Only very few medieval chroniclers from Central Europe reflected the beginnings of the Ottoman expansion in their works. The arrival of the Turks in Europe and the occupation of the first fortresses on the Thracian peninsula of Gallipoli in the Dardanelles are explained by these authors in a mono causal way - by the internal dispute of hostile candidates for the Byzantine throne and the desire for power of one of them. In his contribution, the author focuses on indicating the deeper connections and causes of the Ottoman arrival in Europe, which can be reconstructed in relatively detail based on the reports of contemporary Byzantine authors.
The article presents images of the Turks in the Czech environment and their development in the last half century of the existence of the Ottoman Empire, namely from the 1870s to 1923. It analyses works that reacted to the Balkan uprisings and Russo – Turkish War of the 1870s, travel reports and literature written after the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and briefly outlines the view of the Turks in scholarly literature, especially the emerging Oriental or Turkish studies. Attitudes to the Turks are placed in the context of relations with other ethnic and religious groups. The article points to the stereotypes and Orientalist ideas we encounter in works with Turkish themes.
The Ottoman invasions are among the most significant historical events in Central European literature as well as popular culture. An important example is the legendary „well of love“ at Trenčín Castle, supposedly dug by the Turkish Omar in order to free his beloved Fatima, held in captivity by Stephen Zápolya. Despite its setting in the 1490s, this story was first published in German in the early nineteenth century by Hungarian nobleman Alois Freiherrn von Mednyánszky, which inspired Slovak poetic adaptations of this tale by Karol Štúr (1844) and Mikuláš Dohnány (1846). The narrative was popularized in several collections of „historical“ tales set in Slovakia’s castles by twentieth-century authors such as Ľudovít Janota, Jozef Branecký, Jozef Horák and Ján Domasta, as well as in Jozef Nižnánsky’s historical novel The Well of Love (1935), which provides a concrete political background for the legend. Although the story’s events and characters (other than Zápolya) are fictional, it remains today one of the most enduring love stories in Slovak culture. This article will analyse the textual development of this legend in relation to evolving definitions of national identity over the last two centuries.
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