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OLIVER JENS SCHMITT (Ed.) the OTTOMAN CONQUEST of THE OLIVER JENS SCHMITT (ed.) THE OTTOMAN CONQUEST OF THE BALKANS Interpretations and Research Debates ÖSTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN PHILOSOPHISCH-HISTORISCHE KLASSE SITZUNGSBERICHTE, 872. BAND The Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans Interpretations and Research Debates Edited by Oliver Jens Schmitt Angenommen durch die Publikationskommission der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der ÖAW: Michael Alram, Bert Fragner, Hermann Hunger, Sigrid Jalkotzy-Deger, Brigitte Mazohl, Franz Rainer, Peter Wiesinger und Waldemar Zacharasiewicz The research for this publication was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) F42: Visions of Community. Diese Publikation wurde einem anonymen, internationalen Peer-Review-Verfahren unterzogen. This publication has undergone the process of anonymous, international peer review. Umschlagfoto: Weißer Turm in Thessaloniki © Oliver Jens Schmitt Die verwendete Papiersorte ist aus chlorfrei gebleichtem Zellstoff hergestellt, frei von säurebildenden Bestandteilen und alterungsbeständig. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. ISBN 978-3-7001-7890-3 Copyright © 2016 by Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien Druck und Bindung: Prime Rate kft., Budapest http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/7890-3 http://verlag.oeaw.ac.at Contents Oliver Jens Schmitt Introduction: The Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans. Research Questions and Interpretations 7 Maurus Reinkowski Conquests Compared. The Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans and the Mashreq in an Islamicate context 47 Toni Filiposki Before and After the Battle of Maritsa (1371): The Significance of the Non-Ottoman Factors in the Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans 65 Mariya Kiprovska Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? Integrating the Es- tablished Balkan Military System into the Ottoman Army 79 Grigor Boykov The Human Cost of Warfare: Population Loss During the Ottoman Conquest and the Demographic History of Bulgaria in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era 103 Tijana Krstić New Directions in the Study of Conversion to Islam in Ottoman Rumeli Between the Fourteenth and the Seventeenth Centuries: Reconsidering Methods, Theories and Terminology 167 Andrei Pippidi Taking Possession of Wallachia: Facts and Interpretations 189 Ştefan S. Gorovei / Maria Magdalena Szekely Old Questions, Old Clichés. New Approaches, New Results? The Case of Moldavia 209 6 Content Dubravko Lovrenović The Ottoman Conquest of Bosnia in 1463 as Interpreted by Bosnian Franciscan Chroniclers and Historiographers (A Historic(Al) Event With Political and Psychological Ramifications That Are Still Present Today) 243 Ovidiu Cristea Venice Confronting the Ottoman Empire: A Struggle for Survival (Fourteenth–Sixteenth Centuries) 265 Index 281 Introduction: The Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans. Research Questions and Interpretations Oliver Jens Schmitt The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans constitutes a major change in European history. Scholarship on the topic is extensive, yet the evidence produced by decades of research is very scattered and lacking comprehensive synthesis, not to mention consensual interpretation. Although major political and military milestones seem to have been investigated thoroughly, there is a notable ab- sence of more theoretical and interpretative approaches that overarch the enti- re phenomenon rather than merely individual aspects. Scholars have hitherto addressed the topic from various perspectives and employing a wide range of methods, but Byzantine studies, Ottoman studies, Eastern Mediterranean stu- dies and national historiographies in the Balkan countries have yet to establish either a coherent collaboration or a consistent model of interpretation.1 Disse- mination too has proved somewhat problematic; the vast number of detailed studies is often only known to a restricted circle of specialists, and even among these scholars, there are just a few who make use of the evidence available for the entire Balkan Peninsula. This also explains the lack of a general model or models of explanation for the fall of the Balkan-Orthodox Commonwealth. It is not uncommon for historians to offer a narrative of facts they simply take to be self-explanatory. While Ottoman studies focuses on the emergence of a new empire, Byzantine studies and Balkan national historiographies adopt different perspectives. Narratives are therefore often contradictory or fragmentary. At best they partially overlap, but they usually do not reflect competing perspecti- 1 The only comprehensive monograph on the topic has remained almost unnoticed: Hristo Matanov and Rumjana Mihneva, Ot Galipoli do Lepanto. Balkanite, Evropa i osmanskoto našestvie 1354–1571 g. (Sofia: Nauka i iskustvo, 1988). Cf. my research essay Oliver Jens Schmitt, “Südosteuropa im Spätmittelalter: Akkulturierung-Integration-Inkorporation”, in: Akkulturation im Mittelalter, edited by Reinhard Härtel (Ostfildern: Thorbecke 2014), pp. 81–136. Scholars also tend to disregard older comprehensive monographs which despite their inevitable shortcomings are instructive because of their interpretative schemes, e.g. Jovan Radonić, Zapadna Evropa i balkanski narodi prema Turcima u prvoj polovini XV veka (Novi Sad: Izdanje Matice Srpske, 1905). 8 OIiver Jens Schmitt ves. Fragmentation runs along spatial, chronological and disciplinary lines; the extreme specialization of most scholars in the field and a bibliography in many languages also constitute considerable obstacles for what is needed: a perspec- tive that encompasses the entire Balkan area in a long-term analysis stretching from the second half of the fourteenth century until the beginning of the six- teenth, and use of all sources available in Greek, Latin, Slavonic, Ottoman and European vernacular languages such as Italian, German or French. This alone however would not substantially improve the state of the art in the field. A key to assessing the Ottoman conquest of Balkans as a long-term process of violence-induced change is comparison, i.e. an enlargement of the heuristic frame both in time and in space. Constant synchronic comparison with Ottoman expansion in Anatolia and the Arab world (cf. the contribution of Reinkowski in this volume), but also with other major processes of expansion and change in European and Mediterranean history, such as the Spanish Reconquista or the conquest of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan by the Grand Duchy of Mos- cow (1552–1556), would open a Eurasian horizon. Important insights could be gained moreover by shaping a diachronic frame of comparison: the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans must also be analyzed in the light of historical transfor- mation studies. The most sophisticated field is certainly Late Antique/Early Me- dieval studies, which since the end of the eighteenth century have discussed ex- planatory models for what Edward Gibbon famously called the “fall and decline of the Roman Empire”.2 Key models for interpreting historical change and a controversial discussion of violence-induced discontinuity of cultural, social and administrative patterns – or in a competing perspective their continuity in spite of political and demographic change – lie at the core of a debate that shares with the interpretation of the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans a high degree of ideo- logization and politicization and the very fact that there is still no consensus in assessing the character of long-term historical change. While after 1945 scholars tended to emphasize transitional elements from the Late Antique Roman to the Early Modern medieval world in the vein of Romano-Germanic socio-cultural 2 A brillant discussion of these models is provided by Alexander Demandt, Der Fall Roms. Die Auflösung des römischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt (Munich: C.H.Beck, second edition 2014); Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome. A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (Lon- don: Allen Lange, 2009); Peter Heather, Der Untergang des Römischen Weltreichs (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2007); Bryan Ward Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Ox- ford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Walter Pohl, Die Germanen (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2004); Walter Pohl, Die Völkerwanderung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005); Post-Roman tran- sitions. Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, edited by Walter Pohl (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012); Visions of Community in the post-Roman World. The West, Byzan- tium and the Islamic World, 300–1100, edited by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner and Richard Payne (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). Introduction: The Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans. 9 and political symbiosis, reflecting the project of European unification after the Second World war, advocates of rupture still put forward powerful arguments such as the clearly visible decline of material culture between the second and the seventh century AD.3 In the Balkans, negative judgments concerning Ottoman rule and especially its beginnings had to legitimize the emergence of the modern Christian national state on the territory of the Ottoman Empire in the long ni- neteenth century. In this case, historians insisted on invasion by Asian barbarians, resistance, disruption, the de-Europeanization and orientalisation of Balkan soci- ety and cultures, mass flight and deportation of the population and centuries of anti-Ottoman resistance. The competing narrative developed mainly by Turkish historians and extra-regional Ottomanists close to the formers´ interpretation underline accommodation (istimalet policy, a term coined by Halil İnalcık), in- corporation, pax ottomanica, general improvement of the fiscal status
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