Merdiban was an accounting method used by the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

Abbasid Caliphate The Abbasid Caliphate or Abbasid Empire (; ) was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (566–653 CE), from whom the dynasty takes ...

, and

Ilkhanate The Ilkhanate or Il-khanate was a Mongol khanate founded in the southwestern territories of the Mongol Empire. It was ruled by the Il-Khans or Ilkhanids (), and known to the Mongols as ''Hülegü Ulus'' (). The Ilkhanid realm was officially known ...

, especially for recording tax payments and liabilities.

Etymology

The word "Merdiban" is derived from ''merdiven'', a word of Persian origin meaning "staircase" or "ladder". The Ottomans themselves generally called this method ''muhasebe usulü'' "method of accounting".

History

Abbasid accounting techniques were inherited by the

and then the

; spanning several centuries until modern double-entry accounting was adopted post-

Tanzimat The (, , lit. 'Reorganization') was a period of liberal reforms in the Ottoman Empire that began with the Edict of Gülhane of 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 1876. Driven by reformist statesmen such as Mustafa Reşid Pash ...

. Merdiban originated in the

; the first likely example has been found in an eighth-century government document. After the conquest of

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

by Mongol forces in 1258, many Persian and Arab officials were employed by the Ikhanate. As the Mongols lacked strong state institutions, local systems were adopted, including accounting techniques. For instance, the Abbasids had a kind of daily ledger called a Defter-ul Yevmiye; the Ilkhanate adopted the same kind of daily ledger but called it Ruznamce. (The later Ottoman ruznamçe was similar).

Ghazan Mahmud Ghazan (5 November 1271 – 11 May 1304) (, Ghazan Khan, sometimes westernized as Casanus was the seventh ruler of the Mongol Empire's Ilkhanate division in modern-day Iran from 1295 to 1304. He was the son of Arghun, grandson of Abaqa K ...

(1295–1304) made fiscal reforms; these drove more detailed record-keeping and, hence, further development of accounting techniques. Centralised fiscal record-keeping was divided according to provinces, and each team reported to a ''katip'' (which roughly corresponds to "clerk") - the same title used in the Abbasid state. "Katip" continued to be used to describe Ottoman accountants, although their official title was ''halife''. The Risale-i Felekiyye, written in 1363 by Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Kiya Al-Mazandarani, was a manual of accounting, and is an important source for modern historians. The technique set out in the Risale begins to resemble a crude early attempt at double-entry accounting, but there is little evidence that this influenced the development of modern double-entry accounting in Italy. It is possible that other states used accounting systems based on merdiban, but documentary evidence is sparse.

Method

In the Ottoman empire, accounting was not taught systematically in

madrasah Madrasa (, also , ; Arabic: مدرسة , ), sometimes romanized as madrasah or madrassa, is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, secular or religious (of any religion), whether for elementary education or higher learning ...

s or other schools; instead, it was taught on a master-apprentice basis in the workplace, especially the Hazine-i Amire (finance ministry). So, few instruction documents survive from this era. Merdiban was named because of the descending sequence in which amounts were recorded; a total at the top, and then individual items below. Typically, the last letter of the first word in an entry would be extended all the way across a line from left to right, acting as a separator between entries. Mediban was usually recorded in '' siyakat'' script; a specialised and condensed form of text, almost stenographic, which was used where much of the content was numerical. Siyakat was so widely associated with accounting and fiscal documents that it became a synonym.

References

History of accounting Abbasid Caliphate Economy of the medieval Islamic world Taxation in the Ottoman Empire Ilkhanate Economic history of Turkey {{Mongol-Empire-stub