Pronoia

Pronoia, Greek for "care" or "forethought", was a grant of state revenue in the late Byzantine Empire, from the 11th century to the 15th. It transferred imperial fiscal rights, chiefly the taxes of cultivated land, usually for the holder's lifetime; the emperor could revoke it at will. Manuel I Komnenos gave pronoiai to aristocratic officers instead of a salary, and Michael VIII Palaiologos, who recovered Constantinople in 1261, let them be inherited. It carried no specific military obligation, unlike a western fief, and the Ottomans borrowed it for their own timar system.