Sir Arthur Evans – 1875
Evans, Arthur E. Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot During the Insurrection August and September 1875. Longmans, Green & Co., 1877. Reprint. Salem, NH: Ayer, 1970.
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Down The Save Christendom and Islam.
Next, morning betimes we bade farewell to Siszek, and took a passage on the Save steamer for Brood, from which place we were to begin our foot journey through Bosnia . During the early part of the voyage there was little to see. Mud banks lined with willows, now and then vil lages of dark timber, where, within the palings of the large house-communities, were clustered together several dwelling-houses of tea-caddy shape and somewhat pagoda-like appearance, due to their having eaves projecting over the ground-floor as well as the upper storey. The Save, as we enter it, takes a muddier hue than the Kulpa, which at Siszck possessed something of the emerald purity of a limestone stream. Opposite the confluence of the Save and Unna was Jassenovac, taken and held for awhile by the 1′asha of Bosnia in 1530, after the battle of Mohacz; it is a small town of about 1,100 inhabitants, and, being built on piles, is sometimes called New Amsterdam. It might also recall the Swiss lake-dwellings, to restorations of which many Granitza villages bear a certain family likeness ; but I doubt if the boats that float off Jassenovac are not even more primitive than those of the old lake-dwellers, for they are simply great oak-trunks hollowed out in a Crusoe-like fashion. Further on we passed floating mills, paddle-boats of Noah’s Ark-like construction anchored in the current, or left behind us large flat barges which looked like giant cockchafers turned over on their backs.
We are now on the watery boundary-line between Christendom and Islam, and the contrast between the two shores is one of the most striking that can be imagined, recalling that between the Bulgarian and Wallachian banks of the Lower Danube . On one side Croat men,
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SOUTH SCLAVONIC TYPES
white tunicked and white breeked, with blue vests, and fringes of homely lace to their trowsers; bare-legged women, with the shortest of apron-skirts, washing their linen in the shallows, coifed in the rosy Rubatz. Now and then a town, white houses and bulbous church-spires, and citizens in the mourning hues of Western civilization. On the other bank minarets and narrow wooden streets, gorgeous Turkish officials, brilliant maidens and mum mied dames, cheerful fezzes and red Bosnian turbans ; and it is to be remarked that the men on the Turkish bank, owing to their wearing such comparatively shadeless head-gear, are distinctly more sunburnt than the Slavonians of the Austrian side in their broad, black, felt wide awakes. The one side was cold and dull, if comparatively clean ; the other dirty but magnificent.
Various types illustrative of the South Sclavonic world are to be seen on deck : a Syrmian woman of an Oriental cast of feature already spoken of, with dark hair and eyes, and a purple skirt; the grave hadji whose acquaintance we had made at Siszek, who vouchsafes me a majestic nod of recognition ; a Dalmatiner—one of those Italianised Sclaves who man the Austrian navy—with blue sailor-blouse and bright red sash, sounds the shallows, when the steamer slackens speed, with a long pole. A Slavonian of that dissipated type which becomes more frequent as we approach Syrmia, the mother-country of the ftuncil plum-brandy—the Syrmian slivovitz—with low eyebrows, a ferocious moustache and an eminently Sclavonic nose, is caught by our artist napping, and pocketed as below. 1 Beyond Gradisca we came to the prettiest part of the river scenery, where the watery mirror reflects the
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TURKISH BROD
‘ shall the lightning of the Sultan strike all who order not themselves according to my will.’
‘But as to those who harbour the unruly, by the sword shall they be cut. off; and in all God’s houses sub ject to our jurisdiction shall prayers be offered up for the help of God and the protection of the prophet, on our exalted master the Sultan and his government.’
But for better or worse our Rubicon is passed, and we land on the Turkish shore, among a group of turbaned gentry, from amongst whom emerges a somewhat tattered soldier, who conducts us to the square, verandahed, Karaula or guard-house. Here we are asked by another official, in Italian, if we have anything to declare in our knapsacks, and having satisfied him by a simple ‘Niente,’ wo are again beckoned on by our soldier, and follow him into the narrow street of Turkish Brood to show our pass to the Prefect or Mudir. Our appearance created as great a sensation as was decorous among the big-turbans of the townlet; crowds of Bosnian gamins followed at
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ASIA IN EUROPE
our heels; and we caught a passing glimpse of a dusky Ethiopian maiden white-toothing us in the must coquet-tish fashion from behind a door. As the Mudir was not at home, we had to wait in the front room of his Konak, 1 if indeed a place which possesses neither door nor window, and is completely open to the air on the street side, can be called a room ; and taking our seat on the platform or raised floor—which in the other houses of the town, as generally in Turkey, is used as the squatting-place of the shopkeepers, and the counter on which to display their wares—became the gazing-stock of a motley assem blage, who, crowding round in the- street, or taking reserved seats in the melon-shop opposite, ‘twigged us’
at their leisure.
We, too, obtained a breathing space in which to realise in what a new world we were. The Bosniacs themselves speak of the other side of the Save as ‘ Europe ,’ and they are right; for to all intents and purposes a five minutes’ voyage transports you into Asia . Travellers who have seen the Turkish provinces of Syria , Armenia , or Egypt , when they enter Bosnia , are at once surprised at finding the familiar sights of Asia and Africa reproduced in a province of European Turkey . Thrace, Macedonia, the shores of the Ægean, Stamboul itself, have lost or never displayed many Oriental customs and costumes; but Bosnia remains the chosen land of Mahometan Conservatism, the Goshen of the faithful, ennobled by the tombs of martyrs, and known in Turkish annals as the ‘Lion that guards the gates of Stamboul.’ Fanaticism has struck its deepest roots among her renegade popula tion, and reflects itself even in their dress. In no other
- The usual name given to the residence of a Turkish official.
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MOSLEM CHILDREN
European province of Turkey is the veiling of women so strictly attended to. It is said that not long ago the fine egg-shaped turbans of the Janissaries might still be found in Bosnia , and the Maulouka, the most precious of all mantles, which had died out elsewhere, long survived among these Bosnian Tories. As to the introduction of fezzes, the Imperial order almost provoked a revolt here; and to this day among Mahometans the fez is almost con fined to officials, the rest of the believers going about in the capacious turbans of the East.
The very darkness of the background, the dirty narrow street, the timber houses, the time-stained wooden minaret, acted as a foil to the Oriental brilliance of the dress and merchandise, the scarlet sashes, the gold embroidery, those gorgeous little maidens—doomed most of them by sweet thirteen to take the winding-sheets of Turkish matrimony, and bury their beauty in harems, where by thirty-five they are turned old hags; but now, poor little butterflies! fluttering out their brief child-glimpse of the world—light-smocked, in linen chemises, ehevroned with rainbow threads of colour.—bagged as to their legs, but bellowered with roses of Shiraz—pranked out with gilt coin-bespangled fezzes, whence fountain-like the separate jets of their tresses trickle forth in a score of silken plaits; Perilets, with sisterly arms round each other’s necks, deigning to smile on the strange Giaours. There, loo, are their little brothers, showing more of their slender legs, but gay as their sisters, in bags and tunics, with pntes not yet artificially baldened, but long haired as the little maidens, only in softer cascades, falling down their backs, and fringing their foreheads. Capillati (Copi is still the word for boys among the Roumans of
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AN UNKIND CUT.
East Europe )—one almost hoped to see a bulla round their necks! and indeed I doubt not that they wore many a potent spell against the Evil Eye.
There was one little lad of about five, with blue eyes and hair of Scandinavian lightness, the cut of which called up some tiny page of Charles the Second’s days, who, with some of his playmates, crowded so near as lo shut out the view of the two mysterious Franks from the grave and reverend signiors behind, whereupon a Turk, who happened to hold a small switch in his hand, came forward and flicked these small flies away. The whip just touched our small urchin, who moved out of the way with the others. He did not cry, but more, as it seemed, in sorrow than in anger, fixed on his flagellator a look of such childish dignity and grave surprise as should have annihilated anyone less impassive than a Turk. It said, as plainly as a look can speak, ‘ I am not accustomed to such treatment.’ The look of a child may seem a slight matter, but it was eloquent of the tenderness with which the Turks treat children—a tenderness which does them honour. Such an unkind cut was a new experience in the little lad’s life.
When our observers had taken sufficient stock of us, the propriety of showing us into an upper room of the Konak suggested itself to some of them, and we were accordingly led upstairs, and invited to squat in a den belonging to some subordinate official, who, while waiting the Mudir’s arrival, treated us to coffee. It was a very dirty little room, in which the rags and tatters of an old piece of faded carpet and rotten matting made shift for chairs and sofas; these, with a stove such as has been described already, pigeon-holed with pots, and a broken
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hoped from the secluded youth and corrupt morals of him whom the Sultan would impose as his successor. The Vali, in spite of the characteristic indifference of an Osmanli to the sufferings of rayahs, has not been without ambition of improving the material condition of his Vilayet; but lie has seen himself thwarted from above by the cor ruption of Stamboul, and below by the impenetrable ignorance of his own officials. ‘What is the use?’he would complain to consular sympathizers when desirous of introducing this or that reform. ‘What is the use of giving such orders to the Mutasarif or Kai’makam? they cannot understand them, and if they did they could not carry them out; the people would laugh at their reforms or throw them oil”!’
Mostar, as a town, pleased us more than any we had seen in Bosnia . The houses are almost all built of stone, instead of the customary wood and plaster. Here, as at Tesanj, we noticed a Campanile. There are many gay kiosques rising over the graves of Moslem saints. The mosques, of which there are forty, are many of them domed, and the plate tracery of their windows is curiously Roman or Byzantine : the minarets—which, not taking their pinnacles into account, look like unfinished Corin thian columns—struck us as more elegant than those of Serajevo, and even the Byzantine church was in better taste. The impression which the streets of Mostar are perpetually forcing on us is that we have come once more on the fringe of Roman civilization. These stone houses arc no longer the Turkish Chalet,but the Casa of Italy or Dalmatia . Some are roofed with a rough slate, others with tiles, Romanesque if not Roman. Every now
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ROMAN REMA1NS IN MOSTAR
and then an Italian physiognomy strikes us among the citizens; the auburn locks and blue eyes of the Illyrian interior are giving place to swarthier hues. The name of the mountain under whose barren steeps we passed on our way here—Porim—in the Sclavonic tongue means on, or over against Rome, and seems to indicate that this part of the Narenta valley remained Roman at a time when the mountain wilderness of the interior had passed into the hands of the Sclavonic barbarians. 1 Mostar indeed owes her name, and perhaps her very existence, to Roman enterprise. The situation of the present city has been identified with that of a Roman Castra Stativa mentioned in the Itineraries, and certainly there are abundant traces here of Roman occupation. This morn ing I looked through two hundred coins, nearly all of them Roman, found in Mostar and its immediate vicinity, and from the number of these of Consular date one may gather that the Roman settlement dated back to the earliest days of their Illyrian conquest. 8
But the most interesting monument of her early civili zation, and that to which Mostar, even at the present day, owes much of her importance, is the magnificent bridge over the Narenta. It is a single arch, 95 feet 3
1 Since writing this I observe that the derivation of Mt. Porim had also struck M. de St. Marie.
2 Though authorities difter as to whether it is the ancient Andetrium (otherwise Mandertium), Saloniana or Sarsenterum. By the Sclaves it was originally called Vitrinica.
3 The coins I saw were silver and brass. There were one or two Greek of Dyrrbachium, and besides Consular and Imperial Roman denarii, there were many third-brass coins dating from the time of Gallienus to that of Constautius II., but the series broke off so abruptly wilh Constantius, that one would think that the Roman setllement must have been destroyed about the middle of the fourth century. At Siscia, on the other hand, Roman coins were common till the time of Honorius.
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TRAJAN’S BRIDGE
inches in span,’ and rising 70 foot above the river when the water is low. According to tradition, this was the work of the Emperor Trajan, whose engineering triumphs in Eastern Europe have taken a strong hold on the South-Sclavonic imagination. Others refer its erection to Ha-drian, and the Turks, not wishing to leave the credit of such an architectural masterpiece to Infidel Emperors, claim the whole for their Sultan, Suleiman thc Magnificent He and other Turkish rules have certainly greatly re-
stored and altered the work, insomuch that Sir Gardner Wilkinson declares that none of the original Roman masonry has been left on the exterior, but he was none the less convinced of its Roman origin ; and anyone who
1 I take this measurement from Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who visited MOstar about thirty years ago, and then took accurate plans of the bridge. SeeDalmatia , vol.ii.p.58, $c. On the piers of the abutment at the east end of the bridge Sir Gardner deciphered two Turkish inscriptions, one of them bearing the date 1087 A.H. (1659 A.D.), the second year of Sultan Ma homet, probably referring to repairs made in his reign;
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THE FOUNDATION OF MOSTAR
has seen it will agree with Sir Gardner that the gran deur of the work, and the form of the arch, as well as the tradition, attest its Roman origin. In the gateway-towers at each end we also detected something Roman, as besides in some ancient archways and masonry on the river-bank by the side of the bridge. This sketch was taken looking down the stream from the left side, and indeed the view from this point needs not the spell of classic associations to fascinate the beholder! The soar ing arch beneath which the emerald Narenta hurries__
fuming and fretting amongst the boulders that strew her course in many a foamy eddy—as though after eighteen centuries she were still impatient of the yoke’ imposed upon her by the monarch of the world; the steep banks tiered with rocks, contorted, cavernous, festooned with creepers and wild vines; above, the arcades of Turkish stores, with brilliant Oriental wares ; the peaks and towers and gables of quaint old fortifications; two slender mina rets, and further still a fainter background of barren mountain, against which the medieval outlines of the city were relieved in the chiaroscuro of a Southern sun. The whole scene presented such a picturesque combination, alike of colours and outlines, as I have not seen the like of in any other town.
The very name of Mostar signifies in the Sclavonic tongue ‘ the old bridge,’ 2 and would be enough to prove that the bridge was already looked on as an antiquity before the Turkish conquest.
1 ‘VIRTUS ROMANA QUID NON DOMAT? SUB JUGUM, ECCE, RAPITUR ET DANUVIUS’, was the inscription on Trajan’s bridge over the Danube .
2 Most = bridge; Star = old.
