Another Darkness, Another Dawn

by Becky Taylor

  By the fourteenth century evidence from popular culture, in the form of surviving folk stories from Constantinople, provides the first insight into how they were perceived by the general population, rather than simply by the elite. The surviving stories show how they were considered ‘dark’, and give evidence that they were sieve makers and bear keepers. The tales also reveal more broadly the contemptuous attitude held by the Byzantines towards them, and one satirical poem – ‘A Jocular Tale about the Quadrupeds’ – has the protagonist, a wolf, insulting a bear, calling it a ‘reservoir of filth, an amusement of the foolish Gypsies’. Later in the poem ‘Gypsy’ is used as an insult, when a creature is accused of being ‘a liar, a thief and a Gypsy’, a theme that emerges in another poem of the same period. This suggests that Gypsies were familiar enough to the general population that they would have understood and appreciated the references. However, we should also remember that, despite such contemptuous attitudes, Gypsies were able to make a living from providing forms of entertainment and certain services, so that they cannot have been such pariahs as to be unable to garner any audience or custom.

  If we can assume that by the fourteenth century Gypsies had become a normal part of Byzantine society, we cannot make any similar assumptions about how they moved into the Balkans and became established in Thrace (modern-day European Turkey). While it is tempting to tie the first recording of Gypsies in Serbia (1348) to the rapid movement of the Black Death from the Middle East into Europe in that year, in fact most of this first wave of the plague followed a route through Italy rather than the Balkans. As with the migration from India westwards, the gradual migration of Gypsies north and west is attributable to a combination of factors, including moving within existing trading routes and responding to small-scale and short-term opportunities and difficulties by moving on. Certainly by 1362 they had reached Ragusan in southern Croatia – a document from then instructed a local goldsmith to return eight silver coins to two Gypsies named Vlachus and Vitanus – and by 1378 they were present in Zagreb. We also have evidence that Gypsies had already become serfs of the ruling princes, monasteries or nobles in Moldavia and Wallachia (present-day Romania), so that in 1385, for instance, 40 Gypsy families were granted to the Monastery of St Anthony at Vodita. By 1445–6 there are detailed records of Gypsies living in villages in the Sofia region: one of these, Dabijiv, contained fifteen full Gypsy households and three of widows. Comparing the chief’s low income from tax here with others in the area we can see how Gypsies in this district were on the lowest part of the social scale. Taken together, these documents demonstrate how Gypsies fully integrated into the feudal system by the early fourteenth century and probably participated in agriculture on a full-time basis.27

  At the same time that Gypsies were establishing themselves in what was by now a disintegrating Byzantine Empire they were also spreading beyond its boundaries, pushed by the shifting geopolitical realities of the region. By the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries they were well established in the areas of the Peloponnese under Venetian control. Given the relatively stability of these provinces, which did not at this time suffer attack from the expanding Ottoman Empire (in contrast to the rest of the Peloponnese), this is no surprise. Traveller writings from the Greek mainland and islands show that ‘Egyptians’ were well established within these areas, that they had their own language and that they were numerous enough to be seen as one of the most ‘notable’ presences in the region. In this they were just one part of the mixed Mediterranean societies in the late medieval period, and although they were seen as distinctive, they were not exceptional in the eyes of others. A Franciscan friar who visited Crete in 1323 described some Greek Orthodox Gypsies living on the outskirts of the city of Candia as ‘not stopping at all, or rarely, in one place longer than thirty days; they live in tents like Arabs, little oblong black tents’.28 While this account compared them to nomadic Arabs, tax records from late thirteenth-century Corfu show that they were sufficiently numerous to be counted as an independent fief – the feudum acinganorum – and consequently integrated into the island’s feudal system. Here they lived under an overlord who held the right to extract money and in-kind taxes, and bring to trial and punish his Gypsy serfs, with the power to imprison and exile them or make them galley slaves. Some decades later, evidence from Crete shows how some Gypsies had become absorbed within the lower ranks of Venetian imperial social structures: a letter argued for John the Gypsy (Johannes cinganus) to be reinstated as head of a company of soldiers, ‘under the same terms of law, rank, title and position as before the said deprivation took place’.29 It may well be that, owing to the increasingly uncertain landscape created by the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the Venetians acted expediently to ensure that the loyalty of all groups living under their control could be counted on. Granting rights and privileges was one way of ensuring this. It is also clear that, within the context of the ethnically mixed Peloponnese region, a range of different lifestyles, languages and beliefs were common, and in that sense Gypsies could be seen simply as one of a number of peoples rather than as ‘the outsiders’.

  Probably the most important place for Gypsy settlements in the Venetian Empire in this period was the city of Modon (Methoni) on the west coast of the Peloponnese. Its location on the route to Jerusalem meant it hosted many pilgrims, and surviving accounts from the 1380s onward reveal the existence of a Gypsy settlement located outside the city. An Italian, Lionardo di Niccolo Frescobaldi, visiting in 1384, described a number of Romniti, whom he believed were living outside the walls in order to do penance for their sins. The most detailed account, from nearly a century later stated that ‘there are many hovels outside the town, about three hundred in number, in which dwell certain folk like the Ethiopians, black and ungainly’ and that these people were called Saracens in Germany and that they had ‘falsely claimed to have come from Egypt’.30 Just over a century later the pilgrim Arnold von Harff in 1491, gave an insight into their livelihoods and an explanation of their presence in the city:

  They are called Gypsies: we call them heathen people from Egypt who travel about in our countries. These people follow all kinds of trade, such as shoemaking, cobbling and smithery. It was strange to see the anvil on the ground at which a man sat like a tailor in our country. By him, also on the ground, sat his housewife spinning . . . these people come from a country called Gyppe, which lies about forty miles from the town of Modon. The Turkish emperor took it sixty years ago, but many lords and counts would not serve under the Turkish emperor and fled.31

  As here, many Traveller accounts from Modon refer to the settlement as ‘Gyppe’ or ‘Little Egypt’, in a manner ‘paralleled by the “Little Jewry” of some English towns’. When Gypsies entered western Europe in the fifteenth century they claimed to be from Egypt or ‘Little Egypt’, and more than one gypsiologist traced this back to this Modon settlement.32 The timings make this unlikely as ‘Egyptians’ began arriving in western Europe from the early fifteenth century, while the settlement at Modon was still in existence 150 years later. What, however, is certainly the case is that, just as the successive movements of early Gypsy groups were tied to the expansions of the Persian, Seljuk and then Byzantine empires, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, which consolidated their domination of the Balkans, was central to the establishment of Roma communities in what was to become one of their heartlands in Europe.

  We have already seen how although Gypsies in the Byzantine and Venetian empires were of low status, they were not completely separate from wider society, but were integrated into the feudal tax system and provided services – smithing and entertainment – to the wider population, as well as being tied to the land as serfs. The Corfu tax records also reveal that they kept poultry, while evidence from Nauplion shows that it was not impossible for them to enter the Byzantine hierarchy, albeit at a lowly level. And in this part of the eastern Mediterranean they existed as simply one ethnic and linguistic group among many other
s who settled or moved around the region as opportunities or difficulties arose. As part of their daily lives, therefore, they would have come into contact with feudal officials, pilgrims, traders and travellers as well as the wider population they served. Consequently, although different and distinguishable from other communities, they do not appear particularly exceptional.

  In this sense at least, the expansion of the Ottomans into the Balkans reaffirmed and continued these features of Gypsy life. However, the Ottomans brought with them some new features too, not least the active settlement of sparsely populated areas of Thrace and Bulgaria, and the methodical expansion of their taxation system across their new territories. Significantly, the Ottomans did not insist upon conversion to Islam but rather operated the millet system. This term, stemming from the Arabic for ‘nation’, referred to the separate confessional communities of the empire that were granted control over matters of ‘personal law’. In essence, this meant that Muslim Sharia, Christian canon law and Jewish Halakha existed in parallel across the empire, with communities collecting their own taxes and setting their own laws within a context of swearing loyalty to the empire. This system of government was to have as much impact on Gypsies as it did on the rest of the population of the Balkans.

  However, within this we must take into account the way in which the different histories of conquest played into local structures of rule and autonomy, particularly the difference between the southern Balkans, which were ruled directly as part of the Ottoman Empire, and the principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania (present-day Romania), which, along with Hungary, by the sixteenth century represented the furthest reaches of the Ottoman Empire. Rather than being ruled directly by Istanbul they existed as loose vassal client states, and consequently had far more autonomy. So while in 1393 Bulgaria was annexed outright, Serbia retained more independence via its vassal status from 1389, as did Bosnia, Wallachia and Moldavia. This reminds us of the importance of understanding the complex nature of empires; that conquered territories might not only be drawn in, settled and accommodated into empire, but could equally remain separate and largely independent.33 Crucially, for the Gypsies of Wallachia and Moldavia (and of Transylvania for a short period), the autonomy of these Christian principalities meant that a system of enslavement of the Gypsy populations was able to develop.

  In fact, from the first records of Gypsies Wallachia and Moldavia in the 1380s, unlike in other parts of the Balkans, they appear as slaves. Slavery here needs to be understood within the broader context of an evolving feudal system, with its meaning shifting gradually from something closer to serf status in the late medieval period to outright slavery by the time of its abolition in the nineteenth century. In this period, eastern and south eastern Europe, in sharp contrast to western Europe, saw the general expansion of serfdom, where conditions deteriorated for peasants as feudalism and serfdom became the primary means of social organization. Across the region it was often difficult to distinguish in practice between a slave and a serf: in Russia for example, a noble’s wealth was measured by how many ‘souls’ he owned.34 In the Balkans changes within feudalism need to be tied to shifting economic fortunes across the region, particularly as trade routes moved as a result of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, turning Wallachia and Moldavia into something of a backwater. At the same time their vassal status required them to pay a sizeable yearly tribute to Istanbul and to supply the Empire with certain foodstuffs. As these financial obligations were passed down the social hierarchy the position of the peasantry worsened so that by the fifteenth century they had descended in semi-serf status. From then matters deteriorated further and from the sixteenth century ‘it is impossible to speak of the enslaved Gypsies without mentioning at the same time the enslaved peasants’.35

  With no firm evidence of when Gypsies reached this northern part of the Balkans or of their economic status at this time we can only extrapolate from what we know of their lives in the Byzantine Empire, and of how serfdom expanded in this region generally to fashion an explanation for the phenomenon. They were likely to have been travelling craftspeople, (horse) traders and casual labourers who, possibly through debt or poverty, had to settle in one place as serfs of the local landlord, who might have been a voivode (prince), bishop or noble.36 Some Gypsies were able to evade this status, and maintained a nomadic way of life. In some respects these nomadic Gypsies were better off, as although technically classed as slaves of the voivode, they still had considerable freedom (including that to move around in their family groups), as long as they paid an annual tribute.37 The position of enslaved Gypsies in this period may have been little different to that of the serfs, whose allegiance was transferred along with any change in ownership of the land. So although a 1385 document confirming the transfer of the rights of feudal ownership of 40 Gypsy families to the monastery of St Anthony at Vodita shows they existed within the Wallachian feudal system as serfs, it is not necessarily a record of their slave status. At this time, when donations of Gypsy families were being made, what was being transferred was the right to exact tribute (of work, money or goods) rather than the physical exchange of individuals. So transferrals of Gypsies to the ownership of monasteries – such as the gift of 300 families to the newly established Cozia monastery in 1388 – were probably in this vein, and it was only over time that this tribute became more formally tied to rights over Gypsies as individuals. What is also notable about the practice of slavery in the region is how, against the backdrop of an over-pressurized feudal economy, Gypsies acquired an increasing financial importance. They typically occupied a position between peasants and the growing number of agricultural serfs and the upper orders, and were valued for their artisan skills, particularly as smiths, with entire estates being dependent on their skills to function.

  The position of Gypsies in Rumelia (the southern Balkans, directly ruled from Istanbul) was rather different. The expansion of the Ottomans into the region quickly resulted in the entry of more Gypsies, whose presence was documented through the extension of the empire’s extensive taxation system. Two key sources exist from this period: a tax register specifically relating to the Gypsy population of Rumelia from 1523; and a general tax register from eastern Rumelia, which is thought to have been compiled in 1530 and included Gypsies within its remit.38 Taken together these registers allow us an insight both into the nature of the early Gypsy population of the Balkans and how they fitted into broader society. The picture that emerges from the early period of Ottoman rule of the Balkans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is one in which Gypsies were integrated into the emerging society and hierarchies, albeit typically at the lowest level.

  The two different types of tax register present different faces of the place of the Roma within the administrative structure of towns and villages in the Ottoman Empire. We need to remember that one of the key roles of the registers was, like England’s Domesday Book, to provide an idea about the demographic, productive and taxation potential of the communities under scrutiny. Notably, the Gypsy register of 1523 is very clear that although Gypsies were considered by the Ottomans to be nomadic, they largely travelled in relatively circumscribed areas and so were thought to be controllable by the authorities for taxation or military purposes.

  The register shows the Gypsies as groups of independent communities (cemaats) that may or may not have been tied to a particular settlement, but were certainly associated with a broader district or territory within which they were based and travelled. In some cases members of the community might have been settled in a town or village in a given district while others from the same group were more nomadic, returning periodically and almost certainly for the winter season. The figures from 1523 show that there were 382 cemaats spread across 88 districts, together holding 16,000 Gypsies. These were not geographically evenly distributed: most Gypsies were concentrated in northern Rumelia and in the areas south of Sofia that had been settled before the capture of the city by the Ottomans in 1382. By 1530
there were 17,191 households (possibly 66,000 people) making up around 1 to 1.2 per cent of the total population of Rumelia. Mapping their locations onto present-day state boundaries, a majority of them were based in Bulgaria (5,701), with the former Yugoslav states having the next highest population (4,382), followed by Greece (2,512), with only 374 living in Albania.39

  The spread of the Ottoman Empire northwards meant that preexisting Gypsy communities, which were by this time identifiably Christian and took Slavic names, were added to by incoming Muslim Gypsy groups, who came as part of the process of imperial expansion and consolidation. Gypsies are recorded as having taken part in the military campaigns of the Ottomans in the Balkans, before forming part of the waves of settlement as part of the process of Ottoman-Turkish colonization. During the winter preparations for the attack on Constantinople in 1452–3, for example, Mehmed II brought together a large group of blacksmiths and craftsmen that included a number of Gypsies in order to make the cannons. This military use of their skills was something that continued, with particular communities of Gypsies being tied to forts and military settlements such as the town of Vidin and along the Danube crossings.40 As much as it was possible, the Ottoman rule aimed at facilitating settlement in the sparsely populated parts of Thrace. This simultaneously enabled the establishment of a sound taxation base for the new territories and ensured that the population was not hostile. The groups most favoured for this scheme were in fact nomads, primarily Yürüks and Tatars, and also Gypsies, since their mobility made resttlement easier. Initially this occurred relatively spontaneously but then became a specific policy of the imperial power.

  By 1530 the balance of religious allegiance was already changing, with records showing that 40 per cent of Gypsies were now Muslim. This shift was less a result of continuing in-migration and more part of the process of Islamicization encouraged by financial incentives. Fairly rapidly then – the fall of Constantinople had only occurred some 70 years previously – not only did the Ottomans manage to create what appears to be a relatively accurate picture of their new dominions, but they had also started having a profound impact on the population of the Balkans. These tax registers also give us a useful insight into how the Gypsy populations related to the wider communities in which they lived and through which they travelled. The evidence strongly suggests that as well as being present in both the countryside and towns, Gypsies at this time were not living particularly separately from other communities: there were no settlements with a predominantly Gypsy population, although they may have been living in particular quarters of larger settlements. Over time these did develop into distinct areas of towns, but in the first decades of Ottoman rule it appears that the situation was far more fluid. In 1530, for example, there were a number of documented examples of Gypsy households, both Christian and Muslim, which were not included in a cemaat but rather were dispersed among other residents.41