10 



CAUSES OF THE WEAKNESS AND DECLINE 



the agreement made by the Mohassil of Aleppo in D'Arvieux time 

 with the Grand Seignior's treasury ; the contract in 1769 was fixed 

 at a much lower rate. The reservoirs and canals by which the 

 fertility of Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, and Babylonia, under the 

 time of the Saracens, and Mamaluke Soldans, was augmented 

 and improved, have been neglected. The land throughout the em- 

 pire is charged with a rent paid either to the Sultan himself, 

 to the governors of provinces, or to those who farm the territorial 

 impost, and other taxes : the amount of that levied on the Mussul- 

 man is a seventh or tenth of the produce ; the Greeks on the con- 

 tinent and Islanders pay a fifth. But this tribute is not collected 

 by any fixed regulations ; and the inequality of exactions, and the 

 want of just and proportioned impositions are the great political im- 

 pediments to all improvements in Turkey. Great avanias are levied 

 occasionally on the villages of Asia Minor and Syria, and as the 

 land owners or renters defray that part of the assessment laid on 

 the peasants and labourers, who cannot themselves pay it, from the 

 small portion of the fruits of the earth which they receive, a heavy 

 debt is always due from the latter to the former. In some parts, the 

 Agas from improvident and extravagant habits of life have been 

 unable to pay the Miri *, or territorial tax, and have been obliged 

 to quit the lands which they had hired. A long interval of time 

 elapses before they are again occupied, and the peasants are forced 

 to seek in the larger towns the means of support. The great cities 

 are filled in this manner, because they afford a certain supply of pro- 

 visions, as the governors are unwilling to expose themselves to those 

 tumults which would arise in cases of famine, or dearness of corn. 

 In the meantime large tracts of country are deserted. A melan- 

 choly illustration of the depopulated state of them is afforded by 

 the view of those extensive cemeteries so frequently passed by the 

 traveller in his route. Scarcely any vestiges of the villages which 



* Russell, i. 339. and 342. 



