Rat Svete lige, gospodarska kriza i njezine posljedice: Köse Halil-paša i fiskalna transformacija u osmanskoj Bosni 1699. – 1702.
The War of the Holy League, Economic Crisis, and its Aftermath: Köse Halil Pasha and the Fiscal Transformation in Ottoman Bosnia, c. 1699-1702

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims at re-examining the dominant historiographical views on the transformation processes in the economic history of the Ottoman Empire, and at expounding on the previously unknown aspects of the financial measures undertaken by the Ottoman government with an agenda of providing stability in the early 18th-century province of Bosnia. The research shows the nuances of the Ottoman strategy in dealing with the actual and perceived consequences of the economic crisis in the Western periphery of the Islamic world, caused by the long warfare with the Christian coalition of the Holy League. By critically evaluating the state-of-the-art in the Ottoman studies and by comparing the results with the unpublished primary sources, the author argues that a better understanding of the Ottoman transformation processes requires elaborate research on the governmental fiscal policies in the borderland provinces, along with the exploration of their long-term impact on the finance sector and market economy, as well as the material position of the power elites and the taxpaying local communities. As a primary example of these under-researched financial measures, this paper highlights the permanent exemption of the 18th-century eyalet of Bosnia from the bedel-i nüzûl, an important tax used to secure the provisions and financial resources for the army. Another argument for the above-mentioned hypothesis is the crucial change that occurred in the structure of the state revenue sources, as this research has established that the traditional monetary taxes, such as the so-called “taxes of the Vlachs” (rüsûm-ı Eflâkân), i.e. the resm-i filûrî (or resm-i filori) tax, were abolished and substituted by the in-kind obligation, the tithe. This phenomenon has been ascertained for numerous land plots in the early 18th-century agrarian economy of Ottoman Bosnia. The present research has been based on the previously unused and unpublished financial records from the Ottoman chancelleries.

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