Editing Demographic history of Kosovo (section)

==Late Middle Ages==

Chrysobulls related to tax rights for Orthodox monasteries form the vast majority of the existing sources for the available demographics of Kosovo in the 14th century. The [[Dečani chrysobulls]] (1321–31) of [[Kingdom of Serbia (medieval)|Serbian king]] [[Stefan Uroš III|Stefan of Dečani]] contains a detailed list of landholdings and [[Farm (revenue leasing)#Historical use|tax farming]] rights which the Serbian Orthodox monastery of [[Visoki Dečani]] held over settlements and various communities in an area which spanned from southern Serbia (modern [[Sandzak]]), [[Kosovo]], [[Montenegro]] and parts of northern [[Albania]]. The chrysobulls were signed by King Stefan of Dečani who confirmed existing rights and gave new ones to the monastery.{{Citation needed|date=July 2022}} The chrysobulls listed that [[Visoki Dečani]] held tax farming rights over 2,097 households of [[meropsi]] (dependent farmers-serfs), 266 [[Vlachs|Vlach]] households (pastoral communities) and 69 ''sokalniki'' (craftsmen).<ref name="Fine">{{citation | first = John Van Antwerp | last = Fine |title = The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest | publisher = University of Michigan Press | year = 1994 |page=318|isbn = 978-0-472-08260-5 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LvVbRrH1QBgC&pg=PA318 }}</ref> Among the settlements over which Dečani held tax rights in modern-day Kosovo, find Serbs living alongside Albanians and [[Vlachs in medieval Serbia|Vlachs]]. In the golden bull of [[Stefan Dušan]] (1348) a total of nine Albanian villages are cited within the vicinity of Prizren among the communities which were under tax obligations.{{sfn|Malcolm|1998|p=54}}<ref name="Wilkinson183" /> During this period, among a part of the Albanians a degree of Serbianization and conversions to Serbian Orthodoxy seems to have taken place.{{sfn|Malcolm|1998|p=197}}

The [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman]] [[cadastral]] tax census ([[defter]]) [[Ottoman defter of the District of Branković (1455)|of 1455 in the District of Branković]] (defter Vuk-ili) is one of the oldest Ottoman tax registers in the Balkans. The [[District of Branković]] at the time of the defter included parts of central [[Serbia]] (present-day [[Toplica District]] and the historical [[Raška (region)|Raška Region]]), part of northeastern Montenegro and parts of eastern Kosovo (the [[Kosovo (region)|Kosovo Plain]]).<ref name="Bobic">{{cite book |last1=Bobić |first1=Mirjana |editor1-last=Sović |editor1-first=Silvia |editor2-last=Thane |editor2-first=Pat |editor3-last=Viazzo |editor3-first=Pierpaolo |title=The History of Families and Households: Comparative European Dimensions |date=2015 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-9004307865 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IeQPCwAAQBAJ |pages=73–78 |chapter=The Reconstruction of Domestic Communities in the Branković Region of Serbia in 1455}}</ref> The vast majority of names recorded in ''Vuk-ili'' by the Ottomans in 1455 are Slavic.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Selimović |first1=Salih |title=How Many Albanians were on the Territory of Kosovo in the year of 1455? |journal=HERETICUS – Časopis za preispitivanje prošlosti |date=2019 |pages=222–223 |url=https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=978231 |access-date=12 June 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Katić |first1=Tatjana |title=The Voynuk Defter of the Year 1455 |journal=Institute of History Belgrade |date=2020 |volume=17 |issue=1 |page=37 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348575164 |access-date=12 June 2023}}</ref>

The defters of 1485–87 of the [[Sanjak of Shkodra]] and parts of the former Branković areas recorded:
*[[Vushtrri]] district:
** 16,729 Christian households (412 in [[Pristina]] and [[Vushtrri]])
** 117 [[Muslim]] households (94 in Pristina and 83 in rural areas)
*District of [[Peja]]:
**[[Peja]] (town)
** 121 Christian households
** 33 Muslim households
* [[Suho Grlo]] and [[Metohija]]:
** 131 Christian households
* [[Donja Klina]] – nationalities not clear according to Ottoman records based on religion 
*[[Deçan]] – nationalities not clear according to Ottoman records based on religion
* Rural areas:
** 6,124 Christian households (''99%'')
** 55 Muslim households (''1%'')

Scholarship on Kosovo has encompassed Ottoman provincial surveys that have revealed the 15th-century ethnic composition of some Kosovo settlements. However, both Serbian and Albanian historians using these records have made much of them while proving little.<ref name="Anscombe">{{cite journal|last=Anscombe|first=Frederick|title=The Ottoman Empire in Recent International Politics – II: The Case of Kosovo|jstor=40109813|journal=The International History Review|volume=28|issue=4|year=2006|pages=767–774, 785–788|doi=10.1080/07075332.2006.9641103|s2cid=154724667|url=https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/576/1/Binder1.pdf}}</ref> Madgearu (2008) argues that the series of defters from 1455 onward "shows that Kosovo... was a mosaic of Serbian and Albanian villages", while Prishtina and Prizren already had significant Albanian Muslim populations, and that the same defter of 1455 indicates the presence of Albanians in Tetovo.<ref name="Madgearu" /> During the 15th century, Albanians moved to the town of Novo Brdo to work on the mines.<ref name="Madgearu" />