he first signs that the Ottoman state was unable to curb the power of its
regional officials came at the end of the 16th century. The disparate need for
money in the central treasury led the administration to make a number of concessions
regarding the financial exploitation of the countryside for the enrichment of the local
administration.
Small timars - fiefdoms, were sequestered and transformed into imperial estates -
hass so that the sultan could rent them out to financially powerful people,
in other words to those who were in a position to transfer large sums of cash in payment,
or to court officials who had indirect control over regional tax collection. Initially,
the state franchised out the right to collect taxes for a limited period only -
(iltizam)- in return for an advance payment of a substantial proportion of the
projected revenues. But by the mid-17th century, new franchising practises meant that
this arrangement tended to be made on a permanent basis (millikan, and the size of
the areas subject to such arrangements grew continuously.
These local officials exploited their newly-found power to maximise revenue from their
estates at no risk to themselves, mainly by increasing the tax burden on their subjects
to intolerably high levels, without any interference from the state. Moreover, they
faked Porte decrees in order to exploit neighbouring land, and oppressed and
terrorised the subjects by promoting their owen people in the administration so
that this exploitation could go on unchecked.
Several decades before the timars (fiefdoms) were finally converted into
private hereditary estates (tsifliks), entire regions of the Greek area
had already fallen into the control of prominent officials: in 1604 for example,
the Vizir Casim controlled an area extending from Sterea Ellas to Trikala and Ioannina,
which brought in revenues amounting to 1,200,000 akce. In the same year
a Turkish official in Florina, with an even higher income, asked the state to approve
the appointment of his own men in precisely those administrative services which oversaw
the repayment of his own debt to the state. By the end of the century, the oppression
and abuses of power were leading to long-term stoppages and insurrections, Macedonia
in 1697 being a notable example.