The government of the Ottoman Empire in the time of Suleiman the MagnificentLybyer, Albert Howe
History
The government of the Ottoman Empire in the time of Suleiman the Magnificent
Lybyer, Albert Howe
Süleyman I, Sultan of the Turks, 1494 or 1495-1566; Turkey -- Politics and government
[604] Navagero (1553), 37-39, estimates 7,166,000 ducats; Trevisano
(1554), 149-150, says 8,196,000 ducats. Navagero seems to overestimate
the mines (1,500,000 ducats) and the duties (1,200,000); Trevisano’s
estimate of 2,000,000 from the animal tax seems unwarranted. Erizzo
(1557), 130, claims to give an authentic statement of the sultan’s income
and expenditure; the former he sets at 4,600,000 ducats and the latter
at 3,600,000. A. Barbarigo (1558), 150, gives 7,740,000 ducats as income
and 4,100,000 as expenditure. Donini, 190, says that after great efforts
he knows most certainly that the income of the treasury for 1561 was
216,519,826 aspers, or 4,330,396 ducats and 26 soldi, and the expenditure
206,581,957 aspers, or 4,131,639 ducats and 7 soldi. He states that this
income is less by 400,000 ducats than usual, because of the prohibition
of wine. Erizzo does not include the tax on mines and salt works, and
the income from Mesopotamia and the domain lands, in his list of sources
of revenue; and Donini does not specify the sources. Bernardo, 347, says
that the income in his time of service (1584-87) was 9,000,000 ducats,
and that by 1592 it was 10,000,000. Knolles (ed. 1687, p. 982) estimates
the sultan’s ordinary revenues about 1603 as 8,000,000. This does not,
however, include confiscations, fines, tribute, customs, booty, etc.,
which Knolles (p. 983) believed to exceed the ordinary revenue. Hammer,
_Staatsverwaltung_, 170, gives official figures for a hundred years
later (1660): the income of the treasury then was 600,000,000 aspers,
or 11,000,000 to 12,000,000 ducats at sixteenth-century valuations;
capitation was nearly 2,000,000, land tax about as much, mines 1,000,000,
etc.
[605] The extensive notes given above show clearly that from 1433 to 1660
there was a progressive increase in the sultan’s income, as measured
in aspers or ducats. Brosch (in _Cambridge Modern History_, iii. 130)
accuses Suleiman of raising by taxation double the amount exacted by
Mohammed II, and thus bringing undue pressure to bear. This statement
fails to take account of the fact that Suleiman’s empire was about double
that of Mohammed II’s in area, population, and wealth. Also it seems to
have been the case that the value of gold and silver fell greatly after
the discovery of the American mines (Day, 135). If these effects were
felt promptly in the Levant, Suleiman’s income in the last years of
his life may have had little more purchasing power than Mohammed II’s.
Distributed over a wider area, the pressure of taxation in his time may
easily have been lighter than it was three generations before.
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