Old Skopje Bazaar

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You cannot become familiar with Skopje quickly and all at once. The first impression
would be misleading. And being in a hurry only makes matters worse. Getting familiar should be a gradual process - you need to stroll through this city, at ease and slowly. During this wandering, one must start from the significant markers of the city, from something that is beautiful and original, something one does not find in other places.
The Old Bazaar of Skopje is one of those markers. It represents a unique fragment of a complex and urban event from the past. For centuries, it has the role of an indelible living document about Skopje and its movements, about its growth and stagnation.
The Bazaar, together with the remnants of material culture within it, reflects the stormy pas that was full of spiritual influences, crusades and slaveries, ethnic migrations, propaganda and denationalization by the foreign regimes of neighbors. The bygone times can be represented and described, they can also be wrenched from the past by means of pictures and photographs, through the indelible memories of our ancestors. When we fill this "album" with pictures, without pretending that this would be complete, we will recognize the face of the bazaar and its life in the past - the forgotten, and yet not so distant, past times.
All the remembered and invented stories about the bazaar and its citizens, started and ended here, within this network of streets, Shops, window-shutters, among the craftsmen, merchants and market-men... Here, the waves of various cultures threaded their path, a new architecture was crystallized, new habits were formed, the union was felt of the smells of the East, the West, of the Mediterranean and of the Balkans. Europe walked here with all its splendor. One must enter into the past and into the contemporary, in order to perceive the harmony. In order to remember and to come to love all of this, it is necessary to explore and to discover permanently.
The strong contrasts between the past and the present, still, impose comparisons. Without them, the picture about the Old Bazaar in Skopje would be incomplete and hazy. The crossing of cultures and systems of the East and the West in the city led to contradictions and conflicts. In modern life, such conflicts and contradictions exist less and less.
All the pictures of the Old Bazaar we carry in ourselves. In the course of time, the changes through which the Bazaar went through are not even noticeable. Time is merciless in the changes, but also in the forgetting. At the foot of Kale, at the heart of the new city conglomerate, a beautiful entity has been preserved, as e remainder of the old city of Skopje. This is the Old Bazaar, starting from the Stone Bridge and all the way to Bit-Pazar (Old Market).
The Old Charshya with its innumerable small shops and window-shutters, which in olden times was rich and had a good name, preserved until the present times some rare crafts and trades, and many good memories about its past.
A characteristic marker of all cities that were under the influence of the Oriental cultures is the separation of housing zones and zones for trading and crafts. Thus, Skopje developed during the Ottoman period also into two zones. The bazaar represented one of the zones, as the center of trade and crafts, while the other zone was represented by the city mahalas (streets).
The Old Skopje Bazaar has always represented a lively urban totality. It is a challenge and an interest for uncountable foreign researchers and travelers-writers. We encounter it in the Diary of the travels of the Venetian Jovan Sorenzo, from 1575, who described it as a lively trading and crafts totality.
Skopje, as a large city with a developed trade, with a very beautiful bezisten (market place), covered with lead, with a covered caravansary with a rich market, with a bazaar where in front of every shop there was a flower, was also described by the Turkish geographer Hadji-Kalfa towards the middle of the 17-th. century. Also, he describes the city clock as the most beautiful in all Christian countries, with a special watchmaker to take care of it.
Documents and material remains show that Skopje was urbanized according to a wellplanned concept of a Turkish architect from the 17-th. century. This plan discloses the special features of an urban composition of a housing quarters, a set of public buildings, paved roads, shops and inns. The housing quarters was connected with a wide road to the Old Bazaar.
The suburb which contained the largest number of shops, concentrated into a complex totality,
made it possible to maintain the bazaar and its economic development.
The most interesting description of Skopje and of the Old Bazaar was given by the Turkish traveler-writer Evlya Cheleby, in 1661. He notes that the Old Bazaar, about which he writes with delight, had 2,150 shops, was divided into several charshyas, of which the most beautiful were those for: canvas, silk, paints, molds, shoes, etc. The Charshya was exceptionally beautiful, with arches and domes, where people could take shelter during the hot periods, just like in Baghdad. In the bezisten (market place), various perfumes were sold, such as camphor and others. The bezisten was like a fortress, and there were many Latins in the bazaar.
For the English traveler Edward Brown, personal physician of the English king, Skopje in 1669 was a nice place with 700 tanners who processed leather. The rich homes were covered with precious carpets and with wood-carving. The bazaar had a bezisten covered with lead.
The Old Bazaar, according to the traveler writers from the 16-th. and 17-th. centuries, was a lively trade and crafts place, renown especially for its leather products. Well known Skopje products were especially the yellow safyan (fine processed sheep and goat leather) and the furrier product - kjufdya, a richly decorated overcoat lined with fur.
Its development was often interrupted by various catastrophes and wars.
The Old Bazaar was especially damaged in the fire by Austrian soldiers in 1689, when almost all
important landmarks in it were completely destroyed.
Only in the 19-th. century could the Old Bazaar return its old shine, as a result of the reforms in the Ottoman Empire and the transformation of the feudal system. This had its impact upon the physiognomy of the Old Bazaar. The Old Bazaar used to be one of the most important trading centers on the Balkan Peninsula. There was a developed trade with Bosnia, Austria, Bulgaria and Trace.
Trading with Bosnia was in tobacco, cords, silver-thread products, silk threads, seet (cloth), canvas, while iron products and salt were imported. Exports to Austria included safyan, especially the yellow one, while manufactured products were imported.
Domestic trade and sales of goods were done in the Charshya and on the market. Towards the end of the 19-th. century, the Old Charshya counted over 1,150 shops. Almost every Skopje merchant had a shop in the Charshya, where wholesale and retail trade were performed.
Groceries and factory products were imported from Austria, Germany and Thessaloniki. Many merchants from Serbia, especially from Prizren, Prishtina and Novi Pazar, received European products through Thessaloniki. The large European trading houses from Thessaloniki opened clones in Skopje in order to be able to work with Kosovo. A total of 800,000 Turkish liras worth of goods entered Skopje per year.
European export goods were sold wholesale and retail in Skopje, through the large number of grocery stores, caftan and tailor shops.
Export trade for the whole Skopje vilayet (region) went through Skopje. Everything intended for export first came to Skopje and only then it went abroad.
The economic importance of this city increased even more after 1886, when the Morava and the Vardar valleys were connected with the Belgrade-Skopje-Thessaloniki railway line. It became an important railway crossing, and at the same time, it became directly linked with Serbia, and through it with the Danube river and with Central and Western Europe.
The urban structure of the city in the 17-th. and 19-th. centuries is based on the presence of the traditional concept of construction of the Ottoman cities. The Charshya had a central place in the city and it exerted a significant influence upon its development.
Skopje underwent a more differentiated and more modern urbanization after World War I. The city received its first urban plan in 1914, through an international tender. The urban concept foresees the areas around the old city Kale as a zone of social buildings and the creation of a kind of acropolis.
Urban plans existed in continuity in 1922, 1924 and 1929. City arrangements based on more modern urban and architectural principles followed with the first five-year plan, after World War II. The implementation of the adopted urban plans in 1948 and later in 1955 were interrupted by the earthquake in 1963, when conditions for further development of the city changed completely, as well as the views in regard to its urban concepts.
However, the central area, as its most important nucleus, continued to encompass the traditional space of the Old Charshya.

Kiro Dojchinoski

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