Tax Burdens on the Working Population of the City
Taxes were levied on grain crops from the townspeople — kharaj, on melons — tanap, on livestock — zyaket, on trade — also zyaket, taxes were collected from handicraft production, for legal transactions, for inheritance of property, for gathering firewood, etc. It is no wonder that the Russian orientalist A. L. Kun, who collected tax records after the fall of the Kokand Khanate, wrote about the tax burden: “It seemed that only air remained, for the right to breathe it cost nothing.” Taxes were collected both in kind and in money. Labor obligations in the form of ashar (should not be confused with ashar — mutual aid and collective labor of united neighbors) were widely used. Naturally, military service was a heavy burden — the so-called "blood tax."
The first rulers of Kokand, who managed to capture Osh, tried to levy taxes from its residents and nearby Kyrgyz nomads for their benefit. The oppression of the Kokand feudal lords increased as their power was established in southern Kyrgyzstan. The amounts of tax revenues to the khan from Osh and its surroundings in the 1840s-70s can be judged by the data from Russian travelers of the past century. For example, the natural tax to the khan from Osh in 1840 amounted to 12,000 chariks (a weight measure of 4 poods) of grain — 10,000 chariks of jujube and 1,000 chariks each of wheat and barley. Converted to Russian banknotes, this brought an income of 38,400 rubles. There was a persistent trend of increasing these taxes, as new and larger taxes were established by each new ruler ascending the throne in the khanate.
The tax in money from the nomads was likely introduced earlier than from the settled population. In any case, by the 1870s, it had become much more widespread. This is evident from the documents of the Kokand khans' archive, where taxes, for example, in the Margilan district, including Osh, Aravan, and other Kyrgyz areas, were named in natural terms (in chariks of wheat, rice, cotton, flax, opium poppy), while from livestock — in monetary terms (in tanga and tilla).
Monetary zyaket represented a significant item of income for the khan. It is enough to say that in the last years of the khanate, the zyaket from the livestock of the nomads (ilat) of Osh and Aravan, from the tribes of Nayman, Teip, Urgu, Biga, Uighur, Chuchuk, amounted annually to one lakh sixty-two thousand nine hundred and forty tanga - At the same time, the records (defters) indicated either the district, or the clan and tribe, or the leader of the nomads.
The lack of clear accounting of the tax capabilities of the population led to the widespread development of the tax farming system in Kokand and other cities of the khanate. A. L. Troitskaya, analyzing the economic archive of the Kokand khans, concludes that the last three decades of the Kokand Khanate were characterized by a tax farming system of taxes and government levies. The practice of tax farming descended from the khan to the beks, and from the beks — downwards.
Sometimes the khans, bypassing the beks, themselves leased tax collection from certain districts of the bek's estate or city quarters to tax farmers.
After the occupation of Fergana in 1876, the head of the city of Kokand reported to the military governor of the region: “The entire financial structure in Fergana under the khans was based on the tax farming system, which alone gives serious reason to doubt the accuracy of the information contained in the defters; it is well known that tax collectors always deceived the khans.”
All this led to the fact that when collecting taxes through the tax farming system, “neither time nor deadlines were observed, and often even the amount of the tax itself.” To collect the required amount from the population, tax farmers borrowed money at interest from the nearest merchants, subsequently collecting the tax from the workers, not without profit for themselves.
Thus, merchants gradually became involved in the orbit of tax exploitation of the working population. Receipts from tax farmers of a stencil nature have been preserved: “A subscription stating that instead of the money given by them to the Kokand authorities for the society... — they now with the consent of the society [collect] the following kharaj from the residents.”
To obtain a lease or tax farm for the collection of kharaj, a petition was usually submitted to the khan or bek and a corresponding document was received, while the population of the given area was notified by a special decree or notice, listing the amount of grain leased or farmed. “Apparently,” A. L. Troitskaya notes with full justification, “the lease or tax farm was in some cases resold several times. The first tax farmer or lessee of the kharaj was a sarkar or trusted person of the khan or bek, who in turn leased the kharaj to an amlakdar under his control.”
Tax Farming System and Usury.
The archival materials contain documents discussing usurious operations in the Central Asian khanates, despite the formal prohibition by Islam of any transactions that yield interest. However, in practice, usury was practiced even by religious institutions of Islam — waqf establishments.
The tax burden and obligations weighed heavily on the working population, the direct producers — urban artisans and peasants. Feudal lords, both Kokand and local Kyrgyz, participated in their exploitation and also enjoyed various tax privileges. Special khan's decrees were issued for private land holdings exempt from taxes (obelnye), and their owners were included in special lists — defteri-tarkhani. Most waqfs were fully or partially exempt from taxes.
One of the largest waqfs of the Kokand Khanate — the Osh madrasa of the Kyrgyz feudal lord Alymbek — was exempt from all types of taxes. Not only waqf shops and lands donated by Abdullabek, but also his personal lands were exempt from taxes by the khans and their legitimate representatives. In particular, the archive of the Kokand khans contains an order (patta) from the year 1287 H. (1870/71), addressed to a certain Mullah Barat-Makhram from Sultan Murad-bek, regarding the exemption of eight bahye (plots for melons) from the tanap tax. Moreover, at the same time, a similar order exempted the personal gardens of the warriors (batyrs) dependent on Abdullabek from the tanap tax. Three years later, Sultan Murad-bek reinforced his previous order with a new document regarding the exemption in the Osh vilayet of the personal lands (hayfields and vineyards) of both Abdullabek and his warriors.
By exempting representatives of the feudal lords from taxes, the khan thereby transferred to them the right to rent, which he disposed of as the ruler of the state and supreme owner of the land. Often, the khan would concede the rent not entirely, but partially, either as compensation for services, military service, or as a result of “incomplete” sale of land. In such cases, part of the rent continued to flow to the state in the form of tax, while part was appropriated by the feudal lords.
All Osh clergy, legal scholars, and officials were exempt from the tax — tanabana. In one of the documents from the archive of the Kokand khans, the following individuals are mentioned in Osh, from whom tax was collected, but since it was collected illegally, it was subject to return to the owners: muftis, alims, ishans, turas, biis, datkhas, sarkars. Osh dervishes and khojas, who had special decrees — yarlyks, were also exempt from taxes. However, the entire burden of the tax burden and uncodified levies fell entirely on the shoulders of the working townspeople.
According to an anonymous source from the mid-19th century, “Overview of the Kokand Khanate in its Current State,” tax collection in the khan's cities was based on the number of houses, shops, and certain articles of production. The total amount of tax was determined by a “round number,” and among the townspeople, the distribution and collection were carried out by their aksakals. From Osh, 1,000 chariks of wheat, 1,000 chariks of barley, and 10,000 chariks of jujube were collected. In European measurement terms, this amounted to: 64 tons of wheat, 64 tons of barley, and 640 tons of jujube. When converting natural collections into monetary indicators, it amounted to (at the time's ratio: 1 tilla = 12 rubles 80 kopecks in Russian banknotes) 38,400 rubles in banknotes. Since taxes were leased out, the collection was obtained partly in kind, partly in money.
The City of Osh Was a Major Source of Tax Revenues for the Kokand Khans.
In the mid-1870s, Osh contributed 19,000 rubles to the khan's treasury (along with Margilan) while the total amount of zyaket for the khanate was 197,500 rubles. The trade zyaket on goods exported to Kashgar ranged from 10 to 20 tanga (depending on the goods) in favor of the khan. From each cartload of grain, 10 to 13 tanga were collected. Large trade was conducted through intermediaries — brokers, and large military leaders of the khanate, even pandzhabashi (centurions), were engaged in trade collections. The picture of broker collections in the city of Osh is complemented by documents from the archive of the Kokand khans stored in Tashkent. For instance, the rental fee for the sheep market broker in the city of Osh, Mullah Mir-Abdusaid, amounted to 10,000 tanga per year, while the total rental fee for the broker for all collections in the city of Osh, Bakhti Mukhamed-kurbashi, reached 113,000 tanga per year.
The tax burden particularly intensified during the reign of the greedy Khudoyar-khan. Thus, in the 1870s, over 20,000 batmans of natural grain tax were paid by the population of the Osh bekstvo, i.e., Osh with its attached villages. In one of his articles, A. L. Kun wrote about the collection from the residents of Osh and eight attached villages of 24,000 batmans of grain, while in another he mentioned already 27,000 batmans from the city of Osh and ten attached villages (one batman equaled 4 Russian poods; the average price of 1 batman at the market was 2 rubles). The plowing tax from cotton and vegetable crops amounted to 6,000 tilla (a coin worth 3 rubles 60 kopecks in previous calculations). Additionally, from the cities of Osh and Margilan, a zyaket on goods in the amount of 8,000 tilla was collected, from city markets and scales — 1,800 tilla, from livestock of the surrounding population — 3,500 tilla, and special taxes were imposed on handicraft products. In the last years of the Kokand Khanate, from the city of Osh and its surroundings (i.e., the city and the 20 villages attached to it at that time), the following were collected: natural grain tax (gala) of 27,000 batmans, monetary tax from cotton and gardens — 6,000 tilla. In total, this amounted to approximately 75,000 rubles in banknotes.
The city of Osh is a major source of tax revenues for the Kokand khans. It is no coincidence that its governors were often heirs to the khan's throne.
For the tax-paying classes of townspeople, natural and monetary taxes were compounded by the burden of labor obligations. The Kokand khans, beks, as well as Kyrgyz manaps and biis, were not averse to using free labor for the creation of an irrigation network on their lands, for building buildings, etc. In an archival note with information about the Kokand Khanate (1874), one can read the following lines about the forced application of labor obligations: “For the construction of roads, the building of khan's houses, for work on his (the khan's — ed.) fields and in his gardens, as well as for the construction of ditches and canals, workers are driven from all corners of the khanate, and they must work for free, and in case of failure to appear for work, these people are punished with sticks, and it happens that they are beaten to death... Sometimes it also happens that the unfortunate disobedients to the khan's will are buried alive in the ground.”
The increasingly oppressive burden provoked various forms of social protest, unrest among the working people of the city and village. One of the largest popular uprisings was the rebellion of 1873-1876, which led to the collapse of the Kokand Khanate.