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Conversation between Dr. Anatoli Kanev and Prof. Ilia Todev about the role of historians and more specifically the history of Batak.
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This article presents the points of view from which interreligious relations in the Ottoman world have been approached in academic historiography, the frames of interpretation and concepts that have been used, and the critical reassessments and revisions that are currently underway. Conceptions about the position of the non-Muslims and the nature and forms of interreligious relations in the Ottoman Empire have changed perceptively over the last half century. The mosaic world of subjugated nations and self-governed religious communities (millets) that lived parallel and distinct lives gave its place, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, to the plural society of extensive interreligious interaction at individual or communal level. In tandem came the shift from an emphasis on the oppression of the non-Muslims to that on toleration. We are now in a new phase of revision which focuses on the forms, extent and limits of toleration and intercommunal interaction, and pays close attention to change over time.
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The author examines the South Slavic Boarding School in the town of Nikolaev under the direction of the Bulgarian Todor Minkov and reveals its contribution for the education and shaping of the Bulgarian national elite in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. From a statistical and historical perspective, he has collected and summarized valuable data on the biography, study and future professional realization of dozens of Bulgarians, many of which joint the intellectual and political elite of free Bulgaria.
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The article describes the establishing of the first circle of Kabbalists in Salonica by two scholars who later laid the foundations of The Golden Age of Safed: R. Joseph Karo, whose Shulchan Aruch became the authoritative codification of Jewish law; and his companion, kabbalist and poet R. Solomon Halevi Elkabetz. While performing a mystical ceremony on the nights of Shevuot (Pentecost) of 1533, a prophetic voice was heard through R. J. Karo’s throat and mouth. The voice urged the companions to ascend immediately to the Land of Israel in order to redeem the Assembly of Israel and be redeemed from exile.Special weight is given to the messianic enthusiasm of the circle, and to their interpretation of the triumphs of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent over the Christian coalition led by Emperor Charles V as an omen to the fall of the satanic realm of “Edom” and as an encouraging step towards redemption.
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As a cosmopolitan port city imbued with various cultures in the Levant, Salonica took its share from the modernization efforts triggered with Tanzimat Period. By mid-nineteenth century, Salonica’s embankment and customs facilities were limited and the transport of goods was problematic due to limited access. Meanwhile, burgeoning trade activities as a result of Ottoman treaties granting special privileges to foreign tradesmen necessitated a comprehensive reorganization of the harbour area.This paper aims to study the urban and architectural transformation of the commercial centre of the city, with a special focus on the re-organization of the sea shore supported with new findings from the Ottoman archives. After its completion in 1882, Salonica Quay became the most prestigious area of the city, lined with buildings which represented the transforming socio-economic life. The urban transformation emerging from the quay area also reflected on the traditional commercial centre concentrating around Frank Street, where new types of commercial buildings started to appear.
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Scholars have relied upon diverse methodologies and sources to produce a new corpus of studies about Salonica’s Jews that explores the impact of the end of the Ottoman Empire and the consolidation of the Greek nation-state. Much of the newer scholarship, however, reinforces the perception that Salonica’s Jews experienced a period of “decline” after the city’s incorporation into the Greek state (1912 – 1913) that culminated in their deportation to Auschwitz (1943). This study investigates why such a lachrymose and teleological interpretation of Salonican Jewish history persists today. By reference to new sources and a different interpretive lens, this article also challenges conventional wisdom concerning key turning points in the narrative of the city’s Jews: a major fire (1917), a compulsory Sunday closing law (1924), and the first major act of anti-Jewish violence (1931). The article thus offers a new approach to assessing the encounters between the multiplicities of Jews in Salonica and the Greek state.
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Bouena Sarfatty was born in Salonika in 1916 to a Sephardi family. After World War II, she memorialized her birthplace by composing hundreds of Ladino verses (coplas) about Jewish life in the twentieth century. Her phenomenal memory and personal insights provide a poetic mirror that reflects the multi-cultural environment which she experienced personally. The poems appearing below reflect her thoughts about the process of modernization, whether of language, education, dress or mentalité. European influences created a cosmopolitan city that clearly affected Jewish life. The changes that transpired following the devastating fire of 1917 often harmed the development of this community that had been so vibrant and essential for centuries. Be that as it may, the poems written by this native Salonikan present a unique glimpse into the mindset and experiences of multilingual Jews attempting to adapt to the twentieth century and life in a multi-cultural city.
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The loss of independence, and then the collapse of the national uprisings against Russia (1831, 1863) forced many Poles to emigrate. Many former military in emigration began working as engineers. A major center of the Polish immigration was the Ottoman Empire and the Polish engineers contributed to the modernization of the state. Some of them worked in Bulgarian lands, building telegraph lines, roads and railways. Several of them remained in Bulgaria after its liberation. Boleslav Anz served as Principal Engineer of Bulgarian railways and Sabin Halatkevich participated in the expansion and completion of the Bulgarian railway network until his death in 1935.
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Оne of the most popular photos of Vasil Levski is claimed to have been taken in Koprivshtitsa. This opinion is based on the memorial testimony of Vasil Karaivanov – Levski’s cousin from Kalrovo and a participant in the revolutionary movement. This short article presents the result of an attempt some additional information to be found, which could confirm the credibility of Karaivanov’s opinion that one of the pictures of Levski was taken in Koprivshtitsa.
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The text interprets Khand Tatar and Todorka ballad by commenting the historical terms used from the one hand, and, from the other hand by doing a transformational analysis of the attributes and functions of the mediator in the plot. The situations connected with the Tartars as historical population are analyzed as potential sources of folk personages and motifs. Resultantly, the folklore situation is seen in the light of a possible reflection of the mythological understandings while at the same time the basic psycho-social functions of the ballad are outlined. Thus the reading combines historical and mythological aspects and compares the particular “Bulgarian” case with the universal models and structures of thinking.
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Reviews of: - “Turski (Osmanski) izvori za istoriju Crne Gore”, Podgorica, CANU 2019, tom I-1, I-2, I-3, 1926 pages, review by: Ema Miljković - Zlatko Karač, Alen Žunić: “Islamska arhitektura i umjetnost u Hrvatskoj - Osmanska i suvremena baština” (Islamic Architecture and Art in Croatia - Ottoman and Contemporary Heritage), Arhitektonski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, UPI-2M PLUS, Zagreb, 2018, 432 pages, review by: Rifat Alihodžić - Zuvdija Hodžić: „Kapija Prokletija – Gusinje i Plav u zapisima i putopisima“, Almanah, Podgorica 2019, 298 pages, review by: Draško Došljak - “Putovanje kroz boje Ibrahima Kurpejovića” (Sa otvaranja izložbe I. Kurpejovića u Historijskom muzeju u Sarajevu 24. aprila 2019. Godine), review by: Faruk Dizdarević - Husein Bašić: “Nedovršene tuge”, review by: Jasmina Srdanović - Izet Šabotić: “Čivčijski odnosi i promjena vlasništva nad zemljom u Bosni i Hercegovini (1878-1918)”, Centar za istraživanje moderne i savremene historije Tuzla, Tuzla 2019, 320 pages., review by Jasmina Jajčević
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The object of the present study is an unpublished account from 1632 preserved in the Propaganda Fide Archive in Rome. The source provides a detailed description of three miracles which occurred in Bulgaria, namely in Sofia, Trăn and Nikopol. The document is important because it offers new information which allows us to better understand the complex relations between Christians and Muslims in the Balkan Peninsula. The author of the study considers the Ragusan merchants from Sofia to be the spies who brought this fresh and updated information to the Imperial Court in Vienna. He argues that the unknown author of the account was most likely Ciriaco Rocci, the Apostolic nuncio to the emperor.
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We are examining the administration of the Greek-Orthodox community in Thessaloniki during the Ottoman period, and its evolution in the 19th century. We are observing self-governance institutions in place since the Byzantine era. Powerful Greek-Orthodox families of Salonica and the Church play an important role in the administration of the Greek-Orthodox community. By the 17th century, changes can be seen in the makeup of the community’s administration as new members from the city’s professional guilds become part of it. This development enhanced the role of secular elements in that administration. By the second half of the 18th century, the creation of a class of merchants in the Greek-Orthodox community helped it gain a leading role in the administration of its affairs. We are also examining, by relying on Ottoman documentary evidence, the districts inhabited by the Greek-Orthodox of Thessaloniki in the first half of the 19th century, and how these developed in the latter part of the century following the city’s new town plan. The changes brought about by the Ottoman authorities in the second half of the 19th century with respect to the administration of the Greek-Orthodox communities under Ottoman rule were significant. Nonetheless, socially and financially powerful groups continued to partake of the administration of the Salonica community. The participation of the Greek Orthodox (powerful financially and socially groups) in regional councils (the so-called vilayet idare meclisi) brought about changes in the relations of the Greek-Orthodox with the local representatives of the Ottoman authorities. By the end of the 19th century, these developments had led to the emergence of new socialities between communities, and new mentalities and behaviors.
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The article argues that speculation with the metaphorical use of the term “slavery”, which in recent years took over the Bulgarian public debate on the Ottoman past, is due not only to political and ideological reasons but also to the fact that the Bulgarian historical science does not pay enough attention to the study of the institution of slavery in the Ottoman empire. Very little, in particular, has been done for the research on domestic slavery, which was the most mass form of slavery in the Empire, including its Bulgarian provinces. Several themes are discussed in the text, the illumination of which undermines the popular myth of the total Bulgarian “slavery” during the Ottoman era: 1/ about the ethnic composition of slaves, its dynamics over the centuries and the exceptionally modest place of the Bulgarians among the slaves after the middle of the 15th century; 2/ about the significant difference between the status of slaves in the Ottoman Empire – on the one hand, and its non-Muslim subjects – on the other hand and 3/ about the presence not only of the non-Muslim but also of the Muslim slavery in the Bulgarian lands during the Ottoman centuries, as well as about slavery as an integral part of the history not only of the Ottoman Empire, but also of all southern Christian Europe until the beginning of the 19th century.
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The investigation in question is recorded in a series of thirty-eight register entries on a case of financial malfeasance in recently-conquered Ottoman Egypt that was investigated by officials from Ottoman Syria. This case appears in the oldest existing mühimme defteri, a register of important affairs of the Ottoman Empire, and provides detailed information about how the Ottomans governed their provinces. It lists many of the taxes and revenues collected by the Ottomans and discusses the most important treasury personnel in the province and the documents they created. It also describes how the Ottoman state worked to control those personnel even at a distance and to induce these officials to adhere to concepts of just imperial rule. The article describes the issues in the case and identifies the provincial officials involved in the investigation, the documents they were supposed to collect or create, and the procedures they were commanded to follow. The conclusion examines the implications of the case for our understanding of the place of Syria and Egypt within the wider Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. This episode presents an instance of the Ottoman integration of newly conquered lands in a period when records are fairly plentiful (in contrast to the conquest of Rumeli, where most of our evidence comes from chronicles written at a later date). Beyond that, this case illuminates the whole issue of how an empire operates and challenges the stereotype of general Ottoman oppression of the conquered territories.
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The text contains elements from the history of the town of Pirdop and its` surroundings during the 19-th century. The codex of the local church community has been studied in detail. The accounting within was noted for two decades by the hand of the local notable, Simon. It starts from the decoration of the new church and further on contains data on the functioning of the church community as a microcredit institution. The core of local notable families was examined, as they were the leaders of the church community. More recent pre-Liberation ethnographic documentation, gathered by the teacher Simeon Aldov (Serdanov) was examined from a general anthropological, „patrimonial“, socioeconomical, ecological and geographical point of view in the frame of the region. Robbery and crime, local political unrest and their consequences have been mentioned in a cholistic perspective, in the spirit of local and regional studies.
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Nowadays in Istanbul, Turkey, there is a Bulgarian colony, which was created after the Second Balkan War and the First World War. It was not related to the Bulgarians in Constantinople from the times of the Bulgarian National Revival, but through the Foundation of Bulgarian Orthodox Churches in Istanbul as established, it was their legal successor. The Foundation was also the formal owner of that part of the Bulgarian exarchal properties in Turkey which the Turkish State returned. Lifting the schism was an act of international and internal political importance. This act put an end to the use of the Exarchy as a mean to unite all the Bulgarians within the borders of a new Bulgaria according to the Treaty of San Stefano. In essence, this was a retreat from the national ideal. The conditions for lifting the schism, the closing of the Exarchal Vicegerency and the unresolved status of the Bulgarian Church Community deprived the Bulgarians in the Republic of Turkey of Bulgarian representation on church affairs and predetermined their remaining within the diocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This issue has consequences even nowadays.
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