Medieval and Ottoman town of Sokolac

The historic area of the Old Town of Sokolac was declared a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2007 (Komisija za očuvanje nacionalnih spomenika, 2007).

Free From AI LLM! All written works on greenwaytour2parks.com are the product of a human being. If you find a misprint, rest assured it was made by and will be corrected by a genuine human being. 

Sokolac is located on the beautiful hill of Debeljača on the left bank of the Una River near the town of Bihać, and it stands on a very impressive limestone cliff that can be clearly seen from the town itself. Such an elevated position played an important defensive role during the turbulent Middle Ages.

Prehistoric Hillfort

The prehistoric hillfort, measuring 670 × 170 m, occupied the entire upper part of the Debeljača hill plateau in the southeast–northwest direction, the same place where the medieval town of Sokolac was later built (Radimsky, 1893, 45–47).

 Very valuable archaeological finds were discovered at this prehistoric site, including ceramic vessels and moulds used for making small bronze objects, “terminal” parts of bronze jewellery, as well as iron artefacts. The age of the discovered knives and horseshoes could not be determined, but the study of the pottery established that it dates from the Bronze Age, between the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. This was the period when the wider area was inhabited by the prehistoric Illyrian population of the Yapodes, who at that time built very interesting settlements on the nearby Una River at Ripč – Sojenice, wooden houses on stilts (Radimsky, 1893, 45–47).

Today, most of these valuable finds are preserved in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo.

The Turbulent Middle Ages

Numerous upheavals, changes of ownership, and leases greatly complicated the proper preservation of written historical documentation. However, some records have been preserved and archived across Europe. Thus, the chronicler Ivan Tomašić, while researching historical sources, identified the year of the construction of Sokolac as 1020 CE (Lopašić, 1890, p. 271).

In medieval documents the fortress is mentioned under the names Zokol and Sokolatz, while on a map from 1574 by one of the most famous cartographers of the 16th century, Abraham Ortelius, the name Sokol appears. This form of the name occurs throughout much of the Middle Ages. For example, the cartographers Gerard Valk and Leonard Valk published in 1700 the map Sclavonia, Croatia, Bosnia, cum Dalmatiae Parte, on which the form of the name Socols appears (Ruderman, n.d.).

On such an impressive rock stood an equally impressive tower, sixteen metres high, located at the highest south-eastern part of the hill, which dominated - and still dominates - this area. Sokolac had two towers: the smaller kapi-tower or gate-tower was situated on the northern side of the fortress and stood about 15 metres high and approximately 3 × 4 m in width. The larger and main tower was somewhat higher, with a diameter of 10 m and wall thickness of 2.4 m. The fortress had a triangular ground plan and was built of “local hard stone and partly tufa,” measuring 175 m in length and reaching its greatest width of 120 m on the north-western side (Truhelka, 1904, p. 31).

Radoslav Lopašić also provides a detailed description of the so-called ban’s palace within the walls - a larger room in which stone-carved tables and benches were located.

The oldest charter in which Sokol is mentioned as a royal town with castellans Ivan and Grgur Eten dates from 1395 (Lopašić, 1890, p. 271).

During this medieval period, kings frequently granted it to deserving Croatian noblemen and repurchased it when necessary. At that time, most conflicts and battles were fought over fortresses - who would capture which one, and which held greater strategic importance. Sokolac, for example, held the status of a royal town, which meant that due to its important strategic position it enjoyed certain privileges guaranteed by the king. Sokolac experienced the classic turbulent medieval story which, throughout Europe, was characterized by major upheavals, unusual alliances, and bloody conspiracies. Thus, in this region as well, Croatian nobles formed alliances with various partners in order to achieve their goals.

The Croatian-Hungarian king Sigismund of Luxembourg (reigned 1387–1437) granted the royal towns of Bihać and Sokol, together with their lands, to his supporters, the princes of Krk, the Frankopan family, by charters issued in 1431 and 1434. They held these possessions for more than half a century (Lopašić, 1890, p. 272).

Sigismund of Luxembourg also ruled as king of Germany and Bohemia and was Holy Roman Emperor, although he maintained power through rather ruthless tactics-methods that were also used by many others who sought the throne. How harsh those times were, and how one came to power or remained on the throne, is vividly illustrated by the historical event of 1397 known as the “Bloody Assembly of Križevci” (Krvavi sabor križevački), when Sigismund treacherously murdered the Croatian ban Stephen Lacković and the nobles who accompanied him during what had been presented as a conciliatory assembly (Macan, 1992, pp. 110–111).

After losing their larger fortress of Bihać, the Frankopans also lost Sokol, which came under the authority of the Croatian ban Ivaniš Korvin (a Hungarian magnate, Duke of Slavonia, and Ban of Croatia in 1495–1498 and 1499–1504), whose wife Beatrice came from the Frankopan family. After Korvin’s death, the towns of Bihać and Sokol returned to royal authority in 1505 (Lopašić, 1890, pp. 272–273).

A new change in the ownership of Sokol occurred in 1510, when the Croatian-Hungarian king Vladislaus II of Hungary (who also ruled as King of Bohemia but was less fortunate in his ambitions concerning Poland and Lithuania) granted Sokol to the old Croatian noble family of Orlović from Ripč and Čavka. He publicly praised their merits in defending Croatia against the Turks, although the Croats were defending far more than their own territory (Lopašić, 1890, pp. 273–274). For a long period of time, Croatia served as a Habsburg frontier outpost in the defense of the rest of Central Europe against the Ottomans, suffering greatly as a result - a fate that few in Central Europe would have envied.

After the Orlović family, among the better-known Croatian nobles and military heroes who resided in Sokol were Petar Kružić around 1529 and Ladislav Kerečen around 1534 (Lopašić, 1890, pp. 273–274).

Ottoman attacks and conquests lasted for a long time and came in waves; the fighting was cruel, and the human casualties and material damage were enormous. As early as 1537 a major battle took place when a strong Ottoman force managed to reach the very walls of the town, although they failed to capture it. Part of the local Croatian population managed to take refuge within the city walls, but many were killed or taken into slavery, while others were displaced. Another major attack occurred in 1561, when the numerically superior Ottoman army brutally devastated Golubić, Ripač, and Privilica. The fertile Golubić field was an important source of food for the soldiers, which is why Golubić had been attached to the fortress of Bihać. New major attacks followed in 1586 and 1591, when Sokolac was attacked by the Livno bey with 1,500 soldiers, though without success, despite very heavy losses on both sides (Lopašić, 1890, pp. 275–277).

The attacks continued until 1592, when Hasan Pasha Predojević captured both the main fortress of Bihać and the town of Sokolac, bringing them under Ottoman rule.

After the fall of the fortress, there is no firm information about the further fate of Sokolac. It is known that nearby towns on the right bank of the Una River were incorporated into the newly established Bosnian Sanjak (an administrative unit), presumably in the period between 1592 and 1620 (Šabanović, 1982, pp. 82–84).

During the Ottoman period, the nearby settlement of Ripač is mentioned most frequently as an important local centre. Attractive for settlement since the time of the Japodes and beautifully situated on an island of the Una River, it gained greater importance in this era. Within the fortress of Sokolac itself there were only a small number of soldiers—the so-called nefers—and a few cannons (Kreševljaković, 1952, pp. 124, 146).

In the 18th century, the Bihać Sanjak was one of five sanjaks within the Bosnian Eyalet (an important administrative province). Besides Bihać, other notable places within it included Ostrožac, Cazin, Bosanska Krupa, Kamengrad, and Bužim. The seat of the sanjak was Bihać, although at times it was also located in Krupa. Historical sources suggest that the Bihać Sanjak had been abolished in the mid-17th century and later re-established, but in 1711 it was definitively abolished (Šabanović, 1982, pp. 88, 230).

Devshirme

Expansionist (imperial) wars have continued until the present day, and all of them, without exception, have always required new soldiers - especially when such wars last for centuries. Thus, in the Ottoman Empire a method of recruitment emerged that people still view differently today, depending on whether one descends from the “tax collectors” or the “taxed”: devshirme (Ottoman Turkish: devşirme, a form of tribute in kind, instead of the head-tax or cizye (Yılmaz, 2015, pp. 901–902) - known in our region as "danak u krvi" or tribute in blood. The reasons for creating an elite army loyal and responsible only to the sultan were complex. It is not known with certainty when the devshirme system began, although it appears in historical documents in 1438 (Nicolle, 2011, pp. 273–274), and historians believe that the practice may have started even earlier. The Ottoman practice of forcibly recruiting primarily Christian boys lasted for centuries and was permanently abolished in the early part of the reign of Ahmed III (1703–1730) (Murphey, 2006, p. 223).

This form of recruitment or taxation was carried out across the vast conquered territories of the Ottoman Empire. For example, from the Balkan region between the 15th and the end of the 17th century, between 200,000 and 300,000 boys were taken. Interestingly, the practice raised suspicions from the very beginning because it did not conform to Islamic law (Sharia), yet it was still implemented in cycles every few years (Dragić, 2012). The British historian and Turkologist Victor Louis Ménage (1966) included in his research the important work of Dr. Basilike D. Papoulia titled Ursprung und Wesen der “Knabenlese” im Osmanischen Reich, and particularly noteworthy are the studies of the historian Gülay Yılmaz, associate professor at Akdeniz University in the Turkish province of Antalya, who has specialized in the Janissary army and the devshirme system during the early modern period.

Janissaries

For her research article The Devshirme System and the Levied Children of Bursa in 1603–4, Yılmaz used surviving registers known as eşkal defter, which contain detailed records of the children “collected” in 1603–1604 in the region of Bursa (Greek Prusa). In addition to analysing authentic documents and court records from Bursa, Yılmaz sought to examine as objectively as possible the condition of the children themselves - most of whom were young Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Albanians. The documents she studied record in detail who these children were, their original names and the Muslim names given to them after conversion, the names of their parents, where and how they had been “levied,” their age, physical appearance, and health condition, as well as their fate after arriving in Istanbul. For the first six to ten years their lives were typically connected with hired labour and learning the Turkish language and customs; only after this period would they join the Janissaries. Her conclusions about the reactions of the children and their families are particularly interesting, noting that they ranged from strong resistance to a degree of “desirability” (Yılmaz, 2015, pp. 902–903).

Although Ottoman historical writings often portray the devshirme as a spontaneous process - suggesting that a Janissary soldier would ride into a village and choose boys who caught his eye - Yılmaz found in the documents a clearly defined protocol according to which the taxation of children was carried out, although she notes that various practices existed in reality. The selection process usually lasted several months and followed clearly defined criteria, after which the boys were transported to Istanbul, converted to Islam, and began the process of selection and education as servants of the sultan according to Turkish customs and the Islamic faith. Not all boys, however, ended up in the army, and not all obtained certain privileges such as land or a house. Depending on their physical abilities and intelligence, some later achieved high positions within the Ottoman administration, some advanced as successful soldiers to high military ranks, while others ended up as manual labourers in state workshops (Yılmaz, 2015, pp. 901–902). Undoubtedly many were killed in military campaigns.

The vast majority of parents attempted in various ways to protect their children from this form of taxation - through falsifying baptismal records, mutilation, early marriage, disguising boys as girls, or pretending that the children had mental or physical disabilities. Escapes by boys were not uncommon. Yılmaz cites documents describing such escapes as well as cases in which parents organized themselves and forcibly took their sons back. At the same time, there are also records showing that some parents - and slightly older boys, most often from extremely poor families - wished to join the Ottoman army voluntarily (Yılmaz, 2015, pp. 910–917).

Kizil Aba and Külah 

Transport to Istanbul was especially closely supervised, since escapes were most common during this stage. For easier control, the boys were dressed in “red clothing (kızıl aba)” and a “conical red hat (külah)”, while the costs of the clothing and transportation were paid by the children’s parents. The journey was long, and one can only imagine what the boys must have felt during that time. From the surviving documents, the author was able to partially reconstruct events after their arrival in Istanbul. After the long journey, the boys rested for several days, often staying with host families who were frequently Christian. These were foster families paid by the state and obliged to feed and protect the children. According to the surviving records, after the rest period the boys were called forward for inspection overseen by the commander of the Janissaries, followed by circumcision. In the registers, notes were sometimes written next to individual names - for example: suspicious, sick, dead, and similar remarks. This was followed by the first selection of the boys: those who showed the most promise were placed in the palace school and boarding institution known as Enderun School, located within the palace and originally intended for princes of the court but also for Janissaries who were expected to become governors and administrators of the Ottoman state. For the remaining boys there are various records, but it is known that many were hired out to Turkish peasants, craftsmen, or state workshops for a period of three to eight years during which they learned the language and customs. Children also died from illness, as evidenced by entries in the registers; foster families had to report the death to the court and prove the cause. Escapes continued to be recorded throughout the process, and written traces indicate that some runaway boys were captured and returned, sent to serve a punishment, or in rare cases even executed. Some children were hidden by villagers and local inhabitants who opposed the blood tax, while others fled from battlefields after they had already become trained soldiers (Yılmaz, 2015, pp. 912–915).

Interestingly, the return of runaway Janissaries to a Christian environment was not easy. The author supports this claim with records mentioned in a book by Bartolomé Bennassar and Lucile Bennassar concerning the trials of converts before the Inquisition courts (Yılmaz, 2015, p. 916).

In the summary of his article Some Notes on the Devshirme, Victor Ménage wrote: “No Ottoman institution has provoked more bitter criticism than the devshirme, the ‘blood tax’, particularly - and naturally - among those Christian peoples whose ancestors were subjected to it; yet none touches so many fundamental problems” (Ménage, 1966). The analysed documents from Turkey clearly confirm that the process was mostly forced and involuntary and, without doubt, extremely traumatic for such young children. At the same time, they also show that later there were many cases in which parents and somewhat older boys from poor regions wished to be recruited in order to secure a better future - even a military one - since these were harsh times marked by widespread poverty, hunger, continuous suffering, and deep trauma caused by centuries of warfare.

Even in the 21st century there are debates about whether devshirme constituted a form of enslavement or not. However, the Ottoman Empire was not unique in the exploitation of children. The problem of child exploitation is a problem of humanity itself, since it has existed throughout most of human history and reached a terrible peak during the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries (Ortiz-Ospina and Roser, 2016). Sadly, the exploitation and abuse of children continues even today, and in the case of devshirme it is therefore encouraging to hear a young scholar from Turkey state: “I hope that further similar research will be conducted so that we may better understand the impact of one of the most important institutions of the Ottoman Empire - the devshirme system - on the everyday lives of its subjects, and especially on the children whose lives it transformed” (Yılmaz, 2015, p. 926).

Learning from mistakes and never repeating them again.

Old Town of Sokolac - Future Tourist Attraction

Learning from past experiences and building a successful future in which this historic structure can also serve as a lever for development. In 2015, the first phase of restoration and conservation works on the Old Town of Sokolac began. Today, the site already hosts a variety of cultural events, and through our Calendar of Events and Activities we regularly encourage visitors to include this location in their plans.

Since the summer of 2019, this tour can be completely eco-friendly and responsible, thanks to proactive citizens of Bihać who arranged the Debeljača trim trail. The trail leads from the city all the way to this valuable historical site - the Sokolac Fortress - which is now also illuminated.

Tour this historic site, learn more about its turbulent, but rich history.

Explore Local represents a part of our natural and cultural heritage; for a fuller overview of the tangible and intangible heritage, see our Interactive Map under Experiences and Events and Activities Calendar with many suggestions for your itinerary.

References

1. Dragić, M. (2012). Tribute in blood in the novel the bridge on the Drina and in the modern narrative. Hum, (8), 140. ˃https://hrcak.srce.hr/229346˂
2. Komisija za očuvanje nacionalnih spomenika. (2007, 12. rujna). Odluka o proglašenju historijskog područja Prahistorijske gradine, srednjovjekovnog i osmanskog grada Sokolac u selu Sokocu, općina Bihać, nacionalnim spomenikom Bosne i Hercegovine.˃ http://aplikacija.kons.gov.ba/kons/public/uploads/odluke_bos/Bihac_srednjev%20grad%20Sokolac%20kompl%20BOS.pdf˂
3. Kreševljaković, H. (1952.). Prilozi povijesti bosanskih gradova pod turskom upravom, Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju i istoriju jugoslovenskih naroda pod turskom vladavinom II, Orijentalni institut u Sarajevu, Sarajevo, 146., 124.
4. Lopašić, R. (1890.). Bihać i Bihaćka krajina. Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske, Zagreb, 271-277. ˃https://books.google.hr/˂
5. Macan, T. (1992.). Povijest hrvatskog naroda. Zagreb, Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske - Školska knjiga, Zagreb, 110-111.
6. Ménage, V. (1966.). Some Notes on the Devshirme. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 29(1), 64-78. doi:1017/S0041977X0006081X
7. Murphey, R. (2006.). Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700. Routledge, 223.
8. Nicolle, D. (2011.). "Devshirme System". In Alexander Mikaberidze (ed.). Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia. Vol. 1., 273.-274.
9. Ortiz-Ospina, E. and Roser, M. (2016).  Child Labor. OurWorldinData.org. ˃https://ourworldindata.org/child-labor˂
10. Radimský, V. (1893.). "Nekropola u Jezerinama u Pritoci kod Bišća", Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja u Sarajevu, V, Sarajevo, Zemaljski muzej, 45-47.
11. Ruderman (b.d.). Antique Maps & Prints.˃ https://www.raremaps.com/˂
12. Šabanović, H. (1982.). Bosanski pašaluk, postanak i upravna podjela, II izdanje, Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 82-84.
13. Truhelka, Ć. (1904.). Naši najljepši gradovi, Sarajevo, 31.
14. Yılmaz, G. (2015.). The Devshirme System and the Levied Children of Bursa in 1603-4. Belleten, 79 (286), 902-903. DOI: 10.37879/belleten.2015.901