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CHAPTER V.

FINANCES OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND
REVENUES OF THE SULTAN.

1

System of finance under the feudal government.-Divisions of the Turkish exchequer.—Public treasury.-Sources of reve

nue;-land-tax,-property-tax,-customs,-poll-tax,-monopoly, mines,-escheats and forfeitures,-coinage,-tribute. -Expenditure of the public treasure.—Sultan's revenues, fixed and casual.-Doweries and pensions.-Nizami djedid.

finance un

dal govern

Iv reviewing the financial resources of the System of Turks, it must first of all be considered, that der the feumany of the expenses, with which the trea- ment. suries of more regular governments are burthened, are among them sufficiently provided for by the arrangements of the feudal system; and indeed, according to the spirit of its original institution, every establishment, whether calculated for internal utility or for external defence, was upheld by a competent assignment of landed property. Perhaps the chief inducement to the adoption of the feudal system, with a warlike people unskilled in

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the art of conducting the operations of finance, was, that it enabled them to support their numerous armies without levying taxes for their pay. An assignment of lands, involving the condition, that the possessor shall be constantly prepared to take the field at the call of the sovereign, is in itself a military pay; and the Turkish exchequer issued no other to its soldiery until the institution of the corps of janizaries*. In like manner, the condition of keeping in order the national establishments was imposed on the governors of the provinces to the extent, of their jurisdiction, and adequate assignments of the national domain were made to them for the purpose: hence neither the army, nor the administration of justice, the police, public worship, the building nor repairing of public edifices, of fortresses, mosques, arsenals, bridges, and high roads, are kept up in the provinces at the expense of the grand signor. The establishment of the janizaries was first superinduced upon the general plan. Being

* "Hic rerum est ordo, hæc distributio—sic ut faciles inexhaustaque bello copiæ adsint, quotidianæque pro eisdem alendis pecuniæ cura levetur imperator, ut nullum ob bellum consueta ex magnificentia vel sumptibus quicquam intermittere cogatur." (Montalban. ap. Elzevir. p. 16.)

considered as the body-guards, or standing army, of the sultan, their head quarters and fixed residence were in his capital, and they were maintained from his treasury as a part of the imperial household. The necessity of a naval force, when the conquest of Constantinople was projected*, obliged the sultan to assign a portion of his peculiar treasure for its creation and maintenance: but besides the marine forces, the janizaries and other similar bodies of regular troops, no part of the national establishments was supported from the imperial treasury.

of the

exchequer,

The Turkish exchequer consists of two Divisions parts; the miri, which is employed in col- Turkish lecting and receiving the public revenues and in disbursing such sums as the public service requires, and the hazné or sultan's treasury. The former under the administration of the defterdar effendi, and the latter under that of the hazné vekili, a black eunuch second in official rank to the kislar aga. The revenues of each may be divided into fixed and casual: those of the miri are generally estimated at three millions three hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds sterling, com

* See Cantemir, p. 56, note 23.

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