M?g?rd?ç Cezayirliyan was a sarraf who lived in Istanbul from 1805 to 1861. He became one of the most powerful merchants of the mid nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire. Although he was referred as a sarraf and as a merchant, the spheres he was involved in were more varied ranging from tax collection to the establishment of schools and theatres. By becoming involved in the collection of taxes and custom duties, he also established alliances with state officials in various provinces such as Mudanya, Bursa, Symrna, Crete and Thessalonica. This paper examines the functioning of M?g?rd?ç Cezayirliyan with a specific concentration on his intertwined relations with the state and tax farmers, as well as with other traders. Through the analysis of the activities of this powerful provincial actor such as his involvement in tax farming, custom duty collection and money lending by utilizing archival materials which have not been used in any study so far and are available in the Prime Ministry Archives in Istanbul, I aim to depict the functioning of the Ottoman tax collecting practices and socio economic changes that took place during the 19th century and highlight the regional differences in terms of the state’s relations with powerful provincial actors during the nineteenth century. Through such an analysis of specific cases in which Cezayirliyan was involved, first, I aim to show the intertwined relationships such as alliances between sarrafs, state officials and tax collectors. Then, I argue that these alliances between Cezayirliyan and state officials as well as those between him and tax collectors were not permanent. The significance of such an analysis lies on the scarcity of the studies on sarrafs and their relations with state officials and provincial actors in the Ottoman Empire. The additional significance of this study is that it gives the opportunity to make further comparisons with other powerful merchants, tax collectors or sarrafs for further research.