Peter the Great's beard tax
Want a beard? Pay up and carry a copper beard token
Back from Europe, Peter I taxed beards. Under a 1705 decree rich merchants paid 100 roubles a year, townsmen 60 or 30, and peasants a kopek every time they entered a town. Payers carried a token showing a beard and the words 'money taken'.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 17th century
Did you know
Beards in Russia stayed taxable for 74 years. Peter I introduced the levy in 1698, and it was abolished only in 1772, under Catherine II. Share →
Under Peter the Great bearded men carried a token stamped “Money received”, proof of paying the beard tax. Top merchants paid 100 rubles a year; peasants paid a kopeck each time they entered a town. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1676 Leeuwenhoek sees microbes — 22 years earlier
- 1683 Battle of Vienna — 15 years earlier
- 1687 Newton's Principia — 11 years earlier
- 1688–1689 Glorious Revolution — 10 years earlier
Middle East
- 1722 Fall of Isfahan — 24 years later
Alive at the time
- Louis XIV (aged 60)
- Isaac Newton (aged 55)
- Kangxi Emperor (aged 44)
- Peter the Great (aged 26)
- Johann Sebastian Bach (aged 13)
- Voltaire (aged 4)
- Aurangzeb (aged 80)
- Leopold I (aged 58)
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (aged 52)
- Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (aged 52)