SERVIA,
YOUNGEST MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN FAMILY:
OR, A
RESIDENCE IN BELGRADE,
AND
TRAVELS IN THE HIGHLANDS AND WOODLANDS OF THE INTERIOR,
DURING THE YEARS 1843 AND 1844.
BY
ANDREW ARCHIBALD PATON, ESQ.
CHAPTER XV.
Arrival at Ushitza.—Wretched streets.—Excellent Khan.—Turkish Vayvode.—A Persian Dervish.—Relations of Moslems and Christians.—Visit the Castle.—Bird’s eye view.
Before entering Ushitza we had a fair prospect of it from a gentle eminence. A castle, in the style of the middle ages, mosque minarets, and a church spire, rose above other objects; each memorializing the three distinct periods of Servian history: the old feudal monarchy, the Turkish occupation, and the new principality. We entered the bazaars, which were rotting and ruinous, the air infected with the loathsome vapours of dung-hills, and their putrescent carcases, tanpits with green hides, horns, and offal: here and there a hideous old rat showed its head at some crevice in the boards, to complete the picture of impurity and desolation.
Strange to say, after this ordeal we put up at an excellent khan, the best we had seen in Servia, being a mixture of the German Wirthshaus, and the Italian osteria, kept by a Dalmatian, who had lived twelve years at Scutari in Albania. His upper room was very neatly furnished and new carpeted.
In the afternoon we went to pay a visit to the Vayvode, who lived among gardens in the upper town, out of the stench of the bazaars. Arrived at the house we mounted a few ruined steps, and passing through a little garden fenced with wooden paling, were shown into a little carpeted kiosk, where coffee and pipes were presented, but not partaken of by the Turks present, it being still Ramadan. The Vayvode was an elderly man, with a white turban and a green benish, having weak eyes, and a alight hesitation in his speech; but civil and good-natured, without any of the absurd suspicions of the Mutsellim of Sokol. He at once granted me permission to see the castle, with the remark, “Your seeing it can do us no good and no harm, Belgrade castle is like a bazaar, any one can go out and in that likes.” In the course of conversation he told us that Ushitza is the principal remaining settlement of the Moslems in Servia; their number here amounting to three thousand five hundred, while there are only six hundred Servians, making altogether a population of somewhat more than four thousand souls. The Vayvode himself spoke Turkish on this occasion; but the usual language at Sokol is Bosniac (the same as Servian).
We now took our leave of the Vayvode, and continued ascending the same street, composed of low one-storied houses, covered with irregular tiles, and inclosed with high wooden palings to secure as much privacy as possible for the harems. The palings and gardens ceased; and on a terrace built on an open space stood a mosque, surrounded by a few trees; not cypresses, for the climate scarce allows of them, but those of the forests we had passed. The portico was shattered to fragments, and remained as it was at the close of the revolution. Close by, is a Turbieh or saint’s tomb, but nobody could tell me to whom or at what period it was erected.
Within a little inclosed garden I espied a strangely dressed figure, a dark-coloured Dervish, with long glossy black hair. He proved to be a Persian, who had travelled all over the East. Without the conical hat of his order, the Dervish would have made a fine study for a Neapolitan brigand; but his manners were easy, and his conversation plausible, like those of his countrymen, which form as wide a contrast to the silent hauteur of the Turk, and the rude fanaticism of the Bosniac, as can well be imagined. His servant, a withered baboon-looking little fellow, in the same dress, now made his appearance and presented coffee.
Author. “Who would have expected to see a Persian on the borders of Bosnia? You Dervishes are great travellers.”
Dervish. “You Ingleez travel a great deal more; not content with Frengistan, you go to Hind, and Sind, and Yemen.1 The first Englishman I ever saw, was at Meshed, (south-east of the Caspian,) and now I meet you in Roumelly.”
Author. “Do you intend to go back?”
Dervish. “I am in the hands of Allah Talaa. These good Bosniacs here have built me this house, and given me this garden. They love me, and I love them.”
Author. “I am anxious to see the mosque, and mount the minaret if it be permitted, but I do not know the custom of the place. A Frank enters mosques in Constantinople, Cairo, and Aleppo.”
Dervish. “You are mistaken; the mosques of Aleppo are shut to Franks.”
Author. “Pardon me; Franks are excluded from the mosque of Zekerieh in Aleppo, but not from the Osmanieh, and the Adelieh.”
Dervish. “There is the Muezzin; I dare say he will make no difficulty.”
The Muezzin, anxious for his backshish, made no scruple; and now some Moslems entered, and kissed the hand of the Dervish. When the conversation became general, one of them told me, in a low tone, that he gave all that he got in charity, and was much liked. The Dervish cut some flowers, and presented each of us with one.
The Muezzin now looked at his watch, and gave me a wink, expressive of the approach of the time for evening prayer; so I followed him into the church, which had bare white-washed walls with nothing to remark; and then taking my hand, he led me up the dark and dismal spiral staircase to the top of the minaret; on emerging on the balcony of which, we had a general view of the town and environs.
Ushitza lies in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains. The Dietina, a tributary of the Morava, traverses the town, and is crossed by two elegantly proportioned, but somewhat ruinous, bridges. The principal object in the landscape is the castle, built on a picturesque jagged eminence, separated from the precipitous mountains to the south only by a deep gully, through which the Dietina struggles into the valley. The stagnation of the art of war in Turkey has preserved it nearly as it must have been some centuries ago. In Europe, feudal castles are complete ruins; in a country such as this, where contests are of a guerilla character, they are neglected, but neither destroyed nor totally abandoned. The centre space in the valley is occupied by the town itself, which shows great gaps; whole streets which stood here before the Servian revolution, have been turned into orchards. The general view is pleasing enough; for the castle, although not so picturesque as that of Sokol, affords fine materials for a picture; but the white-washed Servian church, the fac simile of everyone in Hungary, rather detracts from the external interest of the view.
In the evening the Vayvode sent a message by his pandour, to say that he would pay me a visit along with the Agas of the town, who, six in number, shortly afterwards came. It being now evening, they had no objection to smoke; and as they sat round the room they related wondrous things of Ushitza towards the close of the last century, which being the entre-pôt between Servia and Bosnia, had a great trade, and contained then twelve thousand houses, or about sixty thousand inhabitants; so I easily accounted for the gaps in the middle of the town. The Vayvode complained bitterly of the inconveniencies to which the quarantine subjected them in restricting the free communication with the neighbouring province; but he admitted that the late substitution of a quarantine of twenty-four hours, for one of ten days as formerly, was a great alleviation; “but even this,” added the Vayvode, “is a hindrance: when there was no quarantine, Ushitza was every Monday frequented by thousands of Bosniacs, whom even twenty-four hours’ quarantine deter.”
I asked him if the people understood Turkish or Arabic, and if preaching was held. He answered, that only he and a few of the Agas understood Turkish,—that the Mollah was a deeply-read man, who said the prayers in the mosque in Arabic, as is customary everywhere; but that there was no preaching, since the people only knew their prayers in Arabic, but could not understand a sermon, and spoke nothing but Bosniac. I think that somebody told me that Vaaz, or preaching, is held in the Bosniac language at Seraievo. But my memory fails me in certainty on this point.
After a pleasant chat of about an hour they went away. Our beds were, as the ingenious Mr. Pepys says, “good, but lousy.”
Next day, the Servian Natchalnik, who, on my arrival, had been absent at Topola with the prince, came to see me; he was a middle-aged man, with most perfect self-possession, polite without familiarity or effort to please; he had more of the manner of a Moslem grandee, than of a Christian subject of the Sultan.
Natchalnik. “Believe me, the people are much pleased that men of learning travel through the country; it is a sign that we are not forgotten in Europe; thank God and the European powers, that we are now making progress.”
Author. “Servia is certainly making progress; there can be no spectacle more delightful to a rightly constituted mind, than that of a hopeful young nation approaching its puberty. You Servians are in a considerable minority here in Ushitza. I hope you live on good terms with the Moslems.”
Natchalnik. “Yes, on tolerable terms; but the old ones, who remember the former abject position of the Christians, cannot reconcile themselves to my riding on horseback through the bazaars, and get angry when the Servians sing in the woods, or fire off muskets during a rejoicing.”
The Vayvode now arrived with a large company of Moslems, and we proceeded on foot to see the castle, our road being mostly through those gardens, on which the old town stood, and following the side of the river, to the spot where the high banks almost close in, so as to form a gorge. We ascended a winding path, and entered the gate, which formed the outlet of a long, gloomy, and solidly built passage.
A group of armed militia men received us as we entered, and on regaining the daylight within the walls, we saw nothing but the usual spectacle of crumbling crenellated towers, abandoned houses, rotten planks, and unserviceable dismounted brass guns. The doujou, or keep, was built on a detached rock, connected by an old wooden bridge. The gate was strengthened with heavy nails, and closed by a couple of enormous old fashioned padlocks. The Vayvode gave us a hint not to ask a sight of the interior, by stating that it was only opened at the period of inspection of the Imperial Commissioner. The bridge which overlooked the romantic gorge,—the rocks here rising precipitately from both sides of the Dietina,—seemed the favourite lounge of the garrison, for a little kiosk of rude planks had been knocked up; carpets were laid out; the Vayvode invited us to repose a little after our steep ascent; pipes and coffee were produced.
I remarked that the castle must have suffered severely in the revolution.
“This very place,” said the Vayvode, “was the scene of the severest conflict. The Turks had twenty-one guns, and the Servians seven. So many were killed, that that bank was filled up with dead bodies.”
“I remember it well,” said a toothless, lisping old Turk, with bare brown legs, and large feet stuck in a pair of new red shining slippers: “that oval tower has not been opened for a long time. If any one were to go in, his head would be cut off by an invisible hangiar.” I smiled, but was immediately assured by several by-standers that it was a positive fact! Our party, swelled by fresh additions, all well armed, that made us look like a large body of Haiducks going on a marauding expedition, now issued by a gate in the castle, opposite to that by which I entered, and began to toil up the hill that overlooks Ushitza, in order to have a bird’s-eye view of the whole town and valley. On our way up, the Natchalnik told me, that although long resident here, he had never seen the interior of the castle, and that I was the first Christian to whom its gates had been opened since the revolution.
The old Vayvode, notwithstanding his cumbrous robes, climbed as briskly as any of us to the detached fort on the peak of the hill, whence we looked down on Ushitza and all its environs; but I was disappointed in the prospect, the objects being too much below the level of the eye. The landscape was spotty. Ushitza, instead of appearing a town, looked like a straggling assemblage of cottages and gardens. The best view is that below the bridge, looking to the castle.
- This is a phrase, and had no relation to the occupation of Sind or Aden. ↩︎
