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 95 Hungarian captives escorted by Ottomans institutions gone only a few priests remained in the town despite the fact that Ottoman laws raised them from common people and required them to pay reduced taxes only. At the time of the first registration the name of the priest who looked after the religious needs of Christians in Vác was Ferenc. Very soon he moved to Kosd and his place was taken by another priest called Gergely. Around 1570 the priests in Vác were called Ferenc and Vince. We can see from the above that the population of Vác was quite mixed both from an ethnic and a religious point of view, and we have not mentioned some minority groups of people yet. Let us recall the facts that the majority of the conquerors were Muslims but they came mainly from the Balkans; the native Christian inhabitants were Hungarians and Germans with Hungarianized names or Germans in the process of assimilation; most of the people moving in from the vicinity were probably Hungarian. Mainly Serbs and Bosnians, who kept their Eastern Christian faith, arrived on the Muslim payroll. Also, there were quite a few Catholic families of Slavic origin in the town, whose family name was Cseh (Czech) or Tót (Slovak). They are regarded as natives because their names already appear in the first register. Finally, in 1559 a small Gipsy community was registered with seven family heads, two of whom had already converted to Islam, and the remaining five names indicated that they originated from the Balkans. It is not easy to find our way in this mixture of peoples and religions, and it is a hopeless task to estimate the size of the ethnic units living together. However, we can capture some of the influence they may have had on one another. Naturally, the strongest impacts was exerted by the most numerous groups of people, the natives and the invaders. The latter exerted influence by determining the conditions of life, offering subsistence and career. We do not know what proportion took the opportunity; the only people we are aware of, or at least some of them, are the ones who were in Ottoman service and converted to Islam. Islamization was frequent among the Balkan and the Gypsy people; it happened far less often among the Hungarians, but it did happen sometimes. The converted man or woman acquired a new Muslim name in the new faith; the patronymic of any man entering military service was always Abdullah. The payroll of the castles of Buda province (or vilayet) in 1557 mentioned a Hungarian boy from Vác, who had been captured by a high-ranking Turkish officer, Merni Beg, but later liberated by him. In return for his freedom the boy converted to Islam, changed his name to Pervane Abdullah and joined the infantry defending the Castle of Drégely. As we learn from a property register of around 1570, his father was a native inhabitant of Vác called János Csiszár and he left his house to his son. Among the house owners of the town we know of three more converted Hungarians. One of them might also have been a soldier, Ferhád Abdullah, whom the clerk registered as a Hungaria.The second one.Taligás (“person with a barrow") Haydar was not a soldier, so he kept his Hungarian byname. The third man was rather peculiar. He was called Huseyn Lakos, and according to the Turkish payrolls he defended the sultan's empire in three different castles of the occupied territory. In 1557 he served in Tata, having been sent there from Vác, but the following year we found him back in Vác where he was a corporal in the cavalry. In the same year he was transferred to Nógrád but, with the help of his high-ranking patron, he managed to get home again. He was yet again back in Vác in 1573 at the latest. However, he could not enjoy his return for too long as he died
