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914.96 Se22t 1877 vol.1
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
3 1197 22728 2404
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TRAVELS IN
THE SLAVONIC PROVINCES OF TURKEY-IN-EUROPE
SERBIAN BORDER GUARD.
■jik
TRAVELS IN
FHE SLAVONIC PROVINCES OF TURKEY-IN-EUROPE
By G. MUIR M.
■^'■«vjSS~
THE SL^ OF Tli
^iibf .....r
BiG.J(UIR
THE KiGi:: :
TRAVELS IN
THE SLAVONIC PROVINCES OF TURKEY-IN-EUROPE
By G. MUIR MACKENZIE and A. P. IRBY
WITH A PREFACE BY
THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
IN TWO VOLUMES.— I.
SECOND EDITION REVISED
LONDON DALDY, ISBISTER & CO,
56, LUDGATE HILL
1877
LONDON
PRINTED BV VIRTUE AND CO. LIMITED CITY ROAD
THE SECOND EDITION OF THIS WOEK
IS TO
SOPHIA, LADY MXJIR MACKENZIE,
OF DELVINE, IN TOKEN OF LOVING ESTEEM;
AND IN MEMORY OF HER DAUGHTER,
WHOSE NAME STANDS ON THE TITLE PAGE;
WHO MARRIED, IN 1871, SIR CHARLES SEBRIGHT, BARON d'eVERTON, AND WHO DIED IN CORFU, JANUARY, 1874.
The Illustrations are from Original Sketches by F. Kanitz, Author of ^'Serbien," ^'Bulgarien," &c. The greater portion of the Text of the First Edition was Contributed by Gr. Mxjir Mackenzie, and has been Eevised for this Edition by A. P. Irby, who has added the Three Chapters : " Bosnia in 1875," ^' Journey in Bosnia in August, 1875," "Bosnia in 1876-7."
PEEFACE.
TTNTIL our own day, it has never been possible for the people of one country to obtain trustworthy informa- tion respecting the contemporary condition of the people of another. The press, the telegraph, the railway, the large and costly development of diplomatic and consular establishments, and the usages of popular governments, have, in their several manners and degrees, contributed to place within our reach this description of knowledge, in other times substantially inaccessible. In the general absence of it is to be found the best excuse for the seemingly heartless manner in which the statesmen of a bygone generation have argued for the maintenance of the Ottoman Government with a view to the general convenience of Europe, while they have seemingly omitted from the case all consideration of the question, how far the Porte fulfilled or defeated the main purpose for which every government exists — namely, the welfare of those beneath its rule. With the possession, even the partial possession, of such knowledge, we have obtained a great advantage. But we have also come under a new and very grave responsibility. We cannot now escape from the consciousness that we are dealing with ques-
viii PREFACE.
tions wliicli gi'eatly involve the happiness or misery of many millions of human beings, whose condition we had formerly omitted from our calculations. In the case of Greece, the recollected glories of the past and the scandal of the servitude of a race once illustrious, were associated vrith the arguments drawn from the distm-bance of the Levant, and probably told more in the production of the result than any keen sense of the specific character of Turkish oppression.
But, although this important change has been effected, it still remains a matter of difficulty, as well as of desire, that this knowledge, in cases with which we have chosen to concern ourselves, should be trustworthy, should be complete, and should be effectual. So to be concerned, is indeed a matter of great inconvenience, and even mis- chief. Ill able to cope with the problems which appertain to our own affairs, we can yet worse afford to meet drafts upon our care and attention for settling the affairs of others. Happily or unhappily, we have taken upon our- selves a heavy charge of this kind in the case of Tui'key. Some found themselves upon British interests, others upon general duty, others upon the specific obligations growing out of our anterior proceedings, and especially out of the Crimean war. But all, or very nearly all, are agreed, that the question of the Ottoman Empire is one from which we cannot wholly with(Jraw. Yery nearly all, whether freely or reluctantly, now confess that in treating it we cannot refuse to look at the condition of the subject races. And if we are to include that element of the case in our view, it is most important that we should sec it as clearly and fully as may be possible.
PREFACE. ix
I do not mean to disparage the labours and services of others when I say that, in my opinion, no diplomatist, no consul, no traveller, among our countrymen, has made such a valuable contribution to our means of knowledge in this important matter, as was made by Miss Mackenzie and Miss Irby, when they published, in 1867, their travels in some of the Slavonian Provinces of Euro- pean Turkey. I shall not now dwell upon the infor- mation they have given us with respect to Montenegro : for, although it is highly interesting and instructive, it is subsidiary to the main part of the volume, on which I now dwell. Here, much more than in any other work I have been able to discover, is exhibited to view without passion or prejudice, as well as without reserve, the normal state of life among the subject races, the standing relation both between them and their government, and likewise between them and those Mahommedans, mainly descended from renegades, who are at once their fellow-subjects and their masters. At the time when these ladies undertook a mission of the purest philanthropy with a view to the diffusion of education in the Provinces, the Eastern question did not, among ourselves, wear even in the slightest degree the aspect of a party question. There was nothing from this side to disturb a perfect rectitude of view. It was still more important, that there was then nothing occasional, nothing exceptional, in the condition of the Provinces themselves. They had been, for some time, what would be called in Turkey tranquil. The journey was indeed one which would never have been undertaken except by ladies endowed with a courage and resolution
X PREFACE.
as remarkable as their discernment and their benevolence. But they were able at the time to draw, with steady hand, all the lineaments of a picture, which is the picture of Ottoman rule over a Christian majority at its best, and in the absence of all exasperating circumstances. Without studying pictures so taken, our knowledge of the Tui'kish question must be essentially defective, and more or less misleading. The condition exhibited in it is that which determines the true measure of happiness or misery, groT\i:h or retrogression, elevation or depression, in the ordinary human life of these provinces. It shows us also the point of departure, from which begin the terrible processes, not indeed without example in former times, but never so fully exhibited to the view of Christendom as in the Bulgarian massacres of 1876, now ineffaceable from the memory of civilized mankind.
We thus come to learn, that there are two distinct phases of existence for the subject races of Turkey : the ordinary, and the exceptional. The exceptional phase comes when the ruling race finds or thinks itself threat- ened in the key of its position. This is on the rare occa- sions, when oppression is felt to be absolutely intolerable, and the down-trodden rayahs, appealing to force, seek to obtain their rights by the same instrument which has been the source and the vehicle of all their wrongs. Other conquerors, such as the Greek or the Eoman, have relied, along with force, upon intellectual supe- riority, and upon the communication of benefits to the conquered. The Ottoman Turk, with his satellites, has relied upon force alone. Whatever intellect he has at any time displayed, and it has not always been small,
PREFACE. xi
has been intellect addressed to the organisation and application of force. The rebellions rayah for once meets him on his own ground. He is in a manner compelled to develop and apply on these occasions the whole of his large inventory of the weapons of violence and torture, and other yet worse and baser means of inflicting agony upon his subjects. For, if these instru- ments fail, he has nothing in reserve. It is now, there- fore, coming to be understood, that the indescribable proceedings of last year in Bulgaria were not due to passion, ignorance, or accident ; but to method, policy, and principle : the ends sought were absolutely vital to Turkish power as it exists in these Provinces, and the instruments chosen were admirably adapted to the ends.
"With reference to this, which I have called the excep- tional phase of existence under the Ottoman Power, Miss Irby, in the new edition of her work, has supplied illustrations of very great interest and importance. Although a considerable portion of the Metropolitan daily press systematically suppresses the too copious evidence of continuing Turkish outrages in Bulgaria, this portion cannot control its remaining organs, and it has become generally known that the reign of terror is still prolonged in that unhappy Province, and that what was done last May to hundreds and thousands is still, and daily, done to units, or fives, or tens. If the tem- pest has passed by, the swell still continues. Ottoman security is felt to depend upon keeping alive in the mind of the subject races the memory of the great massacres \ for on the mirror of the past is drawn the
xii ^ PREFACE,
image of the future. The work of Miss Irby, with the chapters she has added, widens our perspective. I have myself stated, months back, to the public that, while we were venting indignation about Bulgaria, the Turk was doing the very same foul work, though not on the same imperial scale, in Bosnia. The Manchester Guardian has rendered important public service with respect to the same afflicted region, through its very valuable correspondence. Eut Miss Irby, after her long and self-sacrificing experience, speaks with a weight of dispassionate authority, to which neither I nor any correspondent of a public journal can pretend. She now discloses, and that down to the latest date, upon information which she knows to be trustworthy, a state of things which exhibits a greater aggregate of human misery flowing from Turkish rule, than even the Bul- garia of 1876 could show. In Bosnia and the Herze- govina more than a third of the population are exiled or homeless; the mass of these (as we now learn) reduced to an allowance of a penny a day, but rather preferring to travel, and that rapidly, the road to famine and to pestilence, than to descend, by returning, into the abyss of a suffering which is also shame ; and with this, the constant and harrowing recurrence of the cruel outrages, which are more and more fastening themselves, as if inseparable adjuncts, upon the Turkish name.
" I nunc, et versus tecum meditare cancros."
Teach, you who will, the duty of dealing effectually with the insuiTcction, and setting up again that fabric of Turkish rule over a Serbian people, which,
PREFACE, xiii
amidst all this misery, we may hope is tottering to its final fall.
Such is the aid Miss Irby gives ns towards the attain- ment not merely of a theoretical, but of a practical and living knowledge with reference to the condition of the Slav Provinces of Turkey after an insurrection. I how- ever attach not a less, perhaps even a greater, importance to the less exciting picture which is drawn in the older part of the work. By the simple, painstaking communi- cation of the particulars supplied from daily experience, it presents to us in comparatively quiet landscape, rayah life, under Turkish mastery, in the best condition it could attain, after many long years of peace for the Empire abroad, and of reforms promised at home, with facilities for effecting them such as are not likely to return. And what was rayah life under these happier circumstances ? It was a life never knowing real se- curity or peace, except when the Government and its agents were happily out of view. A life which never had any of the benefits of law, save when the agents of the law were absent. A life in which no object, that was valued, could be exposed. A life which left to the Christian nothing, except what his Mahommedan master did not chance to want. A life in which wife and daughter, the appointed sources of the sweetest consola- tion, were the standing occasions of the sharpest anxiety. A life debased by cringing, poisoned by fear, destructive of manhood, shorn of the freedom which is the indispen- sable condition of all nobleness in man, and shorn too of every hope, except such as might lie in an escape from it to some foreign land; or in the dream of a future
XIV PREFACE.
redemption, wliich we may think to be now probably at band, when acute suffering has been substituted for dull chronic pain, and when a people, too long patient, seems to be at length determined, in vindicating its own rights, to A'indicate the insulted laws of the Most High.
W.E.G.
April 10th, 1877.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
-♦-
CHAPTER I.
PAOB
BOSNIA IN 1875 1
CHAPTER II.
JOURNEY IN BOSNIA IN AUGUST, 1875 24
CHAPTER III.
BOSNIA IN 1876-7 . 35
CHAPTER IV.
SALONICA IN 1863 54
CHAPTER V.
BULGARIA VIEWED FROM SALONICA. PART I (55
CHAPTER VI.
BULGARIA VIEWED FROM SALONICA. PART II 83
CHAPTER VII.
FROM SALONICA TO MONASTIR 90
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ANCIENT BULGARIAN CAPITAL AND THE MODERN TURKISH TOWN 102
xvi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
king's son maeko : his castle and his story . . .115
PA«E
CHAPTER X.
THE BULGARIAN TOWNS OF PRILIP AND VELESA . . .128
CHAPTER XI.
VISIT TO THE MONASTERY OF RILO, IN AUGUST, 1862 . . .145
CHAPTER XII.
THE CITY OF JUSTINIAN .158
CHAPTER XIII.-
KATCHANIK , 1^8
CHAPTER XIV.
THE BATTLE-FIELD OF KOSSOVO ...... 182
CHAPTER XV.
THE MONASTERY OF GRATCHANITZA, AND THE TOWN OF PRISHTINA 198
CHAPTER XVI.
STARA SERBIA • 209
CHAPTER XVII.
FROM PRISHTINA TO VUCHITERN 228
CHAPTER XVni.
VUCHITERN 234
CHAPTER XIX.
FROM ARNAOUTLUK INTO BOSNIA 252
CONTENTS. xvii
CHAPTER XX.
PAGE
NOVI BAZAAE ......... 265
CHAPTER XXI.
THE BOSNIAN BORDERS — NOVI BAZAAR TO TUTIN . . . 285
CHAPTER XXII.
THE BOSNIAN BORDERS — TUTIN TO ROSHAl . . . . . 298
YOL. J.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
VOL. I.
SERBIAN BORDER GUARD ..... FrontispiCCe
MAP OF THE SOUTH SLAVONIC PROVINCES . . . faCWg p. 1
SALONICA ON THE ^GEAN ....... 54
BULGARIAN PEASANTS, WITH BULGARIAN MERCHANT AND HIS SON CATHEDRAL OF OCHRIDA ......
BULGARIAN MONASTERY OF RILO ....
MAP OF STARA (oLd) SERBIA .....
SPECIMEN OF SERBIAN ARCHITECTURE MUSSULMAN BEYS AND CHRISTIAN PRIEST .
INTERIOR OF SERBIAN CHURCH MANASSIA .
SERBIAN PEASANTS AND CITIZENS OF A COUNTRY TOWN BOSNIAN RAYAH PAYING TRIBUTE ....
69
loa
151 209 212 255 275 281 311
■^
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t^
Map
SOUTH iimwmi^
COUNTRIES
^^^i^^^V^-r shown tTtus ^-..^ Explanation of Colours
-Serbian Greece
^^^■fVecL.
iH
CHAPTEE I
BOSNIA IN 1875.
^pHE rearguard of Mahommedanism in Europe maintains its last stronghold in the Turkish vilayet of Bosnia. Here, as the religion of the ruling caste, Islam has had a trial of nearly four centuries. What fruits has it borne ?
In geographical position the nearest to European civi- lisation, but in social condition the most barbarous of the provinces of Turkey in Europe, Bosnia, including Turkish Croatia and the Herzegovina, extends to a point west of the longitude of Yienna, and interposes a savage and Oriental aspect between the Dalmatian shores of the Adriatic and the advancing culture of Serbia, Hungary, and Croatia. Cross the frontier from these lands, and you may fancy yourself in the wilds of Asia.
The soil of Bosnia teems with various and valuable minerals, her hills abound in splendid forests, her well- watered plains are fertile and productive, her race, under culture, proves exceptionally gifted. Yet her commerce is contemptible ; '-'- flums^'' to quote the report of Mr. Consul Holmes for 1873, being " the most valuable article of trade in the province ; " her population is un- educated, not one man in a hundred knowing how to read, and the chief town, Serajevo, which contains from forty to fifty thousand inhabitants, possessing not a single book shop.
VOL. I. B
2 BOSNIA IN 1875.
One or two English speculators have been tempted to inquire into the mineral riches of the land, but have prudently retired, being unable, on the one hand, to come to satisfactory terms with the government, and, on the other, to find a company to work the mines in face of the vexatious hindrances which baffle all enterprise under the present regime. The immense mineral wealth re- mains untouched.
An Austrian company has obtained some sort of local concession to work all the mines of coal, lead, and cop- per, within thirty miles of the proposed line of railway. But this concession has not yet received the needful ratification at Constantinople, and it appears that the Turks have a peculiar disinclination to give their neigh- bours, the Austrians, any footing in Bosnia. The beau- tiful marble of the country, white, and white with red streaks, is put to but sorry use in the rough Turkish pavements. Stone for building purposes is plentiful: yet even in Serajevo, wood, rubble and shingles still prevail ; only here and there brick and stone houses, roofed with tiles, are beginning to appear.
A road now leads from Brood on the Save to Serajevo, a distance of about one hundred and thirty-eight English miles, along which passes once a week each way the post cart of the Austrian consulate in Bosnia ; three places on the hay in the springless vehicle may be hired by those who do not object to jolt on continuously for two days and a night, or more. If a private cart be taken from Brood, at least three nights must be spent on the way, sleeping at khans, the discomfort of which is not to be described. It is necessary to take bed and bedding, or at least a mattress, and moreover to command the immediate expulsion of the carpets, mats and cushions, which form the only furniture of the rooms. A road is in course of completion from Serajevo to the Dalmatian fron-
I
BOSNIA IN 1875. 3
tier by way of Mostar, the chief town of the Herzegovina. Two years ago the rough carts of the country might be driven to Livno, and thence across the Austrian frontier to Spalato on the Adriatic ; but the Turkish portion of this road is now impassable. There is a road from Serajevo by Travnik and Banjaluka to Gradishka on the Save, and other cart-roads and fragments of roads exist, but they are constantly out of repair and the bridges in most uncertain condition.
It is possible to traverse this rude land in many direc- tions, on foot or on horseback, rejoicing in the ever changing beauty of mountain, wood, and water, Avhich is enlivened by the rich colouring and picturesque variety of national costume. But the traveller may journey on for days, and he will come upon no works of modern enterprise, no monuments of ancient medieeval art. He may, indeed, if he search diligently, and if he know where to look, discover beneath weeds and brushwood, or scanty tillage, traces of Eoman roads, one of which led across the province from Scissia (Sisseg) on the Save to Salona on the Adriatic. Such tracks of ancient passage he may find for the searching, and what is likely to be more to his purpose, he may come upon the fragment of a modern railway, lying detached and unconnected on the Bosnian plains. Along this railway, without beginning and without end, a train used to run once a day each way, conveying a ludicrously small average of goods and passengers between the village of Novi and the more important town of Banjaluka. The ideal and fragmentary nature of the achievement was owing to the collapse of the contract between an Aus- trian company and the Tm-kish government ; but the whole, of which it should form a part, may some day become our main highway to India. It is to be seen on the map of the '^ Continental Guide," where Bradshaw
B 2
4 BOSNIA IN 1875.
has traced in anticipation a railway (elsewliere, by-the- bye, prophetically designated a branch of the great Euplirates Yalley Eailway), which, trending eastward off the well-known Semmering line between Vienna and Trieste, and traversing a part of Croatia, may at some future time cross Bosnia, Old Serbia, and Bulgaria, to Salonica and Constantinople. Such means of passage through the land, viz., lost Eoman roads, of which scarce a trace remains, and the projected Turkish rail- ways, of which, save the fragment here noted, not a Bosnian sod has been turned, constitute the chief works — with the exception of the roads, telegraphs, and bridges of the last few years, I should rather say the only works, for which Bosnia is indebted to ancient Eoman and modern Turkish enterprise.
But what traces do we find of the intermediate cen- turies which elapsed before a part of the Eoman pro- vince of Mcesia became the Turkish pasLalik of Bosnia ? Euined castles of the ancient feudal nobility, ruins of Serb and Latin churches and (convents ; and the three Franciscan convents of Foinica, Xreshevo, and Sudiska, which, endowed with special privileges, have been main- tained from the fifteenth centuiy to the present day. The Paterenes, or Bogomiles, the early Dissidents of Bosnia, were very numerous from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, but they were scattered or exter- minated with cruel jjersecutions, and have left visible traces only in graveyards popularly assigned to them.
Before the Turkish conquest at the end of the fifteenth century, the frontiers of Bosnia were repeatedly changed, and its inhabitants were incessantly harassed by the passage and encounters of hostile troops. For Bosnia has ever been the borderland of contending rival states and rival churches. Its history, in the Middle Ages as in later periods, is a distressing and tangled record of
BOSNIA IN 1875. 5
petty warfare, revolting treachery, and terrible crimes. A gleam of legendary light falls on the times of Ban Kulin, who held the faith of the Paterenes, and whose name is still remembered among the people, marking the era of a distant Golden Age. Its race is identical with that of Free Serbia, Old Serbia, and Montenegro, and with the Serbs of Hungary and Dalmatia. The name of the country is derived from the Bosna, a tributary of the Save. As in other Serb countries, the early princes of Bosnia were called zupans. At one time nearly all these lands acknowledged the supremacy of Byzantium. At another period Bosnia was incorporated in the kingdom of Hungary. In the middle of the fourteenth century it formed a part of the empire of Stephan Diishan, that great ruler of the house of JSTemania, who assumed the title of ^' Christloving Czar of all Serbs and Greeks," imitated the style and institutions, and aspired to suc- ceed to the sovereignty of Byzantium, but died of fever on the march to Constantinople (1355).
Before the Turkish conquest, Bosnia was again a separate state under native bans and kings, and had been partly conquered by and partly reconquered from the Magyars. The Serbs belonged to the Eastern, the Hungarians to the Western Church, and then as now the jealousies of rival hierarchies divided the Serbian race.
Whatever germs of free institutions may have existed in the barbarous communities which we trace through- out the Serbian countries, and in Bosnia among the rest, were here stifled beneath the growth of feudalism, and the contending claims of the Eastern and Western Churches. Finally, the accidents of geographical posi- tion exposed the Southern Slavs to the full sweep of the Turkish deluge. The Osmanli conquered ; the Byzantine Empire was overthrown ; there suffered also a younger
6 BOSNIA IN 1875.
race, the younger children of t\\Q European family, the Southern Slavs, who, after centuries of repression, are asserting their right to independent existence.
After the conquest of Bosnia by the Turks, those of the nobility who remained alive in the land became Mahommedan. The Bosnian Begs were the offspring of an alliance between feudalism and Islam.
The feudal system, which had been established in Bosnia in the Christian period, was continued after the Mussulman conquest, with this sole difference, that the feudal lords changed their faith and their suzerain. Their own position was confirmed by the change. We have seen that Bosnia was continually the object of attack from Hungary. IS'ow the Turkish policy was acute and masterly ; there was also much that was noble and magnanimous in the Osmanli character ; tempting terms were offered to the Bosnian nobles. Perceiving that under the shelter of their mighty conquerors, they would be able to preserve their nationality, maintain their caste privileges, and bid defiance to Hungary and the Pope, many of the nobles threw in their cause with that of the Empire of Othman, and the Bosnian Slavonic Mussulman became, in the words of Turkish writers, '^the lion that guarded Stamboul." Bosnia was the bulwark of Islam against Western Europe. As in later times the vis inertice of the Turkish Empire in Europe has been considerably weighted by the Mussulman ele- ment in Bosnia, so in the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, the days of its aggressive vigour, the spahis or feudal chiefs of Bosnia, led powerful contingents to the Turkish armies, and the ranks of the Janissaries were largely recruited by her sons.
But the tyranny and pretensions of the Begs waxed too great. They assumed entire independence, they ' coerced or chased away the viziers sent from Constanti-
BOSNIA IN 1875. 7
nople to reside or rule in Eosnia. It became necessary to subdue it as a rebel province. This subjection was accomplished in our own days by Omer Pasha, who in 1850-1 put an end to the feudal system in Eosnia, equalising the Mussulman Eosnian Eegs, or magnates, with all other Mussulmans in Turkey, abolishing the rank and office of spahis, or military feudal chiefs, and compelling the tithe hitherto received by them to be paid into the government treasury.
All Mussulmans being equalised before the law in 1850, and political and social equality among all creeds and classes having been proclaimed by the Hatt-i-Huma- youn of 1856, let us inquire what was the actual con- dition of the subjects of the Porte in Eosnia in the spring of 1875, immediately before the outbreak of the revolt.
The population of Eosnia and the Herzegovina, form- ing part of one Slavonic race, is still commonly spoken of as three different ^'nations," so great is the division marked by difference of creed. I give the following statistics gathered from Turkish official rej)orts of 1874. Their accuracy cannot be relied upon : the number of Mussulmans is enormously exaggerated ; the proportion between Greek and Latin Christians is fairly stated.
Bosnian Mussulmans 442,050
Christians of the Orthodox Eastern Church . 575,756
Roman Catholics 185,503
Jews . 3,000
Gypsies 9,537
Total . . 1,216,846
In addition to this native population should be men- tioned some 5,000 Austrian subjects, and some hundreds of Osmanli officials.
It is only in the mutesariflik of Serajevo that the Mahommedans are in the majority. In the other six
8 BOSNIA IN 1875.
subdivisions of the land the Christians, Eastern Church Sljivs and Eoman Catholics being taken together, on the whole greatly outnumber the Mussulmans.
I. The Bosnian Mussulmans are the owners of the land, and they reside on their estates, or in houses in the towns. They are also small merchants, and follow trades. Some are hnets^ or farmers of the lands for richer Mussulmans. The Bosnian Beg par excellence, the powerful feudal chief of sixty years ago, is a chained monster with drawn teeth and cut claws. He was too decidedly a megatherion for our age. The brute force of the savage is greatly broken, and he has ac- quired no other force. For, with some possible excep- tions, the Bosnian Begs of to-day are ignorant and corrupt, indolent, and wholly incapable of organization or combined action. Some have learnt a little Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, but very few know how to read and write their own tongue. The spirit of feasting and merrymaking, banished by Mahomet and his followers, but ineradicable among the Slavs, still lingers among the Bosnian Mussulmans. Instead of the annual festival of the Krsno ime^ when the friends and relations of every Serbian house gather to celebrate with feasting the day of their patron saint, the Begs still in many places make a festivity of the time of boiling down plums for bestilj\ or plum syrup. But even this lingering oppor- tunity for social union is being relinquished, and scarcely anything else of the kind remains.
The Mussulmans of Serajevo still keep St. John the Baptist's day (24th of June, 0. S.), when the sun is said to dance at da^vn on the top of the hill Trebovich : on that day, and on St. Elias's and St. George's days, the Mussulman population turns out of doors, and the whole side of Trebovich, especially the neighbourhood of the Moslem saint's tomb, is bright with red turbans and
BOSNIA IN 1875. 9
jackets and groups of women in white veils. They sit in separate companies smoking and drinking coffee, and there is a striking absence of life and gaiety among them.
Many of the Bosnian Begs are not indisposed to embrace the Christianity professed by their forefathers. They call a priest to say prayers over them when they are ill, they keep the name of the patron saint of their family, and they preserve with care the patents of nobility of their Christian ancestors. But on the other hand many of them are fanatic Moslems, and nourish a blind and savage hatred against their Christian fellow countrymen. This hatred finds vent even in quiet times in many a hidden act of cruelty. At the present moment of licensed insult and revenge (autumn of 1875), we hear of Chris- tians being imjDaled and flayed alive, and cruelties of the worst ages committed on helpless women and children. In a season of perfect quiet (1871-2) some fierce Mussul- mans of Serajevo swore to cut the throats of the Christians if they dared to hang bells in the tower of their new church. The conspiracy was discovered, and the leading Mussulmans held responsible for the quiet of the town. The pasha confessed the weakness of his authority to maintain the law when he called the principal merchants and asked them to give up their legal rights to the bells, on the ground that if their sound were heard he would be unable to restrain the fury of the Mahommedans.
The state of political feeling among the Bosnian Mus- sulmans was described to me before the outbreak by those who knew them well, as by no means unanimous. At present they have no leader of preponderating influ- ence who might render them strong and dangerous by uniting them in one purpose. Some were amicably dis- posed towards Serbia; others were fanatically jealous of the Christian principality. The name of the late Prince
lo BOSNIA IN 1875.
Michael of Serbia was not unpopular among them, but his assassination by men who were his own subjects greatly injured the Serbian cause, and is regarded by the Eegs of Bosnia, among whom lingers the spirit of their aristocratic caste, as a crime which condemns the nation. Dislike to the Osmanlis and to Stamboul is universal among them, and has been much iD creased by taxation and by the obligation to serve in the Turkish army.
The conscription was first enforced by Osman Pasha in 1864. The Bosnian Mussulmans are drawn by lot for the regular army, or nizaiii^ for a term of four years' service ; and likewise for the redif^ or reserve, in which they must serve one month in the year for nine years. Exemption may be purchased from the nizam by the payment of a hundred ducats, about £50, or a substitute may be found ; but service in the redif is compulsory on each man on whom the lot may fall. The Bosnians are not required to serve outside the province. They are all infantry ; the cavalry and artillery stationed in Bosnia are natives of other provinces of Turkey. Since the outbreak, robber bands of Turkish volunteers have been raised in different parts of the country.* The redif (or reserve) in many places have refused to serve.
The sacerdotal-legal profession is greatly desired by the Bosnian Mussulmans. Many of their ulemas have studied at Stamboul. Pilgrimages to Mecca are frequent. It is a not uncommon sight to see crowds of the Mussul- man population sally forth from Serajevo to meet some returning hadji, or to escort pilgrims setting out for the Holy Places. Wandering dervishes visit the country, ex- citing the fanaticism of the faithful. Although no spirit of proselytism exists in Bosnia, yet renegadism has been
♦ Their method of suppressing suspected insurrection has been amply illus- trated in Bulfraria. The like method is to this hour being pursued in Bosnia. But there are no reporters.
BOSNIA IN 1875. II
more frequent of late among the Christians. In the course of 1874, in Serajevo alone, ten women and four men, Catholics and Pravoslavs, became Mahommedan, and it is uncertain how many in other parts of the province. The immediate cause is generally the great poverty of the Christians, which often compels them to place their girls in service in Turkish houses.
The difficulty presented by the Mussulman element in Bosnia has been greatly exaggerated, together with its strength and numbers. Any well- organized Christian government would be able to deal with it. But as long as the Mussulmans alone are permitted to bear arms the difficulty is insuperable. With regard to toleration it should be remembered that since Serbia expelled the Turks from her own territory she still maintains a mosque in Belgrade for Mahommedan visitors, the expenses being defrayed by the Serbian government.
II. The Pravoslav Christians of Bosnia are merchants, small tradesmen, and farmers.
Some few Christians have attained to the possession of landed property ; but the Mussulmans cannot endure the innovation, and they do their utmost, usually with success, to prevent a ghiaour from acquiring land, or to dispossess him if he has accomplished the purchase. This can be done in various ways ; whether by bringing in Mussulman evidence — always ready at the call of Mussulmans — to prove that the late owner had no proper title, and that the sale is therefore invalid; or by making use of the law which exists in Turkey (or at least in Bosnia), that no property can be sold without first giving all the neighbouring owners the right of refusal. It is very seldom that a Mussulman can induce his neighbours to consent that he should sell his land to a Chi'istian, and thus introduce a ghiaour into their midst. Public opinion prevents the sale, even
12 BOSNIA IN 1875.
though no one of the neighbours be able to purchase instead.
The Bosnian cultivator or farmer (here called kmet)^ usually a Christian, pays to his landlord, usually a Bosnian Mussulman, one third of the produce, or one half, according to the agreement, and as the landlord or the tenant may supply oxen, seed, and implements. A tithe, which is now actually the eighth, is paid into the government treasury, and is collected by the tax- gatherer, who farms the taxes from the government. Great and bitter complaints are made of the injustice and exactions of the tax-gatherer. The cultivator dares not gather in his crops till the visit of the assessor ; while he is waiting it repeatedly happens that the har- vests perish. The tax on the arbitrarily calculated value is, of course, exacted all the same. In fact the peasants suffer much less from the Mussulman landlord than from the government official, for the landowner is inter- ested in the prosperity of his tenant.
The tax in lieu of military service which is paid by all non-Mussulmans weighs very heavily on the poor, who have to pay equally with the rich twenty-eight piastres for every male. In the poorest and most miserable family this sum must be paid for the male infant who has first seen the light a few hours before the visit of the tax-gatherer. This tax on the young children of the rayah is the most oppressive and galling to him, col- lected often by house visitations, in which the sanctity of his hearth is most vilely outraged. Great suffering results from the forced labour exacted by the government. For instance, in tlie making of the new road to Mostar, Christians were driven by zapties from great distances, and compelled to work for days without pay.
Systematic and legalised extortion has succeeded to the intermittent violence of former times ; the mass of the
BOSNIA IN 1875. 13
people are ground to the dust under the present regime. They were materially much better off in the days of Begluk (the reign of the Begs). The Christian rayah was often less miserable when more directly under the Beg, or resident landowner, than he is now under the temporary official — the present farmer of the revenue — whose sole advantage lies in pocketing all he can for himself. The position of the landowner and his dependents affords op- portunity for the development of much kindly human feeling : the tax-gatherer is by nature a bird of prey. Not long ago the Christian retainers of the Begs used to come into the town to church on the great festivals, decked out in the old-fashioned silver ornaments of the country, but now these ornaments are seldom seen, for their owners have been obliged to sell them.
I will here give a translation of the words of a native Bosnian woman, describing the changes which had taken place in the dail}^ life of the Christian women of Serajevo, within the memory of the present generation and since the residence of the European consuls in that city has restrained the grosser outrages still committed in other parts of the country.
'^ When the vizier resided at Travnik, thirty years ago, the common people were much better than off than they are now, for then there were no taxes but the haratch (in exemption from military service). They were rich, and had horses, oxen, swine, sheep, and poultry; they wore fine clothes with silver ornaments, they had beau- tiful arms. Although there was no liberty, yet the Begs and Agas, lords of the land, protected and defended their own kmets. The greatest violence was in the days of Mental Pasha and Fazli Pasha, who plundered, killed, raged, tortured, and tormented just as they chose ; there was no inquiry made and no evidence taken. This lasted till the time of Omer Pasha. As regards liberty (personal
14 BOSNIA IN 1875.
safety), from that day to this, the difference here is as great as between heaven and earth; at that time the women in Serajevo did not dare to go to the eharshia (market place) or along the streets, they did not dare to stand at the doors; when they went to church, or wherever they were obliged to go, they went without ornaments, and covered down to the feet in a white cloth ; the Turkish women rarely went along the streets, even covered up so that you could not see their eyes. Now for some time past Christian women and maidens, wives and daughters of the Pravoslav Serajevo mer- chants, adorned with ducats and pearls, in their best dresses, go along our streets, and in our eharshia, as in their own homes, by day or by night without any fear." With the exception of a few merchants, the Pravo- slav population is miserably poor. There has been no development of the immense material resources of the country, no means of employment and occupa- tion which might enable the poor to meet the ever increasing taxation, the extortions of the officials, and the heavy exactions of their own clergy. But in spite of all hindrances, the Serb merchants of Bosnia have advanced steadily, though slowly, in wealth and position. It was jealousy of their progress which led to the oppression of the thriving merchants at Gradishka, opposite the Austrian frontier, in 1873. False accusations were made against the leading Christians of the place and some were seized and put in prison ; they petitioned the Porte, and, as usual, a counter-statement was got up by the medjliss, which Christians were made to sign, not knowing the contents of the document to which they had put their names. Fourteen Christian merchants fled over into Austria, and went to Vienna, declaring they would never return unless placed under Austrian protection. Through the initiative of Austria, Mustapha Assim
BOSNIA IN 1875. IS
Pasha, the then governor of Bosnia, too zealous a Turk for the age, and determined by repression of Christian progress to restore the waning Mussulman prestige,