The Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group native to Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other neighboring countries in Central and Southeastern Europe who share a common Croatian ancestry, culture, history and language. They are also a recognized minority in a number of neighboring countries, namely Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Marko Mrnjavčević was the de jure Serbian king from 1371 to 1395, while he was the de facto ruler of territory in western Macedonia centered on the town of Prilep. He is known as Prince Marko and King Marko in South Slavic oral tradition, in which he has become a major character during the period of Ottoman rule over the Balkans. Marko's father, King Vukašin, was co-ruler with Serbian Tsar Stefan Uroš V, whose reign was characterised by weakening central authority and the gradual disintegration of the Serbian Empire. Vukašin's holdings included lands in north-western Macedonia and Kosovo. In 1370 or 1371, he crowned Marko "young king"; this title included the possibility that Marko would succeed the childless Uroš on the Serbian throne.
The Bay of Kotor, also known as the Boka, is a winding bay of the Adriatic Sea in southwestern Montenegro and the region of Montenegro concentrated around the bay. It is also the southernmost part of the historical region of Dalmatia. At the entrance to the Bay there is Prevlaka, a small peninsula in southern Croatia. The bay has been inhabited since antiquity. Its well-preserved medieval towns of Kotor, Risan, Tivat, Perast, Prčanj and Herceg Novi, along with their natural surroundings, are major tourist attractions. The Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. Its numerous Orthodox and Catholic churches and monasteries attract numerous religious pilgrims and other visitors.
Zachlumia or Zachumlia, also Hum, was a medieval principality located in the modern-day regions of Herzegovina and southern Dalmatia. In some periods it was a fully independent or semi-independent South Slavic principality. It maintained relations with various foreign and neighbouring powers and later was subjected to Kingdom of Hungary, Kingdom of Serbia, Kingdom of Bosnia, and at the end to the Ottoman Empire.
Stephen Tvrtko I was the first king of Bosnia. A member of the House of Kotromanić, he succeeded his uncle Stephen II as the ban of Bosnia in 1353. As he was a minor at the time, Tvrtko's father, Vladislav, briefly ruled as regent, followed by Tvrtko's mother, Jelena. Early in his personal rule, Tvrtko quarrelled with his country's Roman Catholic clergy but later enjoyed cordial relations with all the religious communities in his realm. After initial difficulties – the loss of large parts of Bosnia to his overlord, King Louis I of Hungary, and being briefly deposed by his magnates – Tvrtko's power grew considerably. He conquered some remnants of the neighbouring Serbian Empire in 1373, after the death of its last ruler and his distant relative, Uroš the Weak. In 1377, he had himself crowned king of Bosnia and Serbia, claiming to be the heir of Serbia's extinct Nemanjić dynasty.
The Balkans and parts of this area may also be placed in Southeastern, Southern, Eastern Europe and Central Europe. The distinct identity and fragmentation of the Balkans owes much to its common and often turbulent history regarding centuries of Ottoman conquest and to its very mountainous geography.
Morlachs has been an exonym used for a rural Christian community in Herzegovina, Lika and the Dalmatian Hinterland. The term was initially used for a bilingual Vlach pastoralist community in the mountains of Croatia from the second half of the 14th until the early 16th century. Then, when the community straddled the Venetian–Ottoman border until in the 17th century, it referred only to Slavic-speaking, mainly Eastern Orthodox but also Roman Catholic people. The Vlach, i.e., Morlach, population of Herzegovina and Dalmatian hinterland from the Venetian and Turkish side were of either Roman Catholic or Christian Orthodox faith. Venetian sources from 17th and 18th centuries make no distinction between Orthodox and Catholics, they refer to both groupings as Morlachs. The exonym ceased to be used in an ethnic sense by the end of the 18th century, and came to be viewed as derogatory, but has been renewed as a social or cultural anthropological subject. As the nation-building of the 19th century proceeded, the Vlach/Morlach population residing with the Croats and Serbs of the Dalmatian Hinterland espoused either a Serb or Croat ethnic identity, but preserved some common sociocultural outlines.
Novo Brdo or Novobërda and Artanë, is a town and municipality located in the Prishtina district of Kosovo. According to the 2011 census, it has a population of 6,729 inhabitants. The center of the municipality is the village of Bostane. The region is especially known for its role in mining during medieval times, in particular after the construction of the Novo Brdo Fortress by Stefan Milutin to house Saxon miners who were brought in the region.
The History of Dalmatia concerns the history of the area that covers eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea and its inland regions, from the 2nd century BC up to the present day. The region was populated by Illyrian tribes around 1,000 B.C, including the Delmatae, who formed a kingdom and for whom the province is named. Later it was conquered by Rome, thus becoming the province of Dalmatia, part of the Roman Empire. Dalmatia was ravaged by barbaric tribes in the beginning of the 4th century.
The Republic of Ragusa was an aristocratic maritime republic centered on the city of Dubrovnik in South Dalmatia that carried that name from 1358 until 1808. It reached its commercial peak in the 15th and the 16th centuries, before being conquered by Napoleon's French Empire and formally annexed by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1808. It had a population of about 30,000 people, of whom 5,000 lived within the city walls. Its motto was "Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro", a Latin phrase which can be translated as "Liberty is not well sold for all the gold".
The Paštrovići is a historical tribe and region in the Montenegrin Littoral. Paštrovići stretches from the southernmost part of the Bay of Kotor, from the cape of Zavala to Spič. Its historical capital was the island of Sveti Stefan. From 1423 until 1797, with interruptions by the Ottoman Empire. It was part of the Kingdom of Dalmatia from 1815 to 1918, then Yugoslavia, then became part of Montenegro only after World War II. The Paštrovići form one of the three historical tribes of the Montenegrin Littoral, the other two being Krivošije and Mrkojevići.
The Serb-Catholic movement in Dubrovnik was a cultural and political movement of people from Dubrovnik who, while Catholic, declared themselves Serbs, while Dubrovnik was part of the Habsburg-ruled Kingdom of Dalmatia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Initially spearheaded by intellectuals who espoused strong pro-Serbian sentiments, there were two prominent incarnations of the movement: an early pan-Slavic phase under Matija Ban and Medo Pucić that corresponded to the Illyrian movement, and a later, more Serbian nationalist group that was active between the 1880s and 1908, including a large number of Dubrovnik intellectuals at the time. The movement, whose adherents are known as Serb-Catholics or Catholic Serbs, largely disappeared with the creation of Yugoslavia.
The medieval Serbian army was well known for its strength and was among the strongest in the Balkans before the Ottoman Empire's expansion. Prior to the 14th century, the army consisted of European-style noble cavalry armed with bows and lances and infantry armed with spears, javelins and bows. With the economic growth from mining, mercenary knights from Western Europe were recruited to finalize and increase the effectiveness of the army, especially throughout 14th century.
Maria of Serbia, christened Helena, was the last queen of Bosnia and despoina of Serbia. As the eldest daughter of the deceased despot of Serbia, Lazar Branković, the 12-year-old Helena was given in marriage to the Bosnian prince Stephen Tomašević in 1459. She then took the name Maria, while her husband obtained the title to Serbia through her. The country was lost to the Ottomans within a few months, and the couple fled to Bosnia. Maria's husband ascended the Bosnian throne in 1461, but two years later the kingdom too fell to the Ottomans and he was executed. The widowed queen avoided capture by fleeing to the coast. Having spent a few years in Venetian Dalmatia and possibly Hungary, Maria settled in Ottoman Greece at the court of her aunts Mara and Kantakouzene, where she spent her life in a string of conflicts and legal disputes with Kantakouzene, the Republic of Ragusa, and the Athonite monasteries.
The Narentines were a South Slavic tribe that occupied an area of southern Dalmatia centered at the river Neretva, active in the 9th and 10th centuries, noted as pirates on the Adriatic. Named Narentani in Venetian sources, Greek sources call them Paganoi, "pagans", as they were for long pagan, in a time when neighbouring tribes were Christianized. The tribe were fierce enemies of the Republic of Venice, having attacked Venetian merchants and clergy passing on the Adriatic, and even raided close to Venice itself, as well as defeated the doge several times. Venetian–Narentine peace treaties did not last long, as the Narentines quickly returned to piracy. They were finally defeated in a Venetian crackdown at the turn of the 10th century and disappeared from sources by the 11th century.
The term Vlachs was initially used in medieval Croatian and Venetian history for a Romance-speaking pastoralist community, called "Vlachs" and "Morlachs", inhabiting the mountains and lands of the Croatian Kingdom and the Republic of Venice from the early 14th century. By the end of the 15th century they were highly assimilated with the Slavs and lost their language or were at least bilingual, while some communities managed to preserve and continue to speak their language (Istro-Romanians).
Venetian Dalmatia refers to parts of Dalmatia under the rule of the Republic of Venice, mainly from the 15th to the 18th centuries. Dalmatia was first sold to Venice in 1409 but Venetian Dalmatia was not fully consolidated until 1420. It lasted until 1797, when the Republic of Venice fell to the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte and Habsburg Austria.
The Spata were a noble Albanian family active in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, initially as Venetian vassals and later as Ottoman vassals. The family's progenitors were the brothers Gjin Bua Shpata and Skurra Bua Shpata. Shpata means "sword" in Albanian.
Aleksandar Komulović was a Catholic priest and diplomat from Venetian Dalmatia. Part of the Counter-Reformation, and an early Pan-Slavist, he notably led a diplomatic mission aimed to forge an anti-Ottoman coalition in support of the West during the Long Turkish War, principally in the Balkans and among the Slavs. Although he failed his mission, he inspired the Serbs to revolt. The Papacy was aware that the Latin language of the liturgical books presented an obstacle for the conversion of the South Slavs from Islam and Orthodoxy to Catholicism. Komulović belonged to the first group of Jesuit missionaries and authors who attempted to spread Catholicism among the Slavs using liturgical books in Slavic. After his death, his propaganda activities were continued by Bartol Kašić.
The Croatian–Venetian wars were a series of periodical, punctuated medieval conflicts and naval campaigns waged for control of the northeastern coast of the Adriatic Sea between the city-state of Venice and the Principality of Croatia, at times allied with neighbouring territories – the Principality of the Narentines and Zahumlje in the south and Istrian peninsula in the north. First struggles occurred at the very beginning of the existence of two conflict parties, they intensified in the 9th century, lessened during the 10th century, but intensified again since the beginning of the 11th century.
