Tax-Farming in the Early Ottoman State

Abstract

While tax-farming is often thought of in negative terms, its application in the early Ottoman state may well have been beneficial for economic development. Tax-farming seems to have been in operation from at least the later fourteenth century and may simply have been taken over by the early Ottoman rulers as a system already in operation in Byzantine territory. It is possible to argue that tax-farming also existed in the Turkish states of Aydin and Mentese from the beginning of the century.