Iványosi-Szabó Tibor: Írott emlékek Kecskemét XVII. századi nyilvántartásaiból 2. 1633–1700 - Forrásközlemények 12. (Kecskemét, 2008 [!2009])
Summary
SUMMARY For a long time people's interest in the Turkish occupation of Hungary concentrated on the various fights at the border castles, the position of civil wars, the exotic traits of East Diplomacy and the tendency of constitutional law. For decades the source book's aim was to make this interest satisfied. In this field Gyula Káldi-Nagy's work and books meant a radical change because the 16 th century assessment of taxes became public property and basic of the further researches. Having seen that we do not have a similar document from the 16 th century, the researches about the towns and villages during the foreign occupation in Hungary are supposed to be based on the documents that can be found in the Archive of Kecskemét and Nagykőrös. Fortunately, in Kecskemét not only the assessment of taxes survived but also the registers of the chief justices, the receivers of taxes, the deputy chiefs' registers, and last but not least the registrations about the socage by the village drummers. In these registrations official registers, judgements, compositions and rendering of accounts could be found. On the base of these registrations we can get a more complete lifelike picture about this area than from the assessments of taxes which contains only a couple of data. From the 150-volume material we publish the descriptive registrations, the statements of accounts about the market town's services and economy. Regarding the whole inhabitants there are only a couple of registers in the source-book which are indispensable from demography point of view or it can show the structure of agriculture. The source-books value is increased by some facts. It helps to show a unique peculiarity in the world history: although, the Ottoman Turkish Empire took possession of Hungary, it was not able to build it up into its empire. The Turkish had to admit the fact that the noble county was judged by the Hungarian law; its biggest enemy, the Hungarian King collected the taxes on the overcame counties; the escaped aristocrats kept their rights over their possessions, they insisted on the old services being done for them and what is more, the most important currency remained the Hungarian money. In spite of the fact that the source-book is based on the documents that can be found in the archive in Kecskemét it contains a lot of data about the surrounding settlements and areas. From the documents we can get detailed information about the moving and fights of the Kuruc, French, Turkish, Tatar and Hungarian armed forces. The source-book can only illustrate and not prove or document the collaboration and willingness of the villages and prairie towns between the Danube and Tisza (called Homokhátság). To document the town and the surrounding's demographical moving and to give an enormous quantity of the economy makes the book unique and it gives a great possibility to the researchers of the historical ethnography. It is important to mention that there are more than 200 quotations in the book which are in an advantaged place to show the cultural life of the prairie town from a new point of view.
