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 Age of Migrations
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,
backed by Serbian volunteers, reached the Western Morava River where they
established a new frontier. Ethnic Albanians collectively guaranteed to the
Porte the safety of the regions in the immediate vicinity of Austria, and
were in return exempted from the heaviest taxes. Towards the end of the war
(1717), a major Serbian uprising broke out in Vucitrn and its surroundings:
it was brutally crushed and the troops sent to allay the rayah and launch an
investigation, perpetrated fresh atrocities. Excessive dues, robbery and the
threat of extermination put before the Kosovo Serbs the choices of either
converting to Islam or finding a powerful master who would protect them if
they accepted the status of serfs. Many opted for a third solution: they
moved to surrounding regions where life was more tolerable.5
The following war between Austria and Turkey (1737-1739) ended with the
routing of the imperial troops from Serbian territory. The border was
reestablished at the Sava and Danube rivers, and Serbs set out on another
migration. Patriarch Arsenije IV Jovanovic, along with the religious and
national leaders of Pec, drew up a plan for cooperation with the Austrian
forces, and contacted their commanders. A large-scale uprisings broke out
again in Kosovo and Metohia, engaging some 10.000 Serbs. They were joined by
Montenegrin tribes, and Austrian envoys even stirred up the Kliments, a
Catholic tribe from northern Albania. A Serbian militia was formed again,
but the Austrian troops and insurgenta were forced to retreat in the face of
superior Turkish power: reprisals ensued, bringing death to the insurgents
and their families. Serbs withdrew from the mining settlements around
Janjevo, Pristina, Novo Brdo and Kopaonik. In order to keep the remaining
populace on the land, the Turks declared an amnesty. After the fall of
Belgrade, Arsenije IV moved to Austria. The number of refugees from Serbia,
including Kosovo and Metohia, along with some Kliments has yet to be
accurately determined, as people were moving on all sides and the process
lasted for several months. The considerably reduced number of taxpayers in
Kosovo and Metohia and in other parts of Serbia points to a strong migratory
wave.6
Unrest in the Ottoman empire helped spread anarchy in Kosovo and
Metohia and rest of Serbia. Raids, murder, rape against the unarmed
population was largely committed by ethnic Albanian outlaws, who were now
numerically superior in many regions. Outlaw bands held controll over roads
during Turkey's war with Russia (1768-1774), when lawlessness reigned
throughout Serbia. Ethnic Albanian outlaws looted and fleeced other regions
as well, which sent local Muslims complaining to the Porte seeking
protection.
During the last Austro-Turkish war (1788-1791); a sweeping popular
movement again took shape in northern Serbia. Because of the imperial forces
swift retreat, the movement did not encompass the southern parts of Serbia:
Kosovo, Metohia and present-day northern Macedonia. The peace treaty of
Sistovo (1791) envisaged a general amnesty for the Serbs, but the ethnic
Albanians, as outlaws or soldiers in the detachments of local pashas,
continued unhindered to assault the unprotected Serbian population. The wave
of religious intolerance towards Orthodox population, which acquired greater
proportion owing to the hostilities with Russia at the end of 18th century,
effected the forced conversion to Islam of a larger number of Serbian
families. The abolition of the Pec Patriarchate (1766), whose see and rich
estates were continually sought after by local ethnic Albanian pashas and
beys, prompted the final wave of extensive Islamization in Kosovo and
Metohia.7
Those who suffered the most during these centuries of utter lawlessness
were the Serbs, unreliable subjects who would rise every time the Turks
would wage war against one of the neighboring Great Powers, and whose
patriarchs led the people to enemy land. Although initially on a small
scale, the Islamization of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia began before the
penetration of ethnic Albanians. More widespread conversion to Islam took
place in the 17th and the first half of 18th centuries, when ethnic
Albanians began to wield more influence on political events in these
regions. Many Serbs accepted Islamization as a necessary evil, waiting for
the moment when they could revert to the faith of their ancestors, but most
of them never lived to see that day. The first few generations of Islamized
Serbs preserved their language and observed their old customs (especially
slava - the family patron saint day, and the Easter holiday). But several
generations later, owing to a strong ethnic Albanian environment, they
gradually began adopting the Albanian dress to safety, and outside their
narrow family circle they spoke the Albanian language. Thus came into being
a special kind of social mimicry which enabled converts to survive.
Albanization began only when Islamized Serbs, who were void of national
feeling, married girls from ethnic Albanian tribal community. For a long
time Orthodox Serbs called their Albanized compatriots Arnautasi, until the
memory of their Serbian origin waned completely, though old customs and
legends about their ancestors were passed on from one generation to the
next.8
For a long time the Arnautasi felt neither like Turks nor ethnic
Albanians, because their customs and traditions set them apart, and yet they
did not feel like Serbs either, who considered Orthodoxy to be their prime
national trait. Many Arnautasi retained their old surnames until the turn of
the last century. In Drenica the Arnautasi bore such surnames as Dokic,
Velic, Marusic, Zonic, Racic, Gecic, which unquestionably indicated their
Serbian origin. The situation was similar in Pec and its surroundings where
many Islamized and Albanized Serbs carries typically Serbian surnames:
Stepanovic, Bojkovic, Dekic, Lekic, Stojkovic, etc. The eastern parts of
Kosovo and Metohia, with their compact Serbian settlements, were the last to
undergo Islamization. The earliest Islamization in Upper Morava and Izmornik
is pinpointed as taking place in the first decades of the 18th century, and
the latest in 1870s. Toponyms in many ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo
show that Serbs had lived there the preceding centuries, and in some places
Orthodox cemeteries were shielded against desecrators by ethnic Albanians
themselves, because they knew that the graves of their own ancestors lay
there.9
In the late 18th century, all the people of Gora, the mountain region
near Prizren were converted to Islam. However they succeeded in preserving
their language and avoiding Albanization. There were also some cases of
conversion of Serbs to Islam in the second half of 19th century, especially
during the Crimean War, again to save their lives, honor and property,
though far more pronounced at the time was the process of emigration, since
families, sometimes even entire villages, fled to Serbia or Montenegro.
Extensive anthropogeographic research indicates that about 30% of the
present-day ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo and Metohia is of Serbian
origin.10
1 N. Samardzic, Savremena strana stampa o Velikoj seobi Srba,
Istorijski Casopis, vol. XXXII (1985), pp. 79-103; R. Trickovic, Velika
seoba Srba 1690. godine, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp.
127-141.
2 N. Samardzic, op. cit., pp. 136-139.
3 R. Trickovic, Ustanci, seobe i stradanja u XVIII veku, in: Kosovo i
Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 149-169
4 Ibid
5 Ibid
6 Ibid
7 Ibid
8 J. Cvijic, La peninsule balkanique. Geographic humaine, (Paris 1918),
pp. 343-355.
9 A. Urosevic, Kosovo, (Beograd 1965); D. Slijepcevic, Srpsko-arbanaski
odnosi kroz vekove, pp. 95-127.
10 J. Cvijic, Osnove za geografiju i geologiju Makedonije i Stare
Srbije, I-III, (Beograd 1906-1911).
The Age of Oppression
The series of long-scale Christian national movements in the Balkans,
triggered off by 1804 Serbian revolution, decided more than in the earlier
centuries, the fate of Serbs and made ethnic Albanians (about 70% of whom
were Muslims) the main guardians of Turkish order in the European provinces
of Ottoman Empire. At a time when the Eastern question was again being
raised, particularly in the final quarter of 19th and the first decade of
20th century, Islamic Albanians were the chief instrument of Turkey's policy
in crushing the liberation movements of other Balkan states. After the
congress of Berlin (1878) an Albanian national movement flared up, and both
the Sultan and Austria-Hungary, a power whose occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina heralded its further expansion deep into the Balkans,
endeavored, with varying degrees of success, to instrumentalize this
movement. While the Porte used the ethnic Albanians as Islam's shock cutting
edge against Christians in the frontier regions towards Serbia and
Montenegro, particularly in Kosovo, Metohia and the nearby areas,
Austria-Hungary's design was to use the Albanians national movement against
the liberatory aspirations of the two Serbian states that were impeding the
German Drang nach Osten. In a rift between two only seemingly contrary
strivings, Serbia and Montenegro, although independent since 1878, were
powerless (at least until the Balkan wars 1912-1913) without the support of
Russia or other Great Power to effect the position of their compatriots
within the borders of Ottoman Empire.1
During the Serbian revolution, which ended with the creation of the
autonomous Principality of Serbia within the Ottoman empire (1830), Kosovo
and Metohia acquired special political importance. The hereditary ethnic
Albanian pashas, who had until then been mostly renegades from the central
authorities in Constantinople, feared that the flames of rebellion might
spread to regions they controlled thus they became champions for the defense
the integrity of the Turkish Empire and leaders of many military campaigns
against the Serbian insurgents, at the core of the Serbian revolution was
the Kosovo covenant, embodied in the "revenge of Kosovo", a fresh, decisive
battle against the Turkish invaders in the field of Kosovo. In 1806 the
insurgents were preparing, like Prince Lazar in his day, to come out in
Kosovo and weigh their forces against the Turks, However, detachments of
Serbian insurgents reached only the fringes of northern Kosovo. Metohia, Old
Raska (Sandzak), Kosovo and northern Macedonia remained outside the borders
of the Serbian principality. In order to highlight their importance in the
national and political ideologies of the renewed Serbian state, they were
given a new collective name. It was not by chance that Vuk Stefanovic
Karadzic, the father of modern Serbian literacy, named the central lands of
the Nemanjic state - Old Serbia.2
Fearing the renewed Serbian state, Kosovo pashas engaged in ruthless
persecution in an effort to reduce number of Serbs living in their spacious
holdings. The French travel writer F.C.H.L Pouqueville was astounded by the
utter anarchy and ferocity of the local pashas towards the Christians.
Jashar-pasha Gjinolli of Prishtina was one of the worst, destroying several
churches in Kosovo, seizing monastic lands and killing monks. In just a few
years of sweeping terror, he evicted more than seventy Serbian villages
between Vucitrn and Gnjilane, dividing up the seized land among the local
Islamized population and mountain folk that had settled there from northern
Albania. The fertile plains of Kosovo became desolate meadows as the Malisor
highlanders, unused to farming knew not to cultivate.
The revolt of the ethnic Albanian pashas against the reforms introduced
by the sultans and fierce clashes with regular Turkish troops in the
thirties and forties of the 19th century, emphasized the anarchy in Kosovo
and Metohia, causing fresh suffering among the Serbs and the further
devastation of the ancient monasteries. Since neither Serbian nor
Montenegro, two semi-independent Serbian states, were able to give any
significant help to the gravely endangered people, Serbian leaders form the
Pristina and Vucitrn regions turned to the Russian tsar in seeking
protection from their oppressors. They set out that they were forced to
choose between converting to Islam or fleeing for Serbia as the violence,
especially killings, the persecution of monks, the raping of women and
minors, had exceeded all bounds. Pogroms marked the decades to come,
especially in period of the Crimean War (1853-1856) when anti-Slav
sentiments reached their peak in the ottoman empire: ethnic Albanians and
the Cherkeses, whom the Turks had resettled in Kosovo, joined the Ottoman
troops in persecuting Orthodox Serbs.
The brotherhood of Decani and the Pec Patriarchate turned to the
authorities of Serbia for protection. Pointing to the widespread violence
and increasing banditry, and to more frequent and persisted attempts by
Catholic missionaires to compel the impoverished and spiritually discouraged
monk communities to concede to union. Prior Serafim Ristic of Decani loged
complaints with both the sultan and Russian tsar and in his book Plac Stare
Srbije (Zemun 1864) he penned hundreds of examples of violence perpetrated
by the ethnic Albanians and Turks against the Serbs, naming the
perpetrators, victims and type of crime. In Metohia alone he recorded over
one hundred cases in which the Turkish authorities, police and judiciary
tolerated and abetted robbery, bribery, murder, arson, the desecration of
churches, the seizure of property and livestock, the rape of women and
children, and the harassment of monks and priests. Both ethnic Albanians and
Turks viewed assaults against Serbs as acts pleasing to Allah acts that
punishing infidels for not believing in true God: kidnapping and Islamizing
girls were a way for true Muslims to approach Allah. Ethnic Albanian outlaws
(kayaks) became heroes among their fellow-tribesmen for fulfilling their
religious obligations in the right way and spreading the militant glory of
their clan and tribe.
Eloquent testimonies to the scope of the violence against the Serbs in
Kosovo and Metohia, ranging from blackmail and robbery to rape and murder,
come from many foreign travel-writers, from A. F. Hilferding to G. M.
McKenzie - A. P. Irby. The Russian consul in Prizren observed that ethnic
Albanians were settling the Prizren district underhidered and were trying,
with the Turks, to eradicate Christians from Kosovo and Metohia. Throughout
the 19th century there was no public safety on the roads of Metohia and
Kosovo. One could travel the roads which were controlled by tribal bands,
only with strong armed escort. The Serbian peasant had no protection in the
field where he could be assaulted and robbed by an outlaw or bandit, and if
he tried to resist, he could be killed without the perpetrator having to
face charges for the crime. Serbs, as non-Muslims, were not entitled to
carry arms. Those who possessed and used arms in self-defence afterwards had
to run for their life. Only the luckiest managed to reach the Serbian or
Montenegrin border and find permanent refuge there. They were usually
followed by large families called family cooperatives (zadruga), comprising
as many as 30-50 members, which were unable to defend themselves against the
numerous relatives of the ethnic Albanian seeking vengeance for his death in
a conflict with an elder of their clan.
Economic pressure, especially the forced reducing of free peasants to
serf, was fostered by ethnic Albanian feudal lords with a view to creating
large land-holdings. In the upheavals of war (1859, 1863) the Turkish
authorities tried to restrict enterprising Serbian merchants and craftsmen
who flourished in Pristina, Pec and Prizren, setting ablaze entire quarters
where they worked and had their shops. But it was the hardest in rural
areas, because ethnic Albanians, bond together by tight communities of blood
brotherhoods or in tribes, and relatively socially homogeneous, were able to
support their fellow tribesman without too much effort, simply by
terrorizing Serbs and seizing their property and livestock. Suppression in
driving of the Serbian peasantry, space was made for their relatives from
northern Albania to move in, whereby increased their own prestige among
other tribes. Unused to life in the plains and to hard field-work, the
settled ethnic Albanians preferred looting to farming.
Despite the hardships, the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia assembled in
religious-school communes which financed the opening of schools and the
education of children, collected donations for the restoration of churches
and monasteries and, when possible, tried to improve relations with the
Turkish authorities. In addition to monastic schools, the first Serbian
secular schools started opening in Kosovo from mid-1830s, and in 1871 a
Seminary (Bogoslovija) opened in Prizren. Unable to help politically, the
Serbia systematically aided churches and schools from the 1840s onwards,
sending teachers and encouraging the best students to continue with their
studies. The Prizren seminary the hub of activity on national affairs,
educated teachers and priests for all the Serbian lands under Turkish
dominion, and unbeknownst to authorities, established contact on a regular
basis with the government in Belgrade, wherefrom it received means and
instructions for political action.
Ethnic circumstances in Kosovo and Metohia in the early 19th century
can be reconstructed on the basis of data obtained from the books written by
foreign travel writers and ethnographers who journeyed across European
Turkey. Joseph Miller's studies show that in late 1830s, 56,200 Christians
and 80,150 Muslims lived in Metohia; 11,740 of the Muslims were Islamized
Serbs, and 2,700 of the Christians were Catholic Albanians. However, clear
picture of the ethnic structure during this period cannot be obtained until
one takes into account the fact that from 1815 to 1837 some 320 families,
numbering ten to 30 members each, fled Kosovo and Metohia ahead of ethnic
Albanian violence. According to Hilferding's figures, Pec numbered 4,000
Muslim and 800 Christian families, Pristina numbered 1,200 Muslim, 900
Orthodox and 100 Catholic families with a population of 12,000.3
Russian consul Yastrebov recorded (for a 1867-1874 period) the
following figures for 226 villages in Metohia: 4,646 Muslim ethnic Albanian
homes, 1,861 Orthodox and 3,740 Islamized Serbs and 142 homes of Catholic
Albanians. Despite the massive departure of the population for Serbia,
available data show that until Eastern crisis (1875-1878), Serbs formed the
largest ethnic group in Kosovo and Metohia, largely owing to a high birth
rate.
The biggest demographics upheaval in Kosovo and Metohia occurred during
the Eastern crisis, especially during the 1876-1878 Serbo-Turkish wars, when
the question of Old Serbia started being internationalized. The Ottoman
empire lost a good deal of territory in its wars with Russia, Serbia and
Montenegro, and Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the
second war with the Turks, Serbian troops liberated parts of Kosovo: their
advance guard reached Pristina via Gnjilane and at the Gracanica monastery
held a memorial service for the medieval heroes of Kosovo battle... After
Russia and Turkey called a truce, Serbian troops were forced to withdraw
from Kosovo. Serbian delegations from Old Serbia sent petitions to the
Serbian Prince, the Russian tsar and participants of the Congress of Berlin,
requesting that these lands merge with Serbia. Approximately 30,000 ethnic
Albanians retreated from the liberated areas (partly under duress), seeking
refuge in Kosovo and in Metohia, while tens of thousands of Serbs fled
Kosovo and Metohia for Serbia ahead of unleashed bashibozouks, irregular
auxiliaries of Ottoman troops.4
On the eve of the Congress of Berlin in the summer of 1878, when the
great powers were deciding on the fate of the Balkan nations, the Albanian
League was formed in Prizren, on the periphery of ethnic Albanian living
space. The League called for the preservation of Ottoman Empire in its
entirety within the prewar boundaries and for the creation of autonomous
Albanian vilayet out of the vilayets of Kosovo, Scutari, Janina and Monster
(Bitolj), regions where ethnic Albanians accounted for 44% of overall
population. The territorial aspirations of the Albanian movement as defined
in 1878, became part of all subsequent national programs. The new sultan
Abdulhamid II (1878-1909) supported the League's pro-Ottoman and pro-Islamic
attitude. Breaking with the reformatory policy of his predecessors, sultan
adopted pan-Islamism as the ruling principle of his reign. Unsatisfied with
the decisions taken at the Congress, the League put up an armed opposition
to concession of regions of Plav and Gusinje to Montenegro, and its
detachments committed countless acts of violence against the Serbs, whose
very existence posed a permanent threat to Albanian national interests. In
1881, Turkey employed force to crush the League, whose radical wing was
striving towards an independent Albanian state to show that it was capable
of implementing the adopted reforms. Notwithstanding, under the system of
Turkish rule in the Balkans, ethnic Albanians continued to occupy the most
prominent seats in the decades to come.
The ethnic Albanians' religious and ethnic intolerance of the Serbs
took on a new, political tone. The strategic objective of their national
policy was to systematically edge the Serbs out of these regions. The
sultan's policy of forming a chain of ethnic Albanian settlements to secure
a new border towards Serbia and to let ethnic Albanians, as advocates of
Islam, crush all unrest by Serbs and other Christians in the Empire's
European provinces, turned Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody battle-ground in
which the persecution of the Serbian populace assumed almost apocalyptic
proportions. From 1876 to 1883, approximately 1,500 Serbian families fled
Kosovo and Metohia for Serbia ahead of Albanian violence.5
Surrounded by his influential guard of ethnic Albanians, the Abdulhamid
II became increasingly lenient toward Islamized Albanian tribes who used
force in quelling Christian movements: they were exempt from providing
recruits, paying the most of the regular taxes and allowed at times to
refuse the orders of local authorities. This lenient policy towards the
ethnic Albanians and tolerance for the violence committed against the
Serbian population created a feeling of superiority in the lower strata of
Albanian society. The knowledge that no matter what the offense they would
not be held responsible, encouraged ethnic Albanians to ignore all the
lesser authorities. Social stratification resulted on increasing number of
renegades who lived solely off banditry or as outlaws. The policy of failing
to punish ethnic Albanians led to total anarchy which, escaping all control,
increasingly worried the authorities in Constantinople. Anarchy received
fresh impetus at the end of the 19th century when Austria-Hungary, seeking a
way to expand towards the Bay of Salonika, encouraged ethnic Albanians to
clash with the Serbs and disobey the local authorities. Ruling circles in
Vienna saw the ethnic Albanians as a permanent wedge between the two Serbian
states and, with the collapse of the system of Turkish rule, a bridge
enabling the Dual Monarchy to extend in the Vardar valley. Thus, Kosovo and
Metohia became the hub of great power confrontation for supremacy in the
Balkans.
The only protection for the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia until the end
of 1880s came from Russian diplomats, Russia being the traditional guardian
of the Orthodox and Slav population in the Ottoman Empire Russia's waning
influence in the Balkans following the Congress of Berlin had an unfavorable
impact on the Serbs in Turkey. Owing to Milan and Alexander Obrenovic's
Austrophile policy, Serbia lost valuable Russian support at the Porte in its
efforts to protect Serbian population In Kosovo and Metohia, Serbs were
regarded as a rebellious, treasonous element, every move they made was
carefully watched and any signs of rebellion were ruthlessly punished. A
military tribunal was established in Pristina in 1882 which in its five
years of work sent hundreds of national leaders to prison.
The persistent efforts of Serbian officials to reach agreement with
ethnic Albanian tribal chiefs in Kosovo and Metohia, and thus help curb the
anarchy failed to stem the tide of violence. Belgrade