [1] Under Ottoman rule, muqasama became known as Ashar. The name means "a tenth", although the exact proportion might vary - and it was a tithe taken from all agricultural produce. Ashar was an important source of revenue in the early Ottoman empire, as it had been for the Abbasids.
The defter was a tax register. It recorded names and property/land ownership; it categorised households, and sometimes whole villages, by religion. The names recorded in a defter 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. [3]
The Ottoman Empire, rather than using its own resources to collect taxes, awarded tax collecting rights to the highest bidder, who could keep profits after sending a portion back to the central government. [3] Though access to these tax farms took different forms throughout the period, local a'yan developed into the chief owners of these rights.
Trade, agriculture, transportation, and religion make up the Ottoman Empire's economy. The Ottomans saw military expansion of currency, more emphasis on manufacturing and industry in the wealth-power-wealth equation, and moving towards capitalist economics comprising expanding industries and markets.
Of crucial importance for this period in Ottoman history was the institution of malikāne, or life-term tax farm.Tax farming had been used as a method of revenue-raising throughout the seventeenth century, but contracts only began to be sold on a life-term basis in 1695, as part of the empire's wartime fiscal reforms.
Under the Ottoman Empire, Muqata'ah or Mukata'a were hass-ı hümayun, parcels of land owned by the Ottoman crown.These were distributed through the iltizam auction system; rights to collect revenue from the land were sold to the highest bidder, eventually for the life of the buyer.
In other cases, local taxes were imposed on non-Muslims specifically to encourage conversion. [3] İspençe had existed in the Balkans before the Ottoman conquest; the Ottoman Empire typically adapted local taxes and institutions in each conquered area, leading to a patchwork of different taxes and rates.