The Eighteenth Century: the Traditionalists 355
retinue of magnates and viziers. Likewise, his advice is also quite traditional:
the sultan should inspect the registers of the timar villages and the lists of pro-
vincial sipahis. Furthermore, these timars should be revived: the sipahis must
be ordered to move there with their families and provide the peasants with
oxen and seed. If they are not able to take part in campaigns they should give
their timars to others. As for those officers and magnates who hold timar rev-
enues without being entitled to them, they must be executed (Ö166–167). The
suggestion of reviving the timar system is something quite exceptional for this
period, and may stem from Canikli’s provincial origins.
Finally, all these authors have the usual cry against oppression of the peas-
ants (e.g. Dürri, 286a–286b; Penah, B312–314, 317, 391–393), combined with re-
ports of specific injustices (such as the use of messengers: Dürri, 289b–290a).
Whereas, in their denunciation of the timar system, Dürri and Penah Efendi
were in accordance with their times, their analysis of taxation is rather old-
fashioned in an era characterized by growing privatization of assets, as they all
criticize the tax-farming system. Dürri remarks that the tax burden of the peas-
ants (including mukata ’as, fiefs, and the poll-tax) increases every year because
of tax-farming. The three-year leasing system leaves the peasants destitute
and drives them out of their villages to towns and cities, where they become
servants or idlers. Yet he does not advocate the abolition of tax farming, pre-
ferring to suggest the abolition of extraordinary taxes instead (290a–290b).
Canikli’s discussion of taxation is located within a peculiar section dealing
with Istanbul (Ö170–173). Because of the continuous campaigns, the presence
of robbers, and the greed of state officials, he maintains, peasants from the
provinces have fled in huge numbers to the capital. Istanbul has grown to such
a degree that it needs feeding from all four of its mouths, namely the Aegean
Sea, the Black Sea, Anatolia, and Rumeli; as the transport of goods by both
land and sea is difficult during the winter, profiteering merchants raise prices,
while the inhabitants gather in barber-shops and coffeehouses.51 Since viziers
and other palace officials devote their time only to the affairs of the capital
and ignore the provinces, the latter have decayed. As a result, everybody comes
to Istanbul, thinking that life there is easy, with the side-effect that the peas-
ants who remain in their avariz-hane (tax units) have to pay much more in
taxes than they should; all the more so since the poll-tax is farmed out as a
lump sum. This vicious circle results in more and more infidel peasants flow-
ing into Istanbul. They find salaries and stipends from the custom-house or the
51 Migration to Istanbul indeed seems to have reached unprecedented levels during the
eighteenth century, and control of it was considered a major problem by the time of
Selim III’s reign: Faroqhi 1998; Başaran 2014; Başaran – Kırlı 2015, 261–263.