Patmos in the eighteenth century: fiscal threats and exemption promises
Elena Grozdanova devoted a large part of her scholarly attention to the Ottoman poll-tax, its administration and the source-value of the cizye records for the study of historical demography of the Balkan territories under Ottoman rule, a subject comprehensively explored and summarized in her monumental study entitled Balgarska narodnost prez XVII vek. Demografsko izsledvane, published in Sofia in 1989. A copy of her work, with Elena's handwritten dedication dated 21 july 1989 in possession of the author, is a sad reminder of a lost reminder of a lost friend and a colleague whose fascination with Ottoman fiscal registers the present author shares. Yet while her book investigates, in a broad sweep and (in her own words) with a "complex approach", the situation during the seventeenth century up to about 1690 when a new system of levying the cizye was devised and progressively introduced, the present contribution merely intends to throw some light, at the micro-level of one small Aegean island, on a few but significant developments in this island fiscal regime during the eighteenth century.
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