Vegetation in the Territories of Serbia and Southern Hungary in Travel Accounts (Fifteenth–Seventeenth Centuries)

Krstić, Aleksandar (2020) Vegetation in the Territories of Serbia and Southern Hungary in Travel Accounts (Fifteenth–Seventeenth Centuries). In: Voyages and Travel Accounts in Historiography and Literature. Volume 1. Voyages and Travelogues from Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages. Trivent Publishing, The Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Novi Sad, Budapest, pp. 295-338. ISBN 978-86-6065-616-4

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Abstract

Travellers who passed through the territory of present-day Serbia from the 15th to the 17th centuries used the Constantinople road, while some sailed the Danube from Buda to Belgrade. Others, coming from Bosnia, passed through Raška and Kosovo and went further east. In the works of travel writers we find mostly brief and summary descriptions of the areas through which they travelled, often written sometime after the journey. Travellers mention forests they passed through, rarely looking at the species of trees that were prevalent, and then fields, planted or abandoned, as well as vineyards, also cultivated or neglected. They were also impressed by high, bare or forested hills and mountains. We learn about agricultural crops from the description of how bread was prepared or the mention of a tax (tithe) paid by the locals to the Ottomans. The landscape of southern Hungary, present-day Vojvodina, gave the travellers the impression of the “most flat” country through which they had passed. In this area they noticed the absence of forests and swamp vegetation along rivers and wetlands

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