In the city of Niš, in the heart of the Balkan Peninsula, stands a macabre monument to the Serbian resistance against the Ottoman's 400-year rule. But it was built not to celebrate or commemorate the heroic sacrifices of thousands of resistance fighters who lost their lives, but to strike fear in their very hearts.
The Serbian Empire fell to the Ottomans in the late 14th century, but the writing was on the wall for a long time. The Empire was crumbling under Stefan Uroš V, whose indecisiveness and incompetence had earned him the disgraceful title of “Uros the Weak”. Internal conflicts had fragmented the empire into a number of principalities, some of which did not even nominally acknowledge his rule. At the same time, the Ottoman sultanate was gradually spreading across Asia and Europe. When the powerful Ottomans attacked, the Serbian provincial lords, too absorbed with their own enmity, offered little resistance.
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The city of Niš was captured for the first time by the Ottoman Turks in 1375. The Serbs managed to get it back in 1443, but it fell again in 1448. The city changed hands a few more times between the Turks and the Austrians during the 17th and 18th centuries, but for the greater part of the next 400 years since the city fell, it was under the famously brutal Ottomans. During this era, the Serbs suffered untold misery as chronicled by travelers passing through the region. A 16th century Silesian traveler described grisly scenes of mutilated corpses littered along the route from Sofia to Niš. When he reached the gates of Niš, he saw that it was bedecked with freshly-severed heads of poor Bulgarian peasants.
The first full-scale war between the Serbians and the Ottomans took place in 1805, in the Battle of Ivankovac, where the Serbs defeated the Turks and forced them to retreat toward Niš. Stevan Sinđelić, the military commander for the revolutionaries, proved himself as a good and capable military leader and was subsequently appointed to be the Commander of the Resava Infantry Brigade.
Battle of Mišar, painting by Afanasij Scheloumoff, 1930s.
In 1809, a force of ten thousand Serbian rebels approached the villages south of the city of Niš, and dug six trenches. The first and the biggest one was on Čegar Hill in charge of Stevan Sinđelić. From there, the Serbs launched several attacks against the Niš Fortress, but each time they were repulsed by the numerically superior Ottomans. During the two-month-long struggle, Sinđelić and his Brigade became separated from the remainder of the Serb guerrilla positions and he and his men resisted fiercely. But when Ottoman troops began pouring into the trench where Sinđelić’s unit was trapped, Sinđelić knew there was little hope. Overwhelmed by enemies, Sinđelić pulled out his gun and fired at the powder magazine. There was a tremendous explosion that shook the ground and killed everyone inside the trench as well as in the vicinity. It is estimated that over 6,000 Ottoman troops and 3,000 Serbians perished in the Battle of Čegar Hill.
Stevan Sinđelić blowing up the powder keg.
After the battle, Grand Vizier Hurshid Pasha ordered that the heads of Sinđelić and his men be skinned, stuffed and sent to the Ottoman sultan, Mahmud II. The sultan appreciated the offering, and then sent the skulls back to Niš with the instruction that a tower be built and the skulls displayed as a warning to all Serbians who dared to rebel. When constructed, the Skull Tower was 15 feet high and consisted of 952 skulls embedded on its four sides. The locals named it Ćele kula. Over the years, many skulls fell out from the tower walls, some were taken away for burial by relatives of the deceased, and some were taken by souvenir hunters.
By the 1860s, with the Ottoman’s power weakening, Midhat Pasha, the last Ottoman governor of Niš, realized that the tower was only fostering resentment against the Ottoman administration and reminding locals of the empire's past cruelty. So he ordered that the remaining skulls be removed from the tower, but he did not dare destroy it because it had become a monument, a powerful symbol of the Serbian resistance. And it still is.
Today, the Skull Tower has lost the majority of the skulls. The few that remains—around 50—are protected by a glass enclosure. The entire tower is housed inside a rather small chapel that looks like a church from the outside. The skull believed to be of Sinđelić rests in a glass container.
The Skull Tower as in 1863.
The Skull Tower as in 1878.
The Skull Tower today. Photo: Maxim Bonte/Flickr
Photo: Magalie L'Abbé/Flickr
The supposed skull of Stevan Sinđelić. Photo: Pudelek/Wikimedia Commons
Photo: asiana/Shutterstock.com
Photo: NiglayNik/Shutterstock.com
Photo: NiglayNik/Shutterstock.com
ReplyDeleteI understand your need to find a historical cause-and-effect relationship and to comprehend the motive behind the creation of such a terrifying monument as the Skull Tower (Ćele-kula). The thesis by Dr. Ferid Muhić that you cited attempts to link the tragic events in Sjenica to the construction of the tower in Niš through the motive of revenge.
However, when it comes to historical facts and sources, the picture is somewhat different and more complex.
1. The Events in Sjenica (1809) and Historical Records
The tragedy in Sjenica in May 1809 is indeed a historical fact. Contemporaries such as Antonije Protić and Vuk Stefanović Karadžić documented it, writing openly about the breach of the given word and the suffering of the population and garrison after the surrender of the fortress. The rebels focused their efforts toward Sjenica and Novi Pazar to join forces with Montenegro, and the outcome of that battle and the accompanying crime remained recorded as one of the darkest episodes of the uprising on that front.
2. The Battle of Čegar and the Origin of the Skull Tower
On the other hand, on the eastern front in May 1809, the Battle of Čegar took place near Niš. Voivode Stevan Sinđelić, realizing the position was lost and that Ottoman forces had breached the trench, fired into the powder magazine, blowing up himself, his fighters, and the Ottoman soldiers alike.
Following the battle, Hurshid Pasha of Niš ordered the heads of the fallen rebels to be decapitated, flayed, stuffed with cotton, and sent to Istanbul, while their skulls were embedded into a tower at the entrance to Niš (a total of 952 skulls).
3. Was the Skull Tower Created as a Reaction to Sjenica?
In the Ottoman doctrine and warfare practices of that era, constructing skull towers or displaying the severed heads of rebels was not a novelty born out of revenge for Sjenica, but rather a standard Ottoman military and political method of intimidation (ibrat—a warning/deterrent to the subject population and potential rebels).
The Practice of Intimidation: Throughout history, the Ottoman Empire built similar structures or displayed the heads of rebels across the empire (from the Middle East to the Balkans) to demonstrate the power of the central authority and deter further rebellions.
The Inscription on the Tower: There are no historical, Ottoman, or Western primary sources confirming that an inscription mentioning Sjenica or women and children ever existed on the Skull Tower. The earliest Western travel writers who described the tower (such as Alphonse de Lamartine in 1833) depicted it as a monument to tyranny and a warning to the people, with no mention of such text.
Conclusion
The events in Sjenica and the crime committed there are a historical reality condemned even by Serbian chroniclers of the time. However, the Skull Tower was not primarily produced by a specific act of revenge for Sjenica, but rather by a systematic Ottoman strategy of intimidation aimed at crushing the First Serbian Uprising and sending a clear message to anyone rebelling against the empire.