Voyage militaire dans l’Empire Othoman

There is not more than a league from Mourâd's tomb to Pristina; a level or slightly undulating road. Pristina is a city of seven to eight thousand inhabitants, half-hidden in a ring of land, where a stream flows. The place which it occupies, is surrounded by heights towards its ends, and seems dominated on all sides: which does not prevent it from being surrounded by a moat and a metal fence, as if it had the purpose of protection. It would be necessary to erect a permanent camp around it, or to build one of these great squares with defensive walls at the ends, the model of which has recently been proposed, and of which the present city would form the nucleus. This large polygon would later serve as both a fortress and a permanent camp.
Prishtina is the capital of the Pashalik, which, together with those of Nis and Belgrade, constitutes one of the three military governments of Serbia. This province, which is separated from Bosnia by the Drin and from Bulgaria by the Timok, descends from the plain of Kosovo to the junction of the two Moravas in an inconspicuous manner, and appears as a kind of platform, surrounded by mountain horns, extending from the Drin to Eastern Moravia, which is only an extension of the Bosnian plateau; but the surface of the land, to the north of this plain, falls abruptly towards the Danube, and is bounded by this river from the mouth of the Sava to that of the Timok. Pristina is the dominating point of these two areas, and at the same time the most important military point of European Turkey: it is also the point that nurtures the best breed of men and the best soldiers. At the time when the throne was the reward of bravery, the canton of Pristina, the heart of Dardania, had given many leaders to the Roman empire.

Source: Beaujour, Félix de (1817). Voyage militaire dans l'Empire Othoman, ou Description de ses frontières et de ses principales défenses, soit naturelles soit artificielles. Paris: Firmin Didot, p. 409–410. Printed material. (Translation: Y.R.)