IP "Standarts of Everyday Life in the Middle Ages and in Modern Times". Opening and presenting the partners participants in IP - 14.05.2012

The Program started and after first presentations the ice was broken and new friendships were established. We learned more about the traditions and innovations in Bulgarian family from Professor Maria Ivanova. Dr. Marcin Piotrovski shared personal experience on the family topic. There was also a lively discussion about marriage and responsibilities. The communication continued during the walk through the streets of the old capital. We all were convinced of the merits of the urban environment and the role of Veliko Tarnovo as a cultural center. For dinner, guests were welcomed by children in traditional costumes who offered, according to the Bulgarian custom, bread and salt. Nice Bulgarian food.

Assoc. Prof. Krassimira Mutafova, RELIGIONS AND RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS ON THE BALKANS

 Summary

D

uring the last decades the Balkans has turned into one of the hottest points in Europe. The number of conflicts, followed by the foundation of new countries and politics and sociologist are still trying to find the reason for the new political map of European southeast.One of the main points that are going to be discussed in my lecture is whether and how religion, and especially the religious and ethnical changes on the Balkan peninsula in historical aspect and their contemporary projections, directly or indirectly reflect on the "degree of tension".

The other highlights of the lecture (having rather general title) are:

1.      The positions taken by the monotheistic religions on the Balkans up to the Ottoman invasion according to their official recognition and “delegated” priorities, the Byzantine missionary work and religious emancipation of the Balkan states, the relationship "East - West" / Catholicism and Orthodoxy;

2.      The new ethno-confessional situation on the Balkans during the Ottoman domination and the change in the balance religious – ethnical identity will be outlined in the context of:

-         changes in the positions of the traditional monotheistic religions after the Ottoman conquest;

-         law regulation of the relations with the "infidels". Some of the discussed problems which are related to the religious institutions of the officially recognized religious communities within the framework of the Millet system will be reviewed on the basis of recently found and translated Ottoman archival material from the so called “Piscopos kalemi”/lit. chancellery for Episcopal matters;

-         The Catholic propaganda, the traditional religious communities in the Balkans during the 16^th – 17^th centuries, and the communities with "interim" status;

3.      The Islam (“orthodox” and “heterodox”) and the Islamic religious institutions on the Balkans are represented as an inseparable part of the establishment of the Ottoman rule and the new confessional situation, with priority positions not of the Christianity, but of the Islam. In the light of the still “open” discussions on Turk colonization and the process of Islamization of the local Balkan population has been set one of the major issues related to the new confessional picture of the Balkan peninsula – the way in which Islamic enclaves are formed.

4.      The centers of religious life in the confessional communities - Muslim and non-Muslim - have been considered as an expression of dominance, formalized status and the center of the religious life of the marginal communities. Special attention is paid to the so called utraquistic/ dual sanctuaries, as an expression of specific dual code of coexistence of Muslims and Christians.

One of the main conclusions that I have made as a result of the my long-lasting research work on these issues is that not irrelevant for the modern ethnic and religious situation on the Balkans is the fact that up to the Ottoman invasion and the final conquest of the medieval Balkan states in the late 15^thcentury, and despite the persistent and earnest efforts of the papacy to impose Catholicism on the Balkans, the Crusades and the emergence of the Latin Empire, the Orthodoxy has preserved its priorities on the on the Balkan peninsula.

Dr. Alexander Antonov, TIME IS MONEY. THE OTTOMAN EXPRESS (ULAK) SERVICE IN THE LATE 17TH AND IN THE 18TH CENTURY

The lecture is based on Ottoman documents kept in Baş bakınlık Osmanlı Arşivi and the Oriental Department of the National Library in Sofia and tracing the development of the express (Ulak) service in the Ottoman Empire in the late 17^th and during the 18^th century. The lecture aims at presenting the mechanism of financing and the effectiveness of the express (Ulak) service during some of the most troublesome centuries for the Empire in military aspect.

The firmans through which in the 18^th century the authorities tried to regulate the menzil system as well as the information from the separate menzil defters show how difficult it was to reform the system because of the difference in the interests of the central authorities and the vilayet âyâns. The menzils (route stations) turned out to be a substantial source of wealth. The means from the by-the-hour payments were lost in them and the horses were used rather for private ends. The time for travelling was turned into money which was never returned into the system but catered for private interests. After 1696 the number of the menzil defters kept by the superintendents of the route stations and certified by the kadis grew substantially. This type of defters was kept as late as the 19^th century when Mustafa Reshid Pasha founded the Post khane system modeled after the modern European post office service.

Assoc. Prof. Maria Ivanova, THE BULGARIAN FAMILY – TRADITIONS AND INNOVATIONS

 

The present lecture discusses problems concerning characteristic features of the Bulgarian family – its form, structure, the average number of its members. Special attention is paid to the different forms of the Bulgarian family as a household. The inner family organization is considered according to the sex and the age of the family members.

The lecture examines some innovations in the family structure of the Bulgarians mostly characteristic of the urban family. Traditionally the village remained a preferable object of research until the 60s of the 20^th century. Only after this period the town got into the field of study of ethnologists because of the changes that were in progress in the Bulgarian village resulting in its gradual depopulation and the turning of the town into a place for making a living and adaptation for the migrated village population. Therefore most of the ethnologic research works are devoted to the process of transformation of the peasant into an industrial worker and the influence of urban environment over family way of life.