yevmiye

Yevmiye is a Turkish term meaning daily wage or day’s pay, traditionally used to describe the compensation a worker received for one day of work. In the Ottoman period and into early modern Turkey, yevmiye referred to the standard rate of pay for casual or laboring laborers, such as agricultural workers, construction crews, porters, and municipal laborers. The amount varied by region, season, skill level, and the employer, and it was commonly recorded in contracts and wage ledgers alongside other forms of remuneration.

Etymology and usage: The word is generally understood to derive from Persian and Arabic roots related to the word for day, combined with a Turkish suffix that forms a noun indicating a type of payment or charge. In historical documents, yevmiye appears as a unit of pay distinct from monthly salaries (maash) or piecework earnings, reflecting a system in which work was organized and compensated on a day-by-day basis. Wage registers and administrative records sometimes note yevmiye rates when labor was mobilized for public works, road maintenance, or seasonal tasks.

Modern usage: In contemporary Turkish, yevmiye remains a recognized term for daily wages, though it is less common in formal compensation practices where salary or hourly rates are standard. It is often encountered in historical studies of Ottoman labor, urbanization, and economic history, where it helps illustrate how flexible labor demand and seasonal work were accommodated within wage systems of the time.

See also: Wage, Labor economics, Ottoman economy.