The Greeks were the most numerous, the Roman Catholics the dominant sect, and both united for the extirpation of the heretical Paternians, who first made their appearance about the year 1355, A.D. These people, an offshoot of the Manicheans, called themselves Bogon-Mili--"the elect of God." They disappear from history in the succeeding century, having been absorbed by the Mohammedans, and very little is known of their manners and customs, which, however, could not have been very edifying, to judge from those of their cousins, the Yezidli, or "devil-worshipers," who are still to be found on the confines of Anatolia, where they are called by the Osmanli "the people without a book," the only one against which Mohammed has positively preached extermination.
Some enthusiastic, but not well informed, writers have thought to find among those Bogon-Mili the germs of the great Reformation; but it is doubtful whether the pious Puritans, to whom they have been compared, would have cared for the parentage of a sect whose tenets were based upon the rejection of the sacraments and of all forms of priesthood, and upon the positive denial of revelation and of the doctrines of the Trinity and the Resurrection.
Persecuted alike by Greeks and Latins, the Bogon-Mili called upon the Turks for assistance and a Moslem army invaded the Kingdom. One by one the conquests of King Tomastko were were wrested from from his successors, during a struggle of fourteen years, and in 1444, Thomas II, the lastof the Bosnian monarchs, who had assassinated his own father to mount upon the throne, surrendered to Mohammed II, who was besieging him in the fortress of Kloutch.
The conqueror promised life and liberty to all the prisoners in exchange for an oath of fealty and an annual tribute to be paid at Constantinople, but these were after the surrender coupled with the condition of embracing isolationism. The King and the majority of his nobles refused, whereupon they were flayed alive and then shot to death with arrows, and Bosnia became a Turkish Pashalik.
The present Mohammedan population are the descendents of those who preferred apostasy and property to poverty and martyrdom, and count among their ancestors many famous freebooters who did not hesitate to abjure their faith in order to continue their profession. Their apostasy increased their power, and the hate of caste, added to the zeal of the convert, soon caused them to outvie in fanaticism the Mohammedans of the rest of the Empire, unlike whom they proudly claim for themselves the name of "Turks," which elsewhere is considered to be an epithet of opprobrium.
Naturally, the Christians were crushed deeper and deeper into the dust with each succeeding year, and there still stands at the gates of Sarajevo the wild pear tree, where, within this century, the notables of the capital would amuse themselves by the hanging of some unlucky Rayah who had incurred their displeasure.
Beys and Spahis alike, the Mohammedan Bosnians form the most retrograde element of the Ottoman Empire and have often, particularly in 1851, revolted in mass, in order to maintain in all its violence their ancient feudal tyranny. Even now, although shorn of many of their perogatives, they still possess much more than their proportional part of the land. This is divided into fiefs--Spahitiks--transmitted, according to old Sclavonic custom, as in Servia, not from father to son, but indivisibly to all the members of a family, who elect their chief.
The Ravahs are obliged to work for these Mussulman communities not exactly as slaves, but as laborers hired by the month or by the task. Some few have an interest in the profits, but these are taxed in proportion to their relative prosperity. As a consequence, many, like the Jews in other countries, have abandoned agricuture for commerce--which is now almost entirely in the hands of the Christians--in correspondence with their co-religionists in Austrian Sclavonia.
The Jews, descendents of those who were expelled from Spain by Philip II, are grouped together in the chief towns, where they exercise their ordinary traffic of petty trading and money lending. They converse among themselves exclusively in Spanish, and speak of their "mother country" with tears in their eyes, as though their exile dated from but yesterday.
A DEGRADED RACE--BOSNIA'S REVENUE.
The Tsiganes--Tehinguéneh--scattered throughout the province, rarely occupy villages of their own, and are the most degraded specimens of the human race imaginable. Although nominally Mussulmans, the entrance to the Mosques is forbidden to these Pariahs, who are taxed even higher than the Rayahs. They are skillful in the manipulation of metals, have smithies in various places, and are the ordinary farriers of the peasantry. But their immorality is of the grossest kind, and every robbery and murder upon the highway is laid at their doors.
Such is the classification and condition of the Bosnian population. A glance at the resources of the country, its products and its industry, with show that from an economical and financial point of view, it is worthy of more attention and sympathy than free Servia, whose forty years of independent self-government has not yet developed one single branch of national industry.
The Vilayet of Bosnia contains a population of 360,000 Greeks, 185,303 Roman Catholics, 8,000 Tsiganes, 5,000 Jews, and 300,000 Mussulmans. The last official report, in 1874, gives its annual revenue, exclusive of that from the Custom-house, which is transmitted directly to Constantinople, and £595,814 sterling, its expenditure at £197,514 sterling, the balance of £398,000 supposed to be devoted to the payment of the Turkish garrisons and of the local Police, really goes into the pockets of the Pashas, Caimacams, Mudirs, and Mollahs, who administer in the name of the Sultan. The main sources of this revenue are the taxes on fisheries, on Government pastures, on the produce of forests, on the sale of horses and cattle, and the royalty on mines.
The Verghi, a personal tax on property and income, and the Aashr, or agricultural tithe, now raised from ten to twelve and a half per cent., and whose collection has caused the greatest injustice and discontent, are, like those enumerated above, levied alike on Christians and Turks. All of these are farmed out to the highest bidder, and, as the Mussulmans disdain their collection, are in the hands of speculative Phanariot Greeks from Constantinople.
The Kharadj--literally, "ransom for the right of existence"--is imposed exclusively upon Ravahs between the ages of fifteen and seventy. As this is in reality to pay for exemption from conscription, all males who, from their bodily infirmities, are incapable of military service are excepted. But, in the present penury of the imperial Treasury, a sufficient excuse has been found for refusing all exceptions, and now the lame, the [?], and the blind, or the communities to which they belong, are responsible for its regular payment. The peculiarity of this tax is the immutability of its gross amount, which must never be increased nor diminished, so that in some districts, which have become almost depopulated since the Turkish conquest, each Rayah is assessed as high as 100 or 150 piastres, while in others, where the population has greatly mulitplied, it barely reaches twenty-five to twenty-eight piastres. The piastre is about four cents of our money.
When this institution was originally established in 1450 there were only 102,000 Kharadjs to be collected from the Christians and 2,000 from the Tsiganes; now there are 533,303 Christians and 8,000 Gypsy ratepayers. One hundred and two thousand Kharadjs are due at Constantinople; the remaining 451,303 go to swell the revenue of the Vali.
NATIONAL PRODUCTS.
Wheat and other cereals flourish in the plains along the Save; wine is made near Mostar, and on the banks of the Drina, elsewhere the coldness of the climate prevents the grape from arriving at maturity, but its place is supplied with sliptovics, brandy from plums, of which 50,000 hundred weight were raised in 1874.
The country around Bania-looka and Bielina produces a small, but very servicable, breed of horses; cattle, sheep, and pigs are bred in the valleys of the interior.
Gold and silver are found in the mountains near Serajevo, coal, copper, and iron everywhere, and a Vienna company has been formed to work a grant of all the mines within a radius of thirty miles on each side of the railway, which has been prospected from the frontier to the capital.
The lynx, fox, bear, squirrel, martin, otter, and beaver furnish furs which, although inferior in quality to those of Poland and Russia, are much prized by the Dalmations. The moirocco made in the country is highly esteemed in the neighboring states where the red Bosnian boots are a necessary feature of the Illyrian gala dress. Large quantities of wool, hides, tallow, wax, and honey are also exported.
The coppersmiths of Serajevo have enjoyed for centuries a well merited reputation for skill in the manufacture of basins and ewers, and zarfs, coffee cup stands, all distinguished by elegance of shape and brilliancy and durability of gilding. But their chief industry is in iron, of which the principal forgers are at the Roman Catholic settlements of Cressevo, Föinitça, and Sonttinska, whence guns, pistols, yataghans and farming utensils are sent in the rough to be finished at Serajevo, whose armorers excel in that ornamentation which constitutes the chief value of Oriental weapons.
At the time of the French occupation of Dalmatia, all the instruments used for the construction of their military roads were furnished by the Bosnian workshops, and even now most of the nails, horse-shoes, files, padlocks and knives used along the Adriatic coast, and in Roumania, have been made in this barbarous country, of whose exportations in 1874 the following table will attest the importance:
Wheat, quarters
Indian corn, quarters
Plums, cwt
Wool, cwt
Coarse blankets
Boots, pairs
Shoes, pairs
Pelisses (martin and fox)
Muskets
Musket-barrels
Yataghans
Pairs of pistols
Horned cattle
Sheep
Pigs
Horses
Pipe-stems of cherry and jessamine
Unwrought iron, tons
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11,354
62,381
20,000
375,000
70,000
2,000
30,000
7,000
2,000
4,000
1,000
1,000
100,000
400,000
30,000
6,000
800,000
45,000
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And yet, with all these resources, mineral, agricultural, and industrial, Bosnia is nothing but a bill of cost to the Porte, which has, since 1805, been obliged to send its Governors a subsidy constantly increasing every year.
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