Ottoman records on Balkan provinces exceed those on Asian territories

Evidence

Most of it applies with even greater force to the European provinces, in which Ottoman administration was more direct and effective, and the records therefore more detailed and extensive. I refer only in passing to the great series of registers on land, fiefs, waqfs; taxes, customs and tolls; tax-farms and leases; population, non-Muslims, tribes; supplies, ports, roads, services; army, navy, police, arsenals; laws, decrees, regulations; and the vast mass of correspondence between the cen­ tral and provincial authorities. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1990