Travel in Belgrade, Serbia - History

Belgrade - History

Capital of Yugoslavia Belgrade (Serbian: Beograd ), is one of the oldest cities in Europe.

Archaeological finds indicate that the site has been inhabited for 7,000 years. Around 600 B.C. Thracian-Cimmerian and Scythian tribes crossed the territory of Belgrade, and in the early 3rd century B.C. Celts penetrated into this area. The Celtic Scordisci tribe funded a settlement here named Singidunum. Early in the 1st century, the Romans captured Singidunum. For the four centuries following the arrival of the IV Flavin legion in 86 A.D., the town flourished.

With the Roman Empire, Singidunum was incorporated into the Eastern Empire. Frequent incursions of barbarians during the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries weakened the imperial frontier; Singidunum became the target of Ostrogoths, Gepids, Sarmatians, Avars and Slavs. Taking advantage of the weak defences of the Byzantine Empire, during the 6th century, the Slaves increasingly crossed the Danube (the biggest invasion being in 550) and during the 7th century they settled in Singidunum.

On the ruins of the ancient Celtic and Roman Singidunum a new town grew up with a purely Slav name - Beligrad (White Town). Under this name it is mentioned in a historical document from 878.

During the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, Belgrade fell in turn under Bulgarian, Byzantine and Hungarian rule. With the creation of the extensive empire of Samuilo of Macedonia, Belgrade once more changed hands. Following the collapse of Samulio's empire, it reverted to Byzantium, serving as an important frontier stronghold.

At the time of King Dragutin, in 1284, Belgrade came under Serbian rule for the first time. The city attainted the culmination of its medieval development in the reign of Despot Stefan Lazarevich (1403-1427) when it became the Serbian capital for the first time. The Turks captured it on August 29, 1521.

In the poem The ruin of the Serb kingdom, which belongs to the Serb oral tradition collected by Vuk Karadzic , the king Lazar is visited, immediately before the battle of Kosovo (1389), by a grey hawk holding in the mouth a swallow. However, the grey hawk was not a hawk but Saint Elias, and the swallow was not a swallow but a letter from the Mother of God. The hawk deposited the letter on the knees of Lazar, and the letter began to speak, proposing the following alternatives. If he prefers the kingdom of this Earth, then he should prepare himself and his army with the weapons for the battle, and all the turks would be killed and the great battle would be won. If, on the contrary, he rather likes to belong to the kingdom of the heavens, he should build a church on the field of Kosovo where he was to meet the turks, and himself with all his soldiers should get the Holy Communion; but later he and all his soldiers would be killed, and the decisive battle lost.

Then king Lazar considered by himself what he would rather do, and having thought that the earthly kingdom is anyway small and limited in time, while the heavenly kingdom is infinite and ethernal, he decided to chose the latter. Thus he built the church and performed the religious rites, following exactly the instructions received from the Mother of God; the next day, after a long and terrible battle, he was defeated by the turks and killed, together with all his soldiers.

This traditional song, preserved for many centuries -of course with many transformations, and with little care for the details of the historical events- for having been song with the accompaining music of single string fiddle, must represent a very strongly held belief. All along the centuries of the Turkish domination, after all resistance had been crushed, when all the rare uprisings only resulted in massacres, the Serbs kept copying their icons and singing their legends, thus preserving their language, culture, religion, and national identity. Only in the 19th century they were able to fight, with some reasonable chance of success, against the turks; the first Serb high school , in which a new Serb speaking intellectual elite could be formed, was created during the first Belgrade uprising of 1806-1813, and Vuk Karazic was one of the first students.

The legend of king Lazar is of course susceptible of different interpretation, but a possible one is that the Serb were deeply convinced that it is better to be right, to preserve their own way of thinking, rather than to be successful in the military and economic sense, as they never were for centuries. Actually, the ones who give up, and become Muslims, do not consider themselves, and are not considered, Serb any more.

Since I do not believe in neutral, objective knowledge, and even less in neutral touristic guides, I have done many comments and I apologize if I have offended somebody, but I will nevertheless stand for my own opinion. However, I would like to give a single, final comment which is as far from neutral as it could be.

Let us try to answer the following question: suppose king Lazar is reborn now. If presented with the following alternative: should the Serb nation either chose to reaffirm that it has preserved, even against the odds and the persecutions (not only by the turks), the culture, the spirit, and the morality by which it is a nation in its own right, but within the framework of European culture, spirit, and morality; or, should the Serbs prefer a small kingdom of this world, may be in the form of some villages where other Serb either live or used to live? Guess what king Lazar would chose.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, Belgrade changed hands between Turkey and Austria several times, on each occasion suffering further damage, and being reconstructed. In the Austro-Turkish war of 1717-1718, following his victory at Petrovaradin (Novi Sad), Prince Eugene of Savoy captured Belgrade on August 18, 1717. Aware of its great strategic importance, he ordered the reconstruction of the fortifications according to the Vauban system. After the Austro-Turkish war 1737-1739, Belgrade again came under the Turkish rule and the fortress appearance was once more altered. The cruelty and oppression to which they were subjected roused the Serbian people to rebellion, with the aim of throwing off Turkish rule and its feudal system, in 1804. The Serbian insurgents under Karadjordje (Black George) Petrovich captured the town of Belgrade at the end of 1806, and the fortress early in 1807.

Under Karadjordje (1806-1813), Belgrade became the administrative, political and cultural centre of liberated Serbia. From 1807, the highest state body, the Legislative Council met in the city. The first high school for educating the Serbian youth was established.

Belgrade's importance continued to grow during the time of Prince Milosh I Obrenovich, particularly after 1830 when gained autonomy. Around the turn of the century Belgrade expanded rapidly; the influx of people raised its population to 90,000 by 1910.

During World War I, the Austrian army captured Belgrade. After the breakthrough on the Salonika front, the Serbian army liberated Belgrade and on November 5, 1918 entered Zemun, just across the river, ending two centuries of Hapsburg rule over the Serbian people living north of the Danube and Sava rivers. The interwar period was one of intensive expansion for Belgrade, capital of the newly founded Yugoslav state.

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