Identifier: travelsinslavoni00mack (find matches)
Title: Travels in the Slavonic provinces of Turkey-in-Europe
Year: 1866 (1860s)
Authors: MacKenzie, G. Muir (Georgina Muir), d. 1874 Irby, A. P. (Adelina Paulina), 1833-1911
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Publisher: London : A. Strahan
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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points may be discerned which place theirmutual relations in a somewhat harder light. To giveone instance : according to the law of the Mahometanconqueror, the oath of the rayah was not received in acourt of justice against a Mussulman, and in the dis-tricts to which we refer this practice is still in full force.Between the landholder and the peasant under theold Serbian law no such distinction existed. Oneclass of peasants was free, but the laws mention anotherclass, who are called meropch or neropch, a non-Serbian word, of which the meaning is obscure. Somepersons suppose it originally indicated such cultivatorsof the soil as the Serbian immigrants may have foundin the country after it had been harried by the Avars ;and whoever the merops were, in due time they appearto have been absorbed, for now-a-days one finds amongthe Serbians no class considered lower than the rest. Butwhile the merops were still merops, i.e., avowedly notfree, it is especially provided by Serbian law that any
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CHAP. XIII.) THE STORY OF SERBIA. 179 of them could call his lord into court, or that, if anyperson had injured him, whether noble or prelate, theczar, or the czarine,^ he could obtain justice againstthat person; while the judge was bound to exact bailsufficient to ensure that in all future time the powerfuldefendant should not take vengeance on his poor pro-secutor.* Of course it is impossible to say whether the aristo-cracy of Serbia might have become more and more sepa-rated from the people, more and more a burden on theirlabour, even as Christian aristocracies certainly did be-come in France, Poland, Wallachia, and elsewhere. Hadit become so, perhaps the evil for the lower classes mighthave been worse than the evils entailed by Mahometanconquest. But there is not sufficient evidence to show thatat the time of the Turkish invasion the Serbian aristo-cracy had actually attained this stage; on the other hand,it is self-evident that the conquest took the land out of thehands of an upp

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