The Resm-i Çift (''Çift Akçesi'' or ''Çift resmi'') was a tax 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 ...

. It was a tax on farmland, assessed at a fixed annual rate per çift, and paid by land-owning Muslims. Some

Imam Imam (; , '; : , ') is an Islamic leadership position. For Sunni Islam, Sunni Muslims, Imam is most commonly used as the title of a prayer leader of a mosque. In this context, imams may lead Salah, Islamic prayers, serve as community leaders, ...

s and some civil servants were exempted from the resm-i çift. The tax was collected annually, on 1 March, from the holder of 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 ...

or their tax-farmer. Some exemptions from resm-i çift were granted, but this was less common than exemptions from extraordinary taxes. Some of the '' sadat'' were initially considered exempt from taxes such as the resm-i çift, but this exemption ended in the 17th century; there were various exemptions for those involved in salt-making and

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

. The Çift is a measure of land area, derived from the word for "pair"; it is an area of farmland which can be ploughed by a pair of

oxen An ox (: oxen), also known as a bullock (in BrE, British, AusE, Australian, and IndE, Indian English), is a large bovine, trained and used as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castration, castrated adult male cattle, because castration i ...

- the equivalent of the Byzantine Zeugarion. It has been argued that the basic land tax in Asia Minor and the Balkans was directly copied from earlier

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

tax methods. A nim çift was half of that area (or half a yoke of oxen); a çiftli bennak was an area less than half; these terms match the Byzantine zeugarion, boidaton, and aktemon - and the rates of tax were initially similar. In the 15th and 16th centuries, most taxpayers 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 ...

paid resm-i çift at a rate somewhere between 22 and 70 akçe; this could have been collected by a

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 ...

, as either a tax in kind or a cash tax. However, later centralised tax reforms led to cash payments of avâriz and nüzül replacing resm-i çift; this transition had begun by 1640. A typical

defter A ''defter'' was a type of tax register and land cadastre in the Ottoman Empire. Etymology The term is derived from Greek , literally 'processed animal skin, leather, fur', meaning a book, having pages of goat parchment used along with papyrus ...

record from the village of Eyucek in

Antep Gaziantep, historically Aintab and still informally called Antep, is a major city in south-central Turkey. It is the capital of the Gaziantep Province, in the westernmost part of Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Region and partially in the Medi ...

shows that çiftliks held 10 çift, taxed at 40 akçe per çift, totalling 400 akçe; this, along with most of the village's other taxes (mostly taxes on individual crops), was paid to the fiefholder. Rates might vary for Muslims and nonmuslims; there are even instances of Muslim converts continuing to pay their "old" rate of tax. Landless peasants might pay Resm-i bennâk instead.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Resm-i cift Taxation in the Ottoman Empire