Abstract

This text is an excerpt from a more comprehensive study dedicated to our regions in the travel writings of foreigners from the 16th to the 19th century. It is focused on travel writings about journeys and travelers through Serbia during the period of the Turkish rule. After an insight into the nature of traveling in the Pre-Turkish period, changes in the manner of traveling, in the way of life on journeys, in motives for traveling and in safety on the road have been determined on the basis of observations of French and English travel writers from the 16th to 18th century. Being that one of the ways of traveling through Serbia in the Turkish period was "at the Sultan's expense", at least for the ambassadors' missions of Christian rulers sent to the Sublime Porte, particular attention has been devoted to the obligations of Christian subjects concerning their "safe and comfortable" journeys. Writings about that, as well as about violence committed on Serbian population in order to extort everything needed, often resemble the tyranny described in epic poetry and heavy taxes listed in epic catalogues