Family and tax registers in the Aegean Islands during the Ottoman period

Abstract

This article examines types of tax registers that provide a picture of families in the Aegean Islands during the Ottoman occupation. Numerical data from the islands of Andros, Myconos, Syros, Serifos, and Patmos are emphasized. Accounts by travelers and Roman Catholic priests and other documentation of that time are also examined. The article attempts to verify the reliability of data from the registers regarding family size, number of households, the possibility of household sharing by more than one family, and number of household heads. Records of personal taxes ( ispence, or poll tax) indicate that the families on the islands during the 17th and 18th centuries had only a few members. Exact data cannot be derived because the communities attempted to redistribute taxes according to their own needs rather than following official Ottoman orders. Similar indirect information is derived from another kind of register that recorded the transfer of taxpayers' properties. The number of houses for some islands seems to have steadily increased although the number of family shares did not. This phenomenon may be linked to the status of ownership of immovable property, the horizontal property that was applied, and the nonexistence of cohabitation of extended families. Another issue concerns the number of widows in the tax registers. This large number does not correspond to the family status of these women but rather to tax practices exercised by the communities and participation of these women in the economic and social life of the islands.