The resm-i bennâk was a tax on peasants who had little or no land - those who did not pay the
resm-i çift - in the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
.
The name is probably a loanword of
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
origin; in the Ottoman Empire, "bennâk" came to mean a landless peasant, or a man who had married but not yet established his own household. "''Bennâk''" was also a term for a small area of farmland, less than half a çift.
The resm-i bennâk was usually paid annually, on 1 March, by the head of a family who is either landless or has very little land - not enough to be assessed for resm-i çift. The tax was payable to the
timar
A timar was a land grant by the sultans of the Ottoman Empire between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, with an annual tax revenue of less than 20,000 akçes. The revenues produced from the land acted as compensation for military service ...
-holder or to a tax-farmer in their stead.
The rate of resm-i bennâk was generally lower than the resm-i çift. For instance, in the provincial tax code of
Hüdavendigar in 1487, a married man with his own farm might pay the full resm-i çift rate of 40 akçes; a bennâk would pay 12 akçes, and a mücerred (bachelor) would pay 6 akçes (see also
resm-i mücerred).
In some cases, bennâk was only paid by peasants in the Ottoman Empire who had a small but nonzero area of land to farm; the truly landless peasants would pay a ''caba'' tax in which case the remaining bennak might be called "''ekinlü-bennâk''".
Academics might be exempted.
Miners were also exempted from many taxes, and the resm-i bennâk was no exemption - for example,
sipahi
''Sipahi'' ( ota, سپاهی, translit=sipâhi, label=Persian, ) were professional cavalrymen deployed by the Seljuks, and later the Ottoman Empire, including the land grant-holding (''timar'') provincial '' timarli sipahi'', which constituted ...
s who worked in
saltpetre
Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . This alkali metal nitrate salt is also known as Indian saltpetre (large deposits of which were historically mined in India). It is an ionic salt of potassium ions K+ and nitra ...
mines would be exempt from resm-i bennâk, resm-i çift, and caba; they would also be exempted from
avariz and other taxes. Some of the sadat - those claiming descent from Muhammed - were initially exempted from paying resm-i bennâk, but this exemption was eroded over time. There were even cases of people forging certificates of ancestry in order to claim tax exemptions.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Resm-i bennak
Taxation in the Ottoman Empire