"The market down in the western part of Nis, where animals, wood, hay are sold, is called the Aranauts Market". No one knows where one of the ideologues of Greater Serbia, Stojan Novaković (1842-1915), got the courage not to hesitate to call things by their real names. Even more, he had addressed the topic "Cities, markets, towns" within the framework of the study of medieval Serbia. The market of Aranuts in Nis, although it was mentioned in passing in the context of the extensive study, in 1903 it was published in the magazine "Archiv für slavische Philologie 25"
"Why do you plow in a foreign land?"
"News reached my grandfather Jovan's ears that somewhere in Arnautllek (Albania), in the areas of Jabllanica and Toplica, there were many properties that had been abandoned by the Albanians. It didn't take long and a fellow villager joined the grandfather." This is how a later resident of the village of Rafunë in today's Jabllanica remembers the story of the old men killed immediately after the summer of 1878. "Grandfather Jovani, after he had proven himself by seeing whole uncultivated fields surrounded by abandoned houses and shacks, returned to Vraje, took the dogs and started digging in one of the abandoned properties without knowing whose it belonged to. Plowing, after a few days someone from behind had closed his eyes. Jovan had his legs cut off when he saw the armed Albanian!
Whose land are you tilling?
I do not know!
When you don't know whose it is, why do you bark?
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This land belongs to the orphans - said the Albanian, confessing that he was the uncle of the orphans, whose parents were killed during the ethnic cleansing campaign of the Serbian army.
Seeing that there was no future left for the former Albanians of the Jabllanica area, he sold the property worth 37 dinars. Finally, Jovani was settled in the new property at the beginning of 1880".
But the story does not end here. "When my grandfather Jovani settled in Rafuna, except for one family known as Stambollovi, all the other houses were Albanian. Although the Rafuna Albanians later abandoned their hearths, everything that remained behind them, not only in the village, but also in the wider area, had an Albanian color" - recalls the Serbian resident of the surroundings of Vraja, who spent his childhood and youth in Rafuna formerly Albanian.
One of the proponents of Serbian expansion in the southern countries has testified how rich the Albanians of the provinces of the four districts that the Principality of Serbia brought under its power after the Congress of Berlin were.
"In Arnautlëk there were large amounts of food and animals left as spoils of war, which were welcome for our army. Of these surplus foods, a significant amount was placed in warehouses, while a portion was used for the army. In order to know what the quantities of these foods were, it is enough to mention that a brigade of the Danube Division, that of Braničeva, had managed to capture so many large and small animals that the entire Danube Division for six consecutive weeks was fed with their meat! In addition, three hundred heads of cows were sent to the Morava corps in Kurshumli, while several hundred heads of small animals were sent to the Nis depot", writes the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Principality of Serbia, Jovan Ristić, in his memoirs.
Albanians abandoned their homes under the flames of war and Serbian violence
In the second half of the 1876th century, on the eve of the wars of 1887-1878 and especially after the end of the Congress of Berlin, the Albanians of the former villages of Toplica, Kosanica, Pusta Reka, Jabllanica, as well as the vast province of Vraja, then of Nis, under the flames of war and Serbian violence, they abandoned their hearths. The first to settle in the deserted Albanian properties were the Montenegrin colonizers. Their arrival started in 1912 and it did not stop until XNUMX. Before the wars in Kosanica and Upper Jabllanica, the Serbian population was almost very small and in the whole above-mentioned area there were only two Serbian villages, while in the province of Pusta In Reka, Toplica there was a very small number of mixed Albanian-Serbian villages.
In the winter of 1878, when entire Albanian families were wandering in the mountains, the then Serbian state, in accordance with the decisions of the Congress of Berlin, started the establishment of the new government. Initially, instead of the six counties that existed before, with the law of December 17, 1878, it was decided that their number would be reduced to four: Toplica, Nish, Vraja and Pirot. Previously, on October 2, 1878, the Serbian leaders of the districts of Topilca and Vraja were ordered to settle the Serbian citizens, who had previously submitted their requests to be settled in these properties, in the abandoned Albanian properties. The deployment of the first wave of Serbian colonizers was based on Article 39 of the agreement issued by the Congress of Berlin. The Serbian officials made such propaganda that the abandoned hearths and Albanian properties were for a short time occupied by the newly arrived colonizers. However, seeing that the settlement of the colonizers was going even better than it was anticipated, the Serbian state on January 13, 1880 approved the Law on the Colonization of the "unliberated" regions, as the regions acquired after the Congress of Berlin were called. Meanwhile, a month later, the Law on the Regulation of agrarian relations in the "post-liberated villages" was also approved.
"In the province of Leskoc, according to the opinion of the administration, three districts should be formed, Veternica with the center in Leskoc, Vllasina with the center in Vllasotice, Pusta Reka with the headquarters in Bojnik. All the Albanians of the province of Leskoc should be attached to the district of Pusta Reka, and this district will have more than 2,700 houses, because according to the report of the officials in the province of Leskoc, there are 53 Albanian villages that are not included in the composition of the municipalities, and in which today there are no inhabitants, except for some Albanian family hiding among the mountains", was the foreseen plan that the Principality of Serbia had to realize, and the organization of power was left in the hands of Alempija Vasilević, who at that time just had returned from Russia.
On October 2, 1878, the Serbian leaders of the counties of Topilca and Vraja were ordered to settle the Serbian citizens, who had previously submitted their demands to be settled in these properties, in the abandoned Albanian properties. The placement of the first wave of Serbian colonizers was based on Article 39 of the agreement issued by the Congress of Berlin
"I assessed that one of the main tasks is to take the best account, with the goods that were found in the liberated areas that did not have their owners, also the food, which was in sufficient quantity and which was left in the warehouses and through different barns. Therefore, on January 11, 1878, I issued an order to all the leaders of the 'new administration' to register the state properties and the spahis in their areas as soon as possible, and to submit the collected data to me. and also to record the food left in towns and villages in order to specify where and how much food was found. I made it known to the officials that the property of the Spahians and Beylers, who abandoned them during the war, should be registered", recalled the organizer of the new government, Vasilevic himself.
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However, before the new government brought the former Albanian lands under control, the Albanian inhabitants had to be pacified by means of the action of organizing their disarmament.
On January 13, 1880, the Serbian state approved the Law on the Colonization of the "unliberated" regions, as the regions acquired after the Congress of Berlin were called. Meanwhile, a month later, the Law on the Regulation of Agrarian Relations in the "post-liberated villages" was also approved.
"Already in the first days, officials and policemen helped to disarm the Muslims and the inhabitants of the Albanian villages who had not abandoned their hearths. The disarmament was done in agreement with the local army commanders. Afterwards, the residents provided the army with food and means of transport, supervised and repaired the damaged roads, collected the food found in certain places... ", added Vasilevic
"Montenegro" volunteers or...?
As a nation that also had assimilated Albanians with a fighting tradition, a large number of "Montenegros" in the wars of 1876-1878, presenting themselves as volunteers, had fought on the Serbian side. It was these volunteers who were the first to encourage the "Montenegro" colonizers to settle initially in the Province of Toplica. Even the official Cetinja had participated in promoting their placement in the Albanian hearths! According to information that is archived in Belgrade, the first "Montenegro" families settled in Toplica in 1878, but since they lacked passports, they were treated as refugees who had arrived from the other side of the border of the Ottoman Empire. But later, other "Montenegrins" who had obtained Turkish passports in official Cetinje also arrived. Based on the official records of Cetinje that are documented, starting from March until the autumn of 1879, the Malaysian state issued a pretty large number of family passports to Serbia.
But even the data that is kept today in the Archives of Serbia generally agree with the time when the "Montenegrin" colonizers started settling in the province of Toplica. According to a report of the head of the district of Prokuple, it is confirmed that at the beginning of December 1879 "families from Montenegro, but also from Herzegovina, are constantly arriving in the district of Prokuple". Among the families "who lacked food" are also those who had received passports in Cetinje in the spring of the same year. More specifically, these families were located in Gajtan and Statovc in the district of Jabllanica and in Grabovica in the district of Kosanica. In the list of colonizers settled in Albanian Gajtan, there is also the name of Ilija Bozhoviqi, who was one of the most vocal propagandists of encouraging "Montenegro" colonizers to settle in abandoned Albanian houses and properties. However, Ilia's son later testified that the first agitator among the "Montenegro" colonizers to settle here was Nedelko Mehmedović, a lawyer by profession, who was killed in unclear circumstances only a few months later after the agitation of his had begun. But the dilemmas about who were the instigators of the settlement of the "Montenegro" colonizers in these places are removed by the information confirmed by archival data that "the personal agent of the Serbian king Karagjorgjevic who led the colonization action of the Albanian places was Gjoko Llukačević". Llukačević's action at that time was an engagement of Belgrade's secret character. Among the first colonizers who settled in Gajtan, was the "Malaysian" Jovan Popovic, who, after finishing theology in Russia, wrote to the Serbian prince Milan to be allocated a property, and the prince himself, being proud of his education Popović had given him the property in the village of Gajtan. Meanwhile, in Upper Jabllanica, the first colonizer who settled there was Milosh Dragović with his brother Mashan, who had previously been a war volunteer. In the register of passports issued in Cetinje, there is information that Dragović, together with other family members, had received the passport in the spring of 1881, but this had happened after the previous stay in Jabllanicë, and upon returning to his hometown, he had managed to He convinced his relatives to join him in settling in the Albanian lands.
According to the official reports of Serbia at that time, from 1880 to 1897, a total of 836 families of colonizers were settled in the district of Toplica. The most families, 707, were settled in 1889. In Prokuple and the area of Kosanica, in the same period, 772 families were settled. The largest number of colonizers settled until 1889 is recorded in the Vraja district. 1,079 families were settled there. According to a calculation, it is estimated that in these years, 9785 colonizers were settled in the former Albanian villages, which is a number based on official data. A colonizing family averaged six or more members.
The Slavized Albanians of Montenegro, the biggest beneficiaries in the villages of Toplica and Jabllanica
In 1891, in the area of Kosanica, around fifty families of the Vasojevic tribe were settled, while five years later, namely in 1896, another 72 families were also settled in Jabllanica. The biggest wave of settlement of colonizing families in the former Albanian territories was marked in the years 1904-1906. According to the report of the Agrarian Commission, which after an inspection gave permission for settlement in particular in abandoned properties, in 1904 a total of 252 families were settled in the district of Jabllanca, Kosanica and Prokuple. It is estimated that the total number of people deployed exceeded 1,500. In the following year, in 1905, 1,138 colonizers were settled in the district of Jabllanica, while in 1906, 2,803 colonizers were settled in the entire area of Jabllanica and Kosanica. So, in the time frame of three years, about 6,000 new colonizers became the owners of the abandoned Albanian lands. In 1908, a group of the Kuç tribe settled in the surroundings of Leskoci, but at the same time members of the Bratonozhiq, Drobnjak tribes settled in the province of Jabllanica.
Based on archival data, the total number of those settled in the former Albanian territories in the district of Jabllanica, Kosanica and Kurshumli between the years 1879-1912 reaches 13,000 inhabitants.
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The biggest wave of settlement of colonizing families in the former Albanian territories was marked in the years 1904-1906
In the entire process of colonization, Toplica served as a center from which the colonizers were oriented to the places and properties where they will settle in the future. While the temporary station was Prokupla and the villages of Këçmara and Visokë of Kurshumlia. Initially, the colonizers targeted the areas from which the Albanians had been expelled en masse, such as the villages of Statovc, Gajtan, and then they settled in the villages of Jabllanica and Kosanica, which were also emptied and destroyed.
To be continued in the next issue of the Culture Supplement. For the placement of "Montenegro" colonizers around the border of Kosovo. Why for the Serbian regime should the Slavized Albanians be well preserved, because they will turn into good defenders of the border? What is said about this in a Serbian state report from 1890? For the violent conversion of Albanians who, even after the Congress of Berlin, did not abandon their former properties
View of Nish, 1875
