266 chapter 6
(Heraklion), Grand Vizier Fazıl Ahmed Pasha authorized Defterzade Mehmed
Efendi, one of the scribes of the janissary corps, to carry out a survey of the
entire island.111 The 1670 Cretan kanunname accompanying the survey high-
lighted a Quranic verse (al-Imran, Q 3:87)112 and banned all uncanonical
taxes that had been previously collected from the reaya as being an illicit
innovation.113 It also stipulated that the cizye payments due on the reaya were
to be calculated based on the Sharia ratios, as stated in the fikh manuals.114 The
kanunname also introduced a three-tiered system for cizye collection, dividing
the non-Muslim population into three ranks according to their wealth, a policy
that would be carried back to the mainland by the 1691 poll-tax regulation.115
This survey and the law book departed radically from the classical Ottoman
tahrir tradition since what was being registered was not the male population
of the villages, as had been the case for centuries, but the land itself. Moreover,
the conquerors of Crete used clearly Islamic terms such as haraci to define
the lands and declared them to be the freehold (mülk) of their occupants, as
stipulated by Hanafi law.116
The Cretan departure has been interpreted in various ways: as a reaction to
the necessity of incorporating the previous Venetian practices of land admin-
istration and ownership;117 as a result of the central administration’s attempt to
authorized Hasan Efendi, from the men of the pen, to register Chania’s foundations and
immovable property such as land, shops, and other buildings. The first registrar that we
have dates from 1650, when the governor of Chania, Mehmed Pasha, carried out another
survey (Gülsoy 2001, 186).
111 Gülsoy 2001, 193.
112 “Those—their recompense will be that upon them is the curse of Allah and the angels
and the people, all together”.
113 These were called divani taxes, and included ispençe, resm-i tapu, resm-i ağnam, resm-i
küvvare, resm-i deştbani, resm-i otlak, kışlak ve yaylak, cürm-i cinayet, bad-ı heva, resm-i
arus, and tarh-ı milh. This would be reconfirmed in a later kanunname for Crete, dated
c. 1705–06, which adds that not a single penny must be collected from the inhabitants
of the island in contravention of the Holy Law. The kanun that laid down these fines
and taxes was no longer mentioned. Similarly, the kanunname for the island of Midilli
(Mytilene, Lesbos), in the cadastral register of 1709–08, abolished the fines and many örfi
taxes. According to a note at the end of the kanunname these impositions had been left
out of the “old register”, probably that of 1082/1671–2 or earlier (Heyd 1973, 153).
114 The akçe of the time equaled 1/14 shari dirhems based on fıkh books.
115 Gülsoy 2001; see also Yılmaz 2000b, 203–208; Sariyannis 2011b.
116 Gülsoy 2001, 194; Kolovos 2007; Veinstein 2008; Kermeli 2008, 17–48. Kermeli points to
Ömer Lütfi Barkan’s XV. Ve XVI. Asırlarda Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Zirai Ekonominin
Hukuki ve Mali Esasları, Volume I: Kanunlar as the first emphasis on the departure from
Ebussu’ud’s sixteenth-century legal interpretation of land.
117 Greene 1996, 78.