Koca Sinan Pasha
The Banat Uprising (1594), in which the Serbs in Banat rose up against the Ottomans, had been aided by Visarion and Metropolitan Rufim Njeguš of Cetinje. The rebels' war flags with the icon of Saint Sava had been consecrated by Serbian Patriarch Jovan Kantul. Ottoman Grand Vizier Koca Sinan Pasha ordered the flag of Prophet Muhammad be brought to counter the Serb flag, as well as the sarcophagus and relics of Saint Sava located in the Mileševa monastery be brought by military convoy to Belgrade. Along the way, the Ottomans had people killed in their path so that the rebels in the woods would hear of it. The relics were publicly incinerated by the Ottomans on a pyre on the Vračar plateau, and the ashes scattered, on April 27, 1595.