Legal analysis of tax farming (Iltizām) practice within the framework of Ottoman fatwā literature

Iltizām (tax-farming), which can be summarized as the transfer of the state's right to collect taxes to a person in return for a certain amount, was a tax collection method and domestic borrowing instrument in the Ottoman Empire. Since the middle of the 16th century, the state had resorted to tax farming to meet its cash needs, and it had become a common practice in the entire Ottoman financial system, including the Ottoman financial central treasury, tīmār and waqf. This study tries to reveal the legal dimensions of tax farming, which has usually been studied economically in the secondary literature until today. For this purpose, in the thesis, the approaches of the Ottoman scholars to the practice of tax farming are evaluated based on the tax farming fatwās determined in the Ottoman fatwā literature. Based on the iltizām fatwās analyzed in the thesis given by both the central and the border muftīs who lived between the 16th and 19th centuries, it can be said that the Ottoman ʿulamāʾ regarded tax farming as an illegal and void contract. Since iltizām in the fatwās given by the ʿulamāʾ did not produce the expected results in the custom ('urf), it was also reflected in the fatwas that the ahl-i 'urf resisted the iltizām fatwās and the court decisions made according to the aforementioned fatwās.