Rumeli Under the Ottomans, 15th-18th Centuries: Institutions and Communities

Rumeli under the Ottomans is a collection of papers by Rossitsa Gradeva concerning the Ottoman Balkans between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Gradeva is concerned primarily with the system of government and the various communities which inhabited the Balkans. In the chapter “The Ottomans”, Gradeva looks at specific cases, such as the cities of Pazarcik and Sofia, and how the Ottoman qadi courts functioned in each. She also writes on Ottoman Bulgaria’s administrative system in general. In “The Subjects”, Gradeva studies the Orthodox Christians and Jews in the Balkans, tackling questions such as church building, apostasy and Christian use of Muslim religious courts. Gradeva shows to the reader that in the past, the Balkans existed as a place of mixed ethnicities, languages and religions but without the conflict which most people associate with the region.