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The Ottoman Empire Part 11
Until the early sixteenth century most newly won revenue sources,
especially lands in the Balkans and Anatolia, became timar holdings. But,
when the Arab regions fell to the Ottomans in 1516–1517, the central
state organized their revenues as tax farms (iltizam), a fiscal device which
already existed on a small scale elsewhere in the empire.
Chronically short of cash because of the difficulty of collecting cash taxes directly, premodern states across the globe routinely used tax farms. In tax farming,
the state held auctions at specific times and places for the right to collect
the taxes of a district, the annual value of which officials already had
determined. The highest bidder paid the state in cash at the auction or
soon thereafter.
Armed with state authorization, the tax farmer went to
the assigned area and, accompanied by state military personnel, collected
the taxes. After deducting expenses, the tax farmer retained the difference
between the tax farm bid and the sums actually collected.
From the sixteenth century, timars over time gave way increasingly to
tax farms because the cash needs of the state were mounting.
The state bureaucracy was becoming steadily larger, in part because the empire
itself was bigger and also because of changes in the nature of the state
(chapter 6). Increasingly complex warfare for its part demanded more
cash. Until the sixteenth century, the sipahi cavalry armed with bows and
lances had formed the core of the military, being tactically and numerically its most vital component, and supported by timars.
In a development with fourteenth- and fifteenth-century roots, a standing fire-armed
infantry replaced cavalry as the crucial battlefield element. Vastly more
expensive to maintain, this infantry required large cash infusions that tax
farms but not timars provided.
The rising importance of firearms – the product of a remarkable openness to technological innovation – also helps to explain Ottoman successes in the centuries after 1300. For several hundred years Ottoman armies
used firearms on a vaster scale, more effectively, and earlier than competing dynasties. In the great Ottoman victories of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries, technological superiority often played a key role.
Cannon and fire-armed infantry were developed at very early
dates and used to massive technological advantage in the Balkan as well
as the Safevid wars. These firearms required a long training and discipline that often were incompatible with nomadic life. In many cultures, including the Ottoman, cavalry prevented or retarded the use of guns
that took a long time to reload and grated on the warrior ethic of bravery
and courage demonstrated through hand-to-hand combat.
Further, sultans used newly created fire-armed troops in domestic power struggles
against timar forces that were insufficiently docile. As firearms became
more important, the cavalry and its timar financial base became decreasingly relevant.
The rising importance of firearms is linked to another factor in the
Ottoman success story, the dev¸sirme, or the so-called child levy system.
This system had its origins in the era of Sultans Bayezit I, Murat I, and
Mehmet II.
Until the early seventeenth century, recruiting officials went
to Christian villages in Anatolia and the Balkans as well as to Muslim
communities in Bosnia on a regular basis. They assembled all the male
children and selected the best and the brightest.
These recruits then were taken from their village homes to the Ottoman capital or other
From its origins to 1683 31 administrative centers. There, in the so-called palace school system, they
received the best years-long mental and physical education that the state could provide, including religious training and, as a matter of course, conversion to Islam. The cr`eme de la cr`eme of this group entered the state elites, becoming officers and administrators. Many rose to become commanders and grand viziers and played a distinguished role in Ottoman history.
The others became members of the famed Janissary corps, an extraordinarily well-trained, fire-armed, infantry center of armies that won many victories in the early Ottoman centuries. The Janissaries for centuries technologically were the best-trained, best-armed fighting force in
the Mediterranean world.
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