Talk:Muqata'ah

Problems with term 'tax farm' in relation to muqata'ah
I would like to contribute to this topic, but I have a problem with definitions used in the field, and I wonder if anyone else has any suggestions.

I understand that muqata'ah meant a grouping of tax resources into a unit that could then be collected or assigned by various means. Many Ottomanists define it in these terms; but they then go on to talk about it using the term 'tax farm', as if that definition implied a tax farm; it does not. I understand 'tax farm' to mean the same as the Wikipedia entry for this term, which requires that a resource be held on the basis of a fixed rent, i.e. 'keep all the profit, or bear the loss if there is any', whereas, for the period I know most about (to end of the seventeenth century), muqata'ahs were not held on such a basis at all, but on the basis of fixed or proportional fees, such as 'two akce for every cizye payment collected'; this is definitely not 'farming'. The fact that the contracts were auctioned off does not constitute 'farming'. However, it is impossible to cite Wikipedia-appropriate secondary sources for the correct meaning of the term, because so many of them call it 'farming'.

Could anyone advise, please?

A.V. Exelby (talk) 14:54, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

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