BELGRADE Read online

  The history books say that Belgrade was razed and put to the torch forty times. This, then, would mean that it was rebuilt forty-one times. Yet different each time, different from the preceding community, almost as if to deny its very existence.

  These words from 1989 bear an almost prophetic tone, coinciding with the time when Belgrade was on the verge of another major transformation, as the country of which it was then capital was about to dissolve in the Wars of Yugoslav Succession.

  The flat land of Vojvodina to the north was in some very far and distant past covered by a vast tract of water, the Pannonian Sea, which is still yielding occasional examples of prehistoric fossils. Archaeologists have also found plenty of evidence of life from more recent prehistory in the vicinity of Kalemegdan, which reveals that it has been a base for human activity for some eight thousand years. There are two large archaeological sites from the Neolithic period fairly close by. The closer one is to be found at Vinča, about ten miles from the centre of Belgrade. The other is situated further down the Danube at Lepenski Vir in the direction of the Black Sea where the startling remains of a settlement going back to 6000 BC were unearthed. The research undertaken on the very rich and varied finds from these diggings has been of huge significance for international scholarship in deepening our understanding of Neolithic communities, their methods of husbandry, their religious rites and culture generally. Objects from this period of the late Stone Age are on display in the National Museum (Narodni muzej) and the City Museum of Belgrade (Muzej grada Beograda).

  Although pickings from Kalemegdan and around the city centre itself have been sparser, there is evidence to support the view that a small settlement was established here in about the same period. Perhaps it functioned as a lookout post, a watchtower for the larger groups downriver. Later, tribes of Illyrians, Thracians and Dacians passed through here in periods of migratory activity during the Bronze Age from about 2000 BC to 800 BC.

  Evidence of early knowledge about Belgrade’s geographical location comes from the myths and legends passed down from generation to generation. The Homeric world knew that two important rivers met and provided a crossroads at this promontory. The rock overlooking the confluence has been identified as one of the places in the story of Jason and the Argonauts. Returning with the Golden Fleece, Jason and his crew sailed from the Black Sea up the Danube, then turned and steered down the Sava and followed its course in order to find an outlet into the Adriatic Sea before heading south for home. Greek classical authors, including Hesiod, have also left indications that they were aware of this location. From these Greek chroniclers we know that the Celts began to arrive in the area from the fourth century BC during their migration westward. They brought with them the culture and technology of the Iron Age, which they put to good use, soon driving out the Bronze-Age tribes who lived here. One of these Celtish tribes, the Singi, settled on the rock above the Sava and Danube where they built a simple wooden fortification in the third century BC.

  There are those, including Miloš Crnjanski, who maintain that some place-names around Belgrade have retained Celtic roots. Looking at the names of rivers, for example, Crnjanski writes that it is a mistake to think that the Sava and the Drava are somehow Slavonic words since they come from the Celtic roots aw and dur meaning water. (It has to be said that this etymological link has never been conclusively proven.) But whatever the truth of the debate, the site on which Kalemegdan Park now stands has played a significant role in events in the Balkan Peninsula since long before the birth of Christ. Different peoples and cultures from the ancient world have come and gone, each leaving some slight sign of their presence. These traces from archaeological, mythic and textual sources give us some idea of the earliest human activity around this place above the two rivers.

  FROM ROMAN CAMP TO SERBIAN CAPITAL

  The earliest visible traces of previous occupants at Kalemegdan were left by the Roman legions which fought the Celts and took their settlements along the Danube in order to secure the use of the river by Rome. These military missions were sent over a period of some forty years from 35 BC to AD 6. Having chased out the Celts, they began to build forts of their own in order to hold the ground already taken and prepare the way for further conquest in the region. The fort at Belgrade was home to more than 5,000 legionnaires and was one of a series of similar camps along the Danube. In an expansive and confident mood, the Roman conquerors turned to make a more permanent home for themselves, and around AD 69–80 replaced the wooden walls and structures with ones made of stone. They called their new settlement Singidunum, after the Celtish tribe which had prior ownership over the territory, and they stayed for another three centuries. Excavated finds from Belgrade’s Roman period are on display in the National Museum.

  As was common practice elsewhere in the empire, Singidunum became more than just a camp with a solely military purpose. On retiring from active service, soldiers would often make a home for themselves in the countryside surrounding their fortress. Meanwhile, Roman power in the region extended in all directions and Singidunum changed from being a frontier outpost to one of the nodal points in the imperial network of roads and river transportation.

  The city under Roman management was part of a secure imperial world and enjoyed one of its longest periods of peace and stability. The civilian population of Singidunum continued to grow outside the confines of the sturdy fortress walls, spilling into what is now Belgrade’s central district. Emperors passed through the region on their way to defend the imperial borders from marauding bands of outsiders, like Claudius II who marched his army in 268 via Singidunum to defeat the Goths near what is now the southern Serbian town of Niš.

  The Roman Emperor Constantine decided on a step that was to have profound consequences for the development of the Balkans and Europe generally, and which echoes down to the present day. He built a new imperial city on the shores of the Black Sea to be named after himself. Gavro Škrivanić of Belgrade’s Historical Institute, writing in An Historical Geography of the Balkans, comments on this development: “Konstantinopolis emerged from the old Greek town of Byzantium and was built under Constantine the Great in AD 330 and proclaimed as the capital of the Roman Empire. It had an exceptionally strategic position, and became one of the largest mercantile and communication centres of the world.” This rival to Rome is better known to the Serbs as Byzantium or Carigrad (City of the Tsar or Emperor); it was later renamed Istanbul after it fell to the Ottoman Empire.

  The Roman Empire effectively became two units: a western entity based on the power and the glory of Rome, and an eastern section administered by the new city. The Christian Church took root at the same time, promoted by Constantine who was the first emperor to be baptized, and it too was destined to be divided in two branches. The division was not complete until the Great Schism of 1054 when the leaders of the Church, the Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch in Byzantium, excommunicated one another, thus paving the way for the emergence of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

  The political and administrative arrangements for the initial partition of the empire led to a weakening of its defences, and Singidunum’s years of Pax Romana came to an end. The city was sacked by Goths in 378 and then again at the hands of Attila the Hun in 441. The local population was condemned to slavery and for nearly a hundred years the city ceased to exist. The Byzantine Emperor Justinian began a programme to rebuild it in 535, changing the name from the Roman Singidunum to the Hellenized version Singidon. The walls were constructed from the remains of the previous Roman fortress along with new stone and brick—handiwork that has left a confusing legacy for later archaeologists to sift through. Justinian’s project was constantly interrupted during the rest of that century by the Avars, another tribe who invaded the Balkans and laid siege to the city three times.

  During the sixth and seventh centuries fresh waves of newcomers crossed from the north into the Balkan Peninsula. These latest interlopers were the Slavs who came in search of pasture for their h
erds and made their way deep into the peninsula. Not much is known of them from this period although they are mentioned by Byzantine chroniclers. They were nomadic peoples who had no form of writing and, consequently, have left behind little evidence about their way of life, customs, rituals or religion. They were converted to Christianity in the ninth century by followers of the monks Cyril and Methodius.

  These two brothers were themselves of South Slav origin, from the region of Thessalonica, educated in the Greek rite of the Church, and commissioned by the Byzantine Empire to spread the Gospels among the Slavs. As speakers of a Slavonic dialect, their first task was to develop an alphabet that would make a suitable vehicle for translating the Holy Scriptures into a language comprehensible to all Slavs. The Cyrillic script still bears the name of its inventor who borrowed and adapted Greek letters with numerous additions and modifications in order to accommodate this system of writing to their Slavonic dialect which had some sounds that did not exist in Greek. The Slavs of the ninth century were linguistically much closer than they are today and it was possible to find enough common ground for the brothers’ translations to be widely accepted. Some Slavs, like the Slovenes, Croats and Czechs, later accepted the authority of the Church in Rome and abandoned the Cyrillic alphabet, taking up and using Latin as the lingua franca of the written word. Meanwhile, each Slavonic branch of the Orthodox Church, including the Serbs, developed its own liturgical language, influenced by developments in local speech patterns as their dialects evolved into distinct languages with separate although related vocabularies, grammars and pronunciation. The Orthodox Church not only brought the Bible and writing to the Slavs, but it also introduced them to the more sophisticated Byzantine models of social, political, economic and cultural organization which were gradually adopted in secular practices and forms of government.

  The terms Serb and Croat were used by Byzantine chroniclers to refer to some of the Slavonic tribes in the Balkans. The Serbs generally lived in the central region while the Croats settled in the west and north. The settlement standing where the Sava and Danube met acquired something of a Serbian population during the ninth century, but they were not a dominant presence. In a letter from Pope John VIII to the Bulgarian ruler Boris written in 878 we find the first mention of the name for the city in its Slavonic form, Beograd. It came under the jurisdiction of Bulgarian emperors, who challenged the supremacy of Byzantium in south-eastern Europe.

  Belgrade was recaptured by the Byzantine emperor in 1018, and it then became a bone of contention in the regional power struggle between Byzantium and the Hungarians, or Magyars, who moved into the territory north of the Danube. The city was treated as a commodity in political horse-trading. It was taken by the Hungarian King Solomon in 1072 after a long siege, only to be given back two years later when his son was betrothed to a Byzantine princess. In a similar move, the Hungarian ruler Bela III besieged and destroyed the citadel in 1127, but returned it as part of another marriage contract when he gave the hand of his daughter to the Byzantine emperor. Possession of the city passed rapidly from Bulgarian, to Byzantine, to Hungarian control and back again.

  SERBIAN RULE

  It may seem a strange thing to say today, as one stands in Kalemegdan in the capital of the modern Republic of Serbia, that Belgrade did not feature in the appearance of the first independent Serbian kingdom. The centre of Serbian power was established further south around the area of Raška. The Serbs were split into disparate clan groups based on extended families. Then, one of their leaders, Stefan Nemanja, managed to win the allegiance of the others so that he could proclaim himself to be local overlord in 1169. Abdicating in 1196, he took holy orders and retired to a life of quiet contemplation in the Serbian monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos. His dynasty ruled Serbia for the next two hundred years.

  His son, also called Stefan, wanted a crown for himself and the status of a kingdom for his country in order to cement its independence. The Byzantine authorities, in whose religious and political sphere Serbia lay, refused his request. Determined to achieve his goal, however, he approached Rome, and the Catholic Church obliged by sending a Papal legate to anoint him in 1217. Having fulfilled his ambition, he proceeded to shift Serbia’s allegiance back to Byzantium and secured the right to establish an autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church. His own brother, Sava, a pious monk from Mount Athos, became the first archbishop of this newly-formed institution. Sava was later canonized and adopted as the patron saint of Serbia.

  Dragutin became the first Serbian king to rule from Belgrade in 1284 when he was given the city by the Hungarian King Stephen V whose daughter, Katarina, he married. The city, now linked to the Serbian lands further south and its natural hinterland, was in an advantageous position to expand. Under Dragutin’s stewardship the population grew and trade developed. The king paid particular attention to building churches and Serbian influence quickly spread around the city. News of his success in this regard reached Rome and in 1290 provoked a letter of protest from the Pope who was concerned that the Orthodox Church was supplanting the Catholic Hungarian culture of the area. Dragutin died in 1316 and the position of Belgrade again came into question. The city was claimed by Dragutin’s successor, his brother King Milutin, and by the Hungarian crown which had given the city as part of a marriage contract. The Hungarians regarded Belgrade as strategically important for their security and, launching an attack in 1319, they captured the city again.

  Meanwhile, during the fourteenth century the Serbian kingdom to the south of Belgrade became a powerful empire under Dušan the Mighty (Dušan Silni). The emperor twice took his armies to the very walls of Byzantium and his territory extended over Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, northern Greece, Albania and much of Bosnia and Dalmatia. Even so, he was unable to retake Belgrade. His untimely death in 1355 precipitated a power vacuum and left the country in a weakened position. Byzantium, thanks to Serbia’s efforts, also lost much of its former influence. Taking advantage of this predicament, the Ottoman Empire, the largest Muslim power in the world, began to expand from its base in Asia and threaten the Balkan Peninsula. Its army under Sultan Murat met a coalition of Serbs and other Christian forces led by the Serbian Prince Lazar at the Battle of Kosovo on 28 June 1389. According to contemporary accounts, neither side won a decisive victory and both withdrew from the field with the loss of their leaders. But in Serbian myth the Battle of Kosovo is considered a defeat and the beginning of the end for Serbian independence. The Serbian nobles quarrelled amongst themselves while Ottoman forces slowly consolidated their presence in the region. With this increasing competition from their enemies the centre of Serbian interests slowly shifted from the southern provinces further north.

  A new Serbian ruler, Despot Stefan Lazarević, opened negotiations with the Hungarians and was able to make Belgrade his capital in 1403. By this time the city and its fortress were greatly damaged and depopulated because of frequent attempts to take it by the other powers in the region. Despot Stefan, determined to strengthen the city’s fortifications, extended the walls of his citadel down to the Sava and Danube, thus encompassing for the first time the upper reaches of the fortress with the lower area by the rivers in one defensive whole supported by a series of towers. Under his building programme the city was much more resilient to attack both from the river and from land. In his book The Life of Despot Stefan Lazarević, Constantine the Philosopher has left many descriptions of Stefan’s Belgrade above the rivers “where a gleaming white castle is under construction.” (He also tends toward a certain hyperbole in some of his claims: “And who is able to say in writing what is the situation, appearance and beauty of Belgrade!”) When Stefan died in 1427, the Hungarians again occupied Belgrade forcing his successor, Đurađ Branković, to move the Serbian capital further down the Danube to Smederovo. From then until the nineteenth century the city was lost to the Serbs.

  TAKEN BY THE TURKS

  Ottoman forces besieged Belgrade unsuccessfully in 1456 when the city’s defence was le
d by the Hungarian Janos Hunyadi. Yet the huge military organization of the Ottomans could not be stopped so easily and Belgrade finally fell to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1521. As the Ottoman armies advanced into the Balkans, cities passed into the hands of the new colonial administrators. Much of the urban Christian population “chose to withdraw to inaccessible mountains where they founded new settlements,” explains Nikolai Todorov in his book The Balkan City 1400–1900. The cities were significant points in the Ottoman imperial system of communications and security. They existed to maintain authority over the local population and protect trade routes. By the second half of the sixteenth century Muslims formed a majority of the urban population in Serbia. The conquering army drove out the whole civilian population from Belgrade, while a totally new community moved in.

  The city duly went through one of its frequent and complete transformations, belonging to a foreign empire, governed by men of a different religion, subject to a radically changed way of life. The Serbs usually referred to their new masters as Turks, or in Serbian Turci, although the term is inaccurate as the administrators, soldiers and governors in the service of the Ottoman Empire could come from any part of its vast territories.

  The new masters called Belgrade Dar ul Jihad, or House of the Holy Wars, giving the name Kalemegdan (from kale town and megdan battlefield) to the fortified area where previously Celts, Romans, Byzantines, Bulgarians, Hungarians and Serbs took turns to look out over the two rivers. The fort housed a garrison of troops and was the seat of political power for the pasha, or governor, sent by the Sultan to rule the province in his name. Craftsmen and artisans came from the interior of the empire to provide services for them, men who consolidated the oriental look and feel of the place, dominated by Islamic codes of dress, food and social ritual.