allies. It is believed that the Albanian army was delayed by Serbian despot Đurađ Branković. The Serbs had declined joining Hunyadi's forces following an earlier truce with the Turks. As a result, Skanderbeg ravaged Brankovic's domains as punishment for the Serbian desertion of the Christian cause. Significance The overall significance of these battles (within their medieval context) remains disputed, although the First Battle of Kosovo has become, for Serbians since their independence at least, a national symbol for heroism and an admirable 'fight against all odds', and may therefore have assumed a significance that it lacked. It seems unlikely that single battles could seriously have affected the rise of Ottoman power. In the First Battle of Kosovo, Sultan Murat I was the first Ottoman ruler to lose his life in combat; his successor Sultan Bayazid I went on to expand Ottoman territories significantly despite defeats in Wallachia, in his siege of Constantinople, and his crushing defeat in the battle of Ankara, in which he was captured and which resulted in a civil war for the succession. Despite these defeats, Ottoman power continued to expand. The Second Battle of Kosovo might have had more significance in that there were two powers simultaneously resisting the Ottomans (the Hungarians under Hunyadi and the Albanians under Skanderbeg), with Skanderbeg only narrowly missing joining Hunyadi for the battle. While the resistance of the Byzantines, Serbians, Hungarians, Albanians and Wallachians should have given the Austrians (and Italians) more time to prepare for an Ottoman threat against them, it is by no means clear that they believed the threat to be serious or consciously prepared for it. Kastrioti and Dukagjini The Battle of Kosovo of 1389 had completely disorganised the Serb state, and left the field open to the most dynamic local lords, including among them the Albanian princes of the North and the Northeast. One of them was Jon Kastriot, the father of Skanderbeg, from the high region of Mati. At the end of the fourteenth and the start of the fifteenth century he managed to carve a principality from Ishmi to Prizren at the heart of region of Kosovo. Around the 15th century, the region of modern Kosovo became also part of the Albanian principality of Dukagjini. Leke Dukagjini ruled what is today large parts of Northern Albania and Kosovo, with Lezha in Northern Albania as its capital city and Ulpiana near modern Prishtina in