Tradition of Demolition: Architecture of Terror—Urban Destruction as a Political Message, or How the Destruction of the Ottoman Heritage in Early Modern Serbia

Abstract

The revised Serbian history introduced by the mainstream Western scholars and media in the early 1990s developed the trope of "Serbian nationalist expansionism," which was responsible for most of the Balkan problems since the Ottoman departure in the early 20th century. The evidence of Serbian expansionism over the non-Serbian, predominantly Muslim territories was sought in the assertion of deliberately targeted Ottoman/Islamic architectural heritage in all territories they attempted to conquer. This article, following the summative timeline analysis of the changing fortunes of Belgrade's architecture between 1521 and 1919, challenges this view. The article argues that most of damage done to the Ottoman/Islamic heritage in the early modern period of the Serbian nation state (1804–1914) was through neglect of the inherited ruins from the period when the Serbs did not exercise influence over the process of urban destruction. It asserts that the occidentalization of Belgrade coincided with "the age of capital," in Hobsbawm's sense, following the struggles for liberation, which could arguably be seen as part of the great European "age of revolution." The article juxtaposes modern mainstream Western interpretation of destruction of the Islamic heritage in Serbia with well-evidenced fate of the architectural heritage in situ.