The town of Chiprovtsi and several of the surrounding villages were administratively organized as a "hass", or a private possession of the sultan's royal family and later of the sultan's mother. The special status of the area meant that the local Christians would not be subject to the usual discriminatory laws, but would have to pay an annual tribute of silver to the sultan. Later on, the estate was organized as a "waqf", a land devoted for Muslim religious or charitable purposes. Chiprovtsi and the region were inhabited exclusively by Christians and they had the privilege to perform their rituals in public without discrimination. The only Turkish person in the town was the sultan's representative and no Turks were allowed to settle there, as the local Bulgarians enjoyed self-government to a certain degree and were administered by an elected council of eminent Bulgarian residents ("knezove"). A fragment of the area's pre-Ottoman Bulgarian administrative division may have also been preserved, as it is referred to under the Slavic name "voivodeship" in some documents.