¹ Mecmua no. 27, OZ R-005, Sarajevo Historical Archive. The poem (Mahzar piše bosanska fukara) is usually attributed to Mustafa Firakija, whose notebook contains the now-standard version of this poem. Though nominally addressed to the sultan, the poem's vernacular language ensured that the primary audience for “The Plea” were other inhabitants of Ottoman Bosnia. Lehfeldt, Werner, “Zur Erforschung des serbokroatischen Aljamiado-Schrifttums,” Südost-Forschungen 28 (1969): 94–122Google Scholar; Nametak, Abdurrahman, ed., Hrestomatija bosansko-alhamijado književnosti [Anthology of Bosnian Aljamiado literature] (Sarajevo, 1981), 156–60Google Scholar; Hajdarović, Rašid, “Medžmua Mula Mustafe Firakije,” Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju [Contributions to Oriental philology] 22–23 (1973): 301–14Google Scholar.

² Quote (ca. 1810) from Abdulvehab Ilhami mecmua, p. 31b, ms. R-3025, manuscript collection, Gazi Husrev Bey Archive.

³ This is especially true for the period after 1699. Compared to the numerous studies linking earlier Ottoman expansion into Europe with concurrent social, economic, and confessional changes across European-Ottoman borderlands (e.g., in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), the post-1699 period of Ottoman territorial contraction received less attention along such social-historical lines. Among the major works in this field are: Rothenberg, Gunther E., The Military Border in Croatia, 1740–1881: A Study of an Imperial Institution (Chicago, 1966)Google Scholar; Fodor, Pál and Dávid, Géza, eds., Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest (Leiden, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ágoston, Gábor, “A Flexible Empire: Authority and Its Limits on the Ottoman Frontiers,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 9 (2003): 15–31Google Scholar; Fichtner, Paula Sutter, Terror and Toleration: The Habsburg Empire Confronts Islam, 1526–1850 (London, 2008)Google Scholar; Norton, Claire, “Liminal Space in the Early Modern Ottoman-Habsburg Borderlands: Historiography, Ontology, and Politics,” in Stock, Paul, ed., The Uses of Space in Early Modern History 1500–1850 (London, 2015), 75–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For useful reframings of social developments, see Roksandić, Drago and Štefanec, Nataša, eds., Constructing Border Societies on the Triplex Confinium (Budapest, 2000)Google Scholar; for a dynamic relationship between external and internal frontiers, see the excellent discussion by Ferguson, Heather L., The Proper Order of Things: Language, Power, and Law in Ottoman Administrative Discourses (Stanford, 2018)Google Scholar.

⁴ As Baki Tezcan put it, this was a long-term process that generally saw Muslims “move up to become citizens of sorts” while most Christians (and Jews in some areas as well) remained “subjects”; Tezcan, “Ethnicity, Race, Religion, and Social Class: Ottoman Markers of Difference,” in The Ottoman World, ed. Christine Woodhead (London, 2012), esp. 166–67. Beyond the general framework, however, the specific social mechanics of this change remain underexplored. It is telling that historians of the Ottoman Balkans have recognized the problem of understanding raiyyet (or subjecthood) as especially important; see the useful overview on “Reʿayas and Protected Peoples” by Panaite, Viorel, Ottoman Law of War and Peace: The Ottoman Empire and Its Tribute-Payers from the North of the Danube (Leiden, 2019), 316–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the sake of consistency, I here use the term raya rather than re'aya as it more closely matches its multilingual use in Ottoman Bosnia.

⁵ On the 1869 Ottoman law that became the turning point for reforming subjecthood and citizenship, see Hanley, Will, “What Ottoman Nationality Was and Was Not,” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 3, no. 2 (2016): 277–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a comparative perspective, see Khoury, Dina Rizk and Glebov, Sergey, “Citizenship, Subjecthood, and Difference in the Late Ottoman and Russian Empires,” Ab Imperio, no. 1 (2017): 45–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Murphey, Rhoads, “Continuity and Discontinuity in Ottoman Administrative Theory and Practice during the Late Seventeenth Century,” Politics Today 14, no. 2 (1993): 426–36Google Scholar.

⁷ Kreševljaković, Hamdija, Kapetanije u Bosni i Hercegovini (Sarajevo, 1954), 13–64Google Scholar; on the higher-ranking governorships, Hickok, Michael, Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia (Leiden, 1997)Google Scholar.

⁸ Yaycioglu, Ali, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford, 2016)Google Scholar.

⁹ Davison, Roderic H., “‘Russian Skill and Turkish Imbecility’: The Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji Reconsidered,” Slavic Review 35 (1976): 463–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pollock, Sean, “‘We Slavishly Request…’: Invitations to Empire and Russian Political Patronage in the Balkans,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 4 (2000): 751–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More broadly, see Sonyel, Salahi R., “The Protégé System in the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Islamic Studies 2, no. 1 (1991): 56–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Sućeska, Avdo, “Promjene u sistemu izvanrednog oporezivanja u Turskoj u XVII vijeku i pojava nameta tekālif-i şākka” [Changes in the system of extraordinary taxation in the 18^th-century Ottoman Empire and the imposition of new dues], Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 10–11 (1961): 75–112Google Scholar.

¹¹ Čar-Drnda, Hatidža, ed. and trans., Sidžil tešanjskog kadiluka, 1740–1752 [The court records of the Tešanj magistrate] (Sarajevo, 2005)Google Scholar; hereafter abbreviated as Sidžil TK, followed by case and page number.

¹² Frequently subsumed under the imdad-i hazariye and taksit dues were numerous other taxes; see Sućeska, Avdo, “Taksit: prilog izučavanju dažbinskog sistema u našim zemljama pod turskom vlašću,” [Taksit: A study of the revenue system in our lands under Turkish rule] Godišnjak Pravnog fakulteta u Sarajevu [The yearbook of the Sarajevo law school] 8 (1960): 339–62Google Scholar; Sućeska, “Novi podaci o nastanku i visini taksita u Bosni,” [New findings about the origins and levels of the taksit tax in Bosnia] Prilozi instituta za istoriju u Sarajevu [Contributions of the Sarajevo institute for history] 10, no. 2 (1974): 135–54.

¹³ Sarajevo Sicill, no. 13, pages 34–35, Court Record Collection, Gazi Husrev Bey Archive. (I thank Azra Kasumagić for pointing out and helping me understand this source.)

¹⁴ Mostar Sicill, page 34b, OZ-1400, Mostar Archive of Herzegovina.

¹⁵ Koller, Markus, Bosnien an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Gewalt (1747–1798) (Munich, 2003), 173–202Google Scholar.

¹⁶ See taksit registers for Blagaj, no. 115 (1833) and no. 540 (1846), ZOP, National Arhive, Bosnia and Herzegovina (DABiH).

¹⁷ Đaković, Luka, Prilozi za demografsku i onomastičku građu Bosne i Hercegovine: Na osnovu popisa katoličkog stanovništva 1743 godine [Contributions to the demographic and onomastic source materials of Bosnia and Herzegovina: On the basis of the Catholic population count of 1743] (Sarajevo, 1979), 10–11Google Scholar.

¹⁸ A much smaller number of Ottoman Muslims in Hungary converted to Catholicism during this period. For an example of movements across the new Ottoman-Habsburg border, see Die Autobiographie des Dolmetschers ‘Osman Aga aus Temeschwar (London, 1980). Ivo Andrić used the resettlement of Danubian Muslims to Bosnia as a backdrop for his memorable character, “Mustafa the Hungarian”: Mustafa Madžar i druge priče [Mustafa the Hungarian and other stories] (Sarajevo, 1965).

¹⁹ See especially Jovan Pešalj, Monitoring Migrations: The Habsburg-Ottoman Border in the Eighteenth Century (Ph.D. diss., Leiden University, 2019). On Bosnia, see Petrić, Mario, “O migracijama stanovništva u Bosni i Hercegovini” [On populations migrations in Bosnia-Herzegovina], Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja [Herald of the National Museum] 18 (1963): 5–16Google Scholar; Pelidija, Enes, “O migracionim kretanjima stanovništva bosanskog ejaleta u prvim decenijama XVIII stoljeća” [On migratory population movements in the Bosnian province in the early 18th century], in Migracije i Bosna i Hercegovina [Migrations and Bosnia-Herzegovina], ed. Šehić, Nusret (Sarajevo, 1990), 119–31Google Scholar; Skenderović, Robert, “Zapisi o doseljenim sarajevskim katolicima u najstarijoj brodskoj matici, 1701–1735” [Documents concerning the settlement of Sarajevan Catholics in the oldest church books of Brod, 1701–1735], Scrinia Slavonica [Slavonia annual review] 10 (2010): 143–60Google Scholar; and Bronza, Austrijska politika prema prostoru Bosne i Hercegovine, 1699–1788 [Austrian policies toward the space of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1699–1788] (Banja Luka, 2012), 309–29. Many of these syntheses draw on birth records, taxation registers, or other evidence of demographic movements that say little about specific motivations or intentions of Ottoman, Venetian, or Habsburg subjects in choosing particular routes or places of migration.

²⁰ Milenko Filipović makes this point throughout his ethnographic study of northeast Bosnia; see his Prilozi etnološkom poznavanju severoistočne Bosne [Contributions to the ethnographic study of northeastern Bosnia] (Sarajevo, 1969). On similar processes in the Dalmatian hinterland, see Wolff, Larry, Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford, 2002), 45, 145–48, 286Google Scholar.

²¹ A great deal has been written about chiftlik formation as a dimension of the economic integration of the Ottoman Empire into the “modern world-system”; see Wallerstein, Immanuel and Kasaba, Reşat, “Incorporation into the World Economy: Change in the Structure of the Ottoman Empire, 1750–1839,” in Économie et societé dans l'Empire ottoman, eds. Bacqué-Grammont, J. L. and Dumont, Paul (Paris, 1983)Google Scholar. For a reconsideration of these debates, see Keyder, Çağlar and Tabak, Faruk, eds., Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East (Albany, 1991)Google Scholar.

²² Sidžil TK, L 22-a3, 77.

²³ Sidžil TK, L 23-d3, 89.

²⁴ Sidžil TK, L 23a-d3, 91and L 34-d6, 112.

²⁵ It is unclear whether any peasants in this case were returning from across the Habsburg military border (Militärgrenze); they could have been attracted to emigrate there by a lighter taxation regimen, though one linked to conscription obligations that were systematically enforced. On some features of this system, see Lazanin, Sanja and Štefanec, Nataša, “Habsburg Military Conscription and Changing Realities of the Triplex Confinium,” in Constructing Border Societies on the Triplex Confinium, eds. Roksandić, Drago et al. (Budapest, 2000), 91–116Google Scholar.

²⁶ See numerous examples in Sidžil TK, L 11-b, 12-b, 48–53.

²⁷ Filipović, Nedim, ed., “Sedam dokumenata iz kodeksa Br. 1” [Seven documents from codex no. 1] Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 3–4 (1953): 437–54Google Scholar, especially documents dated 1776 and 1779.

²⁸ McGowan, Bruce, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe: Taxation, Trade and the Struggle for Land, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1981), 52–56Google Scholar.

²⁹ Zarinebaf, Fariba, “Soldiers into Tax-Farmers and Reaya into Sharecroppers,” in A Historical and Economic History of Ottoman Greece: The Southwestern Morea in the 18th Century, eds. Zarinebaf et al. (Athens, 2005), 9–47Google Scholar. Also see similar conclusions regarding Ottoman Wallachia by Aksan, Virginia, “Whose Territory and Whose Peasants? Ottoman Boundaries on the Danube in the 1760s,” in The Ottoman Balkans, 1750–1830, ed. Anscombe, Frederick (Princeton, 2005), 61–86Google Scholar; and Yıldız, Aysel and Kokdaş, İrfan, “Peasantry in a Well-Protected Domain: Wallachian Peasantry and Muslim Çiftlik/Kışlaks under the Ottoman Rule,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 20 (2018): 1–16Google Scholar.

³⁰ Muslim leaders, like the kadi Abdulkarim Muharemija of the Tuzla area or sheikh Muhammed of Užice, were at the forefront of popular agitations that included Christian peasants. See Spaho, Fehim, “Pobune u tuzlanskom srezu polovicom XVIII vijeka” [Rebellions in the Tuzla area in the 18th century], Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja 45 (1933): 71–76Google Scholar; Mušić, Omer, “Poslanica šejha Muhameda Užičanina beogradskom valiji Muhamed-paši” [Sheikh Muhamed of Užice's dispatch to the Belgrade governor Muhamed Paša], Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 2 (1951): 185–94Google Scholar; also Tričković, Radmila, “Buna užičkog šejha Mehmeda 1747–1750 godine” [The rebellion of the sheikh Mehmed of Užice, 1747–1750], in Oslobodilački pokreti jugoslovenskih naroda od XVI veka do početka Prvog svetskog rata [The liberatory movements of the Yugoslav peoples from the 16th century to the First World War], ed. Milić, Danica (Belgrade, 1976), 101–14Google Scholar.

³¹ On some occasions, Sarajevan janissaries allowed those who paid a fee to don the military garb and proclaim, “We are janissaries,” thus claiming they are not raya and do not owe such taxes. Sućeska, , “Pokušaji muslimanske raje u Bosni da se oslobode rajinskog statusa u XVIII stoljeću” [The attempts of the Muslim re'aya of Bosnia to exempt themselves from the re'aya status in the 18th century], Godišnjak Pravnog Fakulteta u Sarajevu 33 (1985): 242–44Google Scholar.

³² Hadžijahić, Muhamed, “Sarajevska muafnama” [The Sarajevo register of tax exemption], Godišnjak društva istoričara Bosne i Hercegovine [The Yearbook of the Historical Society of Bosnia-Herzegovina] 14 (1964), 67–119Google Scholar; Sućeska, Avdo, “Da li su sarajevski jevreji bili mu'af?” [Were the Jews of Sarajevo exempt from some taxation?], Godišnjak Pravnog fakulteta u Sarajevu 23 (1975), 191–205Google Scholar; Gadžo-Kasumović, Azra, “Obnovljena muafnama Novog Jajca/Varcar Vakufa iz 1734. godine i ehalija” [The rescript of the tax exemption register of Jajce/Varcar Vakuf in 1734], Anali Gazi Husrev-begove biblioteke [The Annals of the Gazi Husrev Bey Library] 37 (2016): 28–30Google Scholar; and Acun, Fatma, “The Other Side of the Coin: Tax Exemptions within the Context of Ottoman Taxation History,” Bulgarian Historical Review 1–2 (2002): 125–39Google Scholar.

³³ Bašeskija, Mula Mustafa, Ljetopis (1746–1804) [Chronicle, 1746–1804], ed. and trans. Mujezinović, Mehmed (Sarajevo, 1997), 283–84Google Scholar.

³⁴ Jelenić, Julijan, Kultura i bosanski Franjevci [Culture and the Bosnian Franciscans], vol. 1 (Sarajevo, 1915), 310–28Google Scholar; see esp. Tóth, István, “Between Islam and Catholicism: Bosnian Franciscan Missionaries in Turkish Hungary, 1584–1716,” The Catholic Historical Review 89, no. 3 (2003): 409–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁵ Benić claims the Ottoman threats were based on a rumor started by an Orthodox captive: “The damned schismatic answered, ‘The cause of all this is your raya and the friars.’ When the Turks heard that, they all went up in great agitation. And the army cursed the raya and us. Then the pasha, being a wise man, said to everyone, ‘Let's first beat the Germans, and only then, God willing, when we come back, we'll cut down the men above age seven, and turn their women into slaves.’ . . . Thus they went off to fight [without attacking the monastery].” Benić, Bono, Ljetopis sutješkoga samostana [The chronicle of the Sutjeska monastery], ed. Gavran, Ignacije (Sarajevo, 2003), 122Google Scholar. For a very similar account of the same event, see Lašvanin, Nikola, Ljetopis (Sarajevo, 2003), 208–9Google Scholar.

³⁶ Benić, Ljetopis sutješkoga samostana, 142, 146–47, 159–61, 214, 218, 284, 310.

³⁷ Bogdanović, Marijan, Ljetopis kreševskoga samostana, 1765‒1817, ed. and trans. Gavran, Ignacije (Sarajevo, 2003), 215–18Google Scholar.

³⁸ Bronza, Boro, “The Habsburg Monarchy and the Projects for Division of the Ottoman Balkans, 1771‒1788,” in Empires and Peninsulas: Southeastern Europe between Carlowitz and the Peace of Adrianople, 1699–1829, eds. Mitev, Plamen et al. (Berlin, 2010), 85–94Google Scholar.

³⁹ This 1785 German-language report is reprinted in Kreševljaković, Hamdija and Kapidžić, Hamdija, eds., Vojno-geografski opis Bosne pred Dubički rat od 1785 godine [The military-geographic survey of Bosnia before the Dubica War of 1785] (Sarajevo, 1957)Google Scholar. On Ottoman accounts of the ensuing war, see Korić, Elma, “Bosansko pograničje u vrijeme Dubičkog rata 1788–1791,” Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 65 (2015): 213–37Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ For numerous Austrian military surveys of Bosnia of this period, see box 18, StAbt Türkei III (Grenzverhältnisse), Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (HHStA).

⁴¹ Schmidt, Jan, “Franz von Dombay: Austrian Dragoman at the Bosnian Border, 1792–1800,” Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Des Morgenlandes 90 (2000), esp. 123–34Google Scholar. On similar remarks by the French consul in Ottoman Bosnia, see Cascavilla, Giuseppe Pio, “Pierre David's Consulship under Hüsrev Mehmed Pasha's Rule as Governor of Bosnia,” French Historical Studies 41, no. 4 (2018): 620, 641Google Scholar.

⁴² In 1781, friar Bono Benić reported that two Ottoman Muslim clerics began to demand that the cross in front of the Catholic communal graveyard in Kreševo be removed and that friars no longer carry crosses in funeral processions. Petitioned by the Franciscans for help, the Ottoman governor issued an order “that everyone should stick to the usual customs,” but unnamed local Muslim instigators nonetheless proceeded to imprison a Kreševo friar and apparently force the Franciscans to alter the funerary customs, a change that Benić saw as “unprecedented since the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia some 320 years ago.” In such local incidents, seemingly symbolic struggles over Christian public practices revealed much deeper changes in Muslim-Christian relations that occurred in the eighteenth century. Benić, Ljetopis sutješkoga samostana, 319.

⁴³ Sidžil TK, L 19-b, 83 and L 24-b3, 139.

⁴⁴ Bogdanović, Ljetopis kreševskoga samostana, 89.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Bogdanović, Ljetopis kreševskoga samostana, 155; see also 225. These Franciscan chronicles can be usefully read alongside the contemporaneous chronicle of the Ottoman Muslim cleric Mustafa Bašeskija, whose notes conveyed a sense of Ottoman Muslim tension around the raya: “Many [in Sarajevo] lack sense and are crazy when they consider it almost their mission to make the raya miserable. This much I know, such actions are against the holy Qur'an.” Bašeskija, Ljetopis (1746–1804), 156; also 88, 98, 116, 177, 299.

⁴⁷ Benić, Ljetopis sutješkoga samostana, 302.

⁴⁸ Jukić, “Želje i molbe kristjanah u Bosni i Hercegovini, koje ponizno prikazuju njegovom carskom veličanstvu sretnovladajućem sultanu Abdul-Medžidu” [The desires and requests of the Christians in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which they humbly present to their Imperial Majesty, the felicitously ruling Abdülmecid], in Zemljopis i Poviestnica Bosne [The geography and history of Bosnia] (Zagreb, 1851), 155–64.

⁴⁹ For related examples in Ottoman Bulgarian regions, see Mirkova, Anna, Muslim Land, Christian Labor: Transforming Ottoman Imperial Subjects into Bulgarian National Citizens, 1878–1939 (Budapest, 2017)Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ For a recent survey of these fields, see Yılmaz, Yasir, “Nebulous Ottomans vs. Good Old Habsburgs: A Historiographical Comparison,” Austrian History Yearbook 48 (2017): 173–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.