The resm-i mücerred was a

bachelor A bachelor is a man who is not and has never been married.Bachelors are, in Pitt & al.'s phrasing, "men who live independently, outside of their parents' home and other institutional settings, who are neither married nor cohabitating". (). Etymo ...

tax 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) ...

, related to the

resm-i çift The Resm-i Çift (''Çift Akçesi'' or ''Çift resmi'') was a tax in the Ottoman Empire. It was a tax on farmland, assessed at a fixed annual rate per çift, and paid by land-owning Muslims. Some Imams and some civil servants were exempted from the ...

and the

resm-i bennâk 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 name is probably a loanword of Armenian origin; in the Ottoman Empire, "bennâk" came to mean a landless pea ...

. The amount payable varied from year to year and from region to region, but the tax was payable annually, in March, 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. A ...

holder (nominally a sipahi) or to the tax-farmer (

iltizam An Iltizām (Arabic التزام) was a form of tax farm that appeared in the 15th century in the Ottoman Empire. The system began under Mehmed the Conqueror and was abolished during the Tanzimat reforms in 1856. Iltizams were sold off by the gove ...

). However, a muafname (tax exemption) might excuse a person, or a village, or an entire social group from paying resm-i mücerred and related taxes; alternatively, örfi taxes might be lifted from a community but they would still have to pay resm-i mücerred. Resm-i mücerred was paid by landless poor or unmarried

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...

s who did not have sufficient resources to qualify for the

and the

land-taxes - whose names, taken literally, refer to one " çift" of land, and a half-çift, respectively. This structure may have been directly inherited from the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

system of land taxes, in areas which were conquered by the Ottomans. One 19th-century tahrir, from a group of villages in a district which is now in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

, set çift resmi at 50

akçe The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (also spelled ''akche'', ''akcheh''; ota, آقچه; ) refers to a silver coin which was the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. The word itself evolved from the word "silver or silver money", this word is deri ...

s, bennak resmi at 18 akçes, caba resmi (for farmers who rented rather than owned land) was 12 akçes, and mücerred resmi was valued at only 6 akçes; in this case, the tahrir set aside tax revenue from the villages to support a local charitable foundation (or trust), rather than returning it directly to the state. Comparison of different tax records suggests that the ratio between tax rates for bachelors and for established farmers may have narrowed over time. Tax records show that mücerred were more likely to migrate to other areas; they had fewer ties to the land, and may have been more vulnerable. Migrant mücerred were more likely to make their way to a growing town; some may have moved locally, but a few would travel to

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

from a distant district.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Resm-i mucerred Taxation in the Ottoman Empire Taxes promoting marriage and reproduction

See also

References