Gazimestan is the name of a monument commemorating the historical Battle of Kosovo

Battle of Kosovo

The Battle of Kosovo took place on St. Vitus' Day, June 15, 1389, between the army led by Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović, and the invading army of the Ottoman Empire under the leadership of Sultan Murad I...

, situated about 6-7 kilometres north-northeast of the actual battlefield, known as Kosovo Field (Serbian

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

: "Косово Поље", "Kosovo Polje"), or in Albanian

Albanian language

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

: "Fushë Kosovë/Fushë Kosova". The monument was designed by Aleksandar Deroko

Aleksandar Deroko

Aleksandar Deroko was a famous Serbian architect, artist, and author...

 and built in 1953 under the authority of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. It is in the shape of a medieval tower. Gazimestan is reached from the Lazarevo-Mitrovica highway, on a 50 m hill above the plain.

Etymology

The name originates from the Ottoman Turkish

Ottoman Turkish language

The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...

 word "gazi", meaning 'hero' (or in specific contexts 'war veteran'), which in turn is a loanword

Loanword

A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

 from Arabic. Thus, in a portmanteau with the Serbian word "mesto", meaning place, Gazimestan's meaning becomes "Place of Heroes". The Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...

 language absorbed a huge number of Turkish, Arabic and Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

 loanwords during centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans (see: History of the Balkans

History of the Balkans

The Balkans is an area of southeastern Europe situated at a major crossroads between mainland Europe and the Near East. The distinct identity and fragmentation of the Balkans owes much to its common and often violent history and to its very mountainous geography.-Neolithic:Archaeologists have...

).

History

The monument was the location of the Gazimestan speech

Gazimestan speech

The Gazimestan speech was a speech given on 28 June 1989 by Slobodan Milošević, then President of Serbia. It was the centrepiece of a day-long event to mark the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, which spelled the defeat of the medieval Serbian kingdom at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, as...

 delivered by Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...

 on the 600th anniversary of that battle in 1989, which preceded a violent surge in nationalistic and ethnic tensions prior to the Breakup of Yugoslavia.

Inscribed on the monument is the "Kosovo curse

Kosovo curse

The Kosovo curse or Prince's curse is, according to the legend, a curse said by Serbian Prince Lazar before the Battle of Kosovo...

" attributed to Prince Lazar

Lazar of Serbia

Lazar Hrebeljanović , was a medieval nobleman that emerged as the most powerful Serbian ruler after the death of the previous, childless, Emperor Uroš the Weak, which resulted in years of instability in the Serbian realm. As Stefan Lazar, he was Prince of Serbia from 1371 to 1389, ruling what is...

:

"Whoever is a Serb and of Serb birth

And of Serb blood and heritage

And comes not to the Battle of Kosovo,

May he never have the progeny his heart desires!

Neither son nor daughter

May nothing grow that his hand sows!

Neither dark wine nor white wheat

And let him be cursed from all ages to all ages!"

This form of the curse first appeared in the 1845 edition of the collection of Serbian folk songs by Vuk Karadžić.

See also

• Spatial Cultural-Historical Units of Great Importance
  Spatial Cultural-Historical Units of Great Importance (Serbia)
  Spatial Cultural-Historical Units of Great Importance are the monuments in the Republic of Serbia that have the second level of the State protection.Those are part of the Cultural Property of Great Importance protection list.- Further reading :...
  
  

External links

• http://www.yuheritage.com/pristina1.htm
• http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2006/October_03/5.html
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8574983.stm