Long after the fall of the Kotromanići kingdom of Bosnia, local traditions about its former architectural, topographical and institutional setup were still current among the people in central and western Bosnia (and beyond) who had in the meantime become Ottoman subjects. Ottoman revenue survey registers (tapu tahrir defterleri) from as early as 1468/9 started to record not only a vast amount of fiscally relevant data collected on the ground by the surveying commission, but also, yet less regularly and comprehensively, information about the situation 'at the time of the unbelievers', including facts and observations relating to the Bosnian king himself. Equally, but less frequently, Ottoman documents issued by surveying officials or local cadis (now housed in the archives of several Franciscan monasteries in Central Bosnia) also contain references to sites, boundaries and buildings associated in people's memories with the pre-Ottoman past in general, or the Kotromanići kingdom in particular. This paper is to investigate, on the basis of selected examples, the character of such references as a historical source, as well as some of the pitfalls in the course of their interpretation. Keywords: Historical memory; tahrir; boundaries; offices; Bobovac; Sutjeska; Curia Kotromanića.
Michael Ursinus (Thu,) studied this question.