ABSTRACT
Acomplex fiscal year which combines the solar and the lunar years was used by the Ottomans through the centuries. The solar year was more functional for revenue collecting, the lunar year for expenditures. These two kinds of years differ by eleven days in length. Ottoman finance officials and astrologers were aware of this difference, and that from time to time this might cause problems. Nevertheless, they seem to have decided that it was not important, since the daily revenues and expenditures of the treasury balanced. In the leasing of state farms and possessions, they added the rent of the additional eleven solar year days to the price of the iltizam (farm) under the name of tefâvüt-i şemsiyye. To make up the above-mentioned difference and to balance the budget, they registered the revenues on the basis of a lower exchange rate and the expenditures on a higher one, calling the fictitious income tefâvüt-i hasene ve guruş. Such measures, however, did not solve the basic problems of budgetary deficits in Ottoman finance. These deficits, as in other Islamic societies that have had budgets with dual characteristics, paved the way to crises, explained in this paper, which contributed to the decline and downfall of the Empire in its financial aspects. Although the difference between the two calendars and the corrections and adjustments periodically made has not escaped the attention of some scholars, 1 the repercussions of this phenomenon on the financial, military, social and monetary life of the Ottoman Empire have not yet been studied.
