The Death of Smail-Aga in Literature and Popular Belief: the Formation of

the Turk as the Political Enemy in the Balkans

Aleksandar Pavlović

1. Introduction

By focusing on the representation of the Bosnian Muslim Smail-Aga

Čengić in oral and written literature, I want to explore the relation between these
two narrative traditions, but also to address the role of intellectual elites in
promoting the hostility toward the Turks in the Balkans around the mid-19 th
century.

Smail-aga Čengić was a Muslim dignitary from Hercegovina; not of a

highest rank, but with a reputation of a great hero – he fought fiercely to crush the
Serbian Uprising against the Turks from 1809 to 1813, then against the Bosnian
Muslims who rebelled against the central Ottoman government and, in 1836, he
defeated the Montenegrins at the battle of Grahovo; nine members of the ruling
Monetenegrin Petrović clan parished in the battle, and it is believed that Smail-aga
personally killed the brother of the Montenegrin Bishop-Prince Petar Petrović
Njegoš. In revenge, Njegoš plotted the assasination of Smail-aga with the
assistance of the local Christians from Herzegovina who lived on the territory
under Smail-aga’s control. In 1840, the locals attracted him deep into their teritory,
organised an ambush and killed him by attacking his camp during the night.

The assassination of this minor dignitary in 1840 was followed by an

amazing literary production in the Balkans, and it is to these narratives, such as
articles in the Serbian and Croatian press, oral folk songs and, in particular, a

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poem published in 1846 by a Croatian writer Ivan Mažuranić, that Smail-aga owes
his infamous reputation.

Rather than spending half of my presentation to explain in detail the local

context, I will juxtapose two radically different portrayals of Smail-aga, and then
follow how and when these narrative traditions were established.
The first quotation describes Smail-aga as a bloodthirsty tyrant. It is taken from
Mažuranić’s literary epic The Death of Smail-aga Čengić, usually described as the
peak of Croatian romanticism and national revival:

I Smail-aga as the ‘Ugly monster’

Smail-aga collects the bloody tax Smail-aga krvav harač kupi,

In Gacko and the near purlieus… Po Gackome i okolo njega…
From the east the tax collectors ride, Od istoka haračlije jašu,
They lead the bare rayah by horses’ tails… Vode golu na repovijeh raju…

The aga stands, the other Turks stand, Aga stoji, ini Turci stoje,
And on this mournful sight Ter prizorom žalosnijem
They feast their angry eyes, Gnjevno svoje pasu oko,
And all their awful thirst for blood I svu groznu krvi žeđu
By the Vlach’s blood and Vlach’s Vlaškom krvi, Vlaškom mukom gase.
torture is quenched.

When, covered with blood, Gdje domilje krvi oblita

The sad rayah crawled to the tents, Do čadorja raja tužna,
The mad aga, ugly monster, Bijesan aga, neman ružna,
Cries, ‘Harač, rayah, harač ‘Harač, rajo, harač!’ riče,
Harač, harač, or still worse whips’. ‘Harač, harač. Il još gore biče’.

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The second one, taken from a much later collection of local oral narratives in
Montenegro, provides a rather different account on Smail-aga:

II Smail-aga as a hero and righteous governor

Čengića sablja ne siječe mučki

An army led by the Bosnian pasha went to collect the tax from the Herzegovinian
Christians. At the front, rode the pasha himself and Smail-aga as the greatest hero. Being
aware of Smail-aga’s reputation, the pasha asked him: Smail-aga, how many infidels are
you going to slay?
Smail-aga replied: ‘Not a single one that accepts my hand, and hundred and one that
reject it – Čengić’s are no cowards who slay armless people, we do it on the battlefield.

How is it possible that there is such large incongruity between the two
representations? I will follow briefly oral and written tradition on Smail-aga, to
show that these discrepancies stem from the context in which oral tradition has
been appropriated by the literary culture.

Mažuranić’s poem and its relation to oral folk songs

Let me briefly describe the relation of Mažuranić’s literary epic to oral folk songs
about the same event. Because Mažuranić was so effective in capturing this spirit
of popular folk songs, his readership and early scholars believed that his poem
depends heavily on popular folk songs about Smail-aga’s death that were
circulating at the time. However, later analyses show that this was not the case,
and I will here briefly present several main facts established in later scholarship.
1. Firstly, Mažuranić himself has never been to Montenegro, nor in any
other part of the Ottoman Empire for that matter; so, he had no direct, personal
experience about the region that he describes, its people and their folk epics.
2. Secondly, Mažuranić finished his work in the late 1845. At the time, only
one folk epic song about Smail-aga was published a couple of months before in a
literary magazine. It seems that Mažuranić had not read it but, even if he did, it

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made no significant influence on his poem, which was already largely finished
when the song was published.
3. (and) Thirdly, Mažuranić’s poem shows certain similarities with oral folk songs
simply because the story that inspired the poet was based on the same oral
tradition as the folk songs. Namely, a year or so before he wrote the poem, the
family invited for a visit a common Montenegrin who was passing by. This
anonymous Montenegrin was an excellent storyteller, he related the story of
Smail-aga’s death in great detail, apparently relying on the folk songs about this
event; the whole family was touched with his detailed story of the campaign, and
Mažuranić in particular was so fascinated that he decided to write a poem about it.
In short, the links between Mažuranić’s poem and folk songs are rather
distant, and it would be unjustified to identify his artistic conception with the
popular perceptions of Smail-aga and his death. In his literary work, the poet
heavily transformed the events in order to give them broader significance and
universal meaning. In the spirit of Romantic nationalism, Mažuranić thus
constructed the character of Smail-aga as a ruthless bloodthirsty tyrant who
molests innocent helpless Christians, but tries to escape when he hears the
Montenegrin guns.

Oral Epic Songs about the Death of Smail-aga

Oral songs about this event clearly exemplify the ways in which
Mažuranić’s poem departs from popular tradition. Between 1845 and 1860, at least
9 folk songs about the death of Smail-aga were collected throughout the Balkans.
These songs also welcome Smail-aga’s death, but often do not emphasize so much
his oppressive character and portray him as a hero – although he could have
escaped, he stayed and encouraged others to stay and fight the Montenegrins.
Finally, in distinction to Mažuranić, they essentially present Smail-aga’s death as a
local incident without any particular political consequences.

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 In order to understand how this tradition has been established, it is
important to take a closer look into where from and under which circumstances
were these songs collected.
Seven out of these nine songs were collected by Vuk Karadžić or on his
behalf. Karadžić started collecting and publishing oral songs already in 1814, and
by the 1840s he was the most important and influential collector of South-Slavonic
oral songs. Without exaggeration, it could be said that most of South-Slavonic folk
literature that was published in the first half of the 19 th century was mediated and
filtered by him. At the time of Smail-aga’s death, Karadžić was already preparing
the collection of epic songs about the most recent events. Naturally, Karadžić
became very interested in this event, and started searching for the songs describing
the death of Smail-aga. He gathered seven songs between 1846 and 1860, and
there were possibly 2 more that had never reached him. Since Karadžić actually
lived in Vienna and only came to Serbia for relatively short visits, he relied mostly
on his associates. Most of the songs about the Death of Smail-aga Karadžić
received from his associate from Risan, on the present-day Montenegrin Adriatic
Coast. Risan was the place where local peasants from Hercegovina used to come
to the market. Karadžić’s associate had an arrangement with one of these peasants
from Grahovo who knew a little bit of writing, and from 1846 onwards he
delivered dozens of epic songs, including at least four about the death of Smail-
aga.
Two other versions were written down around 1846 in Western Serbia, from the
Hercegovinian settlers. One of them was from a rural settlement near Trebinje, and
the other one perhaps from Nikšić, but this is uncertain. And, in 1860 Karadžić
received another song about this event from the Montenegrin capital Cetinje, also
collected from Herzegovina.
Finally, two other songs were published at the time at/on the Adriatic coast – the
one published Dubrovnik in 1849 has been written down from a local peasant, and
the one printed in 1845 in Zadar is of uncertain provenance.

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What can be derived from this survey?
Firstly, such a large number of songs certainly indicates that this event received
popular interest. However, without Karadžić’s persistent efforts from 1846
onwards, we would have a rather different impression about its place in oral
tradition. Secondly, most songs were collected on the Adriatic coast. In other
words, by the 1840s the channels through which oral songs got published were
already established; thus, all the songs with identifiable place of origin come from
a very narrow area around Grahovo and Trebinje, and were conveniently delivered
or performed for the collectors at the Coast. In other words, no one actually went
to the mountains to observe local oral tradition in the spot and to collect these
songs directly from the locals. It is thus no surprise that these songs have many
similarities, and sometimes leave us in doubt whether to treat them as separate
versions or as the same song textualized several times in a slightly different form.
Finally, it is striking that there are no songs from the actual place of Smail’aga’s
death nor from the area under his control, and thus the people who knew the most
about Smail-aga and his rule had no part in this narrative tradition.

The Positive Representations of Smail-aga

So, when do we finally get these positive representations of Smail-aga that I

quoted at the beginning? Basically, not until the 20th century or, more precisely,
after the First World War when Petrović’s were overthrown and Montenegro
united with Serbia. In this context, local narratives that remembered Smail-aga as
a righteous governor and the later Montenegrin rule as in fact more oppressive
became attractive. Some of these stories also point out that he had fought the
Petrović’s on the battlefield, whereas they plotted his assassination from the
ambush. In other words, these narratives became resurrected not in the context of
the increasing national tolerance in the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but in the
process of reinterpreting and discrediting the overthrown Montenegrin ruling
dynasty.

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Conclusion:

To sum up, common people were telling stories and singing songs about Smail-
aga and his death. But oral tradition is fluid and dynamic, and the way it became
accessible to us, in the sense of what kind of narratives are going to be collected,
memorized and canonized, depended heavily on the collectors’ predispositions,
their values, expectations and contacts. Karadžić, as many of his contemporaries,
was fascinated by Mažuranić’s poem, and he persistently searched for the
corresponding folk narratives.

To conclude, this enquiry does not question so much the common assumption
about the influence of the oral tradition on the mid-19th century literature. Rather,
it shows how this relation worked the other way round, that is how narrative
tradition about Smail-aga has been modelled by an artistic creation written in the
spirit of Romantic nationalism and Serbian and Croatian intelligentsia.

Thus, my message is not that we should celebrate Smail-aga – to me, he seems to

be in his own time already the man of the past, believing in Muslim supremacy
won on the battlefield. My point is rather that we should be more attentive to the
ways in which oral tradition has been shaped by the influences and impetuses from
the literary sphere. It was primarily through the efforts of these great literary and
national figures that this discourse of ‘otherness’ or hostility that has been
nourished in our national cultures ever since became formulated and established.