Draft:Naum Markovic

Naum Marković

Naum Marković (Serbian Cyrillic: Наум Марковић; Nebregovo, Ottoman Empire, 1870 - Nebregovo, Ottoman Empire, 17 April 1905) was a Serbian Chetnik freedom-fighter who participated in many battles in the Macedonian Struggle for the liberation of Serbian regions, Old Serbia and Macedonia.

Biograpghy

Naum Marković was born in a Serbian village of Nebregovo in the Vardar region. He finished his elementary education and high school before enrolling at a medical and pharmaceutical school in Skopje what was then the Ottoman Empire. He left without completing his studies and went to his village because the Bulgarian exarchist proselytizers showed up. It became a reminder that drastic changes were afoot. The times were made more difficult because of Sultan Hamid's oppressive regime and the Kachaks threatening the Serbian communities with constant raids from nearby Albania with Turkish border guards looking the other way. This compelled Marković to participate in founding of one of the guerrilla boards (gorski štabovi)operatin on the left and right sides of Vardar River in what would become the Macedonian Struggle (1903-1912) with the aim to emancipate the land of Serbian emperors of the Middle Ages who, long time ago, built the monasteries and churches as thanksgiving for their Eastern Orthodox Christian fortune.

In 1904, he joined the Serbian Chetnik Organization rather than be coerced to join the Bulgarian Exarchate and convert to their schismatic sect that no one among the Eastern Orthodox faithful recognize. His orders from Belgrade's Central Board (centralni odbor) was to recruit local Serbian Macedonians population into a guerrilla bands known as chetas. Their actions were to tacitly respond to every unfavourable Turkish, Albanian and Bulgarian act. During such troubled times, saving Serbian lives in the regions of Old Serbia and Macedonia was the primary goal of the Chetniks, the other goal was to liberate the Balkan Peninsula from the remaining hold the Ottoman Empire held in the early 20th century.

In his last deployment, not too far from the borders of Bulgaria and Albania, Marković was killed defending the village of Nebregovo, against numerically superior Bulgarian Komitaji. He died on 17 April 1905. The village was targeted because it is the birthplace of Gligor Sokolović, the supreme Chetnik commander of the vardar region.