Fetislam Fortress Kladovo

The Fetislam Fortress is positioned on the bank of the Danube River, the second largest river of Europe. As Danube River flows through most of the central Europe along its whole course of more than 2800 km which is mostly navigable, it can be said that the Fetislam fortress has been built on one of the largest corridors of Europe. The Danube River was often in the past border of many different countries and empires, like the Danube Limes in the Roman times. At the beginning of the 16th century the Ottomans strengthen their control of the Danube River by construction of the Fetislam fortress, which raised both their offensive and defensive abilities. The Fetislam Fortress in Kladovo was a part of larger defensive system along the Danube within a row of fortresses: Belgrade, Smederevo, Ram, Fetislam… The precious name of the fortification is Fetislam, in Turkish Fethul Islam meaning “the Gate of Islam”, but the name is found in literature in various forms.
Fetislam Fortress in Kladovo is the most important cultural monument of the recent past built by Ottomans after they have conquered those territories of Serbia. The area of the present day Kladovo became part of the Ottoman Empire after the bloody Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, which ended with failure of the attempt of the Hungarian King Zigmund and the crusaders, allied with armies of France and Byzantium to decisively defeat the Ottoman army led by Sultan Bayazed, supported with the army of the Serbian despot Stefan Lazarevic.

The Fetislam fort in Kladovo consists of two parts : the Mali /Small/ and the Veliki /Large/ town. 1524 is considered the year of construction of the Fetislam fort with the aim for defense against Hungary and as the military center for further invasion of Transylvania. Main difference between military fortification in the middle ages and the later modern era was in composition of walls, shape and usage. Because of the gunpowder, walls were built to be much thicker and lower, so that could resist the canon fire. In terms of shape, fortifications were built with many angles, in order to catch the enemy in cross fire. According to the preserved remains it can be concluded that the Small town of the Fetislam fortress had characteristics of the artillery base, which was protected with walls comprising circular towers on the angles and the loopholes within the wall. The Small Town of Fetislam fortress had had rectangular shape /90 x 30 m/. Beneath walls, except from the Danube River side, there was the trench with two moving bridges to enter the fortress. There was the third gate within the wall which was located close to the Danube which enabled solders to get secretly to the boats and escape from the fortress. The Large Town as the part of the whole Fetislam fort has been built by the Turks later, during the wars between Austria and Turkey 1717-1739. The Ottomans accomplished the construction of the Fetislam fortress when they were exhausted by long wars and forced to pay attention to defend earlier occupied territories. Above the gates that led into the Fetislam Fortress there posted marble plates with inscriptions that glorified the Sultan Mehmed II.
By great political initiative and activity of the Serbian prince Mihailo Obrenović, after the incident at Čukur česma, Serbian people have succeeded eventually to push out all of the Ottoman military forces from Serbia. Since then the Fetislam Fortress is in Serbian hands. As the years passed, Fetislam was constantly losing on military importance, until it became a silent monument to the ages that passed long ago…