Village Gari – Peak Golem Rid – Peak Babin Srt

Gari – village in the Municipality of Debar, in the vicinity of the city of Debar. The village is located on the slopes of Stogovo mountain, under the forest called Kanesh. Garska Reka passes through the village itself, which is a protected monument of nature.

The village is especially famous for the iconostasis and the carvings in the “Assumption of the Virgin Mary” church, which were made by the team of the far-known master Petre Filipovski – Garkata.

Gari is part of the Mala Reka area, located deep in the bosom of the Stogovo mountain, at an altitude of about 1100 meters. The village is located in a narrow valley, which originates from a glacial lake on Stogovo.

During the penetration of the Slavic tribes in the Balkans, the Mijas were among the more warlike. Several legends say that they, as the bravest, inhabited the most difficult to pass region from Macedonia along Radika, in the armpits of the mountains Stogovo, Bistra, Jama and all the way to Malesia and Luma (Albania). According to Toma Smiljanic, Mijaci are called that because they were always clean and washed. Another tradition says that the Miatsi got their name because they pronounce the personal pronoun “we” as “mie”. Smiljanic believes that this interpretation is the most accurate. According to Novaković, (Legal Monuments), Gari is mentioned in the 14th century. According to one tradition, it is believed that Gari was once located in the Prisoj area, somewhere around the 14th century.

According to the same author, it is stated that Gari was settled by the Miyacs in 1760, and before that the area was deserted. According to legend, it is said that during the 15th century on the slopes of Mount Stogovo, in the locality called Drenice, there was a church dedicated to Saint Spas, from which the icon dedicated to the saint disappeared several times. The icon flew to the present-day village of Gari, and the villagers later returned it back, but the event was repeated. Therefore, the villagers decided to build a new church and village at the place where the icon fell.

Georgi Trajchev in his “Book of Mijatsi” described Gari “as a village with more than 180 houses, most of them with two or three floors, which with their massive stone structure, exposed to the south and amphitheatrically symmetrically distributed, give it a beautiful landscape”. According to data from 1873, the village had 100 households with 278 Christian (Macedonian) inhabitants. According to Vasil K’nchov’s data from 1900, the village had 1000 Christian (Macedonian) inhabitants.

Source: Wikipedia

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(under construct.)