Osmanski korijeni Gospića: nahija Novi u XVI. i XVII. stoljeću
The Ottoman roots of the town of Gospić: nahiyah Novi in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Summary/Abstract: The author sets the history of Gospić in the Ottoman era (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) in the context of several analytical frameworks. General geopolitical, socioeconomic, ethno-cultural and demographic processes are viewed in the context of the Ottoman frontier nahiyahs Lika (censuses from 1528–1530 and 1550) and Novi (censuses from 1574 and 1604) to which the modern-day Gospić belonged. He pays close attention to the fortification of the town of Novi as the military stronghold and a local administrative centre. The second framework concerns the spatial and functional structures of settlements to which the Ottoman sources from the sixteenth and early seventeenth century refer as Gospojino Selo and mezra Gospić, and discusses the problem of the origin of the name and the siting. Beginning with an analysis of Ottoman cadastre registers, the author examines various aspects of the historical development and transformation of the Gospić area. Although the area around the lower course of the river Novčica was not a focus of population settlement, the structures of the Ottoman frontier (Krajina) understood the strategic importance of that space. Thanks to its favourable natural siting, Gospić emerged, over the course of the seventeenth century, as a factor of growing importance in the Ottoman frontier (Krajina) in Lika. This statement is supported by the existence of fortification objects that may be seen as forerunners of the town (the tower of Senković, the tower of Alić, probably palanka). In the changed historical circumstances of the eighteenth century, these objects anticipated urban development of the town of Gospić.

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