Фалшификат ли е летописният разказ на поп Методи Драганов?
Is Priest Methodi Draginov’s Annalistic Narrative a Forgery

Summary/Abstract: In the article are adduced numerous pieces of information which refute the three arguments put forward in support of the view that Priest Methodi Draginov’s annalistic narrative on the conversion to Islam of part of the Bulgarians in the Valley of Chepino in the 17th c. was a late forged document of the 19th c. (1) It has been established on the basis of monastery bead-rolls, marginal notes and lists of Bulgarians of 1626, 1637 and 1644–1650 that in the 17th hundreds of Priest Methodi Draginov’s contemporaries called and signed themselves like him with a patronymic with the ending “-ov” and this, consequently, could not bring in question the possibility for the chronicle to date precisely from the 17th c. (2) Information is also cited from Ottoman Turkish sources about the presence of voynuksin vakif vilages, including also precisely in the area of the Valley of Chepino. (3) Concrete information is also provided from the “Book of Complaints” feikayet defteri) of 1675 about a sharp confrontation between the Metropoliten Bishop of Plovdiv Gavrail who for a long time had been heavily in debt and this flock owing to their refusal to pay the church taxes frequently raised by him.

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