Zhitar (grain-tax collector)

Zhitari are mentioned in the Vitosha and Rila charters. The Zograf chrysobull of Tsar Ivan Alexander—a solemn ruler’s charter bearing a gold seal—also contains the related form “ЖИТАРЬСКѪ,” associated with the same field of taxation. The documents do not name individual Bulgarian holders of the office, but they place it among the organs of the fisc. The title itself derives from the Slavic word for grain and most naturally denotes an official charged with collecting a state due on cereals.

The precise nature of this tax remains disputed. A less widely accepted reconstruction identifies the komod as the principal levy on land and draught animals and equates it with the volobershtina and zhitarstvo. It connects these names with Byzantine fiscal terms such as oikonomion, zevologion, and zeugaratikion. The more common interpretation, however, treats the oikonomion as an additional charge used to remunerate the official who assessed production or measured taxable land in modioi, units employed in fiscal calculations. On this reading, the principal state levy in Bulgaria probably remained the tithe, including the tithe on grain.

The office is connected with the term zhitarstvo, usually derived from the Greek σιταρκία. There is no consensus that it originally denoted a tax in the narrow sense. It may have begun as an obligation requiring producers to sell grain to the state at regulated prices and subsequently developed into a regular levy. It has also been identified with the perpera because payment could be made in money. The secure conclusion is more limited: zhitarstvo concerned the taxation of grain and probably resembled the grain tithe without necessarily being identical to it. No directly corresponding Byzantine office can be identified from which the Bulgarian zhitar was simply borrowed.

The order in which officials appear in the charters provides some indication of the zhitar’s standing. In the complete lists, zhitari occupy the seventh or eighth position, but among fiscal officials they rank second, immediately after the perperari, the officers associated with the monetary levy known as the perpera. This suggests an important role in the provincial fiscal administration rather than a high court dignity in the capital. Their principal duty was probably to collect and account for the grain levy. Their remuneration may have been provided through a separate surcharge imposed on the population, although the evidence does not establish this conclusively.

Later Moldavian offices with similar names do not provide an exact model for the Bulgarian institution. An inscription of 1558 mentions Kărstya, described as the “zhitar of Suceava.” In the sixteenth century the Moldavian jitnicer still belonged to a lower category of princely servants, but during the seventeenth century he rose into the upper boyar ranks and became part of the central court administration. He supervised the collection, storage, and distribution of grain in the ruler’s granary and was assisted by subordinate granary officials, scribes, and storehouse personnel. These responsibilities distinguish him from the Bulgarian zhitar, who appears primarily to have been a provincial tax collector.

A closer parallel is found in Wallachia, where the zhitar appears in charters from the end of the fourteenth century. It has been proposed that the title derived from a Romanian word for livestock and originally meant a keeper of cattle, but its transparent connection with the Slavic word for grain makes this etymology uncertain. The fact that zhitar could denote a guardian of borders or forests in the nineteenth century likewise does not prove that the medieval office had this function. More significant is the Wallachian levy called zhitarstvo, which supports the possibility of an additional payment intended for the official. The “ПАМЕТЪКЪ ЖИТЪНЪИ” mentioned in the Virgino Charter and in King Stefan Uroš II Milutin’s charter for the Monastery of St George Gorgos near Skopje may have had a similar character. In those texts it is distinguished from the grain tithe.

The surviving evidence does not reveal when the office was created, the precise extent of its territorial jurisdiction, or when it ceased to exist. No distinctive insignia, official seals, or coins belonging to zhitari are known. It can most securely be defined as an important provincial office within the fiscal administration of the Second Bulgarian Empire, responsible for the principal levy on grain production. Whether that levy was the tithe itself, a separate grain tax, or a combination of a tax and an administrative fee remains unresolved.