Doseljavanje Morlaka u opustjela sela šibenske Zagore u 16. stoljeću
Morlak Colonization in the Abandoned Villages of Šibenik’s Hinterland during the 16th Century

Summary/Abstract: In the second half of the 15th century, Šibenik’s hinterland was affected by strong and almost continuous emigration due to the Ottoman incursions. During the Venetian-Ottoman War (1499-1502), even the last inhabitants, subjects of the Venetian Republic, abandoned their villages in the area of Šibenska Zagora. Soon after the Ottomans conquered Knin, Drniš, and Skradin in 1522, thus becoming the immediate neighbours of Šibenik, the two opposed sides started to negotiate, which in 1525 brought about the stabilization of political contacts and the establishment of trading relations in the borderline area of Skradin and Šibenik. However, the Ottoman authorities began assigning the abandoned land in the hinterland to their meritorious military personnel, who in turn invited the Morlaks from the continental Ottoman provinces, mostly Herzegovina, to colonize them. As early as 1525, the Venetian emissary in Istanbul complained that the Ottoman subjects had illegally occupied the village of Konjevrate in the Šibenik district, and in 1527 the High Porte received a new complaint claiming that the Ottoman Morlaks were using pastures belonging to Trogir and Šibenik without authorization, and that some of them had even settled down there. The Porte ordered Husref, the Bosnian sanjakbey, to investigate the matter. In 1531, together with the kadi of Skradin, he negotiated with some Venetian diplomats, who showed him old Hungarian documents about the medieval borders of the Trogir and Šibenik districts. As he reported to the Sultan about the matter, in 1533 a directive came from Istanbul that the occupied territories should be returned to the people of Trogir and Šibenik, while the Morlaks should be transferred to other places within the Ottoman Empire. Having heard that, the Morlaks hurried to Šibenik, where they signed contracts with the landowners concerning the lease of villages where they had been hitherto living illegally. The issue of ownership over the hinterland villages belonging to Šibenik and Trogir again became a point of dispute between the Venetians and the Ottomans after the War of the Holy League (1537-1540) as the Morlaks were no longer giving the agreed part of income from grains and cattle to the landholders of Šibenik. The tax list of the Klis sanjak from 1550 mentions the disputed villages belonging to Šibenik simply as Ottoman possessions. On several occasions (in 1549, 1551, and 1553), the Venetian emissaries in Istanbul received a written confirmation from the Porte that the 33 villages under dispute belonged to the Šibenik district, but these decisions were never implemented. The issue was finally solved through the peace treaty signed immediately after the Cyprus War (1570-1573), when the entire territory of Zagora also de iure became part of the Ottoman Empire.

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