Wicker Erika: Rácok és vlahok a hódoltság kori Észak-Bácskában (Kecskemét, 2008.)

VIII. RÁC AND VLACH PEOPLE IN THE NORTHERN-BÁCSKA REGION DURING THE TURKISH RULE. SUMMARY

RÁC AND VLACH PEOPLE IN THE NORTHERN-BÁCSKA REGION DURING THE TURKISH RULE SUMMARY By the time of the first two-three decades of the 16 l century, the area of the Northern-Bácska region had practically become a deserted, abandoned land, described in Hungarian with the term "puszta": the inhabitants of the Hungarian villages moved to safer regions, taking refuge in bigger towns. The main thoroughfares, however, used by the Turks when they were crossing the region, were not safe, because of the continuous and ceaseless attacks made by the Hungarian military. It was for this reason that in the middle of the century, pursuant to the decree issued by Suleiman I, "a certain number of rája people coming from various places" as well as "tent-dweller wanderers", out of whom a hundred people served as "free cavalry-men", had settled in the three villages located in the area between the towns of Zombor and Baja. The first incomers were soon followed by further new settlers, and by the time of the last dec­ades of the century most of the depopulated villages in the Northern-Bácska region had been resettled. According to the few surviving defters dating from this period, that are known today, these new inha­bitants had names of a mixed Serb-Rumanian-Bulgarian origin, their chiefs and principals held the ranks of kenéz and primikür, their religious life was organised by kalugyers. Although historical science is to this day at fault for a precise identification of their place of origin and ethnic group, this much can be regarded as certain that it was Southern-Slav and Vlach people - besides some Islamised communities - who constituted the Balkan population who settled in the region between the Danube and Tisza rivers as far as the vicinity of the town of Szeged. However, the fact that they settled here did not mean permanence and stability: parts of the population of the villages were often and repeated­ly replaced, new settlers kept coining to take the place of those who had moved away. The fate of the Balkan people who lived in the Northern-Bácska region, and who, by the end of the 16 th century called themselves Rác (Serb), was, in fact, sealed by the 15-year war. For a while they managed to resist the efforts made by the Palatine Miklós Pálffy, who tried to make them settle in the vicinity of Esztergom. Nevertheless, many of them left their villages temporarily to settle some­where else, in a safer region - just temporarily, according to their original intentions. That is to say that according to the two contracts concluded with Miklós Pálffy in 1598 - which were signed by the inhabitants and the principals of the Rác (Serb) villages of the Northern-Bácska region - the Rác people swearing an oath of allegiance to the emperor Rudolf had thereby undertaken to pay taxes up until they would resettle in their villages, as well as afterwards. There are no written records available dating from the first two decades of the 17 th century, and not only records referring to small villages are lacking, but there are no records even of such a densely populated big town as Baja. We can only guess that most of the Rác (Serb) people who had left their villages never ever returned, or even if they did return, they did not stay there for a long time: by the year 1622 "the Bácska region had become a deserted land, a puszta." Although there were some Serbs from Old-Serbia and Bosnia, who came and settled in this depopulated region, it was people engaged in agriculture, Christian peasants from Bosnia, who settled in some of the towns or bigger villages of the Northern-Bácska region. Efforts to identify the archaeological remains of the Bosnians have not been successful so far: these remains have as yet not been distinguished from those of either the Hungarian population who had survived the Turkish invasion, or from those of the Vlach-Rác population who had moved into the Bácska region around the middle of the 16 th century. When the Turkish troops withdrew from the country, yet another wave of devastation of both settlements and population ensued, so much so that in the region between the Danube and Tisza rivers, the area stretching from Kecskemét to as far as Szabadka and Szeged, became depopulated. The archaeological investigation of the remains of the Rác­Vlach population, who had lived in the Northern-Bácska region during the Turkish rule, started in 1993 with the excavation of the ceme-

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