Prizren
Prizren is the second most populous city and municipality of Kosovo and seat of the eponymous municipality and district. It is located on the banks of the Prizren River between the foothills of the Sharr Mountains in southern Kosovo. Prizren experiences a continental climate with some mediterranean influences.
Prizren is constitutionally designated as the historical capital of the country. Archaeological excavations in Prizren Fortress indicate that its fortress area has seen habitation and use since the Bronze Age. Prizren has been traditionally identified with the settlement of Theranda in Roman Dardania, although other locations have been suggested in recent research. In late antiquity it was part of the defensive fortification system in western Dardania and the fort was reconstructed in the era of eastern Roman Emperor Justinian. Byzantine rule in the region ended definitively in 1219-20 as the Serbian Nemanjić dynasty took control of the fort and the town. Prizren served as the capital of the Serbian Empire under the reign of Stefan Dušan, as it bloomed to become an important center of trade and commerce during Dušan's reign. From 1371, a series of regional feudal rulers controlled Prizren, including the Mrnjavčević family, the Balšić noble family, the Branković dynasty, as well as the prominent House of Kastrioti. Ottoman Turks captured Prizren from Serbian Despotate in 1455 and almost immediately served as the capital of Sanjak of Prizren in the Ottoman Empire. While standing as an important administrative city for the Ottomans, Prizren became an important political center of the Albanian Renaissance during the late 19th century.
Prizren was the seat of the League of Prizren, serving as the center of Albanian nationalism and resistance.
Name
The name of the city has been linked with that of Petrizen, a Dardani fort mentioned by Procopius in the 6th century.Hamp has suggested that the name of the city roughly meant "ford-horned animal" with the IE root *ḱrn "horn, horned-thing". According to Curtis, the toponym Prizren follows Albanian phonetic sound rules, meaning that the name developed under an Albanian-speaking population.
History
Early period
Prizren has been traditionally identified with Theranda, a town dating from the Roman Empire. However, recent research suggests that Theranda may have been located at present-day Suva Reka. Archaeological research has shown that the site of the Prizren Fortress has had several eras of habitation since prehistoric times. In its lower part, material from the upper part of the fort has been deposited over the centuries. It dates from the Middle Bronze Age to the late Iron Age and is comparable to the material found in the nearby prehistoric site in the village of Vlashnjë. In 2005, prehistoric rock paintings in a ritual site related to the cycle of life were found near Vlashnjë. They represent the first find of prehistoric rock art in the region.In late antiquity, the fortification saw a phase of reconstruction. It is part of a series of forts that were built or reconstructed in the same period by Justinian along the White Drin in northern Albania and western Kosovo in the routes that linked the coastal areas with the Kosovo valley. At this time, the Prizren fortress likely appears in historical record as Petrizen in the 6th century CE in the work of Procopius as one of the fortifications which Justinian commissioned to be reconstructed in Dardania.
Konstantin Jireček believed, from the correspondence of bishop Demetrios Chomatenos of Ohrid, that Prizren was one of the areas occupied by the Albanians prior to the Slavic expansion.
Middle Ages
Present-day Prizren is first mentioned in 1019 at the time of Basil II in the form of Prisdriana. In 1072, the leaders of the Bulgarian Uprising of Georgi Voiteh traveled from their center in Skopje to the area of Prizren and held a meeting in which they invited Mihailo Vojislavljević of Duklja to send them assistance. Mihailo sent his son, Constantine Bodin, and 300 of his soldiers. Dalassenos Doukas, dux of Bulgaria was sent against the combined forces, but was defeated near Prizren, which was then extensively plundered by the Serbian army. The Bulgarian magnates proclaimed Bodin "Emperor of the Bulgarians" after this initial victory. They were defeated by Nikephoros Bryennios in the area of northern Macedonia by the end of 1072. The area was raided by Serbian ruler Vukan in the 1090s. Demetrios Chomatenos is the last Byzantine archbishop of Ohrid to include Prizren in his jurisdiction until 1219. Stefan Nemanja had seized the surrounding area along the White Drin between the 1180s and 1190s, but this may refer to the areas Prizren diocese rather than the fort and the settlement itself and he may have lost control of them later. The ecclesiastical split of Prizren from the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1219 was the final act of establishing Serbian Nemanjić rule in the town. Prizren and its fort were the administrative and economic center of the župa of Podrimlje. The old town of Prizren developed below the fortress along the left bank of the Bistrica/Lumbardhi. Ragusan traders were stationed in the old town. Prizren over time became a trading hub and gateway for Ragusan trade towards eastern Kosovo and beyond.In this period, Stefan Dušan founded and was buried in the Monastery of the Holy Archangels in Prizren. Prizen briefly served as the capital of the Serbian Empire and was a crossroad of important trade goods between Dubrovnik and Constantinople.
In 1330, Serbian king Stefan Dečanski explicitly mentioned the presence of Albanians and the Albanian names of villages in Kosovo, in particular in the districts of Prizren and that of Skopje. A chrysobull of the Serbian Tsar Stefan Dušan that was given to the Monastery of Saint Mihail and Gavril in Prizren between the years of 1348-1353 states the presence of Albanians in the vicinity of Prizren, the Dukagjin Plain and in the villages of Drenica. Within this chrysobull, nine Albanian stock-breeding villages within the vicinity of Prizren are mentioned explicitly - these villages are known with the names Gjinovci, Magjerci, Bjellogllavci, Flokovci, Crnça, Caparci, Gjonovci, Shpinadinci and Novaci. Entire Albanian villages were gifted by Serbian kings, particularly Stefan Dušan, as presents to Serb monasteries within Prizren, Deçan and Tetova. Additionally, people with Albanian anthroponomy are repeatedly mentioned in a 1348 chrysobull of Stefan Dušan that lists those who pray at the monastery of St. Michael and Gabriel in Prizren as well as some of the inhabitants of the city itself and the surrounding villages. In one of Stefan Dušan's documents in 1355, a soldier with Albanian anthroponomy is exclusively mentioned as one of the people who must continuously pay the Monastery of St. Nicholas in the village of Billushë near Prizren.
People with Albanian anthroponomy are also mentioned in a 1452 register within the vicinity of Prizren in villages such as Mazrek, Kojushe, Milaj, Zhur, Xerxe, Pllaneje, Gorozhup, Zym.
In the area of Prizren, Albanian toponyms were recorded in the 14th and 15th century such as Rudina e Leshit, Truallishta e Gjon Bardhit, Llazi i Tanushit, Truallishta e Komanit, Shpija e Bushatit, Zhur, and Mazrek. In 1330, Albanian toponyms such as Katun Arbanas were mentioned in the area between Prizren-Rahovec.
With the death of Stefan Uroš V in 1371, a series of competing regional nobles sieged, counter-sieged and held control of Prizren – increasingly with Ottoman support and intervention. The first who tried to gain control of Prizren and the trade that passed through the town was Prince Marko, but after his defeat in the Battle of Maritsa in September 1371, the Balšići of the Principality of Zeta moved to take Prizren in the fall and winter of 1371. In the spring of 1372, Nikola Altomanović besieged Prizren and tried to expand his rule, but was defeated. The death of Đurađ I Balšić in 1377 created another power vacuum – Đurađ Branković then took over Prizren. The Battle of Kosovo led to an additional political change, as Gjon Kastrioti captured Prizren and granted special privileges regarding commerce to Ragusa and its inhabitants.
The Catholic Church retained some influence in the area; 14th-century documents refer to a Catholic church in Prizren, which was the seat of a bishopric between the 1330s and 1380s.
Ottoman Period
After several years of attack and counterattack, the Ottomans made a major invasion of Kosovo in 1454; Attempts of liberating the Prizren area earlier by Skanderbeg and thereafter by John Hunyadi failed, as Đurađ Branković was an Ottoman vassal at this time and did not grant passage into Kosovo for the Crusaders to fight the Ottomans. On 21 June 1455, Prizren surrendered to the Ottoman army. Prizren was the capital of the Sanjak of Prizren, and under new administrative organization of Ottoman Empire it became capital of the Vilayet. Later, it became part of the larger Rumelia Eyalet. It was a prosperous trade city, benefiting from its position on the north-south and east-west trade routes across the Empire. Prizren became one of the larger cities of the Kosovo vilayet.In the Nahyia of Hoca in the 16th century around 409 heads of families and 104 landowners bore Albanian names. Roughly around 45 villages had majority Albanian names while the lands between Prizren and Gjakova itself had villages with majority Albanian names and there exist also many cases of mixed Albanian-Slavic anthroponymy.
In the Ottoman Defter of 1591, the city of Prizren itself was recorded under the Sanjak of Prizren - this includes the household heads of the city. By this time, Prizren had been significantly Islamised, as reflected by the anthroponomy of the inhabitants; several cases of Muslim inhabitants with mixtures of Muslim and Albanian anthroponomy exist. The Muslim neighbourhoods consisted of Xhamia e Vjetër, Levisha, Ajas beu, Haxhi Kasem, Jazixhi Sinani, Çarshia, Kurila and Mëhalla e lëkurëpunuesve . The Christian neighbourhoods consisted of Pazari i Vjetër, Madhiq, Vasil, Kodha, Çarshia/Pjetri Nikolla, Bogoi Riber, Radmir, Jazixhi Sinani, Pandelja, Prend Vriça and Ajas . The neighbourhoods of Pandelja, Jazixhi Sinani and Kodha were dominated by inhabitants with characteristically Albanian anthroponomy; the other neighbourhoods saw a blend between predominantly Slavic/Slavic-Albanian anthroponomy.
Lazaro Soranzo, writing in the 16th century, noted the town was inhabited "more by Albanians than by Serbs". In 1624 Pjeter Mazrreku reported the town was inhabited by 12,000 Muslims, almost all of them Albanians, 200 Catholics and 600 'Serviani'. Gjergj Bardhi, during his visit in Prizren, wrote in 1638 that the area was inhabited by Albanians and that the Albanian language was spoken there. In the 1630's, the Ottoman Turkish traveller Hajji Khalifa wrote that the town of Prizren was inhabited by Albanians. In 1651, the Albanian Catholic priest of Prizren Gregor Mazrreku reported that many men within Prizen converted to Islam to avoid the Jizya tax, and that they would ask Gregor to give them confession and Holy Communion in secrecy, which he had refused to do.
During the Austrian-Ottoman wars, the local Albanian population in the Prizren region rallied to support the Austrians against the Ottomans under the leadership of the Albanian priest Pjeter Bogdani. Documents and dispatches refer to the Austrians marching to "Prizren, the capital of Albania" where they were welcomed by Bogdani and 5,000-6,000 Albanian soldiers. The Albanian Catholic priest Toma Raspasani wrote that, once the Austrians had been expelled and Prizren was firmly in the hands of the Ottomans yet again, nobody was able to leave Prizren. In 1693, Toma also wrote that many of the Catholics in Kosovo had gone to Hungary where most of them died of hunger or disease.