Po redaktohet VICKERS

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Between Serb and Albanian
A History of Kosovo
By MIRANDA VICKERS
Columbia University Press


1

THE RULE OF THE NEMANJAS AND THE ARRIVAL OF THE OTTOMANS

`The earthly kingdom is shortlived, but the Heavenly one is forever.'
(Prince Lazar, on the eve of the Battle of Kosovo, 1389)
Following the Second World War, but especially since the serious riots which broke out in Kosovo in 1981, Serbian archaeologists have been hard at work seeking to refute the theory of the Illyrian ethnic origins of the Albanians. The battleground over the status of Kosovo has thus now been extended to pre-history. The long-standing Albanian claim for a continuity of descent from the ancient Ilyrians is now accompanied by arguments that Kosovo and Metohija form parts of an ancient Illyrian homeland that should naturally be joined with the rest of modern Albania. The peoples whom the Greeks and Romans called Illyrians occupied an extensive tract of territory bordering on the Adriatic from Epirus in the south and Macedonia in the south-east to Istria in the north. The Albanians claim that they are consequently descended from the Illyrians and are the indigenous inhabitants of Kosovo. The Albanian language, which belongs to the Indo-European group, has distinctive vocabulary, morphology and phonetic rules which have engaged the attention of many philologists, of whom several have confidently asserted its descent from ancient Illyrian.

    The continuing political collisions between Albanians and Serbs have had a marked impact on Illyrian studies. It is no novelty that debates over the ethnic affinities of ancient peoples in southeastern Europe should be bound up with the antipathies of Serbs, Bulgars, Greeks and Albanians, but the question of Kosovo has become more serious than at any time since it was first posed at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The theory of their Illyrian origins propounded by modern Albanians is centred on their unbroken descent from an Illyrian people already formed in Bronze Age times, and in a geographical area that includes the modern state of Albania, together with the Albanian-inhabited regions of former Yugoslavia: Kosovo, western Macedonia and southeastern Montenegro. This fact is corroborated by a number of items of evidence from the names of places and people, evidence of an Illyrian presence in the Kosovo-Metohija region. The Albanians also claim that the Dardanians -- ancient inhabitants of Kosovo, northern Macedonia and southern Serbia -- were an Illyrian people, whereas Serbian archaeologists hold that they represent an intermingling of both Illyrian and Thracian elements. The issue has been consistantly obscured by political and ideological arguments which have prevailed over academic ones.

    Serbian historiography claims that the Albanian population was formed from a mele of peoples including remnants of Illyrians but also a mixture of peoples who inhabited the western Balkans during the classical and medieval period. Serbian scientific and political institutions strive to substantiate that since their arrival in the Balkans in the sixth century, the South Slavs have dominated the Kosovo region, and that the Albanians only arrived as late as the end of the seventeenth century and primarily during the eighteenth century. According to this theory, a few small Albanian communities lived up till the fifth century AD in Kosovo and in Macedonia as far north as Skopje, but they then retreated south into the mountains of Albania following the Slav invasions. They began returning in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, becoming larger communities after the Ottoman invasion under the protection of Islam. Strong insistence on the demographic argument aims at presenting the Albanians as colonisers and persecutors of Serbs, who have a historic right over Kosovo and therefore a right to live there, whereas the Albanians are immigrants and therefore have no historic right to live there. In general Albanian historians do not deny that some Albanians occupied Serbian lands (the North Albanian provenance of many Kosovars is attested by their own family histories). But they tend to minimise the size of the colonisation, while letting their opponents read between the lines that, after all, these immigrants were going back home, the lands they occupied having belonged to their Illyrian ancestors, the Dardanians, who shared a long eastern border with the Thracians in the central Balkans during the Hellenistic period.

    There was a pre-urban Dardanian society between the sixth and fourth centuries BC with urban settlements developing between the fourth and first centuries. Recent research has proved that close contacts with the Hellenic world began towards the end of the seventh century BC with imports from Chios. It has also been observed that hill settlements in Kosovo gradually disappeared towards the middle of the fourth century BC as they also did in the Skopje valley (Skopje castle, Nerezi, Varvara, Studencan). No instance of the destruction or forced evacuation of a settlement has been noticed, which makes their desertion as a result of the urbanisation of Dardanian society the more likely explanation. Serbian archaeologists assert a number of theses on the origins of the Albanians, the most widely accepted being that the Albanians were not Illyrian but a mixture of Daco-Moesian, appearing during the early Middle Ages as a result of intermarriage between nomadic shepherds and local un-romanised remnants, including those of the Illyrians and the Dardanians. In the past, Serbian researchers had not always been of one mind in allocating the Kosovo region to the ancient Daco-Moesians. The prominent Serbian archaeologist Milutin Garasanin, in a survey of prehistoric Serbia in 1973, openly admits that on the basis of their personal and place names, the Dardanians can, with a degree of certainty, be considered Illyrians, and that a Thracian and perhaps a Dacian element are evident only in the eastern parts of their territories. In the matter of distribution, Thracian names are found mainly in eastern Dardania, from Skupi (Skopje) to Naissus (Nis) and Remesiana, although some Illyrian names do occur. The latter are entirely dominant in the western areas, Pristina-Mitrovica and Prizren-Pec.

    Whether the Dardanians were an Illyrian or a Thracian people has been much debated and one view suggests that the area was originally populated by Thracians who were then exposed to direct contact with Illyrians over a long period. The theory of the Illyrian origins of the Dardanians is based primarily on classical written sources and personal and place names. In Kosovo archaeological research has so far concentrated mainly on the excavation of Neolithic, Iron Age and some classical and medieval sites. Few Bronze Age sites have been excavated and all of them appear to be of an Illyrian character. Research into the Iron Age, which has been the most intensively researched period in Kosovo, has shown that a culture with distinct features that can without doubt be called Dardanian existed in the eighth century BC in the territories that written sources later called Dardania. In the first century BC the Dardanians appear as troublesome neighbours of Roman Macedonia, and around 70 BC the Roman army waged war against them with exceptional cruelty. Their final submission to the Romans may have occurred when Macedonia was in the charge of Antony (40-31 BC), though any record of that achievement is likely to have been suppressed by his rival Octavian. Thus the Illyrians disappeared into the Roman Empire.

    In the fourth century AD the Roman province of Dardania was created, which included Kosovo and Skopje, while the towns of Tetovo, Gostivar, Struga and Ohrid were included in the province of New Epirus. The Albanian-inhabited areas of what is today Montenegro were a part of the province of Prevalitana. The Romans generally left the Dardanians to their own devices, and they thus managed to retain their characteristics and traditions. Under Roman occupation Saxon miners were brought to Kosovo from Hungary. Throughout the third and fourth centuries AD, the Illyrian regions suffered numerous invasions from the Huns, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths. When, in 395, Rome was split into eastern and western empires, southern Illyria went to the Eastern Empire and the Eastern Church, while northern Illyria went to the Western Empire, under the ecclesiastical authority of the Pope. By the sixth century AD the Slavs had begun to cross the Danube into the Balkans. However, the large Avaro-Slav migrations of the sixth and seventh centuries did not cause the disappearance of the pre-existing societies in the central Balkans. At first Kosovo was little affected by these migrations, which started from the Danube crossing by Singidunum (today's Belgrade), mainly heading for the shores of the Black Sea, Thrace and eventually Constantinople. Smaller numbers passed down the route via the Morava and Vardar valleys to reach Thessaloniki, and only isolated groups penetrated the western regions.

    The dispersal of Slavs in the southern Balkans following the unsuccessful siege of Thessaloniki in 586 resulted in an occupation of Praevalitana and the region south of the Shkumbi river, a distribution indicated by place-names of Slav origin. These invasions seriously weakened the Byzantine Empire and by the end of the sixth century, following further invasions by Slav tribes, the indigenous tribes began to move their settlements from the exposed lowland plains to the comparative security of higher ground. Many mining communities dispersed as colonists left the area. Those that remained became subsistence farmers. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire and the weakening of the Byzantine Empire, the Illyrian-speaking peoples expanded again into the Mat valley and the Muzeqe plain. By then they were known to their southern neighbours as Albani, and their language as Albanian.

    During the tenth century the central Balkan regions became the scene of conflict between the Byzantines and the Bulgarian tsars Simeon and Samuel. By the end of the century the Empire of Samuel comprised most of the land between the Black Sea and the Adriatic, including all the Albanian inhabited regions. However, in 1018 the Bulgarians were defeated in a battle on the outskirts of Beligrad (Berat) by the Byzantines, who then re-established their rule over the Albanian-speaking regions. In 1054 the Christian world finally split into the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches, and as a result the Albanian people of the Balkans came under the influence of the Greeks and Slavs on the one hand and of Rome and Venice on the other. Catholicism began to spread through the pastoral tribes of what is now northern Albania, and Latin was reinstated where Greek had formerly dominated as the cultural and ecclesiastical language. The Albanian world now became closely integrated to Byzantium, which greatly valued the economic and strategic importance of the Albanian-inhabited regions linking the vital trade routes from the Adriatic coast with Constantinople.

    The following century social and ethnic divisions occurred. Those Slavs entering the western Balkans split into three groups, comprising the Slovenes, who occupied territory to the north, and farther south the Croats and Serbs. The Croats established an independent state which lasted until it was absorbed into the Kingdom of Hungary in 1102, while the Slovenes accepted the rule of the Frankish kings. Much more central to the future of the Balkans was the evolution of Serbia. Its early history was marked by quarrels between various tribal chiefs (zupans), which led internally to disorder and externally to clashes with the neighbouring Bulgarians. Being predominantly agriculturalists, the Slav tribes settled in river valleys and plains. The interior was thinly peopled by pastoralists: Wallachians (Vlachs), Illyrians, Thracians, Dardanians and other (earlier) settlers. The Slav invasions pushed the `indigenous' population back to the highland pastures, and by the eleventh century, almost all arable soil in the northernmost part of what is now Albania and in the region of present-day Kosovo was in Slavic hands.

    Up till 1180, when the Emperor Manuel Comneni died, Kosovo had been governed by Byzantium. The castle of Zvecan near Mitrovica that guarded the great mining centre of Trepca, played a major role in the twelfth century struggle of Byzantium against the Serbs. The original homeland of the Serbs was in the mountainous area around Raska, near the present-day region of Novi Pazar. During the latter part of the twelfth century, the Serbs moved south and eastward beyond Raska towards present-day Kosovo. Eventually, in about 1166, a major change occurred in Serbia. The old dynasty was replaced by a new one headed first by a certain Tihomir, who was quickly replaced by his brother Stefan Nemanja. This new dynasty was to reign in Serbia till 1371.

Kosovo, the centre of the Nemanjic state

Attempts to gain access to the Albanian coast were prominent in the politics of the medieval Serbian state. The urbanisation and consequently the development of the Serbs began as they drew nearer to the coast and established their administrative and religious centres in Shkoder, Prizren and Decan. In the decade 1180-90, taking advantage of the internal disorders of Byzantium under Andronicus, of the Hungarian attack launched in 1183 with which Nemanja was allied, of the Norman invasion in 1185, and of the Third Crusade in 1189, Nemanja was able to conquer Kosovo and Metohija, including Prizren, and penetrate into northern Macedonia, taking Skopje and the upper Vardar. No territory remained under the former Dukljan dynasty; Zeta was incorporated into Nemanja's state of Raska. Having reached the coast, he acquired southern Dalmatia, including the towns of Kotor, Ulcinj and Bar. From Zeta he also advanced into northern Albania, obtaining the region of Pilot lying between Prizren and Lake Shkoder. Thus Serbia came into possession of a consolidated territory bordering Hungary along the low mountain range on the north side of the West Morava river and extending south well into Kosovo and Metohija and west to the coast, including Zeta, Trebinje, Hum and southern Dalmatia. The Byzantines were clearly on the defensive.

    Situated at the crossroads of the main Balkan routes connecting the surrounding Serbian lands of Raska, Bosnia, Zeta and the Shkoder littoral with Macedonia and the Pomoravlje region, Kosovo now became the cultural and administrative centre of the Nemanjic state following the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204. From the twelfth century Catholicism had begun to penetrate through the coastal areas to the interior of the Albanian-inhabited territories of the north-east, but since state and religion were synonymous, the Nemanjas set about imposing the Orthodox faith on their subject peoples. A large number of Catholic churches and monasteries were enlarged and converted into Serbian ones. In the course of time the Orthodox church divided into several national churches corresponding to the states or peoples of the region. Thus the Serbian Orthodox Church acquired an independent identity in the thirteenth century, becoming closely tied to the power of the state and a strong supporter of state policies.

    Throughout the twelfth century, Serbia experienced a growth in economic development. Progress in agriculture was based on rich soils left by former lakes located in fertile basins as in Kosovo (upper Ibar river), Metohija (upper Drin river) and Tetovo (upper Vardar river). Progress in mining also occurred based on deposits of gold, silver, copper and tin. After the fall of Constantinople in 1204 the centre of the Nemanjic state moved to the comparatively rich and densely populated regions of Kosovo and Metohija. Here were established the Nemanjas' cultural and administrative centres which required the seat of the Serbian Orthodox church also to move to Pec on acquiring autocephalous status in 1219. The successors of the first archbishop, Saint Sava, built several additional chapels around the Church of the Holy Apostle, laying the ground for what was to become the Pec patriarchy. Through their various theoretical writings and liturgies, these monastic communities helped to foster and strengthen not only the beliefs of the Orthodox Church but also the spiritual form of the Serbian nation. King Milutin left behind the largest number of endowments in Kosovo, one of the greatest of which is Gracanica monastery built in 1321 near Pristina.

    In Kosovo, especially in its eastern part, most Albanians were gradually assimilated into the Eastern Orthodox faith by numerous methods, including the baptism of infants with Serbian names and the conducting of all religious ceremonies such as marriages in the Serbian language. In Montenegro entire tribes such as the Kuc, Bjellopavliq, Palabardha, Piprraj and Vasovic were assimilated; those who resisted assimilation retreated into the hills of what is now northern Albania. It is probable that during the twelfth century the definite differentiation occurred between the Gheg linguistic group north of the Shkumbi river and the Tosk group to the south of it. This division was clearly indicated in 1210 by the choice of this valley as the northern border of the territories `conceded' by Venice to Michael of Epirus. At the same time Roman Catholicism, coming from Dalmatia, spread throughout northern Albania, while the south remained under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church. The formal adoption of Catholicism, besides drawing a clear line of demarcation between Albanians and Serbs, also had a further important effect: it incorporated the resistance of the Albanians into the powerful anti-Serb coalition of the Catholic monarchs of Europe that the Papacy attempted to construct especially at the start of the fourteenth century. There is no doubt that the Serbs' breach with the French Angevins, hitherto their allies, played a decisive role in the creation of this front. Common interests gave rise to major campaigns against the Serbs, such as the Crusades of 1319 and 1331, when the alliance of the Papacy, Naples and Hungary was eagerly joined by Albanian and Croat nobles. The Albanians were not to create any structure resembling a state till the fifteenth century. However, organised in tribes under their own chieftains, they dominated the mountains of most of what is today known as Albania.

    Virtually the whole territory of southern Kosovo during the Middle Ages became the property of the big monasteries. The information contained in the founding charters of these monasteries show that in the first half of the fourteenth century the population gradually moved from the mountains to the west and north of Kosovo down into the fertile valleys. Not far from Pec stands the enormous and beautiful church of Decani, built in 1327-35 for Stefan Uros III; its wealth of decoration includes almost 10,000 painted figures and twenty biblical cycles representing the largest surviving collection of icons created within the Byzantine sphere of influence. Each Serbian ruler built at least one monastery. The 1330 Decani charter lists in detail households and chartered villages. The Decani estate was an area of sweeping size which included parts of what is today northeastern Albania. It is these self-sufficient monastic complexes that are cited as proof of the ethnic and homogeneous settlement of Kosovo by Serbs.

The empire of Stefan Dusan

The civil wars in Byzantium in the mid-fourteenth century had destabilised the European provinces of the Empire, thus opening the way for the Balkan conquests of the most powerful of all the Serbian kings, Stefan Dusan (1331-55), an undertaking easily accomplished with the aid of the local nobility. The conquest by the Serbs of the Albanian-speaking lands within the area formed by Antivar (Bar), Prizren, Ohrid and Vlora was mainly accomplished in 1343 when Dusan launched a great invasion of the territory now known as Albania. With the proclamation of the empire, the patriarchal throne was permanently established at the Pec monastery in 1346. Serbia's rulers subsequently dotted the fertile land lying between Pec, Prizren, Mitrovica and Pristina with churches and monasteries, and the whole region eventually acquired the Serb name Metohija (from the Greek metoh, meaning an estate owned by the Church). Thus the Metohija region became the spiritual nucleus of the Serbian nation. There followed a policy of enforced conversion of both Catholic and Orthodox Albanians to the Serbian national church -- conversion to the Serbian church being a priority of Serbian state policy, as can be shown by the Code of Stefan Dusan. This Code -- a form of constitution of the mediaeval Serbian kingdom -- contained so-called 'anti-heresy clauses' demanding that all subjects of the Serbian kingdom and members of foreign communities be baptised into the Serbian church. The Code laid down the role of the Serbian king as the defender of the Serbian church and the extirpator of `heresy'.

    In 1346, following the incorporation of Epirus and Thessaly into his Empire, Dusan was crowned emperor of the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians and Albanians. The Serbian bishopric of Pec was then proclaimed a patriarchate, thus establishing the Serbian Church's independence from Constantinople. Stefan Dusan made a great effort to encourage commerce and industry, which was skilfully achieved by the importation of foreigners as well as by diplomacy and treaties. Saxons, Ragusans (from Dubrovnik), Venetians, Greeks and Albanians all worked in his rich mines such as Novo Brdo, or garrisoned his fortresses. Never before or since has Serbian power or territory been so great. Today Serbian patriots look back to the age of Dusan as the most glorious in their history and regard him as a hero. His name was to become synonymous with the aspirations of the Serbian nation. Under the Nemanjas, protected highways united Prizren with the Danube and the Adriatic. There was constant communication between Prizren, Kotor, Ragusa and even Venice. The Serbian rulers facilitated the passage of merchants through their lands. For two centuries Prizren was the seat of the Serbian sovereign, and was one of Serbia's chief trade centres where many Serbian merchants as well as traders from the coast resided, including Dubrovnik's consul for all of Serbia.

    Prizren naturally became Dusan's capital, and in its vicinity he built between 1347 and 1352 a church dedicated to the Holy Archangels as his final resting place, the only structure he had an opportunity to build as donor. No expense was spared on the interior, which was resplendent in marble, gold leaf, silver stars and mosaics. Unfortunately for the Serbs, Stefan Dusan never learned to hold his great empire together. He divided his territorial conquests into provinces, each under the control of a powerful chieftain. All goes well in such a consolidated state while there is a strong ruler at the helm, but once the `iron hand' is removed, as happened after Dusan's death in 1355, internal conflicts inevitably emerge. The Empire, comprising small semi-independent states under such powerful families as the Dukagjin, Balsha, Thopia and Kastrati, lacked uniformity and cohesion, thus gradually crumbled, especially after it was attacked by the Ottomans, an enemy completely united under the authority of a single leader. Following Dusan's death, Kosovo came under the rule of King Vukasin Mrnjavcevic, the co-ruler of the last Nemanjic, Tsar Uros. In the years after 1371 Prizren declined to some extent, since it had become part of a smaller principality and was separated from the principal mines, which no longer lay under the same ruler as the town. After 1371 merchant colonies at individual mines, like Novo Brdo, grew in size and importance, and much of the trade between the mining centres and the coast was carried on directly rather than being routed through Prizren.

The arrival of the Ottomans

During the late fourteenth century, disunity in the Balkans resulting from internal division and domestic squabbles was a prelude to the real danger that was materialising from the south-east. A new power now made its appearance as a factor in the history of Europe. The Ottoman Turks, an Asiatic people, had gradually worn away the weakened Byzantine Empire and in 1354 invaded the peninsula from Asia Minor. They began their inexorable trail of conquest by moving up through the Maritsa valley and capturing Macedonia in 1380. Lacking unity the various Balkan national rulers failed to recognize the problem and thus to stem the tide. The imminence and extent of the Ottoman threat had not been accurately estimated by either the Byzantines or the Balkan rulers, whose main efforts were absorbed in wars among themselves.

    By 1370 the Serbian state was very different from the empire Dusan had left at the time of his death. Thessaly, Epirus and Albania had seceded entirely, and internal feuds between the various autonomous Slavic and Albanian lords had allowed the Ottomans, throughout the 1360s, to penetrate deep into Thrace with little opposition. They were unable to form a sufficiently strong and united coalition to fight the Ottomans when the latter confronted them on 26 September 1371 at the Battle of Marica, near Crnomen, where the Ottomans scored their greatest success up to that time. This battle, which heralded the decisive Ottoman invasion of Serbian-controlled lands, was far more significant in opening up the Balkans to the Turks and in weakening Serbian resistance than the later and more famous Battle of Kosovo (1389). Due partly to their unpreparedness, the Serbian forces were annihilated and in consequence the rest of Serbia disintegrated. Parts of it were grabbed by the still feuding warlords who, distrusting each other, struggled to fill the vacuums created by the collapse of central power.

    The Battle of Marica made the disintegration of the rest of Serbia easier; the central government, such as it was, lost the bulk of its forces in the battle, while the nobles who had not fought retained their forces unimpared. In 1386 the Ottomans invaded Serbia and captured the key communication `crossroads' of Nis. In the ensuing peace treaty the Serbs agreed to pay the Ottomans an annual tribute and provide 1,000 mercenaries for the Ottoman army. At last, and too late, the Balkan states realised that they had to unite against the Ottoman threat. The Bosnian king (Tvrtko) sent a detachment of soldiers to aid the Serbs, and in the fastness of Montenegro a combined force of Albanians and Serbs utterly defeated the Ottoman army. Its leader Sultan Murad I (1362-89), then absent in Asia Minor, swore revenge. He dashed back to Europe and assembled an enormous army to march against the Serbs.

The battle of Kosovo

This was the background to the battle destined to decide the fate of the Balkans. It took place in Kosovo Polje (the Field of Blackbirds -- the Serbian kos means blackbird) outside Pristina, on St Virus Day, 28 June 1389. On the eve of the battle, the northern parts of Kosovo were in the possession of Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic and parts of Metohija belonged to his brother-in-law Vuk Brankovic. The Turks first demanded that Lazar accept Ottoman suzerainty and pay tribute. He refused and, realising that he would be faced with an invasion, sought aid from his neighbours Tvrtko and Vuk Brankovic. Tvrtko sent a large contingent under the command of Vlatko Vukovic, the commander who had defeated the Turkish force at Bileca. Vuk Brankovic came himself, leading his own men. Thus the Serbian army was composed of three contingents under these three leaders, none of whom was then a Turkish vassal. It is said that Vuk accepted the offer agreeing to desert with his troops in the course of the coming battle, and he has accordingly been cast as a traitor in Serbian folk history. The Ottoman chroniclers, however, fail to mention these specific facts. Nevertheless, morale was certainly low in the Serbian camp, which led not only some Serbian but also several Bulgarian princes to offer their services to the Sultan. But in spite of this a large coalition army led by Serbian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Bosnian and Albanian nobles gathered on the wide plain of Kosovo to confront the Ottoman army. Albanian princes were at that time close allies of the Serbs, the result of their shared desire to oppose the Ottomans. In many districts the Slavonic and Albanian elements existed side-by-side, and numerous examples are known of close economic and political ties between Serbs and Albanians during the medieval period.

    Sultan Murad succeeded in surprising Lazar's army. The sudden attack caused considerable disorder among the Christian troops who were forced on the same afternoon to disperse in total confusion and disarray. Both Murad and Lazar were killed in the head-on collision between the two armies (approximately 30,000 troops on both sides). As the battle ended, what remained of the Turkish army held the field while the surviving Serbian (Lazar's and Brankovic's) and Bosnian (Vlatko Vukovic's) troops withdrew. However, the Turks then withdrew as well, for Bayezid needed to hurry back east to secure his position as the new sultan against his brothers; also, he did not have enough troops remaining to carry on an offensive against the Balkan Christians. Thus, since the Turks also withdrew, one might conclude that the battle was a draw. They had indeed lost a vast number of troops, but they had many more in the east and were able in the following years to return and raid, and continue their successful push into the Balkans. The Serbs were left with too few men to resist successfully, and although they did not lose the battle, they lost the war over the next two to three years because they could no longer resist the Turks effectively; and their losses at Kosovo were, of course, the main reason why they had so few men left to defend Serbia.

    Although no true military 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 were exhausted by their heavy losses and immediately sought peace by agreeing to become vassals of their new sultan. Vuk Brankovic resisted them until 1392, when he was forced to do the same. The Ottomans took Brankovic's lands and gave them to a more loyal vassal, Stefan Lazarevic (the son of Prince Lazar), thereby creating a rift between their heirs. Stefan appointed as his successor his nephew Djurad Brankovic, whose rule was marked by fresh conflicts and finally the fall of the whole of Kosovo to the Ottomans in 1455. A feeling of despair permeated Lazar's lands after the prince's death and, conscious of the need to combat pessimism in Serbia and create hope for a bright future, the monastic authors of the day wrote eulogies and sermons in praise of Lazar in which they interpreted the events of the time for their own contemporaries. They portrayed Lazar as God's favoured servant and the Serbian people as the chosen people of the New Testament -- the `new Israel'. Like the Hebrews in Babylonian captivity they would be led out of slavery to freedom. According to accounts in epics, Lazar dreamed on the eve of the battle that he was offered either a heavenly or an earthly kingdom and, being a man of his time, he chose the heavenly one. It was also prophesied that he would be betrayed in the battle.

    Because the epic account was designed to parallel the New Testament, a Judas Iscariot also had to be found. Thus it was he who on the morrow would betray his master when the prophesy was revealed; Milos Obilic was accused by Vuk Brankovic of being the one in secret contact with the Turks. When Lazar faced Milos with the charge, Milos denied it, saying, `Tomorrow my deeds will show that I am faithful to my lord.' To prove his loyalty, shortly before dawn on 28 June, Milos slipped out of his camp and announced himself to the Turkish sentries as a Serbian deserter. Taken to the Sultan, he pulled out a knife hidden in his garments and stabbed Murad, fatally wounding him. We do not know whether there had actually been any accusations in the Serbian camp before the battle, but it is a fact that a Serb named Milos Obilic (or Kobilic) did desert and murder the Sultan. Lazar's death is depicted as the triumph of good over evil -- a martyrdom for the faith and the symbol of a new beginning. Responding to contemporary needs, the medieval writers transformed the defeat into a kind of moral victory for the Serbs and an inspiration for the future. The Serbian epic tradition only developed these ideas further and established them firmly in the consciousness of the Serbian people.

    These epics influenced the Dalmatian historians who wrote about the great battle in the seventeenth century, but because their early versions had propagandistic motives and religious overtones, they are inevitably suspect. Not only were they partisan on behalf of the Serbs and Christians against the Turks and Muslims, but they also gave prominence to certain Serbian families against others. Therefore, much concerning the Battle has remained controversial. The church also romanticised the Nemanjic tradition for the masses, and by removing any of the negative aspects of feudalism helped to convey the image of a once glorious state. The Serbs therefore viewed the collapse of the medieval Serbian state as the central event in their history and found its explanation in the Battle of Kosovo. Indeed, the epic cycle of Kosovo became the longest, most beautiful and most important of all the Serbian epics. It was not so much the loss of the battle itself as the subsequent loss of statehood that so impressed the minds of ensuing generations of Serbs. These epic myths eventually became institutionalised as part of the nineteenth-century Serbian national programme, as poetic licence did away with historical fact. Nearly five centuries later two British travellers, after hearing a succession of accounts of the Battle, declared: `Every Serb between the Danube and the Adriatic is as familiar with the names of all here mentioned as with those of his own brothers.'

    As late as 1866, only 4.2 per cent of the Serbian population were able to read and write -- in rural areas the proportion was as low as 1.6 per cent. Decasyllabic epics chanted by bards and easily memorised by generations of listeners were instrumental in preserving the Serbian national identity; the heart of the national consciousness being the Kosovo myth and its covenant. By transforming the national defeat into a metaphor for survival, the poems about Kosovo served a double function, providing a rationalisation of the past that was a salve to wounded pride and at the same time containing a radical programme for the future. The Tsar's curse on all those who do not fight for Kosovo would serve as a reminder to Serbs for all time. Five hundred and sixty years later, following the Second World War, a 25-metre-high monument was erected in 25 acres of pasture on Kosovo Polje where every summer hundreds of thousands of bright red poppies bloom, supposedly the blood of the fallen Christian heroes. Each year the battle's anniversary on 28 June (Vidovdan) is still commemorated.

Subjection to Ottoman control in Kosovo

The years following the Battle of Kosovo were marked by an increase in Ottoman military activity; certain territories were directly annexed and suzerainty was imposed on various hitherto independent princes and tribes. Taking advantage of the increasing internal troubles in Byzantium, Bulgaria and Serbia, the Ottomans began to extend their conquests deep into the Balkan peninsula. In 1393 the capital of Bulgaria, Turnovo, was captured and a short time later the whole territory of Bulgaria came under Ottoman rule, but it was only in 1455, two years after their capture of Constantinople, that the Ottomans directed a major assault against Serbia, capturing Southern Serbia, the Kosovo region and the richest mine, Novo Brdo, which was estimated at the time of its capture to yield an annual revenue of 120,000 ducats. Among Serbia's losses in 1455 was Pec, seat of the Serbian Patriarch. After the final fall of Serbia to the Ottomans in 1459, all the Serbian eparchies came under the jurisdiction of the Greek Archbishopric of Ohrid. Many ecclesiastical buildings were plundered and some were immediately converted into mosques, among them the church of Our Lady of Ljeviska in Prizren. Many of the great monasteries were looted. Tsar Dusan's magnificent Church of the Holy Archangels was all but razed to the ground, and its rich marble was re-used to build the huge Sinan Pasha mosque in the centre of the town. Today, more than 500 years later, the ruined church's forlorn, grass-covered stones lie scattered along the canyon of the bustling little river Bistrica, providing a playground for Albanian youngsters. The great monasteries of Decani and Gracanica escaped destruction, but their patrimonies were reduced to a handful of surrounding villages.

    With the arrival of the Ottomans, Prizren and Pristina became important stages on the revitalised trade route from the Dalmatian coast to Macedonia and Constantinople. The new Ottoman administrative system divided up most of the land according to the Ottoman military fief (or timar) system, which was totally controlled by Ottoman feudal landowners and their officials. In 1432 a land registration was carried out dividing the territory of Albania into 335 timars or fiefs, each usually comprising two or three villages which were then distributed among the leaders of the civil, military or religious administration. Dibra and its surroundings became a separate sandjak (administrative district) while the region now known as Kosovo was included in the sandjak of Skopje. The expansion of the Serbian state southwards had led to a corresponding movement of the Serbian population into present-day Kosovo and Albania, but with the arrival of the Ottomans this process was reversed and migration came to be directed northwards. These events set in motion a series of northward local migrations of Serbs, and by 1481 a large part of the Slav population of Kosovo had migrated to what is now Hungary and Transylvania.

    The continued development of mining in Kosovo caused the rapid development of several towns such as Novo Brdo, Janjeva, Trepca and Pristina and a corresponding population shift towards them. Although Ottoman colonists were sent to Kosovo, there were relatively few of them and they settled primarily in and around Prizren. By the first half of the fifteenth century Albanians had begun gradually to move their cattle down from the mountain pastures to the plain of Kosovo where they established small farming settlements. Migrants came mostly from the surrounding mountainous regions to settle in the lowland plains and valleys. As people moved to the towns, others came from the hills and occupied the abandoned villages. No one who has travelled in the formidably inhospitable mountains of present-day northern Albania and western Macedonia can fail to appreciate the chronic lack of suitable land on which to sustain even the smallest population. There are thus two types of new Albanian settlement in Kosovo -- one in pastureland and the other in the towns. With the Treaty of 1489 between Venice and the Porte, recognising Ottoman sovereignty over Albania, almost half the Albanian population emigrated to Italy, and to evade the Ottomans thousands more retreated into inaccessible mountain regions, or migrated to Greece where they settled in Thessaly, Attica and as far south as the Peloponnese.

    Albanian historiography asserts that Albanians were the majority in Kosovo even before the Ottoman conquest: `The documents of the period after the Ottoman occupation of Kosovo, in 1455, and especially the land registers, provide many facts that show that these regions were inhabited by the Albanian population, while the Serbs who came as colonists, or as a ruling stratum during the Serbian occupation of these regions, constituted a minority, insignificant numerically but dominant from a political and social standpoint.' In fact, the documents do not show any such thing. The Ottoman defter (register of landed property) of 1455 for the lands of the Serbian Brankovic princes (i.e. most of present-day Kosovo plus small areas of adjoining Sandjak and Serbia proper) record an overwhelming Slavic (Serb) majority.

    Although Albanian researchers claim with some justification that common Christian names do not necessarily imply Slavs, and a `Todor or a Djuradj, son of Martin' could be either Albanian or Serb, it would be hard to imagine that a `Radihna, son of Dabiziv' or a `Prijezda, son of Relja' had any Albanian ancestry. It is more to the point that wherever Albanians appeared in 1455, they were often though probably not always identified as such. For example, in the village of Siptula, near Pristina, there were a `Petko, Albanian' and a `Mihal, Albanian'. In short, their nationality was not the usual one in the area. The number of Albanian migrations into Kosovo began slowly to increase during the early sixteenth century.

    In an effort to cope with the Empire's increasingly diverse ethnic-religious groups, the Ottoman administration devised a socio-cultural communal entity, the millet, based on religious adherence rather than ethnic identity. The first millet -- the Orthodox -- was established in 1454 by Sultan Mehmet II who granted rights and freedoms in perpetuity; these were inherent in the millet and not subject to renewal, abolition or limitation. An Armenian and Jewish millet followed later. Thus non-Muslims were brought into the Muslim organisational system but remained able to retain their own cultural and religious freedoms. The adoption of this system was essentially in response to the hetrogeneous nature of society in the Balkans, and used by Mehmet II to neutralise differences and secure a degree of harmony. The millet and not the church was responsible for maintaining ethnic and linguistic identity. Within the Orthodox millet, the Serbs could preserve their language, religion and ethnic individuality because religion not rationality was the fundamental factor in the Ottoman concept of governance.

    During the fifteenth century the great majority of Albanians were still Christians, and Serbs and Albanians lived together in considerable harmony. They venerated the same saints, worshipped in the same churches, and respected a past of shared values. Even today elderly Albanians recall that their fathers would never begin any project on a Tuesday, the day of the Serbian defeat at Kosovo. The Albanians brought with them into Kosovo the maxims of the Kanun of Leke, which for the clans of northern Albania took precedence over all other laws, and for that reason both the church and the state opposed the application of the Kanun. In the areas bordering on Dukagjin, especially in the plains, where the Ottoman government had managed to establish a degree of domination, compromises occurred between the Kanun and the Shariat. Tradition ascribes the Kanun to Leke Dukagjini (1410-81), contemporary and comrade-in-arms of the Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg. However, Albanian customary law evolved over many centuries, both before and after the lifetime of this particular historical personage. The influence of Illyrian law should not be ignored. As the direct precursors of the Albanians, the Illyrians undoubtedly retained their legal norms despite coming under Roman domination, since it is established that the Roman governor of Illyria permitted the use of local laws when these did not conflict with the principles of Roman law. Even after Diocletian, when the provinces were forced to submit to increased Romanisation, the old laws were retained at least in memory and must have been transmitted orally to succeeding generations.

    The turbulent era of struggle against Ottoman expansion, in which Leke Dukagjini participated, also coincided with fundamental changes in the structure of Albanian society, especially the final disappearance of the aristocratic class (Leke belonged to it) and the emergence of a well-defined clan (fis) system. While the Kanun of Skanderbeg was confined to a fairly limited area, that of Leke Dukagjini was observed over a wide area: in the mountains of Lezhe, in Dukagjin, in Shkoder, in Djakovica in Kosovo, and even among the Albanian populations in parts of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. In certain overwhelmingly Muslim areas such as Krasniq and Lume the Kanun lost some of its power, and Ottoman customs came to replace older traditions. But on the whole the precepts of the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini were respected in all rural areas of the north, including Kosovo. As Syria Pupovci says in his valuable introduction to the 1972 reprint of the Kanun, `In essence, the preservation of customary law was one of the most important elements in helping the Albanian people to maintain, their individuality under Ottoman domination.' For those Serbs who remained in Kosovo the first century of Ottoman rule saw no great social change. In 1557 the patriarchate of Pec was renewed, thanks to Mehmed-Pasha Sokolovic, a Grand Vizier at the Porte of Serbian origin.

(C) 1998 Miranda Vickers All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-231-11382-X