Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/136

130 the wheat and orders the farmer to watch and wait until he comes again to measure it. In the meantime the farmer has no bread to eat and no oats for his stock, and is obliged to borrow at a rate of fifty per cent interest. He may have to wait for weeks and sometimes until late in the autumn watching over his crop day and night to keep off the cattle and robbers from disturbing "the marks," in which case he will be accused of stealing and must lose more. When the farmers of the town send word and beg the tithers to come and settle the business the rude answer is "Yavash, Yavash" (slowly, slowly). When they do come a horror fills the town, farmers are accused of stealing, insulted, beaten and condemned for so much damage, the act and the mode of execution being in their own hands. After the alleged damages are rectified in their own fashion, the turn comes to the "legal tithe, the divine right bestowed upon he Sultan, the successor to the prophet." From the best portion of the crop the right of the government is secured.

3. Taxes on Herds and Flocks. The tax levied upon each sheep, etc., is estimated about one-eighth of the entire value due in the spring, when the sheep sell for the least money. As a hard winter passes, when the owner of the flock has consumed all provisions and left nothing to pay this tax, he is obliged to sell a part of his flock for only one-third of the price they could easily get in the autumn. The only reason this tax is demanded in the spring is because the number of the sheep and goat are greatest at that time.