Задължения и статут на рударите в българските земи през XV–XIX в.
Obligations and Statute of the Ore-miners in the Bulgarian Lands during the 15th – 19th centuries

Summary/Abstract: The research is made on the basis of Ottoman-Turkish sources from the oriental section of the People’s library “Sv. Sv. Cyril and Methodius” in Sofia, the History Archive of Macedonia, seated in Thessalonika, some Turkish archives in Instanbul, the collection of microfilms of the State Archive in Budapest etc., and includes the main ore-mining centres in the Central and the East part of the Balkan peninsula with an accent on the Bulgarian lands. The chronological frames coincide with the period of the Ottoman rule. The obligations of the different categories people, directly involved in the ore-mining and metallurgy and in the service sphere (madehci, küreci, kömurcü) are traced. It is found out that regardless of some local differences the statute of the directly involved in the ore-mining and metallurgy “privilidged” raja is characterized mainly with the following peculiarities: 1) because of their obligations they are free from taxes and duties, and mostly from the category of the extraordinary ones (avariz-i divaniye ve tekâlif-i örfiye) and exceptionally rare from the pay-tax djzizie (cizye); 2) some of the taxes are payed on a small scale; 3) in the first centuries they are free from blood tax (devsirme); 4) minimal payment of their labour at places; 5) they are free from obligations of other sources of economic activity, regulated analogically from the Ottoman state (for example they do not participate in the obtaining of salt, which is entrusted to the so-called solari (tuzcu)). Some violations in the statute officially provided for the. Ore-miners as compensation for their labour are also pointed out.

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