The resm-i bennâk was a tax on peasants who had little or no land - those who did not pay 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 ...

- in the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

. 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 around 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. A ...

-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 The resm-i mücerred was a bachelor tax in the Ottoman Empire, related to the resm-i çift and the resm-i bennâk. The amount payable varied from year to year and from region to region, but the tax was payable annually, in March, to the timar ho ...

). 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.

Miner A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face (mining), face; cutt ...

s were also exempted from many taxes, and the resm-i bennâk was no exemption - for example,

sipahi The ''sipahi'' ( , ) were professional cavalrymen deployed by the Seljuk Turks and later by the Ottoman Empire. ''Sipahi'' units included the land grant–holding ('' timar'') provincial ''timarli sipahi'', which constituted most of the arm ...

s who worked in

saltpetre Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with a sharp, salty, bitter taste and the chemical formula . It is a potassium salt of nitric acid. This salt consists of potassium cations and nitrate anions , and is therefore an alkali metal nitrate ...

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