Les paysans et la pauvreté dans le kaza d’Edirne durant le XVIIe et les premières décennies du XVIIIe siècle
The Peasants and Poverty in the Kaza of Edirne in the 17th – First Decades of the 18th Century

Summary/Abstract: The study aims to add touches to the study of one of the problems of the 17th – first decades of the 18th century – the intensified processes of impoverishment among the rural population. The main documents attempting to determine the poverty parameters of villages and their inhabitants in the territory of kaza of Edirne are two avarız defters, compiled in 1676 and 1685/1686, as well as numerous sultan orders, petitions and complaints of the population, kadı huccets, marginal notes in liturgical literature, etc. The study analyzes the main causes and mechanisms of rural impoverishment. The quantitative parameters of poverty among taxpayers at the level of the kaza as a whole and on level of the individual nahiye are reconstructed. The study seeks to answer the following questions:Was there a connection between the religious characteristics of the population and its property status, and between the geographical location of the village in particular and the nahiye as a whole?What was the ratio between poor villages and taxpayers and those who managed to cope with their tax obligations; in other words, between those who produced a scarce agricultural product and those who produced in sufficient quantity or with a surplus?The article examines the behavior of peasants in the context of increasing taxation and increasing poverty.

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