Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 13

in the value of the ače , to 300 ače s). If
the peasant left the land unworked for
more than three years, the timariot could
grant it to another. The use to which the
land was put could not be changed: agri-
cultural land, for example, could not be
converted to pasture, vegetable-growing
or fruit-growing. Agricultural land turned
over to vine- or vegetable-growing with-
out the sipāhī 's permission could, if less
than ten years had passed, be restored
to its former use. The State expected the
peasant to sow a definite quantity of seed
on land of a given area. Vineyards and
vegetable-gardens near towns or around
houses were exempt from these regula-
tions, being subject to the ª arī rules of
ownership. The status of the land and the
farmer was confirmed by the tarīr carried
out at fixed intervals.
The problem in the Ottoman Empire
was not shortage of land but shortage of
labour; and it is probably for this reason
that the peasant was bound to the soil.
On the tīmārs there were several areas of
untenanted land, known as mezraa and
ekinlik . The State was concerned above
all to prevent the peasants abandoning
the land and moving away: the sipāhī
who provoked this was severely punished,
while those who could persuade farmers to
settle on vacant land were rewarded. The
tarīr registers of the time of Süleymān I,
however, show that new land, referred to
as ifrāzāt , had then been brought under
cultivation, for at this period the popula-
tion had increased considerably and the
State encouraged the cultivation of mawāt
lands, heretofore left unused; such lands
were exempt from tapu resmi until the next
tarīr was carried out.
A further degree in State control of the
land and of agriculture is found in the
active participation by the State, exempli-
fied particularly in rice-growing. Under
this system, applied with the object of

ensuring supplies for the army, rice-grow-
ing was carried out under the supervision
of emīn s, responsible for the administrative
and financial organization, and of čeltik
re īsleri , responsible for the actual cultiva-
tion. Every čeltik ¡ i was obliged to sow a
definite amount of seed on a definite area,
both prescribed by the State. The irriga-
tion-canals were kept in repair under the
supervision of the re īs . From the har-
vested rice, after seed had been set aside,
the State took one-half (in some areas
two-thirds). As compensation for this, the
čeltik ¡ iler so organized were exempt from
certain taxes. The cultivation of rice was
introduced into Rūmeli by the Ottomans,
and extensive rice-fields under State con-
trol appeared in the valleys of the Merič
(Maritsa), Karasu, Vardar and Salambria.
A similar system of State participation
prevailed in the villages which, in order to
ensure the food-supply of Istanbul, were
created in the vicinity of the city by the
settlement of prisoners of war.
Thus the principal characteristic of the
classical Ottoman land-system was direct
State control of the peasant and the soil,
a system which had grown up to meet the
military and financial needs of an absolut-
ist administration, and in which the state's
main concern was to ensure the revenues
of the tīmār s. This tīmār organization and
the Ottoman land-system broke up in the
period of anarchy which began at the end
of the 10th/16th century. Lack of settled
conditions and heavy taxes caused the
peasantry to abandon the soil in droves:
in the first half of the 11th/17th century
this movement from the land reached
disastrous proportions and was called
'the great flight', ' büyük ačun '. In many
districts local dignitaries and Janissaries
turned the abandoned agricultural land
into pastures for their flocks of sheep. The
new ānūns concerning the use of land and
the raāyā which were promulgated in the