When the Aga was gone, the collector gave me a significant look, and,
knocking the ashes out of his pipe into a plate on the floor, said,
"Changed times, changed times, poor fellow; his salary is only 250
piastres a month, and his relations used to be little kings in
Shabatz; but the other fellows in the Turkish quarter, although so
wretchedly poor that they have scarcely bread to eat, are as proud and
insolent as ever."
_Author_. "What is the reason of that?"
_Collector_. "Because they are so near the Bosniac frontier, where
there is a large Moslem population. The Moslems of Shabatz pay no
taxes, either to the Servian government or the sultan, for they are
accounted _Redif_, or Militia, for which they receive a ducat a year
from the sultan, as a returning fee. The Christian peasants here are
very rich; some of them have ten and twenty thousand ducats buried
under the earth; but these impoverished Bosniacs in the fortress are
as proud and insolent as ever."
_Author_. "You say Bosniacs! Are they not Turks?"
_Collector_. "No, the only Turks here are the Aga and the Cadi; all
the rest are Bosniacs, the descendants of men of our own race and
language, who on the Turkish invasion accepted Islamism, but retained
the language, and many Christian customs, such as saints' days,
Christian names, and in most cases monogamy.
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