Twenty Years' Residence among the People of Turkey: Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, Turks, and Armenians

by Fanny Janet Sandison Blunt

The harem, on their side, bring friends to stay with them; and the days are spent in roaming out barefooted in the most négligés costumes, eating fruit, and helping to make the winter provisions, such as Tarhana Kouskous, Youfka,[9] Petmaiz,[10] Rechel,[11] and Nichesteh.[12] No needlework is brought to fill up the leisure hours of country life; the only amusements are the indecent conversation and the practical jokes of the parasites who never fail to accompany such parties.

The villages owned by the bey are made up of the dwellings of the tenants. These for the most part present a pitiable appearance of poverty and misery, though their interiors are as clean as circumstances will allow. They are constructed of mud and wattle, and divided into two or three rooms, with small openings for windows, and open chimneys. A fence incloses the house, together with the granary and cattle-shed. The tenants are, with few exceptions, Christians, and are called Yeradjis. They are poor, and look dejected and depressed, a demeanor I have often heard superficial observers attribute to laziness and natural worthlessness. This judgment may be just in some instances, but can by no means be taken as generally correct; the people are as willing to work and gain an honest living as those of any other land, but they labor under certain disadvantages which merit attention, and which, when carefully examined, will go far to justify their failings.

A Yeradji’s house costs from £30 to £50; sometimes it is built by the landlord, sometimes by the tenant himself. This may happen for instance when the Yeradji has a son to marry and the landlord refuses to build a house for him, in which case he has to build it at his own expense, and should he leave the estate, receives no compensation for it. These Chiftliks are cultivated on the Metayer system as it is understood and practised in Macedonia: the landlord provides the seed in the first instance, the Yeradji finds his own yoke of oxen or buffaloes and implements, tills the ground, sows the grain, reaps it, threshes and winnows it, and when the seed for the next year and the tithes have been deducted, shares the produce with the landlord. The Metayer system on a luxuriant soil like that of Macedonia would not only pay, but would also contribute to increase the wealth of the estate and improve the wretched condition of the Yeradji if it were only properly and equitably administered. But it is not difficult to point out capital failings in the working of the system. When the grain is cut, a certain number of sheaves, forty for instance, of the finest and heaviest, are set aside as samples. These are threshed separately, and the seed for the next year, the tithes, and the landlord’s share deducted according to this standard, which leaves the Yeradji an iniquitously small proportion of the produce. Under this unfair arrangement the Yeradji has to give for every head of cattle he possesses six Constantinople kilés of barley and six of wheat to the Soubashi of his bey.

In addition to these the Yeradji has to defray the heavy burden of his own taxes, and the quartering of troops and Zaptiehs upon him, besides other burdens, among which must be reckoned the wasted time of the numerous feast-days, that deprive him of so much work in the year. Toil as hard as he may, he can never become an independent and prosperous man.

When these estates are transferred by sale or other causes, the Yeradji, should he be in debt to the estate, goes with it into a sort of bondage terminable under certain conditions, viz.: his industry and activity and the honesty of the landlord and his agent. If on one hand the superabundance of feast-days is to be looked upon as a hindrance to the Yeradji freeing himself from debt, the unscrupulous manner in which his master or the Soubashi reckons accounts opposes fresh obstacles to the breaking of the chain that binds him to the soil. Farm accounts are generally kept by means of chetolas, or notched sticks, a very primitive mode, leading to many errors being committed, wittingly or unwittingly. The consequence is that all tenants are more or less in debt to their landlords in the same manner as all Turkish landlords are in debt to the Government or to private individuals.

The scarcity of Yeradjis and their disqualifications as tenants are now a general complaint throughout Macedonia. It is not, however, surprising that the better class of peasants should refuse to become Yeradjis, and that the inferior classes, employed in their absence, should be found fault with and be always in debt.

Of late years some of these estates have passed into the hands of Christians, by purchase or mortgage. These proprietors, as a rule, do not reside on their estates, which are left in the charge of an agent, but content themselves with an occasional visit. When this property is well situated, and (as seldom happens) free from litigation, it is said to be a good investment.

Besides these Yeradji villages, there are the Kephalochoria, or head-villages, composed of petty landholders, some of whom were formerly wealthy, and might have continued so but for the injury done to them by the forest regulations and the heavy impositions laid upon them by the Government since the commencement of the war.

One of the principal grievances peasants labor under is the angaria, or statute-labor, into which man, beast, and cart are impressed at the command of a mere Zaptieh, causing a loss of time, and injury to property and cattle, which is often fatal to an otherwise well-to-do village. A village on a main road is never free from all kinds of vexatious impositions and the quartering of Zaptiehs and troops, who, whether they pay or not for what they have consumed, extort sums of money from their hosts, and are always careful to take away with them a declaration from the Kodja-Bashi that all accounts have been settled.

The Angaria work lately exacted from the inhabitants of Cavalla for the transport of flour for the use of the army was very nearly occasioning troubles of a nature likely to prove fatal to the whole town. The affair originated in the townspeople being required to carry on Sunday loads which they willingly carried on Saturday. They refused, and shut themselves up in their houses; whereupon an excess of zeal was displayed by the police in trying to force them out by breaking into some of the dwellings. This led to a slight disturbance which encouraged some noted bad characters belonging to the Moslem population to take a menacing attitude, and conspire to break into the offices of some of the principal merchants of the town, ransack them, and then proceed to follow the precedent with the rest of the town, threatening the Christians with massacre. Panic soon spread, and the people shut themselves in their churches. Men-of-war were telegraphed for, but luckily the local authorities were able to put down the tumult, and order was restored without loss of life. The incident is instructive in showing the difficulties and dangers under which the Macedonian peasant carries on his work. It is no wonder that the land is ill-cultivated.