Ispendje

İspençe was a land tax levied on non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.[1][2]

İspençe was a land-tax on non-Muslims in parts of the Ottoman Empire; its counterpart, for Muslim taxpayers, was the resm-i çift - which was set at slightly lower rate.[3] The treasury was well aware of the difference in tax takes, and the incentive to convert; the legal reforms of Bayezid II halved some criminal penalties on non-Muslim taxpayers "so that the taxpayers shall not vanish";[4] this rule was reconfirmed a century later, in 1587. In other cases, local taxes were imposed on non-Muslims specifically to encourage conversion.[3]

İspençe had existed in the Balkans before the Ottoman conquest; the Ottoman Empire typically adapted local taxes and institutions in each conquered area, leading to a patchwork of different taxes and rates. The concept of İspençe, theoretically a payment in lieu of corvee labour, was derived from the Byzantine "zeugaratikion", a land tax based on the zeugarion - the area of farmland which could be ploughed by a pair of oxen. The zeugarion itself was taken up as the Ottoman "çift", a word meaning "pair".[3]

  1. ^ ACCOUNTING METHOD USED BY OTTOMANS FOR 500 YEARS: STAIRS (MERDIBAN) METHOD (PDF). p. 192. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-02-01. Retrieved 2011-04-19.
  2. ^ A historical and economic geography of Ottoman Greece: the southwestern Morea in the 18th century. ASCSA. 2005. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-87661-534-8.
  3. ^ a b c Malcolm, Noel (1999). Kosovo: A Short History. Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-06-097775-7.
  4. ^ Heyd, Uriel (1973). Studies in old Ottoman criminal law. Clarendon Press. pp. 156, 287.