Earliest sources[edit]

The earliest sources on the Battle of Kosovo, which generally favour the cult of Prince Lazar, do not
mention Miloš or his assassination of the sultan.[9] The assassination itself is first recorded by Deacon
Ignjatije on 9 July 1389, only 12 days after the battle.[10] The assassination of sultan Murad and one of his
sons was also mentioned in the instructions of the Venetian Senate issued to Andrea Bembo on 23 July
1389, although Venetians were uncertain if news about the assassination were true.[11] On 1 August
1389 King Tvrtko I of Bosnia (r. 1353-1391) wrote a letter to Trogir to inform its citizens about Ottoman
defeat.[12] Victory over the Turks (Latin: ob victoriam de Turcis) was also reported by Coluccio
Salutati (died 1406), Chancellor of Florence, in his letter to King Tvrtko, dated 20 October 1389, on
behalf of the Florentine Senate.[9][13] The killer is not named but he is described as one of twelve
Christian noblemen who managed to break through the Ottoman ranks:

"Fortunate, most fortunate are those hands of the twelve loyal lords who, having opened their way with
the sword and having penetrated the enemy lines and the circle of chained camels, heroically reached
the tent of Amurat [Murad] himself. Fortunate above all is that one who so forcefully killed such a strong
vojvoda by stabbing him with a sword in the throat and belly. And blessed are all those who gave their
lives and blood through the glorious manner of martyrdom as victims of the dead leader over his ugly
corpse."[13][14]

Another Italian account, Mignanelli's 1416 work, asserted that it was Lazar who killed the Ottoman
sultan.[15]

The assassin's first appearance in Serbian sources is in the biography of Stefan Lazarević, Lazar's son,
by Constantine the Philosopher, written in the 1440s. The hero, still anonymous, is described as a man
of noble birth whom envious tongues had sought to defame before the prince. To prove his loyalty and
courage, he left the front line on the pretext of being a deserter, seized the opportunity to stab the
sultan to death and was killed himself shortly afterwards.[9] The initial phase of ignominy and its
redemption by a courageous plot of slaying the sultan are narrative ingredients which would become
essential to the Serbian legend as it evolved in later times.[9]

Ottoman and Greek sources[edit]

The loss of the Sultan also made an impression on the earliest Ottoman sources. They usually describe
how Murad was unaccompanied on the battlefield and an anonymous Christian who had been lying
among the corpses stabbed him to death. In the early 15th century, for instance, the poet Ahmedi writes
that "[s]uddenly one of the Christians, who was covered in blood and apparently hidden among the
enemy dead, got up, rushed to Murad and stabbed him with a dagger."[9][16]

Halil İnalcık explained that one of the most important contemporary Ottomans sources about the Battle
of Kosovo is the 1465 work of Enveri (Turkish: Düstûrnâme). İnalcık argued that it was based on the
testimony of a contemporary eyewitness of the battle, probably Hoca Omer, an envoy sent by the Sultan
to Lazar before the battle.[17] In this work Enveri explains that before he became a Serbian nobleman,
Miloš (Miloš Ban is how İnalcık rendered the name in Enveri's text) was a Muslim at the Sultan's court
who deserted Ottomans and abjured Islam. The Sultan allegedly called him to return to his service many
times. Enveri explains that although Miloš always promised to return, he never did. According to this
account, when Lazar was captured, Miloš approached the Sultan who was riding a black stallion and
said: "I am Miloš Ban, I want to go back to my Islamic faith and kiss your hand." When Miloš came close
to the Sultan, he struck him with the dagger hidden in his cuff. The Sultan's men cut Miloš into pieces
with swords and axes.[17]

One historian from Edirne, Oruc Bey, explains the lack of protection by saying that the army was
preoccupied with pursuing the enemy in rear flight and introduces an element of deception: the
Christian "had promised himself as a sacrifice and approached Murad, who was sitting alone on his
horse. Pretending he wished to kiss the Sultan's hand, he stabbed the Sultan with a sharp
dagger."[9][13][18]

Since about the late 15th century, Greek sources also begin to record the event. The Athenian
scholar Laonicus Chalcocondyles (d. c. 1490) claims to draw on Greek traditions when he refers to
Murad's killer as Miloes, "a man of noble birth [... who] voluntarily decided to accomplish the heroic act
of assassination. He requested what he needed from Prince Lazar, and then rode off to Murad's camp
with the intention of presenting himself as a deserter. Murad, who was standing in the midst of his
troops before the battle, was eager to receive the deserter. Miloes reached the Sultan and his
bodyguards, turned his spear against Murad, and killed him."[9] Writing in the second half of the same
century, Michael Doukas regarded the story as worthy of inclusion in his Historia Byzantina. He relates
how the young nobleman pretended to desert the battle, was captured by the Turks and professing to
know the key to victory, managed to gain access to Murad and kill him.[9]

In 1976, Miodrag Popović suggested that the narrative elements of secrecy and stratagem in the Serbian
tradition were all introduced from Turkish sources, seeking to defame the capabilities of their Christian
opponents by attributing the death of the Murat to "devious" methods.[19] Thomas A. Emmert agrees
with him.[9]

Emmert says that Turkish sources mentioned the assassination several times, while Western and Serbian
sources didn't mention it until much later. He thinks that Serbians knew about the assassination, but
decided not to mention it in their first accounts for unknown reasons.[20]

In 1512 Ottoman historian Mehmed Nesri wrote a detailed account of the battle that became the source
for later Ottoman and Western descriptions of the battle. Nesri's account took several elements from
popular Serbian tradition, and described the assassination in a way which reflected negatively on the
perpetrators.[9]

Serbian traditions[edit]

Miloš Obilić is a major hero of the Serbian legend of Kosovo, whose central part is the Battle of Kosovo.
According to the legend, Miloš was a son-in-law of the Serbian Prince Lazar. A quarrel broke out
between his wife and her sister who was married to Vuk Branković, about superiority in valour of their
respective husbands. As a consequence of this, Branković took offence and picked a fight with Miloš.
Filled with hate, Branković maligned Miloš to Lazar, saying that he conspired with Turks to betray the
prince. At Lazar’s supper on the eve of the battle, the prince reproached Miloš for disloyalty. To prove
his loyalty, Miloš went into the Turkish camp feigning defection. At a favourable moment, he stabbed
and killed the Turkish Sultan Murad, whose attendants then executed Miloš. The legend then goes on to
describe events regarding the battle.[21]

There are two main views about the creation of the Kosovo legend. In one view, its place of origin lies in
the region in which the Battle of Kosovo was fought. In the other view, the legend sprang up in more
westerly Balkan regions under the influence of the French chansons de geste. Serbian philologist
Dragutin Kostić stated that the French chivalric epics had in fact no part in the formation of the legend,
but that they "only modified the already created and formed legend and its first poetic
manifestations".[21] The nucleus from which the legend developed is found in the cultic literature
celebrating Prince Lazar as a martyr and saint, written in Moravian Serbia between 1389 and 1420.
Especially important in this regard is the Discourse on Prince Lazar composed by Serbian Patriarch Danilo
III. The legend would gradually evolve during the subsequent centuries.[21]

The tale of the maligned hero who penetrated the Turkish camp and killed Sultan Murad, is found in
the Life of Despot Stefan Lazarević written in the 1430s by Konstantin the Philosopher. The hero's name
is not mentioned in this work. The theme of the quarrel between Lazar's sons-in-law was first recorded
in Herzegovina in the mid-15th century. Lazar’s supper on the eve of the battle and his reproach of Miloš
are mentioned in texts from the 16th century. The argument between Lazar's daughters over the valor
of their husbands was first recorded by Mavro Orbin in 1601. The fully developed legend of Kosovo, with
all of its elements, is recorded in the Tale of the Battle of Kosovo composed around the beginning of the
18th century in the Bay of Kotor or Old Montenegro. This was a very popular text, whose copies were
continuously produced for some 150 years in an area stretching from the south of ex-Yugoslavia to
Budapest and Sofia. The Tale played a notable role in the awakening of national consciousness of the
Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy, which began in the first half of the 18th century.[21]

Miloš Obilić at the tent of Sultan Murad.

The first author to refer to Murad's killer by his full name is Konstantin Mihailović, a
Serbian Janissary from the village of Ostrovica, near Rudnik, who wrote his Memoirs of a
Janissary or Turkish Chronicle in ca 1497. In a passage intended to infer a moral lesson about disloyalty
from the Serbian defeat at Kosovo, Mihailović identifies Miloš Kobica[22] as the knight who on the fateful
last Friday of the battle slew Murad.[9] The next time a name is given in the sources is three decades
later, in 1530, when the (Slovene) monk Benedikt Kuripečič (Curipeschitz) wrote memoirs of his travels
through the Balkan Peninsula. His visit to Murad's tomb in Kosovo Polje provides the occasion for the
story of the knight whom he names Miloš Kobilović.[9] Kuripešić elaborates on the humiliation and fall
out favour which Miloš endured before the battle, his last dinner with Lazar and his nobles, his
admittance to Murad's tent, the brutal murder and his own death on attempting to escape on
horseback.[9] The monk, though not explicit about his sources, writes that Miloš was a celebrated figure
in the popular traditions of Serbs, who sing about his heroic exploits on the border.[9] He recorded some
legends about the Battle of Kosovo and mentions epic songs about Obilić in regions far from Kosovo,
like Bosnia and Croatia.[23] In his 1603 work Richard Knolles described the "country songs" of Serbs about
the Battle of Kosovo and refer to Obilić as "Cobelitz".[24]

In Serbian epic poetry and song (e.g. "Radul-bey and Bulgarian King Šišman" and the song "Dušan's
Wedding"), Miloš Obilić is often grouped along with other literary creations like Karadjordje, Vuk
Karadžić and Njegoš as Serbs of Dinaric origin who distinguished themselves as the great moral and/or
intellectual minds of the past in contradistinction to Bulgarian contemporaries, who could claim no such
status.[25] In the poem "Obilić Dragon's Son", Miloš is given a mythical ancestry as the son of a dragon to
emphasise his superhuman strength on a physical and spiritual level; in this, he joins the ranks of many
other heroes of Serbian poetry who fought against Turkish oppression and are claimed to have been
descendants of a dragon.[26]

Albert Lord of Harvard University stated in 1982 that Albanian epic songs about the Battle of Kosovo
were not translations of the Serbian epic songs, as was previously thought. Lord argues that the two
traditions emerged more or less independent of each other. According to him, major elements of the
Albanian tale of the assassination of Sultan Murad cannot be found in the corresponding Serbian
accounts, while these elements can be traced to Albanian folklore. The Serbian and the Albanian
traditions came into contact in the region of Raška, where they were fused.[27]