Pirot

Pirot ( Serbian - Cyrillic Пирот ) is a place and a municipality in the administrative district of the same name in southeast Serbia . At the time of the 2011 census, Pirot had 38,432 residents. Historically, Pirot is the capital of the Ponišavlje region. Located on the Nišava , the largest right-hand tributary of the Morava , Pirot established itself as an Ottoman trading center and today's industrial location. The river is followed by the transcontinental traffic axis, which has changed from the Via Militaris to today's Pan-European traffic corridor X. Connected to the railway connection between Istanbul and Paris ( Orientexpress ) since 1887 , one of the central motorway axes between Europe and Asia Minor runs here.

From the mountain region of the Stara planina , which is characterized by herding cattle, and the trading center for wool products, a nationally recognized production facility for kilims has developed since the 18th century . Due to the former annual Pirot Fair ( Panajur ) and the settlement of numerous traditional handicrafts, Pirot was also a central trading point for handicraft products for a long time. Pirot kilime , Pirot pottery products ( Pirotsko grnčarije ) and the Staroplaninski- Kaschkaval have remained typical Pirot brand products to this day. The largest modern industrial company is "Tigar", a manufacturer of car tires and other rubber products.

In the town is the 14th century Kale Castle ; The Ponišavlje Museum is located in the traditional Balkan house of the Ristić merchant family from the 19th century . About ten kilometers northeast of the city is Lake Zavoj .

geography

False color end image from NASA's Landsat 7 ETM + satellite. The section from the Stara Planina region shows the Pirot Basin in the left middle distance. The slopes of the north-east side of the Bulgarian Stara Planina with high forest stand out clearly at the top right. The small town in the northeast is Berkowiza.

location

Pirot lies at an altitude of 368 m in the south-east Serbian border region of the Stara Planina with Bulgaria. The municipality takes up an area of 1.235 km². Located on the northern edge in an alluvial tectonic basin of the Nišava , the Pirot Basin was still a swampy area until the 19th century due to the flooding of the Nišava, which meets here, with the Jerma . The Pirot Castle as the core of the medieval town development developed on a small limestone dome in the basin at the point where the Nišava leaves the same in a narrow valley. The Pirot Basin with a length of 16 km in north-west and south-east direction and a width of 2 to 5 km is generally framed by karst mountains.

Hydrology

Great gorge of the Nišava in the Sićevačka klisura

The carbonate-rich rocks in the eastern part of the Pirot region are shaped by karst hydrological processes. Stark karst is particularly the Vidlić mountain forming the southeastern slope of the Pirot basin. Here you will find next to a large Dolinenreichtum also several major karst hollows in the form of smaller Karstpoljen with typical occurrence of flow shrinkage or Ponoren as features of deep karst advanced. The largest and most famous polje in the region is the Odorovačko Polje 20 km east of Pirot, whose ponors are on the Poljengrund at an altitude of 730 m. These shrinkages drain water from the Vidić mountain range underground into the Pirot Basin, which is why a more significant wetland has emerged here in the Krupačko swamp. The two large karst springs on the edge of the Pirot Basin, as well as several depth ponors and the Nišava valley in the freatic zone have contributed to the large swamping of the basin. At the beginning of the 20th century, the southern Pirot city limits were joined by a more important marshland, called Barje. The river valleys of the tributaries of the Nišava, which are characterized by breakthrough valleys, are obstacles to communicative penetration of the Ponišavlje region due to their steep relief and inaccessibility. Even the main communication axis between Niš - Bela Palanka - Pirot had to overcome a 15 km long obstacle via the great Sičevačka klisura gorge.

The significant limnic sediments in the Pirot Basin are from the Upper Miocene when the basin was occupied by a lake. These clay-rich sediments were the basis for the development of Pirot's pottery. Neogene and Quaternary backfills shape the alluvial terraces of the Nišava near the river. The formerly strongly meandering course of the Nišava in what is now the city of Pirots has been redeveloped through edging and amelioration.

climate

For the climate of Pirot, only the nearest, neighboring station in Dimitrovgrad, 22 km away, can be used. Data from the Hydrometoeorological Institute of Serbia in the table are therefore taken from the statistical values of the climatological measurement series of the Dimitrovgrad station for the control period 1981–2010. Since the official height of Pirot with 368.2 m differs by the negative amount of about 82 m from the 450 m high measuring station Dimitrovgrads, the temperatures in particular have to be corrected by an assumed positive value of about 0.53 ° C (this statistical mean value is obtained from the climatological temperature gradient in which the temperature decreases by the geometric temperature gradient of 0.65 ° C / 100 m in the temperate northern hemisphere).

Average monthly temperatures and precipitation for Dimitrovgrad 1981–2010

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Max. Temperature ( ° C )	4.0	6.1	11.4	16.9	22.0	25.3	27.8	28.1	23.4	17.8	10.5	5.1	O	16.6
Min. Temperature (° C)	-4.3	-3.6	-0.1	4.1	8.5	11.6	13.0	12.9	9.4	5.4	1.0	-2.6	O	4.6
Temperature (° C)	1.4	3.1	7.6	12.9	18.1	21.0	23.0	22.7	18.0	12.9	7.1	2.7	O	12.6

Precipitation ( mm )	39.5	38.1	40.2	54.3	57.2	70.0	61.1	52.5	51.8	50.2	52.8	46.9	Σ	614.6

Hours of sunshine ( h / d )	2.0	3.7	5.1	6.3	8.1	8.8	9.4	9.0	6.3	4.9	3.0	1.6	O	5.7

Rainy days ( d )	12	12	12	14th	13	12	9	8th	9	9	11	13	Σ	134

Humidity ( % )	81	77	70	67	69	70	66	66	71	75	79	82	O	72.7

Source: Hydrometeorological Institute of the Republic of Serbia ;

history

Look at Pirot

Antiquity

The medieval settlement of Pirots took place on the former site of the Roman town of Turres , which was first mentioned in the 2nd century. Prokopios of Caesarea mentioned a place called Quimedava here in the 6th century . Turris was mapped on the Tabula peutingeriana in the 4th century between Remesiana and Serdica as a place on the Roman road Via Militaris (also called Via Diagonalis ). In the 4th century Turres is a border town in the east of the Roman province of Thracia (Thrace) to the province of Moesia superior (Upper Moesia ). In the late Roman Empire, Turres became part of the newly formed province of Dacia mediterranea . With the spread of Christianity as a result of the Constantinian reforms and the possibility of free religious practice through the guarantees of the Milan Agreement , an episcopate was established in neighboring Remesiana in the 4th century. In Pirot, a church was built both in the civil town, near the so-called Sarlah, and in the fort. The 4th century was also the age of the greatest flowering of the Roman turret. However, the region was devastated by Sarmatians, Goths and Huns at the end of the 4th century. Under the Byzantines, the region was secured by numerous small forts. Under Justinian II the fortifications in the area of today's Pirots were probably renewed.

middle Ages

The upper town of the Pirot castle called Momčilov grad was built under Lazar Hrebeljanović from around 1380. Stefan Lazarević reinforced this from 1413 with a second wall ring around the suburb.

Urban development of Pirots

After the migrations, the region came into Bulgarian possession in the 8th century . With the end of the first Bulgarian empire under Presian II and the incorporation of most of the Balkan Peninsula into the Byzantine Empire of the Macedonian dynasty under Basil II , the geopolitical and economic importance of the so-called Via Militaris was revived. The Via Militaris connected the capital of Byzantium , Constantinople via Sofia, Pirot and Niš with Belgrade and was not only used for military purposes. Via Militaris (Balkans)

Kaiser Basil II. 1020, the specific boundaries of the Archdiocese of Ohrid and all of Bulgaria , with which the region Pirots (Ponišavlje) between the episcopy Serdicas (Sofia) and Ohrid was divided. The Arab geographer Idirisi recorded Pirot in 1154 on the well-known geographical world map Tabula Rogeriana . In the commentary of "Kitabu al Rogger" Idrisi recorded the city of Atrubi as a city "a day's journey east of Niš on a river that rises in the Serbian lands and flows into the Morafa (Morava)". Between 1081 and 1185 the Byzantine Empire reached the Comnenes -Dynasty reached its peak. The Pirot region and the entire Ponišavlje region were integral parts of it. In a Serbian-Hungarian union, under Stefan Nemanja Niš and the Ponišavlje region fell under short-term Serbian dominance from 1182. During these conquests of Byzantine territory, Stafan Nemanja advanced through Pirot into the Bulgarian Serdica. In 1189 Stefan Nemanja accompanied the Roman Emperor Friedrich I. Barbarossa on the third crusade from Niš via Pirot to Serdica. 1190 the region was under Isaac II. Angelos, in turn, Byzantine. In 1202 the Bulgarian Tsar Kalojan was able to include all countries east of the Bulgarian Morava in the Bulgarian Empire. Until the Battle of Welbaschd in 1330, the region remained Bulgarian with the exception of the reign of King Stefan Milutin .

In the empire of Stefan Dušan , Pirot was part of the Serbian empire. But it was only after Dušan's death that the first fortification began in the area of today's Pirot. The Serbian prince Lazar Hrebeljanović built a cartel castle from 1371 on the hill of the river Bistrica below the confluence with the Nišava. This polygonal fort stands on a smaller hill and has an extension of 50 by 35 m in an east-west direction. The fort is surrounded on all sides by defensive towers, a donjon flanks its north side. In 1385/86 the Ottomans were able to take Pirot together with Niš for the first time. After the Blackbird Field Battle , Sultan Bayezid I handed over the Pirot region to Princess Milica Hrebeljanović . After the Battle of Rovine in 1395 and the death of Konstantin Dragaš , who had his seat in nearby Kyustendil and who, together with Empress Helena Dragaš, had the foundation of the most important monastery in the Pirot region, Porganovo on the Jerma, built, Pirot again became Ottoman. In 1411, the Serbian despot Stefan Lazarević invaded the region and Pirot then formed the starting point under Musa in 1413 for the decisive battle in the Ottoman civil war for rule in the Ottoman Empire. The new Ottoman Sultan Mehmed I , who was victorious in the civil war , then handed Pirot and the region over to the Serbian despot. He had the so-called middle town fortified around the fort castle built by his father between 1414 and 1425. This walled suburb descends in steps from the fort and takes up a space of 70 by 60 m. Stefan Lazarević also had the fort reinforced and the Pirot area was organized as a border region. Between 1425 and 1427, Pirot again fell under Ottoman rule. The despot Đurađ Branković could 1443 in the great Turkish war with the Hungarian King Wladislaw III. and the imperial administrator Johann Hunyadi advance to Sofia via Pirot. On January 2, 1444, after their retreat from Serdica, the Christian allies defeated a strong Turkish army between Pirot and Niš in the Kumovica Mountains. In 1444, Branković received Pirot in the Peace of Szeged together with the entire Ponišavlje region. In 1433, Bertrandon de la Broquière wrote the first travelogue for the city. In it he mentioned that only a few Turks lived in Pirot at the time:

"Ainsi, j'entrais dans un pays de montagnes, beau et se prètant au voyage cheval, et suis arrivé dans une autre plaine où il ya encore une ville, du nom de Pirot, érigée sur une rivière, appelée Nichava: corn, d 'un bout il ya une petite ville avec d'un côté la rivière, et, de l'autre un grand marécage. Et c'est une assez petite localité, près d'une montage au nord. Et dans ladite ville, il ya très peu de Turcs. »

- Bertrandon de la Broquière : Le voyage d'outremer

From 1454 Pirot fell to Mehmed II , but the Turkish colonization of Pirots had already begun at the end of the 14th century. The first Turkish inhabitants were dervishes. The origin of the name of the later Ottoman toponym Pirots - Şeherköy - mentioned for the first time in 1443, is interpreted on the one hand by the Turkish / Persian term Şeher for town and Köy for village, and by Scheiklerköy about sheik , as the heads of the dervish orders . Pirot developed as an important Ottoman city at the end of the 15th century.

Since the 18th century

Appeal (May 27, 1878) by the Bulgarians from Pirot to Dondukow-Korsakow for the annexation of the city to Bulgaria

In the course of the Tanzimat reforms of 1834 a Bulgarian community was able to form, which opened the first New Bulgarian school . In 1862, the first Bulgarian agricultural bank (Bulgarian Българска земеделска взаимноспомагателна каса / Balgarska semedelska wsaimnospomagatelna kasa) was founded in Pirot .

In 1870 the city became the seat of an eparchy and a metropolitan of the Bulgarian Exarchate by a decree of the Sultan ( Berât ) . The first metropolitan was Partenij Sografski . A Tschitalischte was also opened in the 1870s . In 1875 Todor Kableschkow founded a revolutionary committee of the Internal Revolutionary Organization (IRO) in Pirot .

Pirot was occupied by the Serbian army during the Russo-Ottoman War in 1878 and after the Peace of San Stefano Bulgaria was awarded. The Serbian troops did not withdraw, however, leading to protests among the Bulgarian population, led by the Bulgarian Metropolitan Evstatiy . The Bulgarian institutions were closed and 48 citizens of the city, including Metropolitan Evstatiy, were arrested and interned. At that time, Bulgarian educational institutions comprised two elementary schools, a pre-grammar school and a girls' school. After the Berlin Congress , Pirot was awarded to the now independent Principality of Serbia and part of the Bulgarians fled to nearby Caribrod (today Dimitrovgrad ), which was awarded to Bulgaria. The library was opened in Pirot on January 27, 1909.

Pirot was captured by the Bulgarian army in the Serbian-Bulgarian War of 1885/1886 after the defeat of Serbia in the Battle of Pirot . Bulgaria also occupied Pirot during the First and Second World Wars , but the city remained with Yugoslavia after the wars . According to an agreement with the Third Reich , 158 Jews from the Pirot region were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Second World War . After World War II, a grammar school was opened in Pirot for the Bulgarian minority in the region, but it was closed in the 1980s.

population

Urban development

There is no precise information about the development of the medieval pirot. The extent to which the ancient urban heritage was taken over into the new construction of the Pirot Castle is part of the considerations that are being tried to clarify during the current conservation work on the architectural ensemble. It is assumed that the castle was built on Roman or Byzantine foundations before the Blackbird Battle. During the conservation work, however, pre-Roman settlement horizons were also excavated. As a result of the work on the Niš-Dimitrovgrad motorway route, larger Roman buildings were also discovered at the Sarlah site. It is assumed that next to the Roman Urbs Turres on the ridge of the Sarlah, a Roman fort could also have existed in the area of today's Pirot Castle. The location of the Pirot Castle on a rock in the plain of the Pirot Basin could be due to strategic reasons due to the branching of the longitudinal Roman road to the Timokgraben in the direction of the Danube from the transversal Via militaris. The Sarlah mountain range, at the foot of which is the Pirot Castle, as well as the large swamp area in front of the castle until the 20th century would have favored a fortification at this point from a topographical point of view. A Byzantine adaptation of the Roman fort as the new urban center of the abandoned Roman civil town on the Sarlah is assumed to be the starting point for Pirot's medieval development.

In the late 14th century, the new castle was built in the form of a border fortress. The upper town was secured by four towers and a donjon. In the 14th century, the Ottomans apparently combined the possibility of using firearms and first fortress guns in the expansion of the fortifications. The city of Pirot then developed east and northeast of the castle in Ottoman times. The left-hand part of the Nišava - Pazar -, the right-hand part of the city - Tija Bara - was called. These parts of the city have been connected by a stone bridge over the Nišava since Ottoman times. Pirot's oriental character was retained until the town was regulated in 1888–1891. The city only had a fortified hill on the north side of the Tia Bara, which was shaped by a 5-6 meter wide and 2-3 meter deep trench. 6 watchtowers on the inner side of the hill reinforced this fortification. The large covered bazaar of the Tija Bara was shaped by the craft guilds of the businesses organized in the individual Esnafs. The covered bazaar disappeared at the end of the 19th century, but the division of the individual craft guilds remained in place beyond that. In terms of spatial distribution, the affiliation to Esnaf determined the structure: the terzijski- occupied the entire right side of the market square, the tkački Esnaf held 20 shops on its left. After that, the shops of opančari, kovačri and alabati, as well as samardžije, kazandžije, ćurčije, alvadžije were distributed over other areas up to the Stone Bridge to the Pazar district.

Pirot's mosques remained until 1928, one each in Tija Bara and Pazar. Two more had been removed shortly after the liberation. Two Ottoman hammams on the square of today's elementary school and a Jewish hammam, as well as a larger Turkish cemetery on the site of the Pirot grammar school built in 1907, were still part of the image of the city ensemble. A large Ottoman clock tower with a bell also stood in the city center. The Jewish quarter directly on the marshland on the outskirts of Pazar disappeared through regulation and filling.

Population development

According to the preliminary results of the 2011 census, there are 92,277 inhabitants in the Pirots County (Pirotska oblast). 57,911 of these are in the municipality and 38,432 in the city of Pirot. Since the 2002 census, Pirot has lost around 2,000, the municipality around 6,000 and the district around 13,000 inhabitants compared to the previous census.

Of the 63,791 inhabitants counted in the municipality of Pirots in the 2002 census, 93.8% were Serbs , 3.0% Roma and 0.8% Bulgarians .

traffic

The Niš – Dimitrovgrad motorway , which follows the course of the old Roman road Via Militaris (also called Via Diagonalis ), was completed in November 2019. Once the expansion has been completed, it will lead to Sofia on the Bulgarian side and connect to the Bulgarian motorway network. The nearest airport is Sofia International Airport (around 100 km away).

Personalities

Boschidar Sdrawkow (1884–1959), Bulgarian politician
Georgi Metschkonew (1858–1930), Bulgarian officer
Krastjo Krastew (1866-1919), Bulgarian linguist
Vojislav Vučković (1910–1942), Serbian composer
Spas Wazow (1856–1928), Bulgarian climatologist and founder of Bulgarian meteorology

Web links

Commons : Pirot - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

^ Constantin Jiriček: The Army Road from Belgrade to Constantinople and the Balkan passes . Prague 1877, p. 21.

↑ Dušan Gavrilović: Karst Srbije - online version of the SANU - Chapter: Genesis and evolution of Karst sanu.ac.rs ( Memento of the original from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
↑ Climatological measurement series 1960–1990 Dimitrovgrad, HMZS hidmet.gov.rs
↑ ^a ^b ^c Siniša Mišić (edt.): Lexicon of towns and market places in the medieval Serbian lands - according to written sources . Zavod za Uđbenike, Beograd 2010, p. 213.
↑ Miroslava Mirković: Moesia Superior - a province on the middle Danube . Zabern, Mainz 2007, p. 8.
↑ Miroslava Mirković, p. 90.
↑ Borislava Lilić: Istorija Pirota i okoline I - Pirot u vreme turske vlasti (1804–1878) . Filosofski Faculty, Belgrade 1994, p. 13.
^ Svetislav C. Petrović: Istorija grada Pirota . NIP Hemikalc, Narodna Biblioteka Srbije, Pirot 1996, p. 10.
^ Svetislav C. Petrović, p. 11.
↑ History of the city (Serbian) on the official website
↑ Predrag Điđić: Fortresses and remnants of fortified towns in Serbia . Narodna Biblioteka Srbije, Beograd 2009, p. 58.
↑ Borislava Lilić: Pirot i okolina us spisima savremenika od XV do početka XX veka . NIP Hemikals, Pirot 1994, p. 9.
↑ Borislava Lilić, 1994, p. 20.
↑ Българските държавни институции 1879–1986 . ДИ "Д-р Петър Берон", София 1987, p. 27 .
↑ Sigrun Comati, Radka Vlahova: Bulgarian Culture: a teaching and textbook. P. 102.
↑ Zidaju kule na pirotskoj tvrđavi
↑ Borislava Lilić, 1994: Istorija Pirota i okoline, II deo 1878-1918, p. 429.
↑ ^a ^b ibid. Borislava Lilić, 1994, p. 430.
↑ ibid. Borislava Lilić, 1994, p. 433.
↑ Popis 2011 - prvi rezultati (PDF; 2.3 MB)

[1] Constantin Jiriček: The Army Road from Belgrade to Constantinople and the Balkan passes . Prague 1877, p. 21.