Pre-nationalist Serb epic prized a mediator with the Ottomans, not the Kosovo martyr
Evidence
Until the nineteenth century, the battle of Kosovo was not the central theme of Serbian epic. Rather than Prince Lazar, the main Serbian epic hero was Marko Kraljevic, a Serb vassal of the Ottomans. Because he fought both for and against his masters in Istanbul, Prince Marko has served as a figure of mediation between the Serbian Orthodox and Ottoman worlds. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 134
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The Kosovo-as-holy-land discourse is a modern nationalist invention, not ancient tradition — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1465
Related
- Kosovo’s mythic centrality was imposed by nationalists, not present in the folk canon (similarity 0.84)
- The Kosovo-as-holy-land discourse is a modern nationalist invention, not ancient tradition (similarity 0.83)
- Serb religious nationalism mapped the Kosovo myth onto the Passion narrative (similarity 0.82)
- A retrieved Serbian tradition could recast Kosovo’s traitor as the genocidaires themselves (similarity 0.81)
- The Kosovo myth of ancient Serb-Muslim enmity is a recent nineteenth-century construction (similarity 0.80)
- Kosovo mythology transforms religious identity into a racialist ideology (similarity 0.79)
- Serb extremists drew direct inspiration from religious epics glorifying Muslim extermination (similarity 0.79)
- The Serbian-Jerusalem discourse is a product of 1980s Serb nationalism, not ancient tradition (similarity 0.78)
- Slavic Muslims were redefined as Turkish invaders through religious nationalism (similarity 0.78)
- Serb nationalist ideology fuses religious identity with race-traitor charges against Muslims (similarity 0.78)