This article offers a microhistorical and borderland-centered analysis of Benedikt Kuripešić’s 1530-1531 travel diary, composed during a Habsburg diplomatic mission to Ottoman Constantinople. Often cited yet rarely studied in depth, Kuripešić’s text is reinterpreted here as more than a record of geographic movement; it is a rich epistemic artifact that captures early modern inter-imperial friction in the Balkan borderlands. Drawing on the methodologies of Carlo Ginzburg and Anssi Paasi, the article argues that Kuripešić’s diary reveals how borders were experienced not only through political boundaries but through affective registers: faith, fear, memory, and resistance. Through close readings of selected diary entries, such as encounters with chained Christian children or whispered appeals from peasants, the article illuminates the lived experience of Ottoman-Christian coexistence. It also traces Kuripešić’s rhetorical positioning as interpreter, diplomat, and narrator of martyrdom, highlighting how sacred geography and narrative mapping became acts of Christian counter-sovereignty. The legend of Miloš Obilić, retold with reverence, is analyzed as a key site of myth-making and identity projection. Furthermore, the article explores the Ottoman strategies of governance; taxation, devşirme, and regulated religious tolerance, as an early form of “soft conquest”, prefiguring modern theories of biopolitics. By combining microhistory and border theory, the study demonstrates that Kuripešić’s “small text” bears large historical implications for understanding Balkan identity, imperial subjectivity, and religious resilience across fluid frontiers.
Srđan Mladenov Jovanović (Wed,) studied this question.
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