An Iltizām (Arabic التزام) was a form of tax farm that appeared in the 15th century in the Ottoman Empire. The system began under Mehmed the Conqueror and was abolished during the Tanzimat reforms in 1856.
Iltizams were sold off by the government to wealthy notables, who would then reap up to five times the amount they had paid by taxing the peasants and extracting agricultural production. It was a system that was very profitable and was of great benefit to the Egyptian aristocracy under the Mameluks, and helped create a large and powerful elite. In Egypt, it was abolished by Muhammad Ali as part of his centralization efforts in the early nineteenth century. After confiscating the iltizam lands of the ulema, Muhammad Ali imposed a tax on their significant (and previously tax-exempt) waqf revenues.
The holder of an Iltizām was a mültezim (ملتزم).
Iltizām was typically an annual agreement; malikâne, developed as a replacement for Iltizām, was for life.[1]
^An Introduction to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire. Barnes. 1987. ISBN 9789004086524.
An Iltizām (Arabic التزام) was a form of tax farm that appeared in the 15th century in the Ottoman Empire. The system began under Mehmed the Conqueror...
whereby the different nahiyahs (districts) of the Chouf would be granted in iltizam ("fiscal concession") to one of the region's amirs, or leading chiefs,...
"sui iuris" sheikhs. After the Ottoman rule and the implementation of the Iltizam system, the title gained a noble instead of royal connotation, since it...
stream for Egypt. To accomplish this, Muhammad Ali 'nationalized' all the iltizam lands of Egypt, thereby officially owning all the production of the land...
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of the Beqaa Valley, the Ottomans awarded the sanjak of Homs and local iltizam concessions to Baalbek's Harfush family. Like the Hamadas, the Harfush...
subjects. Another vital section of these reforms was the abolishment of İltizam, or land-tenure agreements. Internally, the Ottoman Empire hoped that abolishing...
centuries, came from leasing a number of Aegean islands to tax farmers (iltizam). The heyday of the post of Kapudan Pasha came in the 16th century, when...
sheikhs were appointed as multazems (tax collectors and local enforcers) of iltizam (tax farms) in parts of the Galilee by the Ma'ani, and, after 1697, the...
most important source of revenue was the customs duty collected through iltizam (tax farming) on goods flowing through Massawa, Beylul, and Suakin in Sudan...
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different parts of Mount Lebanon, between 1667 and 1841, was an Ottoman iltizam, or tax farm, rather than a dynastic principality, and the multazims were...
districts were regarded with suspicion during the Ottoman–Safavid wars, and iltizam was relayed to rival families in an effort to leverage their power base...
prohibited, in order to protect revenue. It could be subject to tax-farming, or iltizam; an individual could buy the "right" to damga resmi fees from the public...
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