Macedonia under Ottoman Turkish Domination

After the Battle of the River Marica (1371), the Turks celebrated their victory over the army of King Volkasin and Despot Uglesa. Following this battle Volkasin’s successor, King Marko, and the remnant of his court gained a short-lived and relative freedom by paying tribute.

The swift subjugation of the Balkan states was certainly a result of the circumstances prevailing at the time. Intolerance towards one another and armed conflicts, resulting from the collapse of the feudal system, lead to a rapid weakening of the defensive powers of the Balkan states. Social movements and uprisings were on the increase. The struggle between the ruling class on one hand and the serfs and urban population who were without rights on the other assumed large proportions.

After its subjugation to the Osmanli Turks, a process completed during the first decades of the 15^th century, Macedonia became a platform from which the conquest of the neighbouring countries continued. The Turks swiftly implemented their own administrative division of the country and formed four sanjaks, those of Skopje, Kustendil, Thessaloniki and Ohrid, within the vilayet of Rumelia.

For the Macedonian people the subjugation of Macedonia was not just a simple change of rule. It was followed by terrifying destruction of towns and villages, enslavement, forced migrations by large groups to the infertile areas of Asia Minor, assimilation and many other misfortunes.

With the implementation of their policy of conquest directed towards the subjugation of the Balkan states which were still at liberty, the Osmanli Turks endeavoured to secure their rear as well as possible. Thus they began a massive settlement of large Turkman groups, usually herdsmen, in order to drive wedges between the Macedonian population, taking over the most fertile pastures from the Plain of Thessaloniki to that of Skopje. The ethnic unity of the Macedonian population was gradually splintered. With time the Turkish authorities, carrying out a skilful and well-thoughtout policy, managed to include some of the minor local feudal lords in their system of fiefs and spahis, while the estates of greater nobility were taken over entirely and divided up. The fiefdoms of the local spahis were not large and there were some whose income was hardly more than 250 akri. According to the chronicles of the monastery at Matka, not far from Skopje, and the records from the church of that monastery, there lived in Skopje a noble named Tosnik with his wife Milica and their son. In 1497 Milica donated funds for the reconstruction of the monastery. In the 16^th century, the princely families of Vojcik and Pepik, famous for their gifts to monasteries in Macedonia, were living in Kratovo. Finally, there were Christian soldiers who served in the Turkish army in Macedonia who at the same time retained their inheritance, as was also the case with privileged peasants – the defile guards and falconers. The majority of the spahis who were Christians and soldiers gradually went over to Islam, and were indistinguishable from the true Moslems.

The wars weakened and crushed the peasants, the essential productive force, and the spahis decreased in number. Capital from trade and money-lending entered the peasants economy. The large money-lenders devastated the Christian commoners who in many cases fled to the towns. Seeing no way out of the situation, the Macedonian population began to rebel. Thus in 1512 an outlaw band appeared in the region of Kratovo mines. In the 16^th century the resistance assumed a mass character. From this period the Mariovo and Prilep Rebellion is well known. In 1574 the peasants of the Ohrid villages rose against the increasing taxation. There were still, however, no realistic conditions for these revolts to become more large-scale movements.

The Ohrid Archbishopric was not abolished with the arrival of Turks. It retained its own organization, even expanding at the expense of the other neighbouring Orthodox churches. Its borders often changed, depending on the wishes of the Turkish authorities. However, while it existed it managed to retain nine metropolitanates and five bishoprics and which is most important, its autocephalous status. From time to time the Turkish authorities took harsh measures against the archbishopric, as they did in 1466 when by order of Sultan Mohammed II the Archbishop of Ohrid Dorotheus was transported to Constantinople, together with several distinguished Ohrid citizens. From the end of the 16^th century an increasing number of the leading positions in the archbishopric were occupied by clergy of Greek nationality. However, the regular clergy remained Macedonian.

Not only to give a better orientation and overview but also because of stylistic features and characteristics, icon-painting in Macedonia from the time of its occupation by the Ottoman Turks up to its liberation from Turkish rule (1912) has been divided into three periods. The first covers from the end of the 14^th to the end of the 15^th centuries, the second from the 16^th to the end of the 17^th centuries, and the third from the beginning the 18^th century up to 1912.

In this work we are concerned with icons and their revetments up to the end of the 17^th century. This was indisputably the time when the most important achievements in icon-painting under Osmanli Turkish rule were made in Macedonia.

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Icons of Macedonia

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