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Ottoman Military Commanding Personnel in the Fortresses of Klis, Lončarić and Kamen around 1630
Krešimir Kužić
Sažetak
In 1629 a group of eleven Ottoman commanders (agas) from the fortress of Klis, five commanders from the fortress of Lončarić, four from Kamen, two Friday preachers (hatibs) and five fortress commanders’ deputies (kethüdas) sent a letter of warning to the Venetian proveditore in Zadar. They demanded that Venetian authorities stop collecting feudal dues from the peasants cultivating lands in the contested border area to the north of Trogir. They threatened that, if their demands were ignored, they would block trade routes between Bosnia and Split. The article discusses prosopographical data on the majority of these people, and establishes their military duties and positions. They were castellans (dizdars), and captains (kapudans) and the commanders of the stationary troops (mustahfizes) and the mobile troops (both azaps and farises). For the most part, their family names were also established. Thus, it became clear that these and similar Ottoman military officers of the border marches (sancaks) of the province (eyalet) of Bosnia had hereditary status. Regarding the border conflict, it is a fact that the Ottomans came into its possession around fifty years earlier, by unilateral demarcation. Peasants inhabiting that area, even if they were nominally Ottoman subjects with the privileges of Vlachs, concluded treaties with the patricians of Trogir concerning their feudal dues on their own, which provoked the aforementioned members of the provincial elite into forcing peasants from their possessions and retaining agreed dues. The whole case was not an exception, because the so-called çiftlikisation process was at that time happening not only in Dalmatia, but also all over the European part of the Ottoman Empire, where, because of the weakness of the central authority caused by the incessant wars, the decline of the economy and a constant state of corruption, formerly free peasants were little by little transformed into serfs. Discrimination on religious grounds was also present. Although the central authorities from time to time tried to restrain the agas, the latter put up forceful resistance. Moreover, they were supported by warlike factions at the court. All these developments came to help to ensure that the peasantry completely supported the Venetians in the following wars of Candia (Crete) and the Morea (Peloponnese), in which the Ottoman regime in Dalmatia was completely defeated and the aforementioned agas disinherited from all their possessions.
Ključne riječi
Ottoman Empire; military service; landed property; military frontier; Klis
Hrčak ID:
7450
URI
Datum izdavanja:
19.12.2005.
Posjeta: 5.915 *