From Fiscal Diversity to Fiscal Convergence: Franciscan Monasteries in the Sanjak of Bosna during the First Century of Ottoman Rule

Abstract

The present contribution is an attempt to analyse and conceptualise all available information concerning the principal Franciscan monasteries in Central Bosnia from the Ottoman tax survey registers of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries. Many features in the monks’ fiscal status at this period are shared with the müste’min or foreigner from abroad, a status which appears to be based on the ahdnames granted by Sultan Mehmed Fatih. Yet at the same time, individual monasteries can be shown to have been placed under different tax regimes. It is only towards the later period that a high degree of fiscal convergence can be observed, resulting in a stereotype wording of the relevant entries in the tax survey registers.