This volume is a collection of the essays of Stefka Parvena concentrating on two areas of Ottoman Balkan history, the organisation of the economy and Christian-Muslim relations. Parvena has made use of the Ottoman archives in Sofia and Istanbul to offer a formerly unavailable description of rural Balkan life in the between the 16th and 18th centuries. Parvena’s work also looks at the relationship between the Balkan peasantry and town dwellers of this era as urban areas emerged under Ottoman rule. The second set of articles deals with the interaction between and coexistence of Muslim and Christian communities in Bulgaria. This could produce complex and even syncretic relationships much more nuanced than the traditional view of a Balkans embroiled in perpetual conflict. Parvena explores such themes in an attempt to explain the origins of communal stereotypes which still exist in the Balkans today.