BELGRADE (6 page)

In early 1717 Edward Wortley Montagu arrived in Belgrade on his way overland to take up the post of Ambassador to the Court of Turkey. He was accompanied by his wife, Lady Mary, whose correspondence tells a great deal about daily life in the Ottoman Empire. She wrote to her friend Alexander Pope on 12 February 1717 from Belgrade, describing how on entering Serbia they encountered the site of the last battle between Turks and Austrians: “I could not look without horror on such numbers of mangled human bodies, and reflect on the injustice of war that makes murder not only necessary but meritorious.” The English visitors, escorted into Belgrade by the pasha’s guard, were impressed by the fortifications of Kalemegdan, not knowing that it would soon fall to the Habsburgs before the year was out. Lady Mary’s letter confirms that this was an Ottoman city dominated by a cultured and sophisticated ruling class:

In the meantime, we are lodged in one of the best houses, belonging to a very considerable man amongst them, and have a whole chamber of janissaries to guard us. My only diversion is the conversations of our host, Achmed Bey, a title something like that of count in Germany. His father was a great pasha, and he has been educated in the most polite eastern learning, being perfectly skilled in the Arabic and Persian languages, and is an extraordinary scribe, which they call
effendi
. This accomplishment makes way to the greatest preferments, but he has had the good sense to prefer an easy, quiet, secure life to all the dangerous honours of the Porte. He sups with us every night, and drinks wine very freely. You cannot imagine how much he is delighted with the liberty of conversing with me. He has explained to me many pieces of Arabian poetry which, I observed, are in numbers not unlike ours, generally alternate verse, and of a very musical sound. Their expressions of love are very passionate and lively. I am so much pleased with them, I really believe I should learn to read Arabic, if I was to stay here a few months. He has a very good library of their books of all kinds and, as he tells me, spends the greatest part of his life there.

Under Habsburg administration after 1717, Belgrade quickly acquired the look of a European city. The Austrians added another storey to some of the larger buildings, or simply pulled them down to make way for their own Baroque architectural styles. Mosques were converted into churches or for other uses. Catholic priests and Franciscan monks replaced Muslim clerics and dervishes. The Turkish harems disappeared. The Austrians rebuilt the fortress, such that the overall shape of Kalemegdan today owes much to the efforts of their chief architect, the Swiss Colonel Nicholas Doxat. He strengthened the walls, added more towers and installed a more complex series of inner and outer walls, making it into one of the best defended bastions in Europe.

The population changed again as the Muslims left, and soldiers of fortune, who were prepared to gamble on a quick profit from the new frontier, filled the taverns and trading posts. They were a colourful and highly diverse group from all corners of Europe with representatives of all social classes. Unfortunately, but characteristic for the development of Belgrade, hardly anything remains of this frenetic building activity. It was not long before the Turks recouped their losses when the Austrians returned the city under the terms of the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739. Before leaving, however, they dismantled large parts of their fortifications in order to reduce Kalemegdan’s potential as a defensive position.

The Turks made an effort to rebuild the walls of Kalemegdan but not on their previous scale. They tore down the churches and other buildings erected under the Habsburgs and the city quickly reverted to its former appearance. This change in ownership was accompanied by the usual exchange of populations. The Christian townsfolk moved out, with the adventurers taking their chances elsewhere and the Serbs going north to what is now Novi Sad, while Muslim families took up residence once again.

The Austrians occupied Belgrade fifty years later, their war efforts assisted by Serbs fighting on their side, and despite all promises the city was yet again returned to Ottoman rule two years later in 1791. This time the Serbs were at least mentioned in the peace treaty drawn up between the two Great Powers who had spent a century fighting one another across Serbian lands. According to the treaty, the Serbs were to be given amnesty and allowed to remain in Belgrade, while Ottoman troops, principally those known as the janissaries, were to be denied access to the city. These troops were originally recruited from young Christian boys forcibly taken into the service of the empire, removed to Istanbul and brought up as Muslims. They formed an elite guard entirely loyal to the sultan and often used by him as a personal army to defend his interests against those who would try to usurp them. With time they became a powerful force in their own right and were responsible for some of the more draconian measures and oppressive policies against the Serbs. They were increasingly seen as a liability by the imperial authorities who made genuine efforts to build bridges with the local Serbs through the more conciliatory rule of their new pasha, Hadji Mustafa. The janissaries, however, were anxious to reassert their position and murdered him in 1801 inside Kalemegdan. They then established themselves alongside the powerful local lords, the Dahijas, as undisputed rulers of Serbia. A new chapter was about to open in the fight for control of Belgrade. It was not long before the Serbs rose in revolt against the tyrannical demands of the new regime.

There are just a handful of buildings in the centre of town, outside Kalemegdan, which represent Belgrade architecture before the nineteenth century. One of the rare examples of an Ottoman structure is the only remaining mosque in the city, the Bajrakli-džamija on Gospodar Jevrem Street. It was built about 1690 by the Sultan Suleiman II when the Turks retook possession of Belgrade. The name is taken from the word
barjak
meaning a flag or banner that would be flown from the minaret to give the signal to the other mosques that it was time to begin prayers. Jesuits moved in when the city was under Austrian rule 1717–1739 and it was converted into a Catholic church, the minaret serving as a bell tower. Reverting to its original function when the Austrians left, Bajrakli-džamija has reflected the changes of regime that are the hallmark of the city.

The house at 10 Tsar Dušan Street, near the corner with Kalemegdan, is the only surviving example of Habsburg Baroque architecture in a residential dwelling constructed between 1724 and 1727. Changes have been made to the façade and an extra storey was added in the nineteenth century, but its basic structure retains the imprint of the influence of the Austrian occupation of those years. Situated close to the other corner with Kalemegdan straight over the hill from Tsar Dušan Street, is a building originally erected at the end of the eighteenth century at 10 Gračanica Street. It appears as a family house on a plan of the city from 1789 but was altered by the new owner, Janko Marković, in about 1830. Its classically proportioned simple appearance emphasizes its straight horizontal lines with evenly spaced rectangular windows on the ground and upper floors. The look of the house and its construction in brick covered with plaster are reminiscent of other dwellings in Zemun, Pančevo, Sremski Karlovci and Novi Sad, towns in Habsburg territory. The house and its architecture attest to some continuing cultural influences in the city of European rather than Ottoman origin.

Generally speaking, however, frequent transformations of the cityscape have completely wiped out traces of older architecture. There are records of what were the larger and more important buildings from the pre-nineteenth–century period, but it is not always known exactly where they stood or what became of them. Somewhere close to 10 Tsar Dušan Street was a huge caravanserai, a place for merchants to stay with their carts, horses and camels while transporting goods through the Ottoman Empire. It also incorporated a covered market-place. The structure was erected between 1571 and 1574 by the powerful Ottoman Vizier Mehmed Pasha Sokolović (1505–79). He was, incidentally, one of those Christians taken as a boy from his home in Bosnia who rose to prominence in the imperial service. Some historians place his caravanserai at what is now 13 Tsar Dušan Street, while others locate the same building at the corner of Tsar Dušan and Tadeusz Kościuszko Street (another group even proposes an entirely different location). It is also known that after the Austrian capture of Belgrade in 1717 a headquarters for the new commander was built, the Palace of Eugene of Savoy. Yet it is disputed whether the palace was in fact made by adapting the caravanserai of Mehmed Pasha Sokolović, or a different building in Turkish Belgrade.

There have been many different Belgrades, following one after the other, but with little in common. The earthen huts of Bronze-Age tribes were replaced by a Celtic settlement, then by a Roman military camp, a Byzantine or Bulgarian or Hungarian fort, a Serbian capital, an Ottoman regional centre, even the Baroque outline of a Habsburg city. Each population brought its own language, religion and culture to bear on the territory. Not only has there been a lack of continuity, but the memories of one community have been erased by the next. The site has served as a centre for communications uniting disparate parts of larger administrative units, it has been a lawless frontier town and a lookout post between east and west. Numerous wars, occupations and the ensuing mayhem at each transformation have ensured that its past remains buried under layers of myth.

Belgrade’s is a complex and at times cruel story. Many poets have written verses about the city trying to express something of this image. Miloš Crnjanski wrote his “Lament over Belgrade” (Lament nad Beogradom, 1956) in which he addresses his home town after many years of living in exile, making an oblique reference to the whiteness of Kalemegdan’s walls: “You, however, spread, like a swan its wings,/oblivion over the Danube and the Sava, while they sleep.” And he closes that verse with the lines: “And when my head slumps forward and my hours stop,/You will, I know, kiss me like a mother.” Vasko Popa in his poem “Belgrade” (Beograd, 1965–71) expresses an altogether more chilling vision:

White bone amongst the clouds

You arise out of your pyre
Out of your ploughed-up barrows
Out of your scattered ashes

You arise out of your disappearance

The sun keeps you
In its golden reliquary
High above the yapping of centuries

And bears you to the marriage
Of the fourth river of Paradise
With the thirty-sixth river of Earth

White bone among the clouds
Bone of our bones

One of the main entrances into Kalemegdan Park today is from the pedestrian precinct of Knez Mihailo Street, along which the people of Belgrade come for an evening stroll or to have a drink at one of its many cafés. At the end of the street stands a nineteenth-century building originally designed as a hotel but now containing the City Library. Opposite the doorway into this rather ornate structure is a statue to the poet Milan Rakić (1876–1938). His work stands out among that of the poets from the early Modernist period before the First World War. He was also a career diplomat and served as Serbian consul in Kosovo between 1908 and 1911 when it was still a province of the Ottoman Empire. Across the road and inside the entrance to the park are many more such statues to literary and political figures whose contributions have been significant for Serbian culture and for creating a sense of modern Serbian identity. One of the first monuments is a relief showing Knez Mihailo, one of Serbia’s famous rulers, receiving the keys to the city of Belgrade from the Ottoman pasha when the Turks withdrew their last troops and administrators from the country in 1867. On the other side of the path stands a monument to Radoje Domanović (1873–1908), a satirical prose writer whose barbed observations entertained the Serbian reading public at the beginning of the twentieth century. Then come two of the more popular poets from around the same period, Jovan Dučić (1871–1943) and Aleksa Šantić (1868–1924). There is a statue further on, just off a path to the right, to the prose writer Borisav Stanković (1876–1927), who is often credited with introducing the form of the modern novel to Serbia. Close to him is a bust of Miloš Crnjanski (1893–1976), whose importance has already been noted, and not far from him is Jovan Skerlić (1877–1914). Skerlić was one of the dominant figures in Serbian intellectual, cultural and political life in the decade before the First World War, holding several important positions as university professor, literary critic, editor and politician.

From this entrance the path forks and skirts round a fountain, dating from 1906, of a fisherman struggling with a serpent. Sedate dances used to be held on the little square around the fountain in the 1920s and 1930s, giving the young men and women of Belgrade society an opportunity to meet, albeit under the watchful eyes of their chaperones. Straight ahead stretches one of the park’s more popular promenades overlooking the River Sava with its port down below and New Belgrade on the other bank. A broad set of stone steps leads down from this path to a small garden area and a monument with the graves of four men from the communist past. The busts displayed here commemorate the lives of Đura Đaković (1886–1929), Ivo Lola Ribar (1916–53), Ivan Milutinović (1901–44) and Moša Pijade (1890–1957). Đaković was a pre-war activist, Lola Ribar fell as a member of the communist-led Partisan movement resisting enemy occupation during the Second World War, Milutinović was also killed fighting for the Partisans during the battle to liberate Belgrade, and Pijade, besides being a painter, was a member of the Communist Party’s executive committee in 1921, arrested and imprisoned for his political activities in 1925, and holder of various high political offices after the Second World War. In the 1990s, when anti-communist feelings ran high, their busts were removed from their pedestals, but are now returned to their original position.