Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

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Či̇ftli̇k
(1,322 words)

is the ordinary word for farm in Turkish, but in the Ottoman times it designated, at first, a certain unit of agricultural land in the land-holding system, and then, later on, a large estate. It was formed from čift (pair, especially a pair of oxen) from the Persian d̲j̲uft with the Turkish suffix, lik . Originally, a čiftlik was thought of as the amount of land that could be ploughed by two oxen. Čift and čiftlik were used synonymously. In the Slav areas of the Ottoman empire the term bas̲h̲tina was often substituted for čiftlik. In the Ottoman land-holding system during the period in which the tīm…

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İnalcık, Halil, “Či̇ftli̇k”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Consulted online on 28 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_1613>
First published online: 2012
First print edition: ISBN: 9789004161214, 1960-2007



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