Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)

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92

VÁC IN THE OTTOMAN ERA

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f-The Ottoman register

of the

inhabitants

and taxes

of Vác of 1580

only the castle and the military barracks were cleared of their native population and both the remaining Christians and the incoming Muslims continued to live at the same place. This was the case in Vác, too. Islamic canon law did not allow anyone, even the "heathens”, to be deprived of their properties. This may be the reason why the valuable, large houses in the town were owned by the Christians, while most of the conquerors lived in wretched houses made of planks, wicker and clay made by themselves. Several houses were sold to the Turks by the Hungarians (and vice versa after some time) or by the treasury, which had obtained them as vacant estates. The latter happened to most of the church properties, the buildings of the bishopric and the chapter who had escaped from the invaders. The Ottoman registers mention them as "the houses of the priests".

The Christian population of Vác, their products and services were listed by the Ottoman tax officers six times. The censuses of 1546,1559,1562,1580, 1590 are still available but 1570 is missing.

The method was more o.r less the same each time. The head of the family and his teenage sons were taken into consideration; the family formed a tax unit and was

bound to pay both the state and the landowner half a forint per year (in the case of Vác, which was owned by the treasury, the landowner and the state coincided). Then agricultural production was taken into account. Householders had to pay tithes on items produced domestically. Finally, some smaller fees were levied on newly-acquired properties, weddings, offences etc. We should never take the registers for granted: a smaller or bigger proportion of the population tended to be left out of them, and we may well assume that there was quite a lot of fraudulent tax calculation but the picture we get from these registers is, by and large, realistic.

According to the first register of 1546, there were 213 tax-paying Christian families living in the town; this number changed to 370,248,259 and 200 in the following registers. The first low number might have been due to the destruction of the war and to the fact that part of the population had fled. The numbers kept on decreasing in the following decade too, when lots of people moved away or died. Life-span was short at the time, a man of fifty was considered to be old. However by 1559 the population had grown to a large extent. Refugees had swarmed into Vác,

"Vác", as the Turks spelled it