Káldy–Nagy Gyula: A budai szandzsák 1546–1590. évi összeírásai. Demográfiai és gazdaságtörténeti adatok - Pest Megye Múltjából 6. (Budapest, 1985)

Introduction

except when they were either judges, scriveners, priests, blacksmiths or itinerant labourers (haymane); in these cases, they indicated this status instead along with their first names, the first names being the way they registered everybody else. In compiling the roster, the census takers indicated the number of sheep owned by all sheep farmers, and also noted any physical handicaps, such as blindness, any of the inhabitants might have. Having listed all the names, they first indicated the number of people paying jizye tax; this information they took from the jizye defter they had received upon starting out. This defter was probably necessary only at the first two censuses of the sanjak of Buda, because, as it is shown by the entries, by 1562 almost all families had to pay the jizye tax. As we know, in the earlier years, this tax (amounting to 50 akches per year, the equivalent of one Hungarian forint — the very reason they also called it the filori tax) was paid by only those who had an independent income and chattel worth 300 akches, i.e. 6 Hungarian forints.

6 Whenever a new sanjak census was ordered, the census takers always received a copy of the previous census. Quite illustrative of the procedure followed in the course of such a new census taking is the 1559 census of the sanjak of Buda. The census taker, having received the previous (1546) census, copied the roster of the various settlements, then read each on the spot. He asked the one who, on hearing his name stepped forward, whether there had been any changes in his family

—whether his previously registered son or brother had got married in the meantime

; whether any of his younger sons or brothers had reached the age of registration—and adjusted the roster accordingly. If no one answered when he called a name, he inquired as to his whereabouts, and according to the information he received, he indicated above the person's name that he was deceased or had taken flight, or if he was told that the person had moved, he indicated the name of the settlement that was the person's new residence. Finally he registered those who had moved to the location subsequent to 1546, often indicating the location of their previous residence. These types of entries of the registrations may be quite helpful in examining migration, as they may contain the names of those who resided at a given settlement only temporarily between 1546 and 1559. For example, in the 1559 censuses of Agárd and Kosd we may come upon the names of some Keszeg residents who were registered in their own village neither in 1546 nor in 1559. As it is—and as we have pointed out earlier—the data in this census also have to be looked at with a critical eye: for example, the census taker, based on his information, noted that the 18 families of the village of Várad „had died of the plague"; yet 5 of these families were again registered in the 1562 census as living in Várad (true, the village did later become an abandoned puszta). But entries of this kind are by no means erroneous in all cases; for instance, the village of Pomáz, another place where according to the census taker the Black Death had taken its toll, was not inhabited even in the ensuing decades. 6. See: Bevölkerungsstatistischer Quellenwert der Gizye-Defter und der TahrirDefter, in: Acta Orient. Hung. XI. (1960), 259-69. 30