Peja
Peja or Peć, is the fifth most populous city in Kosovo and serves as the seat of the Peja Municipality and the District of Peja. It is located in the Rugova region on the eastern section of the Accursed Mountains along the Peja's Lumbardh in the western part of Kosovo.
In medieval times, the city was under Byzantine, Bulgarian and Serbian rule. After its integration into Serbian territory, it became the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1346. The Patriarchal monastery of Peć is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Medieval Monuments in Kosovo. Under Ottoman rule the city became a district capital with mosques and civil architecture. From the end of the nineteenth century until today, the city has been the site of nationalist aspirations and claims for both ethnic Albanians and Serbs, often resulting in tense inter-ethnic relations and conflict.
According to the 2024 census, the municipality of Peja has 82,745 inhabitants. The municipality covers an area of, including the city of Peja and 95 villages; it is divided into 28 territorial communities.
Etymology
The Albanian name's definite form is Peja and the indefinite Pejë. The Serbian name for the city is Peć. The etymology of the city's name in Serbian is derived from the South Slavic word for cave, Pećina. The connection is in reference to nearby caves to the city.During the period of Ottoman rule, it was known as Ottoman Turkish İpek. Other names of the city include Latin Pescium and Greek Episkion meaning "Episcopal City". It was also known as Siparant.
History
Ancient History
The city is located in a strategic position on Peja's Lumbardh, a tributary of the White Drin to the east of the Accursed Mountains. The medieval city was possibly built on the ruins of Siparant, a Roman municipium. The area has the most unearthed stelae in all of Kosovo.Archeological studies have concluded that settlements in the Peja region have existed since the Paleolithic and Mezolithic periods. Several ancient ruins in Peja and in its surrounding villages have been declared as UNESCO heritage monuments, including the ancient fortifications of Gradina and Gjyteti, as well as the archeological sites of Doberdol, Kryshec, Vranoc, Tuma and Peja, together with the Roman archeological site of Stanica in Gllogjan.
Several caves in the area, such as the Bukuroshja e Fjetur Cave in Radac, where the remains of a 6,000 year old skeleton were found, the Dema cave, the Karamakazi cave and the Shpella e Mbretëreshes were inhabited by ancient humans in the early Stone Age according to archeological findings.
According to historiographer Reshat Nurboja, the earliest known name for Peja is "Peion", a Dardanian city built around 231 BC. He states that it was made by the Dardanians as a city to house groups of Pannonians who migrated to the region during the multiple Dardanian-Macedonian conflicts. The name "Peion" could derive from the then Pannonian king Drypeion. Nurboja also places the age of Peja at around 2,300 years old. The city of "Peiscium" mentioned by the Romans in the 4rth-3rd century BC is also thought to have been in the area of the Peja.
Medieval development
Following Slavic settlements in the 6th century, the Byzantine Empire and the First Bulgarian Empire fought for control of the area until it finally fell under full Serbian rule. Between 1180 and 1190, Serbian Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja annexed Peja with its surrounding župa of Hvosno from the Byzantine Empire, thus establishing Serbian rule over the city of Peja for next 300 years. In 1220, Serbian King Stefan Nemanjić donated Peja and several surrounding villages to his newly founded monastery of Žiča. As Žiča was the seat of a Serbian archbishop, Peja came under direct rule of Serbian archbishops and later patriarchs who built their residences and numerous churches in the city starting with the church of Holy Apostles built by archbishop Saint Arsenije I Sremac. After the Žiča monastery was burned by the Cumans in the 1290s, the seat of Serbian archbishop was transferred to a more secure location, the Patriarchal Monastery of Peć. The city became a major religious center of medieval Serbia under the Serbian Emperor Stefan Dušan, who made it the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1346. It remained the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church until the abolition of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć in 1766. Peja was also shortly a part of the Principality of Dukagjini in the late 14th century or early 15th and was its northernmost territory.Ottoman Empire
The town passed under Ottoman rule after its capture in 1455. In Turkish, the town was known as İpek. The town became the center of the Sanjak of İpek, governed by the Albanian Mahmud Pasha Dukagjini as its first sanjakbey. The Sanjak of Dukagjin had four kazas: Peja, Gjakova, Gusinje and Berane.During the 15th and 16th centuries, Orthodox Albanians formed the majority of the region's population whereas South Slavs formed a minority. The Slavs had arrived during the period of Serbian rule in Kosovo through the Middle Ages from the regions north of Kosovo or as a stratum of the ruling class. In the Ottoman defters of the time, there existed a designation for new arrivals to the region; in the region of Peja and Suhogërla, new arrivals existed within about a third of the villages, with their anthroponomy indicating that only 4 of these new 180 arrivals had Albanian names, whereas the rest had characteristically Slavic names. This suggests that an arrival of a Slavic element to the northeast of the Sanjak of Shkodra occurred during the 15th-16th centuries, and the absence of this trend in the rest of the Sanjak of Shkodra indicates that these Slav populations hailed from Slavic-inhabited regions outside of Peja itself.
In 1582, Ottoman cadastral records indicated that 23 villages in the nahiya of İpek were inhabited by an Albanian majority due to the dominance of Albanian anthroponomy amongst its inhabitants; 85 villages had mixed Albanian-Slavic anthroponomy, and the rest contained almost exclusively Slavic anthroponomy.
The villages with a certain Albanian majority were Osak, Kramor, Ljepovaç, Trakagjin, Strelec, Romaniça, Sredna Çirna Goi, Nivokas, Temshenica, Trepova pole, Novasel, Dobri Lipari, Boshanica, Brestovac, Baç, Tokina pole, Novasel, Dujak, Dobroshi i Madh, Vraniq, Mraç or Çirna Potok, Dolina Çirna Goi and Preloniça. The documentation of Albanians in Peja at the end of the 15th centuries, which coincides with the very beginning of Ottoman rule in Kosovo, presupposes that the Albanians of Peja were early inhabitants of the region.
By the 1582 defter, the city had been significantly Islamised. Several cases exist where Muslim inhabitants have a blend of Islamic and Albanian anthroponomy. The Muslim neighbourhoods include Xhamia Sherif, Sinan Vojvoda, Piri bej, Ahmed Bej, Hysein, Hasan Çelebi, Mustafa bej, Mahmud Kadi, Orman, Kapishniça, Mesxhidi Haxhi Mahmud, Bali bej and Çeribash. The Christian neighbourhoods include Gjura Papuxhi, Nikolla, Nikolla Vukman, Andrija and Olivir. The inhabitants of the two Christian neighbourhoods Olivir and Gjura Papuxhi had a blend of characteristically Albanian and Slavic/Orthodox anthroponomy.
A revolt against the Ottomans was instigated in the area of Peja in 1560 by an Albanian named Pjeter Bogdani, possibly an ancestor of the Archbishop Pjeter Bogdani himself. Not much is known about the revolt other than that Bogdani robbed a caravan, killed some traders and was later captured and executed.
During this period the town of Peja had a majority Muslim population; the Ottoman tax register from 1582 lists 158 households with only 15 being Christian. Travelling Kosovo in the 1660's, Evliya Celebi wrote that the town and the mountains lay in Albania. According to a report from 1681 by Pjeter Bogdani, the town had a majority of 1,000 Muslim Albanian households, and 100 Christian Serb households.
In 1688, the city became the seat of the Pashalik of Peja under the governance of Mahmut Pasha of Begolli. The Pashalik included most of the Dukagjin region. The Begolli continued to govern the region until the Pashalik was disbanded between 1821–1831.
Joseph Muller noted the town in the 1830's had a majority Muslim population of 2000 households and only 130 Orthodox households.
In 1835 the Albanian population supported by other Albanian rebels from Shkodra took over the town from the Ottomans.
The Albanian nationalist organization League of Peja established in 1899 was based in the city. The organization, led by Haxhi Zeka, adopted the character of the earlier League of Prizren to defend the rights of Ottoman Albanians and seek autonomous status within the empire. After an armed clash with Ottoman forces in 1900 the organization ended its operations.
Modern period
Ottoman rule came to an end in the First Balkan War of 1912–13, when Montenegro took control of the city on 28 October 1912. On 8 January 1916, during World War I, Austria-Hungary took the city. Peja was taken by Serbian forces under the command of Kosta Pećanac on 13 October 1918, taking approximately 2,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war. After World War I, the city became part of Yugoslavia. Between 1931 and 1941 the city was part of Zeta Banovina.During World War II Peja was occupied by the Italian puppet state of Albania. Following Italy's capitulation in the last months of 1943, several hundred Serbs were massacred by Albanian paramilitaries in Peja and its vicinity. The city, together with Rugova were liberated by Albanian LANÇ forces in 1944 during the Kosovo operation. After the war, Peja again became part of Yugoslavia as part of the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija, an autonomous unit within the Socialist Republic of Serbia.
Relations between Albanians and Serbs and were often tense during the 20th century. They came to a head in the Kosovo War, during which the city suffered heavy damage and mass killings. The Panda Bar massacre occurred in Peja in December 1998. Speculation that the crime may have been committed by the Serbian State Security Directorate had been put forward in the past, but the crime remained unsolved as no new evidence had come forward for a long time. More than 80 percent of the total 5280 houses in the city were heavily damaged or destroyed during the war. Peja suffered further damage in violent inter-ethnic unrest in 2004.