Olivera Lazarevic

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Olivera Lazarević , Sultana Mileva or Olivera Despina or just Despina (1373 - after 1444), originally Mileva Olivera Lazarević was the daughter of the Serbian prince Lazar and his wife Milica . After the Battle of Kosovo was the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I married. Through the battle of Ankara she was captured with Bayezid in Timur , returned to Europe in 1403, where she then lived in Serbia, the Zeta and the Republic of Ragusa .

Life

Olivera Despina was born in Kruševac between 1373 and 1376 as the youngest daughter of Milica and Lazar Hrebeljanović. She grew up in Kruševac, was married to Sultan Bayezid I in 1389 and lived in the harem in Bursa for 12 years . Olivera was sent from Bursa with two daughters to Timur's captivity after the defeat of the Ottomans in the Battle of Angora in 1402. After her brother Stefan was able to release her from Timur in 1403, she returned to Serbia and lived at the court of the despot in Belgrade. After Stefan's death in 1427, she moved to her brother-in-law Đurađ Branković in Smederevo and was often with her sister Jelena Balšič in Dubrovnik and the Zeta and Zahumlje .

Her actual name Olivera is often supplemented by Despina (derived from Despotin). She got this from Ragusans , her sister Jelena also called her Despina. The fact that the sisters Olivera and Jelena remained connected until the end of their lives emerges from Jelena's testament in 1442, which Despina bequeathed her golden icon and 200 ducats . Olivera probably died in 1444.

Sources and Legends

The checkered life of Olivera as the sultan's wife in the harem in Adrianople and as an alleged servant in Mongolian captivity has often been portrayed as a novel in various sources. Numerous legends were thus able to develop in both the Ottoman and Western cultures. In the Chronicle of Aşıkpaşazâdes (1400–1484), Olivera Despina Hatun was placed in a predominantly negative context. So she is said to have seduced Bayezid to alcohol, since Bayezid was said to drink wine. Orgiastic drinking parties are said to have taken place, and Bayezid is said to have converted to Christianity under her influence. According to Laonikos Chalkokondyles , she had to serve the Mongol ruler naked under the eyes of Bayezid, who was imprisoned in a cage, which is why Bayezid is said to have bumped his head on the walls of his dungeon out of anger and desperation until he and Olivera two days after Bayezid's death died of grief. Marvo Orbini also repeats this story , adding that she had to cut her dress down to the navel. In contrast, Konstantin Kostenecki reports in the vita of the despot Stefan Lazarević that Olivera was released not long after her capture.

In the Serbian folk tradition, the sultana Mileva (Olivera) is said to have married Bayezid in Kruševac. She is said to have donated a mosque in honor of her husband because he had a church built for her in his residence. This alleged mosque of the sultana was still preserved in Felix Kanitz's time, but in reality it was only a Turkish bathhouse ( hammam ).

In the Studenica Monastery there is a sheet of gold interwoven with the coffin of St. Simeon by Olivera Despina with a Turkish inscription woven into the fabric between golden tendrils.

Dramaturgical treatment

She experiences a dramatic implementation of Olivera Despina's imprisonment as Zabina in Christopher Marlowe's drama Tamburlaine the great , one of the most influential works by the Elizabethan theater . Zabina and Bayazit are depicted as a loving couple in captivity. Zabina is humiliated as the servant of the concubine Timur's Zenocrate and has to feed her husband, who is kept in a cage as an attraction and who Timur uses as a footstool, with leftovers. By suicide in a Tamerlan's cage, Zabina and Bayazit end this ordeal. The opera libretto Tamerlano by Agostino Piovene , which is often set to music (see Georg Friedrich Handel's Tamerlano , Antonio Vivaldis Tamerlano / Bajazet or Josef Mysliveček's Il gran Tamerlano ) uses the same historical context, but without developing a parallel dramatic figure to Despina.

swell

  1. ↑ Sıla Şenlen, Dramatic Representation of the Battle of Ankara and Bayezid I's Captivation by Tamerlane (PDF; 208 kB)
  2. ↑ Medieval sources on the Amselfeld, Jelena Balšić's testament, 1442 Jelene Balšić's testament
  3. ↑ Prenses Olivera Despina on Scribd.com
  4. ↑ Felix Kanitz : The Kingdom of Serbia and the Serbian People from Roman Times to the Present . Country and population. 2nd volume, Leipzig, 1909.
  5. ↑ Christopher Marlowe, Tambulaine the great Tamburlaine the great
  6. ↑ Tamburlaine the great (PDF; 208 kB) on Ankara.edu.tr

Web links

literature

  • Princeza Olivera: Zaborovljena srpska kneginja (German Princess Olivera: The forgotten Serbian princess). Fond Princeza Olivera, Belgrade 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Olivera Lazarevic
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Olivera Despina; Despina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Daughter of the Serbian prince Lazar and his wife Milica
DATE OF BIRTH before 1389
DATE OF DEATH after 1443