Tatar servicemen’s last wills of the first half of the eighteenth century

Published here are two last wills of military men of Tatar origin – the colonel of the Royal Army Michał Olejowski and the royal horse captain Muharem Ulan Lostayski. These are very interesting sources for research into the life of military men in the early modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The documents reveal that the testators were of the Muslim religion, which is indicated by their specific prescriptions and endowments to mosques. A comparison was also made between these documents and last wills of Catholic military men from the same period. The characteristic features of Muslim last wills are similar to those of Catholic ones, as they belonged to the same Baroque culture of the word. The published texts include valuable information on the marital state, family and professional relations, and clientage ties of the testators. They also provide a useful insight into the financial state of the testators and the forms of their property ownership