Fisco e terra nell’Impero ottomano in età moderna

In the Ottoman Empire the fiscal system was designed to control the land, the peasants, and the agricoltural production since the economy was based mainly on the agrarian sector. The government's power to tax was grounded in the islamic law which ascribed to the State the property right over the lands assigned to peasants for life tenancy. The fiscal decentralization driven by the substitution of timar with iltizam system of exaction, even though gave rise to a new class of local notables to whose rural taxes were farmed out, did not weaken the power of central government, as asserted by the scholars of the so called "ottoman decline". The role of central authority was kept through resorting to islamic law which protected both the small landholding and the peasant family, avoiding illegal confiscation of harvest or land and saving the possibility for peasants to appeal directly to the Sultan against the pretenses of notables. This resulted in a seriuos obstacle to the ascent of local notables.