Ultimately, the region was repopulated by Orthodox Bulgarians, beginning in the 1720s. In 1737–1738, the sultan amnestied the rebels and permitted the return of the insurgents' property in 1741, though none of the former residents is known to have returned. In the 1720s–1730s, Chiprovtsi had only 12 inhabited houses; by the 1750s, those had reached 150. The Orthodox Chiprovtsi Monastery had been reestablished in 1703 by a certain Zhivko who took the ecclesiastical name of Zoticus. As the interrupted mining was apparently not continued after the uprising and the international trade links had been severed, the locals switched to cattle breeding, agriculture, fur trade and later carpet weaving as their main occupation.