A Békés Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 35. (Békéscsaba, 2012)
Seres István: A sarkadiak küzdelme a hajdúszabadság visszaszerzéséért - Források (1712-1768). (Előmunkálatok a "Sarkadi hajdúk" című monográfiához)
Seres István The Struggle of the Sarkad people to Regain Haiduk’s Freedom - Resources (1712-1768). (Preparatory works to a monograph entitled ’’Sarkad Haiduks”)- István Seres - Resume In terms of the history of the Sarkad Haiduks, even currently, our most important resources include the materials of 18th wittness interrogations, which were part of the evidence taken on the state of the city. Sándor Márki, the first historian to summarize the history of both the city and the fortress, mostly owing to the scarcity of resources, could only rely on wittness interrogation records when writing the Haiduks’ 17* century history. Márki mainly obtained his resources from the Archives of Sarkad City and the documents kept in a letter box of the local Leelőssy family. He mostly referred to the material of an interrogation conducted in 1721 during which, four times, altogether 68 wittnesses were heard but he also quotes test reports recorded in 1724 and 1728 and 1731 and 1732, restrictively. Since a significant part of the documents which had been resources for the excellent historian, is no more available, first of all, we have set the aim to make up for them. At Hajdú-Bihar County Archives, we have managed to find the wittness interrogation reports from the year 1721 and 1731, as well as that from the year 1732. Our resource release has been completed with a wittness interrogation report recorded in 1712, which had been unknown before Márki. Márki also used the wittness reports connected to the rights of the noble families living in Sarkad and he often referred to a 1768 document on the nobility of the Leelőssy family. This latter document was also found and is published in our resource release together with the documents connected to some other Sarkad families (Bende Szabó, Sajti, Pribék). Our present resource release contains the materials of altogether 13 wittness interrogations and, in addition, a letter written in 1727 by Sándor Szabó, a fortress captain of Rákóczi’s War of Independence, is also published. Seres István E-mail: istvan.seres@gmail.com 196
