expansive national movement, closed within itself, developed without a
standstill, regardless of whether it was lead by feudal lords, outlaws,
foreign patrons, Albanian or Yugoslav communists. In a society which
harmoniously accepted both in Albania and Yugoslavia the ideological monism
of xenophobic isolation which suited its internal tribal structure and a
certain intolerance that was racial as well as ethnic. After receiving
political asylum in France, the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare pithily
explained the nature of the internal resistance of the Albanian society to
all ideological challenges. "Communism has not really penetrated into the
depths of Albanian society. The Albanians are, as it were, racists: they
consider those who do not share their moral customs amoral, as the classic
Greeks considered other peoples Barbarians. This racism probably played a
role in the Albanian resistance to socialism."1 From this
perspective, the depth of the conflict and the mutual misunderstanding of
Serbs and Albanians is shown in brighter light. However, it is important to
note that in this centuries-old conflict to which their seems no end, in the
second half of the 20th century Albanians in Kosovo and Metohia won crucial
support from Yugoslav communists to the detriment of Serbs.
1 Ismail Kadare Interview in Le Monde, 26. 10. 1990. 34
KOSOVO AND METOHIA
A HISTORICAL SURVEY
In the thousand year long-history of Serbs, Kosovo and Metohia were for
many centuries the state center and chief religious stronghold, the
heartland of their culture and springwell of its historical traditions. For
a people who lived longer under foreign rule than in their own state, Kosovo
and Metohia are the foundations on which national and state identity were
preserved in times of tribulation and founded in times of freedom .
The Serbian national ideology which emerged out of Kosovo's
tribulations and Kosovo's suffering (wherein the 1389 St. Vitus Day Battle
in Kosovo polje occupies the central place), are the pillars of that grand
edifice that constitutes the Serbian national pantheon. When it is said that
without Kosovo there can be no Serbia or Serbian nation, it's not only the
revived 19th century national romanticism: that implies more than just the
territory which is covered with telling monuments of its culture and
civilization, more than just a feeling of hard won national and state
independence: Kosovo and Metohia are considered the key to the identity of
the Serbs. It is no wonder, then, that the many turning-points in Serbian
history took place in the and around Kosovo and Metohia. When the Serbs on
other Balkan lands fought to preserve their religious freedoms and national
rights, their banners bore as their beacon the Kosovo idea embodied in the
Kosovo covenant which was woven into folk legend and upheld in uprisings
against alien domination. The Kosovo covenant - the choice of freedom in the
celestial empire instead of humiliation and slavery in the temporal world -
although irrational as a collective consciousness, is still the one
permanent connective tissue that imbues the Serbs with the feeling of
national entity and lends meaning to its join efforts.1
1 Cf. D. Slijepcevic, Srpsko-arbanaski odnosi kroz vekove posebnim
osvrtom na novije vreme, (Himelstir 1983); D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu,
Beograd 1985; Zaduzbine Kosova, (Prizren-Beograd 1987); Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, (Beograd 1989);German translation: Kosovo und Metochien in
der serbishen Geschichte, (Lausanne 1989); Kosovo. Proslost i sadasnjost,
Beograd 1989 English translation: Kosovo. Past and present, (Belgrade 1989).
R. Mihaljcic, The Battle of Kosovo in History and in Popular Tradition,
(Belgrade 1989).
Kosovo and Metohia, land lying in the heart of the Balkans where viutal
trade routes had crossed since ancient times, was settled by Slav tribes
between the 7th and 10th centuries. The Serbian medieval state, which under
the Nemanjic dynasty (12th to 14th century) grew into a major power in the
Balkan peninsula, developed in the nearby mountain regions, in Raska (with
Bosnia) and in Duklja (later Zeta and then Montenegro). The center of the
Nemanjic slate moved to Kosovo and Metohia after the fall of Constantinople
(1204). At its peak, in the early the 14th century, these lands were the
richest and the most densely populated areas, as well as state and its
cultural and administrative centers.1
In his wars with Byzantium, Stefan Nemanja conquered various parts of
what is today Kosovo, and his successors, Stefan the First Crown (became
king in 1217), expanded his state by including Prizren. The entire Kosovo
and Metohia region became a permanent part of the Serbian state by the
beginning of the 13th century. Soon after becoming autocephalous (1219), the
Serbian Orthodox Church moved its seat to Metohia. The heirs of the first
archbishop Saint Sava (prince Rastko Nemanjic) built several additional
temples around the Church of the Holy Apostles, lying the ground for what
was to become the Patriarchate of Pec. The founding of a separate
bishophoric (1220) near Pec was indicative of the region's political
importance growing along with religious influence. With the proclamation of
the empire, the patriarchal throne was permanently established at the Pec
monastery in 1346. Serbia's rulers alotted the fertile valleys between Pec,
Prizren, Mitrovica and Pristina and nearby areas to churches and
monasteries, and the whole region eventually acquired the name Metohia, from
the Greek metoch which mean an estate owned by the church.
Studded with more churches and monasteries than any other Serbian land,
Kosovo and Metohia became the spiritual nucleus of Serbs. Lying at the
crossroads of the main Balkan routes connecting the surrounding Serbian
lands of Raska, Bosnia, Zeta and the Scutari littoral with the Macedonia and
the Morava region, Kosovo and Metohia were, geographically speaking, the
ideal place for a state and cultural center. Girfled by mountain gorges and
comparatively safe from outside attacks, Kosovo and Metohia were not chosen
by chance as the site for building religious centers, church mausoleums and
palaces. The rich holdings of Decant monastery provided and economic
underpinning for the wealth of spiritual activities in the area. Learned
monks and religious dignitaries assembled in large monastic communities
(which were well provided for by the rich feudal holdings), strongly
influenced the spiritual shaping of the nation, especially in strengthening
local cults and fostering the Orthodox doctrine.
In the monasteries of Metohia and Kosovo, old theological and literary
writings were transcribed and new ones penned, including the lives of local
saints, from ordinary monks and priors to the archbishops and rulers of the
house of Nemanjic. The libraries and scriptoria were stocked with the best
liturgical and theoretical writings from all over Byzantine commonwealth,
especially with various codes from the monasteries of Mounth Athos with
which close ties were established. The architecture of the churches and
monasteries developed and the artistic value of their frescoes increased as
Serbian medieval culture flourished, and by the end of the 13th century new
ideas applied in architecture and in the technique of fresco painting
surpassed the traditional Byzantine models. With time, especially in
centuries to come, the people came to believe that Kosovo was the center of
Serbian Orthodoxy and the most resistant stronghold of the Serbian
nation.2
The most important buildings to be endowed by the last Nemanjices were
erected in Kosovo and Metohia, where their courts which became their
capitals were situated. From King Milutin to emperor Uros, court life
evolved in the royal residences in southern Kosovo and Prizren. There rulers
summoned the landed gentry, received foreign legates and issued charters.
The court of Svrcin stood on the banks of Lake Sazlia, and it was there that
Stefan Dusan was crowned king in 1331. On the opposite side was the palace
in Pauni, where King Milutin often dwelled. The court in Nerodimlje was the
favourite residence of King Stefan Decanski, and it was at the palace in
Stimlje that emperor Uros issued his charters. Oral tradition, especially
epic poems, usually mention Prizren as emperor Dusan's capital, for he
frequently sojourned there when he was still king.3
Among dozens of churches and monasteries erected in medieval Kosovo and
Metohia by rulers, ecclesiastical dignitaries and the local nobility, Decani
outside of Pec, built by Stefan Uros III Decanski, stands out for its
monumental size and artistic beauty. King Milutin left behind the largest
number of endowments in Kosovo, one of the finest of which is Gracanica
monastery (1321) near Pristina, certainly the most beautiful medieval
monument in the Balkans. The monasteries of Banjska dear Zvecan (early 14th
century) and Our Lady of Ljeviska in Prizren (1307), although devastated
during Ottoman rule, are eloquent examples of the wealth and power of the
Serbian state at the start of the 14th century. Also of artistic importance
is the complex of churches in Juxtaposition to the Patriarchate of Pec. The
biggest of the royal endowments, the Church of the Holy Archangels near
Prizren, erected by Tsar Stefan Dusan in the Bistrica River Canyon, was
destroyed in the 16th century.4
Founding chapter whereby Serbian rulers granted large estates to
monasteries offer a reliable demographic picture of the area. Fertile plains
were largely owned by the large monasteries, from Chilandar in Mount Athos
to Decant in Metohia. The data given in the charters show that during the
period of the political rise of Serbian state, the population gradually
moved from the mountain plateau in the west and north southward to the
fertile valleys of Metohia and Kosovo. The census of monastic estates evince
both a rise in the population and appreciable economic progress. The estates
of the Banjska monastery numbered 83 villages, and those of the Holy
Archangels numbered 77.5
Especially noteworthy is the 1330 Decani Charter, with its detailed
list of households and of chartered villages. The Decant estate was an
extensive area which encompassed parts of what is today northwestern
Albania. Historical analysis and onomastic research reveal that only three
of the 89 settlements were mentioned as being Albanian. Out of the 2,166
farming homesteads and 2,666 houses in cattle-grazing land, 44 were
registrated as Albanian (1,8%). More recent research indicates that apart
from the Slav, i.e. Serbian population in Kosovo and Metohia, the remaining
population of non-Slav origin did not account for more than 2% of the total
population in the 14th century.6
The growing political power, territorial expansion and economic wealth
of the Serbian state had a major impact on ethnic processes. Northern
Albania up to the Mati River was a part of the Serbian Kingdom, but it was
not until the conquest of Tsar Dusan that the entire Albania (with the
exception of Durazzo) entered the Serbian Empire. Fourteenth century records
mention mobile Albanian mobile cattle sheds on mountain slopes in the
imminent vicinity of Metohia, and sources in the first half of the 15th
century note their presence (albeit in smaller number) in the flatland
farming settlements.
Stefan Dusan's Empire stretched from the Danube to the Peloponnese and
from Bulgaria to the Albanian littoral. After his death it began to
disintegrate into areas controlled by powerful regional lords. Kosovo and
parts of Metohia came under the rule of King Vukasin Mrnjavcevic, the
co-ruler of the last Nemanjic, Tsar Uros. The earliest clashes with the
Turks, who edged their way into Europe at the start of the 14th century,
were noted during the reign of Stefan Dusan. The 1371 battle of the Marica,
near Crnomen in which Turkish troops rode rougshod over the huge army of the
Mrnjavcevic brothers, the feudal lords of Macedonia, Kosovo and neighboring
regions, heralded the decisive Turkish invasion of Serbian lands. King
Vukasin's successor King Marko (the legendary hero of folk poems, Kralyevich
Marko) recognized the supreme authority of the sultan and as vasal took part
in his campaigns against neighboring Christian states. The Turkish onslaught
is remembered as the apocalypse of the Serbian people, and this tradition
was cherished during the long period of Ottoman rule. During the Battle of
the Marica, a monk wrote that "the worst of all times" had come, when "the
living envied the dead".7
Unaware of the danger that were looming over their lands, the regional
lords tried to take advantage of the new situation and enlarge their
holdings. On the eve of the battle of Kosovo, the northern parts of Kosovo
where in possession of Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic, and parts of Metohia
belonged to his brother-in-law Vuk Brankovic. By quelling the resistance of
the local landed gentry, Prince Lazar eventually emerged as the most
powerful regional lord and came to dominate the lands of Moravian Serbia.
Tvrtko I Kotromanic, King of Bosnia, Prince Lazar's closest ally, aspired to
the political legacy of the saintly dynasty as descendant of the Nemanjices
and by being crowned with the "dual crown" of Bosnia and Serbia over St.
Sava grave in monastery Mileseva.8
The expected clash with the Turks took place in Kosovo polje, outside
of Pristina, on St. Vitus day, June 15 (28), 1389. The troops of Prince
Lazar, Vuk Brankovic and King Tvrtko I, confronted the army of Emir Murad I,
which included his Christian vassals. Both Prince Lazar and emir Murad were
killed in the head-on collision between the two armies (approximately 30,000
troops on both sides). Contemporaries were especially impressed by the
tidings that twelve Serbian knights (most probably led by legendary hero
Milos Obilic) broke through the tight Turkish ranks and killed the emir in
his tent.9
Military-wise no real victor emerged from the battle. Tvrtko's
emissaries told the courts of Europe that the Christian army had defeated
the infidels, although Prince Lazar's successors, exhausted by their heavy
losses, immediately sought peace and conceded to became vassals to the new
sultan. Vuk Brankovic, unjustly remembered in epic tradition as a traitor
who slipped away from the battle field, resisted them until 1392, when he
was forced to become their vassal. The Turks took Brankovic's lands and gave
them to a more loyal vassal, Prince Stefan Lazarevic, son of Prince Lazar
thereby creating a rift between their heirs. After the battle of Angora in
1402, Prince Stefan took advantage of the chaos in the Ottoman state. In
Constantinople he received the title of despot, and upon returning home,
having defeated Brankovic's relatives he took control over the lands of his
father. Despite frequent internal conflicts and his vassal obligations to
the Turks and Hungarians, despot Stefan revived and economically
consolidated the Serbian state, the center of which was gradually moving
northward. Under his rule Novo Brdo in Kosovo became the economic center of
Serbia where in he issued a Law of Mines in 1412.10
Stefan appointed as his successor his nephew despot Djuradj Brankovic,
whose rule was marked by fresh conflicts and finally the fall of Kosovo and
Metohia to the Turks. The campaign of the Christian army led by Hungarian
nobleman Janos Hunyadi ended in 1448 in heavy defeat in a clash with Murad
II's forces, again in Kosovo Polje. This was the last concertive attempt in
the Middle Ages to rout the Turks out of this part of Europe.11
After the Fall of Constantinople (1453), Mehmed II the Conqueror
advanced onto Despotate of Serbia. For some time voivode Nikola Skobaljic
offered valiant resistance in Kosovo, but after a series of consecutive
campaigns and lengthy sieges in 1455, the economic center of Serbia, Novo
Brdo fell. The Turks then proceeded to conquer other towns in Kosovo and
Metohia four years before the entire Serbian Despotate collapsed with the
fall of new capital Smederevo. Turkish onslaught, marked by frequent
military raids, the plunder and devastation of entire regions, the
destruction of monasteries and churches, gradually narrowed down Serbian
state territories, triggering off a large-scale migration northwards, to
regions beyond reach to the conquerors. The biggest migration took place
from 1480-1481, when a large part of the population of northern Serbia moved
to Hungary and Transylvania, to bordering region along the Sava and Danube
rivers, where the descendants of the fleeing despots of Smederevo resisted
the Turks for several decades to come.12
1 For a more complete picture of Kosovo and Metohia's medieval past
see: D. Kojic-Kovacevic, Kosovo od sredine XII do sredine XV veka, in:
Kosovo nekad i sad (Kosova dikur e sot), (Beograd 1973), pp. 109-128; S.
Cirkovic, Kosovo i Metohija u srednjem veku, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj
istoriji, pp. 21-45 (with earlier bibliography)
2 R. Samardzic, Kosovo i Metohija: uspon i propadanje srpskog naroda,
in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 6-10; D. Bogdanovic, Rukopisno
nasledje Kosova in: Zbornik okruglog stola o naucnom istrazivanju Kosova,
Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Naucni skupovi, vol. XLII, Belgrade
1988, pp. 73-80. For more details see: Istorija srpskog naroda, vol. I
(Belgrade 1981).
3 S. Cirkovic, Vladarski dvorci oko jezera na Kosovu, in: Zbornik
Matice srpske za likovne umetnosti, 20 (1984), pp. 72-77.
4 V. S. Jovanovic, Arheoloska istrazivanja srednjovekovnih spomenika i
nalazista na Kosovu, in: Zbomik okruglog stola o naucnom istrazivanju
Kosova, pp. 17-66.
5 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 34-39; Zaduzbine Kosova, pp.
313-358.
6 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 39-41; S. Cirkovic, Kosovo i
Metohija u srednjem veku, pp. 34-36. More details in: B. Ferjancic, Les
Albanais dans les sources byzantines, in: Iliri i Albanci, Serbian Academy
of Sciences and Arts, Naucni skupovi vol. XXXDC (Belgrade 1988), pp.
303-322; S. Cirkovic, Les Albanais la lumiere des sources historiques des
Slaves du Sud, ill: Iliri i Albanci, pp. 341-359.
7 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 75. More details in: R.
Mihaljcic, Kraj Srpskog Carstva, Boj na Kosovu II, (Belgrade 1989).
8 S. Cirkovic, Istorija srednjovekovne bosanske drzave, (Beograd 1964),
pp. 133-140.
9 S. Cirkovic, Kosovo i Metohija u srednjem veku, pp. 39-41.
10 M. Purkovic, Knez i despot Stefan Lazarevic, (Beograd 1978).
11 Ibid. More details: R. Mihaljcic, Lazar Hrebeljanovic. Istorija,
kult, predanje, Boj na Kosovu II, (Belgrade 1989).
12 Istorija srpskog naroda, vol. II (Beograd 1982), pp. 260-265; D.
Bogdanovic, op. cit. p. 72.
For the Serbs as Christians, their loss of state independence and fall
to the Ottoman Empire's kind of theocratic state, was a terrible misfortune.
With the advent of the Turks and establishment of their rule, the lands of
Serbs were forcibly excluded from the circle of progressive European states
wherein they occupied a prominent place precisely owing to the Byzantine
civilisation, which was enhanced by local qualities and strong influences of
the neighboring Mediterranean states. Being Christians, the Serbs became
second-class citizens in Islamic state. Apart from religious discrimination,
which was evident in all spheres of everyday life, this status of rayah also
implied social dependence, as most of the Serbs were landless peasants who
paid the prescribed feudal taxes. Of the many dues paid in money, labor and
kind, the hardest for the Serbs was having their children taken as tribute
under a law that had the healthy boys, taken from their parents, converted
to Islam and trained to serve in the janissary corps of the Turkish army.
An analyse of the earliest Turkish censuses, defters, shows that the
ethnic picture of Kosovo and Metohia did not alter much during the 14th and
15th centuries. The small-in-number Turkish population consisted largely of
people from the administration and military that were essential in
maintaining order, whereas Christians continued to predominate in the rural
areas. Kosovo and parts of Metohia were registrated in 1455 under the name
Vilayeti Vlk, after Vuk Brankovic who once ruled over them. Some 75,000
inhabitants lived in 590 registrated villages. An onomastic analysis of
approximately 8,500 personal names shows that Slav and Christian names were
heavily predominant.1
Along with the Decani Charter, the register of the Brankovic region
shows a clear division between old-Serbian and old-ethnic Albanian
onomastics, allowing one to say, with some certainty which registrated
settlement was Serbian, and which ethnically mixed. Ethnic designations
(ethnic Albanian, Bulgarian, Armenian, Greek) appeared repeatedly next to
the names of settlers in the region. More thorough onomastic research has
shown that from the mid-14th to the 15th centuries, individual Albanian
settlements appeared on the fringes of Metohia, in-between what had until
then been a density of Serbian villages. This was probably due to the
devastation wrought by Turks who destroyed the old landed estates, thus
allowing for the mobile among the population, including ethnic Albanian
cattlemen, to settle on the abandoned land and establish their settlements,
which were neither big nor heavily populated.2
A summary census of the houses and religious affiliations of
inhabitants in the Vucitrn district (sanjak), which encompassed the one-time
Brankovic lands, was drawn in 1487, showed that the ethnic situation had not
altered much. Christian households predominated (totalling 16,729, out of
which 412 were in Pristina and Vucitrn): there were 117 Muslim households
(94 in Pristina and 83 in rural areas). A comprehensive census of the
Scutari district offers the following picture: in Pec (Ipek) there were 33
Muslim and 121 Christian households, while in Suho Grlo, also in Metohia,
Christians alone lived in 131 households. The number of Christians (6,124)
versus Muslim (55) homes in the rural areas shows that 1% of the entire
population bowed to the faith of the conqueror. An analysis of the names
shows that those of Slav origin predominated among the Christians. In Pec,
68% of the population bore Slav names, in the Suho Grlo region 52%, in Donja
Klina region 50% and around monastery of Decani 64%.
Ethnic Albanian settlements where people had characteristic names did
not appear until one reached areas outside the borders of what is today
Metohia, i.e. west of Djakovica. According to Turkish sources, in the period
from 1520 to 1535 only 700 of the total number of 19,614 households in the
Vucitrn district were Muslim (about 3,5%), and 359 (2%)in Prizren district.
In regions extending beyond the geographic borders of Kosovo and
Metohia, in the Scutari and Dukagjin districts, Muslims accounted for 4,6%
of the population. According to an analysis of the names in the Dukagjin
district's census, ethnic Albanian settlements did not predominate until one
reached regions south of Djakovica, and the ethnic picture in the 16th
century in Prizren and the neighboring areas remained basically
unchanged.3
A look at the religious affiliation of the urban population shows a
rise in the Turkish and local Islamized population. In Prizren, Kosovo's
biggest city, Muslims accounted for 56% of the households, of which the
Islamized population accounted for 21%. The ratio was similar in Pristina,
where out of the 54% Muslim population 16% were converts. Pec also had a
Muslim majority (90%), as did Vucitrn (72%). The Christians compromised the
majority of the population in the mining centers of Novo Brdo (62%), Trepca
(77%), Donja Trepca and Belasica (85%). Among the Christians was a
smattering of Catholics. The Christian names were largely from the calendar,
and to a lesser extent Slav (Voja, Dabiziv, Cvetko, Mladen, Stojko), and
there were some that were typically ethnic Albanian (Prend, Don, Din,
Zoti).4
After the fall of Serbia in 1459, the Pec Patriarchate soon ceased to
work and the Serbian eparchies came under the jurisdiction of the Hellenic
Ochrid Archbishophoric. In the first decade following Turkish conquest, many
large endowments and wealthier churches were pillaged and destroyed, while
some turned into mosques. The Our Lady of Ljeviska Cathedral in Prizren was
probably converted into a mosque right immediately following the conquest of
the town; Banjska, one of the grandest monasteries dating from the age of
King Milutin, suffered the same fate. The Church of the Holy Archangels near
Prizren, Stefan Dusan's chief endowment was turned into ruins. Most of the
monasteries and churches were left unrenewed after being devastated, and
many village churches were abandoned. Many were not restored until after the
liberation of Kosovo and Metohia in 1912. Archeological findings have shown
that some 1,300 monasteries, churches and other monuments existed in the
Kosovo and Metohia area. The magnitude of the havoc wrought can be seen from
the earliest Turkish censuses: In the 15th and 16th centuries there were ten
to fourteen active places of Christian worship. At first the great
monasteries like Decani and Gracanica, were exempt from destruction, but
their wealthy estates were reduced to a handfull of surrounding villages.
The privileges granted the monastic brotherhoods by the sultans obliged them
to perform the service of falconry as well.5
The restoration of the Pec Patriarchate in 1557 (thanks to Mehmed-pasha
Sokolovic, a Serb by origin, at the time the third vizier at the Porte)
marked a major turn and helped revive the spiritual life of the Serbs,
especially in Kosovo and Metohia. Mehmed-pasha Sokolovic (Turkish:
Sokollu) enthroned his relative Makarije Sokolovic on the patriarchal
throne. Like the great reform movements in 16th century Europe, the
restoration of the Serbian Orthodox Church meant the rediscovery of lost
spiritual strongholds. Thanks to the Patriarchate, Kosovo and Metohia were
for the next two centuries again the spiritual and political center of the
Serbs. On an area vaster than the Nemanjic empire, high-ranking
ecclesiastical dignitaries revived old and created new eparchies endeavoring
to reinforce the Orthodox faith which had been undermined by influences
alien (particularly by Islamic Bekteshi order of dervishes) to its authentic
teachings.
Based on the tradition of the medieval Serbian state, the Pec
Patriarchate revived old and established new cults of the holy rulers,
archbishops, martyrs and warriors, lending life to the Nemanjic heritage.
The feeling of religious and ethnic solidarity was enhanced by joint
deliberation at church assemblies attended by the higher and lower clergy,
village chiefs and hajduk leaders, and by stepping up a morale on the
traditions of Saint Sava but suited to the new conditions and strong
patriarchal customs renewed after the Turkish conquest in the village
communities.
The spiritual rebirth was reflected in the restoration of deserted
churches and monasteries: some twenty new churches were built in Kosovo and
Metohia alone, inclusive of printing houses (the most important one was at
Gracanica): many old and abandoned churches were redecorated with
frescoes.6
Serbian patriarchs and bishops gradually took over the role of the
one-time rulers, endeavoring with assistance from the neighboring Christian
states of Habsburg Empire and the Venetian Republic, to incite the people to
rebel. Plans for overthrowing the Turks and re-establishing an independent
Serbian state sprang throughout the lands from the Adriatic to the Danube.
The patriarchs of Pec, often learned men and able politicians, were usually
the ones who initiated and coordinated efforts at launching popular
uprisings when the right moment came. Patriarch Jovan failed to instigate a
major rebellion against the Turks, seeking the alliance of the European
Christian powers assembled around Pope Clement VII. Patriarch Jovan was
assassinated in Constantinople in 1614. Patriarch Gavrilo Rajic lived the
same fate in 1659 after going to Russia to seek help in instigating a
revolt.
The least auspicious conditions for an uprising were actually in Kosovo
and Metohia itself. In the fertile plains, the non-Muslim masses labored
under the yoke of the local Turkish administrators, continually threatened
by marauding tribes from the Albanian highlands. The crisis that overcome
the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th century further aggrovated the position
of the Serbs in Kosovo, Metohia and neighboring regions. Rebellions fomented
by cattle-raising tribes in Albania and Montenegro, and the punitive
expeditions sent to deal with them turned Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody
terrain where Albanian tribes, kept clashing with detachments of the local
authorities, plundered Christian villages along the way. Hardened by
constant clashes with the Turks, Montenegro gradually picked up the torch of
defending Serbian Orthodoxy; meanwhile, in northern Albania, particularly in
Malesia, a reverse process was under way. Under steady pressure from the
Turkish authorities, the Islamization of ethnic Albanian tribes became more
widespread and the process assumed broader proportions when antagonistic
strivings grew within the Ottoman Empire in the late 17th and early 18th
century.7
It is not until the end of the 17th century that the colonization of
Albanian tribes in Kosovo and Metohia can be established. Reports by
contemporary Catholic visitators show that the ethnic border between the
Serbs and Albanians still followed the old dividing lines of the Black and
White Drim rivers. All reports on Kosovo and Metohia regard them as being in
Serbia: for the Catholic visitators, Prizren was still its capital city. In
Albania, the first wave of Islamization swept the feudal strata and urban
population. Special tax and political alleviations encouraged the rural
population to convert to Islam in larger number. Instead of being part of
the oppressed non-Muslim masses, the converts became a privileged class of
Ottoman society, with free access to the highest positions in the state. In
Kosovo and Metohia, where they moved to avoid heavy taxes, Catholic tribes
of Malesia converted to Islam. Conversion to Islam in a strongly Orthodox
environment rendered them the desired privileges (the property of Orthodox
and of the Catholics) and saved them from melting with Serbian Orthodox
population. It was only with the process of Islamization that the ethnic
Albanian colonisation of lands inhabited by Serbs became
expansive.8
The ethnic picture of Kosovo did not radically change in the first
centuries of Ottoman rule. Islamization encompassed part of a Serbian
population, although the first generations at least, converted as a mere
formality, to avoid heavy financial burdens and constant political pressure.
Conversion constituted the basis of Ottoman policy in the Balkans but it was
les successfull in Kosovo and Metohia, regions with the strongest religious
traditions, than in other Christian areas. The Turks' strong reaction to
rebellions throughout the Serbian lands and to the revival of Orthodoxy,
embodied in the cult of Saint Sava, the founder of the independent Serbian
church, ended in setting fire to the Mileseva monastery the burial place of
the first Serbian saint. The Turks burned his wonder working relics in
Belgrade in 1594, during a great uprising of Serbs in southern Banat. This
triggered off fresh waves of Islamization accompanied by severe reprisals
and the thwarting of any sign of rebellion.
Apart from Islamization, Kosovo and Metohia became the target of
proselytizing Catholic missionaries at the end of 17th century, especially
after the creation of the Sacra Congregazione de Propaganda Fide (1622). The
ultimate aim of the Roman Catholic propaganda was to converts the Orthodox
to Graeco-Catholicism as the initial phase in completely converting them to
the Catholic faith. The appeals of patriarchs of Pec to the Roman popes to
help the liberatory aspirations of the Serbs were met with the condition
that they renounce the Orthodox faith. In spreading the Catholicism, the
missionaries of the Roman Curia had the support of local Turkish
authorities; a considerable number of the missionaries were of Albanian
origin. Consequently, the propagators of Catholic proselytism persisted in
inciting Catholic and Muslim Albanians against the Serbs, whose loyalty to
Orthodoxy and their medieval traditions was the main obstacle to the
spreading of the Catholic faith in the central and southern regions of the
Balkans.9
Catholic propaganda attempts at separating the high clergy of the
Serbian Orthodox Church from the people prompted the Pec Patriarchate to
revive old and create a new cults with even greater vigor. In 1642 Patriarch
Pajsije, who was born in Janjevo, Kosovo, wrote The Service and The Life of
the last Nemanjic, the Holy Tsar Uros, imbuing old literary forms with new
content reflecting the contemporary moment. By introducing popular legends
(which gradually took shape),into classical hagiography Patriarch Pajsije
strove to establish a new cult of saints which would have a beneficial
impact on his compatriots in preserving their faith.
Parallel with the Orthodox Church national policy in traditionally
patriarchal societies, popular tales gradually matured into oral epic
chronicles. Nurtured through epic poetry, which was sung to the
accompaniment of the gusle, epic tales glorified national heroes and ruler,
cultivating the spirit of non-subjugation and cherishing the hope in
liberation from the Turkish yoke. Folk poems about the battle of Kosovo and
its heroes, about the tragic fate of the last Nemanjices, the heroism of
Prince Lazar and his knight Milos Obilic, and, especially, about Kraljevic
Marko (King Marko Mrnjavcevic) as the faultless and dauntless legendary
knight who was always defeating Turks and saving Serbs, were an expression
not only of the tragic sense of life in which Turkish rule was a synonymous
to evil, but a particular moral code that in time crystalized into a common
attitude towards life, defined in the first centuries of Ottoman rule. The
Serbian nation's Kosovo covenant is embodied in the choice which, according
to legend, was made by Prince Lazar on the eve of the battle of Kosovo. The
choice of freedom in the kingdom of heaven instead of humiliation in the
kingdom of earth constituted the Serbian nation's spiritual stronghold.
Prince Lazar's refusal to resign to injustice and slavery, raised to the
level of biblical drama, determined his unquenchable thirst for freedom.
Together with the cult of Saint Sava, which grew into a common
civilisational framework in everyday life, the Kosovo idea which, in time,
gained universal meaning. With its wise policy the Patriarchate of Pec
carefully built epic legend into the hagiography of old and new Serbian
saints, glorifying their works in frescoes and icons.10
1 O. Zirojevic, Prvi vekovi tudjinske vlasti, in: Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, pp. 47-113 (with earlier bibliography).
2 Ibid
3 M. Pesikan, Zetsko-raska imena na pocetku turskog doba, II, in:
Onomatoloski prilozi, vol. IV (1983), pp. 218-243; 0. Zirojevic;, op. cit.,
pp. 90-92.
4. O. Zirojevic, op. cit., pp. 92-94.
5 Ibid, pp. 94-96.
6 R. Samardzic, Mehmed-pasa Sokolovic, (Beograd 1975); Idem, Ideje za
srpsku istoriju, (Beograd 1989), pp. 125-128; Dj. Slijepcevic, Istorija
Srpske pravoslavne crkve, I, Dusseldorf 1878, pp. 328-321.
7 R. Trickovic, U susret najtezim iskusenjima, in: Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, pp. 119-126.
8 J. Radonic, Rimska kurija i juznoslovenske zemlje od XVI do XIX veka,
(Beograd 1950)
9 J. Radonic, op. cit., pp., 8-11; Further documentation in: M. Jacov,
Spisi Tajnog vatikanskog arhiva XVI-XL veka, (Beograd 1983)
10 R. Samardzic, Usmena narodna hronika (Novi Sad 1978).
The Serbs stepped again onto the historical scene in the years of the
European wars that swept the continent from the forests of Ireland to the
walls of Constantinople in the late 17th century. The Turks finally withdrew
from Hungary and Transylvania when their Ottoman hordes were routed outside
Vienna in 1683. The disintegration of Ottoman rule in the southwest limbered
up the Serbs, arousing in them hope that the moment was ripe for joint
effort to break Turkish dominion in the Balkans. The neighboring Christian
powers (Austria and Venice) were the only possible allies. The arrival of
the Austrian army in Serbia after the fall of Belgrade in 1688 prompted the
Serbs to join it. Thanks to the support of Serbian insurgents, the imperial
troops penetrated deep into Serbia and in 1689 conquered Nis: a special
Serbian militia was formed as a separate corps of the imperial
troops.1
After setting fire to Skoplje (Uskub), which was raging with plague,
the commander of Austrian troops Ennea Silviae Piccolomini withdrew to
Prizren where he was greeted by 20,000 Serbian insurgents, and with whom he
reached an accord on fighting the Turks with joint forces. Shortly
afterwards, Piccollomini died of the plague, and his successors failed to
prevent their troops from marauding the surrounding regions. Disappointed by
the conduct of the Christian troops from which they had expected decisive
support, the Serbian insurgents abandoned the agreed alliance. Patriarch
Arsenije III Crnojevic tried in vain to arrive at a new agreement with the
Austrian generals. The restorer of the Ottoman Empire, Grand Vizier
Mustafa-Pasha Koporilli, an Albanian by origin, took advantage of the lull
in military operations, mustered Crimean Tatars and Islamized Albanians and
mounted a major campaign. Despite assurances of help, Catholic Albanian
tribes deserted the Austrian army on the eve of the decisive clash at
Kacanik in Kosovo, on January 1690. The Serbian militia, resisting the
Sultan's superior hordes, retreated to the west and north of the
country.2
Turkish retaliation, in which the Serbian infidels were raided and
viciously massacred lasted a three full months. The towns of Prizren, Pec,
Pristina, Vucitrn and Mitrovica were hit the worst, and Serbs from Novo Brdo
retreated from the Tatar saber. Fleeing from the brutal reprisal, the people
of Kosovo and the neighboring areas moved northwards with Patriarch Arsenije
III. The decision to end the massacre and declare an amnesty came belately
as much of the population had already fled for safer areas, moving towards
the Sava River and Belgrade. Other parts of Serbia were also targets of
ghastly reprisals. In the Belgrade pashalik alone, the number of taxpayers
dropped eightfold. Grand old monasteries were looted from Pec Patriarchate
to Gracanica, and the Albanian tribe Gashi pillaged the Decani monastery,
killing the prior and seizing the monastery's best estates.
At the invitation of emperor Leopold I, Patriarch Arsenije III led part
of the high clergy and a sizeable part of the refugees (tens of thousands of
people) to the Habsburg Empire to the territory of southern Hungary, having
received assurances that the Serbs would there be granted special political
and religious status. Many Serbs from Kosovo and Metohia followed him. The
new churches built along the Danube they named after those left in old
homeland.
The Great 1690 Migration was a important turning point in the history
of the Serbs. In Kosovo and Metohia alone, towns and some villages were
abandoned to the last inhabitant. The population was also decimated by the
plague, whatever remained after the Turkish troops. The physical
extermination along with the mass exodus, the burning of grand monasteries
and their rich treasuries and libraries, the death and murder of a large
number of monks and clergy wreaked havoc in these regions. The position of
the Pec Patriarchate was badly shaken; its highest clergy went with the
people to Austria, and the confusion wrought by the Great Migration had a
major influence on its abolition (1766).3
The hardest consequence of the Great Migration was demographic upheaval
it caused, because once the Serbs withdraw from Kosovo and Metohia,
Islamized Albanian tribes from the northern highlands started settling the
area in greater number, mostly by force, in the decade following the 1690
Great Migration of Serbs, ethnic Albanian tribes (given their incredible
powers of reproduction) was posing a grave threat to the biological survival
of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia. Colonies set up by the ethnic Albanians
in Kosovo, Metohia and the neighboring areas provoked a fresh Serbian
migration toward the north, encouraged the process of conversion and upset
the centuries-old ethnic balance in those areas. Supported (depending on
circumstances) by the Turks and the Roman Curia, ethnic Albanians, abyding
by their tribal customs and hajduk insubordination to the law, in the coming
centuries turned the entire region of Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody
battleground, marked by tribal and feudal anarchy. The period following the
Great Migration of Serbia marked the commencement of three centuries of
ethnic Albanian genocide against Serbs in their native land.
The century after the Great Migration saw a fresh exodus of the Serbs
from Kosovo and Metohia, and a growing influence of ethnic Albanians on
political circumstances. Ethnic Albanians used the support they received
from the Turkish army in fighting Serbian insurgents to seize the ravaged
land and abandoned mining centers in Kosovo and Metohia and to enter in
large numbers the Ottoman administration and military. More and more
Catholic ethnic-Albanians converted to Islam, thereby acquiring the right to
retain the estates they had seized and to apply the might-is-right principle
in their dealings with the non-Muslim Serbs. The authorities encouraged and
assisted the settlement of the newly Islamized ethnic-Albanian tribes from
the mountains to the fertile lands devastated by war. The dissipation of the
Turkish administrative system encouraged the ethnic-Albanian colonisation of
Kosovo and Metohia, since with the arrival of more of their fellow tribesmen
and compatriots, the local pashas and beys (most of whom were ethnic
Albanian) acquired strong tribal armies which in times of trouble helped
them hold on to their position and illegally pass on their power to their
descendents. The missionaries of the Roman Curia did not heed to preserve
the small ethnic Albanian Catholic population, but endeavoured instead to
inflict as much harm as possible on the Pec Patriarchate and its
dignitaries, and, with the help of bribable pashas, to undermine the
cohesive power of Serbian Orthodoxy in these areas.4
The next war between Austria and Turkey (1716-1718) marked the
beginning of a fresh persecution in Kosovo and Metohia. Austrian troops,
standstill, regardless of whether it was lead by feudal lords, outlaws,
foreign patrons, Albanian or Yugoslav communists. In a society which
harmoniously accepted both in Albania and Yugoslavia the ideological monism
of xenophobic isolation which suited its internal tribal structure and a
certain intolerance that was racial as well as ethnic. After receiving
political asylum in France, the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare pithily
explained the nature of the internal resistance of the Albanian society to
all ideological challenges. "Communism has not really penetrated into the
depths of Albanian society. The Albanians are, as it were, racists: they
consider those who do not share their moral customs amoral, as the classic
Greeks considered other peoples Barbarians. This racism probably played a
role in the Albanian resistance to socialism."1 From this
perspective, the depth of the conflict and the mutual misunderstanding of
Serbs and Albanians is shown in brighter light. However, it is important to
note that in this centuries-old conflict to which their seems no end, in the
second half of the 20th century Albanians in Kosovo and Metohia won crucial
support from Yugoslav communists to the detriment of Serbs.
1 Ismail Kadare Interview in Le Monde, 26. 10. 1990. 34
KOSOVO AND METOHIA
A HISTORICAL SURVEY
In the thousand year long-history of Serbs, Kosovo and Metohia were for
many centuries the state center and chief religious stronghold, the
heartland of their culture and springwell of its historical traditions. For
a people who lived longer under foreign rule than in their own state, Kosovo
and Metohia are the foundations on which national and state identity were
preserved in times of tribulation and founded in times of freedom .
The Serbian national ideology which emerged out of Kosovo's
tribulations and Kosovo's suffering (wherein the 1389 St. Vitus Day Battle
in Kosovo polje occupies the central place), are the pillars of that grand
edifice that constitutes the Serbian national pantheon. When it is said that
without Kosovo there can be no Serbia or Serbian nation, it's not only the
revived 19th century national romanticism: that implies more than just the
territory which is covered with telling monuments of its culture and
civilization, more than just a feeling of hard won national and state
independence: Kosovo and Metohia are considered the key to the identity of
the Serbs. It is no wonder, then, that the many turning-points in Serbian
history took place in the and around Kosovo and Metohia. When the Serbs on
other Balkan lands fought to preserve their religious freedoms and national
rights, their banners bore as their beacon the Kosovo idea embodied in the
Kosovo covenant which was woven into folk legend and upheld in uprisings
against alien domination. The Kosovo covenant - the choice of freedom in the
celestial empire instead of humiliation and slavery in the temporal world -
although irrational as a collective consciousness, is still the one
permanent connective tissue that imbues the Serbs with the feeling of
national entity and lends meaning to its join efforts.1
1 Cf. D. Slijepcevic, Srpsko-arbanaski odnosi kroz vekove posebnim
osvrtom na novije vreme, (Himelstir 1983); D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu,
Beograd 1985; Zaduzbine Kosova, (Prizren-Beograd 1987); Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, (Beograd 1989);German translation: Kosovo und Metochien in
der serbishen Geschichte, (Lausanne 1989); Kosovo. Proslost i sadasnjost,
Beograd 1989 English translation: Kosovo. Past and present, (Belgrade 1989).
R. Mihaljcic, The Battle of Kosovo in History and in Popular Tradition,
(Belgrade 1989).
Kosovo and Metohia, land lying in the heart of the Balkans where viutal
trade routes had crossed since ancient times, was settled by Slav tribes
between the 7th and 10th centuries. The Serbian medieval state, which under
the Nemanjic dynasty (12th to 14th century) grew into a major power in the
Balkan peninsula, developed in the nearby mountain regions, in Raska (with
Bosnia) and in Duklja (later Zeta and then Montenegro). The center of the
Nemanjic slate moved to Kosovo and Metohia after the fall of Constantinople
(1204). At its peak, in the early the 14th century, these lands were the
richest and the most densely populated areas, as well as state and its
cultural and administrative centers.1
In his wars with Byzantium, Stefan Nemanja conquered various parts of
what is today Kosovo, and his successors, Stefan the First Crown (became
king in 1217), expanded his state by including Prizren. The entire Kosovo
and Metohia region became a permanent part of the Serbian state by the
beginning of the 13th century. Soon after becoming autocephalous (1219), the
Serbian Orthodox Church moved its seat to Metohia. The heirs of the first
archbishop Saint Sava (prince Rastko Nemanjic) built several additional
temples around the Church of the Holy Apostles, lying the ground for what
was to become the Patriarchate of Pec. The founding of a separate
bishophoric (1220) near Pec was indicative of the region's political
importance growing along with religious influence. With the proclamation of
the empire, the patriarchal throne was permanently established at the Pec
monastery in 1346. Serbia's rulers alotted the fertile valleys between Pec,
Prizren, Mitrovica and Pristina and nearby areas to churches and
monasteries, and the whole region eventually acquired the name Metohia, from
the Greek metoch which mean an estate owned by the church.
Studded with more churches and monasteries than any other Serbian land,
Kosovo and Metohia became the spiritual nucleus of Serbs. Lying at the
crossroads of the main Balkan routes connecting the surrounding Serbian
lands of Raska, Bosnia, Zeta and the Scutari littoral with the Macedonia and
the Morava region, Kosovo and Metohia were, geographically speaking, the
ideal place for a state and cultural center. Girfled by mountain gorges and
comparatively safe from outside attacks, Kosovo and Metohia were not chosen
by chance as the site for building religious centers, church mausoleums and
palaces. The rich holdings of Decant monastery provided and economic
underpinning for the wealth of spiritual activities in the area. Learned
monks and religious dignitaries assembled in large monastic communities
(which were well provided for by the rich feudal holdings), strongly
influenced the spiritual shaping of the nation, especially in strengthening
local cults and fostering the Orthodox doctrine.
In the monasteries of Metohia and Kosovo, old theological and literary
writings were transcribed and new ones penned, including the lives of local
saints, from ordinary monks and priors to the archbishops and rulers of the
house of Nemanjic. The libraries and scriptoria were stocked with the best
liturgical and theoretical writings from all over Byzantine commonwealth,
especially with various codes from the monasteries of Mounth Athos with
which close ties were established. The architecture of the churches and
monasteries developed and the artistic value of their frescoes increased as
Serbian medieval culture flourished, and by the end of the 13th century new
ideas applied in architecture and in the technique of fresco painting
surpassed the traditional Byzantine models. With time, especially in
centuries to come, the people came to believe that Kosovo was the center of
Serbian Orthodoxy and the most resistant stronghold of the Serbian
nation.2
The most important buildings to be endowed by the last Nemanjices were
erected in Kosovo and Metohia, where their courts which became their
capitals were situated. From King Milutin to emperor Uros, court life
evolved in the royal residences in southern Kosovo and Prizren. There rulers
summoned the landed gentry, received foreign legates and issued charters.
The court of Svrcin stood on the banks of Lake Sazlia, and it was there that
Stefan Dusan was crowned king in 1331. On the opposite side was the palace
in Pauni, where King Milutin often dwelled. The court in Nerodimlje was the
favourite residence of King Stefan Decanski, and it was at the palace in
Stimlje that emperor Uros issued his charters. Oral tradition, especially
epic poems, usually mention Prizren as emperor Dusan's capital, for he
frequently sojourned there when he was still king.3
Among dozens of churches and monasteries erected in medieval Kosovo and
Metohia by rulers, ecclesiastical dignitaries and the local nobility, Decani
outside of Pec, built by Stefan Uros III Decanski, stands out for its
monumental size and artistic beauty. King Milutin left behind the largest
number of endowments in Kosovo, one of the finest of which is Gracanica
monastery (1321) near Pristina, certainly the most beautiful medieval
monument in the Balkans. The monasteries of Banjska dear Zvecan (early 14th
century) and Our Lady of Ljeviska in Prizren (1307), although devastated
during Ottoman rule, are eloquent examples of the wealth and power of the
Serbian state at the start of the 14th century. Also of artistic importance
is the complex of churches in Juxtaposition to the Patriarchate of Pec. The
biggest of the royal endowments, the Church of the Holy Archangels near
Prizren, erected by Tsar Stefan Dusan in the Bistrica River Canyon, was
destroyed in the 16th century.4
Founding chapter whereby Serbian rulers granted large estates to
monasteries offer a reliable demographic picture of the area. Fertile plains
were largely owned by the large monasteries, from Chilandar in Mount Athos
to Decant in Metohia. The data given in the charters show that during the
period of the political rise of Serbian state, the population gradually
moved from the mountain plateau in the west and north southward to the
fertile valleys of Metohia and Kosovo. The census of monastic estates evince
both a rise in the population and appreciable economic progress. The estates
of the Banjska monastery numbered 83 villages, and those of the Holy
Archangels numbered 77.5
Especially noteworthy is the 1330 Decani Charter, with its detailed
list of households and of chartered villages. The Decant estate was an
extensive area which encompassed parts of what is today northwestern
Albania. Historical analysis and onomastic research reveal that only three
of the 89 settlements were mentioned as being Albanian. Out of the 2,166
farming homesteads and 2,666 houses in cattle-grazing land, 44 were
registrated as Albanian (1,8%). More recent research indicates that apart
from the Slav, i.e. Serbian population in Kosovo and Metohia, the remaining
population of non-Slav origin did not account for more than 2% of the total
population in the 14th century.6
The growing political power, territorial expansion and economic wealth
of the Serbian state had a major impact on ethnic processes. Northern
Albania up to the Mati River was a part of the Serbian Kingdom, but it was
not until the conquest of Tsar Dusan that the entire Albania (with the
exception of Durazzo) entered the Serbian Empire. Fourteenth century records
mention mobile Albanian mobile cattle sheds on mountain slopes in the
imminent vicinity of Metohia, and sources in the first half of the 15th
century note their presence (albeit in smaller number) in the flatland
farming settlements.
Stefan Dusan's Empire stretched from the Danube to the Peloponnese and
from Bulgaria to the Albanian littoral. After his death it began to
disintegrate into areas controlled by powerful regional lords. Kosovo and
parts of Metohia came under the rule of King Vukasin Mrnjavcevic, the
co-ruler of the last Nemanjic, Tsar Uros. The earliest clashes with the
Turks, who edged their way into Europe at the start of the 14th century,
were noted during the reign of Stefan Dusan. The 1371 battle of the Marica,
near Crnomen in which Turkish troops rode rougshod over the huge army of the
Mrnjavcevic brothers, the feudal lords of Macedonia, Kosovo and neighboring
regions, heralded the decisive Turkish invasion of Serbian lands. King
Vukasin's successor King Marko (the legendary hero of folk poems, Kralyevich
Marko) recognized the supreme authority of the sultan and as vasal took part
in his campaigns against neighboring Christian states. The Turkish onslaught
is remembered as the apocalypse of the Serbian people, and this tradition
was cherished during the long period of Ottoman rule. During the Battle of
the Marica, a monk wrote that "the worst of all times" had come, when "the
living envied the dead".7
Unaware of the danger that were looming over their lands, the regional
lords tried to take advantage of the new situation and enlarge their
holdings. On the eve of the battle of Kosovo, the northern parts of Kosovo
where in possession of Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic, and parts of Metohia
belonged to his brother-in-law Vuk Brankovic. By quelling the resistance of
the local landed gentry, Prince Lazar eventually emerged as the most
powerful regional lord and came to dominate the lands of Moravian Serbia.
Tvrtko I Kotromanic, King of Bosnia, Prince Lazar's closest ally, aspired to
the political legacy of the saintly dynasty as descendant of the Nemanjices
and by being crowned with the "dual crown" of Bosnia and Serbia over St.
Sava grave in monastery Mileseva.8
The expected clash with the Turks took place in Kosovo polje, outside
of Pristina, on St. Vitus day, June 15 (28), 1389. The troops of Prince
Lazar, Vuk Brankovic and King Tvrtko I, confronted the army of Emir Murad I,
which included his Christian vassals. Both Prince Lazar and emir Murad were
killed in the head-on collision between the two armies (approximately 30,000
troops on both sides). Contemporaries were especially impressed by the
tidings that twelve Serbian knights (most probably led by legendary hero
Milos Obilic) broke through the tight Turkish ranks and killed the emir in
his tent.9
Military-wise no real victor emerged from the battle. Tvrtko's
emissaries told the courts of Europe that the Christian army had defeated
the infidels, although Prince Lazar's successors, exhausted by their heavy
losses, immediately sought peace and conceded to became vassals to the new
sultan. Vuk Brankovic, unjustly remembered in epic tradition as a traitor
who slipped away from the battle field, resisted them until 1392, when he
was forced to become their vassal. The Turks took Brankovic's lands and gave
them to a more loyal vassal, Prince Stefan Lazarevic, son of Prince Lazar
thereby creating a rift between their heirs. After the battle of Angora in
1402, Prince Stefan took advantage of the chaos in the Ottoman state. In
Constantinople he received the title of despot, and upon returning home,
having defeated Brankovic's relatives he took control over the lands of his
father. Despite frequent internal conflicts and his vassal obligations to
the Turks and Hungarians, despot Stefan revived and economically
consolidated the Serbian state, the center of which was gradually moving
northward. Under his rule Novo Brdo in Kosovo became the economic center of
Serbia where in he issued a Law of Mines in 1412.10
Stefan appointed as his successor his nephew despot Djuradj Brankovic,
whose rule was marked by fresh conflicts and finally the fall of Kosovo and
Metohia to the Turks. The campaign of the Christian army led by Hungarian
nobleman Janos Hunyadi ended in 1448 in heavy defeat in a clash with Murad
II's forces, again in Kosovo Polje. This was the last concertive attempt in
the Middle Ages to rout the Turks out of this part of Europe.11
After the Fall of Constantinople (1453), Mehmed II the Conqueror
advanced onto Despotate of Serbia. For some time voivode Nikola Skobaljic
offered valiant resistance in Kosovo, but after a series of consecutive
campaigns and lengthy sieges in 1455, the economic center of Serbia, Novo
Brdo fell. The Turks then proceeded to conquer other towns in Kosovo and
Metohia four years before the entire Serbian Despotate collapsed with the
fall of new capital Smederevo. Turkish onslaught, marked by frequent
military raids, the plunder and devastation of entire regions, the
destruction of monasteries and churches, gradually narrowed down Serbian
state territories, triggering off a large-scale migration northwards, to
regions beyond reach to the conquerors. The biggest migration took place
from 1480-1481, when a large part of the population of northern Serbia moved
to Hungary and Transylvania, to bordering region along the Sava and Danube
rivers, where the descendants of the fleeing despots of Smederevo resisted
the Turks for several decades to come.12
1 For a more complete picture of Kosovo and Metohia's medieval past
see: D. Kojic-Kovacevic, Kosovo od sredine XII do sredine XV veka, in:
Kosovo nekad i sad (Kosova dikur e sot), (Beograd 1973), pp. 109-128; S.
Cirkovic, Kosovo i Metohija u srednjem veku, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj
istoriji, pp. 21-45 (with earlier bibliography)
2 R. Samardzic, Kosovo i Metohija: uspon i propadanje srpskog naroda,
in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 6-10; D. Bogdanovic, Rukopisno
nasledje Kosova in: Zbornik okruglog stola o naucnom istrazivanju Kosova,
Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Naucni skupovi, vol. XLII, Belgrade
1988, pp. 73-80. For more details see: Istorija srpskog naroda, vol. I
(Belgrade 1981).
3 S. Cirkovic, Vladarski dvorci oko jezera na Kosovu, in: Zbornik
Matice srpske za likovne umetnosti, 20 (1984), pp. 72-77.
4 V. S. Jovanovic, Arheoloska istrazivanja srednjovekovnih spomenika i
nalazista na Kosovu, in: Zbomik okruglog stola o naucnom istrazivanju
Kosova, pp. 17-66.
5 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 34-39; Zaduzbine Kosova, pp.
313-358.
6 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 39-41; S. Cirkovic, Kosovo i
Metohija u srednjem veku, pp. 34-36. More details in: B. Ferjancic, Les
Albanais dans les sources byzantines, in: Iliri i Albanci, Serbian Academy
of Sciences and Arts, Naucni skupovi vol. XXXDC (Belgrade 1988), pp.
303-322; S. Cirkovic, Les Albanais la lumiere des sources historiques des
Slaves du Sud, ill: Iliri i Albanci, pp. 341-359.
7 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 75. More details in: R.
Mihaljcic, Kraj Srpskog Carstva, Boj na Kosovu II, (Belgrade 1989).
8 S. Cirkovic, Istorija srednjovekovne bosanske drzave, (Beograd 1964),
pp. 133-140.
9 S. Cirkovic, Kosovo i Metohija u srednjem veku, pp. 39-41.
10 M. Purkovic, Knez i despot Stefan Lazarevic, (Beograd 1978).
11 Ibid. More details: R. Mihaljcic, Lazar Hrebeljanovic. Istorija,
kult, predanje, Boj na Kosovu II, (Belgrade 1989).
12 Istorija srpskog naroda, vol. II (Beograd 1982), pp. 260-265; D.
Bogdanovic, op. cit. p. 72.
For the Serbs as Christians, their loss of state independence and fall
to the Ottoman Empire's kind of theocratic state, was a terrible misfortune.
With the advent of the Turks and establishment of their rule, the lands of
Serbs were forcibly excluded from the circle of progressive European states
wherein they occupied a prominent place precisely owing to the Byzantine
civilisation, which was enhanced by local qualities and strong influences of
the neighboring Mediterranean states. Being Christians, the Serbs became
second-class citizens in Islamic state. Apart from religious discrimination,
which was evident in all spheres of everyday life, this status of rayah also
implied social dependence, as most of the Serbs were landless peasants who
paid the prescribed feudal taxes. Of the many dues paid in money, labor and
kind, the hardest for the Serbs was having their children taken as tribute
under a law that had the healthy boys, taken from their parents, converted
to Islam and trained to serve in the janissary corps of the Turkish army.
An analyse of the earliest Turkish censuses, defters, shows that the
ethnic picture of Kosovo and Metohia did not alter much during the 14th and
15th centuries. The small-in-number Turkish population consisted largely of
people from the administration and military that were essential in
maintaining order, whereas Christians continued to predominate in the rural
areas. Kosovo and parts of Metohia were registrated in 1455 under the name
Vilayeti Vlk, after Vuk Brankovic who once ruled over them. Some 75,000
inhabitants lived in 590 registrated villages. An onomastic analysis of
approximately 8,500 personal names shows that Slav and Christian names were
heavily predominant.1
Along with the Decani Charter, the register of the Brankovic region
shows a clear division between old-Serbian and old-ethnic Albanian
onomastics, allowing one to say, with some certainty which registrated
settlement was Serbian, and which ethnically mixed. Ethnic designations
(ethnic Albanian, Bulgarian, Armenian, Greek) appeared repeatedly next to
the names of settlers in the region. More thorough onomastic research has
shown that from the mid-14th to the 15th centuries, individual Albanian
settlements appeared on the fringes of Metohia, in-between what had until
then been a density of Serbian villages. This was probably due to the
devastation wrought by Turks who destroyed the old landed estates, thus
allowing for the mobile among the population, including ethnic Albanian
cattlemen, to settle on the abandoned land and establish their settlements,
which were neither big nor heavily populated.2
A summary census of the houses and religious affiliations of
inhabitants in the Vucitrn district (sanjak), which encompassed the one-time
Brankovic lands, was drawn in 1487, showed that the ethnic situation had not
altered much. Christian households predominated (totalling 16,729, out of
which 412 were in Pristina and Vucitrn): there were 117 Muslim households
(94 in Pristina and 83 in rural areas). A comprehensive census of the
Scutari district offers the following picture: in Pec (Ipek) there were 33
Muslim and 121 Christian households, while in Suho Grlo, also in Metohia,
Christians alone lived in 131 households. The number of Christians (6,124)
versus Muslim (55) homes in the rural areas shows that 1% of the entire
population bowed to the faith of the conqueror. An analysis of the names
shows that those of Slav origin predominated among the Christians. In Pec,
68% of the population bore Slav names, in the Suho Grlo region 52%, in Donja
Klina region 50% and around monastery of Decani 64%.
Ethnic Albanian settlements where people had characteristic names did
not appear until one reached areas outside the borders of what is today
Metohia, i.e. west of Djakovica. According to Turkish sources, in the period
from 1520 to 1535 only 700 of the total number of 19,614 households in the
Vucitrn district were Muslim (about 3,5%), and 359 (2%)in Prizren district.
In regions extending beyond the geographic borders of Kosovo and
Metohia, in the Scutari and Dukagjin districts, Muslims accounted for 4,6%
of the population. According to an analysis of the names in the Dukagjin
district's census, ethnic Albanian settlements did not predominate until one
reached regions south of Djakovica, and the ethnic picture in the 16th
century in Prizren and the neighboring areas remained basically
unchanged.3
A look at the religious affiliation of the urban population shows a
rise in the Turkish and local Islamized population. In Prizren, Kosovo's
biggest city, Muslims accounted for 56% of the households, of which the
Islamized population accounted for 21%. The ratio was similar in Pristina,
where out of the 54% Muslim population 16% were converts. Pec also had a
Muslim majority (90%), as did Vucitrn (72%). The Christians compromised the
majority of the population in the mining centers of Novo Brdo (62%), Trepca
(77%), Donja Trepca and Belasica (85%). Among the Christians was a
smattering of Catholics. The Christian names were largely from the calendar,
and to a lesser extent Slav (Voja, Dabiziv, Cvetko, Mladen, Stojko), and
there were some that were typically ethnic Albanian (Prend, Don, Din,
Zoti).4
After the fall of Serbia in 1459, the Pec Patriarchate soon ceased to
work and the Serbian eparchies came under the jurisdiction of the Hellenic
Ochrid Archbishophoric. In the first decade following Turkish conquest, many
large endowments and wealthier churches were pillaged and destroyed, while
some turned into mosques. The Our Lady of Ljeviska Cathedral in Prizren was
probably converted into a mosque right immediately following the conquest of
the town; Banjska, one of the grandest monasteries dating from the age of
King Milutin, suffered the same fate. The Church of the Holy Archangels near
Prizren, Stefan Dusan's chief endowment was turned into ruins. Most of the
monasteries and churches were left unrenewed after being devastated, and
many village churches were abandoned. Many were not restored until after the
liberation of Kosovo and Metohia in 1912. Archeological findings have shown
that some 1,300 monasteries, churches and other monuments existed in the
Kosovo and Metohia area. The magnitude of the havoc wrought can be seen from
the earliest Turkish censuses: In the 15th and 16th centuries there were ten
to fourteen active places of Christian worship. At first the great
monasteries like Decani and Gracanica, were exempt from destruction, but
their wealthy estates were reduced to a handfull of surrounding villages.
The privileges granted the monastic brotherhoods by the sultans obliged them
to perform the service of falconry as well.5
The restoration of the Pec Patriarchate in 1557 (thanks to Mehmed-pasha
Sokolovic, a Serb by origin, at the time the third vizier at the Porte)
marked a major turn and helped revive the spiritual life of the Serbs,
especially in Kosovo and Metohia. Mehmed-pasha Sokolovic (Turkish:
Sokollu) enthroned his relative Makarije Sokolovic on the patriarchal
throne. Like the great reform movements in 16th century Europe, the
restoration of the Serbian Orthodox Church meant the rediscovery of lost
spiritual strongholds. Thanks to the Patriarchate, Kosovo and Metohia were
for the next two centuries again the spiritual and political center of the
Serbs. On an area vaster than the Nemanjic empire, high-ranking
ecclesiastical dignitaries revived old and created new eparchies endeavoring
to reinforce the Orthodox faith which had been undermined by influences
alien (particularly by Islamic Bekteshi order of dervishes) to its authentic
teachings.
Based on the tradition of the medieval Serbian state, the Pec
Patriarchate revived old and established new cults of the holy rulers,
archbishops, martyrs and warriors, lending life to the Nemanjic heritage.
The feeling of religious and ethnic solidarity was enhanced by joint
deliberation at church assemblies attended by the higher and lower clergy,
village chiefs and hajduk leaders, and by stepping up a morale on the
traditions of Saint Sava but suited to the new conditions and strong
patriarchal customs renewed after the Turkish conquest in the village
communities.
The spiritual rebirth was reflected in the restoration of deserted
churches and monasteries: some twenty new churches were built in Kosovo and
Metohia alone, inclusive of printing houses (the most important one was at
Gracanica): many old and abandoned churches were redecorated with
frescoes.6
Serbian patriarchs and bishops gradually took over the role of the
one-time rulers, endeavoring with assistance from the neighboring Christian
states of Habsburg Empire and the Venetian Republic, to incite the people to
rebel. Plans for overthrowing the Turks and re-establishing an independent
Serbian state sprang throughout the lands from the Adriatic to the Danube.
The patriarchs of Pec, often learned men and able politicians, were usually
the ones who initiated and coordinated efforts at launching popular
uprisings when the right moment came. Patriarch Jovan failed to instigate a
major rebellion against the Turks, seeking the alliance of the European
Christian powers assembled around Pope Clement VII. Patriarch Jovan was
assassinated in Constantinople in 1614. Patriarch Gavrilo Rajic lived the
same fate in 1659 after going to Russia to seek help in instigating a
revolt.
The least auspicious conditions for an uprising were actually in Kosovo
and Metohia itself. In the fertile plains, the non-Muslim masses labored
under the yoke of the local Turkish administrators, continually threatened
by marauding tribes from the Albanian highlands. The crisis that overcome
the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th century further aggrovated the position
of the Serbs in Kosovo, Metohia and neighboring regions. Rebellions fomented
by cattle-raising tribes in Albania and Montenegro, and the punitive
expeditions sent to deal with them turned Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody
terrain where Albanian tribes, kept clashing with detachments of the local
authorities, plundered Christian villages along the way. Hardened by
constant clashes with the Turks, Montenegro gradually picked up the torch of
defending Serbian Orthodoxy; meanwhile, in northern Albania, particularly in
Malesia, a reverse process was under way. Under steady pressure from the
Turkish authorities, the Islamization of ethnic Albanian tribes became more
widespread and the process assumed broader proportions when antagonistic
strivings grew within the Ottoman Empire in the late 17th and early 18th
century.7
It is not until the end of the 17th century that the colonization of
Albanian tribes in Kosovo and Metohia can be established. Reports by
contemporary Catholic visitators show that the ethnic border between the
Serbs and Albanians still followed the old dividing lines of the Black and
White Drim rivers. All reports on Kosovo and Metohia regard them as being in
Serbia: for the Catholic visitators, Prizren was still its capital city. In
Albania, the first wave of Islamization swept the feudal strata and urban
population. Special tax and political alleviations encouraged the rural
population to convert to Islam in larger number. Instead of being part of
the oppressed non-Muslim masses, the converts became a privileged class of
Ottoman society, with free access to the highest positions in the state. In
Kosovo and Metohia, where they moved to avoid heavy taxes, Catholic tribes
of Malesia converted to Islam. Conversion to Islam in a strongly Orthodox
environment rendered them the desired privileges (the property of Orthodox
and of the Catholics) and saved them from melting with Serbian Orthodox
population. It was only with the process of Islamization that the ethnic
Albanian colonisation of lands inhabited by Serbs became
expansive.8
The ethnic picture of Kosovo did not radically change in the first
centuries of Ottoman rule. Islamization encompassed part of a Serbian
population, although the first generations at least, converted as a mere
formality, to avoid heavy financial burdens and constant political pressure.
Conversion constituted the basis of Ottoman policy in the Balkans but it was
les successfull in Kosovo and Metohia, regions with the strongest religious
traditions, than in other Christian areas. The Turks' strong reaction to
rebellions throughout the Serbian lands and to the revival of Orthodoxy,
embodied in the cult of Saint Sava, the founder of the independent Serbian
church, ended in setting fire to the Mileseva monastery the burial place of
the first Serbian saint. The Turks burned his wonder working relics in
Belgrade in 1594, during a great uprising of Serbs in southern Banat. This
triggered off fresh waves of Islamization accompanied by severe reprisals
and the thwarting of any sign of rebellion.
Apart from Islamization, Kosovo and Metohia became the target of
proselytizing Catholic missionaries at the end of 17th century, especially
after the creation of the Sacra Congregazione de Propaganda Fide (1622). The
ultimate aim of the Roman Catholic propaganda was to converts the Orthodox
to Graeco-Catholicism as the initial phase in completely converting them to
the Catholic faith. The appeals of patriarchs of Pec to the Roman popes to
help the liberatory aspirations of the Serbs were met with the condition
that they renounce the Orthodox faith. In spreading the Catholicism, the
missionaries of the Roman Curia had the support of local Turkish
authorities; a considerable number of the missionaries were of Albanian
origin. Consequently, the propagators of Catholic proselytism persisted in
inciting Catholic and Muslim Albanians against the Serbs, whose loyalty to
Orthodoxy and their medieval traditions was the main obstacle to the
spreading of the Catholic faith in the central and southern regions of the
Balkans.9
Catholic propaganda attempts at separating the high clergy of the
Serbian Orthodox Church from the people prompted the Pec Patriarchate to
revive old and create a new cults with even greater vigor. In 1642 Patriarch
Pajsije, who was born in Janjevo, Kosovo, wrote The Service and The Life of
the last Nemanjic, the Holy Tsar Uros, imbuing old literary forms with new
content reflecting the contemporary moment. By introducing popular legends
(which gradually took shape),into classical hagiography Patriarch Pajsije
strove to establish a new cult of saints which would have a beneficial
impact on his compatriots in preserving their faith.
Parallel with the Orthodox Church national policy in traditionally
patriarchal societies, popular tales gradually matured into oral epic
chronicles. Nurtured through epic poetry, which was sung to the
accompaniment of the gusle, epic tales glorified national heroes and ruler,
cultivating the spirit of non-subjugation and cherishing the hope in
liberation from the Turkish yoke. Folk poems about the battle of Kosovo and
its heroes, about the tragic fate of the last Nemanjices, the heroism of
Prince Lazar and his knight Milos Obilic, and, especially, about Kraljevic
Marko (King Marko Mrnjavcevic) as the faultless and dauntless legendary
knight who was always defeating Turks and saving Serbs, were an expression
not only of the tragic sense of life in which Turkish rule was a synonymous
to evil, but a particular moral code that in time crystalized into a common
attitude towards life, defined in the first centuries of Ottoman rule. The
Serbian nation's Kosovo covenant is embodied in the choice which, according
to legend, was made by Prince Lazar on the eve of the battle of Kosovo. The
choice of freedom in the kingdom of heaven instead of humiliation in the
kingdom of earth constituted the Serbian nation's spiritual stronghold.
Prince Lazar's refusal to resign to injustice and slavery, raised to the
level of biblical drama, determined his unquenchable thirst for freedom.
Together with the cult of Saint Sava, which grew into a common
civilisational framework in everyday life, the Kosovo idea which, in time,
gained universal meaning. With its wise policy the Patriarchate of Pec
carefully built epic legend into the hagiography of old and new Serbian
saints, glorifying their works in frescoes and icons.10
1 O. Zirojevic, Prvi vekovi tudjinske vlasti, in: Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, pp. 47-113 (with earlier bibliography).
2 Ibid
3 M. Pesikan, Zetsko-raska imena na pocetku turskog doba, II, in:
Onomatoloski prilozi, vol. IV (1983), pp. 218-243; 0. Zirojevic;, op. cit.,
pp. 90-92.
4. O. Zirojevic, op. cit., pp. 92-94.
5 Ibid, pp. 94-96.
6 R. Samardzic, Mehmed-pasa Sokolovic, (Beograd 1975); Idem, Ideje za
srpsku istoriju, (Beograd 1989), pp. 125-128; Dj. Slijepcevic, Istorija
Srpske pravoslavne crkve, I, Dusseldorf 1878, pp. 328-321.
7 R. Trickovic, U susret najtezim iskusenjima, in: Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, pp. 119-126.
8 J. Radonic, Rimska kurija i juznoslovenske zemlje od XVI do XIX veka,
(Beograd 1950)
9 J. Radonic, op. cit., pp., 8-11; Further documentation in: M. Jacov,
Spisi Tajnog vatikanskog arhiva XVI-XL veka, (Beograd 1983)
10 R. Samardzic, Usmena narodna hronika (Novi Sad 1978).
The Serbs stepped again onto the historical scene in the years of the
European wars that swept the continent from the forests of Ireland to the
walls of Constantinople in the late 17th century. The Turks finally withdrew
from Hungary and Transylvania when their Ottoman hordes were routed outside
Vienna in 1683. The disintegration of Ottoman rule in the southwest limbered
up the Serbs, arousing in them hope that the moment was ripe for joint
effort to break Turkish dominion in the Balkans. The neighboring Christian
powers (Austria and Venice) were the only possible allies. The arrival of
the Austrian army in Serbia after the fall of Belgrade in 1688 prompted the
Serbs to join it. Thanks to the support of Serbian insurgents, the imperial
troops penetrated deep into Serbia and in 1689 conquered Nis: a special
Serbian militia was formed as a separate corps of the imperial
troops.1
After setting fire to Skoplje (Uskub), which was raging with plague,
the commander of Austrian troops Ennea Silviae Piccolomini withdrew to
Prizren where he was greeted by 20,000 Serbian insurgents, and with whom he
reached an accord on fighting the Turks with joint forces. Shortly
afterwards, Piccollomini died of the plague, and his successors failed to
prevent their troops from marauding the surrounding regions. Disappointed by
the conduct of the Christian troops from which they had expected decisive
support, the Serbian insurgents abandoned the agreed alliance. Patriarch
Arsenije III Crnojevic tried in vain to arrive at a new agreement with the
Austrian generals. The restorer of the Ottoman Empire, Grand Vizier
Mustafa-Pasha Koporilli, an Albanian by origin, took advantage of the lull
in military operations, mustered Crimean Tatars and Islamized Albanians and
mounted a major campaign. Despite assurances of help, Catholic Albanian
tribes deserted the Austrian army on the eve of the decisive clash at
Kacanik in Kosovo, on January 1690. The Serbian militia, resisting the
Sultan's superior hordes, retreated to the west and north of the
country.2
Turkish retaliation, in which the Serbian infidels were raided and
viciously massacred lasted a three full months. The towns of Prizren, Pec,
Pristina, Vucitrn and Mitrovica were hit the worst, and Serbs from Novo Brdo
retreated from the Tatar saber. Fleeing from the brutal reprisal, the people
of Kosovo and the neighboring areas moved northwards with Patriarch Arsenije
III. The decision to end the massacre and declare an amnesty came belately
as much of the population had already fled for safer areas, moving towards
the Sava River and Belgrade. Other parts of Serbia were also targets of
ghastly reprisals. In the Belgrade pashalik alone, the number of taxpayers
dropped eightfold. Grand old monasteries were looted from Pec Patriarchate
to Gracanica, and the Albanian tribe Gashi pillaged the Decani monastery,
killing the prior and seizing the monastery's best estates.
At the invitation of emperor Leopold I, Patriarch Arsenije III led part
of the high clergy and a sizeable part of the refugees (tens of thousands of
people) to the Habsburg Empire to the territory of southern Hungary, having
received assurances that the Serbs would there be granted special political
and religious status. Many Serbs from Kosovo and Metohia followed him. The
new churches built along the Danube they named after those left in old
homeland.
The Great 1690 Migration was a important turning point in the history
of the Serbs. In Kosovo and Metohia alone, towns and some villages were
abandoned to the last inhabitant. The population was also decimated by the
plague, whatever remained after the Turkish troops. The physical
extermination along with the mass exodus, the burning of grand monasteries
and their rich treasuries and libraries, the death and murder of a large
number of monks and clergy wreaked havoc in these regions. The position of
the Pec Patriarchate was badly shaken; its highest clergy went with the
people to Austria, and the confusion wrought by the Great Migration had a
major influence on its abolition (1766).3
The hardest consequence of the Great Migration was demographic upheaval
it caused, because once the Serbs withdraw from Kosovo and Metohia,
Islamized Albanian tribes from the northern highlands started settling the
area in greater number, mostly by force, in the decade following the 1690
Great Migration of Serbs, ethnic Albanian tribes (given their incredible
powers of reproduction) was posing a grave threat to the biological survival
of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia. Colonies set up by the ethnic Albanians
in Kosovo, Metohia and the neighboring areas provoked a fresh Serbian
migration toward the north, encouraged the process of conversion and upset
the centuries-old ethnic balance in those areas. Supported (depending on
circumstances) by the Turks and the Roman Curia, ethnic Albanians, abyding
by their tribal customs and hajduk insubordination to the law, in the coming
centuries turned the entire region of Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody
battleground, marked by tribal and feudal anarchy. The period following the
Great Migration of Serbia marked the commencement of three centuries of
ethnic Albanian genocide against Serbs in their native land.
The century after the Great Migration saw a fresh exodus of the Serbs
from Kosovo and Metohia, and a growing influence of ethnic Albanians on
political circumstances. Ethnic Albanians used the support they received
from the Turkish army in fighting Serbian insurgents to seize the ravaged
land and abandoned mining centers in Kosovo and Metohia and to enter in
large numbers the Ottoman administration and military. More and more
Catholic ethnic-Albanians converted to Islam, thereby acquiring the right to
retain the estates they had seized and to apply the might-is-right principle
in their dealings with the non-Muslim Serbs. The authorities encouraged and
assisted the settlement of the newly Islamized ethnic-Albanian tribes from
the mountains to the fertile lands devastated by war. The dissipation of the
Turkish administrative system encouraged the ethnic-Albanian colonisation of
Kosovo and Metohia, since with the arrival of more of their fellow tribesmen
and compatriots, the local pashas and beys (most of whom were ethnic
Albanian) acquired strong tribal armies which in times of trouble helped
them hold on to their position and illegally pass on their power to their
descendents. The missionaries of the Roman Curia did not heed to preserve
the small ethnic Albanian Catholic population, but endeavoured instead to
inflict as much harm as possible on the Pec Patriarchate and its
dignitaries, and, with the help of bribable pashas, to undermine the
cohesive power of Serbian Orthodoxy in these areas.4
The next war between Austria and Turkey (1716-1718) marked the
beginning of a fresh persecution in Kosovo and Metohia. Austrian troops,