Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
HITIT THEOLOGY JOURNAL, cilt.22, sa.2, ss.834-854, 2023 (ESCI)
In the prosperity and stability of states, maintaining public revenues and expenditures plays an important role. For this reason, all states need a well-functioning taxation system to meet the public expenditures.As in all states, Ottoman State had their own taxation system. Ottoman taxation system was classified under two main sections during the period before Tanzimat; Tekalif-i shar'iyya (religious taxes) and tekalif-i orfiyye (extraordinary taxes). The religious taxes, whose provisions are analysed comprehensively in filch books, are zakat, tithe (ashar), kharaj and jizya. The extraordinary taxes, however, are legislated with the order of the sovereign due to the needs. This study tries to find answers to the questions whether zakat, as a religious tax with its own provisions, was a part of the Ottoman taxation system, and therefore whether Ottomans based on the filch accumulation it inherited for the taxes they collected from the goods liable to zakat. The answer to this question will also reveal to what extent theory and practise coincide for the Ottomans. The subject was analysed under two headings. In the first one, general information about Ottoman taxation system is provided. In the second heading, by presenting the taxes Ottomans collect from the goods liable to zakat and the zakat provisions these goods are liable to, it is examined whether these collected taxes coincide with zakat laws.As far as we are concerned, Ottoman State continued the old tradition that the zakat for the value of the hidden goods be paid by the taxpayers, and they did not collect taxes for this directly. They also took into consideration the past practise that when the goods transported from a province through an internal or external customs become evident goods, they collected different zakat/tax amounts depending on the religion or nationality of the merchant. However, over time they implemented different rates by changing the inherited rates. To illustrate, for animal taxes, they applied a different taxation than zakat provisions by collecting a certain amount of money for each animal. Besides, by taking the quorum higher for certain occupations, they practised several specific applications that are not possible for zakat provisions but possible for taxes. They implemented a taxation policy depending on the land regime for the agricultural products. Differently from the older states, by turning the tithe and kharaj lands it included into demesne, they made it the property of the state, and the right of usage was given to the farmers. In this way, they developed a land regime in which the bare owner is the state, and the tenure was farmers'. Therefore, they had the chance to manage these lands easily. Thanks to this opportunity, as part of the rules they organised, differently from the religious tax rate, they implemented a flexible tax rate ranging from 10% to 50% depending on the type of the land. Assigning the tenure of the land, whose owner is the state, was considered renting and the tax collected in return was rental cost. In the period before Tanzimat, for the mines, the state acted according to the land type from which the mine is extracted. Since almost all of the land it owned were demesne, vast majority of the mines were naturally among such lands. The state operated these mines it owned through force account by directly recording them as revenues for the state treasury but did not assign them to the mesne lords. Thanks to the code of laws, the state itself organised the inspection and operating methods of these mines. In the post-Tanzimat era, thanks to the four different codes of practices, the state made thorough regulations in the field of mining law.With its present form, the Ottoman taxation system appears to be an integrated taxation system which depends on the old Turkic states, early Islamic states and the former applications in the lands it conquered. Ottomans also added certain methods and principles to this taxation system and turned it into an integrated taxation system whose extraordinary characteristics are more prevalent.