The Croatian Rural Households and Ottoman Fiscal Units

Abstract

The comparative material concerning Ottoman taxation in Croatian lands is very rich in data on the "hane" problem. This is due to the circumstance that Croatia consists of two different areas, the Mediterranean- Balcanic and the Danubian one with different pattems of settlement and family organization, as well to the fact that valuable non-Ottoman sources are at hand, i.e. the Habsburg and Venetian surveys and other documents dealing with the taxation of Ottoman subjects when references of that kind were needed. One can go even farther away from the Ottoman period, in the "archaeological" pursuit of the remnants of the taxation system which was in use before ca. 1690 (in Slavonia till ca. 1750, in Dalmatia till ca. 1800). Only by combining Ottoman and non-Ottoman material one can arrive to the point where at least general trends are discernible and reliable estimations can be made, however crude they might appear.

So it seems that the most important question be that of the hane - baştine (or çift) relation. Often the meaning of both terms was the same, but in many cases it was not. Baştine was a designation for the holding in raya’ s hands of any size, just as a hane could mean a nuclear family of 3-5, enlarged pseudo-vlach family of 6-8, or a large vlach family of 9 and more. It was happening also that the baştine of a "normal" size, i.e. when its size corresponded to units like "pulluk" or "tamam çift", became the basis for taxation in kind, which modifies the general rule that the Ottomans did not impose taxes on land, but upon the product. Then, in the 17th c. this "sessio integra" was used as a fiscal unit for collecting the cizye, although it was not stated exphcitely in Ottoman sources.