Kosovo and the benevolence of Islam

December 28, 2006 – 11:43 am

In the Hijrah 1256, Turkish Grand Sultan Abdul Mejid I summoned Yashar-Pasha, the ruler of the Uskub, to the Sublime Porte where upon arrival Yashar-Pasha was strangled to death with a silk cord.

Strangling of Turkish officials was often used to improve loyalty to the Turkish-ran Islamic Caliphate and in the case of Yashar Pasha, his independent streak and a probable association with Turkish Dahias, a Janisarry order that sought to reform the Caliphate by means of increasing savageries against the infidel they ruled, made the strangling even more prodigious.

Yashar Pasha was a nephew of Malich Pasha, famous for his contribution to Jihad by participating in a beheading ceremony of 1000 Serbian dignitaries in 1809, whose skulls were used to build Cele Kula, the Tower of Sculls, with the skulls of beheaded Serbs neatly stacked in 14 rows where the skulls were embedded.

Cele Kula, the Tower of Skulls, was built by Muslim rulers of Serbia in 1809 after they beheaded 1000 Serb nobles.

Yashar was, indeed, exceptionally groomed by his uncle to be an exemplary Islamic ruler and upon Yashar’s takeover of the Uskup province, a region that includes today’s Kosovo, the lot of the Muslim Albanians improved tremendously.

Yashar’s first financial act was to pay a visit to an elderly Kosovo Serb Vucich, a meek and very pious Christian who moved from Donje Gusterice to Gracanica that was just cleansed of Christians by the Muslims, the faith most Albanians adopted.

Toiling his field when Yashar Pasha and his posse interrupted Vucich:

“Whose property is this, rayah?” said Yashar Pasha referring to Vucich as rayah, a word that denotes inferiority of a Christian in the Islamic dominion.

“God’s first then mine, benevolent Pasha,” replies Vucich.

“It isn’t mine!?… you son of a bitch,” roared Yashar Pasha while swiping his whip across Vucich’s face.

Bleeding, Vucich covers, falls to the ground, silent.

“Paki!” shout one of Yashar’s sejmeni (enforcers).

Sejmeni jump off the horse, grab Vucich and drag the old man to the pear tree.

“Mother of God, forgive me, the sinner, and save my name,” utters Vucic.

“Damned your name,” replied sejmeni and strung Vucich up on the pear tree as the old man stared at Gracanica for salvation.

At some point, Yashar Pasha came up with a more ambitious infrastructure plan for Kosovo then simply stringing up Christian Serbs for property: he decided to build a bridge over Sitnica River at the Kosovo village of Lipljani, known today as one of the flashpints of Muslim Albanian attacks on Kosovo’s Christian Serbs.

In order to adequately supply his stone-masons, Yashar Pasha ordered that Christian Serb churches in villages of Batus, Skulanovo, Rajce and Slovinja be demolished, but carefully enough, so that the demolished stone can be transported and used in building the bridge. As his stone masons complained that the supply isn’t enough, Yashar Pasha sent his posse to Lipljan to demolish that church, but for some mysterious reason decided not to.

Pious Christians say that miracle of Christ resides in the Lipljan church, even today, because Yashar Pasha was kept away from destroying it.

Yashar Pasha was also benevolent towards Christians and Jews in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, forcing many small shops, most of them Jewish, to be turned over to Islamic owners.

In 1830, however, Yashar Pasha, for some reason, allowed reconstruction of the demolished church of Saint Nicholas in Pristina, first one after all three previous ones, including Saint Petka and Saint Lazarus, were either demolished or turned into mosques. For hundreds of years, Christian Serbs lit candles during Christian holidays at the ruins of Saint Nicholas in Pristina.

The rebuilt Saint Nicholas church was done in a strict Islamic legal code: 4 basamaks lower then any mosque, also a phenomena of the contemporary Kosovo where new mosques must be taller then churches that have not yet been demolished.

Before his silken death, Yashar Pasha left Kosovo his benevolent legacy of Islamic piety: the Yashar Pasha Mosque in Pristina, which, much unlike the Christian Serb churches he demolished to the ground, still stands in Pristina albeit with a need of reconstruction.

UN was alarmed that the Yashar Pasha Mosque, left as the legacy of Islam to Muslim Albanians, has suffered tone deterioration due to salt efflorescence (left) and a crack in the dome transition zone. Hundreds of Christian churches across Kosovo remain unrepaired after Muslim Albanians have demolished them since 1999.

“There are some cracks in the pendentive area of the building,” describes UN in its action plan for reconstruction of the Yashar Pasha mosque in Kosovo. “The lead dome covering is cracked and causes dampness by rain infiltration through the roof. The dampness in the building is also caused by capillary action. The iron bars laid in the dome drum should be checked (rust damage).”

“€223,000 for architectural documentation, structure assessment, diagnostic study and restoration works,” assesses UN of Yashar Pasha Mosque, a remarkable amount of money to be spent on a legacy of a man that did his utmost to demolish Christianity in order to forcibly create an Islamic identity of Kosovo.

The benovolence of Islam in Kosovo still continues.