Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)
Tartalom
96 VÁC IN THE OTTOMAN ERA that year. He had a good reason to be homesick so persistently: he owned a house in Vác. Lakos Huseyn was undoubtedly a descendant of the Stober family. It is impossible to imagine what kind of emotions could have filled his soul; we can only wonder. His family was of German origin. He himself converted to Islam and joined the Ottoman military service but he was so strongly attached to his Hungarianized name that he managed to cajole several military and civilian clerks into allowing him to keep his original name "Lakos" instead of the obligatory Abdullah. As the above examples show fate in Ottoman-occupied Hungary could be unpredictable. It was common practice that the various ethnic, and especially religious, groups in the towns of the occupied territories lived in districts of their own. They hardly ever mixed with one another. When these property registers were compiled the separation along ethnic and religious lines was not yet completed. We have no sources from subsequent periods to clarify the situation further. , Becsi kapu. 2. Török mecset és fürdő. 3. Hatvant kapu. 4. Szent 5. Török mecset. 6. Rév kapu. 7. Szent Jakab templom. 8. Pesti The plan of Vác by the Ottoman register of 1570 THETOWN UNDER A MAGNIFYING GLASS The Turks did not divide the town into streets but into quarters/districts, in Ottoman mahalles. In practice these were blocks of houses with the original Hungarian street names. This is how the property registration was conducted in Vác too. That is why it is quite difficult to find out how the different parts of the town were situated inside or even outside the town walls. The Muslim dignitaries moved into the houses in the castle. The majority of the Muslim population spread from this area next to the medieval Hungarian town, alongside the Danube, towards the German town.The entire town was divided into ten quarters. The ones near the castle were inhabited chiefly or solely by Muslims and soldiers from the Balkans who retained their eastern Orthodox faith. The mahalle named after Kasim Beg's mosque, with only one house left in Hungarian possession, was probably situated below the castle on the riverside part of the Hungarian town. This quarter had just a few independent houses and a former ecclesiastic building, which might have been a monastery and now served as a crammed dwelling place for soldiers. The section of the German town by the Danube had become largely Muslim as well and was on its way to becoming the exclusive residence of the occupiers. This is where we should search for the quarter of Hasan Voivod's mosque with no more than two properties still owned by Hungarians. From the north it was bordered by the quarter called Zsidó ("Jewish") Street; the street was leading from the market place to the ferry and the customs-house, and half of the houses in it were inhabited by Muslims. The quarter of the martolos could have been somewhere in the southern part of the German town, which was not a block of houses but another monastery whose cells were inhabited by the Balkan Christian martolos of the garrison. The number of Muslim house owners increased in the southern part of the quarter bearing the name of Nagy ("Big") Street as well as in the neighbouring quarter named after Kosdi Street in the south-eastern part of the German town.The latter had a block consisting of 13 houses whose Muslim owned properties were newly built. They were good examples of the low standards of Ottoman construction: all of them had wattle-anddaub walls and they consisted of two rooms with a tiny yard and garden but without any outbuildings, bake houses, stables, barns or wells.
