Ottoman-Turkish documents of the Hajdú-Bihar County Archive The 1589 correspondence of Ferhad pasha of Buda regarding Debrecen and the Serbian bishops

Abstract

In this paper, I analyse the processing of two Ottoman-Turkish documents from 1589, preserved in the Hajdú-Bihar County Archive and issued by the Pasha of Buda. These documents pertain to the case of tax-collecting Serbian bishops in Debrecen. I investigate why Orthodox Serbian bishops attempted to collect taxes in the Protestant Hungarian market town of Debrecen. To address this question, I examine the structure of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Hungary and the nature of the taxes sought by the bishops from the inhabitants. Additionally, this work aims to explore problems associated with previous translations of the documents and provide new suggestions for them.