Кучево и Железник у светлу Османских дефтера
Kučevo and Železnik in the Light of the Ottoman Census Books

Summary/Abstract: The medieval region of Kučevo was mentioned in the Serbian and Hungarian historical sources from the last decades of the 12th to the 1440-ies. During the 14th and the first third of 15th century Kučevo had a market and a mine éeleznik. The first Ottoman census of the Smederevo sandjak from 1476/8, noted almost 150 settlements in the nahiye of Kučevo and thus enables precising its borders. It could be concluded that Kučevo was not situated, as it had been thought for a long time, in the poorly inhabited mountainous region of the central and upper flow of the river Pek, but between Avala, the Danube, Velika Morava, Jasenica and Kosmaj, i. e. between the regions (the lands) of Mačva and Braničevo. The last Serbian capital in the Middle Ages, Smederevo, was built at the territory of Kučevo. The western part of this region was a mining basin of Avala and Kosmaj with the mines of éeleznik and Rudiöta. Rudiöta was situated south of Avala, near todayís Ripanj, while éeleznik was in the area of the village of Stojnik at Kosmaj. In this mining basin primarily silver and lead had been exploited continuously since the ancient times, in Middle Ages and the period of the Ottoman rule up to the present day. Although in close administrative, political and church relations with Braničevo, (the land of Braničevo) during the Middle Ages, Kučevo kept its uniqueness up to the fall of Serbia in 1459, although, after the building of Smederevo, the Smederevo vlast (administrative area) was formed at this territory. In the territories of the medieval region the Ottomans had formed their nahiye of Kučevo, while western mining regions belonged to the emperors estate (has), and afterwards to the nahiye of éeleznik.

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