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79-549: Suvorovo was originally named Kozludža during the Ottoman era ( Kozluca in modern Turkish), usually spelled Kozludzha or Kozludja ( Bulgarian : Козлуджа ) meaning "place filled with walnuts" ( kozlu ); this name still persists in Turkish. In 1934 it was renamed Novgradets ( Bulgarian : Новградец ). Its present name is in honor of Generalissimus Alexander Suvorov , one of the famous Russian military commanders, who won

158-657: A Sanjakbey or Subasi accountable to the Beylerbey . Significant parts of the conquered land were parcelled out to the Sultan 's followers, who held it as benefices or fiefs (small timar , medium zeamet and large hass ) directly from him, or from the Beylerbeys. This category of land could not be sold or inherited but reverted to the Sultan when the fiefholder died. The lands were organised as private possessions of

237-478: A complex set of factors behind the process. These include: pre-existing high population density owing to the late inclusion of the two mountainous regions in the Ottoman system of taxation; immigration of Christian Bulgarians from lowland regions to avoid taxation throughout the 1400s; the relative poverty of the regions; early introduction of local Christian Bulgarians to Islam through contacts with nomadic Yörüks ;

316-531: A decisive battle of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 in the vicinity of the modern town. The town has a historical museum, a community centre ( chitalishte ), an Eastern Orthodox church dedicated to the Ascension of Jesus and a mosque. Suvorovo municipality covers an area of 216 square kilometres (83 sq mi) (of which 61% arable) includes the following 9 places: Notable natives of

395-468: A minority of Circassians) were counted as "Established", while colonists who still benefited from a tax exemption (as a rule, Circassians arriving in 1864 or later) were regarded as "Muhacir". Contemporary European geographers, such as German-English Ravenstein , French Bianconi and German Kiepert similarly counted Crimean Tatars with Turks in Islam millet. Timar A timar was a land grant by

474-535: A number of other restrictions: they were barred from testifying against Muslims in inter-faith legal disputes. Even though they were free to perform their own religious rituals, this had to be done in a manner that was inconspicuous to Muslims, i.e., loud prayers or bell ringing were forbidden. They were barred from certain professions, from riding horses, from wearing certain colours or from carrying weapons. Nevertheless, there were specific categories of rayah who were exempt from nearly all such restrictions, such as

553-512: A particularly poignant issue after jizye collection in most of the country was taken over by the Six Divisions of Cavalry . Bulgarians also paid a number of other taxes, including a tithe ("yushur"), a land tax ("ispench"), a levy on commerce, and various irregularly collected taxes, products and corvees ("avariz"). Generally, the overall tax burden on the rayah (i.e., Non-Muslims), was twice as high as that on Muslims. Christians faced

632-421: A slow, but steady process of Islamisation until the mid-1600s when the tax burden became so unbearable that most of the remaining Christians either converted en masse or left for lowland areas. These factors had an impact on the entire country. Due to them, the population of Ottoman Bulgaria is presumed to have dropped twofold from a peak of approx. 1.8 million (1.2 million Christians and 0.6 million Muslims) in

711-485: A temporary arrangement before they were appointed to some appropriate position. It was a kind of appanage given to increasing number of members of the Ottoman elite for tax farming . Instead to resolving the Porte's problems, the institutions of arpalik introduced new, even bigger ones. The exact duties of the arpalik holders were never precisely defined by the Ottoman government, which caused frequent tensions between

790-399: A verdict from a local judge in accordance to imperial law. Their duties were to protect peasants and persons in their territory and to join the imperial army during campaigns. The sultan gave Sipahis vineyards and a meadow for the needs of their families, retainers and horses. One of the main conditions imposed by the state was that a Timar holder did not own the land, as ownership was held by

869-505: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Ottoman Bulgaria The history of Ottoman Bulgaria spans nearly 500 years, beginning in the late 14th century, with the Ottoman conquest of smaller kingdoms from the disintegrating Second Bulgarian Empire . In the late 19th century, Bulgaria was liberated from the Ottoman Empire , and by the early 20th century it was declared independent . The brutal suppression of

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948-568: Is commonly accepted to have started with the historical book, Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya , written in 1762 by Paisius , a Bulgarian monk of the Hilandar monastery at Mount Athos , lead to the National awakening of Bulgaria and the modern Bulgarian nationalism , and lasted until the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878 as a result of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 . The Millet system

1027-501: Is perhaps the immediate predecessor of the Timar system. However, it was not until the re-emergence of the empire under Mehmed I in 1413 that a tenure system that was distinctly Timar was developed. Before the collapse of the empire by Timur in 1402, Bayezid had granted quasi-Timar holdings to his own servants. With the reunification of the Ottoman lands under a Sultan , these men would once again have legal title to their holdings. Over

1106-477: Is written down and codified in a narrative called ( Kanunname ) that mediated and resolved contradictions especially between those two non-Islamic legal traditions – local and imperial – upon which the Ottomans based their dominion 3) officials consult with local grandees and proceeded from village to village to inspect and evaluate land and other holdings 4) draw up results of the survey in a register prefaced by

1185-635: The Austrians as part of their long war with the Ottomans. All of the uprisings were unsuccessful and were brutally suppressed . Most of them resulted in massive waves of exiles, often numbering hundreds of thousands. In 1739 the Treaty of Belgrade between Austrian empire and the Ottoman Empire ended Austrian interest in the Balkans for a century. But by the 18th century the rising power of Russia

1264-832: The Bulgarian church in Constantinople in pursuance of the March 12 [ O.S. February 28] 1870 firman of Sultan Abdülaziz of the Ottoman Empire. The foundation of the Exarchate was the direct result of the struggle of the Bulgarian Orthodox population against the domination of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople in the 1850s and 1860s. In 1872, the Patriarchate accused

1343-609: The Constantinople Conference (1876-1877), and along with the strategic interests of Russia on the Balkans, was a reason for the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 that ended with the reestablishment of independent Bulgarians state in 1878, albeit under the Treaty of Berlin Bulgarians were divided, and the territory of the Principality of Bulgaria was far smaller than what Bulgarians had hoped for and what

1422-583: The Dervendjis , who guarded important passes, roads, bridges, etc., ore-mining settlements such as Chiprovtsi , etc. Some of the most important Bulgarian cultural and economic centres in the 19th century owe their development to a former dervendji status, for example, Gabrovo , Dryanovo , Kalofer , Panagyurishte , Kotel , Zheravna . Similarly, Christians living on wakf holdings were subject to lower tax burden and fewer restrictions. The Ottoman Empire's greatest advantage compared to other colonial powers,

1501-665: The First Tarnovo Uprising , the Chiprovtsi uprising , the Second Tarnovo uprising and Karposh's rebellion , which led to the massive flight of Christian Bulgarians to Wallachia and the Austrian Empire , the population of present-day Bulgaria in the 1680s is assumed to have dropped to approx. 0.9 million in the 1680s, divided into 450,000 Christians and 450,000 Muslims (or a ratio of 1:1). From

1580-458: The Kanunname that listed the names of all the towns, villages and populations, what they produced and expected revenues. Based on these fiscal projections, the Sultan would distribute the land and villages to the soldiers who had participated in the conquest. Initially the candidates for Timar were recommended individually to the Sultan. Upon receiving this recommendation, the Sultan commanded

1659-581: The Russian Empire (depending on theory), led to the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) , whereby the much smaller Principality of Bulgaria , a self-governing, but functionally independent Ottoman vassal state was created. In 1885 the Ottoman autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia unified through a bloodless coup with the Principality of Bulgaria . The Ottomans reorganised the Bulgarian territories, dividing them into several vilayets , each ruled by

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1738-596: The Sultan for these grants in reward for participating in the growing number of campaigns. Furthermore, Timars were being offered to volunteers and members of the pre-Ottoman military class for their loyalty and service to the Sultan. In order to meet this new demand, existing Timars were turned into jointly held unites, or divided into shares. This growing demand also forced the Ottoman Sultan’s to engage in further wars of conquest in neighbouring countries thus creating Timars through new surveys. This however, also increased

1817-664: The millet system and the autonomy each denomination had within legal, confessional, cultural and family matters, nevertheless, largely did not apply to Bulgarians and most other Orthodox peoples on the Balkans, as the independent Bulgarian Patriarchate was destroyed and all Bulgarian Orthodox dioceses were subjected to the rule of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople and made part of Rum millet (Greek Orthodox millet). Thus, instead of helping Christian Bulgarians maintain their customs and cultural identity,

1896-425: The sultans of the Ottoman Empire between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, with an annual tax revenue of less than 20,000 akçes . The revenues produced from the land acted as compensation for military service. A holder of a timar was known as a timariot . If the revenues produced from the timar were from 20,000 to 100,000 akçes , the land grant was called a zeamet , and if they were above 100,000 akçes ,

1975-532: The "Five Bulgarian Sanjaks" as per 1865 Pop. Registry According to the "Kuyûd-ı Atîk" Ottoman Population Register, the male population of the five sanjaks to eventually form the future Principality of Bulgaria was divided into the following ethnoconfessional communities in 1865: Between 1855 and 1865, the population of the Danube Vilayet underwent seismic changes, as the Ottoman authorities settled more than 300,000 Crimean Tatars and Circassians on

2054-450: The "established Muslims" column and additional 20,000 were left out or simply lost in the carry-over. The division of Muslims into "Established" and "Muhacir" in the 1873-1874 Census and the 1875 Ottoman Salname was not based on origin, as the name might suggest, but on "taxability". Thus, colonists whose tax exemption had expired and were liable to taxation (i.e., those of them who had settled prior to 1862—Crimean Tatars, Nogais, etc. and

2133-511: The 1490s. At the same time, there are records of at least two forced relocations of Bulgarians to Anatolia, one right after the fall of Veliko Tarnovo and a second one to İzmir in the mid-1400s. The goal of this "mixing of peoples" was to quell any unrest in the conquered Balkan states, while simultaneously getting rid of troublemakers in the Ottoman backyard in Anatolia. However, Ottomans never pursued or practiced forced Islamisation of

2212-673: The 1580s to approx. 0.9 million in the 1680s (450,000 Christians and 450,000 Muslims), after growing steadily from a base of approx. 600,000 (450,000 Christians and 150,000 Muslims) in the 1450s. While the Ottomans were ascendant, there was overt opposition to their rule. The first revolt began at the time Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund established the chivalric Order of the Dragon , 1408, when two Bulgarian nobles, Konstantin and Fruzhin , revolted and liberated some regions for several years. The earliest evidence of continued local resistance dates from before 1450. Radik ( alternatively Radich)

2291-732: The Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876 and the public outcry it caused across Europe led to the Constantinople Conference , where the Great Powers tabled a joint proposal for the creation of two autonomous Bulgarian vilayets, largely corresponding to the ethnic boundaries drawn a decade earlier with the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate . The sabotage of the Conference, by either the British or

2370-598: The Bulgarian population, as had earlier been claimed by Communist Bulgarian historiography. According to scholarly consensus, conversion to Islam was voluntary as it offered Bulgarians religious and economic benefits. According to Thomas Walker Arnold , Islam was not spread by force in the areas under the control of the Ottoman Sultan . A 17th-century author said: Meanwhile he (the Turk) wins (converts) by craft more than by force, and snatches away Christ by fraud out of

2449-481: The Danube Vilayet, Bulgarian statistician Dimitar Arkadiev has found that men aged 15–60 represented, on average, 49.5% of all males and that the coefficient that would make it possible to calculate the entire male population is therefore 2.02 . To compute total population, male figures are then usually doubled (Bulgarian authors have suggested a coefficient of 1.956, but this has not gained international acceptance). Using this method of computation, (N=2 x (Y x 2.02)) ,

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2528-527: The Empire and the term was used for legally protected religious minority groups , similar to the way other countries use the word nation . New millets were created in 1860 and 1870. The Bulgarian Exarchate (a de facto autocephalous Orthodox church) was created as separate Bulgarian diocese based on voted ethnic identity . It was unilaterally (without the blessing of the Ecumenical Patriarch ) promulgated on May 23 [ O.S. May 11] 1872, in

2607-626: The Exarchate that it introduced ethno-national characteristics in the religious organization of the Orthodox Church, and the secession from the Patriarchate was officially condemned by the Council in Constantinople in September 1872 as schismatic . Nevertheless, Bulgarian religious leaders continued to extend the borders of the Exarchate in the Ottoman Empire by conducting plebiscites in areas contested by both Churches. In this way, in

2686-743: The Future Principality of Bulgaria in 1875 At the same time, a flash summary of the results of the Danube Vilayet Census published in the Danube Official Gazette on 18 October 1874 (also covering the Sanjak of Tulça ) gave twice as many male Circassian Muhacir , 64,398 vs. 30,573, and slightly fewer "established Muslims" than the final results published in 1875. According to Turkish Ottomanist Koyuncu, 13,825 male Circassians were carried over to

2765-457: The Ottoman administrative system. The boys were picked from one in forty households. They had to be unmarried and, once taken, were ordered to cut all ties with their family. While a minority of authors have argued that "some parents were often eager to have their children enrol in the Janissary service that ensured them a successful career and comfort" , scholarly consensus leans very much

2844-467: The Ottoman state. Another essential condition was that Timars could not be inherited but it was not uncommon for a Timar to be reassigned to a son provided they performed military service. Holding a Timar was contingent on active military service and if a Sipahi failed to participate in military service for seven years he lost his authority over the land grant. Nevertheless, a Sipahi retained his title and could be eligible for another Timar if he remained in

2923-509: The Porte and the provinces. This tensions probably additionally contributed to the decay of the traditional timar system because it left sipahis out of the clear chain of command . By the end of the sixteenth century the Timar system of land tenure had begun its unrecoverable decline. In 1528, the Timariot constituted the largest single division in the Ottoman army. Sipahis were responsible for their own expenses, including provision during

3002-565: The Sanjak of Sofia (male Muslim population of 2,896 and male non-Muslim population of 8,038) to the Ottoman Empire and the kaza of Mankalya from the Sanjak of Varna (male Muslim population of 6,675 and male non-Muslim population of 499) to Romania and attached the kaza of Iznebol (male Muslim population of 149 and male non-Muslim population of 7,072) from the Sanjak of Niš to the Principality of Bulgaria. Ethnoconfessional Groups in

3081-417: The Sultan or Ottoman nobility, called "mülk", and also as an economic base for religious foundations, called vakιf , as well as other people. The system was meant to make the army self-sufficient and to continuously increase the number of Ottoman cavalry soldiers, thus both fuelling new conquests and bringing conquered countries under direct Ottoman control. From the 14th century until the 19th century Sofia

3160-526: The Sultan’s military campaigns who would be eligible for a Timar grant. This made it so competing groups formed and were motivated to fight for the Sultan’s favouritism and patronage. By the time Mehmed II (r. 1451–1481) reigned over the Ottoman Empire the number of candidates eligible for Timar grants had fallen substantially. There was a growing expectation among the Janissary soldiers and other Kuls of

3239-729: The Timar system and other apparatuses of provincial administration. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the surveying and distribution of conquered territory among the Sipahi class had become a very complicated and highly bureaucratic process. In the survey, known as the Tapu-tahrirs , all the fiscal information about the territory would be collected and divided into Timar. The process went as follows: 1) appoint administrator ( emin – accompanied by clerk ( katip ) and regional judge kadı ) collected available documentation about land and building ownership and local taxes 2) information

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3318-465: The Turkish religion is false. If there is one among them who has some little book or can teach them in some other manner something of God's world, they hear him as diligently as if he were their preacher. When Greek scholar Janus Lascaris visited Constantinople in 1491, he met many Janissaries who not only remembered their former religion and their native land but also favoured their former coreligionists. One of them told him that he regretted having left

3397-613: The campaigns, their equipment, providing auxiliary men ( cebelu ) and valets ( gulam ). With the onset of new military technologies, particularly the gun, the Sipahis, who had once made up the backbone of the Ottoman army, were becoming obsolete. The long and costly wars which the Ottoman Sultans waged against the Habsburgs and Iranians had demanded the formation of a modern standing and professional army. Therefore, cash

3476-569: The delegated powers. They had the right to collect certain parts of the tax revenue from arable lands in certain localities in return for service to the state. They were responsible for supervising their Timar territory and the way it was cultivated and possessed by peasants. The Sipahi was rewarded if he procured the settlement of vacant land, but punished if he caused the abandonment of cultivated land. Timar holders had police authority to pursue and arrest wrongdoers within their territories. However, they could not enforce penalties until they received

3555-617: The desire to stop paying jizya as a primary incentive for conversion to Islam in the Balkans, and Bulgarian researcher Anton Minkov has argued that it was one among several motivating factors. Two large-scale studies of the causes of adoption of Islam in Bulgaria, one of the Chepino Valley by Dutch Ottomanist Machiel Kiel , and another one of the region of Gotse Delchev in the Western Rhodopes by Evgeni Radushev reveal

3634-681: The early 1700s, the Christian population is assumed to have started growing again. According to the 1831 Ottoman census , the male population in the Ottoman kazas that fall within the current borders of the Republic of Bulgaria stood at 496,744 people, including 296,769 Christians, 181,455 Muslims, 17,474 Romani , 702 Jews and 344 Armenians . The census only covered healthy taxable men between 15 and 60 years of age, who were free from disability. Millets in present-day Bulgaria as per 1831 Ottoman Census By using primary population records from

3713-572: The grant would be called a hass . In the Ottoman Empire, the timar system was one in which the projected revenue of a conquered territory was distributed in the form of temporary land grants among the Sipahis (cavalrymen) and other members of the military class including Janissaries and other servants of the sultan . These prebends were given as compensation for annual military service, for which they received no pay. In rare circumstances women could become timar holders. However, this privilege

3792-552: The hearts of men. For the Turk, it is true, at the present time compels no country by violence to apostatise; but he uses other means whereby imperceptibly he roots out Christianity... Thus, in a number of cases, conversion to Islam can be said to have been the result of tax coercion, due to the much lower tax burden on Muslims. While some authors have argued that other factors, such as desire to retain social status, were of greater importance, Turkish writer Halil İnalcık has referred to

3871-452: The heavy Muslim population losses earlier in the century, but also counteracted continued population loss and led to an increase in its Muslim population. In this connection, Karpat also refers to the material differences between Muslim and non-Muslim fertility rates, with non-Muslims growing at the rate of 2% per annum and Muslims usually averaging 0%. Koyuncu also notes a much higher natural rate of increase among Non-Muslims and attributes

3950-408: The inhabitants killed the recruiting officials. It was not rare for the boys to attempt to preserve their faith and some recollection of their homeland and their families. For example, Stephan Gerlach writes: They gather together and one tells another of his native land and of what he heard in church or learned in school there, and they agree among themselves that Muhammad is no prophet and that

4029-469: The last waves of Muslim migrants from Anatolia. As a result of the near-constant war led by the Ottoman Empire from the mid-1500s to the late 1600s, the need for additional tax revenues, the sixfold increase in jizye tax rates, which pauperised the Christian population, the Little Ice Age in the 1600s that caused crop failures and widespread famine and several important Bulgarian uprisings, e.g.,

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4108-476: The military class and participated in military campaigns. Due to the nature of the documentation of the early history of the Ottomans it is very difficult to assign the Timar system a concrete date. Elements of the Timar system however can be seen to have their origins in Pre-Islamic antiquity (Ancient Middle Eastern Empires, Rome , Byzantium , and pre-Islamic Iran ). Pronoia of the late Byzantine era

4187-501: The millet system actually promoted their assimilation. Bulgarian ceased to be a literary language, the higher clergy was invariably Greek, and the Phanariotes started making persistent efforts to hellenise Bulgarians as early as the early 1700s. It was only after the struggle for church autonomy in the mid-1800s and especially after the Bulgarian Exarchate was established by a firman of Sultan Abdülaziz in 1870 that this policy

4266-671: The municipality include Esoteric Christian spiritual leader Peter Dunov (born in Nikolaevka ; 1864–1944) and Movement for Rights and Freedoms president Ahmed Doğan (born in Pchelarovo , but spent his childhood in Drandar ; 1954-) Bulgaria's only 750 kV power substation is located just west of Suvorovo, at 43°18'52"N 27°30'25"E. 43°20′N 27°36′E  /  43.333°N 27.600°E  / 43.333; 27.600 This Varna Province , Bulgaria location article

4345-403: The nearly constant Ottoman conflict with the Habsburgs from the mid-1500s to the early 1700s; the resulting massive war expenses that led to a sixfold increase in the jizya rate from 1574 to 1691 and the imposition of a war-time avariz tax; the Little Ice Age in the 1600s that caused crop failures and widespread famine; heavy corruption and overtaxation by local landholders—all of which led to

4424-437: The next fifty years this system of land tenure was largely expanded and standardized. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottomans turned once more to the familiar policy of expansion through conquest. With the period of consolidation that followed there was a move towards total annexation and assimilation of the provinces into the Ottoman system. This meant the elimination of local dynasties and replacing them with

4503-403: The number of candidates for Timar grants. The solution to this crisis took two forms: more than one Sipahi holding a single Timar and instead of receiving an entire village, Sipahis were given shares in many villages in order to make up their Timar. These solutions likely had further implications than just meeting the demands of a growing demographic. The Ottoman government had a policy of keeping

4582-464: The other way. Christian parents are described to have resented the forced recruitment of their children, and would beg and seek to buy their children out of the levy. Many different ways of avoiding the devshirme are mentioned, including: marrying the boys at the age of 12, mutilating them or having both father and son convert to Islam. In 1565, the practice led to a revolt in Albania and Epirus, where

4661-575: The population of present-day Bulgaria in 1831 would stand at 2,006,845 people. The Principality of Bulgaria was established on 13 July 1878 and incorporated five of the sanjaks that used to be part of the Ottoman Danube Vilayet : The Sanjaks of Vidin , Tirnova , Rusçuk , Sofya and Varna , with individual border changes, cf. below. The two other sanjaks in the Danube Vilayet, those of Niš and Tulça , were ceded to Serbia and Romania, respectively. Ethnoconfessional Groups in

4740-424: The provincial governor to award the candidate with Timar in the province. The candidate then, “with the Sultan’s order” ( eli-emirlu ), would go out and find a vacant Timar suitable for him. It has been suggested that there was a regular rotation system so that Timar holders were dismissed after serving a defined period of tenure. This length would vary case to case. As long as the candidate participated regularly in

4819-453: The registered Timars intact even while the number of Sipahis grew. Furthermore, it prevented Sipahis from gaining complete and independent control over the peasants and land within a territory. The institution of arpalik was introduced to make burden of government officials easier by compensating losses of its high officials. An arpalik was a large estate (i.e. sanjak ) entrusted to some holder of senior position, or to some margrave , as

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4898-433: The religion of his fathers and that he prayed at night before the cross which he kept carefully concealed. Islam in Bulgaria spread through both colonisation with Muslims from Asia Minor and conversion of native Bulgarians. The Ottomans' mass population transfers began in the late 1300s and continued well into the 1500s. Most of these, but far from all, were involuntary. The first community settled in present-day Bulgaria

4977-486: The sixteenth century. The goals of the system were necessitated by financial, state and expansionist purposes. The financial aims of the system were to relieve pressure from the Ottoman state of paying the army as well as to gain a new source of revenue for the central treasury. The expansionist aims were to increase the number of cavalry soldiers and to gradually assimilate and bring conquered countries under direct Ottoman control. The Ottoman state also desired to centralize

5056-553: The struggle for recognition of a separate Church, the modern Bulgarian nation was created under the name Bulgar Millet . Also the Bulgarian Uniat Church was created. Armed resistance to the Ottoman rule escalated in the third quarter of the 19th century and reached its climax with the April Uprising of 1876 that covered part of the ethnically Bulgarian territories of the empire. The uprising, provoked

5135-461: The sultan’s authority by removing the feudal system and aristocratic elements from dominating the empire. Within the Timar system the state gave Timar holders, including the Sipahis, the authority to control of arable lands, vacant lands or land possessed by peasants, wastelands, fruit trees, forests or waters within the Timar territory. The Sipahis employed agents or surrogates called Kethüda , Vekil , or voyvoda to collect revenues and exercise

5214-470: The territory of the province. The settlement took place in two waves: one of 142,852 Tatars and Nogais , with a minority of Circassians, who settled in the Danube Vilayet between 1855 and 1862, and a second one of some 35,000 Circassian families (140,000–175,000 settlers), who arrived in 1864. According to Turkish scholar Kemal Karpat , the Tatar and Circassian colonisation of the vilayet not only offset

5293-471: The tremendous rate of increase in the Muslim population of the five Bulgarian sanjaks plus the Sanjak of Tulça of 84.23% (220,276 males) vs. 53.29% (229,188 males) for Non-Muslims from 1860 to 1875 to the colonisation of the vilayet with Crimean Tatars and Circassians. Ethnoconfessional Groups in the "Five Bulgarian sanjaks" as per 1873-74 Census The Congress of Berlin ceded the kaza of Cuma-i Bâlâ from

5372-474: The wide-scale migration of Muslims from Anatolia and emigration of Christians to Wallachia, etc. Both the Christian and Muslim population then grew steadily until the 1580s, reaching approx. 1.8 million, or 1.2 million Christians and 0.6 million Muslims (or a Christian-to-Muslim ratio of 2:1 or 66 per cent to 33 per cent), where the higher growth among the Muslims is attributed to both conversion of Christians and

5451-543: Was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire from 1864 to 1878 with a capital in Ruse . In the late 19th century it reportedly had an area of 34,120 square miles (88,400 km ) and incorporated the Vidin Eyalet , Silistra Eyalet and Niš Eyalet . Christians paid disproportionately higher taxes than Muslims, including poll tax, jizye , in lieu of military service. According to İnalcık, jizye

5530-658: Was a set of confessional communities in the Ottoman Empire . It referred to the separate legal courts pertaining to "personal law" under which religious communities were allowed to rule themselves under their own system. The Sultan regarded the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Constantinople Patriarchate as the leader of the Orthodox Christian peoples of his empire. After the Ottoman Tanzimat (1839–76) reforms, Nationalism arose in

5609-590: Was an important administrative centre in the Ottoman Empire. It became the capital of the beylerbeylik of Rumelia ( Rumelia Eyalet ), the province that administered the Ottoman lands in Europe (the Balkans ), one of the two together with the beylerbeylik of Anatolia . It was the capital of the important Sanjak of Sofia as well, including the whole of Thrace with Plovdiv and Edirne , and part of Macedonia with Thessaloniki and Skopje . The Danube Vilayet

5688-478: Was made up of Tatars who willingly arrived to begin a settled life as farmers, the second one a tribe of nomads that had run afoul of the Ottoman administration. Both groups settled in the Upper Thracian Plain , in the vicinity of Plovdiv. Another large group of Tatars was moved by Mehmed I to Thrace in 1418, followed by the relocation of more than 1000 Turkoman families to Northeastern Bulgaria in

5767-543: Was making itself felt in the area. The Russians, as fellow Orthodox Slavs, could appeal to the Bulgarians in a way that the Austrians could not. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 gave Russia the right to interfere in Ottoman affairs to protect the Sultan's Christian subjects. The Bulgarian National Revival was a period of socio-economic development and national integration among Bulgarians under Ottoman rule. It

5846-432: Was needed to maintain them. Essentially, the gun was cheaper than a horse. By the early decades of the seventeenth century, much of the Timar revenue was brought into the central treasury as substitute money ( bedel ) for exemption from military service. Since they were no longer needed, when the Timar holders died off, their holdings would not be reassigned, but were brought under imperial domain. Once under direct control

5925-412: Was originally proposed in the Treaty of San Stefano . The effect of the Ottoman conquest on Bulgarian demography is uncertain and subject to much contention. However, the population of present-day Bulgaria in the 1450s is estimated to have hit a low of 600,000 people, divided into approx. 450,000 Christians and 150,000 Muslims (or a Christian-to-Muslim ratio of 3:1 or 75 per cent to 25 per cent) following

6004-667: Was recognised by the Ottomans as a voyvoda of the Sofia region in 1413, but later he turned against them and is regarded as the first hayduk in Bulgarian history. More than a century later, two Tarnovo uprisings occurred - in 1598 ( First Tarnovo Uprising ) and 1686 ( Second Tarnovo Uprising ) around the old capital Tarnovo . Those were followed by the Catholic Chiprovtsi Uprising in 1688 and insurrection in Macedonia led by Karposh in 1689, both provoked by

6083-405: Was restricted to women who were prominent within the imperial family, or high-ranking members of the Ottoman elite. Timars could be small, when they would be granted by governors, or large, which then required a certificate from the Sultan, but generally the fief had an annual tax revenue value of less than 20,000 akçes . This system of land tenure lasted roughly from the fourteenth century through

6162-423: Was reversed. Non-Muslims did not serve in the Sultan's army. The exception to this were some groups of the population with specific statute, usually used for auxiliary or rear services, and the infamous blood tax (кръвен данък), also known as devşirme , where young Christian Bulgarian boys were taken from their families, enslaved and converted to Islam and later employed either in the Janissary military corps or

6241-497: Was the single most important source of income (48 per cent) to the Ottoman budget, with Rumelia accounting for the lion's share, or 81 per cent of the revenues. By the early 1600s, the timar system had virtually been abolished, and almost all land had been divided into estates ( arpalik ) granted to senior Ottoman dignitaries as a form of tax farming , which created conditions for severe exploitation of taxpayers by unscrupulous land holders. According to Radishev, overtaxation became

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