Livno // History Never Ends
© John Bills
The decapitated head of a cow hung from the tree, a blur of black and white with eyes shut and nothing visible except, well, the decapitated head. At first glance, I thought it might be some sort of black and white chicken, strung up by concealed feet. It wasn’t. A quick glance at the table made that clear enough. The stripped carcass was behind the butcher, a burly man (is there any other kind of butcher?) who was busy at work with knives and what I could only really describe as clumps of meat. A small crowd watched on with broad smiles. The bus didn’t stop in Prisoje, but we paused at a junction long enough for a clear view of this scene. The vast expanse of Buško Blato lake faded into a hazy memory as the bus continued its journey toward Livno.
It was apparent within an hour or so of arriving that Livno was a town of the ‘sleepy’ variety, although expecting anything more than that would be wrong of me. Fewer than 10,000 people call the town home, and the weather was cold. Why would the streets be filled with conversation and excitement? Wander up the Welshpool high street on a November afternoon, and you won’t find a whole lot, truth be told. There were plenty of cafes in the heart of Livno, but most of them seemed closed.
Not all of them, of course, so I plonked my botty in the corner of Pivnica Livno. The room was dark, the ideal level of light for a pivnica, and it gave me ample time and space to ponder the long and storied history of Livno, a town where the receptionist was more than happy to refer to the language as Croatian, a town where the famous red and white checkerboard flew, a town that is around 65% Croat (according to the last census).
© John Bills
I have tried hard to keep talk of ethnicity and nationality out of this. Enough has been dedicated to the conversation already, and a four-eyed Welshman sipping on a light Livanjska isn’t bringing anything new to the table. I’ve no dog in this fight, to use a depressing reference.
But still, questions are going to be dragged to the surface, right? Livno is the administrative centre of the imaginatively named Canton 10, although a decent amount of the population still refers to it as Herceg-Bosna. Does the history of Livno answer any of these questions? Digging into history in search of answers is dangerous business in this part of the world, but I’m a sucker for a long and storied tale of how a town grew from disparate communities into its modern form, so gather round and enjoy the story of Livno.
Putting a start date on history is a fool’s game because it creates a timeline that is impossible to condense into an easily digestible form, so let’s go ahead and start the story in 892 when the town was mentioned by a Croatian duke called Mutimir. That guy was the duke of what was then the Duchy of Croatia, a position he held from 892 until 910, when he was replaced by Tomislav, a chap who may or may not have been his son but was definitely the first King of Croatia, crowned in 925. A monument to King Tomislav stands in Livno’s main square, erected in 1925 to celebrate the thousandth anniversary of his crowning. No, not that type of crowning.
The story is getting a little off-piste, so back to Livno. The town was a small regional centre, little more than that, although several important Croatian monuments have been discovered in the surroundings, from the altar at Rapovine to the inscription of Tjehodrag, one of the oldest examples of Croatian Cyrillic going. Livno was a part of medieval Croatia until 1326, at which point it became the piggy in the middle between Croatia and Bosnia, settling with the latter until 1463. What happened then?
The Ottomans, of course. The fields around the town weren’t particularly inviting, but the increasingly-Islamic empire decided to imbue Livno with a sense of importance, developing it into a major Ottoman centre with a fine collection of mosques, schools and the rest. In many ways, it was the westernmost output of Islam in the empire, a position of genuine strategic importance and somewhere to develop ideals. The 16th and 17th centuries were the pinnacles of this growth, where Livno was second only to Sarajevo in terms of the importance of its mosques and architecture. Many Beys (regional leaders, basically) lived here, increasing that importance. When ol’ Evliya Çelebi ventured here, he found a fully developed town that was largely Muslim in terms of faith. You could consider this a Golden Age of Islamic life in Livno, but all golden ages end.
© John Bills
What brought Livno’s Golden Age to an end? Fire, that’s what. Not innocent fire either, but an intentional fire started by the troops of Stojan Janković, a prominent Uskok leader who fought for Venice and set about liberating parts of the region in 1685. As the old saying goes, he had a bigger heart than mind, and he met his end in battle near what is today Tomislavgrad, although not before burning Livno to the ground. Two centuries of rebuilding followed, by the town’s importance was diminished.
By the time the Austro-Hungarian army occupied the area in 1878, Livno was once again a small centre of grain and livestock farming. Another fire in 1904 turned some 500 houses into memory, and the town’s Muslim population soon left. By 1910, the town had a majority Croatian population. Livno was initially occupied by the fascists in World War II, although it was soon liberated by the Partisans. Enter Yugoslavia 2.0, where Livno was urbanised, but it lagged behind the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which itself lagged behind most of Yugoslavia. Sure, the construction of Buško Lake (1974) helped, but people were still leaving in search of a better life. That trend continues today. In the 21st century, Livno is a town of memory, where the checkerboard has outlasted the crescent, but using the term ‘outlasted’ is naive. History never ends, after all, time outlasts all. The history of Livno doesn’t give too much of an indicator as to its present day, outside of an understanding that numbers and time will always win out.
But hey, that is how history goes, right? I started the walk home from the pivnica to the hotel, disarmed by the cold weather but warmed by the Livanjska beer that was now making plans to attack my guts. The vast majority of businesses were closed, despite it being no later than 6pm. Two cats lay in the direction of oncoming traffic, seemingly dozing, although the blood that was flowing from their heads suggested that it was going to be a very long sleep indeed.
