The Ayan (Arabic plural: a‘yan أَعْيَان; singular: ‘ayn عَيْن) was the class of local notables or dynasts in the 16th to the early 19th century Ottoman Empire who held varying degrees of authority in provincial towns and districts.
The a'yan included "wealthy merchants, heads of Janissary garrisons, leaders of important craft guilds, those who had bought the right to collect taxes for the government in Istanbul, and those who supervised the distributions of wealth generated by, and the maintenance of, pious endowments.
[3] Scholar Halil Inalcik describes that in the 17th and 18th centuries, "…the struggle between the provincial governors and the central administration emerge[d] as the most significant phenomenon of that period.
Author Gabriel Piterberg notes that, "…the main social characteristic of the rising ayan was that they were of reaya (Ottoman subject, non-military) origin, and that their ascendency can be seen as a part of a wider phenomenon… through which people of reaya origin had been able to join the askeri (tax-collecting, military) class of the empire since the 17th century.
They were very efficient at sending money back to the center (far more than the governors in the preceding Timar system) and their local nature gave them more knowledge of the region and a vested interest in its success.
Often in control of massive territories, the a'yan set up hierarchical structures underneath them to manage the tax farming process.
"Non-Muslims, such as Jews, Greeks, and Armenians, though prohibited from holding tax farm leases, could serve as financiers.
Though the a'yan helped the central government check the control of the governors, they quickly became their own source of headache for the Sultan.
Most rural notables originated in, and belonged to, the fellahin/peasantry class, forming a lower-echelon land-owning gentry in Palestine's post-Tanzimat countryside and emergent towns.