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The research on the well-known Ottoman sources, “The Book of Travels” by Evliya Çelebi and “Stating the Essence of Laws of the Ottoman Dynasty” by Husen Hesarfen, shows that their data have not been introduced into the scientific use. However, these data are unique with regard to the political history of Circassia in the 17th century, which was a decentralized monarchy of representatives of nobility in the form of a federative princely republic. The data obtained from the Ottoman, Russian, and European sources allow to analyze the status of the representatives of the ruling princely dynasty of Inaledes in Circassia, as well as to disclose the international and legal status acquired by them in the 17th century. The paper is devoted to the analysis of the Ottoman-Circassian-Crimean relations in the light of the Ottoman doctrine that connected the confessional supremacy with the military and political one. It has been revealed that the relations in the military and political spheres played the key role in contrast to the confessional ones. This conclusion is confirmed by the facts of a fierce confrontation between the most early Islamized territories of Circassia, including Kabarda, Bzhedugia, Besleney, Hatukai, and Zhaney, and the Ottoman-Crimean coalition, despite they must have been regarded to as “countries of Islam” (dar al-islam) according to their political rhetoric. In that period, the Ottoman-Crimean coalition demanded mostly a military alliance following the adoption of the Islamic faith as their official religion, whereas the Inaledes refused to accept the fact that the religious community should grant any military, political, and economical rights to sultans and Crimean khans in Circassia. Such discrimination between the confessional and military-political factors shows that the military-political aspect played a more important role in the relations with the Circassians than the confessional one for the Ottoman-Crimean coalition in the Caucasus. This is precisely why the whole territory of Circassia in the 17th century, excluding that of the Zhaney (some of its princes had suzerain-vassal relationships, while the other ones were allies), was a “country of war” (dar al-harb).
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Прослава стогодишњице Ι устанка обележена је низом манифестација, током скоро целе 1904. године. Рад на овоме резултирао је и великом количином списа. Она је, и поред спољњег познавања догађаја из те године, остала највећим делом, сем архивистима, непозната нашој научној и широј јавности. Задатак архивисте је да своје знање о овој, као и о другој грађи пренесе и својим колегама и најширој јавности. Из улоге коју имају архиви, а то је да служе потребама друштва у целини, пре свега науци, произлази и њихов задатак да архивску грађу учине приступачном јавности и тиме омогуће научноистраживачки рад у свим доменима друштвеног живота.
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The archives of Bulgarian entrepreneurs from the National revival period contain valuable primary sources that allow us to investigate different issues. Such is the situation with the documentary collections of brothers Hristo, Nichola and Ivan Todorovi Pulievi, and their relatives Evlogi and Hristo Georgievi. One can find in those primary sources information concerning the division of the Bulgarian lands in the production of certain agricultural and craft goods; for little-known or unknown businessmen, for commercial practices, for certain events of regional and national scale. Some of the problems mentioned above have been the subject of scientific interest and research, but there are still “white fields” that deserve attention.
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Studies in the field of trade show that the main contingent of traders originated in urban communities and worked on urban and international markets. But as far as nine out of ten of the subjects of the sultan in Bulgarian lands were peasants, it is logical to assume that some of them earned their living in the field of trade. In this regard, it should be noted that the issue concerning the involvement of peasants as professional traders in the economic life of the Ottoman Empire has remained poorly investigated in the historiography on the subject. The study seeks to outline an approximate portrait of the itinerant and settled rural merchants who participated in the trade, both between a town and a village, and among different regions of the empire at the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Features of their family and property status have been reconstructed on the basis of individual case studies. Issues related to the legal regulation of their business activities are analyzed. The assortment and volumes of the goods sold by them are also investigated. The author examines the problems related to the commercial practices of association of rural traders and crediting such traders. Conclusions were drawn regarding the involvement of institutions in regulating business and relations between traders and their families, partners and creditors; the level of their literacy; the role of their journeys on the level of awareness of the communities in which they operate; the importance of their professional activity in the formation of the modern traders in the Bulgarian society from the pre-Tanzimat period. The study relies on unpublished Ottoman-Turkish documents – estate inventories of deceased merchants, litigations on associations and loans, sultan fermans, petitions and complaints, tax registrations, as well as promulgated laws, travelogues, and more.
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On the basis of Ottoman registers, unique for their information, of nine villages and one mezraa n the area of Adrianople of 1669, the authoress tries to analyse the forms and degree of utilizing and organizing farm land at the level of that of a village as a whole and of the individual household in particular; to reconstruct the picture of property differentiation between the two groups of village inhabitants – reaya and askers; to look for the links between the economic conditions and the behaviour of the peasants with respect to the land and farm production. The analysis of the data permits the following conclusions to be drawn. In the first place, in the area studied is observed a comparatively high degree of utilizing the land suitable for farming. In individual cases even the maximum of the capacity of the village lands was reached. In the second place is noticed a marked activity of the peasants in the process of obtaining land of which the village was short or additional, probably more fertile areas suitable for cultivation within the framework laid down by the law. With respect to the organization of farm production is observed as a whole the prevalence of the three-stage system of crop-rotation, but at the same time in individual reaya farms ciftlic lands, even in whole villages, the two-stage system of crop-rotation was still applied. The nomenclature of agricultural productions, outline by the inheritance of the Adrianople “askers” shows that the principal crop cultivated in the region was wheat, followed by rye, barely and millet. As additional but well-represented occupation in some villages (Mihalich, Karaagach) was viticulture and respectively win-making. Only in one of the cases (Karaagach), influenced no doubt by the proximity of the town, is observed the setting aside of plots of the village land for the growing of vegetables, fruit and for hay. Notwithstanding the suitable soil and weather conditions in the region, in the 17th c., probably due to imperial prohibition, no tobacco was grown. In the third place, the villages researched show an advanced property differentiation among the village inhabitants in the reaya category. Thais makes the authoress to assume that in the sphere of the agrarian economy existed stimuli from which benefited individual village producers, irrespective of their religious or ethnic belonging. They formed that thin layer of well-to-do peasants who could afford the accumulation and farming of land several times over the dimensions of the reaya ciftlic allowed by the law. In the next place, the sources used are yet another proof of the interest on the part of the representatives of the ruling class in investing capital in plant growing and livestock breeding farms. The data point out that the process of differentiation of plots from the village land into ciftliks was fairly advanced; in the individual villages of the region studied they came up to 53% of the cultivated area, and in some places probably more. This process plots not only from the State fund but also such as belonged to the vakifs. At the same time, however, the summed-up data on the cultivable lands in the nine villages as a total territory show that reaya ciftlics constituted 74% of it and the estates of representatives of the group of the “askers” 26% This is yet another proof that the peasant continued to be the basic producer and land owner. Precisely his economic activity was the basis of supplying farm products to the big consumers, the markets and export. Although the interference of the representatives of the ruling class in agricultural production was obvious, the principles of the agrarian system in the Empire at the foundation of which stood the reays ciftlik, were not discredited.
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Radivoj Raduković, from Cernica (near Gacko), and his servant, Obrad Dobranović, from Rudine, were arrested and brought before the Kotor court. They were accused of trying to take to Cernica one of the daughters of Radič Mladenović from the village of Strp, and hand her over to a sub-pasha Skender. On the other hand, a Jurašin Mladenović from Perast also complained about Radivoj, stating that he took part in his arrest and handing over to the aforementioned Skender. However, the investigation established, through the statements of witnesses and the accused, that Radič's daughter willingly accepted to go to the Cernica sub-pasha, so that he free her father from captivity, while Jurašin admitted that Radivoj did not take part in his arrest and handing over. Therefore, the court decided that the arrested Radivoj and Obrad be freed, after 44 days spent in the solitary confinement (between 10 July and 23 August 1477).
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On the basis of consular reports and other material from the Vienna archives the following problems are examined in the article: the internationalization of the emigre question and the position of the official Ottoman authorities on it, the process of Islamization, the internal misunderstandings, political discords, leaders’ ambitions and the appearance of hostile camps among the exiles, peculiarities of their stay in Shoumen (social status), the roads of their dispersion in and outside the Ottoman Empire and finally the relations of the Bulgarians with Hungarians and Poles after the revolutionary situation in Central and SE Europe in 1848–1849.
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Sixteenth century is the time of dramatic expansion and demographic changes for the Ottoman Empire. A certain impact on people's everyday life has the environment and more specifically environment consequences in the means of increasing population, changing patterns of production, transitions from nomadic to settled agriculture communities. The village territory and the peasants' agrarian activities are of great importance for the economic history researchers, ethnologists and scholars interested in the Ottoman Empire and more specifically in the reclamation of the agrarian space. The present paper examines the procedure on fixing the boundaries of the village territory as it was recorded in the judicial records - huccets, included in the detailed (mufassal) defter of 1570 containing information on the vakifs of Pasa sanack. The judicial records refer to the village territories of four settlements - Kul Ibrahim, Sruca Reis, Boazkesen and Hizir bey on the territory of the kaza of Stara Zagora during the 16th century. The examined copies of huccets give detailed information about the two main elements of the village territory - arable lands and pastures, but also provide data on the environment of parts of the territory of the kaza of Stara Zagora.
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This study focuses on some aspects of the ways and mechanisms for preserving the memory of traumatic events during military conflicts among the subjects of the Sultan. These aspects have to do with the functioning of the Ottoman bureaucratic, judicial and military institutions on local and central level, and communication with the local population. For this purpose, the study analyzes the case with the citizens of Silistra and their conduct, as well as that of the Ottoman authorities, during and after the war with the Holy League in 1593–1606 and the late 17th century. The analysis of the sources reveals that the process of preserving and passing on the information involved functionaries from all levels of the Ottoman hierarchy and that various bureaucratic practices were applied related to the registration and taxation of the population, and to the creation of formal and informal archival collections. There were several ways of preserving and passing on of the memory: by means of written communication among the institutions (through document flow toward the centre and back to the provinces); by oral communication between the representatives of the authorities and taxpayers in the kadı court, and discussions among the members of the community and its elders who attended the court sittings. Written evidence of the war events, or more specifically, of the feelings that overwhelmed the people and the disturbing thoughts that haunted them in those troubled times was left by a number of literate Bulgarians in marginal notes on pages of liturgical books and even on church walls. These short notes testify that the clash between the warring armies did not bring any hope to the Christians, but only fear in their souls and awareness of the trouble that had befallen them in those “severe and turbulent times”. Finally, the folklore also provides information about the war, transforming in a specific way the memory of events and people, people’s attitude towards the afflictions that befell on them. The analyzed sources show that the memory which the Bulgarians have preserved and transmitted to next generations is charged with predominantly negative assessment of the traumatic events during the war and of Michael Viteazul’s image. It seems that the scope of the devastation and the suffering caused by the Wallachian armies to the Christian population were a stronger factor in the process of constructing the collective memory of the events than the war victories of the Voivode over the Ottoman ruler in the lands south of the Danube. That is why the themes of killing, enslavement and displacement of the population as well as the motif of the unforgivable sin of Voivode Michael stand out in the Ottoman documents, in the marginal notes, and the folk songs.
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The study is an attempt to examine as comprehensively as possible the formation of the Internal Revolutionary Organization (IRO) in Bulgaria by using, comparing and analysing all sources, including those inadequately researched and new ones. It follows up and analyses the expansion of the network of committees, the setting up of the organizational structure of the IRO, the all-round introduction of clandestine rules and principles in the work of the organization, the formation of groups of outstanding committee figures, the est blishment of links between the committees, the consolidation of the organizational rules and the beginning of the formation of the ideology and the political programme of the organization. An attempt is made to solve the controversial question of the time of the creation of the leading body of the IRO. The author provides facts and arguments against the claims of some researchers that such a body was formed in 1870. The beginning of the organized revolutionary movement in Bulgaria, had, however, already been marked and the chief credit for that goes to the great organizer and revolutionary Vassil Levski.
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Representatives of the Turkish population in the town of Samokov develop a rich literary activity during the Ottoman period. Seven authors and 47 copyists create a very rich production, especially in 18th century. Ahmed el-Keshfi es-Samakova (d. 1747) is among the most prominent names from the end of 17th - first half of 18th century. He is a prolific writer, copyist, commentator of esoteric works and creator of a rich waqf library in Samokov. His production as a copyist counts 101 volumes, part of which feature collections containing two or more works. The earliest copy - Sharh Manar al-anwar li'n-Nasafi, which is a work in the field of Islamic law, has been completed in 1685. The analysis of the production of the authors and the copyists from Samokov gives us a reason to define this town as a center of literary activity of the local Muslim population.
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The study is based upon the representative ottoman historical narratives - the histories of Silahdar Mehmed Aga and Defterdar Mehmed Pasha - in search of typology of social behaviour of the Christian inhabitants of the Ottoman Balkan provinces during the war between the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire in the end of the 17th century . The Ottoman authors whose reports will be analyzed are part of the historiographic direction that presents the military and political events in the Ottoman Empire during the second half of the 17th century. At the same time the chroniclers involve information about the life in the provinces, as a reflection of the war upon the reaya, and its reactions. The purpose of this report is to present the Ottoman viewpoint in the light of Ottoman historiography, as concrete events, happened in the Ottoman rear during the successful advance of the Habsburg forces. From the presented examples, concerning in particular the reaya of Dragoman, will be outlined some conclusions, characterizing the behaviour of part of the non-Muslim population in the context of the specific political situation.
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The aim of this text is to present briefly the works of the well-known Russian historian- émigré Anthony Vassilievitch Florovsky (1884–1968) that have to do with the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878 and the first years of restored Bulgaria. These works not only enrich the historiography on different problems associated with that important period of Bulgaria’s new history, but also extend the ideas of the development and of the image of Russian émigrés’ historical thought, and also show Florovsky’s purely human, friendly feelings towards the people of Bulgaria.
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Article 27 of the Kyuchuk-Kaynardzhi Treaty provides for the exchange of ceremonial embassies to promote peace and friendship between the two empires. The residence of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople had to comply with the rules established between the Sublime Porte and the European countries most respected by it. It is no coincidence that the embassy was headed by a famous general, a participant in the war, who had signed the peace in Kyuchuk-Kaynardzha, Prince Nikolay Vasilievich Repnin. The organization of the solemn embassy of 1775-1776 provided for the observance of the established specific ceremony both during the trip and in the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The object of the proposed study is the preliminary preparation of the trip, as well as the specification of the ceremony and the rules that both parties were obliged to follow. The embassy’s journey to Constantinople in 1775 is briefly traced. The study aims to present the disputes, clarifications, decisions on important elements of the rituals and the ceremony as an expression of the relations between the two empires immediately after the peace of 1774 - relations in which the Russian side demonstrates strength, above all determination but also readiness for reasonable compromises. Some organizational decisions are also mentioned, which complement the overall picture of the movement both within the borders of the Russian Empire and within the Ottoman territories.
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The author aims to focus on the traditional customs in Macedonia regarding wedding and marriage; on the attitude of IMARO towards these institutions; the new marital “rules” imposed by the Organization and engagement norms between the partners; the techniques used by IMARO, and the goals it pursued. In the end, an attempt is made at revealing the effect of the Organization’s activity in this direction, the changes made and the results achieved. The researcher uses a variety of sources, including a large amount of memoirs, as well as program and other documents issued by IMARO.
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The article, based on documents from Bulgarian Exarchate’s archive and other sources, analyses the trends of temporary labour migration of Bulgarians from the region of Kastoria and the adjacent areas of Florina, Bitola, Prespa and Ohrid. While the traditional patterns involved destinations within the Ottoman empire or newly established states Romania, Bulgaria or Greece, at the turn of the century the flow was gradually directed also towards North America. For example, in 1911 38% of migration from Kastoria area was to the New World, 34% – to other regions of the Ottoman empire, including its capital Constantinople, and 22% – to the Kingdom of Bulgaria. The local village or micro-regional factors greatly influenced the migrants’ choice. However, the labour migration to both traditional and new destinations until the Balkan wars of 1912–1913 was temporary (up to several years), and involved only working-age men, between 50% and 80% of them in most of South West Macedonia.
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