OTTOMAN AND ALBANIAN VIOLENCE AGAINST THE SERBS OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA.pdf

Ottoman and Albanian violence against the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija 17

Djordje MIKIĆ

OTTOMAN AND ALBANIAN VIOLENCE AGAINST THE SERBS OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA

Abstract: The Ottoman and Islamic reign resting on the law of discrimination and absolutist rule, left its most drastic effects on the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija. The power of the Albanian penetration from mountainous northern Albania into the pastoral plains and valleys of Metohija, whether individual or in large groups, rested on their significant degree of Islamization, which took place as early as the 16th and especially during the 17th century, leading either to Serb emigration or to their Islamization and Albanization.

The initial impulse of the great Albanian migration lay in the economic hardship of the Albanians living in the rocky and infertile slopes of central and northern Albania. This Albanian migration, founded on Islamization and the specific model of Ottoman military political expansion, resulted in the mass Albanian colonization of Kosovo and Metohija. The fact that the Serbian liberation movements took the side of the Christian powers resulted not only in the Albanian settlement of the Serbian ethnic spaces but also in the Albanians acquiring the status of ruling and privileged class relative to the disfranchised Christian raya. In this way, the Albanian Muslim newcomers became, through political rather than economic reasons, the main and the harshest tool of Turkey’s repressive policy in the wake of the Serbian liberation wars at the beginning of the 19th century. Thus, each liberation movement among the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija inevitably turned into a clash with the Albanians.

Amidst the increasing Ottoman powerlessness to defend the integrity of the empire, the Albanians sought new ways to defend against the renewal of the Balkan states, as well to form an independent and autonomous Albania, on the foundations of the previous ethnic changes and conquests at the expense of the Balkan Christians, which extended far beyond the boundaries that the Albanian migration process had in fact reached. With that aim in mind, with the benevolent tolerance of the Turkish authorities, from the

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highest to the lowest levels, the Albanians went on a centuries-long rampage, filled with scores of killings, assaults, pillage, banditry, church and cemetery desecrations, and kidnappings of Serbian women and young maids, even girls. Left behind is a substantial, sorry historical legacy, recorded and described by many foreign European authors and travel writers, Serbian consuls, scholars and contemporaries. This sad state of affairs was ended by the Balkan War of 1912 and the liberation of Kosovo from centuries-long Turkish rule.

Key words: Kosovo and Metohija, Albanization of the Serbs, Islamization of the Christians, Ottoman empire, Balkan War of 1912, Serbian liberation of Kosovo from centuries-long Ottoman rule. Through the centuries of Ottoman bondage, Kosovo and Metohija

carried the great burden of the survival, trials and sufferings of the Serbian people. In taking Kosovo, Ottoman force endangered the Serbs’ freedom, muted their spoken word and song, assaulted their cities and villages, monasteries and churches – the holies and beacons of enlightenment and faith. In introducing its own rule and the faith of martial Islam, Ottoman policy enforced its “own order and regime” on the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija and on the Albanian herdsmen in the hills of today’s Albania. However, the Albanian nomads easily crossed from Christianity to Islam and descended from their hills into the plains of Metohija and Kosovo, exchanging their faith for new pastures, in accordance with need and personal benefit.

As Islamized soldiers, the Albanians became the favorites of Ottoman Islam, which gave them high positions and privileges, as reward for loyalty to the Ottoman authority and for violence against the Christian raya (non- -Muslim subjects, of inferior status), especially the Serbs. Not only did the Albanians join in the Ottoman violence against the Serbs, they became its main vehicles – a whip in the hands of the Ottoman emperor. Becoming oppressors and aggressors, the Islamized Albanians seized from the indigenous Serbs their lands and property, turned their churches into mosques, Albanized the Serbian people, assaulted their dignity and honor. It can be said that the Ottoman policy, resting on the Islamization and colonization of the Albanians, and wars against the Christian powers, the restive Serbs and the Catholic Albanian tribes, was to settle Islamized Albanians in Kosovo, the center of medieval Serbia and the place of their initial clash with the Serbs, while expelling or Islamizing the indigenous Serb landholders.

Historical records, both Turkish and Serbian, in the first place rulers’ charters and monastery documents, mention only small numbers of Albanian herdsmen on highland and summer pastures of Kosovo and Metohija at the time of the Serbian medieval state and the beginning of Ottoman rule.1 All —————

1 T. Vukanović, Srbi na Kosovu I (The Serbs in Kosovo I), Vranje 1986, 155–162.

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who came subsequently were either newcomers or Albanized Serbs, the so-called Arnautaši. The newcomers unjustly cultivated a tradition and consciousness by which Kosovo was their perpetual holding, to which the Serbs lost rights after the Battle of Kosovo. In 1896, the following exchange took place between Jovan Hadži Vasiljević and an Albanian on a train from Skoplje to Mitrovica: “See this field [said the Albanian], showing… the Kosovo field with his hand, we and you fought together here once upon a time, and that’s where you dropped the banner, which we took over and heroically carried forth,” adding that the banner was dropped by Miloš Obilić and picked up by Skender-beg, and that this story was passed on to the Krasniqi clan by their grandfathers and great-grandfathers.2 Reviewing the history of Kosovo and Metohija in the 19th century and the changes that took place after the Battle of Kosovo, Ivan Yastrebov, Russian consul and scholar, said the following in a conversation with Panto Srećković in 1873: “The Serbs lost the Kingdom in Kosovo, and it is in Kosovo that a decisive battle shall decide the future of the Balkan peninsula and the future of the Serbian people.”3

The Ottoman and Albanian Muslim system of violence over Christians rested on the religious and social order of the Ottoman Empire. Being, in the first place, an Islamic state, with a strict religious hierarchy and class order, it divided its subjects into two categories: Muslims (the right believers) and infidels (mainly Christians). By this division, Muslim citizens had all the rights, while non-Muslims were second-class citizens.4

This division did not secure identical treatment to the Christians in Albania and medieval Serbia. Although classified into raya, the Christians in Albania, especially in the mountains north, with its dominant patriarchal- -tribal (fis) society, retained loose ties to Ottoman feudalism and its authority. The Christian in Kosovo and Metohija, with a once-developed feudal society that was destroyed along with the state, excepting some leftover lower feudal structures, regardless of whether they had remained Christian or became Islamized, were firmly incorporated into Ottoman feudalism.5 These differing —————

2 Ј. Хаџи-Васиљевић, Арбанашка лига (Арнаутска конгра) и Српски народ у Турском царству (1878–1882) (J. Hadži-Vasiljević, The Albanian League /Arnaut Kongra/ and the Serbian People in the Turkish Empire /1878–1882/), Belgrade 1909, 22–23.

3 И. С. Яастребов, Стара Сербія и Албанія (I. S. Yastrebov, Old Serbia and Albania), Споменик СКА, XLI, II разред (Serbian Royal Academy Historical Publication, XLI, II class), Belgrade 1904, V.

4 В. Стојанчевић, Јужнословенски народи у Османском царству од Једренског мира 1829. до Париског конгреса 1856. године (V. Stojančević, South Slavic Peoples in the Ottoman Empire from the Peace of Adrianople in 1829 to the Paris Congress in 1856), Belgrade 1971, 70.

5 Р. Тричковић, У сусрет најтежим искушењима: XVII век (R. Tričković, Toward the Hardest Trials: the 17th Century), in Косово и Метохија у српској историји (Kosovo and Metohija in Serbian History), Belgrade 1989, 119.

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circumstances under the same Ottoman brutality did not lead to an equal level of Islamization and to the equal social position of Albanians and Serbs under the Ottomans. The feudalized Albanians, according to Sali-bey Frasheri, began accepting the “Turkish faith and becoming Mohammedans” before they came under Ottoman rule, with Islam subsequently spreading according to the principle: “The faith follows the sword.”6 According to Jovan Radonić, the influence of Islam in Albania strengthened in the time after Skender-beg.7 According to a Catholic legate, the Islamization of Albanians was strong between 1620 and 1650, when more than 300,000 Albanians converted.8 Differently from Albania, the Christian raya in Kosovo and Metohija, as a “protected raya,” with its “old estate owners” (spahi) and old “timarnici” (holders, of timars, i.e., lands or revenues granted by the sultan in exchange for services) who gradually disappeared from the social scene during the 16th century as a result of the atomization of timar holdings, did not Islamize to a significant degree.9 This is confirmed by the Turkish defters (cadastral tax census books) from the end of the 15th century and the 1630s. According to Omer Lifta Barkan, there was not a single Muslim in the Dukadjin sanjak (Turkish province) around 1630. Not counting the cities, Atanasije Urošević says that concentrated groupings of Muslim households numbering about 250 could be found only in Metohija (near Peć) and in the Lab region.10

Ottoman violence against Orthodox Christians in Kosovo and Metohija and the Albanian tribes was especially pronounced during the time of Sultan Selim II (1566–1574). As the state began to weaken and the crisis of its feudal order grew, the Islamized Albanians in Metohija also began to take part in the violence. The state crisis began after the defeat of the

————— 6 Ђ. Слијепчевић, Српско-арбанашки односи кроз векове са посебним освртом на новије

време (Serbian-Albanian Relations through the Centuries with a Particular Look at the Newer Era), Himmelstier 1983, Second Revised Edition, 63.

7 Ј. Радонић, Ђурађ Кастриот Скендербег и Албанија у XV веку (J. Radonić, George Kastriot Skenderbeg and Albania in the XV Century), Споменик САН (Serbian Academy of Sciences Historical Publication), 95, Belgrade 1942, 5.

8 М. Екмечић, Историографија ‘само по огртачу’, (M. Ekmečić, Historiography ‘Only According to the Mantle’) in, Одговор на књигу Ноела Малкома “Косово. Кратка историја” (Response to Noel Malcolm’s Book, “Kosovo A Brief History”), Belgrade 2000, 36.

9 О. Зиројевић, Први векови туђинске власти (O. Zirojević, The First Centuries of Foreign Rule) in Косово и Метохија у српској историји (Kosovo and Metohija in Serbian History), Belgrade 1989, 47–67.

10 А. Урошевић, Становништво Балканског полуострва у првој половини XVI века (A. Urošević, The Population of the Balkan Peninsula in the First Half of the XVI Century), in Зборник радова Етнографског музеја, књ. 4 (Works of the Ethnographic Museum, book 4), Belgrade 1962, 130, 134.

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Ottoman navy in 1571 at Lepant, which strengthened the role of Albanians in Constantinople as well as in Old Serbia, although they had never previously stood out in any way in the Ottoman military. Previously, the Ottomans had prevented larger crossings of Albanians, who were mostly herdsmen, to Kosovo and Metohija, the main granary for Ottoman military operations. With the coming of crises and shifts in Kosovo and Metohija’s agriculture – from grain farming to livestock farming – came the era of Albanian influx, although Albanian farmers in Kosovo and Metohija were still few in number as late as the end of the 16th century.11

The more intense Albanian colonization of Metohija and Kosovo during the time of Sultan Selim II was preceded by the appearance of more powerful Islamized feudal lords, but also of bandits. A written record from 1574 gives the following account: “And there came a great pogrom from the Arnauts (Albanians), especially the Mahmud-begovićes in Peć, the Ivan-begovićes (Turkicized Bušatlijas) in Skadar, the Sinan-pašić Rotulovićes in Prizren, the Elasu-pašićes in Djakovica; two thousand Christians around this town cut down. Woe to us, oh God, look down from the heavens and deliver your flock.”12 Even earlier, violence and banditry over Orthodox Christians was waged by Kukli-bey, a feudal lord in Opolje, near Prizren (died in 1537). He forced the local Serbs to either Islamize or emigrate, which is why he came to be known as “infamous” among the folk.13 Raids by Albanian bandits and robbers were recorded during the 1570s and 1580s in the vicinity of Prizren, Djakovica and Peć, as well as in the Kačanik canyon (Kačanička klisura) in Metohija. Here, the French envoy at the Porte, Phillippe Differin- -Cannais, recorded how the bandits “killed five qadi (Muslim judges) with their entire escort.”14 Some time later, bandits also appeared in the Priština qadiluk (judicial district), waging terror mainly over the raya and travelers.

————— 11 Б. Храбак, Ширење арбанашких сточара по равницама и словенски

ратари средњевековне Албаније (B. Hrabak, The Expansion of Albanian Herdsmen over the Plains and the Slavic Farmers of Medieval Albania) in Арбанашке студије, књ. I (Albanian Studies, book I), Belgrade 2005, 45–46; Ј. Томић, О Арнаутима у Старој Србији и Санџаку (On Albanians in Old Serbia and in Sanjak), Belgrade 1913, 13.

12 Љ. Стојановић, Стари српски записи и написи, књ. I, бр. 876 (Lj. Stojanović, Old Serbian Manuscripts and Inscriptions, book I, no. 876), Belgrade 1983, 252.

13 И. С. Јастребов, Податци за историју српске цркве – из путничког записника (I.S. Yastrebov, Facts for the History of the Serbian Church – from a Travel Journal), Belgrade 1879, 110; М. С. Лутовац, Гора и Опоље (M. S. Lutovac, Gora and Opolje), Belgrade 1955, 262.

14 Р. Самарџић, Београд и Србија у списима француских савременика, XVI–XVII век (R. Samardžić, Belgrade and Serbia in the Writings of French Contemporaries, XVI–XVII Century), Belgrade 1961, 129–130.

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The Albanian influx and violence against the Serbs in Metohija and Kosovo was predicated on the wars of the Christian powers and the uprisings of the Christian raya against the Ottomans. With the Austro-Turkish war of 1593–1606, and the Serbian uprising under Patriarch Jovan around Prizren and Peć in 1594, Turkey began to “readily receive and settle Albanians from the nearby mountains into the rebellious areas.”15 They gave them a free hand to pillage and plunder. In their increased repression against the raya, the Ottoman authority increasingly turned to and made use of Albanian Muslims.16 By this time (1598), Lazar Soranci could state explicitly that “the Albanians should not be counted on in insurrection, as they are all for the Turkish state.”17 After the Polish victory over the Ottomans in 1631–34, the brunt of the terror was borne by the Catholics, both Serb and Albanian, especially in the Prizren nahiya (Turkish district) and in Metohija, which were Islamized by force; the turn of the Orthodox came during the liberation campaign of 1630–1656, when a part of them fled, while another was Islamized. In this way, while the Albanians in Kosovo and in Metohija were still few in number during the 16th and 17th centuries, Islam became the “factor of force” that imposed Albanian power on the raya, compelling it to either subjugation, Islamization or flight. To the incoming and Islamized Albanians, violence and pillage brought “power and riches.” These riches also lay in the land grabbed in Metohija, which the Albanian highland tribes, amidst their struggles against the Skadar and Dukadjin pashas and the blood that fell between them, increasingly rushed in an organized manner, not only to loot but also to settle the land worked by Orthodox Christians.18 As this immigration and Islamization of Catholic Albanians at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 18th centuries “overwhelmed and filled up all of Serbia,” a contemporary Catholic bishop wrote that the “Albanians…are the people (race) that multiplies the most rapidly” and which is massively settling Kosovo. He called for prayers in Catholic churches…19

In some parts, the Ottoman authorities lost control over the Albanian tribes as early as the beginning of the 17th century. The Archbishop of Bar,

————— 15 Р. Савић, Арбанаси на српском тлу (R. Savić, Albanians on Serbian Soil), Belgrade

1989, 27. 16 Ј. Н. Томић, op. cit., 15. 17 М. Екмечић, op. cit., 35. 18 М. Филиповић, Хас под Паштриком, Научно друштво Босне и Херцеговине,

Дјела XIII (M. Filipović, Chaos Under the Paštrik, Scholarly Society of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Works XIII) Sarajevo 1958, 21; Р. Тричковић, op. cit. 119; Ђ. Слијепчевић, op. cit., 84.

19 М. Екмеџић, op. cit. 30.

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Djordje Bjanki, writes in 1638 that the sanjak-bey of Skadar, Mehmed-bey, from the Albanian gens Suma or Begony, had created such a state of insecurity serving as his father-in-law’s deputy in the Dukadjin sanjak, that no one dared take up tax collecting concessions there.20

During the Austro-Turkish wars of 1689–90 and 1737–39, and Serbian uprisings joined by a smaller number of Albanian Catholics, the Ottomans used the Islamized Albanians in a twofold manner: for the destruction of the Christian movement and its power base – the raya, and for the spread of Islam. Both the wars and the raya uprisings led to Serbian migrations to the Habsburg monarchy, better known as the First and Second Great Serbian Migrations (the second included a certain number of Albanians), as well as to a corresponding influx of Albanians into Old Serbia. During the first war and the Serbian uprising that accompanied it, it seemed as though there existed “some plan” for the destruction of Serbs and the settlement of Albanians. The leader of the punitive expedition, Mahmud-pasha Hasanbegović, an Albanian, ravaged the Patriarchate, devastated Janjevo, and turned villages into infernos, while sparing the deserted cities and settling them with the Albanians who had come with the Ottoman army “to spend the winter.”

To the Albanian Klimenti tribe that immigrated into the Vučitrn region and Islamized, the Porte granted the deserted Serbian lands, so that they could “apply the law of the stronger against the natives.” After the war and the migration of 1739, the Ottomans, joined by the large masses of Islamized Albanians, took retribution against the Serbs who had remained behind in Old Serbia and the Hills, but also against those who had withdrawn with the Austrian army, burning and looting their territories. In the petitions of the Serbs and some of the Turks that stayed behind, it was said that the Albanian newcomers terrorized the people, stole cattle, assaulted wives and daughters, and forced the raya to leave their hearths and flee to other territories, after which they took possession of their homes and lands.21

Between the two Serbian migrations, the Albanians made a migrational shift of 200 kilometers from their ethnic base into the Serbian lands, while the Serbs either emigrated or were Islamized.22 Sreten Vukosavljević sees the Albanian population shifts and their takeover of both deserted and still- -occupied Serbian holdings in the light of the advantages they had over the

————— 20 Ј. Радонић, Римска курија и јужнословенске земље од XVI до XIX века (J. Radonić, The

Roman Curia and the South Slavic Lands from the XVI to the XIX Century), Belgrade 1950, 101. 21 Р. Тричковић, op. cit., 134–135, 144, 164; Ђ. Слијепчевић, op. cit., 98–99. 22 Р. Т. Николић, Ширење Арнаута у српске земље, Гласник Географског Дру-

штва, 3, св. 3–4 (R.T. Nikolić, The Albanian Expansion into Serbian Lands, Gazette of the Serbian Geographical Society, 3, booklet 3–4), Belgrade 1914, 110–111, 125–126.

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Serbs: their conversion to Islam (equalization with the Turkish conqueror), their reliance on blood organizations (gens, brotherhood, tribe, fis), their pastoral economy (expansionist mobility) which could sustain long periods of sparse – i.e., “pastoral” – settlement, and their settling of land “already ordered,” i.e., brought to cultivation. He also underlines the difference in the relationship toward the raya between the Turkish and Albanian newcomers: “The Turk needs the raya to work for him; he does not need land. The Alba-nian wants to raise cattle and till the land himself. He needs the land and the raya is in his way. That is why he forces it out or destroys it. He does not seek to Islamize it. And when it does Islamize, it is in order to get the protection of the authorities from the Albanians.” Vukosavljević emphasizes that the Albanians first occupied villages in mountain areas, forming new migrational bases from which they would then continue their spread into the surrounding villages, first in the mountains, then in the plains. Their immigration did not bring about population increase because the Serb element left in greater num-bers than those in which the Albanians came. The Albanians always kept the regions they settled sparsely populated, while continuing their gradual move forward, to the end…23 In their shifts from their ethnic motherland, the Albanians mostly used transversal communications. The paths were chosen by herds of sheep, not by people, moving first over mountain regions by way of existing communications, water holes and Serbian pastoral settlements, and then descending into the plains.24 The fact that the Serbs were compelled to forced migration by the Albanians, a subjugated people, and not by the Turkish conquerors, Vojislav Radovanović explains by the fact that, having accepted the ideology of the ruling nation, the Albanian also gained privileges that secured them superior status, enabling them, in their organized movements, which took the form of metanostasic streams, to penetrate the other ethnic group as the stronger party, and slowly push it out of the affected areas, house by house, village by village.25

In both Metohija and Kosovo, only Islamized Albanians could secure advantage over the Serbian raya. Wherever the fis organization of the folk was preserved and sanctioned, such as in Malesia and Mirdita,26 Islamization —————

23 С. Вукосављевић, Историја сељачког друштва I (S. Vukosavljević, The History of Peasant Society I), Belgrade 1953, 45–48.

24 М. Екмечић, Стварање Југославије, књ. I (M. Ekmečić, The Creation of Yugoslavia, book I), Belgrade 1989, 316.

25 В. С. Радовановић, Општа антропогеографија I (V.S. Radovanović, General Anthropogeography I), Belgrade 1959, 172.

26 On these organizations’ internal order, see: Б. Храбак, Албанија од коначног пада под Турску власт до средине XVIII века (B. Hrabak, Albania from the Final Fall under Turkish Rule to the End of the XVIII Century), in Арбанaшке студије, књ. I (Albanian Studies, book I), Belgrade 2005, 308.

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had very little success (among the Malisori) or was totally unsuccessful (among the Mirditans). Their fis organization ensured the preservation of their old social and folk (ethnic) order, retaining many of the autonomous rights and distinctions characteristic of Albanian national institutions. In the Dukadjin mountain areas, conversion to Islam meant freedom from paying taxes, military duty and, especially, the taxes on small livestock – the agnam and the chibuk. In parts where feudalization had already taken root, with their changed social relations and abolished ancient autonomous rights, Islamization spread among the Albanian peasants as a way of easing their legal-agrarian obligations. In the feudalized parts of Metohija and Kosovo, it was “necessary.” Soon upon their arrival, coming under the Turkicized feudal lords and mixing with their already Islamized compatriots, the Albanians from Malesia and Mirdita would convert to Islam. In the way they settled the land, they were even more expansionistic than their predecessors.27

The Islamized Albanians settled the abandoned and usurped Serbian lands “as conquerors and the Sultan’s cutthroats against the rebellious raya.”28 At the beginning of the 18th century, the Porte advised Tahir-pasha Mahmudbegović in Peć to cut off all food supplies to the Klimenti, who, perched in their home highlands, were absolutely refusing submission, explaining that, “when compelled by hunger, they would descend to the plains themselves and thereby accept certain obligations.” As to what these “obligations” were is illustrated by the example of the Gashi tribe, recently arrived to the vicinity of Peć, which immediately began to pillage both the city and the surrounding areas. And, excepting the Serbs, no one paid any heed to Mahmudbegović’s tax collecting efforts for the imperial treasury. In Novo Brdo, the supposed dispensers of justice imposed their own taxes, seized cattle, violated the raya’s households and committed scores of crimes.29 The Albanian tribes even fought between themselves. Deacon Jovan of Dečani monastery wrote the following in 1756: “The accursed Arnauts started fighting among themselves, the monastery’s vojvoda (commander of the guards) was killed, the monastery is greatly taxed and there has been great poverty during this time and many Arnauts have met their death…”30 Describing Muslim Albanian behavior toward the Christians, Bishop Petar —————

27 В. Стојанчевић, Срби и Арбанаси 1804–1912 (V. Stojančević, Serbs and Alba-nians 1804–1912), Novi Sad 1994, 10–15.

28 Ђ. Слијепчевић, op. cit., 117. 29 Р. Тричковић, Устанци, сеобе и страдања у XVIII веку (R. Tričković,

Uprisings, Migrations and Sufferings in the XVIII Century), in Косово и Метохија у српској историји (Kosovo and Metohija in Serbian History), Belgrade 1989, 146–147.

30 Писма српских конзула из Приштине 1870–1900 (Letters of Serbian Consuls from Priština), Belgrade 1985, 12, (edited by Branko Peruničić).

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Masarek wrote in 1764 that they were especially dangerous “because they are Turks and can commit any evil they like.”31 Apart from emigrating in order to save their lives and property, the Kosovo and Metohija Serbs had no other choice but to Islamize. After the abolition of the Peć Patriarchate in 1766, Serb Islamization became more frequent. On the national-political level, the abolition of the Patriarchate was a “second Serbian Kosovo,” which, besides national-political bondage, brought the Serbian people church-spiritual bondage to the Greek Phanariot bishops. The Islamized Serbs among the Turks, having accepted the religion of the ruling nation, also accepted the Turkish state idea. Over time, regardless of the degree of Albanian presence, they drew closer to the Albanians through language and marriage, turning into so-called Arnautaši.32

Following the final Austro-Turkish war at the end of the 18th century, as reward for wartime service, the Porte distributed not only honors and titles but also turned the administration in Old Serbia over to the old pasha houses: the Bušatlijas in Skadar, the Rotuli (Rotulovićes) in Prizren, the Begoli (Mahmudbegovićes) in Peć, the Kruezijas (Crnojevićes) in Djakovica, who, in turn, laid the foundations for the Islamization and Albanization of Metohija. In Kosovo, Islamization and Albanization processes were strengthened by bringing the Islamized Jinoglus (Džinićes) from the Krasniqi fis in Ljima to a visible position in the administration of the Priština sanjak.33 Amidst the disintegration and decay of the old regulations and institutions, anarchy increased throughout Kosovo and Metohija. Turkish pashas and beys in Old Serbia, mostly of Albanian descent – or making themselves out as such – raised their own troops and organized their own pillaging raids, while allowing the same to the Albanian tribes that were coming down from the barren hills, not only into Metohija and Kosovo but also into the Morava and Ibar river valleys. At the same time, after a long crisis of the feudal land system – the timar-spahia (fief) system – the so-called ayans (local lords) and Albanian pashas usurped feudal rights for themselves and introduced chitluk- -sahib (renter-tenant) relationships. They turned the spahia-raya holdings into their own chifluks (feudal land holdings) and the raya into chifchi (landless tenant-farmers), thus doubling their burdens and making them personally dependent.34

————— 31 Ј. Радонић, Римска курија, 646, 648. 32 Ђ. Слијепчевић, op. cit., 134–135, 141. 33 В. Стојанчевић, Обновљена српска држава и Арбанаси 1804–1876 (V.

Stojančević, The Renewed Serbian State and the Albanians 1804–1876), in Срби и Арбанаси..., 10–11.

34 Р. Тричковић, Устанци, сеобе и страдања..., 144, 164–165.

Ottoman and Albanian violence against the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija 27

Even though the introduction of chifluks in the Ottoman empire as early as the 17th century was the price of progress in the modernization of agriculture, but also in social oppression,35 Ottoman policy toward the Albanians did not change. For as Vuk Vinaver writes: through this policy, the Islamized portion of the Albanians became a part of the “ruling class” and, with their “military conservative force,” were preventing the state’s more rapid disintegration even as they participated in it, wanting “nothing more than no one else’s authority anywhere near their sheep and chifchi, and weak authority in parts they aimed to pillage next.”36 Watching the weakening of Ottoman authority in the provinces starting with the beginning of the 17th century, the Islamization of the majority of Albanians by around 1600, the Albanian shepherd warriors and their increased influx from northern Albania beginning with the 17th century, German observer Georg Stadtmuller saw in these processes the subjugation and transformation of the ancient Serbian regions of Old Serbia and western Macedonia into Albanian soil, carrying the mark of “Albania.”37 However, despite the Albanian colonization and Islamization, Catholic papal inspectors, starting with Marin Bitzi in 1610, and all the way up to the end of the 18th century, continued to identify the ethnic border between Albanians and Serbs along its earliest defined line – the Crni Drim and Beli Drim rivers – with pockets jutting out into both sides.38

In their battles against the Serbian insurgents during the First Serbian Uprising, their resistance against a restored Serbia, their participation in the war against Russia, in their rejection of reforms made by the Turkish sultans – the Albanians were defending not only the Ottoman Empire but also “their own privileged position and lawlessness, for which they did not answer to anyone,” because in a teetering state an element such as they was necessary.39 As they fought against the Serbian insurgents and defended against their penetration into Kosovo, Ibrahim-pasha Bushatlija, Numan-pasha of Peć, Malić-pasha of Priština, and Mahmud-pasha of Prizren used the occasion to strengthen and expand their authority and increase their wealth through usurpation and pillage, with Islamic religious reasons serving as the ideological motive, while the “struggle for land” was the true one.

In the course of the uprising, Malić-pasha moved the Serb chifchis out of the northern parts of the Lab basin and moved Albanians in. His cousins —————

35.М. Екмечић, Историографија..., 36 36 В. Винавер, Дубровник и Турска у XVIII веку (V. Vinaver, Dubrovnik and Turkey

in the XVIII Century), Belgrade 1966, 32, 34. 37 According to Ђ. Слијепчевић, op. cit., 97, 110. 38 М. Радовановић, op. cit., 97–98, 101. 39 Ђ. Слијепчевић, op. cit., 105; Ј. Н. Томић, О Арнаутима у Старој Србији, 13.

Djordje Mikić 28

in Gnjilane robbed travelers, killed merchants and burned forests all the way up to Priština and Novo Brdo. Passing through these parts in 1807, Frenchman Henry Pouqueville wrote the following about Malić-pasha: “It didn’t seem to me appropriate to visit this Albanian, a sworn mortal enemy of Christians.” His nephew, Yashar-pasha of Priština, was even more merciless toward Serbs. He persecuted them without mercy, destroyed their land, ravaged their villages, forced them to convert, and confiscated church and monastery lands. In place of the Serbs expelled from the border regions he settled Albanians from Malesia, Metohija and the vicinity of Skadar.

The Serb position in Old Serbia could not be improved even by the planned reforms of the sultan-reformers in the first half of the 19th century, with which the Porte sought to modernize and centralize the administration and protect the Christian raya. The independent Albanian pashas did not just resist the reforms that called for the abolishing of tribal autonomies, Alba-nian disarmament and service in the regular army, their acceptance of modern jurisprudence instead of the customary law of Leka Dukadjin, and recognition of the central authority, all of which cut deeply into Albanian feudal and tribal relations: they demanded the retention of everything old that secured their privileges and gave them a free hand in dealing with the Christian tribes, which they brutally exploited, being freed of all state levies. Many Albanian outlaws took advantage of the era of the independent pashas. Each Mohammedan, if he wished it, could kill any Serb without any conse-quences as long as he sought the protection of a Muslim temple, mosque or tekiye. Even Sharia law was not respected in regard to the Christian raya.

After the abolition of the janissary order in 1826, the intra-Albanian clashes in Old Serbia with Mustafa-pasha Bushatlija in 1827, the Peace of Adrianople in 1829 and the rejection of reforms at the meeting in Skadar in 1831, as well as the defeats of the Albanian and Bosnian beys in 1831–32, the liberal great vizier Mahmoud Rashid-pasha introduced “many useful edicts” in Priština and Vučitrn in the summer of 1832, through which he improved the unbearable life of the Christian raya in the Kosovo villages. Restoring to the Serbs lands illegally usurped from them though the chitluk system, he placed them “under direct imperial protection.” However, since the lot of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija was not improving due to the lawlessness and usurpation of the Turko-Albanian beys, after putting down the most prominent captains in Bosnia, the Porte pacified the revolting tribes in central and southern Albania, chiefly through the use of troops in 1835–36, arrested the independent pashas in Old Serbia and confiscated their property.40

————— 40 В. Стојанчевић, Обновљена Србија, 14–23.

Ottoman and Albanian violence against the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija 29

With the goal of centralizing the Empire, in 1839 the Porte issued the Gioulhan Hatiserif (edict) on the so-called Tansimat Reforms, by which, among other things, it abolished the spahi feudal system and introduced the chitluk system (with estates). This did not end the feudal system because in place of the spahia, the renter became the state itself, which held title to the land. In this way, instead of using the Tansimat Reforms as a way of initiating a general transformation of the Empire, the Porte was dragged into the battle between the former spahias and the peasants. This battle was accompanied by Turko-Albanian clashes and Albanian attacks on Serbs and the raya’s land. The Albanian resistance to reforms and their treatment of the Serbs was a result of the increasing significance of the monetary economy, the penetration of European trade, impoverishment due to increased fiscal obligations toward the state and adjustment to the laws of the capitalist marketplace, all of which opened up a wide field of economic activity to the Christians. In this way, the Albanian struggle against reforms in the Empire was as much an attempt to protect the old Sharia norms and traditional Islamic-Turkish public institutions, as it was an attempt to prevent the Christians from benefiting from these reforms.41

The unceasing Albanian terror led the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija to launch an ever-growing number of appeals to the diplomacies of the European powers, to the Serbian government and to the Porte itself. However, the entire history of Turkish reforms shows that the Porte always remained faithful to the doctrine that the Muslim populace is more important than the non-Muslim one and that there can be no equalization between Muslims and Christians. Its primary goal was to keep landed property in Muslim hands, even as it worked to shed the decadence of the old system.42

The anti-Orthodox and anti-Slavic orientation of the Porte became especially evident during the Crimean War of 1853–56 and the persecution of the Serbs in the Priština and Prizren pashaluks, which started under the Džinićes and the Rotuli and reached its culmination in a great new wave of Islamization and Albanization, after which Metohija lost its Serbian character. France also contributed to this process after it received from the Porte the right of exclusive influence over all Albanians, and especially the Catholic Fandas. French agents encouraged these highland Catholics to migrate into Metohija and parts of Kosovo, in order to pit them against the local Serbian —————

41 Ibid, Јужнословенски народи, 142, 373–374, 377–378. 42 Ibid, op. cit., 408, 411; М. Екмечић, Улога Ислама у социјалном и политичком

развоју Балкана (M. Ekmečić, The Role of Islam in the Social and Political Development of the Balkans), in “Ислам, Балкан и Велике силе (XIV–XX век),” (Islam, the Balkans and the Great Powers /XIV–XX Century/) Belgrade 1997, 25.

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populace. Thus the Fandas also started appearing among the outlaw kachaks (brigands), plundering the Serbian villages in the Peć kaza.43

And while the Albanian Catholics were linking up with the European states, including Serbia and Montenegro, the Porte took to increasing its influence among the Muslim Albanians, in part by restoring the Albanian beys to state employ, which was observed by Jovan Ristić in 1864, when he served as a Serbian diplomat in Constantinople. The effects of this policy of the Porte was noted by both domestic and foreign contemporaries, who left cheerless accounts about the position of the Serbs: Serafim Hadži Ristić, a monk at Dečani monastery, in his 1864 booklet, The Weeping of Old Serbia, Aleksandre Gilferding, Russian consul in Sarajevo in his Travel Journal from 1858, British women missionaries Irby and Mackenzie in 1863, Russian consul in Prizren, Evgeny Timayev, in his reports from 1866–67, and Prizren resident Sima Andrejević-Igumanov in his letters to the Belgrade Metropolitan, Mihailo, in 1866–1870.44 Presenting the facts about Albanian terror over the Serbs in Old Serbia and about the forced colonization and its consequences, Consul Timayev writes in 1866: “The Albanian folk is increasingly conquering the lands it is settling… The massive settling of the Prizren sanjak… is not encountering any obstacles. It seems that the Turkish government would be very happy if no Christians were left in this province…”45 In the same year, Sima Igumanov writes in a letter from Kiev: “…I am receiving blacker and blacker news from Prizren…” while in 1870, having returned to Prizren, he continues: “With us here, the devil is a thousand times blacker than people paint him…. Ever since our glorious Prizren was made the vilayet capital, there has been no evil that has not come down on the heads of our poor Serbian folk… Everywhere are still the remnants of the old disbanded janissaries… there is not a church which has not been ravaged, some more than once… Since Ismail-pasha has come as governor, more than 300 souls in our own vicinity have been killed. He reigns in Prizren, while Cusra of the Zatrićes reigns over the nearby area with equal Honors and levies his own dues on the vilayet; such evildoers also reign on the other side…. And truly, if we didn’t have Mr. Yastrebov here, they would have destroyed our church here long ago and taken Mr. Stavrić (the teacher – Dj. M.) from here, and all kinds of iniquities would have been done to us by —————

43 В. Стојанчевић, Обновљена Србија, 25. 44 Савременици о Косову и Метохији 1852–1912 (Contemporaries on Kosovo and Metohija

1852–1912), Belgrade 1998 (edited by D. T. Bataković). 45 Д. Батаковић, Од Српске револуције до источне кризе 1804–1875 (D.

Bataković, From the Serbian Revolution to the Eastern Crisis 1804–1875), in Косово и Метохија у српској историји (Kosovo and Metohija in Serbian History), Belgrade 1989, 188.

Ottoman and Albanian violence against the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija 31

the Turks, Cincars, Bulgarians and Latins here. Mr. Yastrebov is a true Russian gentleman and very much loves our people.”46 Yastrebov himself wrote between 1855 and 1870 that he found 165 Serbian households in the twenty or so villages around Dečani during his first visit, but only 50 during the second.47

During the time of the Eastern Crisis, in 1875–1878, and subsequently, during the Albanian League, the terror over the Serbs increased even more and continued to the end of Turkish rule. According to Petar Kostić, the acts of terror committed about ten years prior to 1876 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, were solely a consequence of the terrorists’ fanaticism and had no political goal, while subsequently, the purpose was to wipe out the Serbs completely…48 The roots of this Albanian terror lay in the pan-Islamistic policy of the new sultan, Abdul Hamid II, and the identical policy of the newly emergent Albanian League, formed in Prizren in 1878, whose Statute and activity had a pronounced anti-Serbian character, both in regards to Old Serbia and to the Serbian state itself. The anti-Serb terror was the same in the period when the Porte and the League cooperated and after they ended their cooperation in 1880. In reality, the Serbs gained two masters: the Turks and the Albanians; to each they had to pay taxes and feed their armies, without having any rights or protection for themselves.49

Both foreign and domestic contemporaries wrote about the huge scale of Turkish and Albanian terror that started with the end of the Eastern Crisis, and continued during the work of the Berlin Congress and afterwards, during the period of the Albanian League. French diplomats reported that, between the beginning and the middle of June 1878, 112 Serbs were killed, while at least 60 fled from Priština to Serbia.50 Serbs from the Peć, Djakovica and Prizren kazas wrote to Prince Milan Obrenović on October 14, 1878, that, since the Berlin Congress, over a thousand Serbs had been killed and robbed in the Prizren and Peć nahiyas separately, while no house in the

————— 46 Ђ. Слијепчевић, Неколико писама Симе Игуманова, Хришћанско дело, св. 3

(Dj. Slijepčević, Several Letters of Sima Igumanov, Christian Deed, booklet 3), 1940, 227; Ibid, booklet 6, 1940, 457.

47 И. С. Яастребов, Стара Сeрбіяа и Албаніяа, 86. 48 Зулуми ага и бегова у Косовском вилајету (Atrocities of the Agas and Beys in the Kosovo

Vilayet), Belgrade 1989, 58–67, (edited by B. Peruničić). 49 Ђ. Слијепчевић, Српско-арбанашки односи, 224–225; Ј. Хаџи-Васиљевић,

Арбанашка лига..., 109. 50 Б. Храбак, Први извештаји дипломата великих сила о Призренској лиги

(B. Hrabak, The First Reports of the Diplomats of the Great Powers about the Prizren League), Balkanika, IX, Belgrade 1989, 253.

Djordje Mikić 32

Priština and Vučitrn areas had been spared destruction and looting.51 The Serbs from Peć informed Russian tsar Alexander about the killings of over 100 people after 1875, as well as the looting of the Peć Patriarchate and Dečani monastery.52 The Russian consul in Prizren, Yastrebov, writing in 1879 about the rape of a 13 year-old girl and the fear of reporting the perpetrators to the authorities, notes: “People say that, up till now (1879), such atrocities weren’t committed even after the Crimean War, and that they have the impression that everything has conspired to wipe out the Serbian element.” His reports from 1880 and 1881 are filled with accounts of killed Serbs, of plunder and burned houses and farms, of attempts at forced Islamization, and in one report he exclaims: “The position of the Christians in those parts is deplorable everywhere…”53 During the five years of the work of the military tribunal, the so-called “urfia,” which was set up in 1882, around 7,000 Serbs were executed for high treason while 300 were sentenced to terms ranging from six to 101 years.54 Sima Andrejević Igumanov published a book about the crimes committed by the Turks and the Albanians during the first days of the Turkish military tribunal, entitled Садашње несретно стање у Старој Србији и Македонији (The Current Unhappy State of Affairs in Old Serbia and Macedonia).

Even after the suppression of the Albanian League and the rapprochement between the Albanians and the Porte, the position of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija did not change. The Turks, such as, for example, Kosovo governor Abdi-pasha, estimated in 1883 that, in case of war, the “faithful Albanians” would be sufficient for the defense of Old Serbia.55 Stojan Novaković noted that the Turkish Porte’s policy after the

————— 51 М. Екмечић, Стварање Југославије, књига II (M. Ekmečić, The Forming of

Yugoslavia, book II), Belgrade 1989, 116; М. Костић, Из историје Срба у Новопазарском санџаку после Берлинског конгреса 1878, Гласник Скопског научног друштва, XXI, Скопље (M. Kostić, From the History of the Serbs in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar after the Berlin Congress in 1878, Gazette of the Skoplje Learned Society, XXI, Skoplje), 1940, 101.

52 В. Стојанчевић, Жалбе Срба Пећaнаца на турске зулуме 1876–1878. године, Архивски преглед (V. Stojančević, Complaints of Serbs from Peć about Turkish Atrocities 1876–1878, Archival Review), 1–2, Belgrade 1978, 151–160.

53 В. Бован, Јастребов у Призрену. Културно-просветне прилике у Призрену и рад руског конзула И. С. Јастребова у другој половини деветнаестога века (V. Bovan, Yastrebov in Prizren. Cultural-Educational Conditions in Prizren and the Work of Russian Consul I. S. Yastrebov in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century), Priština 1983, 146, 160.

54 Ђ. Микић, Политичка, културна и привредна стремљења (Dj. Mikić, Political, Cultural and Economic Strivings) in: Историја српског народа (History of the Serbian People), V/1, Belgrade 1983, 293–294.

55 В. Бован, op. cit., 180, 183–184.

Ottoman and Albanian violence against the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija 33

Berlin Congress had taken the Albanians “under its special protection,” extending them “great privileges.”56 The Austro-Hungarian consul in Prizren, Prohaska, was of the opinion that the maintaining of the “existing system of administration is of mutual interest, in tandem with the accompanying campaign against the Serbs in Kosovo,” through which policy “bad blood has been created between the Serbian population and the Albanian tribes…” In this way, by sacrificing the Tansimat reforms and refeudalizing society, Abdul-Hamid was extending Turkish rule in Kosovo and Metohija, leaving the Serbs to the mercy of the Turko-Albanian lords.57 The Albanians from Toplica, the so-called muhajirs, were settled and distributed throughout Kosovo and Metohija in 1878 in such a way as to form a chain of settlements transecting the dense network of Serbian settlements, by which the sultan formed a sort of a military border toward Serbia.58

Violence against the Kosovo and Metohija Serbs was waged by all segments of the stratified Albanian society: the members of the feudal class of the old pasha houses, the tribal-fis organizations, the professional Turkish military and civil officers, peasants and especially, the so-called fukara (rabble), formed out of runaway chifchis from feudal estates, landless peasants and the city proletariat, from which kachaks, brigands, extortionists and the like were recruited.59 The Turkish authority was loose, law-breaking, corrupted: soft towards the Albanians, harsh against the Serbs, arming the Albanians while disarming the Serbs.

The daily reports of the Serbian consuls from Priština, starting with the first – Luka Marinković in 1889, who was killed there, to the last – Milan Milojević in 1912, registered the daily history of Albanian terror against the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. In the words of Consul Marinković, the Priština mutesarif (governor) viewed the Consulate as a gate “through which Serbia would come to Kosovo.” That is why Constantinople instructed the —————

56 Зулуми бегова и ага у Косовском вилајету (The Atrocities of the Beys and the Agas in the Kosovo Vilayet), 78–80.

57 Ђ. Микић, Друштвене и економске прилике косовских Срба у XIX и почетком XX века (Dj. Mikić, The Social and Economic Conditions of the Kosovo Serbs in the XIX and the Beginning of the XX Century), Belgrade 1988, 24–25.

58 Д. Т. Батаковић, Основе арбанашке превласти на Косову и Метохији 1878–1903, (D. T. Bataković, The Origins of Albanian Predominance in Kosovo and Metohija 1878–1903,) “Идеје,” Belgrade 1988, 24–25.

59 В. Стојанчевић, Друштвено-политичке прилике међу Арбанасима у Косовском вилајету на почетку века и арбанашки отпор против турских реформа 1902/1903, “Историјски часопис”, књ. XI (V. Stojančević, Socio-Political Conditions among the Albanians in the Kosovo Vilayet at the Beginning of the XX Century and Albanian Resistance to Turkish Reforms 1902/1903, “Historical Magazine,” book XI), Belgrade 1961, 209–210.

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local authorities to tolerate all the violence “perpetrated in these parts by the Albanians against the Serbs, which they are forcefully exterminating by way of expulsion.” Consul Branislav Nušić observed that the Serbs were pressed “with equal force from above and below” – from both the Albanians and the authorities, “and that all that could be done was to fold one’s arms and wait not for better times but for better people…”

Contemplating the role of the Porte’ in the Albanian violence against the Serbs in Old Serbia, Serbia’s envoy in Constantinople, Vladan Djordjević writes in 1895: “It would not be just to suppose that the Turkish government approves of this… the Turkish government is too weak to control the Albanians… it is further true that, besides custom and the inbred Albanian instinct for brigandage and violence, there is also a secret agentur, which influences them and their tribal chieftains from the outside, to continue their terror over the Christians, in order to keep a permanent state of anarchy in European Turkey.”

The consuls’ reports followed the violence committed against the Serbs with precision and registered its perpetrators: in the Priština sanjak, these were – Suleyman-aga (later pasha), the Lab vojvoda (local military commander), the Priština mufti Mustafa-efendi, Yusuf Feta, while in the Peć sanjak the main culprit was Mula Zeka. All the others were linked to them, but all concerned had their own henchmen.60

The Greco-Turkish war of 1897 whipped up religious fanaticism in Turkey and increased the anarchy in Kosovo and Metohija. Frenchman Victor Bérard, who toured these parts in 1897, described the state of affairs in the following way: “The Albanians in this Slavic land are playing and will play the same role as the Kurds in the Armenian land. Captives of Islam and servants of the Master (sultan), they shall enjoy double impunity no matter how great their crimes.” For the European public as well as the 1899 peace conference at The Hague, Serbia prepared its Blue Book – Correspondence about Albanian Violence in Old Serbia 1898–99, which, however, was not put on the agenda at The Hague.61

In the convening of an Albanian parliament in Peć at the beginning of 1899, the Serbian envoy in Constantinople, Stojan Novaković, saw the inten-tion to “kill our complaints against the Albanian atrocities… that the Porte was not letting up… let come what may.”62 Montenegrin vojvoda Gavrilo —————

60 Писма српских конзула из Приштине..., 15–17, 61, 176. 61 Д. Т. Батаковић, Анархија и геноцид над Србима 1897–1912 (D. T.

Bataković, Anarchy and Genocide over the Serbs 1897–1912) in Косово и Метохија у српској историји (Kosovo and Metohija in Serbian History), Belgrade 1989, 16–17.

62 Писма српских конзула из Приштине..., 327–333.

Ottoman and Albanian violence against the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija 35

Vuković, commenting on the relationship between Constantinople and the Albanians, wrote the following: “Albania was the apple of the sultan’s eye.”63

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, in addition to the everyday violence against the Serbs, several pogroms also took place, such as the burning of the village of Verići near Peć, which was organized by Mula Zeka, the killings in the village of Čaglavica at the nod of the mufti of Priština, in Mitrovica by Isiyah Ferhat-agić (all in 1899), and, the most numerous, in Ibarski Kolašin in the summer of 1901, organized by Isa Boljetinac. The Albanians were roused to their feet by the proposed reforms at the turn of the century, which led to clashes with Turkey in 1901 and 1902. Тhey settled down at the beginning of 1904, having secured exemption from the reforms for the northwestern portion of the Kosovo vilayet.64

Amidst the growing brigandage of the kachaks in Kosovo and Meto-hija, a new leadership appeared within the Albanian movement, consisting of beys and leaders of fises, such as Isa Boljetinac, Bajram Curi, Hasan Priština and some others, with a minuscule number of intellectuals mixed in. The ma-jority of the former behaved like local lords with a large entourage, armed units, and covert ties with other states.65 Their policy toward Christians rested on a religious Muslim platform and ideology rather than on a national move-ment, as Italian scholar and political emissary Antonio Baldacci emphasized in 1899.66 It was the feudal-administrative and religious-Islamic circles that molded the uniform stance toward the Christians in Turkey and so skillfully imposed this ideology on the Albanians. The Islamized Serbian “Arnautaši” were “the Serbs’ bitterest enemies,” wrote the famous British historian Har-old Temperley.67 Having in mind the career of Isa Boljetinac and the treat-ment of the Serbs at the hands of the most hardened criminals, who subse-quently became the sultan’s adjutants, generals and pashas, B. Jugović wrote the following in 1904, as he toured Kosovo: “That’s the way Turkey is… as long as things in it continue going this way, there won’t be any progress.”68

————— 63 Ђ. Слијепчевић, Српско-арбанашки односи, 133. 64 В. Стојанчевић, Друштвено-политичке прилике..., 209. 65 М. Екмечић, Стварање Југославије, book II, 456. 66 Ibid, Историографија..., 27. 67 С. Терзић, Стара Србија у очима ‘Милосрдног анђела’: феномен историчареве

деструктивности (S. Terzić, Old Serbia in the Eyes of ‘Merciful Angel’: the Phenomenon of the Historian’s Destructiveness), in Одговор на књигу Ноела Малкома “Косово. Кратка историја” (Answer to Noel Malcolm’s Book, “Kosovo. A Brief History”), Belgrade 2000, p. 91.

68 Б. Југовић, Једна ретка књига (Успомене са пута у манастир Девич) (B. Jugović, One Rare Book /Memories of a Journey to Devič Monastery/), Дело II, 1906, XLI/II, 241.

Djordje Mikić 36

Somewhat earlier, Serbian consul Sveta Simić characterized the Turkish policy and Albanian atrocities in the following way: “The policy of both the Turkish authorities and the Albanian terrorists toward the Serbs is an expression of a policy whose task is: the disappearance of Serbs from these parts and the encirclement of Serbia with a strong wall made up of the worst Albanians…”69

The news from Serbia about the violence against Serbs and their emigration to Serbia are also confirmed by English historical records. Sir John Bonham wrote in 1901 about the flight of 40 Serbian families to Serbia because of Albanian terror, while English diplomat Young added the following in the same year: “Old Serbia is still a restive region because of the Albanians’ lawlessness, vengeance and racial hatred.” He noted that 600 Albanians, aided by 50 Turkish soldiers, succeeded by constant persecution in reducing a village of 60 Serbian households to one-fourth the number and that, between springtime and December of that year, 250 Serbian families had fled to Serbia.70 And British traveler Brailsford writes the following in 1906: “There are few Serbian villages that have not been looted bare on one occasion or another… A village suffers total deprivation for two or three years at a time and then, thanks to hard work, it manages to start a herd, only to have it stolen as well.”71 This Briton underlined that the Albanians “manifested semi-feudal terrorism” against the Slavic element.72

When, with the support of Austro-Hungarian diplomacy and its increasing propaganda against the Serbs, Old Serbia was excluded from the reforms in 1904, Serbia’s consul in Priština, Miroslav Spalajković, found the trail leading to the Albanian committee for the liquidation of Serbs, which was newly formed in Peć. In the project of bringing down the remaining “Serbian ramparts,” the Catholic “Fandas” began to play a more prominent role than the Albanian Mohammedans. At the head of the organization stood the Austro-Hungarian consuls in Old Serbia, while its soul was the clergy – the bishop with the friars. The Catholic leaders in Peć, such as Petar Angelo, consoled the Serbs with the words: “Just endure the pogroms for now; later, when Austria comes, there will be peace; for now it has to be like this, because those are the orders of the consulos and the friars.”73 This Catholic activity was also observed by B. Jugović in 1904, who noted: “Austria is —————

69 Писма српских конзула из Приштине..., 442. 70 С. Терзић, op. cit. 100. 71 H. Zdravković, Politika žrtve na Kosovu (Victim Politics in Kosovo), Belgrade 2005,

43–44. 72 С. Терзић, op. cit., 91. 73 Зулуми ага и бегова..., 232, 351.

Ottoman and Albanian violence against the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija 37

rubbing its hands with pleasure, for now the road to Thessalonica is wide open for her. The Serbian tribe is disappearing, and humane Europe has sanctioned this at an inconvenient hour.”74

In 1908, the Mohammedans concentrated in the Gnjilane area, where the Serbs outnumbered the Albanians, using the methods previously used by Albanian Mohammedans in Metohija and, after them, the Catholics. Similar areas in Kosovo were not spared either.75

The violence against the Serbs did not stop even after the Young Turks came to power in Turkey in 1908. They merely exchanged Abdul-Hamid’s pan-Islamism for pan-Ottomanism.76 And, despite the ceaseless clashes between the Albanians and the Young Turks, neither sought separation. In connection with this, Albanian Sami-bey Frasheri said: “…[T]he Turks found in the Albanians loyal and brave comrades-in-arms, while the Albanians found with the Turks a government that totally suited their tastes…” Ekrem- -bey Vlora says that well-known Young Turk Talat-pasha told him: “You have made much more avail of the power of the empire than have the Turks themselves.”77

Just as under the old regime, the Albanians plundered, burned, murdered and forced the Serbs from their property and their territory. Through the law on the return of abandoned and usurped properties from 1908–1909, the Young Turks transferred the properties of the Serbian exiles from Old Serbia into Mohammedan hands without any legal proof or property deeds, even before the law passed through the parliament in Constantinople. In this way, the Young Turks succeeded in legalizing the centuries-long Albanian appropriation of Serbian properties in Kosovo and Metohija. They also tolerated the pressure exerted by the Albanian landholders against the Serbian chifchis and the bringing of Albanians to replace them. This legalization of the Albanian usurpation further degraded the conditions for Serbian survival, not only of the chifchis but of the few remaining landowners as well.78 Even the lands of Dečani monastery and the Peć Patriarchate were transferred to Mohammedans. This Young Turk policy and the pressures of the beys upon the chifchis in Old Serbia led to the

————— 74 Б. Југовић, op. cit., 236–240. 75 Архив Србије – Београд, Министарство иностраних дела, Просветно про-

пагандно одељење 1908, ред 307, Приштина, 4. фебруара 1908, бр. 157, (бр. 653) (The Archive of Serbia – Belgrade, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Educational-Propaganda Section 1908, line 307, Priština, February 4, 1908, no. 157 /no. 653/).

76 Ђ. Микић, Друштвене и економске прилике…, 64, 65. 77 Ђ. Слијепчевић, Српско-арбанашки односи…, 106. 78 Зулуми ага и бегова..., 21–22, 525.

Djordje Mikić 38

opening of the so-called chifchi question, and their expulsion would have meant the end of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija.79 For, according to official data from 1911, more than 40% of the entire land of the Kosovo vilayet at the time lay in the hands of the landholders – the so-called beglers and agalars – while the greatest numbers of chifchis were located north of Kačanik.80 The status of the Serbian tenants was described by British traveler Brailsford in 1906 with the following words: “I tried to find out about what kind of a system of land rent this was. As a rule, my questions were met with a smile. The system of land rent in that land, where the Kur’an and the rifle were the only law, was what the Albanian area chieftain chose it to be. The Serbian peasants, the children of that soil, are tenants according to someone’s whim, exposed to every caprice of their domestic conquerors. Albanian highlanders conquer more of the plains each year, while the Serbian peasants flee before them year after year. Hunger, want and disease are the natural companions of that daily abuse.” 81

As it was easier for the landholders to exploit the Christian Serbs than the Albanian Muslims and Catholics, it may be said that it was the chifluk system that preserved what little of the Serbian peasants remained by the time of liberation in 1912. Their exact numbers can gathered from the records for about 330 villages in Kosovo, as well as some oases in Metohija, containing the first and last names of all the agas, beys and their Serbian chifchis.82

Sometimes even a single source, such as the book by Englishwoman Mary Edith Durham, Through the Serbian Lands from 1904, can aid in understanding the entire Ottoman and Albanian policy toward the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, as well as the state of these lands under the Ottomans. After traveling through Metohija in 1903, she summed up the entire picture in several sentences: “The story of Old Serbia is one of uninterrupted pain. The suffering of the Christian people in the Balkans is nothing new. It started with the coming of the Turks and shall continue as long as they are there. As far back as the year 1690, the unbearable lot of Old Serbia’s Serbs led to the emigration of no less than 37,000 cooperatives (family groups including uncles and their children) to Hungary. The Albanians proceeded to fan out over the deserted landholdings, and were subsequently allowed to perpetually plunder them with impunity.”83

————— 79 Ђ. Микић, Друштвене и економске прилике..., 124–136. 80 Вардар (Vardar), June 12, 1911, no. 46. 81 Н. Здравковић, op. cit., 44. 82 Ђ. Микић, Друштвене и економске прилике..., 137–234. 83 С. Терзић, op. cit., 90.

Ottoman and Albanian violence against the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija 39

A small number of contemporaries in all periods, aware of the historical Ottoman and Albanian violence against the Serbs in Metohija and Kosovo, searched for the answers to the causes of such a condition. Atanasije, a teacher living at the end of the 17th century and contemporary of the Serbian migration into Hungary and the increasing influx of Albanian tribes into Old Serbia, found the causes of the violence in the Islamization of these highlanders. As such, the Islamized nomads could take possession of the land belonging to the Serb emigrants and exiles, and kill them unobstructedly and without fear of blood retribution, as there was no protection of the state to speak of. And even when they converted to Islam, the Serbs were faced with harsher ramifications than were the Albanians: with the change of religion and language, they would also gain the label of “Arnautaši” (Albanized Serbs) in folklore. Austria, the “protectress” of the Christians, having withdrawn its army from a war in which it had invited the disenfranchised Christians to join it, left them to the terrible vengeance of the Ottomans, Tatars and Albanians. He observes: “The Serbs battled for freedom, but won even greater bondage.”84 Hieromonk and spiritual shepherd of the Serbs exiled from Kosovo and the surrounding areas, Gavril Stevanović Venclović, gave an account in his Молитва против крвавих вода (Prayer Against Bloody Waters) of how the people escaped from under the Turkish and Albanian sword, where “not even the Devil can hold the tyrant back,” for, before the lawless, terrible oppressors, “all our rights are nothing more than a cobweb…”85

The end of Ottoman rule was the same as its beginning. Nothing changed with the Turks and the Albanians. Thus, Bishop Nikolaj wondered: “Was there anyone in the world who did not take part in pushing the Balkan slave into his centuries-long darkness, closing all the windows through which light could shine on him.” He explained how the Turks had received from the Arabs their religion but not the Arab enterprise and creative spirit, and how, as nomads, they had retained two characteristics of nomadic peoples – warfare and sloth. This was why it was easy for the Turks to win the Albanian nomads over to the same way of life, i.e., to wage terror over the disenfranchised Serbian raya, and “destroy everything that opposed their whim by flame and sword.” Gligorije Božović testifies that brigands ruled from the sea to the Danube and that the general weakening of imperial

————— 84 В. Ђурић, Косовски бој у српској књижевности (V. Djurić, The Battle of Kosovo in

Serbian Literature), Belgrade 1990, 289. 85 Гаврил Стефановић Венцловић, Црни биво у срцу, (Gavril Stefanović

Venclović, A Black Bull in the Heart), Prosveta, Belgrade 1967, 124.

Djordje Mikić 40

authority brought terrible disobedience and chaos everywhere: “The outlawry of the pashas gave abominable examples. The beys and the agas became oppressors… raising their heads up with no regard to any authority or obligation… All manner of bandits are attacking the chifchis, no one can go out into the field from the terror. The poor raya cannot feed even itself, much less send to the pasha what is customary, yet they act with shame and embarrassment in order to escape reprimand: All among the living are abandoning their hearths and fleeing to other pashaluks or to Serbia.”86 This picture of the harsh lot of the Serbs living on Kosovo and Metohija’s fertile land, and its abandonment amidst the all-out Turkish and Albanian violence and lawlessness, is magnified by the words of Marko Miljanov: “Barren are the hills and mountains around Peć and Djakovica, around Dečani and the Patriarchate, around Kosovo and Prizren, all the way to Šar mountain! ...All the places are desolate and sad, up to the Šara and Kom… In all the places now rules the terrorist evildoer’s hand…There are no more of those that exchanged springs of tears for springs of blood! ...No mountain sons who defended liberty from their slopes and withstood all sufferings! ...No martyrs in those heights whose hearts did not allow them to look upon tears and listen to sighs! ...No! Such hearts have no peace or satisfaction… spiting not only the evildoers’ force and misdeeds but also the natural forces, the cold and the heat, and all troubles one could think of, despising death and life’s sufferings, which are often worse than death… There are none left that give themselves up to the hardest pains for the most shining oath which the blood of man and God’s truth recommend: to defend the blood of the just; to nurse the wounds of the Serbian martyred people, to never forget to elevate this candle to the altar of the Serbian tribe and of its name…”87

And that is the picture of today’s Kosovo as well, by the eternal Marko Miljanov!

Translation: Aleksandar Pavić

————— 86 Г. Божовић, Чипчија Дабижив, приповест (G. Božović, The Chifchi Dabiživ, a

Tale), Belgrade 1940, 15. 87 М. Миљанов, Живот и обичаји Арбанаса – Српски хајдуци (M. Miljanov, The Life

and Customs of the Albanians – Serbian Brigands), Графички завод, Titograd, 1967, 199.