SECTION IV. On Ryot Rents in Turkey. Sect. 4. WHEN the Turks, after subduing the provinces Book I. of the Greek Empire, finally quartered themselves Chap. iv. upon its ruins, the foundation of their system of revenue and government, like that of other Tartar Turkish tribes, rested upon an assumption that their leader had become the legitimate proprietor of the conquered soil. The rent imposed upon the cultivators appears to have been originally calculated at one-tenth of the gross produce; and the estimated value of each district, at that rate, was at a very early date registered in the treasury. The registers are still used, in accounting with the Pachas of the different provinces. But as the rent paid by each district never varies, whatever changes take place in its cultivation, the decay of agriculture and population has loaded many of the peasants with much heavier burthens than they at first bore. One-seventh of the produce where the cultivator is a Turk, onefifth where he is a Christian, have appeared to later travellers in Greece to be about the average actual payment to the crown. The violence with which the Turks exemplified in practice their Asiatic notions of the supreme right of their leader to the soil, will be best judged of by their next measure. The Sultan granted a considerable portion of his proprietary rights to others, for the purpose of form Ryots. Sect. 4. Turkish BOOK I. ing a sort of feudal militia. The officers of rank Chap. iv. received allotments of land called ziamets and timars, in which their rights represent those of the sovereign, and the number created of these exceeded 50,000. The ziamet differed from the timars only in being larger. For these grants they were bound to perform military services, with a specified number of men. Their forces constituted, till the rise of the Janissaries, the main force of the Empire, and amounted it is said to 150,000 men. Similar grants are known in India by the name of Iaghires, in Persia by that of Teecools, but they were established less systematically in those countries than in Turkey. There these lands have never become hereditary. They are still strictly lifehold. In the early days of their institution, use was made of them to excite military emulation. On the death of the possessor, one of the bravest of his comrades was immediately appointed to his estate, and one timar has been known to be thus granted eight times in a single campaign'. The disposal of them, however, has long become wholly venal. An Aga not unfrequently purchases during his life the grant of the reversion to his family; but if he neglects to do this, his relatives are dispossessed at his death, unless they outbid all other applicants. With the exception of these interests for life, and of the estates vested in the Ulema or expounders of Mohammedan law, there are no distinctly recognized proprietary rights in Turkey. Although there, as among the ryots of India and Persia, and else 1 Thornton, p. 166. 2 Oliv. p. 192. where throughout the east, there exist claims to the hereditary possession of land. While the peasant pays to the Sultan, or to the Aga to whose Zaim or. Timar he belongs, the legal portion of his produce, his right to occupy and transmit his lands is not contested, and is secure, as far as any thing is secure there. In Greece the lands were, before the present convulsion, very generally cultivated by the ancient mortitæ or metayer tenants, who paid to the Agas half of their produce. Whether the lands thus cultivated consist exclusively of the domain lands attached to the Aga's Timar, or whether this rent is paid in consideration of stock advanced to the rayah, to enable him to cultivate better the lands of which he is himself the hereditary tenant, I have no materials for judging. It is probable that mortitæ are found of both descriptions. There are evidently some advantages in the Turkish system compared with those of India or Persia. The permanence and moderation of the miri or land rent, is a very great one. If collected on an equitable system, that rent would be no more than a reasonable land tax, and the universal proprietorship of the Sultan would be reduced to a mere nominal or honorary superiority, like that claimed by many of the Christian monarchs of Europe. We may add, that the Turkish government has never been so wholly unequal to the task of controlling its officers, as the feeble dynasties of Delhi in their decline: nor so rapacious and capricious in its own exactions as the Shahs of Persia: Chap. iv. Sect. 4. Turkish BOOK I. but its comparative moderation and strength have remained useless to its unhappy subjects, from a degree of supineness and indifference as to the malversations of its distant officers, which may be traced, partly perhaps to the bigotry which has made the commander of the faithful careless about the treatment his Christian subjects received from Mahometan officers: and partly to an obstinate ignorance of the ordinary arts of civilized governments, which the vanity of the Ottomans has cherished as if it were a merit, and which their bigotry has also helped to recommend to their good opinion. Near the capital, and in the countries where the Turks themselves are numerous, there are some bounds to the oppression of the Pachas and Agas. The Turks, secure of justice if they can contrive to be heard by the superior authorities, have found the means of protecting their persons and properties, by belonging to societies, which are bound as bodies, to seek justice for the wrongs of individual members. But in the distant provinces no sect is safe. The cry of the oppressed is easily stifled, and if faintly heard, seems habitually disregarded. The Sultan indeed abstains, with singular forbearance, from any attempts to raise the revenue paid to himself; but provided it is regularly transmitted by the Pachas of the provinces, he cares little by what means, or with what additional extortions, it is wrung from the people. The consequences are such as might be expected. The jealousy of the government allows the Pachas to remain in office. but a short time, the knowledge of this inflames Book I. Sect. 4. their cupidity, and the wretched cultivators are allowed to exist in peace upon the soil, only while they submit to exactions which have no other limit than the physical impossibility of getting more from Turkish them. 66 66 66 66 Volney has accurately described the effect of this state of things in Syria and Egypt. "The absolute "title of the Sultan to the soil appears to aggra"vate the oppression of his officers. The son is "never certain of succeeding to the father, and the peasantry often fly in desperation from a soil which "has ceased to yield them the certainty of even a bare subsistence. Exactions, undiminished in "amount, are demanded, and as far as possible extorted, from those who remain; depopulation goes on, the waste extends itself, and desolation "becomes permanent." It is thus that a scanty and most miserable remnant of the people are found occupying tracts, which were the glory of ancient civilization; and of which the climate and the soil are such, that men would multiply and would enrich, almost without effort, themselves and their masters; did the general government think fit to protect its subjects with half the energy it sometimes exerts, to force the spoilers to disgorge a miserable pittance of plunder into the imperial treasury. Ryots: |