hartmuth historic fabric of balkan towns (2012)

7/29/2019 Hartmuth Historic Fabric of Balkan Towns (2012)

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Four historic cities in the Western Balkans: value and challenges . Eds. Stephan Doempke, Anduela Lulo Caca,and Sadi Petrela. Tirana: Gjirokastra Conservation and Development Organization, 2012, pp. 17-22.

Maximilian Hartmuth

The Historic Fabric of Balkan Towns:Space, Power, Culture and Society

[>17]

Balkan towns as a mirror of society

Among visitors from the rest of Europe, the historic fabric of urban settlements in the

Balkan peninsula often evokes similar reactions: their pre-modern architecture and

urban structure looks not only somewhat unfamiliar, in terms of style and technology it

also looks unexpectedly homogenous in a vast region between Banja Luka and Edirne.The reason for both is that for a very long period between the fourteenth and nineteenth

centuries much of the peninsula was united under the rule of a single sovereign, the

Ottoman sultan. In the wake of his installation on the throne in his capital of Istanbul in

1453 there developed a centralized state whose many subjects, their goods and ideas,

travelled freely between the nodes of a dynamically expanding urban network in the

Balkans and beyond. It was far from unusual, for instance, that a builder or carpenter

from rugged West Macedonia would be found working 400km to the north, inBelgrade. Models for the regions monumental urban architecture often came from

Istanbul, which also supplied the provincial societys upper strata with an elite style to

be emulated in keeping with ones economic potency.

In choices related to dress or the embellishment of ones home, confessional

differences were often less critical than class differences. Yet, the outward appearance

of towns did reflect a religious hierarchy that was fundamental to Ottoman society until


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the advent of modernity. While a large number of remarkable monuments were

constructed in the Balkans rapidly developing urban settlements in the fifteenth

through seventeenth centuries, churches were not among them. Upon the Ottomans

conquest of a given place, the most monumental building in town was usually

converted into a mosque, and it was generally prohibited by Hanefite law to build

churches ex novo. Necessary repairs to older structures were considered legitimate, but

they required imperial permission. Churches built in the Ottoman Balkans before the

nineteenth century were often rebuilt within the dimensions of the older buildings on

site a regulation that certainly greatly limited design potentials until its gradual lifting

in the nineteenth century. It was in the middle decades of that century, only few

decades before the empires demise, that the monumental church returned to Ottoman

townscapes; but even then the tall belfries would not dare to exceed the height of

mosque minarets. [>18]

In any case, it is important to realize that the Ottoman town in the Balkans was

not a product of laisser-faire but followed certain conventions that have not always been

visible to historians because they were rarely explicitly recorded. One of these was the

understanding of townscapes as reflecting the Ottoman order of things, especially with

regard to religious hierarchies. The typical separation of the city into a bustling

downtown surrounded by a ring of almost exclusively residential districts must

probably be said to have reflected the ideal of a functional separation between private

and public lives. The traditional disposition of residences as free-standing structures in

walled precincts with small gardens also made it possible not only to manage their

exposure to sunlight but also to adapt these structures to changing needs in terms of

spaces and functions. Their frequent location of dwellings on slopes, where possible,

certainly made sewerage more efficient. While this architecture may thus have followed

similar principles, it did vary greatly according to region. Frequent snowfall, for

instance, may have made obligatory steep roofs, while lack of wood had people turn to

stone. The difference, for instance, between dwellings in Bosnia and in neighbouring

Herzegovina one region oriented toward the Adriatic, the other toward the Balkan

interior, and both being separated by the main ridge of the Dinaric range can be

considerable. Nonetheless, and despite what some books might suggest, we must admit


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repeated until the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was then that many Balkan

cities received their principal pre-nineteenth-century monuments. As a rule, this was

not an architecture that was the result of local processes and the (design) work of local

artists, however; it followed types and styles formulated in what might be called the

Ottoman metropolitan region around the Sea of Marmara, where the old court cities

of Istanbul, Bursa, and Edirne (and hence also the principal achievements in Ottoman

architectural design) were located. The standardization of Ottoman architectural types

made it possible for fairly remote settlements to receive monuments of a relatively

noteworthy character. Deviations from standard models were generally meaningful, in

the sense that they reflected a given patrons exalted status or ambition, or date from a

period in which details were not yet as standardized but left to the discretion of

builders and masons. For instance, the unusual size and sophistication (in a provincial

context) of the mosque of Gazi Hsrev Beg mosque in Sarajevo probably echoes its

patrons birth he was the Macedonian-born son of an Ottoman princess as well as

the unusual degree of power yielded by its patron in a region in strategically important

location for the expansion of Ottoman hegemony into Central and Southern Europe.

Irrespective of size, the urban architecture of Ottoman towns drew upon a

certain set of established types. In accordance with the settlements significance, one

would find Friday mosques (in the early period: usually only one), smaller prayer-

houses meant for use by specific neighbourhoods, inns, covered marketplaces for

luxury goods, bathhouses (the coffeehouses of the fair sex), elementary and higher

schools, aqueducts, public fountains, etc. The popularity of domes as not only structural

but also iconographic elements in this architecture is quite plain in many formerly

Ottoman settlements. We know little about the original decoration in the interiors of

these buildings, but the ornamentation of portals is sometimes significant. In the

fifteenth century, bathhouses were often privileged in terms of their monumentality

and decoration. At the end of that century, coinciding with a greater need for the

supervision of Muslim worship in a time of heresies, an important shift was made

that reserved most truly monumental architecture for Friday mosques. A city like

Sarajevo could have as many as seven domed mosques. At the end of the sixteenth

century came another shift an echo of developments in the capital [>20] from the


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patronage of mosques to clusters of buildings around schools of higher education,

medreses. However, this period also sees a significant decrease in architectural

patronage in general. Compared to the period 1425-1575, few comparably monumental

structures appear in the following three centuries.

A major typological change took place only in the nineteenth century, when a

modern infrastructure of schooling, security, and communication was introduced,

dwarfing construction of buildings with religious functions. It is often overlooked that

the advent of a European-type architecture and urban planning predated the

independence of Balkan nations from Ottoman rule. The generally frequent

conflagrations, aided by the then still widespread use of wood in architecture, were an

opportunity for the state to intervene in the rebuilding of urban areas along modern,

rational, principles. In the late period, the Ottoman state also occasionally needed to

build entire new districts for (Muslim) refugee populations. SkopjesMadir maalo (from

Turkish Muhacir mahallesi, i.e. refugees quarter) was the first in that city to be

planned and develop on a rational, orthogonal grid. In late Ottoman Bitola there

developed a representative European-style main street known as irok sokak (literally:

wide street), but originally called Hamidiye, after sultan Abdlhamid II. This was also

the name of a new, elegant suburban district of Thessalonik.

Different paths of development

While many have been tempted to imagine the towns of Southeast Europe as

representing certain types, in accordance with the formerly dominant powers in parts

of the region we so read of the Ottoman town, a Venetian/Dalmatian counterpart, a

Balkan town, a Hungarian town, etc. there are very few normative examples of

such. It must not be forgotten that at the time of the Ottoman conquest there already

existed towns in the Balkans. The Ottomans, in fact, occasionally seemed reluctant to

intervene in drastic ways in the existing urban fabric. Sometimes defensive walls were

razed and major churches were converted, but every so often none of that happened. In

many cases, an Ottoman urban core with the relevant Islamic institutions developed

outside the medieval walled towns, as a quasi new settlement, which, in time, usually

superseded the older settlements centre in terms of importance. To be sure, significant


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transformations occurred, but these are perhaps better described as an Ottomanization

of existing settlements that an implementation of Ottoman urban models on a tabula

rasa. That said, a significant number of Balkan cities are Ottoman foundations without

medieval (urban) precedents, such as Sarajevo, Novi Pazar, Kor, or Razgrad. Three

examples of prominent historic Balkan towns discussed below shall provide an idea of

the differing paths of development.

The medieval walled town of Ohrid appears to have been taken by the Ottomans

from an Albanian lord at the end of the fourteenth century. The Ottomanization that

took place thereafter progressed as follows: The walled towns principal church, the

eleventh-century Hagia Sophia, was turned into a Friday mosque. The area

immediately around it became [>21] a small government district, with the governors

residence, a mint for Ottoman coins, and a small shrine dedicated to a martyred

Ottoman clerk. Save for this small area, the quarters within the medieval town walls

remained predominantly Christian, however. The new, Muslim, Ohrid emerged outside

the walls along the lakeshore. It was there that major Islamic institutions (including a

medrese with a scriptorium) came to be located, and it was also there that the Ohrizade

family, which appears to have dominated Ohrids politics in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries, had their enormous residence and some public buildings

connected to it. The familys ancestor had converted a monastery on a hilltop

overlooking the town into a mosque, possibly in concert with the sultan. Far away from

Ohrids Muslim quarters, the building came to be identified with the fact that here free

food was distributed to the needy, irrespective of creed. Perhaps this institution was

instrumental for the prominence of the Ohrizade family in town. What thus can be

reconstructed to a fair extent is a settlement that was both divided and united. The old

walled town remained inhabited by non-Muslims, save for one area around the pashas

residence and the Hagia Sophia in which the presence of the power of the Ottoman

centre was felt. The more dynamic part of Ohrid was what we might call the Lower

Town, however, which was the site of most of the towns Islamic institutions and of the

residence of the locally dominant family. Perhaps Ohrids urban structure can be seen

as expressive not only of a Muslim/Christian divide but also of that between a local

Muslim elite (here represented by the Ohrizades) and the distant centre of Ottoman


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power (represented by the pasha and the sultans mosque, i.e. the converted Hagia

Sophia). Modern Ohrids downtown developed from the once predominantly Muslim

suburb in the flat land below the quarters in the walled city, which have remained a

principally residential/touristy area.

Skopje, which had also been an important medieval settlement and the residence

of Serbian dynasts, was conquered around the same time as Ohrid. However, events

unfolded quite differently there. Knowledge concerning the physical fabric of pre-

Ottoman Skopje is expected to increase with the publication of finds from the ongoing

excavations in the castle area. It is clear, however, that Ottoman/Muslim Skopje

developed in the depression between the castle and the Gazi Baba hill. Interestingly, the

principal agents of this transformation were three generations of a family of frontier

raiders, who had made Skopje their base for excursions into Albania and Serbia. Their

founding of institutions resulted in the gradual emergence of a new commercial-

cultural district in the area of todays air municipality. This was thanks to the

institutions established there by the raider lord shak Beg and his son sa: bathhouses,

hostels, prayer-houses, etc. Skopjes Great Mosque was built on the Gazi Baba hill by

the Ottoman sultan Murad II, however. Even though around 1500 the towns

population was actually stagnating, the remarkable new monuments dating from this

period show how Skopje had risen to Upper Macedonias metropolis under Ottoman

rule. It had also become a showcase for [>22] architecture for the surrounding region,

easily dwarfing contemporary architectural production in Ohrid, Bitola, and even

Thessalonik. With the arrival of railways and refugees from elsewhere in the Balkans

began the gradual shift of the citys centre to the southern bank of the Vardar, where

under Serbian and Yugoslav rule a new downtown emerged and went into competition

with the old one north of the river.

Sarajevo, finally, emerged as a new Ottoman settlement in an upland plain; its

location was strategically imperative for the expansion into more northern areas

fabulously rich in mineral resources. Sarajevos early history is shady, but it seems that

in the second and third quarters of the fifteenth centuries a frontier outpost in enemy

territory merged with an existing (Christian) village next to a ford over the river

Miljacka into a more significant settlement that could support the residence (saray) of an


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Ottoman governor. The principal agent in this process appears to have been the raider

lord sa Beg, the son of the aforementioned shak Beg of Skopje. Sarajevo soon became

the site of an industrious downtown (Baarija) perhaps a reflection of the

importance played by trade in the genesis of a sixteenth-century Ottoman boomtown

close to the Muslim-Christian frontier. In the middle decades of the sixteenth century,

Sarajevo was equipped with an unusually monumental architectural fabric; few

comparable monuments were added in the three following centuries. Under Austro-

Hungarian rule (1878-1918), the central position in the citys structure of the Baarija

was successfully challenged by a European-type downtown district built adjacent to it.

These developments mark the beginning of the citys westward expansion, continued

under Yugoslav rule. First a rather marginalized oriental/colonial town, Sarajevos

population almost quadrupled after WWII. The names of the two new urban

municipalities established in this period are expressive of this departure: Novo Sarajevo

(New Sarajevo) and Novi Grad (New Town). The monumental centre shifted from

the Baarija and the quarter around the Habsburg-built neo-medieval cathedral to the

beginning of a seemingly endless multi-lane boulevard marked by skyscrapers

challenging the existing minarets and belfries as the dominant vertical elements in

Sarajevos townscape.

All three cases show that development was not motored by a monolithic

culture, a specific spirit or mentality, but resulted from the agency of various groups

and individuals with occasionally very different interests in both new and pre-existing

settlements. In Ohrid and Skopje, these differences here possibly between Istanbul

and provincial power-holders may have been reflected in the fabric of the site as well.

Much more research of a comparative character is necessary before we can endeavour

to make more general statements concerning Balkan urbanisms that will endure the test

of time.

hartmuth historic fabric of balkan towns (2012)

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