Dóka Klára: Szentendre története írásos emlékekben. (Pest Megyei Múzeumi Füzetek XIII. Szentendre, 1981)

DÓKA, KLÁRA: SZENTENDRE IN WRITTEN RECORDS Written records have a definitive role to play in getting acqainted with the past of a settlement. The first documents about Szentendre date back to the 11th century. It is mainly grants and charters that provide a basis to reconstructing the town's past until the 16th century. Later on there were more and more conscriptions on the settlement, chiefly for taxation purposes. There has been systematic continuity in documentary sources since the 1690s. The year 1690 marked a turning-point in the life of Szentendre: the resettling of the town, destroyed during the Turkish rule, started at that time. The immigrant Serbians together with the Hungarian survivors gradually took possession of the territory. In place of animal husbandry they began farming and chiefly vine-growing which became the economic basis for the town. At the end of the 17th century the population of Szentendre comprised a total of about 6000 people which number decreased to about one third of it by the 1730s. The „kuruc" war (a Hungarian fight for independence from the Habsburgs) and the plague affected the development of the settlement unfavourably, but from the second part of the 18th century this was followed by an upswing which stabilized the number of inhabitanst in 3500—3600 persons. The Serbian settlers were granted privilégies by the monarch. The landowners of Szentendre, the Counts of Zichy also had to acknowledge these privilégies. The feudal obligations consisted of money payment and of a minimal amount of gifts. Thus the inha205