Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)
Tartalom
VÁC IN THE OTTOMAN ERA 89 the rest of the century the headcount of the garrison was about 120 people. The first large garrison contained all kinds of units. The heads of the castle were the captain and his deputy and they remained in their posts for a decade. The captain's name was Abdulvehhab, while the deputy captain was called Hasan Sinan. The core of defence included seven units of select infantrymen and six artillerymen, who were permanently on guard in the castle. One division of cavalrymen left the castle from time to time in order to raid and pillage enemy territory and soldiers. It was their task to ward off Christian raids. A bit more than half of the defenders came from the two weaker units of infantry, who were deployed both on water, on the riverbank and in the port. In the middle of the 16th century more than ninety per cent of the defenders of the Ottoman-occupied castles in Hungary came from the Balkan Peninsula, the majority from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and the territory between the rivers Sava and Drava; most of them had already converted to Islam, while some ofthem were still Orthodox Christians when they became Ottoman soldiers. It was the same in Vác whose garrison consisted of mainly soldiers from the Balkans, but we know of a Hungarian soldier too called Gergely Imre. The decreasing number of the mercenary defenders did not mean that there were only 100-300 soldiers living within the castle and the walled town. The above numbers referred only to those permanently stationed there. In addition to them each castle housed some landed cavalry, the sipahi. There were 20 ofthem registered among the house owners in Vác in 1570. There were other soldiers too who were constantly on the move because they belonged to the escort of some high-ranking officials. These soldiers were waiting for vacancies or lived on the spoils of their raids. As we do not know their and the sipahis' number we cannot make a precise estimate of all the soldiers living in Vác, but in peacetime there could not have been more than 500 ofthem. Although Vác lost its military significance, it kept its administrative and economic importance. Sipahi cavalry soldier In the 16th century it was not yet a sanjak (a medium sized administrative unit) centre but it was the centre of a nahiye (Ottoman district) of the Buda Sanjak. There was diversified administrative activity in the town as it also served as the centre of a court, a taxation district and a financial administration unit with a high treasury income. The Vác district of Ottoman public administration expanded from about the middle of Szentendre Island north-eastwards as far as Bátka in Nógrád county bordered with a zigzag line, and it had 69 inhabited settlements in the middle of the 16th century. The highest rank in public administration was that of the Ottoman judge, the kadi, who passed judgement by Muslim canonic law, and not only performed the duties of judge and notary but also controlled and checked nearly all aspects of administration. This large amount of work was done by clerks, tax-collectors, tax-farmers and inspectors whose number was further increased by the people working in the customs office and in the port. CRAFTS,TRADES AND CUSTOMS PLACE In the second half of the 16th century the reputation of Vác was mainly due to its status as a customs place. In these decades Hungary reached the maximum volume of its livestock export to Vienna, the southern German towns and Venice. Most of the cattle were fed on the steppes of the Great Hungarian Plain and the market towns of the occupied territories. Of all the Turkish customs places the greatest number of animals was driven through at Vác. During a single month between 23 August and 21 September 156021,310 head of cattle, while between 22 July 1563 and 9 March 1564, in seven and a half months 30,248 head of cattle, 930 horses and 24,992 sheep were cleared here. In the financial year lasting from October 1559 to September 1560 15% of the income of the treasury in Buda came from the financial administrative unit of Vác, mostly from the duty imposed on animals.
