Öz
The aim of this study is to evaluate the functionality of the muhassıllık (tax collection) councils established in the provinces as one of the most important reforms in the fiscal field with the Tanzimat period, through the Presidential State Archives Ottoman archive documents. The 19th century is a century of innovations and changes in administrative, economic, social, cultural and many other fields for the Ottoman State. As a result of the reform movements that started in the last quarter of the 18th century in the period of Selim III and continued with Mahmud II in the 19th century, the Tanzimat edict was declared on 3 November 1839. The main purpose of the reforms of the Tanzimat period was to keep the provincial administration under control in administrative and fiscal terms by creating a centralized state. In this direction, steps were taken to return to a centralist, single-treasury and single-budget system in the fiscal field. However, the way to be successful in this field and establish an effective fiscal system was to increase revenues. The first step taken through the Tanzimat reforms to increase revenues is the abolition of the tax farming system in the provinces and the establishment of muhassıllık councils in line with the policy of fiscal centralization. It is important to evaluate the muhassıllık organization as it is one of the first applications for the centralization of the fiscal structure of the Ottoman State. In this line, firstly, the tax farming system, which
is the most common tax collection method of the Ottoman State, is mentioned; then the muhassıllık organization established to be the most basic tax collection system with the Tanzimat edict is evaluated in the study. In line with the information obtained from the Ottoman archive sources, it is seen that the desired success was not achieved with the muhassıllık system and that there was a significant decrease in the treasury revenues.For this reason, the muhassıllık organization was abolished in 1842 and the tax farming system was restored