The End of the timar System in Bosnia, 18th - 20th Century

Abstract

Ottomanists have long thought that the timar system was in decline from the end of the sixteenth century, and that it gave way to a new system, the çiftlik system. However, actual knowledge and new conceptual tools have undermined this opinion. Sources have showed that the appearance of çiftlik’s and the rise of new elites as early as the 17th century had not yet signified the end of the timar’s; it is a fact that they continued to be present until late in some provinces. It is therefore necessary to rethink the timar-çiftlik relationship, hitherto conceived as a competitive historical process which supposedly signified the decline of the timar’s and ultimately ended them. As soon as the notion of decline is questioned, or at least relativized, we are able to think of the genesis of çiftlik’s as the establishment of a fiscal complementarity, in the fiscal frame of the eighteenth century, when fiscal incitation to seizing soil was given by more and more depreciating value of money. This trend had far-reaching consequences for the relation the Ottoman elites had with landed possession.