As a result of all this, the system of taxation in the Ottoman Empire was very complex. It contained a great variety of taxes,—on persons, land, trade, animals, produce, mines, markets, and the like,—differing from _sanjak_ to _sanjak_ and from town to town; and it collected its income by various methods and through various agencies. The details of the system cannot be considered here, but a few general observations may be made. Until the time of Mohammed II the revenues were administered directly by the treasury department, but this method led to so many malversations at the cost of the government that he changed the system to one of tax-farming. By this means the government became sure of its money. The malversations did not stop, however, but went on now at the cost of the tax-payers.[585] The taxes of regions of large size were sold by the treasury, usually to high officers among the _kullar_, who did not intend to collect the taxes themselves, but sold them again by sections. This process might be repeated several times, till in the end it would probably be, not Ottomans, but Christians and Jews who applied the screws to the unfortunate subjects.[586] The amount wrung from them might easily be double what the government received. The strongly conservative tendency of the Ottoman people showed markedly in regard to taxation. The taxes that had been agreed upon of old were paid, but a general revision of the system in the direction of uniformity was never thought of. The revenues of the empire were thus extremely inelastic.[587] A special war contribution might be laid, as was done by Suleiman before Mohacs,[588] and requisitions might be made upon the inhabitants of a region through which the army passed; but a permanent increase of revenue was practically impossible. The tendency was in the other direction. As the value of money declined, not without assistance from the sultans,[589] all revenues payable in agreed sums declined likewise. Payments in kind from agricultural products may have increased for a time under local peace and security, but in the end they were to diminish also. Treaties with Western nations were so favorable to the latter commercially as to prevent the receipt of extensive revenues from foreign customs duties; and such trade must have increased with the growth of the empire and the increasing luxury of the court. But on the whole the sultan’s receipts from taxation, aside from the effect of new conquests, and allowing for the fluctuations in tithes due to good and bad harvests, were probably not far from stationary.