Mineral Exploitation and Artistic Production in the Balkans after 1250

MAXIMILIAN HARTMUTH

Mineral Exploitation and Artistic Production in the Balkans after 1250

Less than a decade after Austria–Hungary occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878, the Hungarian writer, ethnographer, and parliamentarian János Asbóth toured the territories and recorded his impressions. Visiting Sarajevo’s bazaar, he mar-velled at the metalwork available (fig. 1); in fact, as he later wrote, he must have seen several ‘masterpieces’ there. However, he also noted, with some unhappi-ness, that one craft at which Bosnians traditionally excelled, namely the embel-lishment of weapons through damascening, i.e. the art of inlaying different metals into one another, had declined dramatically in the recent past. This was, as he explained, because in modern Bosnia weapons were generally no longer displayed in public (Asbóth 1888: 170). What he was probably too diplomatic to add was that the practice of parading through Bosnia’s town centres with richly decorated weapons had ceased following a ban by the new authorities. Having only recently defeated armed resistance against their occupation of the country, Austro-Hungarian policymakers were less than enthusiastic about the public display of privately owned arms. And since ornamented weapons could no longer be paraded, the demand for them seems to have fallen off to such an extent that the arts related to them died out almost completely. When around the year 1900 the authorities wished to revive the damascening of weapons (as part of a plan to develop local export industries), officials managed to track down just one remaining master of the craft, the elderly Mustafa Letić of Foča, who had already abandoned it in favour of another line of work. Having been made a lucrative offer, which he accepted reluctantly, Letić then began to train youngsters in damascening at the government’s Arts and Crafts School (fig. 2) in the provincial capital Sarajevo (Zurunić 1901: 512).

This anecdote occurs at the end of a long history of connections between mineral exploitation and artistic production in the western Balkans. The aim of this paper is to track and trace these connections – on various levels – from the 13th century, when the exploitation of Balkan mines began in earnest, through

98 | MAXIMILIAN HARTMUTH

Fig. 1. ‘Objecte der Metallindustrie’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina around the turn of the 20th century. Drawing by Hugo Charlemont. (Source: Zurunić 1901: 511)

Fig. 2. Students working on objects in the Austro-Hungarian Arts and Crafts School (‘Kunstgewerbliches Atelier der Regierung’) in Sarajevo. Drawing by Emerich von Révész. (Source: Zurunić 1901: 513)

MINER AL EXPLOITATION AND ARTISTIC PRODUCTION IN THE BALK ANS | 99

the 16th and 17th centuries, when mining in the region declined as a result of the influx of cheap American silver and other factors, to the 19th century, when new patterns of production and consumption emerged. I shall start with thoughts on the general role of the mines in the social and artistic development of the region before continuing with reflections on the import and identity of the individuals involved: the consumers and the producers of art objects made of metal.

Balkan Mines and Balkan Art, 13th–15th Centuries

The revival of mining in the western Balkans (fig. 3) began in earnest in the mid-13th century, when ‘Saxon’ miners started working at the Serbian mine of Brsk-ovo in today’s Montenegro. This development was probably stimulated by an increasing demand for silver occasioned by the growth of European commerce and craft production (Stoianovich 1994: 89). The local impact of these changes was considerable: the larger amounts of cash now available to Serbian rulers thanks to increased trade radically improved their position not only financially, but also with respect to their own nobility, for they could now simply hire mer-cenaries instead of using soldiers supplied by their nobles (Fine 1987: 200, 257). It is certainly no coincidence that King Milutin (r. 1282–1321), whose determina-tion to exploit the mines was unparalleled in the Balkans at that time, also became medieval Serbia’s most ambitious patron of art and architecture. The mines not only supplied him with the wealth to sponsor art, but also functioned as agents of centralisation, helping the consolidation of states in the Balkan region.

The same factors were at work in neighbouring Bosnia, which in medieval times was still peripheral enough to give rise to an enigmatic heresy that attracted the attention of Rome. However, with the beginnings of the exploita-tion of its silver and lead mines came development on all fronts: as in neigh-bouring Serbia, mining experts were brought in from Germany while commerce was largely left to merchants from the Adriatic littoral. Merchant colonies and markets grew into towns. An increasingly affluent elite in the country imported luxury goods from Italy and Western Europe via Dubrovnik. In time, local craftsmen developed great skill in metal crafts. The first known craftsmen, though, seemed to have been from Dubrovnik (Fine 1987: 253, 487).

For what must be the grandest metalwork object connected with a member of Bosnia’s House of Kotromanić, a master from Milan, a centre of expertise in goldsmiths’ art in the Middle Ages, was sent for. In 1377, he signed a contract to produce a casket (fig. 4) to hold the relics of St. Simeon. The costs of the work were to be paid by Elizabeth of Bosnia (of the House of Kotromanić), now queen consort of Hungary. It was specified that she was to supply 240 kilograms


Fig. 3. Map of principal mining sites in the West Balkans. (Source: Carter 1972: 61)


of silver needed for the overlaying of the wooden sarcophagus with decorated silver and silver-gilt plaques. Placed next to scenes from the saint’s vita, these narrative panels show the following: the arrival of King Louis I of Hungary in Zadar, hitherto under Venetian sway; the supposed translation of the saint’s relics to that city; the death of the queen consort’s father, Ban Stephen II of Bosnia; a self-portrait by the Milanese goldsmith showing him at work; and the presentation of the casket to the saint by the queen and her three daughters. The silver angels which originally held the chest were sent to King Sigismund of Hun-gary in 1390 in lieu of the money he demanded in taxes from Zadar. This also shows the vulnerability of works of art made of precious metals. More impor-tantly, however, it indicates that metal was seen as a worthy medium for the communication of certain messages between rulers and ruled. That the iconog-raphy of this work of art was not a matter of chance is shown by the contract, in which the goldsmith agreed to submit his designs for the iconographic pro-gramme to Elizabeth on paper before starting the actual work (Petricioli 1996).

The short-lived ‘empire’ in neighbouring Serbia disintegrated after the Battle of the Maritsa River in 1371. Of the various princelings, Knez Lazar managed to inherit Serbia’s two most valuable mines, Novo Brdo and Rudnik. Also, in 1411, Lazar’s Hungarian overlord conferred upon Lazar’s son Stefan Bosnia’s richest silver mine, Srebrenica (Fine 1987: 387, 467). It was no coincidence that Knez Lazar and his son Stefan Lazarević managed to hold out the longest against the Ottomans, nor that it was in his domain that the surprisingly independent ‘Morava school’ of architecture could develop. Named after the major river in lowland Serbia, this school produced churches whose opulently decorated exteriors make them rather unusual in the mainstream of Byzantine art, even in its late period.

The ‘Morava school’ coincided with the establishment of an Ottoman pres-ence on European soil. In this context, the conquering of mines was accorded

Fig. 4. Zadar, St. Simeon’s Church, Shrine of St. Simeon, 1380. By the Milanese goldsmith Francis. (Source: Petricioli 1996: 10)


considerable space in 15th-century Ottoman chronicles by the likes of Aşıkpa-şazade (1949: 134) and Tursun Beğ (1978: 38, 42, 50). This probably reflects the circumstance that for the Ottomans such conquests were not only important, but vital. If we follow İnalcık (1994: 58), the Ottomans’ desire for mines was driven by the empire’s dependence ‘on enormous sums of liquid cash for its cen-tralized administrative apparatus, in particular to create, maintain and lead huge armies to distant fields of action as well as to sustain numerous costly garrisons’. Political theorists believed that a monarch’s power rested on his ability to ensure a large and steady source of revenue, ideally in liquid cash, gold and silver. Hence, the bureaucracy’s paramount concern was to bring in, and keep, as much bullion as possible for the central treasury. This explains why major transit centres of international trade – which yielded cash through customs dues – and gold and silver mines were the empire’s principal targets for conquest.

Goldsmiths and Coppersmiths in the Ottoman Balkans

While the first part of this paper has dealt with how the possession of mines impacted artistic development in the region in general, especially before the arrival of the Ottomans, the second part intends to bring in the human factor by looking at patrons and producers during the centuries of Ottoman sway. There exists a surprisingly rich historical record pertaining to the activities of metal-workers, mostly goldsmiths (kuyumcu) and coppersmiths (kazancı), in Sarajevo, although it is certainly not sufficient for the writing of substantial biographies. I shall draw on this record for the present paper, mostly by way of the bio-graphical inventory compiled by Mazalić (1967). The sources available range from tax registers and probate inventories to signed objects and oral traditions.

The man who, I believe, may well have been the first kazancı in Sarajevo is mentioned in an Ottoman tax register of 1489, which names him Hamza (Mazalić 1967: 55). At that time, Sarajevo was still a new settlement with maybe only 500–1000 inhabitants (cf. Šabanović 1960: 94–95), half of whom were non-Muslims. That Hamza was evidently a Muslim is interesting, for in this time and place conversion was still rather rare. Could he, perhaps, have come to Sarajevo from elsewhere in the Ottoman Balkans, at a time when a demand for his work was developing in the new Islamic settlement?

One later Sarajevo goldsmith, Hadži Marko Nikolić, was kind enough to leave on a copper tray that he gifted to an Orthodox church in the town a record of that artefact’s transfer. The tray, which features ‘Oriental’ ornamentation, has two inscriptions: one, from 1699, records its production by Marko and the other, from 1702, its gifting to the church by the goldsmith. Marko was not the only Ortho-


dox craftsman in Sarajevo to donate work he had done to the church, which seems to have been an important centre of Orthodox community life in a predominantly Muslim city (Mazalić 1967: 104).

Perhaps even more interesting is the case of Hadži Marko’s contemporary Šime Radnić, also a goldsmith of Sarajevo. After Prince Eugene of Savoy’s brief conquest of the city in 1697, Šime decided to join that general’s troops on their retreat to Habs-burg soil. He is on record as a goldsmith in Pécs one year later. Šime was still active around 1720, when he produced artefacts for the Orthodox church there, in the Orientalising style of his home-town (Mazalić 1967: 118).

For the second half of the 18th century, we have available two goldsmiths’ probate invento-ries. According to one of these, Todor, son of Jovan, died in 1772 leaving – in addition to other, more minor, possessions – a house in central Sarajevo worth 72,000 akçe and a stall in the bazaar’s gold-smiths’ street worth 19,000 akçe. The total value of the possessions of his near contemporary Aćim – son of Tanasije – who died in 1789 was several times that, amounting to 794,530 akçe (Mazalić 1967: 18, 134). One can conclude little on the basis of two cases only, but the immense difference in value between the two estates is sufficient to show that there must have been serious stratification even among goldsmiths.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, there is increased mention of names of fami-lies associated with the goldsmith’s craft over several generations. In Sarajevo, these are the Andrić, Laketić, Toholj, and Vučanović families; in Livno, the Kujundžići and Mamići families; in Fojnica, the Miletići and Ostojići families; and in Foča, the Nikolić, Vučević, and Šundurika/Radović families (Mazalić 1967: 20, 28, 75, 77, 85, 94, 99, 104, 134, 146, 147). It is hard to say what this increase might mean. Does it indeed show greater continuity of a particular line of work within families or is it simply reflective of an incomplete historical record? Also, do we see only one Muslim name simply because family names were not the rule in this community, making Muslim goldsmiths difficult to trace and compare?

Then there is the case of one coppersmith from the second half of the 19th century who signed himself Usta Salih on the four candleholders he made for

Fig. 5. Sarajevo, candleholder by the coppersmith Usta Salih in the Gazi Hüsrev Beğ mosque, 1896/7. (Source: Mujezinović 1982: 54)


Fig. 6. Sarajevo, candleholder by the coppersmith Usta Salih in the Gazi Hüsrev Beğ mosque, 1896/7. Detail with inscription. (Source: Mujezinović 1982: 53)

the Gazi Hüsrev Beğ mosque (fig. 5), the largest in Sarajevo. From his inscrip-tions on the pieces, we learn that this was done in 1896/7 and at the request of the administrators of that mosque’s vakf (fig. 6). Salih is remembered for having performed a lot of work in the 1860s for the modernising Ottoman vali of Bos-nia Topal Osman Paşa, a true Tanzimatçı who apparently still had need for house-hold items made of this metal in what may well have been a rather conservative style. Usta Salih’s brother İbrahim also worked as a coppersmith, and so may have their father Halil (Mazalić 1967: 25, Mujezinović: 1982, 46).

While sweeping conclusions can scarcely be drawn on the basis of these few cases, it is probably not imprudent to reiterate what Mayer (1959: 12–14) has written in the introduction to his biographical inventory of Islamic metalwork-ers concerning the social status of these craftsmen and the appreciation allotted to their efforts, namely that most were bazaar artisans (fig. 7) and that only a tiny elite were greatly esteemed for outstanding work for which patrons were ready to pay handsomely. Its members were not averse to referring to their work as nakş, i.e. design or decoration, and to themselves as nakkaş, a term bet-ter known among Ottomanists as designating the painter-designers in the pal-ace workshops. The present writer has come across no Balkan object or person qualifying as nakş or nakkaş respectively, but is rather confident that similar processes and distinctions were at work in our region, too.

Customers and Patrons

It is harder to say something conclusive about the customers for, and patrons of, metalwork artefacts or works of art – including architectural monuments – whose funding was made possible through the possession of means of produc-


tion such as mines. While it is relatively easy to see the connection between the exploitation of mines and artistic production in the relatively compact Balkan polities of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, this is not the case in the empire of Istanbul, although its treasury certainly greatly benefited from control of the mines. There are some artistically worked metal artefacts, often weapons, on which are incised the name of the person who commissioned production or embellishment, but these are not available to me in numbers that would permit anything other than speculation. It appears, though, that certain interesting insights are to be had from looking at the persons placed in charge of the mines.

When the Ottomans took control of the mines, the existing system of man-agement was assimilated into existing Ottoman ones. They were leased out as so-called mukataas to leaseholders known as mültezims or mukataacıs. Their man-agement of the mines was controlled by emins, who were state officials with fixed salaries, and nazırs (Anhegger 1943: 21–22, 27–28). In the interesting case of Skopje up until the 19th century, all mines were organised under a collective nezaret headed by a nazır. By the late 18th century, only the mine of Kratovo seems to have remained active, many others in the region having declined as a result of mineworkers’ migration to Habsburg territory following the devastat-ing incursions from those parts. Still, by 1800, the nazır at Skopje appears to

Fig. 7. Copper-smith’s shop in the bazaar of Mostar, c. 1900. Drawing by Rudolf von Ottenfeld. (Source: Zurunić 1901: 507)


have been the most powerful man in that city, comparable to a şehir ayanı or derebey elsewhere. His remit extended not only to control of the mines: it also encompassed the right to collect taxes across a large area in the central Balkans and to conduct policing, while his duties included the mobilisation of local troops for the central government’s campaigns (Kurz 2003: 60–66). When this office was usurped – probably through a successful legal bid – by a local Alba-nian family in the decades before the Tanzimat, the chief ayan or derebey and the nazır of the mines were one and the same person. Between 1815 at the latest and 1845, when he was murdered, this was Hıvzı Paşa from Tetovo. His one-time residence on the outskirts of Skopje (for this see Kojić 1955) impressively illus-trates the lifestyle of a provincial elite family whose power depended at least in part on the mining industry. This complex consists of three enclosed courtyards; one of these was the ‘public’ selamlık, and another the ‘private’ haremlik. They were linked by a passage running through the base of a fortified tower, which served as the complex’s treasury and armoury. Small channels of water, spanned by small wooden bridges, ran through the haremlik section. The architecture of the two konaks, such as the oval central room or the rounded jetty, reveals acquaintance with trends in Istanbul. It is also known that wooden interiors in the complex were commissioned from a celebrated woodcarver of the period, Petre Filipovič from Gari near Debar, whose speciality was iconostases.

There is, it appears, an earlier case in Skopje of an individual responsible for the operation of the area’s mines who became an architectural patron on a sig-nificant scale. From his vakfiye (Kaleši 1972: 219–256), historians could estab-lish the connection between a number of well-known buildings and a person identified as Muslihiddin bin Abdülgani or Mü’ezzin Hoca ‘al-Ma’dinî’. This is an interesting assemblage of names and titles, from which we can tell that the person who built a large han in Skopje and three small mosques in the wider region was a medrese-trained possible convert who worked as a teacher or mer-chant, and as a caller to prayer; and who, additionally, had some connection with mines. That he was a labourer in the mines is, of course, unlikely, and there are indeed other examples of mine managers who came to be known by the epithet madenci, the Arabic equivalent of which occurs in Muslihiddin’s vak-fiye. I find it most reasonable to suggest that this man was in fact a mukataacı who leased one or more mines in the area. His most visible legacy in Skopje today is the so-called Kurşunlu Han (fig. 8), the largest of the city’s several such structures. Interestingly, the three small mosques he built in Skopje, Novi Pazar, and a village near Trepçë that may well have been his place of birth all are domed mosques fronted by porticos consisting of two rather than three or five bays. This was, it seems, Muslihiddin’s trademark aberration.


However, not only mukataacıs profited from the exploitation of the mines to an extent that enabled them to be sponsors of art. In a sadly neglected essay, Wenzel (1962) proposed that the curious funerary blocks with figural depic-tions found in and around Bosnia and Herzegovina (fig. 9) were in fact not tombs of medieval heretics, as is the standard claim. Rather, she found, they must have been the grave markers of Herzegovinian stockbreeders who had achieved relative prosperity as mounted armed guards accompanying the cara-vans between Dubrovnik and the mines in the first decades of Ottoman rule in Bosnia. This can at least be suggested on the basis of their location (fig. 10), iconography, and inscriptions (which are very few).

Fig. 8. Skopje, Kurşunlu Han, mid-16th century. (Photograph by the author, 2007)

Fig. 9. Three ‘Vlach’ tombstones from the region of Stolac (Herzego-vina), dated by their inscriptions to 1477. (Source: Wenzel 1962: 121)


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Conclusions

Between the mid-13th and mid-17th centuries, the Balkan mines were the region’s source of riches and a principal attraction for conquering parties. This situation changed as a result of the long wars between Ottomans and Habs-burgs in the 17th century, which appear to have left some mines without min-ers, and the arrival of cheap silver from the Americas, which around the same time began to have a serious impact on mineral exploitation in the Balkans.

Prior to the advent of the Ottomans, control of the mines was a vital factor in the formation, consolidation, and centralisation of states, specifically of Ser-bia, Bosnia, and Dubrovnik. The increased wealth of individuals in the moun-tainous West Balkan interior resulted in a demand for luxury goods to express newly-gained status. This in turn resulted in the integration of Balkan locales, including urban-type settlements developing around marketplaces, in interna-tional networks of exchange.

Especially in Bosnia, the easy availability of the material for metalwork also helped develop local expertise in the artistic working of metal objects. This was recognised by Ottoman observers between the 15th and 19th centuries, and is recognised by historians today.

Regarding artistic patronage, I have tried to emphasise that the mines were the economic basis for major innovations in the arts in the region prior to the Ottoman conquests. Afterwards, direct connections between the management of mineral resources and artistic patronage are harder to trace. The very inter-esting case of the muezzin/entrepreneur seems to be exceptional.

Some producers of artistic artefacts from metal also seem to have achieved considerable wealth and celebrity, daring to sign their work while this was not customary in many or most other arts, including architecture. Are we doing them an injustice by relegating the study of their work to – in most cases – departments of ethnography and folklore rather than art history? Must metal-work be considered a ‘fine art’ in the Ottoman-Balkan context? I think that these questions can be answered neither in the affirmative nor in the negative, for these categories and the borders between them evidently did not exist for contemporaries. What we should not do is to relegate them to the lower-stand-ing category solely on grounds of their material or the fact that they were – or at least were made to look like – ‘artefacts for use’, for all art had a function, and evidently everyday use was not the sole factor in their design.


References

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Mineral Exploitation and Artistic Production in the Balkans after 1250

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