The Ottoman Conquest and Establishment in Croatia and Slavonia

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The Ottoman Conquest and Establishment in Croatia and Slavonia The Ottoman Conquest and Establishment in Croatia and Slavonia Nenad Moačanin* Zagreb University [email protected] Raids and Conquest It is necessary to bear in mind that Croatia and Slavonia as political and geographical entities have not had the same meaning throughout history. Shifting borders and identities make our task here quite difffijicult. Indeed, the complicated history requires a way of following the Ottoman advance by paying respect to changing borders from the late Middle Ages until the present day. As a relatively practical reference tool I intend to use the territory covered by the two bishoprics, that is, Zagreb and Split. This is what Croatia and Slavonia were at the time when the land begun to experience strong Ottoman pressure. This division was valid for most of the Middle Ages, except for a period during the reign of King Tvrtko I in Bosnia and parts of Croatia. On the other hand, I must also mention the area that is today inside the borders of the Republic of Croatia, stretching in the east to the Danube and in the south to Dubrovnik, but lacking much depth in the Adriatic hinterland, which was mainly the consequence of the Ottoman withdrawal at the end of the 17th century. Regarding the Croatian lands, what is usually called the Ottoman conquest1 was, in large part, the consequence of the advance of local forces from the provinces of Bosnia and, to a lesser extent, from Semendire (Smederevo/ Szendrő). Only some places along the Danube, which at the time belonged to Hungary and today to Croatia, were captured in the imperial campaigns. As a prologue we may mark the period 1470–1516, during which much land in the Dinaric zone was lost in consequence of the confrontation with Hungary and * This study has been fully supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under the project 9215. 1 Ive Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko carstvo. Zagreb, 1998, 368. This book, despite its outdated views, is still very useful as a detailed representation of the chain of events. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi 10.1163/9789004396234_014 278 nenad moaČanin of Venice’s effforts to curb the Ottoman threat to its possessions in Dalmatia by relying on the Croatian bufffer-zone in the hinterland. An intense phase of conquest occurred between 1522 and 1552, while a piecemeal penetration took place on the middle section of the border between 1558 and 1596. Of course, all the conquests made during the reign of Süleyman the Lawgiver occurred within the broader framework of top level planning and decision-making. Only the advance in the second half of the 16th century was, at least in part, an independent venture at the local level. Generally speaking, Ottoman raids and conquest were often interrelated in the sense that when taking booty (slaves and livestock) became less lucrative, the conclusion was drawn that the area in question should be conquered in order to recolonise it and to establish a regular system of taxation. The impulse usually came from the ranks of the local sipahi class. This was particularly so in the Pannonian and Peripannonian lowlands in the context of the confrontation with Hungary, but was less salient in the Dinaric Adriatic hinterland, owing to the specifijic role of Vlach transhumant pastoralism coupled with a higher capacity of survival. Despite these limitations, the local military class (askeri) knew how to take advantage of the conquest by appropriating the best agricultural land and even by redirecting poll-tax income from the treasury to their own prebends.2 According to the described pattern, the greatest armed conflict with catastrophic and lasting consequences, that is, the Battle of Krbava in 1493, occurred in the context of the gazi raids. It is a well-established fact that because of the terrible losses, the Croatian nobility turned their hopes toward the Habsburgs. But was it possible that at a certain moment a diffferent kind of reasoning was also present? That is, did the Croats try to fijind an “arrangement” with the Ottomans? In 1494, a Croatian mission was in Edirne.3 We do not know its purpose or who sent whom to the sultan. At the same time one Hungarian mission was there, but apparently not as a joint venture. Because at that moment no conquest at that section of the border had been considered, and the area was lying in waste, but still outside the Ottoman realm. Nor did the local population declare its submission to the sultan. Yet this had been the typical sequence of events during the early phase of Ottoman expansion in the southernmost part of Croatia (1470–1516). The offfensive activities were not encouraged by the central authorities, but since many nobles and Vlach leaders preferred peace under Ottoman sovereignty, the fortresses fell one by one. During the reigns of Bayezid II (1481–1512) and Selim I (1512–1520), this 2 İstanbul, Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA), MMV 17685 (ruznamçe from 1587). 3 Mehmet Tayyib Gökbilgin, XV–XVI. Asırlarda Edirne ve Paşa Livası. İstanbul, 1952, 109..
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