1386 or 1387
Niš and Pločnik, 1386
In 1386 Murad leads a large army against Lazar and takes Pirot and Niš, driving a wedge between Bulgaria and Serbia. Lazar may have accepted Ottoman overlordship soon afterwards.
The medieval fortress of PirotWikimedia Commons, Pudelek (Marcin Szala), CC BY-SA 3.0 rs (Pirotski Grad (by Pudelek).JPG)
An Ottoman force under a commander named Şahin, by some accounts a frontier lord and not Lala Şahin, enters Lazar’s land with about 20,000 raiders and reaches Pločnik on the Toplica river. Finding no enemy, most of the raiders scatter to plunder, leaving Şahin with about 2,000 men. Lazar’s army of about 15,000, with Bosnian troops by some accounts, attacks Şahin first and then the plunderers, and by these accounts only about 5,000 raiders return home. Serbian tradition has Miloš Obilić fight in the battle and take an arrow wound.
The valley of the Toplica seen from ProkupljeWikimedia Commons, CrniBombarder!!!, CC BY-SA 3.0 (PK Dolina Toplice.jpg)
Historians date the battle to 1386 or 1387, and some to 1385, and it is unclear whether it came before or after the fall of Niš. Lazar does not retake the town. It is the first major Ottoman defeat in the South Slavic lands, and Tsar Ivan Shishman of Tarnovo renounces his vassalage and refuses to send troops to Murad.
Sources
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1987).
- Istorija srpskog naroda, vol. 2 (1982).
- Rade Mihaljčić, The Battle of Kosovo in History and in Popular Tradition (1989).
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