Village, Town and People in the Ottoman Balkans, 16th-mid-19th Century 9781463225537

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Village, Town and People in the Ottoman Balkans, 16th-mid-19th Century

Analecta Isisiana: Ottoman and Turkish Studies

108

A co-publication with The Isis Press, Istanbul, the series consists of collections of thematic essays focused on specific themes of Ottoman and Turkish studies are brought together in Analecta Isisiana. These scholarly volumes address important issues throughout Turkish history, offering in a single volume the accumulated insights of a single author over a career of research on the subject.

Village, Town and People in the Ottoman Balkans, 16th-mid-19th Century

Stefka Parveva

1 The Isis Press, Istanbul

preSS 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by The Isis Press, Istanbul Originally published in 2009 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of The Isis Press, Istanbul. 2010

o

ISBN 978-1-61719-098-8

Printed in the United States of America

Stefka Parveva is a graduate of the History Department of Veliko Târnovo University. Her doctoral thesis at the Institute of History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia dealt with The Bulgarian Population from the End of the 17th to the Middle of the 18th century - Demographic and Socio-Economic Aspects. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of History in Sofia and has also lectured in several Bulgarian universities. Her research interests are in the field of the agrarian land and its people, the town and its population, military structures, religious institutions and interactions between different ethno-confessional communities in the Ottoman Balkans in the pre-Tanzimat period.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

7

I. The Land and the People: 1. "Rural Agrarian and Social Structure in the Edirne Region during the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century", Études balkaniques, 3, 2000, 55-90 2. "Agrarian Land and Harvest in South-west Peloponnese in the Early Eighteenth Century", Études balkaniques, 1,2003,83-123. .. 3. "Rural Markets and Fairs: the Village of Sliven in the Sixteenth Century", Études balkaniques, 1,2008, 117-136 4. "Some Strokes from the History of the Sliven Trade Fair during the First Half of the Eighteenth Century", in Ethnic and Cultural Spaces in the Balkans. Contribution in Honour of Prof . DSC Tsvetana Georgieva. Part 1 Historical Outlines, Sofia, 2008, 401-409 (translated here from Bulgarian)

11 61 Ill

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II. Intercultural Contacts and Interactions 5. "Urban Representatives of the Ulema in Bulgarian Lands in the Seventeenth Century", Islamic Studies, 38:1, 1999, 3-43 6. "Intercultural Contact and Interaction in the Ottoman Period: the Zaviye Kavak Baba and the Church of the Holy Forty Martyrs in the Real and Imaginary World of Christians and Moslems in the Town of Veliko Tàrnovo", Bulgarian Historical Review, 1-2, 2002, 13-54 7. "Human Mobility and Transmission of Information in the Ottoman Empire from the Seventeenth to the Early Nineteenth Century", in The Influence of Human Mobility in Muslim Societies, Kuroki Hidemitsu (ed.), Kegan Paul: London-New YorkBahrain, 2003,101-116

139

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INTRODUCTION

The articles included in this volume present the results of my work on two distinct projects. The first one concerns the organisation of the agrarian land and economy in the Central and the Southern Balkans during the 16th and early 18th century. The second project focuses on the interactions between the Christian and Muslim communities in the Balkans under the Ottomans. The 17th and early 18th centuries were a time of crisis and transition in the history of the Ottoman Empire. The institutional changes that took place during this period affected the rural life and agrarian sector of the imperial economy as well. Due to the limited historical sources at our disposal we do not yet have a full picture of the internal dynamics of the agrarian changes that occurred in the Balkans during that period. The first two articles in this volume bring new evidence and outline some significant characteristics of the agrarian regime and the reality of rural and urban life. The articles are based on important documents from the collections in the Ottoman Archives in Sofia and Istanbul representing land surveys (defters) of villages from the Edirne region, compiled in 1080 AH (1.06.1669-20.05.1670) and a mufassal tahrir defter of the kazas of Arcadia and Anavarin (New and Old Anavarin) made after the reconquest of the Peloponnese by the Ottomans and dated 20 Muharrem 1128/15 January 1716. The information included in these documents is different from the standard content of tapu tahrir defters, as compiled until the end of the 16 th century. The analysis of these atypical sources clarifies certain aspects of the agrarian and social life in the Balkans during the 17 th and the beginning of the 18 th century that have generally remained understudied. I made an attempt to reconstruct the rural and the urban agrarian landscape and the patterns for land use. I also tracked the economic behaviour of peasants and townsmen in the process of reclamation and organisation of the land belonging to the village and the town territory. Furthermore, the unique information regarding family landholdings, yield ratio of cultivated products and productive capacity of the raiyet giftlik enabled me to reconstruct the quantitative components of the system, i.e. harvest consumption - taxation - remaining surplus per household and to seek answers to questions like to what extent the agricultural production was sufficient to support the family and create a marketable surplus; did the agrarian system offer stimuli to the producer and where could we draw the limits of the poverty and wealth at that period.

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These two articles summarise my early conclusions on the subject. 1 The final results of the analysis of the above-mentioned documents and of the subsequently discovered new Ottoman sources will be published in a forthcoming monograph which deals with aspects of the agrarian and social history of the Central and Southern Balkans in 17th - early 18th century. This part of the present volume also includes two articles that trace the economic development of the village of Sliven during the 16th century, a period preceding its transformation into a town and centre of a kaza as well as certain aspects of the functioning of the Sliven trade fair in the first half of the 18 th century. I believe that the case of Sliven merits special attention as an example of the interrelation between commercialization of the local economy and the process of urbanization in the Balkans during the 16 th -17 th centuries. The second part of this collection brings together articles that discuss the interactions between the different ethno-confessional communities in the Balkans. Following the conquest of the Bulgarian kingdom by the Ottomans in the end of the 14th century new institutions, values and societal relations were established. The new reality was characterised by the encounter and coexistence of the Christian and Muslim religious and cultural complexes. Within the heterogeneous ethno-religious society, the two complexes did not exist in isolation, but inevitably came into contact and exerted mutual influences on one another. Their encounter gave rise to a variety of interactions ranging from conflict and negation, to creation of new syncretic forms, assimilation, etc. Certain aspects of these interactions are reflected in the history of two significant places of worship, the royal church of the Holy Forty Martyrs and the zaviye Kavak Baba, both located in the medieval Bulgarian capital of Tarnovo and in the functioning of the Muslim religious institution in several towns in the Bulgarian lands, which held different positions in the imperial military-administrative structure. The abovementioned issues are the foci of two of the articles. The third one traces the various forms and channels for transmission of information, knowledge and ideas during pilgrimage and commercial activities. The common goal of these three studies is to shed light on the mechanisms for the construction of stereotypes in the attitudes towards the "other" in the real and imaginary world of the multiethnic and multi-religious Balkan society.

1 The original text of the articles has undergone minor changes. I have added some clarifications and a small number of additional notes as a result of information from primary sources and research which have come to my attention since the articles were first published. In the text all new additions appear in square brackets.

INTRODUCTION

9

I would like to thank several institutions, the European University Institute in Florence, the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies, at Newnham College, Cambridge, the Andrew F. Mellon Fund and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Laboratoire de Démographie Historique at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, the Research Support Scheme of the Open Society Institute, Prague, the International Society for EighteenthCentury Studies and the Rikkyo University, Tokyo for awarding me research grants that allowed me to pursue my studies and to work at the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul and at academic libraries in several countries. I am grateful to all colleagues and friends that contributed to and enriched my work with most valuable scientific information, advice and support. I also wish to thank the staff of the Oriental Department at the National Library in Sofia and of the Bagbakanlik Osmanli Ar§ivi in Istanbul for their kind assistance.

1. RURAL AGRARIAN AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN THE EDIRNE REGION DURING THE SECOND HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Due to the scarcity of relevant source material the problems of the degree and methods of reclamation of the agrarian space in the Ottoman Empire, the forms of its organisation and functioning as well as the quantitative characteristics of the land possessions of peasants in the seventeenth century have remained insufficiently clarified. The tapu tahrir defter*, of the population and revenues in villages and towns compiled by the beginning of the seventeenth century have to a large extent determined the research interest in the study of the processes and tendencies in the development of the agrarian sector typical of the "classical period" in the history of the empire. The changes taking place in various structural elements and functional mechanisms in the Ottoman economy in the seventeenth century led up to the introduction of a new type of registration - the avariz defters, which, despite their advantages do not offer adequate information for the study of rural economy. Yet, research about various parts of the empire has been undertaken on the basis of kadi sicilh, financial accounts of large vakif foundations and various types of registrations (cizye, avariz). In them, a number of hypotheses have been launched about the changes in the economic situation and about the formation of new structures, phenomena and processes, characteristic of the rather unstudied and unknown seventeenth century1.

Inalcik, H., "Military and fiscal transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1700", in: idem, Studies in Ottoman Social and Economic History, Variorum Reprints, London, 1985, pp. 284337; idem, "The emergence of big farms, giftliks: state, landlords and tenants", in: Contributions á l'histoire éconoinique et sociale de ¡'Empire Ottoman, Collection Turcica, III. Louvain, 1984, pp. 105-126; McGowan, B., Economic Life in Ottoman Europe. Taxation, Trade and the Struggle for Land 1600-1800, Cambridge, 1981; idem, "The Study of land and agriculture in the Ottoman provinces within the context of an expanding world economy in the 17th and 18th centuries", International Journal of Turkish Studies, 2, 1981, No. 1, pp. 57-63; Faroqhi, S. "A great foundation in difficulties: or some evidence on economic contraction in the Ottoman Empire of the mid-Seventeenth century", in: idem, Making a Living in the Ottoman Lands 1480 to 1820, Istanbul,1995, pp. 275-291; idem, "Agricultural crisis and the art of flute-playing: the worldly affairs of the Mevlevi dervishes (1595-1652)", ibidem, pp. 249-273; New Approaches to State and Peasant in Ottoman History, Berktay, H. and S. Faroqhi (eds), Frank Cass, 1992; Dimitrov, S. "Kám istoriyata na chiflikchiystvoto v Rusensko [Contribution to the history of the giftliks in the Region of Russe], Istoricheski pregled, 1958, No 4, pp. 84-98; idem. "Za agrarnite otnosheniya v Bálgaria prez XVIII v." [About the Agrarian Relations in Bulgaria during the 18th Century], in Paisiy Hilendarski i negovata epoha (1762-1962) [Paisiy Hilendarski and his Time, 1762-1962], Sofia, 1962, pp. 129-165; Gandev, H„ "Zarazhdane na kapitalisticheski otnosheniya v chiflishkoto stopanstvo na Severozapadna Bálgariya prez XVIII v." [The emergence of capitalist relations in the giftlik economy in Northwestern Bulgaria in the 18,h century], in: idem, Problemi na Bálgarskoto Vázrazhdane [Problems of the Bulgarian Revival], Sofia, 1976, pp. 271-394; Grozdanova, E., Balgarskata selska obshtina prez XV-XVIH v. [Bulgarian Rural Municipality in the 15 th -18 th centuries], Sofia, 1979; Mutafchieva, V., Osmanska sotsialno-ikonomicheska istoriya [Ottoman Socio-Economic History], Sofia, 1993, pp. 399-435; Radushev, E., Agrarnite institutsii v Osmanskata imperiya prez XVII-XVIII vek [The Agrarian Institutions in the Ottoman Empire, 17th- 18th Centuries], Sofia, 1995 et al.

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The registers of nine villages and a mezraa1,

situated not far from

Edirne, preserved in the Oriental Department at the Sts. Cyril and Methodius National Library and containing unique information, allow, though on a limited regional level, to shed light on a number of issues related to the agrarian economy in the seventeenth century. The

sources

The uniqueness of the registers consists in the fact that they present an exception to the usual model of population registration undertaken by the Ottoman administration which contained lists of the inhabitants together with the total amounts of their tax liabilities. In this case, the clerks have omitted the information about various tax revenues. Instead, they recorded the types of land within the boundaries of the village territory — fields, meadows, vineyards, forests, the common pasture, etc. The landed possession of each peasant is registered under the rubric zemin-i... (the land of...), followed by the sizes of the fields under crop and the fallow land, vineyards, gardens, meadows. The inventories of the villages Biiyiik Ismai^a 2 , Sokiin 3 , Omurca 4 , Mihali9 5 , Haskoy 6 , Yuriicekler, Pavlikan 7 , and the mezraa Demirta§ were drawn up in 1080 (1.06.1669-20.0 5.1670) 8 . Those of the villages of Kafir Haci 9 and Kara 1 Oriental Department at the Sts. Cyril and Methodius National Library (hereafter NLCM, Or. Dept.), Fond (F.) 1, archival unit (a. u.) 15114 (for the villages of Biiyiik Ismail?a, Sokiin, Omurca, Mihalif, Tekur (Tekfur) Dere otherwise called Pavlikan, Yuriicekler, Haskoy, the mezraa Demirtaf). The document consists of ten pages without the beginning or the end, paper size 23 N° 33 cm. F. 89, a.u. 33 (the village of Kara Agaf) consists of four pages, paper size 43 N° 31 cm. F. 79, a.u. 1393 (the village of Kafir Haci) consists of two pages, paper size 30.5 N° 41 cm. All three are in good condition. The page numbers are not original: they were inserted when the documents were processed and classified in the archives. The text in each register was written by one hand, in black ink, in the siyakat and ince divani scripts. The registers for the villages Kafir Haci and Kara Aga? were used by Strashimir Dimitrov in his study "Za agrarnite otnosheniya...," pp. 133-136, 156-157. I would like to thank Stefan Andreev for consulting me during the deciphering and translation of the documents. 2 Today on the territory of the Republic of Turkey. 3 Today on the territory of the Republic of Turkey. 4 Unidentified. The boundary markings in the simrname of the village lead us to the conclusion that it was located in the close vicinity and to the south of the village of Biiyiik Ismailija. 5 Today, the village of Mihali§, in the area of Svilengrad (Bulgaria). ^ Today, the village of Sladun in the area of Svilengrad. 7 The villages of Pavlikan and Yiirticekler are unidentified but their simrnames bear witness to the fact that they were located in the close vicinity of the villages of Mihali9 and Sokiin. 8 The year of registration is indicated in two marginal notes on the pages on which the villages of Omurca and Mihali9 were registered having the following text:"According to information (ahbar) of the populace (ahali) of the said village it was sold (fiiruht) in the year 1080 for 7,000 akge"-, "According to statement (takrir) of the reaya the village was sold in the year 1080 for 18,000 akge". In addition, when a recapitulation was made of the lands of Haskoy a note was added, saying that the winter pasture (kqlak) included in its territory was "sold in the year 1080 for 2,000 akge". NLCM, Or. Dept., F, 1. a.u. 15 114, p. 3 , 5 , 4 . 9 Today, the village of Blaguntsi, in the area of Svilengrad. Unlike the above-mentioned villages, in this case the clerk has registered the individual dimensions of the fields of each peasant comprising the group of the sown and the fallow land.

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Agai; 1 are not dated. The water mark on the paper 2 , the similarities in the structure of the text as well as the fact that we find perakende possessions of peasants registered in the inventories of Haskoy and Biiyiik Ismailga on the territory of the village of Kafir Haci, and of peasants from Kafir Haci on the territory of Haskoy lead us to the conclusion that they were compiled at relatively the same time as that of the above-mentioned villages. The village of Kara Aga§ belonged to the nahiye of Ada 3 , while the rest — to the nahiye of tiskiidar 4 , both in the kaza of Edirne. [At a later stage in my research on this topic I found in the Oriental Department at the Sts. Cyril and Methodius National Library new defters for 12 additional villages and a mezraa situated in the territory of the aforementioned nahiyes of tiskiidar and Ada. The information in these defters complements the data presented here without altering the main conclusions of the present study. I have analysed these new sources in my monograph The Land and the People in the Central and Southern Balkans in the 17th- beginning of the 18th century (forthcoming)].

Status The villages fall under three categories. One of them - Mihalig, is registered as a kilig timar5. Another five — Haskoy, Biiyiik Ismail^a, Sokun, together with the mezraa of Karaca Siileymanlar, Pavlikan (with another name Tekfur Dere) and Yiiriicekler, belonged to the vakifoi Sultan Bayezid II in Edirne6.

* Today part of the town of Edirne. In this village the clerk has registered the fields (with their individual dimensions) under one entry (tarla) without dividing them into sown and fallow. 2 The paper of document F. 79, a.u. 1393 (the village of Kafir Haci) has a watermark three crescents with dimensions 38X8/70 mm and a countermark, the letters A(?)G with trefoil. Paper with a three crescent watermark of similar dimensions was used in a document of 1670 (No. 267 in the watermark album - three crescents). The paper of document F. 89, a.u. 33 (the village of Kara Aga§) has a watermark of three crescents (34X8/70) with a countermark of letters A(?)G with trefoil. Documents written on paper with similar dimensions of the watermark bear dates 1661 and 1670 (Nos 206, 267). These facts allow for the assumption that the two undated registers were compiled at the same time as the rest. See: Velkov, A. S. Andreev. Vodnite znatsi v osmanoturskite dokumenti, [Watermarks on the Ottoman Turkish Dokuments], vol. \,TriLuni IThree moons], Sofia, 1983,p.49,52. 'a A nahiye located to the southwest of Edirne, between the rivers Arda and Maritsa. 4 A nahiye located to the northwest of Edirne centered in tiskiidar, today the village of Shtit, the district of Haskovo (Bulgaria). A timar unit. See Akgiindiiz. A., Osmanli Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, 1 Kitab, Osmanh Hukukuna Girig ve Fatih Devri Kanunnameleri, Istanbul, 1990, p. 144; Inalcik, H., "The Ottoman state: economy and society, 1300-1600", in: An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914, Inalcik, H. and D. Quataert (eds), Cambridge, 1994, p. 114. 6 For more details about it see Gokbilgin, M. T„ XV-XVI. Asirlarda Edirne ve Pa§a Livasi. Vakiflar-mulkler-mukataalar. Istanbul, 1952, pp. 363-365.

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The third category of villages were those belonging to vakifs of private or legendary persons: the village of Omurca - a vakif of the imaret and han of Hiisrev Kethiida in Ipsala; the village of Kafir Haci - from the vakif of Eyyub-u Ansari 1 ; the village of Kara Aga? - from the vakif of Gazi Murad Pa§a2; the mezraa of Demirta§ belonging (tabi) to the village of Etmek§i3 from the vakif of the tekke of Haydar Baba. All the villages were included in the iltizam system, their revenues forming mukataas which were farmed out (see Table 1). Table 1 Range and value of the mukataas, comprising the studied villages Mukataa range Biiyiik Ismail§a*, Pavlikan, Sokttn, Haskoy, Ytiriicekler Mihali? Omurca Mezraa Demirta§ belonging to the village of Etmckgi Kara Agag Kafir Haci

Mukataa value (in akfe) 220,000 18,000 7,000 sold together with Etmek§i (the sum is not indicated) 15,000 200 guru$

* The mukataa called Ismail9a might have included other villages, not featured in the preserved part of the registers.

[It is logical to raise the question what made Ottoman authorities undertake such a type of registration for the villages in question. An event that was important for the Empire can suggest us where the answer lies - the fall of Kandiye in September 1669 and the final conquest of the island of Crete by the Ottomans. What followed were actions that were usual in such circumstances. In order to organize the newly conquered territory the authorities promulgated a low code (kanunname) and compiled a survey (tapu tahrir defter) of the population with its tax obligations. In October 1669 the Ottomans issued a kanunname which was rather different from the legislative 1 Ibidem, pp. 315-316; Izvori za balgarskata istoriya (hereafter 1111) [Sources on Bulgarian History], vol. 16,Tsvetkova, B. and A. Razboynikov (eds), Sofia 1971, pp. 207-231. 2 Gokbilgin, M. T. Op. cit., pp. 335-337. 3 Today the village of Etmek9i is on the territory of the Republic of Turkey, The mezraa of Demirta§ which formed a mukataa with the village was located to the north of its territory, and it is stated in its sinirname that the mezraa was in the immediate vicinity of the territory of the village of Omurca.

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texts in the other provinces. The main idea in it was to apply the principles of the Muslim tradition and the §eriat to provide for the regime of landholding and taxation. According to these, the land was considered "haraci" and remained the freehold property of its previous owners. This also meant that it could be bought, sold and divided upon inheritance. The texts of the law provided that only those taxes that were in accordance with the §eriat would be collected from the conquered population. As a result, a number of noncanonical taxes were not introduced. 1 As a second step the authorities undertook a land survey. Several defter have been preserved from this campaign - one compiled in the period 1669/70 (1080) - 1673/74 (1084) and another two, compiled in 1705/6 (1117). 2 The new records did not resemble the mufassal defter ones compiled until the 16 th century in any way. They featured records of only those peasants who possessed land. It was recorded for each farmer separately, with notes about the type (field, vineyard, garden et cetera) and the respective area. 3 At the end of the village list there was a record of the village's total of landholdings, as well as the taxes due by the peasants in cash and in kind. Additions were also made of the area of abandoned, "empty land without an owner" 4 . As the kanunnáme of Crete provided, the lands were measured with the Arab unit of measurement - cerib.5 The reasons for the policy of different legislation applied by the Ottomans in respect to the island and the land survey are still in the realm of hypotheses. It is assumed that this new type of registration on principle reflected the problems encountered by the Ottoman administration in the 17 th century in the search of new institutional forms and mechanisms in the sphere of taxation. 6 Along with this, the application of different rules for compiling the registers probably also pursued the objective of assessing the potential

Green, M., "An Islamic experiment? Ottoman land policy on Crete", Mediterranean Historical Review, Vol. 11, N° 1, June 1996, pp. 60-68; idem, A Shared World. Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean, Princeton, New Jersey, 2000, pp. 18-29. 2 Green, M. A Shared World, p. 23, footnote 38. Regrettably, we did not have the opportunity to work with these defters in the Turkish archives, so that we can judge about their contents and structure only by the information gauged by bibliographical means. 4 T h e same or similar terms and structures one encounters in the Edirne village registers are used: arz-i hali I arz-i hali bila sahibi. Green, M. "An Islamic experiment", p. 71, N° 39; idem, A Shared World, p. 48, N° 9. About the Edirne villages see footnote 48. -'Green, M., "An Islamic experiment", pp. 68-77; idem, A Shared World, pp. 23-25. ^Concerned by the problem created by the increasing amounts of abandoned arable land and the population leaving its villages, the authorities faced the need to gradually relinquish the gifthane system as a basis for taxation. They tried to substitute it for the maktu system - determining a lump sum due by the peasant community or the urban residential quarter to the fiscal agents, local administrative officials or multezim, as well as to introduce new practices for the collection of revenue, also applied in other provinces. Green, M., "An Islamic experiment", pp. 68-78; idem, A Shared World, pp. 22-39.

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revenue from the newly conquered territories. It is also pointed out that it is possible for the Ottomans to have borrowed the experience in this sphere from their predecessors, the Venetians.1 It seems by all indications that the manner of compiling the registers of the Edirne villages was influenced by the Cretan campaign. One finds similarity in the structure of the defter, the way in which the information is organized, and the unit of measurement used - cerib. This could possibly have been part of a new experiment, implemented by the Ottoman administration at a time of institutional quests and changes. Although the lands of the Balkans were subject to the miri land regime, what the villages from Crete and those around Edirne shared was that they were included in the iltizam system and their revenues formed separate mukataa? This type of description of the land fund at the disposal of the village residents could probably have given a clearer idea about the potential revenue from their agrarian activity and, respectively, about determining the value of the mukataa. The fact that defters for only the Edirne villages have been discovered to date indicates that these registrations were an isolated phenomenon which did not become a practice for the Ottoman administration on the territory of the Rumeli.]

Location As we have already mentioned, administratively the villages belonged to the nahiyes of Ada and Uskiidar, both in the kaza of Edirne. The village of Kara Aga? was in the close vicinity of Edirne, while the rest were located on the southern slopes of the Sakar Mountain and in the valley of the Tundzha. The better part of the Sakar falls within an altitude range of 200 to 400 metres, followed by the range of 400 to 600 metres, with only seven hectares above 800 metres. The relief with an altitude range between 200 and 600 metres, defined as flat and hilly, is considered favourable for land cultivation as 1 Green, M., "An Islamic experiment", pp. 68-78; idem, A Shared World, pp. 22-39. Similar registrations for Cycladic islands see in Balta, E., "Le rôle de l'institution communautaire dans la répartition verticale de Pempôt: l'exemple de Santorin au XVIIe siècle" in: idem, Problèmes et approches de l'histoire ottomane. Un itinéraire scientifique de Kayseri à Egriboz, Istanbul, 1997, pp. 97-114; Kiel, M., " The smaller Aegean Islands in the 16 th -18 th centuries according to Ottoman administrative documents", in Between Venice and Istanbul: Colonial Landscapes in Early Modern Greece, S. Davies and J. L. Davis (eds), The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2007, pp. 35-54; Slot, B. Archipelagus turbatus: Les Cyclades entre colonization latine et occupation Ottomane c. 1500-1718, vol. 1, Istanbul, 1982. 2

In 1080 (AH) a defter of the "sold" mukataa ("furuht-i mukata'a defteri 1080...) on the island was compiled. Green, M., A Shared World, p. 36, footnote 81. We are quoting this fact as the same year of "selling" them for tax farming is indicated in the defter of some of the Edirne villages. See footnote 9.

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is that in the region of the Tundzha. In terms of soil, the Sakar Mountain is located in the region of maroon forestal soils which, along with the climatic peculiarities of the continental Mediterranean climate characteristic of the territories under review, provided good or very good conditions for the production of grain and particularly for the cultivation of tobacco and vines, as well as for cattle-breeding 1 .

Demographic

characteristics

The number of inhabitants of the villages indicates their small to average size. The fact that strangers (yabanci) were registered in Omurca, Pavlikân, Yùriicekler and Kâfir Haci is a proof that peasants migrated to them. The majority of land possessors were entered by their names alone and, as it might be expected, those were peasants with the status ofreaya. Besides cultivation of land, a small portion of the Christians also practiced some craft (miller, charcoal burner, butcher, makramaci, cooper). Besides the reaya peasants, people from the askerî2 group were also registered in the villages and, judging by their titles and ranks (bey aga, çavu§, be§e), they were predominantly representatives of the janissary corps. As to the religious characteristics of the peasants, it should be noted that those were uniformly Muslim (Biiyiik Ismailça, Omurca, Sôkiin) or Christian villages with single cases of inhabitants of another faith. It is much more difficult to determine with precision the ethnic picture in the Christian villages. In the cases where peasants with Slavonic names prevailed (as in Pavlikân, Yiirucekler and Haskôy) there is no doubt that those were Bulgarian villages. In the remaining villages, most of the inhabitants bore names from the Orthodox feast calendar (frequently in abbreviated forms like Yano, Kosta, Miho or Dimo). It is quite probable that those were Bulgarian villages too, where the nominal tradition was influenced by local cults. There are much better reasons to assume that the Greek population was prevalent in the villages of Kara Agaç and Kâfir Haci, where the majority of the names were ones like Douka, Yorgo, Kiriyaki, Andros, Senadino, Sidero or Yanaki, Slavonic names being much fewer while, for one of the inhabitants of Kâfir

1 Geografiya na Bâlgariya [Geography of Bulgaria], vol. 1, Sofia, 1982, p. 155,161, 246, 382, 403,408; Karayovov, T., "Materiali za izuchavaneto na Odrinskiya vilaet" [Documents for the' study of the Edirne vilayet], Sbornik za narodni umotvoreniya, nauka i knizhnina, 1903, No 1 (19), p. 3.

2

The corporate group of the askerî incorporated the military, representatives of the administration and the ulema.

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Haci, Chakar, in a special note he was described as the son of a Bulgarian, probably to distinguish him from his Greek fellow-villagers. Thus, the abundant information contained in the source also outlines the concrete objectives of this study, i.e.: •

• •

to analyse the forms and degree of farmland reclamation and organisation on the level of the village territory in general and the individual household in particular; to reconstruct a picture of property differentiation between the two groups of village inhabitants, reaya and askerv, to reveal the connections between the economic state of affairs and the behaviour of the peasants in relation of the land and agricultural production.

Square measure One of the first problems which our source raises is connected with the unit of measure used in measuring and registering the fields and vineyards of the villagers, as well as the remaining types of village land. The dönürn was the basic unit of square measure used in the Ottoman Empire 1 , but the land of the villages in our registers was measured by another unit, the certb. This latter was of Arabic origin 2 and was applied in the empire, the Balkans included, as an exception rather than as a rule. One encounters it in some of the 15th century vakifname^, in 15th-16th century tapu tahrir deflers in connection with the tax on vineyards 4 , as well as in 17th-18th century kanunnäme5. It was also used in the registration of voynuk land, particularly

1

Tiirkiye diyanet vakfi Islam Ansiklopedisi, Cilt 9. Istanbul, 1994, p. 521. Ibidem, Cilt 7, Istanbul, 1993, p. 402. 3 See for example the Karlovo vakifname of 1496 where the cerib is mentioned in connection with the measurement of vineyards. N° IBI, vol. 13, Todorov, N. and B. Nedkov (eds), Sofia, 1966,p.493. 2

4

For more details see Beldiceanu, N., "Structures socio-économiques d'un village de Macédoine: Aksilopigali/Sarmisaklu (1464/65)", Byzantion 54/1, 1984, pp. 42-45; Balta, E., L'Eubée à la fin du XVe siècle. Économie et Population. Les registres de l'année 1474, Athènes, 1989,p.21. 5 Barkan, Ó., XV ve XVI 'nei asirlarda Osmanli imparatorlugunda ziraî ekonominin hukuki ve mali esaslan, Cilt I, Kanunlar, Istanbul, 1943, pp. 332-335,346-348, 350-353, (hereafter quoted as "Kanunlar").

RURAL AGRARIAN AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE

19

in the 18th century 1 . The great variety of versions 2 depending on the region and the time of application hardly allows one to determine precisely the size of the cerib compared to the modem metric system. At the same time, it is extremely important in this case to establish the ratio between the cerib and the measure used in the major Ottoman kanuns and in everyday practice, i.e. the dontim. This will allow us to undertake the analysis of problems connected with the behavioural models of the peasants in the process of land acquisition, the stimuli which existed in the rural economy, and the proprietary characteristics of the reaya and the people from the askert group. A 16th-century fetvas of §eyhtilislam Ebussu'ud provides the most detailed information on the identification of the said units of measure. The fetva was issued on the occasion of transgressions connected with the collection of tithe (o§iir) and other taxes. It is one of the types of fetva?. rich in arguments supporting the seyhiilisldm's response based on the texts of Arab legal experts, the Ottoman laws and practice. It is in this part that one finds a definition of the certb and the means of measuring it, as well as exceedingly important information regarding the ratio between the two square measures. The §eyhiilisldm presents the cerib (cerib 4 §er'i) as a square unit of measure 60 zira long and 60 zira wide (zira-i misaha or zira-i kirbas ve kuma§), equal to an area of 3,600 zira. After describing the requirements for the correct measurement of the cerib, Ebussu'ud then went on to compare the measure of the cerib with the one most frequently used in the empire, the dontim. This was done in view of the correct levying of the harac-i §er'i tax on vineyards (bag) and gardens (bagge) in the vakifs of the imaret (imdret-i Amire) of Sultan Bayezid II in the nahiyes of Istanbul. In this case, he equalled the cerib of the above-mentioned dimensions to the donum with a side of 35 zira and an area of 1,225 zira, outlining the considerable difference of nearly one-third between the two units of measure. It was this difference that had to be taken into account when the tax was levied which was why he

1 Bagbakanhk Osmanli Ar§ivi (hereafter BOA), Istanbul, Tapu Defter No. 925; "Survey (idefter) of the voynuks from the region of Plovdiv and Pazardzhik from 1693", in: Nedkov, B., Osmanoturska diplomatika i paleografiya [Ottoman Diplomatics and Palaeography], vol. 2, Sofia, 1972, pp. 198-200; Ercan, Y., Osmanli imparatorlugunda Bulgar ve Voynuklar, Ankara, 1986, pp. 94-95,112-114. 1 See Hinz, W., Islamische Masse und Gewichte Umgerechnet Ins Metrische System, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955. We used the Russian translation of his book: Hinz, W., Musul'manskie mery i vesa s perevodom v metricheskuyu sistemu, Transl. by Y. Bregel, Moscow, 1970, pp. 73-74; Davidovich, E., Materialy po metrologii Srednevekovoy Sredney Azii [Documents on the Metrology of Medieval Central Asia], Moscow, 1970, p. 122,125-130.

20

VILLAGE,

TOWN

AND

PEOPLE

decreed 15 akge hardc-i §er'i tax per one doniim and not the 42 akge due per one cerib of vineyard1. The text of thefetva outlines a ratio of 1:2.9 between the cerib and the doniim 2. One finds the same text of the fetva which determined the ratio between the cerib and the doniim in an order (htikiim) of 1544 to the kadi of Kirk Kilise (today Kirklareli), pertaining to the taxation of the vineyards of non-Muslims from the vakif of the sultan in the nahiyes of Istanbul3. A variant of the ratio between the two units of square measure is provided for in another legal text which says that it was an old law (kanun-i kadimdir) that the cerib (cerib-i §er'i) for the measurement of land was 60 lira long and 60 zira wide, which made an area of 3,600 zira. In this text the cerib is compared to a doniim with a length and width of 45 zira, or an area of 2,025 zira4. In this case the ratio between the two units of measure is 1:1.8. Information from 17th and 18th century sources shows no change in the ways of measuring the cerib5. As to the measurements of the doniim, scholars point out that different variants were encountered in both the 16th and the 17th century, the most frequently found formula being that "the doniim is a plot of land 40 strides

1 "Ve cerib dedikleri, tülen ve arzen altmi§ zira' olmakdir ki, misähada 3600 zirä' olur. Ve zirä'dan muräd, Nü§irevan zirä'idir ki, ya dokuz me§te yahud yedi kabzadir. Ammä §emseddin el-Halvani böyle tashih cylemijdir. Kabzadan muräd oldur ki, her kabza ile ba§ parmak dikilmiglc bile mahsüb ola. Me§te oldur ki, ba§ parmak mahsüb olmayub heman yaliuz kabza mahsüh ola. Mu'in'de ikisi de birdir. Kabza ile mu'teber olan zirä', kirbäsda ve kumagda müsta'mel olan ve dokuz me§te ile mu'teber olan zirä' misähada miista'mel ola ki, ikisi bile muhäsibler istilähinda 24 parmak hesäb oluna ve her parmak alti arpa denlii ola. Alti arpa biri biri yanina enine yaz' oluna, uzunluguma vaz' olunmaya. Cerib-i ger'iden muräd budur. Ve "her ceribde ya'ni her döniimde on dirhem ak?a alma" demekden muräd dirhem-i ger'idir ki, zamane hesäbina on dirhem-i §er'i 42 ak MW W 5 . ta -fi a, « I ,£> ^ O '— ^ u M S

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