The Earliest Records of Income and Expenses of the Sultan

This paper presents in a chronological order some Venetian sources (primarily, but not only) containing data about the Ottoman state, governance, income and army. This information is analyzed and presented in the form of tables, which give us different types of revenues and expenses. It is unique for the 15th century and can be compared partially only with the contemporary ottoman written documentation. Presented here is the data from the works of Laonicos Chalkokondyles, and manuscripts of Iacopo Promontorio de Campis, a Venetian anonymous author from 1490, the Venetian Relazione by Alvise Sagondino from 1496 and other diplomatic reports from the first decades of the 16th century. The report of Felix Petantius from 1502 to the Hungarian king has been added to other Venetian texts, because it was edited in a different manuscript version and presented to Venice.

The contribution of Venice to the knowledge of the budget of the Ottoman state is very precious, particularly for the early periods of the Ottoman history. Chronologically, this study will cover the time of the first mentions of the Sultan's revenue in Venetian (and also in Western) sources from the middle of the 15th century to the time of the appearance of the first Ottoman sources (c. 1530).
Firstly, we have to pay tribute to the work of the great Ottomanists of the 20th century. It is to them that we owe everything we know until now about the finances of the Ottoman Empire from the 15th century. Among the most distinguished are the names of Franz Babinger, to whom we are indebted for the publishing and comments of the manuscript of Iacopo Promontorio de Campis (Babinger 1956), and to the great researcher of the Venetian Archive Nicolae Iorga for discovering many of the Venetian texts. But as far as the study of Ottoman history is concerned, first we have to note the remarkable contributions of Ömer Lütfi Barkan and Halil İnalcik to the study of the problems of economic history, and especially for illuminating the financial organization of the early Ottoman Empire. Perhaps, it is possible now to add some more details to the analysis of

Rakova. The Earliest Records of Income and Expenses of the Sultan 15
Italian men of letters such as Ciriaco d'Ancona. The next one is Theodore Spandounes or Spandugino, who lived for some time in Venice, and then was forced to leave for France where he died probably in 1538. Returning to Laonicos Chalkokondyles, at first it must be noted that although he has been known to the historians for a long time, only recently we have become more aware of the quantity of information he possessed and his worldly connection with the Ottoman grandees, as well as with the Italian humanists. Now we can refer to the new edition of the Chalkokondyles's Histories, produced by Anthony Kaldellis three years ago with some interesting accompanying studies (Kaldellis 2012(Kaldellis , 2014Preiser-Kapeller 2013). Nevertheless, we owe Franz Babinger and Nicolae Iorga the illumination of the circle of Byzantine intellectuals formed around the new Sultan -Mehmed the Conqueror in Constantinople (Babinger 1978, 246-7;Iorga [1935Iorga [ ] 1982. While explaining from whom he learned about the Sultan's accounts, Chalkokondyles himself pointed out one of the padishah's secretaries, the one who was responsible for the calculations (Kaldellis 2014, 264). We are talking about one of the sons of Georgios Amiroutzes (1400-1470), a Greek nobleman from Trebizond, who became the Sultan's calligrapher.
Here are the items of the budget, pointed out in book 8 from The Histories: the kharaj (poll tax) from Europe (i.e. Rumelia), the taxes on cattle, trade, mines, rice and salt, and finally the tributes from foreign rulers, which are about 100,000 ducats (see Appendix 1). Thus, the income of the Sultan, according to Laonicos, including both what accrues to him through the Porte and to the so-called hazine (treasury) of the sultan, is about 4,000,000 gold pieces. Together with the revenues from the timars (land revenues), it reaches the incredible number of 9,000,000. As Chalkokondyles points out, the expenses of the Sultan are mainly for the salaries of the army. Speros Vryonis (1976), in his well-grounded article on this issue, published 40 years ago, calculates only the stated revenues which reach 2,300,000. It has to be noted that we have the revenue from the kharaj from Rumelia, 900,000 ducats, and the numbers of other revenues are pointed out for Rumelia and Anatolia together (Vryonis 1976, 425-6). Vryonis compares further the data from Chalkokondyles with the numbers reported later by Iacopo Promontorio de Campis, and also with the numbers about the amount of the kharaj from the Ottoman survey from 1488-89 which is stated as being 29,929,538 akces (i.e. 610,806 ducats. Exchange rate 49 akce to 1 ducat) (Vryonis 1976, 428-30).
The information from the Genoese Jacopo Promontorio de Campis from 1475 is well known from the first edition and commentary of his manuscript, written by Franz Babinger (1956) (see Appendix 2). To this famous author we owe quite detailed information about the Sultan's income and expenditure, although its accuracy can be questioned. The Genoese merchant obviously has direct information, and for the first time we have the complete budget per items from Rumelia and Anatolia, including revenues from Constantinople, Gallipoli, Thessaloniki, Enos, etc., as well as taxes on salt production and mines. The total number of revenues is 1,831,000 ducats, and the reported expenses about the Sultan's stables, payment, cucina (nutrition for the court), harem, gifts and dowries, and for the fleet amounted to 1,375,000. Even if Jacopo Promontorio de Campis' manuscript is preserved in Bologna, we can hardly assume that his report ever reached Venice. It was not probably known in Venice, but 15 years later a detailed register of the Sultan's revenues and expenses was drawn up there. A two-page manuscript by an anonymous author is kept in a codex from Marino Sanudo's possessions, which is preserved in the Marciana Library. The manuscript was studied for the first time 110 years ago by Nicolae Iorga and excerpts from it are included in the second volume of his History of the Ottoman Empire, published in 1909, but incomplete and with many errors and missing parts (Iorga [1909(Iorga [ ] 2015. Here we provide a full text with a new reading, both in terms of the text and the numbers of ducats derived from different sources of income (see Appendix 3 according to the original version in Italian).
The title of the text is: Intrade del Signor Turcho de la Grexia, 1490 (Revenues of the sultan from Greece, 1490; see Appendix 3). According to the anonymous author, the revenues from Rumelia in 1490 are about two million from kharaj, commerchio (the tax on trade) including taxes from the different cities (Sofia, Thessaloniki, Philippopolis, Adrianople and Constantinople), revenues from salt, alum, inherited goods and naturally from tributes from Bosnia, Wallachia, Trebizond, Ragusa, islands etc.: in total 1,125,000 ducats (number, which differs from the author's accounting!). The revenue from Anatolia is much less, and it is derived mainly from Bursa, from the production of alum and from the copper from Kastamoni. According to our reading, it amounts to approximately 180,000. As far as the expenditures given by this author are concerned, the cost is mostly for the army: 350,000 ducats, for the palace and its janissaries, slaves, stables, and also great expenses are noted for clothing.
There are doubts about the authorship of the document containing this information. It could be ascribed to Giovanni Maria Angiolello (Vicenza 1451-c. 1525) citizen of Venice, who returned to Italy exactly in that year after many travels in the Ottoman Empire, and who had previously been the defterdar (treasurer) of the Sultan. According to his biography, written by Babinger, he was in Vicenza until his death (Babinger 1961;Danova 2010).
The next series of records, mentioned already at the beginning, belongs to the Venetian diplomats. Some of them knew Turkish, as is the case with the first among them: Alvise Sagondino (1496). Upon his return from the mission, Sagondino gives to the Venetian authorities quite a detailed report about the revenues of the Sultan (Bayezid II), his army and his expenses (the text of the relazione is in Sanuto 1879, 397-400). The reported revenue of Bayezid is 2,400,000 ducats per year, distributed in the following way: The Sultan spent all this revenue and had so far withdrawn 3,000,000 from his father's deposit, which had been 6,000,000, according to the hearsay. The Venetian envoys after Sagondino were also obliged to mention the revenues to the Sultan's treasury and the army expenses, the number of the different kinds of soldiers and the number of ships. As İnalcık stated, the reports of Venetian ambassadors provided information about the Sultan's income through the years: Andrea Gritti (1503) reported 5,000,000 ducats, Tommaso Mocenigo (c. 1520) 3,130,000, Marco Minio (1522) 3,000,000, Pietro Zeno (1524) 4,500,000, Pietro Bragadin (1527) 4,500,000 only for central treasury.
We shall not deal with this in detail, but it would be necessary to point out that we owe Maria Pia Pedani the discovery and publishing of some relazioni (ambassadors' reports), which have been unknown so far (Pedani-Fabris 1996). The ones of Tommaso Contarini from 1522 and Tommaso Mocenigo from 1530 are especially important, because they directly report the Sultan's budget. They provide detailed and very precise information on the specific types of revenue from Rumelia and Anatolia (Contarini 1996, 39;Mocenigo 1996, 43-4) (cf. Appendix 5). Extremely valuable in this case is the fact that their information can be compared to the first Ottoman general surveys. The report of Tommaso Contarini from 1522, for example, points out the total of 6,202,500 ducats of revenues. In his turn Tommaso Mocenigo reported a revenue of 6,240,000 ducats, gathered from salt mines, mines and livestock pastures in Gretia (i.e. Rumelia) and from trade taxes, possessions, property fees, fishponds -a total of half a million ducats from Europe; from the same sources in Anatolia the amount of revenue is half as low (750,000 ducats); only from the kharaj the income amounts to 2,300,000 and the expenses, primarily for the army, are about five million (Mocenigo 1996, 43-4).
On the other hand, as İnalcık points out, in 1528 the state revenue is 9,650,000 in Venetian ducats (İnalcık 1973, 116 without source quotation).
Finally, we would like to conclude with a text from 1502 which brings to our knowledge the sultan's revenues. It was not written by a Venetian, but by a Hungarian diplomat. Nevertheless its appearance is related to Venice. The manuscript has not been published yet, as far as we know. This is an 18

Rakova. The Earliest Records of Income and Expenses of the Sultan
Venetians and Ottomans in the Early Modern Age, 13-30 autograph of Felix Petantius (known as Felix Raguzinus and Felix Petančić, 1455-1522) written in Latin. In 1501-1502 Petančić was carrying out an important mission as an envoy of the Hungarian king. He passed through the Turkish lands, visited Rhodes and Venice in his travel back, and in the end presented to his king two valuable manuscripts. One of them has been known to the historians for a long time -it was studied and published by Agostino Pertusi -Quibus itineribus Turci sint aggrigendi (The Roads on which it is possible to go towards the Turks), but the second one is almost unknown. Petančić can be trusted, because he was among the few diplomats of his time who knew Turkish and probably had access to the right information (Pertusi 1970, 490;Rakova 2014).
The manuscript presented here is named Genealogy of the Turkish Sultans, and it is preserved in Budapest 1 (see Appendix 4). As it was conceived, it aimed to present the succession order of the Ottoman sultans, the principal governors even with their images, the structure of the Ottoman government and the composition of the army, and also arrange the collected data in clear order. It is also obvious that this manuscript was meant to be looked through, not published. We will mention here only the part with the statistics.
The revenues are given separately for Rumelia and Anatolia: 1,500,000 and 2,000,000 ducats respectively. The author also gives the number of the households in the two parts of the Empire: 80,000 Christian and 50,000 Turkish for Rumelia, and, a total of 1,600,000 Christian and Turkish for Anatolia (this numbers can be contested, cf. Boykov 2016). The sultan's treasury revenue is said to come from taxes, inheritance, taxation on cattle, trade with salt, copper and other metals, taxation on agricultural produce, custom taxes, etc. The expenditures of the Empire are chiefly for payment of daily rations and money for the army, but the author does not indicate the sums. In fact, we are able to identify the possible source of the part of the information that relates to the revenue of the Ottoman Empire: La Relazione by Alvise Sagondino.
The Venetian connection is expressed in the presence of a special manuscript by Petančić, left in the Venetian archive, now in Correr Library. 2 It also has not been published yet, but it presents a version of the previous one already commented here, although it does not give specific numbers for the revenues, but only lists them by items. The total sum given is 4,000,000. Its title and incipit are Fеlicis Petantii Ragusei. Commentariolum de Rebus Turcharu[m]

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There are some opportunities for further research that could arise from what has been mentioned so far. The individual items of the sultan's revenues, reported by the various authors could be compared. They can be systematized according to the three extant in all the authors sections: Rumelia's revenue, Anatolia's income, and the revenues from vassal tributary states. It can also be summed up both on the increase in revenue by individual items and on the general trend of revenue growth for the sultan's treasury. The Venetian reports could be juxtaposed and verified with the help of the present Ottoman sources -for the period until 1502, as well as for the next one, after the full registers of the revenues of the Ottoman Empire got revealed.
Three of the sources presented and commented here for the first time are preserved as manuscripts in the Marciana Library, Library of Correr Museum, and in Budapest. Without any doubt they contain valuable and reliable information. They are the earliest evidence of revenues and expenditures in the Ottoman Empire -hence the role of Venice as an information hub for Christian Europe is once again unconditionally confirmed. Tribute (= kharaj) from Europe (= Rumelia)~ 900,000 ducats 2 one tenth upon income from the Turks and from the others ? 3 The tax called bastina (patrimony) ? 4 The tax on sheep pasturage ? 5 Beyond the tribute, there are many special fees that are assigned to the sultan throughout Europe and Asia, generated by horses, camels, mules, and oxen~ 300,000 gold pieces 6 In addition, the sultan generates substantial income from his tenants 250,000