Nis

On September 4th Wishbone Ash will be playing a festival in Nis, Serbia, at the invitation of my old friend, promoter, Srjdjan D.Stojanovic who used to book us into the former Yugoslavia, back in the 70’s . It should be an interesting visit to the city of Nis. Srjdan has given a brief history of the place for those interested. Of course, Wishbone visited Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) so the Roman connection with Constantine interested me.

“Nis is an interesting place, it is the second largest Serbian city,
originally founded by the Romans. The Roman emperor Constantine, who
legalized Christianity and split the Roman Empire into East (Byzantium)
and West (Rome) was born in Nis, where we still have the remains of his palace and bath. The festival is held within old Roman/Turkish fortress. In
the 19th century (exactly 200 years ago), the Serbs fought a major battle
for liberation from the Turkish Ottoman Empire near Nis (on the hill
called Chegar). When the Serbian commander Stevan Sindjelic realized
that he was loosing the battle due to insufficient support from the
central Serbian command that hadn't sent reinforcements, he blew up
the ammunition depot in his trenches, killing his last 300 fighters
and some 10,000 Turkish soldiers.

The Turkish commander of the Nis region ordered that all fallen Serbian soldiers (included Sindjelic) be beheaded, scalped and their heads to be built into so called the Skull Tower - in order to frighten Serbs from rebelling again. The Skull
Tower remains to this day as a great monument of bravery, which made
the Serbs seek freedom even more than before. Serbia was liberated
from the Turks in 1833, but Nis and the southern provinces remained under the
Turkish rule until the Congress of Berlin in 1878, when the liberation
was achieved not through blood, but diplomatic games of the big powers
- France, Russia, Great Britain and Germany, which all put pressure on the
ailing Ottoman Empire.”