Dernis

“Not far from Knin is Dernis, where I saw more extensive ruins of the Turkish occupation of Dalmatia than any where else; it is situated on a high bank, overlooking a level, fertile, well-cultivated plain, and appears at a distance like a straggling Turkish town, every house with its walled garden. A mosque had the minaret torn down; and a campanile being reared in its place, it had become the parish church; and the key being procured, I entered it, and saw a transmogrification that had an odd effect. An altar-piece and crucifix veiled the mihrab or holy niche of the mosque, and Allah Hy had given place to Ave Maria. […].

The present Dernis is only a large village, but the Turkish town must have been a place of ten or fifteen thousand inhabitants. As I walked onwards, a konak was unroofed, grass growing on its pavement, and the castle that terminated the hill was a heap of ruins. One solitary minaret, without its mosque, rising on the brow of the hill, had such a melancholy monumental air, that I experienced a transient feeling of pity for the colonists of the Crescent, intruders though they were. What a dread hour, when the rapine of their fathers was visited on the unoffending descendants; when the settlement of a century and a half must be abandoned; when the mother and her tender babe must seek a new home, and eyes dim with age and tears take a last lingering look of the abode of youth and happiness! (pp. 30-31)”.