Original scientific paper

Turkish Receipts on the Ragusan Payment of Tribute (Harač)

Vesna Miović

Abstract

Over the period 1458-1804 the Republic of Dubrovnik paid tribute to the Ottoman sultan. Voluminous material at the Dubrovnik Archives provides diverse information on the subject. Ragusan documents focus on the methods of collecting money for the tribute, on the selection of patrician envoys, the so-called poklisari harača, who were to deliver it to the sultan, and on the consular and diplomatic affairs they attended to while at the Porte. Turkish receipts on the Ragusan payment of tribute reveal some new details and broaden our knowledge on the topic. The archival series Acta Turcarum files 182 receipts on the payment of harač. Almost all of the original documents are in the form of sultan’s edict or firman, as Ragusan tribute was considered a gift to the sultan himself and thus belonged to his private treasury. Apart from the original, also preserved are the transcripts and translations, mainly into Croatian and less often into Italian. Transcripts were done by the scribes at the Porte or by the dragomans of the Republic of Dubrovnik. The translations were also done by the Ragusan dragomans. The Archive also houses several copies of the Turkish texts transcribed from Arabic into Latin script. The standardized form of the receipt contains the following information: type and amount of money delivered as tribute; names of the envoys who delivered it; the beginning and maturity of the harač period (in the eighteenth century it was three years); date of payment, and place and date of the receipt issue.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

11627

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/11627

Publication date:

23.5.2004.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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