Cause of death Killed | Name Milos Obilic | |
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Died 15 June 1389Kosovo Polje Other names Milos Kobilac, Milos Kobilovic, Milos Kobilic Religion Serbian Orthodox Christian | ||
The Monument to Serbian Knight Milos Obilic in Gracanica
Milos Obilic-zakletva ..avi
Miloš Obilić (Serbian Cyrillic: Милош Обилић, [mîloʃ ôbilit͡ɕ]; died June 15, 1389) was a Serbian knight in the service of Prince Lazar, during the invasion of the Ottoman Empire. He is not mentioned in contemporary sources, but he features prominently in later accounts of the Battle of Kosovo as the assassin of the Ottoman sultan Murad I. Although the assassin remains anonymous in sources until the late 15th century, the dissemination of the story of Murad's assassination in Florentine, Serbian, Ottoman and Greek sources suggests that versions of it circulated widely across the Balkans within half a century after the event.
Contents
- The Monument to Serbian Knight Milos Obilic in Gracanica
- Milos Obilic zakletva avi
- Name
- Serbian traditions
- Later legends
- Legacy
- References
It is not certain whether Obilić actually existed, but Lazar's family – strengthening their political control – "gave birth to the myth of Kosovo", including the story of Obilić. He became a major figure in Serbian epic poetry, in which he is elevated to the level of the most noble national hero of medieval Serbian folklore. Along with the martyrdom of Prince Lazar and the alleged treachery of Vuk Branković, Miloš's deed became an integral part of Serbian traditions surrounding the Battle of Kosovo. In the 19th century, Miloš also came to be venerated as a saint in the Serbian Church.
Name
The hero's first name, Miloš, is a Slavic given name recorded from the early Middle Ages among the Bulgarians, Czechs, Poles and Serbs. It is derived from the Slavic root mil-, meaning "merciful" or "dear", which is found in a great number of Slavic given names.
Several versions of the hero's surname have been used throughout history. In his History of Montenegro (1754), Vasilije Petrović wrote of one Miloš Obilijević, and in 1765, the historian Pavle Julinac rendered the surname as Obilić. According to Czech historian Konstantin Josef Jireček, the surname Obilić and its different renderings are derived from the Serbian words obilan ("plenty of") and obilje ("wealth, abundance"). The surname Kobilić could come from the Slavic word kobila (mare), and means "mare's son", as in Serbian legends the hero is said to have been nursed by one. K. Jireček connected the surname to two noble families in medieval Ragusa and Trebinje, the Kobilić and Kobiljačić in the 14th and 15th centuries, and noted that they altered their surnames in the 18th century because they considered it "indecent" to be associated with mares. Based on a 1433 document from Ragusan archives, the historian Mihailo Dinić concluded that Miloš's original surname was indeed Kobilić (Latin: Cobilich). The rendering Obilić has universally been used by Serbian writers in modern times.
The historian Noel Malcolm has proposed that the surname may have been derived from the term kopil, of possible Vlach or Albanian origin, which means "child" or "bastard child". However, a similar word (kopile) exists in the Serbian language and carries the same meaning. Malcolm also hypothesizes that Kobilić might be of Hungarian origin, possibly a transliteration of the Hungarian word kóbor lovag (knight-errant).
Serbian traditions
Miloš Obilić is a major hero of the Serbian legend of Kosovo, whose central part is the Battle of Kosovo. According to the legend, Miloš was a son-in-law of the Serbian Prince Lazar. A quarrel broke out between his wife and her sister who was married to Vuk Branković, about superiority in valour of their respective husbands. As a consequence of this, Branković took offence and picked a fight with Miloš. Filled with hate, Branković maligned Miloš to Lazar, saying that he conspired with Turks to betray the prince. At Lazar’s supper on the eve of the battle, the prince reproached Miloš for disloyalty. To prove his loyalty, Miloš went into the Turkish camp feigning defection. At a favourable moment, he stabbed and killed the Turkish Sultan Murad, whose attendants then executed Miloš. The legend then goes on to describe events regarding the battle.
There are two main views about the creation of the Kosovo legend. In one view, its place of origin lies in the region in which the Battle of Kosovo was fought. In the other view, the legend sprang up in more westerly Balkan regions under the influence of the French chansons de geste. Serbian philologist Dragutin Kostić stated that the French chivalric epics had in fact no part in the formation of the legend, but that they "only modified the already created and formed legend and its first poetic manifestations". The nucleus from which the legend developed is found in the cultic literature celebrating Prince Lazar as a martyr and saint, written in Moravian Serbia between 1389 and 1420. Especially important in this regard is the Discourse on Prince Lazar composed by Serbian Patriarch Danilo III. The legend would gradually evolve during the subsequent centuries.
The tale of the maligned hero who penetrated the Turkish camp and killed Sultan Murad, is found in the Life of Despot Stefan Lazarević written in the 1430s by Konstantin the Philosopher. The hero's name is not mentioned in this work. The theme of the quarrel between Lazar's son-in-laws was first recorded in Herzegovina in the mid-15th century. Lazar’s supper on the eve of the battle and his reproach of Miloš are mentioned in texts from the 16th century. The argument between Lazar's daughters over the valor of their husbands was first recorded by Mavro Orbin in 1601. The fully developed legend of Kosovo, with all of its elements, is recorded in the Tale of the Battle of Kosovo composed around the beginning of the 18th century in the Bay of Kotor or Old Montenegro. This was a very popular text, whose copies were continuously produced for some 150 years in an area stretching from the south of ex-Yugoslavia to Budapest and Sofia. The Tale played a notable role in the awakening of national consciousness of the Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy, which began in the first half of the 18th century.
The first author to refer to Murad's killer by his full name is Konstantin Mihailović, a Serbian Janissary from the village of Ostrovica, near Rudnik, who wrote his Memoirs of a Janissary or Turkish Chronicle in ca 1497. In a passage intended to infer a moral lesson about disloyalty from the Serbian defeat at Kosovo, Mihailović identifies Miloš Kobica as the knight who on the fateful last Friday of the battle slew Murad. The next time a name is given in the sources is three decades later, in 1530, when the (Slovene) monk Benedikt Kuripečič (Curipeschitz) wrote memoirs of his travels through the Balkan Peninsula. His visit to Murad's tomb in Kosovo Polje provides the occasion for the story of the knight whom he names Miloš Kobilović. Kuripešić elaborates on the humiliation and fall out favour which Miloš endured before the battle, his last dinner with Lazar and his nobles, his admittance to Murad's tent, the brutal murder and his own death on attempting to escape on horseback. The monk, though not explicit about his sources, writes that Miloš was a celebrated figure in the popular traditions of Serbs, who sing about his heroic exploits on the border. He recorded some legends about the Battle of Kosovo and mentions epic songs about Obilić in regions far from Kosovo, like Bosnia and Croatia. In his 1603 work Richard Knolles described the "country songs" of Serbs about the Battle of Kosovo and refer to Obilić as "Cobelitz".
In Serbian epic poetry and song (e.g. "Radul-bey and Bulgarian King Šišman" and the song "Dušan's Wedding"), Miloš Obilić is often grouped along with other literary creations like Karadjordje, Vuk Karadžić and Njegoš as Serbs of Dinaric origin who distinguished themselves as the great moral and/or intellectual minds of the past in contradistinction to Bulgarian contemporaries, who could claim no such status. In the poem "Obilić Dragon's Son", Miloš is given a mythical ancestry as the son of a dragon to emphasise his superhuman strength on a physical and spiritual level; in this, he joins the ranks of many other heroes of Serbian poetry who fought against Turkish oppression and are claimed to have been descendants of a dragon.
Albert Lord of Harvard University stated in 1982 that Albanian epic songs about the Battle of Kosovo were not translations of the Serbian epic songs, as was previously thought. Lord argues that the two traditions emerged more or less independent of each other. According to him, major elements of the Albanian tale of the assassination of Sultan Murad cannot be found in the corresponding Serbian accounts, while these elements can be traced to Albanian folklore. The Serbian and the Albanian traditions came into contact in the region of Raška, where they were fused.
Later legends
Legacy
It was not until the early 19th century that Miloš was also venerated as a saint in the Serbian Church. During the First Serbian Uprising (1804–1813), a fresco of Miloš as a haloed, sword-bearing saint was painted in Prince Lazar's narthex in the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos (Greece). The historian Rade Mihaljčić suggests that the cult was a popular movement which originated among the Serbs south of the Sava and Danube during the Ottoman period.
Later in the same century, the heroic figure of Miloš was given a national boost in the epic poem The Mountain Wreath (1847) by Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, prince-bishop of Montenegro. The poem praises the assassin's valour in battle, calling him "the victim of a noble feeling, / An all powerful military genius, / A dreadful thunder that smashes crowns". Njegoš also instituted the Obilić medal for courage.
This event and the Battle of Kosovo itself has become embedded in the Serbs' national consciousness, history, and poetry. Njegoš's tales, including Miloš, inspired later generations of Serbs - notably Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
In 1913, the Medal of Miloš Obilić was awarded by King Peter I to soldiers for the acts of great personal courage, or for personal courage demonstrated on the battlefield. It was given during the Balkan wars, World War I, and during World War II, to members of the Yugoslav Army or allied forces and was discontinued with the end of the war.
In the late 1980s, religious nationalists began to breathe further life into the figure of Miloš and the Kosovo Myth. Special inspiration was taken from Njegoš's The Mountain Wreath, with its portrayal of Lazar as a Christ-like martyr and Obilić as the Serb sacrificing himself to prove his loyalty and seek retribution. A key event which gave expression to this idea was the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo (Vidovdan) on 28 June 1989, which was held at the Gazimestan plain, near the site of the battle. Obilić's feat has been cited as a source of inspiration in public speeches by political leaders, notably President Milošević, who referred to him in his Gazimestan speech on the occasion of the battle anniversary. His regime often alluded to Obilić frequently in comparison to Milosević, who was proclaimed the "saviour of the nation".
Anna Di Lellio presented Kosovo Albanian epic poems regarding the Battle of Kosovo, in her book The Battle of Kosovo 1389: An Albanian Epic, released in 2009, just a few days after the anniversary of the battle. Reviewers point out that she portrays Miloš Obilić as an "Albanian knight", though she has said that she does not claim that Obilić was Albanian: "I have only collected poems sung by Kosovo Albanians and translated them into English so that the world can see the other view on the Kosovo myth which has a strong influence on Balkan countries". She also noted that Albanian historiography officially views Obilić as having been a Serb.
Obilić is featured in Serbian rhymical idiom "Dva loša ubiše Miloša" or "Dva su loša ubila Miloša" which translates as "Two no-goods have killed Miloš". The idiom addresses the issue of quantity prevailing over quality as a sad fact of life, since Obilić was outnumbered by enemies.
He is included in The 100 most prominent Serbs.