[1] The name is probably a loanword of Armenian origin;[2] in the Ottoman Empire, "bennâk" came to mean a landless peasant, or a man who had married but not yet established his own household.
"Bennâk" was also a term for a small area of farmland, less than half a çift.
For instance, in the provincial tax code of Hüdavendigar in 1487, a married man with his own farm might pay the full resm-i çift rate of 40 akçes; a bennâk would pay 12 akçes, and a mücerred (bachelor) would pay 6 akçes (see also resm-i mücerred).
[5] In some cases, bennâk was only paid by peasants in the Ottoman Empire who had a small but nonzero area of land to farm; the truly landless peasants would pay a caba tax[6] in which case the remaining bennak might be called "ekinlü-bennâk".
[8] There were even cases of people forging certificates of ancestry in order to claim tax exemptions.