—an additional indication, if any were needed, of the
thriftlessness of the latter in the matter. Moreover, the Anatolian
railway receives, under the original Bagdad railway convention
(1) an annuity of £14,000 per annum for thirty years as
compensation for strengthening its permanent way sufficiently to
permit of the running of express trains, and (2) a second annuity
of £14,000 in perpetuity to compensate it for running express
trains—this to begin as soon as the main Bagdad line reaches
Aleppo.
It was stated in the preface to the budget of 1910 that the government would grant no more railway concessions carrying guarantees. The amount inscribed for railway guarantees in the budget of 1910 was £746,790. The tables on p. 440 show the respective lengths of the various Ottoman railways open and worked at the end of 1908 and the amount of kilometric guarantees which they carried—and the lengths, &c., of railways worked by the various companies according to the nationality of the concessionaire groups.
Banks.—At the close of the Crimean War a British bank was opened in 1856 at Constantinople under the name of the Ottoman Bank, with a capital of £500,000 fully paid up. In 1863 this was merged in an Anglo-French bank, under a concession from the Turkish government, as a state bank under the name of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, with a capital of £2,700,000, increased in 1865 to £4,050,000 and in 1875 to £10,000,000, one-half of which is paid up. The original concession to the year 1893 was in 1875 extended to 1913, and in 1895 to 1925. The bank acts as banker to the government, for which it has a fixed annual commission, and it is obliged to make a permanent statutory advance to the government of £T1,000,000, against the deposit by the government of marketable securities bearing interest at a rate agreed upon. The bank has the exclusive privilege of issuing bank-notes payable in gold. Its central office is in Constantinople, and it is managed by a director-general and advisory committee appointed by committees in London and Paris.
The National Bank of Turkey (a limited Ottoman Company) is a purely British concern with a capital of £1,000,000, founded by imperial firman of the 11th of April 1909, under the auspices of Sir Ernest Cassel. It is understood that it was originated at the unofficial instigation of both the British and Ottoman governments, with the idea of forming a channel for the more generous investment of British capital in Turkey under the new régime, so that British financial interests might play a more important part in the Ottoman Empire than has been the case since the state bankruptcy of 1876. This bank brought out the Constantinople municipal loan of 1909 (£1,000,000). Other banks doing business in Constantinople are the Deutsche Bank, the Deutsche-Orient Bank, the Crédit Lyonnais, the Wiener Bank-Verein, the Russian Bank for Commerce and Industry, the Bank of Mitylene, the Bank of Salonica and the Bank of Athens.
Monetary System.—The monetary system presents a spectacle of perplexing confusion, which is a remnant of the complete chaos which prevailed before the reforms initiated in 1844 by Sultan Abd-ul-Mejid. The basis of the system adopted was the double standard with a fixed relation of 1 to 15.09, and free coinage. The unit was the piastre (=2⅛d.), nominally subdivided into 40 paras. The gold pound (l8s. 2d.) was equivalent to 100 piastres; the gold pieces struck were £T5, £T1, £T½ and T¼; the standard is 0.916⅔ fine, and the weight 7.216 grammes. The silver coinage consisted of the mejidie (weight 24.055 grammes, 0.830 fine), equivalent to 20 piastres, and its subdivisions 10, 5, 2, 1, and ½ piastre pieces. The altilik, beshlik and metallik currencies struck, the first and last in the reign of Mahmud II. and Abd-ul-Mejid, and the second in the reign of Mahmud only, were not included in the reform; these were debased currencies bearing a nominal value, the altilik of 6, 3 and 1½ piastres, the beshlik of 5 and 2½ piastres, the metallik of 1, ½ and ¼ piastres; they represented the last degree of an age-long monetary depreciation, the original piastre having had a value of about 5s. 7d., which had fallen to 2⅛d. The heavy depreciation in silver causing large losses to the government, free coinage was suspended in 1880, and the nominal value of the mejidie was reduced by decree to 19 piastres (105.26 piastres thus = £T1), while in the same year the debased currencies were reduced, altilik, the 6-piastre piece to 5 piastres, the 3-piastre piece to 2½ piastres, the 1½-piastre piece to 1¼ piastre; beshlik, the 5-piastre piece to 2½ piastres, the 2½-piastre piece to 1¼-piastre; metallik, the 1-piastre piece to ½ piastre, the ½-piastre piece to ¼ piastre, the ¼-piastre piece to ⅛ piastre—these values representing approximately the intrinsic value of the silver, at mejidie standard, contained in the debased coins. The copper coinage (113,000,000 piastres) and the paper currency (kaïmē) (1,600,000,000 piastres) referred to in the above sketch were withdrawn in 1880 by repudiation. The 20-piastre mejidie currency, in spite of the further enormous depreciation of silver since 1880, has scarcely varied in the Constantinople market, but has always remained at a discount of about 3% (between 108 and 109 piastres to the pound) under government rate; this is doubtless due to the fact that the demand and supply of the coins in that market are very evenly balanced. The parity thus working out at 102.60, gold continued to be held away from the treasury, and in 1909 the government decided to accept the Turkish pound at the last named rate. The fractional mejidie coins (5, 2 and 1 piastres) are quoted at a separate rate in the market, usually at a premium over the 20-piastre piece. In the last twelve years of the 19th century the altilik currency was almost entirely withdrawn, and replaced by fractional mejidie; a large proportion of the beshlik has also been withdrawn, but the metallik has not been touched. These debased currencies are usually at a premium over gold owing to the extreme scarcity of fractional coinage. The standard of the altilik is about 0.440 fine, that of the beshlik is 0.185 to 0.225 fine, that of the metallik is 0.170 fine. Foreign gold coins, especially the pound sterling (par value 110 piastres) and the French 20-franc piece (par value 87½ piastres) have free currency. Throughout Arabia and in Tripoli (Africa) the principal money used is the silver Maria Theresa dollar tariffed by the Ottoman government at 12 piastres. The Indian rupee and the Persian kran are widely circulated through Mesopotamia; in Basra transactions are counted in krans, taking as a fixed exchange £T1 = 34.15 krans. The general monetary confusion is greatly intensified by the fact that the piastre unit varies for almost every province; thus, while the pound at Constantinople is counted at 108 piastres silver, it is at about 127 piastres for one kind of transaction and 180 for another in Smyrna, 135 piastres at Adrianople, 140 at Jerusalem, and so forth, accounts being kept in “abusive piastres,” which exist no longer. In some towns, e.g. Adrianople, small change is often supplemented by cardboard tickets, metal discs, &c., put into circulation by private establishments or individuals of good credit.
A commission (the successor of many) was instituted at the ministry of finance in 1910, to draw up proposals for setting this confusion in order. In his 1910 budget speech the minister of finance, Javid Bey, demanded authority to create a new aluminium coinage of 5, 10, 20 and 40 para pieces, of which he would issue, in the course of three years, a nominal amount of £T1,000,000 to those provinces in which there was a great scarcity of small coins. The amounts of Turkish gold, silver and debased coinage in circulation are approximately £T16,500,000, in gold, £T8,700,000 (940,000,000 piastres at 108) in silver mejidies and fractions, and 200,000,000 piastres in beshlik and metallik.
Tenure of Property.—Real property is held in one of four various ways: either mulk, emiriyē, vakuf or khaliyē. (1) Mulk is the absolute property of its owner, and can be disposed of by him as he wills without restrictions, save those enumerated lower down (General Dispositions) as general for all the four classes. Mulk property is governed chiefly by the Sheri (sacred law). A duty of 10 per mille on its estimated value has to be paid on transfer by sale, donation or testament; 5 per mille on transfer by inheritance; and a registration duty on expenses of transfer. (2) Emiriyē is practically “public domains.” The state may grant land of this category to private persons on payment by the latter of the value of the proprietary right—the tithes, ground-rent (should there be private buildings upon it), and the land-tax. It is administered by imperial functionaries called arazi-mēmuru; it is with the consent of the latter only that the proprietary rights can be sold. These rights are of simple possession, but they are transmissible in certain degrees to the heirs of the possessor. Emiriyē cannot be mortgaged, but can be given as security for debt on condition that it be restored when the debt has been repaid. The creditor may demand the arazi-mēmuru to proceed to a forced sale, but the arazi-mēmuru is not obliged to comply with that demand; no forced sale may take place after the decease of the debtor. Emiriyē is not transmissible by will, but may be transferred by donation, which returns to the donor should he outlive the beneficiary. Should a proprietor of emiriyē plant trees or vines, or erect buildings upon it, with the consent of the state, they are considered as mulk; an annual tax representing the value of the tithes on the portions of emiriyē thus utilized is levied. The emiriyē then becomes mulk, with certain restrictions as to transfer dues. A transfer duty of 5% on the estimated value of emiriyē is paid on transmission by sale, inheritance or donation, of 2½% on the amount of the debt in case of mortgage or release from mortgage, and of 10% on expenses of registration. A different scale is established for emiriyē with moukataa (rent paid for emiriyē with mulk property established upon it). (3) Vakuf is “all property dedicated to God, of which the revenue is consecrated to His poor”; or “property of which the usufruct, such as tithe, taxes and rents, is attributed to a work of charity and of public interest.” When once a property has been registered as vakuf it can never be withdrawn. There are two classes of vakuf: (a) Land so declared either directly by the sovereign or in virtue of imperial authority; (b) lands transformed by their proprietors from mulk into vakuf. The laws and regulations concerning vakuf are too intricate to be described; generally it may be said that they form a great obstruction to dealing with a large proportion of the most valuable property in Turkey, and therefore to the prosperity of the country. The vakufs are administered by a special ministerial department (evkaf nazareti), whose property, on behalf of the state, they theoretically
