17 Between Hinterland and Frontier: Ottoman Vidin...

17

Between Hinterland and Frontier:Ottoman Vidin, Fifteenth to Eighteenth

Centuries

ROSSITSA GRADEVA

A STRONGHOLD AND A PORT ON THE DANUBE FROM ROMAN TIMES, and the capital cityof one of the Bulgarian states (1371–96), Vidin was incorporated into the expandingOttoman principality shortly after the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396 as a punishment forits ruler’s co-operation with the crusaders. The battle marked the end of the SecondBulgarian Empire and was the last substantial crusade of the Middle Ages. From thenuntil the mid-sixteenth century the town and the surrounding sancak constituted animportant part of the Ottoman frontier against Serbia, Wallachia and Hungary. It wasbesieged and captured several times, while the region was laid waste during neighbour-ing states’ raids. However, the fall of Belgrade (1521) and especially the conquest ofTemesvar (Temesvár, Timisoara) in the 1550s left Vidin in the second and even the thirdline of Ottoman defence. The unstable Wallachian affiliation to the empire, however,justified the need to retain a solid chain of fortresses on the Danube. Vidin remainedan important component of the Ottoman fortified line, a military as well as a civil porton the south bank of the river. Yet, until the war with the Holy League (Austria, Venice,Poland and Russia, 1683–99), despite several attacks from the north, the regionremained free from actual fighting. It was only then, in 1688–90 in particular, thatHapsburg forces penetrated deep into Ottoman territory, capturing the fortress ofVidin (13 October 1689). This event marked a turning point in the history of the townand the region, bringing them back to the front line, which was now against theHapsburgs rather than the Wallachians, the latter coming directly under Ottomanauthority.1 The importance of Vidin was enhanced after the war of 1715–18 when theHapsburgs occupied and kept for thirty years Belgrade, much of northern Serbia, and

1 On relations between Wallachia and the Ottomans during the period, see Mihai Maxim, L’Empire ottoman au

nord du Danube et l’autonomie des Principautés Roumaines au XVIe siècle: Études et documents (Istanbul: Isis,1999); Viorel Panaite, The Ottoman Law of War and Peace: The Ottoman Empire and Tribute Payers (New York:Columbia University Press, 2000).

Proceedings of the British Academy 156, 331–351. © The British Academy 2009.

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332 Rossitsa Gradeva

even two districts of the Vidin sancak. During the war of 1737–9 Vidin was againbesieged by the Hapsburgs.2 After the Treaty of Belgrade (1739), Ottoman control overthe region was restored. However, in the last decades of the eighteenth century and thefirst of the nineteenth century, there occurred one of the most serious attempts tosecede in the history of the Ottoman state, that of Osman Pasvanoglu3 and the SerbianUprisings. In fact, it was only after the 1820s that Ottoman authority was finallyrestored in Vidin.

In this chapter I examine how the frontier and the changing fate of the regioninfluenced the military system as well as the provincial administration and agrarianregime. I focus on Vidin in the period of the wars which made it a frontier outpostagain, being either directly occupied (by the Holy League) or under immediate threat(in 1715–18). As in many other frontier areas, military activity affected relationsbetween Muslims and Christians in the province and the town of Vidin.4 This chapteris not intended to be a comprehensive study of Ottoman Vidin, but rather to contributeto a better understanding of the complex impact of the wars during the expansion andcontraction of the Ottoman state.5

The chapter is based mainly on documents from the series of kadı sicils, therecords of the sharia court in the town, preserved from the last years of the sev-enteenth century onwards and kept in the Sofia National Library; tapu tahrir deftersand single documents related to the functioning of the timar system in the region; andthe results of relevant archaeological research, as well as published research on Vidin’shistory.6

2 On the contemporary military and diplomatic developments and their effect on the region see Ivan Parvev,Habsburgs and Ottomans between Vienna and Belgrade (1683–1739) (New York: Columbia University Press,1995), 75–115, 163–91, 211–46.3 See on him Rossitsa Gradeva, ‘Osman Pazvantoglu of Vidin: between old and new’, in Frederick Anscombe (ed.),The Ottoman Balkans, 1750–1830 (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2006), 115–61, and the bibliography referred tothere.4 For space considerations the effect of these events on the Jewish community will only be mentioned in passing.5 Space precludes discussing here the very important issue of the migrations towards and from Vidin throughoutthe centuries.6 There is vast literature on Vidin and its region, mainly for the early Ottoman centuries and for the late eighteenthand nineteenth centuries but much less for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition to the worksreferred to in this article, see the following important studies: Bistra Tsvetkova, Prouchvaniya na gradskoto

stopanstvo prez XV–XVI vek (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1972), including law-books for Vidin and the sancak, 164–6,168–78; eadem, ‘Za etnicheskiya i demografski oblik na Vidin prez XVI vek’, Izvestija na Etnografskiya Institut i

Muzey 7 (1964), 11–21; Vera Mutafchieva, L’Anarchie dans les Balkans à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Istanbul: Isis,2005), chapters 2–7, passim, on Osman Pasvanoglu and the situation in the region of Vidin during the last decadesof the eighteenth and the beginning of nineteenth century; Halil Inalcık, Tanzimat ve Bulgar Meselesi, Doktora

Tezi’nin 50. Yılı 1942–1992 (Istanbul: Eren,1992), who discusses at length the Nis and Vidin Uprisings of the mid-nineteenth century, and the gospodarlık regime in Vidin, 45–67, 83–107; Machiel Kiel, ‘Urban development inBulgaria in the Turkish period: the place of Turkish architecture in the process’, International Journal of Turkish

Studies, 4 (1989), 101–2.

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Material Structures

During the fifteenth century the main strongholds on the lower course of the Danubewere Vidin, Nigbolu (modern Nikopol) and Silistre.7 Around them were clusteredsmaller forts on the river and deeper into the territory of modern northern Bulgaria,and several bridgeheads on the Wallachian side which were probably inherited fromthe Bulgarian tsardoms.8 These three fortresses constituted the backbone of theOttoman frontier in the region until Bulgarian Liberation (1878) with one major shift.Starting from the seventeenth century Rusçuk (Ruse) and Yergögi (Giurgiu), whichwas on the opposite side of the river, gradually replaced Nigbolu and its twin,Holıvnik (Turnu Magurele). The location of Rusçuk, safe from Hapsburg attacks,seems to have justified its choice as the base of the Ottoman fleet on the river and theseat of the kapudan pasa (admiral). During the seventeenth century all four placesfunctioned as land fortifications, as bases of the respective sections of the Ottomanflotilla patrolling and guarding the river, and as important stores of munitions andprovisions. What made Vidin particularly important was its proximity to theHungarian front, which forced the Ottomans to preserve its more complex defensivesystem, including a constellation of satellite fortifications. Elsewhere on the Danube,after the fifteenth century and the establishment of Ottoman control over theregion, the forts on the second and third lines of defence were abandoned and only astring on the river banks were kept, mainly to control the traffic across and along thewaterway.

In the fifteenth century the sancak of Vidin, probably more an uc9 than a regularadministrative unit, was defended by the fortress in Vidin and the forts of Belgrad (laterBelgradcık, modern Belogradchik), Filurdin (Florentin), Isfirlik (Svrljig), and Bane(Soko Banja). Later, Fethülislam (Kladovo) was added to them,10 then Severin andOrsova. The latter two remained in the sancak until at least 1586, but in the seventeenthcentury were no longer part of it.11 Towards the end of the war with the Holy Leagueand immediately after, it fortifications were built, Brza Palanka in modern Serbia, and

OTTOMAN VIDIN, FIFTEENTH TO EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 333

7 Immediately upon their conquest they were made administrative centres of the newly established unitsstretching along the Danube from the Iron Gate to the Black Sea.8 See Aleksandar Kuzev and Vassil Gyuzelev (eds.), Balgarski srednovekovni gradove i kreposti, I: Gradove i kreposti

po Dunav i Cherno more (Varna: Izdatelstvo ‘G. Bakalov’, 1981), 94–200, passim, on the medieval defence systemincluding information on the Ottoman period, the latter based mainly on archaeological research and narrativesources.

9 See Rossitsa Gradeva, ‘Administrative system and provincial government in the Central Balkan territories of theOttoman empire, 15th century’, in eadem, Rumeli under the Ottomans, 15th–18th Centuries: Institutions and

Communities (Istanbul: Isis, 2004), 26–8.10 370 Numaralı Muhasebe-i Vilâyet-i Rum-ili Defteri (937/1530) (Ankara: Basbakanlık Devlet Arsivleri GenelMüdürlügü, 2002), 2: 594–7, 604, 607. Fethülislam appears for the first time as a fortified place in this register.11 Mihnea Berindei, Marielle Kalus-Martin and Gilles Veinstein, ‘Actes de Murad III sur la région de Vidin etremarques sur les qanuns ottomans’, Südost-Forschungen, 35 (1976), 15.

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Archar, Lom (Polomiye) and Kutlofçe (Montana) in modern Bulgaria.12 Six of thefortifications in the sancak—Fethülislam, Brza Palanka, Filurdin, Vidin, Archar andLom—are on the Danube, while four are in the hinterland; only Archar and Lom areeast of Vidin. This clearly shows that the sancak’s defences were orientated against thenorth-west, with the river considered the weak point. An order from 1701 concerningstocktaking of munitions in the serhad (frontier) lists Vidin, Lom, Belgrad, Filurdin,

12 For all of them we find references as ‘newly constructed palanka’—Saints Cyril and Methodius NationalLibrary-Sofia (hereafter NBKM), Oriental Department, S 13, fol. 30a, doc. II (the establishment of Brza wasclearly still in progress since the order is about staffing its garrison with soldiers from the palanka of Lom); fol.27b, doc. II (Lom); fol. 26b, doc. II (Kutlofçe); fol. 16b, doc. II (Archar), of 1698–9.

Prut

Olt

Danube

Black Sea

Varna

Rusçuk

Silistre

Istanbul

Bucharest

Ismail

Sofia

Üsküb

Severin

Vidin

Lom

Orsova

MOLDAVIA

WALLACHIA

BUCAK

THRACE

MACEDONIA

KutlofçeBerkovitsa

Nis

Archar

Belgrade Fethülislam

Belgrad Nigbolu

Yergögi

Isfirlik

Holıvnik

SOUTH

EASTWEST

NORTH

Figure 17.1. The Ottomans’ Danube frontier, showing the principal places mentioned in the text.

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Isfirlik and Archar as fortresses (kale) in the sancak.13 What had happened to the restis difficult to judge—they may have been destroyed during the war or, more likely,transferred to another administrative unit as part of the reorganisation triggered by thecontraction of the Ottoman borders after the Treaty of Karlowitz.14 Some of the satel-lite forts are called interchangeably kale and palanka15 (Lom, Archar, Filurdin,Belgrad).16 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, units of the Janissary corps andof the local troops (yerlü) were stationed in all of them. There were detachments of theelite Janissary cavalry, the Six Regiments (altı bölük), in Vidin, Kutlofçe andBerkovitsa,17 the latter two being deep in the territory of the province, and probablyincluded in it only after 1699. I have not yet discovered any evidence of a fort inBerkovitsa.

Originally the fortifications of Vidin, the focal point in the system and the seat ofthe governors, consisted of a citadel and fortress walls surrounding the outer city.18

During the reign of Bayezid II (1481–1512) the defences were reconstructed to accom-modate artillery and firearms. At an unknown date the walls around the outer townwere dismantled, perhaps after the conquest of Hungary, because they were no longerneeded or, more likely, after the devastating raids of Michael the Brave, Prince ofWallachia and Transylvania, between 1595 and 1599, when Vidin, Filurdin andFethülislam, along with Rusçuk, Silistre, Nigbolu and even towns deep within theDanube plain were plundered and set on fire, and their inhabitants killed, enslaved orforced to move across the river.19 The citadel of Vidin, however, survived this violent


13 NBKM, Or. Dept., S 14, fol. 31b, doc. II.14 Bane, Brza Palanka and Fetülislam were the westernmost forts in the Vidin system.15 See Chapter 8 by Burcu Özgüven in this volume, and Behija Zlatar, ‘Tipologija gradskih naselja na Balkanu uXVI vijeku’, in Verena Han (ed.), Gradska kultura na Balkanu (XV–XIX vek) (Belgrade: Institut des étudesbalkaniques, 1988), 65.16 See for example for Belgrad, an old fortress in the province, NBKM, Or. Dept., S 13, fol. 23a, doc. I (as a ‘newlyconstructed palanka’ , probably reconstructed and strengthened after the withdrawal of the Hapsburgs, 1699), andS 14, fol. 40b, doc. I (as kale, 1701).17 NBKM, Or. Dept., S 13, fol. 29b, doc. I, of 1699.18 See in more detail on its fortifications, Kuzev and Gyuzelev (eds.), Balgarski srednovekovni gradove, 98–115;Svetlana Ivanova, ‘Widin’, in EI2, 9: 206–8; Rossitsa Gradeva, ‘War and peace along the Danube: Vidin at the endof the seventeenth century’, in eadem, Rumeli, 107–19; Nikolay Tuleshkov, ‘Krepostnoto stroitelstvo po vreme naosmanskoto vladichestvo’, in Stefan Boyadzhiev et al., Krepostnoto stroitelstvo po balgarskite zemi (Sofia: Stampa,2000), 289–300.19 See descriptions of the events left by Christian sources in Konstantin Veliki, ‘Pohodite na Mihai Viteazul na yugot Dunav’, Istoricheski Pregled, 29 (1973), 65–7, 70–1; Boyan Beshevliev and Pavlina Boycheva, ‘Istorikogeografskisvedeniya v tri dokumenta, posveteni na Mihai Hrabri (kraya na XVI–nachaloto na XVII vek)’, in AxiniaDzhurova, Georgi Bakalov et al. (eds.), Obshtoto i Spetsifichnoto v Balkanskite Kulturi do Kraya na XIX Vek:

Sbornik v chest na Prof. V. Tapkova-Zaimova (Sofia: Gutenberg, 1999), 256–64. See a detailed account of the effectof the Wallachian attack on Silistre in particular based on foreign and Ottoman sources in: Stefka Parveva,‘Balgari na sluzhba v osmanskata armiya: voenni i voennopomoshtni zadalzheniya na gradskoto naselenie vNikopol i Silistra prez XVII vek’, in Elena Grozdanova, Olga Todorova, Stefka Parveva, Yoanna Spisarevska,Stefan Andreev, Katerina Venedikova, Kontrasti i Konflikti ‘zad kadar’ v balgarskoto obshtestvo prez XV–XVII vek

(Sofia: Gutenberg, 2003), 240–2.

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period. It continued to house the garrison, the residence of the governor, and stores ofmunitions, water and provisions.20 Its primary function was to repel eventual incursionsof Wallachians and those of bandits. Changes were triggered by the Hapsburg con-quest of the region during the war with the Holy League. On capturing the town, theAustrians started to restore the fortifications of Vidin in line with Vauban’s system.This was completed by the Ottomans in 1722–3, after the Treaty of Passarowitz withthe Austrians and Venetians (1718), when the fortress came to be directly on the fron-tier with the Hapsburgs.21 The citadel was modernised and a new semicircular fortresswas constructed that protected some neighbourhoods from the river’s spring tide andmilitary threats. Improvements to the fortifications continued during the eighteenthcentury. Osman Pasvanoglu renovated and strengthened them further, turning Vidininto an invincible stronghold, at least against the sultan’s army. The final enlargementand alterations to the fortifications were undertaken in the nineteenth century as partof the modernisation of the Ottoman military, and because of the region’s role as anoutpost against the growingly independent Serbia and Wallachia, and the Russianmenace.

Also inherited from the medieval Balkan states was the use of river men-of-war.22

It seems that the earliest organisation of the fleet on the Danube included units of boatsattached to the main ports which patrolled strictly defined stretches. From the earlyfifteenth century there had been a captain (kapudan) in Vidin.23 In the 1660s he was incommand of ten boats with 300 soldiers whose main task was to persecute brigandswho crossed the river or infested the islands.24 It is not clear whether before the seven-teenth century the Vidin detachment and the others in the sancak had formed an inde-pendent unit under the general command of the sancakbeyi or had been part of aseparate structure of the river fleet. From the beginning of the seventeenth century,

20 In the seventeenth century the other fortified places along the Danube also had just one citadel, where the gar-rison, the stores for provisions and munitions, the seat of the commander, and a mosque would be located. See forNigbolu (an exception, with two, one at the port and another on a hill dominating the area) and Silistre, Parveva,‘Balgari na sluzhba’, 227–8; for Rusçuk, Teodora Bakardjieva and Stoyan Yordanov, Ruse, Prostranstvo i Istoriya

(kraya na XIV v.-70–te godini na XIX v.): Gradoustroystvo, infrastruktura, obekti (Ruse: Avangard Print, 2001),63–86.21 Three inscriptions of 1723 have been preserved, commemorating the work of the Ottoman architect who, uponthe sultan’s order, had completed the fortifications. They praise in particular the wall along the river fortified bythe Austrians: Vera Mutafchieva (ed.), Rumeliyski delnitsi i praznitsi ot XVIII vek (Sofia: OF, 1978), 71.22 On the organisation of the Ottoman fleet on the Danube in the first centuries of Ottoman rule, see RossitsaGradeva, ‘Shipping along the lower course of the Danube (end of the seventeenth century)’, in ElizabethZachariadou (ed.), The Kapudan Pasha: His Office and His Domain (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2002),301–23.23 Du8anka Bojanić-Lukać, Vidin i Vidinskiyat sandzhak prez XV–XVI vek. Dokumenti ot Tsarigradskite arhivi, ed.Vera Mutafchieva and Mihaila Staynova (Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo, 1975), 73: the timar of Ahi Ali, kapudan inVidin in 1454–5. A note in the margin of the register explains that he had served in this position for more than tenyears, but had earlier received a salary in cash.24 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, 6: 97–8.

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when the Tuna kapudanlık (Danube Admiralty) was formed and the seat of the admi-ral was established in Rusçuk, until the mid-eighteenth century, all small captainshipson the lower Danube, including the one in Vidin, were under the command of this highofficer, who at the end of the seventeenth and probably at the beginning of the eigh-teenth century held the rank of a provincial governor (mirimiran).25 Unfortunately, theorganisation of the Ottoman military fleet on the river for the following century hasbeen little researched. According to a couple of documents in the sicils of the kadı ofVidin, it was the admiral of the Danube fleet who initiated the appointment of the newgarrison commander (dizdar) of the palanka of Archar in 1705,26 but it is not clear why.Neither do we know whether he had control over all the fortified ports on the LowerDanube or if the dizdar was also the commander of the local unit of ships. UnderOsman Pazvantoglu the defence of the Vidin fortress was supported by ships, which arementioned in the context of the sieges by the imperial army.

Until the end of the sixteenth century ships were constructed at several places alongthe Danube, including at Vidin. The local shipbuilding works produced boats for thelast campaign of Süleyman the Magnificent in Hungary in 1566, and in 1573–4 afterthe destruction of the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto.27 It is difficult to tell when this activ-ity ceased at Vidin, but during the second half of the seventeenth century the dockyard(tersane) at Rusçuk/Yergögi, under the direct supervision of the kapudan pasa, becamethe main basis for construction, repairs and equipment of the river state-owned ships.During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries some workshops at Vidin wereprobably maintained for smaller repairs.

Human Resources

As elsewhere in the Balkans, after the conquest and the pacification of the region, theOttomans introduced to Vidin the ‘classical’ timar system which supported the provin-cial heavy cavalry (sipahi) troops, the fortress guards (mustahfızan), the highest-rankingofficers on the boats, and commanders of some of the paramilitary corps. In the mid-fifteenth century the sancakbeyi of Vidin led a force of 292 men, including timarlı

sipahis (122, of whom two were zaims), their servants (gulam, 46) and the auxiliaryarmed men (cebelü, 124) they had to bring.28 Around 18 per cent of the sipahis were


25 See on the institution Svetlana Ivanova, ‘Ali Pasha: sketches from the life of a Kapudan Pasha on the Danube’,in Zachariadou (ed.), The Kapudan Pasha, 325–45; Gradeva, ‘Shipping’, 307–13.26 NBKM, Or. Dept., S 38, fol. 13b, doc. II, fol. 14a, doc. I (the berat), of 1705.27 Colin Imber, ‘The navy of Süleyman the Magnificent’, in idem, Studies in Ottoman History and Law (Istanbul:Isis, 1996), 62; Olga Zirojević, Tursko vojno uređenje u Srbiji, 1459–1683 (Belgrade: Istorijski Institut, 1974), 232.28 Bojanić-Lukać, Vidin i Vidinskiyat sandzhak, 55–94: sixteen timars were held jointly by more than one timariotbut this does not change the number of the horsemen serving on campaigns. See also Vera Mutafchieva, ‘Vidin iVidinsko prez XV–XVI vek’, included as an introduction to Bojanić-Lukać, Vidin i Vidinskiyat, 22–9; Ayse

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Christians, and 3 per cent were recent converts.29 In 1520–30, there were 10 zaims and225 sipahis,30 that is a fighting force of probably double the number, or even more, if theproportion of auxiliaries seen in the previous registration remained the same. Around1560 there were 12 zeamet and 190 timars of sipahis in the sancak but the register doesnot provide information about the nature of their holders’ military obligations and thenumber of the auxiliary soldiers. As elsewhere in the central Balkan provinces, bythe middle of the sixteenth century, Christian sipahis had practically disappeared fromthe fighting force of the sancak.31 Unfortunately, the existing documentation concern-ing the timar holdings there from the last decades of the sixteenth century has, with afew exceptions,32 remained largely inaccessible to me.33 Even what is available, however,allows me to agree with the conclusion of Kayapınar that during the fifteenth to six-teenth century the number of the hasses, zeamets and timars in the region grew, and sodid the number of their holders, with a noticeable tendency for the revenues of onetimar to be shared by more than one sipahi.34

Kayapınar, ‘Le sancak ottoman de Vidin du XVe à la fin du XVIe siècle’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, École deshautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, 2004), 214–19 also gives an overview of the timar system and the sipahi

and mustahfız troops supported by it during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, without distinguishing betweenthe two groups.29 See on them Halil Inalcık, ‘Stefan Dusan’dan Osmanlı Imparatorluguna: XV. Asırda Hıristyan Sipahiler veMenseleri’, in Mélanges Fuad Köprülü—60 Dogum yılı münasebetiyle Fuad Köprülü Armaganı (Istanbul: AnkaraÜniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Cografya Fakültesi, 1953), 207–48; for Vidin, 224, 233.30 370 Numaralı Muhasebe-i Vilâyet-i Rum-ili Defteri, 608.31 Bojanić-Lukać, Vidin i Vidinskiyat, 97–160; Mutafchieva, ‘Vidin i Vidinsko’, 35–6. Unfortunately the other pub-lished timar registers for the intermediary period are only fragmentary and do not allow conclusions about theexact military force provided by the sancak. See Du8anka Bojanić, ‘Fragmenti zbirnog popisa Vidinskog sanđajaiz 1466 godine’, in Me8ovita Građa (Belgrade, 1973), 2: 5–77; eadem, ‘Fragmenti op8irnog popisa Vidinskogsanđaka iz 1478–81’, in ibid., 79–177; ‘Timari vav Vidinsko, Berkovsko, Belogradchishko i porechieto na Timok(1479/80 g.)’, three fragments of an icmal defter, published in Nikolai Todorov and Boris Nedkov (eds.), Izvori za

balgarskata istoriya: Seriya XV–XVI vek (Sofia: BAN, 1966), 13: 103–59; ‘Otkas ot podroben registar na timari vsandzhak Vidin ot vtorata polovina na XVI vek’, in Bistra Tsvetkova and Asen Razbojnikov (eds.), Izvori za

balgarskata istoriya (Sofia: BAN, 1972), 16: 496–523: some of the timars in the latter belonged to sipahis, others tofortress guards.32 See NBKM, Or. Dept., F. 26 A, archival unit (a.u.) 1997, fol. 2b, doc. II, about a timar in the nahiye of Zagoriye,of 1584; F. 1, a.u. 14690, 221–2: documents about the movement of timars in the nahiyes of Vidin, Timok andBane, of 1588/89, and D 15, fol. 12b, and fol. 36a: respectively timars in Vidin and Fethülislam, of the same year.33 See the list in Kayapınar, ‘Le sancak ottoman de Vidin’, 113–14: BOA, Maliyyeden Müdevver (MAD) 123 (oftimars), of 1574/5; Tapu Tahrir (TT) 664 (icmal), of 1574–95; MAD 15428 (of timars), of 1584; MAD 15278 (oftimars), of 1591; Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlügü, Ankara (TK) 219 (of timars), of 1579—according toKayapınar it includes data on six hasses, 16 zeamets and 465 timars, those of the fortress guards included; TK 57(mufassal), of 1586. Undated information about the sixteenth century evaluates the military based on the timar

system in the sancak at 201 sipahis (without the cebelüs) and 268 fortress guards, see Evgeni Radushev, Agrarnite

institutsii v Osmanskata imperiya prez XVII–XVIII vek (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo ‘Marin Drinov’, 1995), 78.34 Kayapınar, ‘Le sancak ottoman de Vidin’, 214. See also Strashimir Dimitrov, ‘Politikata na upravliavashtatavarhushka v Turtsiya spriamo spahiystvoto prez vtorata polovina na XVIII vek’, Istoricheski Pregled, 18/5 (1962),36, who explains that this tendency continued also in the seventeenth century combined with a growing number ofthe cebelüs the sipahis were obliged to bring on campaigns.

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Sources for the seventeenth century are scarce. There are no registers that reveal thefull size of the sipahi forces. Some information may be drawn from the Law-book ofAyni Ali (1609–10), who records 12 zeamets and 195 timars for the sancak of Vidin.35

Given doubts about the dating of the figures provided by him and the fact that thenumbers are very close to the late sixteenth-century ones,36 I am reluctant to draw anyfinal conclusions based on it alone. On the other hand, while the sipahis from Vidin donot figure in the 1605–6 and 1607–8 roll-calls (yoklama defter),37 they did participate inthe war, only on another front, supporting the anti-Hapsburg revolt of István Bocskaiin Transylvania.38 Evliya Çelebi, who visited the town in the 1660s, records 12 zeamet

and 65 timars in the sancak. This would make about one-fourth to one-third of thecavalrymen supported by the timar system only a century earlier. However, accordingto the same author, the sancakbeyi, who at that time held a hass of 330,000 akçes,actually produced a force of 2,000 soldiers, which included the private troops of thepasha and another 300 furnished by the nazır (overseer) of the mukataas (tax units) inthe kaza.39 As with Ayni Ali, suspicions about the reliability of Evliya’s data are wide-spread. My work so far, however, suggests that while occasionally the numbers may beinflated and some of his stories sound rather fabulous, most of the information heprovides about places he had personally visited does stand comparison with the docu-mentary evidence.40 Despite the remoteness of the Hapsburg frontier, during the firstthree centuries of Ottoman rule, the number of the fortress guards increased steadily.In Vidin alone their number grew from thirteen in 1454–5 to eighty-three in 1530,including the commander of the garrison and his deputy, and then to ninety-three in1560,41 and around 150 in the 1660s.42


35 Galab Galabov, Turski izvori za istoriyata na pravoto po balgarskite zemi (Sofia: BAN, 1961), 1: 107.36 See for example Caroline Finkel, The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary,

1593–1606 (Vienna: VWGÖ, 1988), 56–7. Hezarfen’s treatise of 1669–70 (Hezarfen Hüseyin Efendi, Telhisü’l-

beyan fi kavanin-i Al-i Osman, ed. Sevim Ilgürel (Ankara: TTK, 1998), 117, quoted from Kayapınar, ‘Le sancakottoman de Vidin’, 219, n. 1016) gives the same numbers but this is not surprising bearing in mind that to a largeextent he relied on the data provided exactly by Ayni Ali, Lütfi Pasha and Kâtib Çelebi, see Victor Ménage,‘Husayn Hezarfenn’, EI2, 3: 623b–624a.37 Vera Mutafcieva, ‘Sur l’état du système des timars au cours de la première décade du XVIIe s. d’après lesyoklamas datants de 1014 et 1016 de l’Hégire (1605–1606 et 1607–1608 A.D.)’, in Vera Mutafcieva and Stra8imirDimitrov, Sur l’état du système des timars des XVIIe–XVIIIe ss. (Sofia: BAN, 1968), 10–11.38 Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 59. Unfortunately the mobilisation order does not specify numbers.39 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, 6: 97–8.40 See also Robert Dankoff, ‘Evliya Çelebi’, in Historians of the Ottoman Empire, Cemal Kafadar, Hasan Karatekeand Cornell Fleischer (eds.), www.ottomanhistorians.com, and cf. Chapter 6 above, Malcolm Wagstaff, ‘EvliyaÇelebi, the Mani and the fortress of Kelefa’.41 Bojanić-Lukać, Vidin i Vidinskiyat, 73–5, 137–45; 370 Numaralı Muhasebe-i Vilâyet-i Rum-ili Defteri, 594. Somedata about the fortress guards can be drawn from the above-cited fragmentary registers but they are not sufficientto evaluate fully their numbers in Vidin. The garrison troops included also artillerymen as well as auxiliaries, whichI shall not discuss here.42 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, 6: 97–8.

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Thus for the seventeenth century the available sources43 suggest that the timarlı

sipahi troops still existed in the sancak, but were clearly in decline; timars were beinglost in favour of the expanding hasses of the sultan and the grand vizier.44 After the warwith the Holy League the timar system and the cavalrymen and garrison troops sup-ported by it seem to have disappeared from the landscape in this region. This situation,while reflecting a general trend of decline of the timarlı troops, shows that in the regionof Vidin the process had developed faster than in the majority of the Balkans, wheresipahis lingered at least in name until the mid-nineteenth century.45

After the war at the end of the seventeenth century Vidin emerged as a highly mili-tarised town with a large number of Janissaries.46 Although precise numbers areunclear, we know that at the turn of the eighteenth century there were detachments ofthe elite Janissary cavalry (probably around sixty men on the territory of the sancak)and of the regular Janissary infantry as well as corps of the ‘local troops’ (yerlü) suchas beslüyan, farisan and so on.47 Half a century later, in 1750, according to AhmedCevad Pasha, the Janissaries’ number was an impressive 5,440 men, the largest contin-gent in the Balkans,48 probably including ‘local troops’. It seems that during the eigh-teenth century, as is well attested in other parts of the empire, ‘regular’ Janissaries inVidin stopped rotating and started taking roots locally. At the same time enterprising

43 The existence of timars and sipahis in the region even after Evliya’s visit to the region is confirmed by, forexample, NBKM, Or. Dept., F. 26, a.u. 1976, of 1678, about a timar in the nahiye of Timok, in the sancak of Vidin.44 There are occasional references to sipahis and zaims in the sancak also from the very end of the seventeenthcentury, listed among the local administrators who are warned against interfering with the collection of some taxes(see for example NBKM, Or. Dept., S 13, fol. 13b, doc. I, of 1698). I tend to agree with Hristo Gandev that theseincidences should rather be considered a cliché, as part of an already accepted format, without actually meaningthat they really existed. See Hristo Gandev, ‘Zarazhdane na kapitalisticheski otnosheniya v chiflishkoto stopanstvona Severozapadna Balgariya prez XVIII vek’, in idem, Problemi na Balgarskoto Vazrazhdane (Sofia: Nauka iizkustvo, 1976), 287. In the rare cases of identification of individuals as sipahis, there is a very high probability thatthe persons in question were members of the sipahi regiments of the Janissary corps. See for example NBKM, Or.Dept., S 38, fol. 6b, doc. II: Medine-i Vidin sukkânından olub kalâ kethüdası Osman sipahi . . .45 On the later history of the sipahilik, see Dimitrov, ‘Politikata na upravliavashtata varhushka v Turtsiya’, 32–60,as well as NBKM, Or. Dept., F. 26, a.u. 303, 313, 316, and many others in the same collection about timars in theneighbouring districts of Oriahovo, Lovech, Nigbolu, Tarnovo, Sevlievo, Vratsa and Sehirköy (Pirot, Serbia) fromthe 1830s and 1840s.46 One of the interesting peculiarities in this region is the presence of a unit of twenty-six yeniçeri oglanları in thenahiye of Bane in 1586 who served as martolosan and were exempt from the extraordinary taxes (avariz-i divaniye

ve tekalif-i örfiye) and other services. See Berindei, Kalus-Martin, and Veinstein, ‘Actes de Murad III sur la régionde Vidin’, 58–60. This, to my knowledge unique, occurrence of employment of ‘young Janissaries’, in such acapacity may be an indication of the sources of conscription for the corps at the time and of the range of theirfunctions.47 See details in Gradeva, ‘War and peace’, passim.48 Ahmed Djevad, L’état militaire ottoman depuis la fondation de l’Empire jusqu’à nos jours, trans. George Macridas(Constantinople, 1882), 167. On the expansion of the Janissary corps in Vidin after the fall of Temesvar in 1716,see Evgeni Radushev, ‘Osmanlı Ordusu ve Balkan Halkları’, in Hans-Georg Majer and Raoul Motika (eds.),Türkische Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte von 1071 bis 1920, Akten des IV. Internationalen Kongresses

(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995), 275–6, and later, Virginia Aksan, ‘Whose territory and whose peasants?Ottoman boundaries on the Danube in the 1760s’, in Anscombe (ed.), The Ottoman Balkans, 67.

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locals infiltrated their ranks. An exemplary case is that of the family of OsmanPasvanoglu. In the 1760s his father was the commander (aga)49 of the 31st Janissaryorta, and later Osman too was to become one of its commanders, implying the exis-tence of hereditary affiliation to the unit. Another interesting trait of the VidinJanissaries in the eighteenth century is the fact that a significant number among thembore Abdullah as their patronym. This may indicate that in Vidin converts, though notlevied through the devsirme, may have served as a major source to fill the ranks of thecorps even in the eighteenth century, serving alongside Janissaries who had migrated toVidin from the territories lost after Karlowitz and Passarowitz, and local Muslims.50

An important feature of the region, which can be traced back to the fifteenth cen-tury, is the very close links between the Muslim inhabitants of the town (and the wholesancak) and the military corps. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thesegroups to a great extent overlapped, as is demonstrated by the way in which names ofmembers of military units are often linked with professions, such as grocer, butcher,barber, dervish, tanner and tailor. At the same time almost every single inventory of theestates of deceased Muslim men in the eighteenth-century Vidin sicils includes varietiesof swords and rifles, revealing a society that lived with war at the doorstep, alwaysready to fight. This impression becomes even stronger after the war of 1715–18.51 Noneof these traits was unique to Vidin, but there they seem to have been particularlyacutely expressed. It is difficult to say when and how exactly the transformation from atimarlı to a Janissary region took place but it may be related to seventeenth-centurychanges in the concept of warfare which had made the sipahi troops obsolete. Of noless importance was the impact of the frontier and of the wars of 1683–99 and1715–18.

* * *

During the early period and as late as the second half of the sixteenth century, themajority, if not all, Muslim reaya (tax-paying subjects) in the sancak seem to have beenengaged in paramilitary activities. Some, especially those living in its western parts,


49 In some sources, the standard-bearer.50 The issue of the voluntary conversion to Islam with the intention of joining the Janissary corps is approachedby Anton Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans. Kisve Bahası Petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 1670–1730

(Leiden: Brill, 2004), 75–7, and Evgeni Radushev, Pomatsite. Hristiyanstvo i isliam v Zapadnite Rodopi s dolinata

na r. Mesta, XV-30te godini na XVIII vek (Sofia: NBKM, 2005), 224–30. The latter also discusses the phenomenonof the ‘rural’ Janissaries in the Rhodopes and elsewhere in the Balkans in connection with ‘personal applications’for conversion. The two authors call this phenomenon ‘voluntary devsirme’ and regard it as one of the reasons forthe abrogation of the ‘original’ devsirme in the late seventeenth century, a hypothesis that I do not find verystrongly substantiated.51 For a snapshot of the structure of the military, the militarisation of local society, and the interaction betweenpeaceful professions and military obligations in Vidin at the turn of the eighteenth century see Gradeva, ‘War andpeace’, 113–19.

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served as irregular cavalry (akıncı)52 whose major tasks included ravaging territoriesunder attack, scaring the local population and clearing the way before the main bodyof the army, and taking part in defence in the event of enemy raids. In return theyreceived part of the spoils and occasionally tax relief. Towards the end of the six-teenth century akıncıs were still found in the towns of Bane, Isfirlik, Belgrad, andseveral villages in the sancak. While all of them were Muslims, there is evidence thatthe corps contained converts.53 Muslims were also involved in the defence of the forts,although direct evidence for this in Vidin does not exist.54 However, in nearby Nigboluunder Mehmed II and Süleyman I, the Muslim reaya were obliged to serve in defend-ing the fortress there and its counterpart across the Danube in lieu of the so-called‘extraordinary taxes’.55 These arrangements were confirmed several times, includingin 1697–8. Among the Muslim reaya in Nigbolu there were also serhadlis, irregularsoldiers on the border within the so-called serdengeçti corps.56 The latter were con-scripted by the state as volunteers from among the Janissaries and served as a van-guard entrusted with the most difficult tasks. The same arrangements were in place atSilistre, where the Muslim reaya also supported the local travel station and expensesfor state messengers.57

The information about Nigbolu and Silistre, and the indirect evidence for Vidin inthe seventeenth century, suggests that many, if not all, Muslims in Vidin and theprovince continued to be directly involved in warfare (let us not forget the 2,000 menEvliya Çelebi mentions) as volunteers or in auxiliary services, and that the boundariesbetween Muslim reaya and the askeri had become even more blurred than in earlier

52 ‘Otkas ot podroben registar na timari v sandzhak Vidin’, 499–502. See on them Aurel Decei, ‘Akindji’, EI 2, 1:340. For much of the second half of the fifteenth century the sancakbeyi of Vidin was Ali Bey Mihaloglu, of thefamily of Gazi Mihal who were hereditary leaders of the akıncıs and led their incursions against Wallachia andHungary. In 1527 sancakbeyi with a hass worth 400,000 akçe was Yahsi Bey, also of the Mihaloglus. See MetinKunt, The Sultan’s Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650 (New York:Columbia University Press, 1983), 105. Members of other akıncı bey families also held the position, a clearindication about Vidin’s importance as one of their bases. On the Mihaloglus see Franz Babinger, ‘Mikhal-oghlu’,EI 2, 7: 34.53 Several of them have Abdullah as a patronym. This is not surprising bearing in mind that non-Muslims couldalso be enrolled as akıncıs. See Boris Nedkov, Osmanoturska diplomatika i paleografiya, II: Dokumenti i rechnik

(Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo, 1972), 175–7, defter of the akıncıs, of 1472. The order preceding it explicitly states thatnon-Muslims were also eligible.54 ‘Otkas ot podroben registar na timari v sandzhak Vidin’, 499–502.55 This is the more or less standard arrangement with the categories of reaya with special obligations includingthose with military functions. Sometimes they would be exempt also from other services and taxes. For an overviewsee Elena Grozdanova, ‘Die Privilegien—’Tojanisches Pferd oder Achillesferse’—als Element der Innenpolitikdes Osmanishen Reiches auf dem Balkan während des 15.–18. Jh.’, Bulgarian Historical Review, 22/3–4 (1994),19–36.56 Parveva, ‘Balgari na sluzhba’, 229–31. I have not found the latter in Vidin, at least in the documentation I haveworked with, which is rather strange, because they were part of the garrisons in all eighteenth-century Ottomantowns in these parts, including Rusçuk: Gradeva, ‘War and peace’, 114.57 Parveva, ‘Balgari na sluzhba’, 231–2.

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centuries.58 It is not surprising that Vidin is one of the places where the divisionbetween ‘Muslims’ and ‘reaya’, in which reaya stands for Christians, appears in localdocumentation rather early, from the first decade of the eighteenth century.59 Apartfrom its probably derogatory meaning, this may have reflected a reality in which allMuslims could serve as military and the Christians were completely excluded from it.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, the Christian reaya in the sancak

of Vidin had also performed paramilitary and auxiliary services for the Ottomanmilitary system60—as derbendcis (mountain pass guards),61 martolosan,62 voynuks,63

müselleman,64 and filurciyan.65 Christians were also involved in the maintenance of thefortresses, mainly as craftsmen—carpenters, builders, rope-makers, caulkers, smiths—but also as producers of arrows, shields, guns, cannons.66 Most of these men wereexempted from the ‘extraordinary taxes’, and sometimes also from the ispence or paidit at a reduced rate (the derbendcis, martolosan, filurciyan, müselleman), the cizye (themartolosan, filurciyan, müselleman, voynuks), the tithes (the filurciyan). Some receiveda bastina, a tax-exempt farm (voynuks, martolosan, filurciyan); others were salaried


58 See the observations of Hülya Canbakal on the basis of Ayntab at the end of the seventeenth century, Society

and Politics in an Ottoman Town: Ayntab in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 85–8.59 NBKM, Or. Dept., S 38, passim. Even earlier this division appears in a kadı sicil from Rusçuk, 1663–4, HistoryMuseum-Ruse, B 2919, passim, contemporaneous with another war which ended with the defeat of the Ottomansat the Battle of St Gotthard, but with the preservation of the border status quo at the Vasvár Peace (1664). It hadbecome a standard formula only from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. See on the term and its meaningsthrough the centuries Joseph Kabrda, ‘Raia’, Izvestiya na Istoricheskoto druzhestvo v Sofiia, 14–15 (1937), 176–85;Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Raiyya’, EI2, 8: 404.60 See in more detail the survey of the paramilitary and auxiliary institutions on the territory of the sancak in thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Kayapınar, ‘Le sancak ottoman de Vidin’, 242–79; eadem, ‘Les filorici dans larégion timoko-danubienne à l’époque ottomane (Xve–XVIe siècles)’, in Faruk Bilici, Ionel Cândea and AncaPopescu (eds.), Enjeux politiques, économiques et militaires en Mer Noire (XIVe—XXIe siècles). Études à la

mémoire de Mihail Guboglu (Braïla: Éditions Istros, 2007), 243–88, including also a survey of the martolosan andvoynuks.61 Depending on the importance of the place for the maintenance of security and order, sometimes all the villagerswould be serving (especially on the banks of the Danube and the Morava rivers and close to mountains), but inothers just some of them, while the rest were ordinary reaya. The institution was progressively expanding on theterritory of the sancak, including towards the end of the sixteenth century nearly 4,000 households.62 They were employed as a policing force fighting against banditry in the mountainous areas in the nahiyes ofÇerna Reka and Bane, while those in the fortresses of Vidin and Fethülislam served on the state boats on theDanube, also ensuring security in strategic places.63 Voynuks originally (fifteenth-century) had exclusively military functions and participated in campaigns but fromthe beginning of the sixteenth century became more and more an auxiliary institution, involved, for example, inpasturing the sultan’s horses. In the late fifteenth century there were over 1,500 men registered as voynuks in thesancak of Vidin.64 Vidin was one of the few places where the müselleman were Christians, serving on boats on the Danube andcontrolling the river banks.65 The filurcis, conscripted mainly among the semi-nomad Vlachs, were one of the specific corps in this provinceand the western parts of the neighbouring Nigbolu sancak. They served as the advance guard, spying and showingthe routes to the main body of the army.66 Bojanić-Lukać, Vidin i Vidinskiyat sandzhak, 55–94.

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(especially the craftsmen). While these institutions were staffed as a rule by Christians,their commanders, who often received timars, were exclusively Muslims. Towards theend of the sixteenth century, after the frontier moved west, some of the corps were dis-banded (such as the filurciyan), others were preserved, but their nature changed andthey had less and less to do with military obligations. Their members were reduced tothe status of ordinary reaya. Unfortunately, there are no reliable sources about theVidin Christians’ participation in defence and military activities for the seventeenthcentury and until the war of 1715–18.

Christian participation in Ottoman military forces was not confined to Vidin. Aglimpse at the other fortresses on the Danube may give some ideas as to how thingsmight have developed in the century and a half between the late sixteenth century and1718. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a significant number of Christians inNigbolu were engaged in real military service, defending the frontier and the fortressunder the command of the sancakbeyi, as archers, gunners, martolosan, and in mainte-nance, as smiths, carpenters, arrow-producers, builders, in return for substantial taxexemptions. Some served also in the fortresses of Holıvnik (Turnu Magurele) andYergögi (Giurgiu) across the Danube. Another group operated under the command ofthe Nigbolu kapudan, employed both as a fighting force and to undertake maintenance.During the seventeenth century the numbers of all these groups dropped significantly,but more importantly, now the majority were auxiliaries, serving on the flotilla and ascraftsmen, rather than having paramilitary or strictly military functions.67 Until the endof the sixteenth century only a small group of Christians were engaged as craftsmen,mainly smiths and carpenters in the defence of the fortress of Silistre. As with Vidinand Nigbolu there were also voynuks, who in the seventeenth century were no longer aparamilitary corps but were responsible for taking care of the sultan’s horses. The realchange occurred after the Long War (1593–1606), when the local Christians foughtbravely against the Wallachian invasion. The Ottomans appreciated their loyalty andgranted them considerable tax exemptions. In exchange the Christians were obliged toequip and maintain two military boats, which were reduced to one at the beginning ofthe eighteenth century.68

Vidin seems to have been closer to the pattern of Nigbolu than of Silistre. Whatmakes it distinct, however, is the fact that after the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718), atwhich the Ottomans lost substantial Balkan territories to Austria, local Janissariesapplied to the central authorities to sanction their demand for the banishment of theChristians from the newly fortified part of the town, referring to the kanun-i serhad (thelaw of the frontier). The Christians were ordered to sell their houses to Muslims andbuild new ones of wood, not stone, outside the walls so that these could not serve as a

67 Parveva, ‘Balgari na sluzhba’, 232–9. For the earlier period see Evgeni Radu8ev, ‘Ottoman border periphery(serhad) in the Nikopol Vilayet, first half of the sixteenth century’, Études balkaniques, 31 (1995), 140–60.68 Parveva, ‘Balgari na sluzhba’, 239–44.

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shelter for an enemy in the case of attack. Their two churches were preserved wherethey were but were surrounded with high walls. Practising Christianity became very dif-ficult, especially since Christians were not allowed to stay in the fortified part of thetown after sunset. Jews remained in the walled part of the town, as a clear indicationthat they were the more trusted of the non-Muslim groups.69 The spatial division offaiths remained in force until the end of the Ottoman domination in the region,although some neighbourhoods outside the walls were mixed.

The reasons behind this spectrum of attitudes to non-Muslims in the three strong-holds on the Danube were varied. The decline in the use of non-Muslims in themilitary establishment was contemporaneous with the increasing ‘sunnification’ of theOttoman Empire and in line with one of the limitations imposed by Islamic legaltheory on the status of the so-called ‘protected’ (zimmi) non-Muslims in the Islamicstate which prohibits their possession of weapons. It was accompanied by a steadygrowth of the Muslim population, which became sufficiently large to meet the require-ments of both offensive and defensive warfare on its own. Another important factorwas the expanded Janissary corps, which increasingly became an instrument forMuslim reaya to change their status.70

The curtailment of non-Muslims in regular military service was also rooted in thepolitical climate, for the Ottoman authority was becoming increasingly aware of theshift in their Christian subjects’ sentiments towards Ottoman enemies. Normally,conquered non-Muslims—when they submitted voluntarily to the Muslims—wouldbe left in their residential areas, even in the citadel of a fortress, as several examplesfrom the Ottoman conquest show. However, any subversive act could upset thisarrangement.71 So far I have not come across any evidence of any acts by the VidinChristians in support of the Hapsburgs. However, there was (probably) in 1688 a risingof Bulgarian Catholics in north-western Bulgaria as well as several scattered rebellionsand conspiracies in northern Bulgaria among the Orthodox.72 During the war with theHoly League, Orthodox Christians in Serbia widely supported the Austrian army. At


69 NBKM, Or. Dept., Vidin, muhafız, N 2534; Ivanova, ‘Widin’, 206; Mitko Lachev, ‘Kratka istoriya na hrama“Sv. Nikolay Mirlikiyski Chudotvorets” v gr. Vidin’, Duhovna kultura, 70/11 (1990), 20–30.70 Parveva, ‘Balgari na sluzhba’, 246–7. See on these developments in general Halil Inalcik, ‘Military and fiscaltransformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600–1700’, Archivum Ottomanicum, 6 (1980), 283–337; and on the settle-ment of Janissaries in the provinces, Tsvetana Georgieva, Enicharite v balgarskite zemi (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo,1988), 116–72.71 This is what happened in Ioannina in 1611 when local Christians led by the metropolitan rose in an uprising andmassacred their Muslim co-citizens. After its suppression Christians who had been granted special privileges asa prize for their voluntary submission to the Ottomans at the time of the conquest, the right to remain in theirresidences in the fortified part of the town and exemption from devsirme, lost both.72 There are many questions around the so-called Chiprovtsi events. See in more detail Yoanna Spisarevska,‘Chiprovskoto vastanie—mit i realnost’, in 300 godini Chiprovsko vastanie. Prinos kam istoriyata na balgarite

(Sofia: BAN, 1988), 180–203; on contemporaneous developments among the Orthodox see Stra8imir Dimitrov,‘Mouvements de libération en Bulgarie orientale pendant les années 80 du XVIIe siècle’, Études balkaniques, 28(1992), 235–48.

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its withdrawal thousands of them followed, led by Patriarch Arsenije III of the Peć

Patriarchate. Yet none of these events, which took place very close to Vidin, seems tohave upset relations between Christians and Muslims there, at least not immediately.After the war Christians in the district of Vidin applied for permission to reconstructtheir churches, which had obviously suffered during the war.73 In 1696 and 1698–9 theywere relieved from paying cizye on the grounds of poverty and devastation caused bymilitary action.74 The list of the Ottoman authorities’ acts showing that they werededicated to preserving good relations with their Christian subjects could be extended.

However, the Austrian occupation brought about not only significant displacementof Vidin’s population,75 but caused considerable problems for local Muslims. Morethan twenty years later the latter still referred to the ‘infidels’ invasion’ (kefire-i istilâ) asthe reason for the flight of many local people, for the destruction and desecration ofplaces of worship, and for the loss of the registers of the kadı court, which requiredrecording many documents anew.76 This shock, reinforced by the even more disastrouswar of 1715–18, when the district once again became the theatre of military hostilities,and not last, the fact that many of the Muslims now living in Vidin had come from thelost territories, must have laid a lasting imprint on the attitude of the Muslim inhabi-tants of the town vis-à-vis Christians. A final blow to the relations between theOttomans/Muslims and the local Christian reaya must have been dealt by the growthof banditry during the war of 1715–18, which prompted the local authorities todemand the signing of a collective liability declaration from the local Christian reaya

that they would not support the hayduds.77

73 S 14, fol. 4b, doc. I, of 1699.74 Boris Nedkov, ‘Pogolovniyat danak v Osmanskata imperiya s ogled na Balgariya’, Istoricheski Pregled, 1(1945–6), 25.75 Muslims, as sicil material from the beginning of the eighteenth century shows, had dispersed to more or less dis-tant places—from Bursa to nearby Vratsa. Some of them returned, others chose to sell their property and leavefor good. The same had happened to Jews. Rossitsa Gradeva, ‘Jews and Ottoman authority in the Balkans: thecases of Sofia, Vidin and Rusçuk, 15th–17th centuries’, in eadem, Rumeli, 245–6.76 See numerous references in the following kadı sicils: NBKM, S 345, of 1696; S 13, of 1698–99; S 14, of1699–1702; and especially in S 38, of 1705–13.77 In 1711 the Ottomans discovered a conspiracy involving Orthodox Christians in several places in northernBulgaria (but not in or near Vidin) who were in connection with Tsar Peter the Great and planned an uprising insupport of his campaign. Rossitsa Gradeva, ‘Villagers in international trade: the case of Chervena Voda, seven-teenth to the beginning of eighteenth century’ Oriente Moderno, 25 n.s. 1 (86) (2006) (Special Issue, The Ottomans

and Trade, ed. Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet), 20. I do not believe that it could have had any contribution to theevents after 1718, though. A much more probable direct cause for the demand of the Vidin Janissaries may havebeen the bandit activities of the Bulgarian haydud Papazoglu who in 1715 disrupted traffic on the Danube andcrossed to the south bank from Wallachia. In 1716/17, according to an order to the overseer (nazır) of Vidin, thethree ‘captains’, Georgi, Dimitri and Filimon, crossed the Danube with a numerous band (and their families) andencamped in a place eight to nine hours away from Vidin, between Vidin and Lom, trying to raise the local reaya

against the Ottomans. However 200 ‘brave Muslims’ from Vidin attacked and routed them. See Bistra Cvetkova,‘Un document turc inédit concernant un mouvement de résistance en Bulgarie du Nord-Ouest au XVIIIe siècle’,Rocznik Orientalistyczny, 38 (1976), 96, 99–100.

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Administrative System and Agrarian Regime

The territory of Vidin sancak remained relatively stable through the centuries. For mostof the period under study until the end of the seventeenth century Vidin belonged tothe eyalet of Rumeli. The new geopolitical situation after the Treaty of Karlowitzforced the Ottomans to restructure the administrative units in the region. Vidin wasthen included in the eyalet of Temesvar and the frontier. After 1718 it went back toRumeli, this time as the immediate serhad. Significant fluctuations in its boundaries canbe observed during the fifteenth century, related to the Ottoman expansion westward,and then after the end of the seventeenth century, reflecting the reorganisation of theOttoman frontier and the loss of territories to the neighbours.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the timar system and the corps basedon it underlay the administrative system in the region. Indeed, one of the main featuresof the landholding there, with a direct bearing on the development of the administra-tive system, was the introduction of the miri system. The imperial hass in the sancak

comprising 498 villages in 1560 was, according to D. Bojanić -Lukać , the largest onein the Balkans.78 Other hasses were held by the sancakbeyi, and in the late seventeenthcentury by the grand vizier.79 The rest of the tax-yielding sources were assigned totimar-holders and to Muslim and Christian reaya who provided various services to thestate, mainly related to warfare. This was paralleled by the absence in Vidin of agrarianmülk properties and vakıfs, that is, no significant plots of land were held as quasi-privateproperty even by the powerful lords from the time of the conquest.80

According to a synoptic defter of 1454–5, the sancak consisted of the vilayet ofVidin, and the nahiyes of Isfirlik, Bane and Belgrad, as well as the unspecified units ofTimok (along the river of the same name), Gelviye (along the upper course of the riverCrni Timok), Velesniçe, Çerna Reka (along the middle and lower course of the riverCrna Reka) and Zagoriye. All reflect the sub-units within the troops coming out ofthe province. Around the mid-sixteenth century the administrative structure seemsto have attained its optimal shape, including the nahiyes of Vidin, Isfirlik, Bane,Timok, Zagoriye, Çerna Reka, Fethülislam, Krivina, Lom and Belgrad.81 However,there was also a parallel administrative system based on judgeships, the kazas of Vidin,Bane, Isfirlik and Fethülislam. In 1699 at least two districts (Berkovitsa82 and


78 Bojanić-Lukać, Vidin i Vidinskiyat, 13.79 Strashimir Dimitrov, Vastanieto ot 1850 g. v Balgariia (Sofia: BAN, 1972), 18.80 The Mihaloglus had large estates around Pleven, Ihtiman, and probably also Filibe/Plovdiv, in Bulgaria, as wellas around Edirne, Turkey, but none is registered in the Vidin sancak. See Babinger, ‘Mikhal-oghlu’, 34.81 Gradeva, ‘Administrative system’, 36–7; Kayapınar, ‘Le sancak ottoman de Vidin’, 117–29; NBKM, Or. Dept.,S 14, fol. 14b, doc. II.82 There is conflicting information about Berkovitsa. While the document we have referred to above speaks of theelection of the kethüda yeri (their local leader and representative in front of all authorities) by the commanders(aga) of the six detachments of the altı bölüks stationed in the sancak of Vidin, there is evidence from the sameyear that Berkovitsa was a nahiye in Pasa sancak: Dokumenti za balgarskata istoriya, III: Dokumenti iz turskite

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Kutlofçe83) formerly in the Pasha sancak had been added to the Vidin one, while oth-ers (Fethülislam and Bane) were no longer part of it. Between 1718 and 1739Fethülislam and Krajna, the north-westernmost parts of the sancak, were in Hapsburgpossession, but then were joined again to the Vidin province, where they stayed untilthe beginning of the nineteenth century.

The evolution of internal divisions reflected changes in military and political struc-tures, in the first place the disappearance in the course of the seventeenth century of thetimars and of the tax-exempt holdings of reaya groups with paramilitary functions atthe expense of the imperial hasses. The Vidin nezaret, founded on the hass lands dur-ing the seventeenth century, expanded after the war with the Holy League to includethe territory of the whole sancak, which was divided into several territorial and/or tax-based mukataas.84 The parallel division into judgeships remained, at the end of theseventeenth century comprising Vidin, Fethülislam, Isfirlik, Bane, Timok85 and Lom.86

However, they seem to have ceased to function as the basis of the Ottoman adminis-tration in the province. During the eighteenth century the sancak of Vidin had turnedinto a nezaret, and the division into mukataas had replaced the classical one of thesancak-kaza-nahiye type in the province, although occasionally there is indication thatmukataa X belonged to (tabi [) kaza Y.87 Their revenues were allocated as ocaklık88 forthe salaries of the paid troops in the sancak and in several other provinces, such asTemesvar and Isakçea, and of captains and crews of the river ships stationed up theDanube.89

darzhavni arhivi, trans. and ed. Pancho Dorev (Sofia: Pridvorna Pechatnitsa, 1940), doc. 73, 72–3, also from 1699.The two documents might be reflecting a transitional period or some confusion in the Ottoman central records.83 Both districts are attested as part of the sancak until the late eighteenth century.84 In the documents appear the territorial mukataas of Sahra, Timok, Krivina, Belgrad, Polomiye, Krayna, Archarand others. See for example, NBKM, Or. Dept., S 14, fol. 14b, doc. I, S 38, fol. 20a, doc. I; or the mukataas of therevenues from the ports of Vidin and Filurdin, the varos of Vidin, etc., ibid., S 38, fol. 78b, doc. I. See alsoRadushev, Agrarnite institutsii, 57–102.85 NBKM, S 345, fol. 4b, doc. I, of 1697.86 NBKM, S 14, fol. 9b, docs II and III, of 1700.87 This tendency is not unique to Vidin. In the first decades of the eighteenth century the timar holdings wereabolished and added to the sultan’s hasses (for example on the islands of Mytilene and Crete). Even earlier, in thelate seventeenth century, timars were transformed into mukataas in the sancaks of Diyarbakır, Tokat, Aleppo,Amasya and others. See Radushev, Agrarnite institutsii, 71–2. Sometimes this was done as the result of yoklama

(muster rolls), Dimitrov, ‘Politikata na upravliavashtata varhushka v Turtsiya’, 37 (in 1715 on the basis of yoklama

were confiscated 2,199 timars in Erzurum, of which 1,517 were vacant and 602 belonged to deserters; they were allincluded in the sultan’s hasses).88 On the ocaklık as a system of payment and administration see Rhoads Murphey, ‘The Functioning of theOttoman Army under Murad IV (1623–1639/ 1032–1042): Key to the Understanding of the Relationship betweenthe Center and Periphery in Seventeenth-Century Turkey’ (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Chicago, 1979),187–202; Michael Hickok, Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia (Leiden: Brill, 1997),79–98; Radushev, Agrarnite institutsii, 80–9. On the use of mukataas for direct salary assignments see also HaimGerber, ‘Mukataa’, EI2, 7: 508.89 NBKM, Or. dept., S 13, fol. 25a, doc. I, fol. 25b, doc. I, both of 1699; S 14, fol. 36a, doc. I, of 1700; S 13, fol.21b, doc. II, of 1699.

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This process, combined with the massive migrations and the displacement ofvillagers during the wars at the end of the seventeenth and in the first half of theeighteenth century, led to the emergence of a specific system of land ownership in thearea (gospodarlıks90). The title deeds (tapu) were no longer in the possession of thepeasants cultivating the land, but in the hands of new agents who intervened betweenthe nazırs, acting as representatives of the sultan, and the direct cultivators. The tapuswere bought by local notables, mainly Janissaries, citizens of Vidin. This deprived thevillagers of their legal possession rights to the land, for they were now treated as ten-ants. Towards the end of the eighteenth century this process was given additionalimpetus by another series of wars, and by the devastation of the countryside by mas-sive brigandage, by plagues, and especially by the regime of Osman Pasvanoglu. Thepeasants no longer paid the traditional taxes, which were replaced by a single tax to theowner of the tapu and one to Pasvanoglu (in the Vidin area) who had acquired, amongother positions, the combined prerogatives of the former superintendents of theimperial hasses and of the nazır.91 As late as the first quarter of the nineteenth centurythe Janissaries in Vidin claimed that, in compliance with the kanun-i serhad, the lawof olden times, property rights on land in the frontier areas belonged exclusively tothe Muslim soldiers from these fortresses.92 The transformation of the villages intogospodarlıks or agas’ villages, as they were also called, corresponds to the process ofcitlucenje taking place in the adjacent Belgrade pasalık, where a similar agrarian regimeestablished by the Janissaries was among the direct causes for the uprising of 1804,leading to the emergence of the Serbian Principality, the first successor state to theOttoman Empire in the Balkans.93 This agrarian relations problem seems to have beentinged by religious confrontation, because at that time the Muslim population was con-centrated in urban centres while the peasants were exclusively Christians.94 The regime


90 The term originates from the Slavic word gospodar, that is, master.91 Dimitrov, Vastanieto ot 1850 g., 13–34. See also Gandev, ‘Zarazhdane na kapitalisticheski otnosheniya’,271–393. Bruce McGowan based his discussion of the developments in the region of Vidin on Gandev’s works:Economic Life in Ottoman Europe: Taxation, Trade, and the Struggle for Land, 1600–1800 (Cambridge and Paris:Cambridge University Press/Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1981), passim.92 Dimitrov, Vastanieto ot 1850 g., 32.93 While citlucenje comes from the term çiftlik, in essence it represents a process similar to the above-describedemergence of gospodarlık villages in which the tapu holders were usually members of the local military elite. In thisregime the peasants rented the land, sometimes even their houses, and paid not only the usual taxes to the statebut also a land rent to the holder of the tapu, that is the Janissaries, and had the status of tenants. However, inSerbia there existed another power centre supported by the central authority, the sipahis, Dimitrov, Vastanieto ot

1850 g., 21–2. On Serbia and Bosnia, see also Bruce McGowan, ‘The age of the ayans, 1699–1812’, in Halil Inalcıkwith Donald Quataert (eds.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1994), 685–6; on Kiustendil and on the distinction between gospodarlık and çiftlik

lands see Slavka Draganova, Kiustendilskiyat Region, 1864–1919 (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo ‘Marin Drinov’,1996), 26–38.94 For an exception of a powerful Christian who had agricultural estates of a similar nature in the nearby Vratsaregion see Svetla Ianeva, ‘Dimitraki Tsenov HADZHITOSHEV’, in Iliya Todev (ed.), Koi koi e sred balgarite,

XV–XIX v. (Sofia: Anubis, 2000), 281–3.

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remained in force until well into the nineteenth century, after the introduction of theagrarian reforms in most of the Ottoman Balkans, probably because the centralauthorities were reluctant to confront openly local Muslim society in this strategicregion. It was only a series of riots and especially the uprising of 1850 that convincedit that reforms could no longer be avoided. These were finally introduced only in 1863.95

Conclusion

When assessing the impact of war on the Vidin region one must bear in mind thesimilarities but, more importantly, the distinctions in the two periods when it wasdirectly on the Ottoman frontier. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the warswere waged by a rapidly expanding state; in the late seventeenth and eighteenth cen-turies, despite some reversals in the trend, wars led to retreat and contraction. Bothperiods put a great strain on the entire local society. The different circumstancesrequired different responses, and, naturally, had different consequences. Warfaredemanded the involvement of all the available manpower and infrastructure, and flexi-bility on the part of the authorities. After the Crusade of 1443–4, and with the excep-tion of the raids of Michael the Brave, Prince of Wallachia, in the late 1590s, no otherserious disruption of the order had taken place in the region. However, from 1688, theOttoman territories again became a theatre of war. This required changes in theadministrative and defensive systems, the construction of new forts, especially alongthe Danube, forming a constellation around the modernised and enlarged fortress ofVidin.

In the first period the Ottomans took advantage of the existing infrastructure andhuman potential and adapted it to their needs, introducing at the same time the kadı

court and the timar system, the two most important institutions in provincial adminis-tration. Although occupying the lowest level in the military corps, Christians wereconspicuously present in them, and they were widely used in paramilitary and auxiliarycorps. Over the centuries local circumstances in combination with the changed realitiesled to the abandonment of the traditional timarlı troops and the transformation ofVidin into a Janissary town and to the militarisation of local (Muslim) society, a societyin which Muslims were the soldiers, and Christians were already entirely excluded fromwarfare, even from auxiliary functions. While reducing the participation of the non-Muslims in the armed forces had been a general trend, it seems that the attitude to themvaried from place to place, and the closer to the border the less acceptable they were in

95 See for example the lists of the ‘agalar villages’, in the nahiye of Polomiye/Lom from around 1835 and prior to1850 in Simeon Damianov, Lomskiyat kray prez Vazrazhdaneto. Ikonomicheski zhivot i politicheski borbi (Sofia,1967), 324–38. In many cases there are direct indications that the villages in question had been transformed intoçiftliks by or during the rule of Pasvanoglu.

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defence, though they still had a role in maintenance. Thus, in Vidin, on the basis of the‘law of the frontier’ (which, interestingly, does not appear in sources from the earlierperiod!) Christians were excluded not only from service but also had to leave their resi-dences in the fortified part of the town. The same law was used by the Vidin Janissariesto give legal sanction to the deprivation of Christian peasants of land ownership.Similar events occurred around the same time, in the 1720s, in Nis, Sofia, and severalother places that had changed hands during the wars or had been under direct threat,and had remained in frontier areas. In some cases the justification was the kanun-i

serhad, in others it was different, but the result was the same—the expulsion ofChristians from the central/fortified parts of the town. This seems to have been initiatedby local Muslim communities, while the central authorities had to accept it more or lessas a fait accompli. The reasons for their demands are not necessarily rooted in concreteacts of the local Christians but rather in an atmosphere in which Muslims felt more andmore vulnerable and exposed to danger from outside. ‘The infidels’ invasion’ was defi-nitely an important memory for the Vidin Muslims, who attributed many of their mis-fortunes to it, as did Jews. Probably Christians did too, but Muslims saw in thempotential danger to the Ottoman rule. This memory was reinforced by the Hapsburgexpansion, which brought the frontier very close to Vidin. These events contributed tothe emergence of a frontier spirit, very different from that of the expanding OttomanEmpire. It did not imply a pervasive hostility between the faiths, and there were evenfriendships between Muslims and Christians across the border in the tradition of theold epics, but it made the Muslims very sensitive to the position of Christians, and ofcourse gave them opportunity to profit economically.


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17 Between Hinterland and Frontier: Ottoman Vidin...

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