Hadži-Ruvim (Serbian Cyrillic: Хаџи-Рувим; 19 April 1752 – 29 January 1804), born Rafailo Nenadović (Serbian Cyrillic: Рафаило Ненадовић), was a Serbian Orthodox archimandrite (superior abbot) of the Bogovađa Monastery, near Lajkovac, an artist and engraver. He was part of a plot to overthrow the Dahije, renegade Janissaries who had revolted against the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II and taken control of the Sanjak of Smederevo. He was jailed and later killed in the event known as the Slaughter of the Knezes. Hadži-Ruvim was an artist, wood carver, engraver and book collector. He left notes and drawings on empty pages at the monasteries he visited.
Early life Rafailo Nenadović was born on 19 April [O.S. 8 April] 1752 in the village of Babina Luka, in the Valjevo nahija of the Sanjak of Smederevo (also known in historiography as the Belgrade Pashalik). He was one of four sons born to Nenad "Neško" (hence the patronymics Nenadović and Nešković) and Marija, also known by the diminutive Mara. The eldest of the four sons, Nikola, was the father of the revolutionary Petar Nikolajević Moler (1775–1816). His paternal family hailed from the Nikšić tribe (now in Montenegro). According to the Serbian linguist and folklorist Vuk Karadžić, Nenadović ran into trouble in his youth when he mischievously disguised himself as a girl to attend a Turkish girls' prelo (weaving-session, traditional women's gathering). As this was forbidden (haram), the Turks condemned him to hang and went searching for him. He fled his home and hid in the monasteries, where he was schooled, and when his act had been forgotten, he returned home. Other historians maintain that he turned to the monasteries due to his thirst for knowledge and love of books. He learned Greek. On 13 May 1774, Nenadović married Marija Simeunović, a woman from Dokmir, with whom he had a son and daughter. That year, he was ordained a priest by Bishop Evstratije of Užice, at the Ćelije Monastery, and served in his home village. He did wood carving and woodcutting. Some of his carved wooden crosses date to this period and are considered to be masterpieces of ecclesiastical art.
Religious service
Following his wife's death in 1783, Nenadović took his monastic vows and adopted the name Ruvim at the Bogovađa Monastery. He made a pilgrimage (hadžiluk; hence the prefix "hadži") to the Holy Land, Jerusalem, in 1784 and returned in 1785. On 25 May 1786, he was appointed the hegumen (monastery head) of the Voljavča Monastery. He remained there until 1788, the beginning of the Austro-Turkish War (1788–91), or by 6 April 1789 at the latest, when the Ottomans burned down the monastery, along with many others in the Belgrade Pashalik. Serbs participated in the war, managing to occupy the pashalik for the Austrians. Hadži-Ruvim fled with the brotherhood, saving some of the monastery's treasures. He recorded that the Ottomans had looted much of the inventory. For a while, he was at the Velika Remeta Monastery at Fruška Gora, in the Habsburg monarchy. When the war cooled down in 1791, he returned to the Belgrade Pashalik, not to Voljavča, but Bogovađa, which had also been burned down. Hadži-Ruvim recorded that five monasteries and eight churches had been destroyed in the Valjevo nahiya during the war. Bogovađa was repaired by Hadži-Ruvim, hegumen Vasilije Petrović and jeromonah (priest-monk) Hadži-Đera over the years, with work starting on 13 June 1791. Hadži-Ruvim's trip to Sarajevo in March 1792 is shrouded in mystery, and three hypotheses have been proposed for the reasons behind his visit. One is that he went to collect funds for the reconstruction of Bogovađa; that he feared for his life and took refuge in Bosnia; or that went to retrieve the stolen defter of Voljavča. A new theory is that he went to Sarajevo to recruit builders for Bogovađa, although the other three theories should not be neglected, as noted by the historian Vladimir Krivošejev. Work on the monastery was finished in 1794. Danilo, the Metropolitan of Šabac–Valjevo, promoted Hadži-Ruvim to the position of archimandrite on 26 October 1795. An interesting note is that Hadži-Ruvim had signed himself as archimandrite already in 1790, which suggests that he had already been promised the title by the time the monastery was renewed. Apart from the Holy Land and Fruška Gora, Hadži-Ruvim visited Hilandar, Studenica, and monasteries in the Podrinje and Ovčar regions, among others, and left notes and drawings on empty pages at the monasteries he visited. In one note, he called the Ottoman Empire and the sultan "God-hating". In another, dated August 1793, Hadži-Ruvim blamed the Greek metropolitan of Belgrade, Dionysius Papazoglou, and Austrian feldmarschall Valis, for the surrender of Belgrade. After the war, Sultan Selim III promised the Serbs some privileges, but these barely materialized. In 1801, renegade Janissaries known as the Dahije seized control of Belgrade and the Sanjak of Smederevo, and the Serbs' situation worsened once again. On 15 December 1801, they murdered Hadji Mustafa Pasha, the Vizier of Belgrade (1793–1801). Prominent Serbs sought the right moment to rise up and revive the Serbian state, and conspired throughout the sanjak. Hadži-Ruvim was a party to this movement.
Plot against the Dahije and death In early 1802, some Ottoman sipahi and Mustafa Pasha's men, in agreement with the Serbian knezes, attempted to remove the Dahije. Fighting raged in Požarevac, but the Dahije emerged triumphant. Despite this, the sipahi and the Serbs continued to plot their removal. Although antagonistic elements, the tyranny of the Dahije forced the sipahi and the Serbs to cooperate. The Serbs, organizing themselves in western Serbia (where knez Aleksa Nenadović was the leading figure) and Šumadija, wanted as the sipahi to return the state of Mustafa Pasha's rule, but needed securities – the status of Christians in the Ottoman Empire, as history told, was never permanent. In 1803, plans were processed and consultations made regarding this. The sipahi worked on one side, the Serbian seniors (starešine) and knezes (subject village heads) on the other.
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