Which countries used the “Royal fifth” law and when?
Answer:
Both Islamic Caliphates of the Medieval period and Christian Iberian kingdoms of both the Medieval Period and later Age of Exploration used this law in order to collect an enormous amount of wealth and property for their rulers and government. The Christians used an old traditional legal system which claimed that the monarch owned all natural resources, precious items, and property within a region and for a private citizen to use these objects they would have to lease it from the ruler for a 20% tax of the total value.
In the Islamic caliphates, the caliphs used a passage from the Quran to claim that 20% of all captured goods, slaves, or property captured by an army belonged to the leaders in order to perform the will of Allah.
These two separate forms of the “Royal Fifth” made it possible for these leaders to amass enormous amounts of wealth, particularly the Spanish and Portuguese Empires upon the discovery of the Americas.