"Prizren".
Prizren (Albanian Prizren/Prizreni, Serbian: Призрен/Prizren) is a historic city located in a United Nations-administered territory of Kosovo, but factually under the Provisional Self-Government) at 42.23° North, 20.74° EastThe World Gazetteer. The City has a population of around 165,000, mostly Albanians. It is the administrative capital of the municipality of Prizreni, which has an estimated population of about 221,000 inhabitants*, both in town and in 76 villages which are a part of the municipality. Prizren is located on the slopes of the Šar mountain in the southern part of Kosovo, close to the border with Albania and partly Macedonia.
A Slavic rebellion arose in 1072 under George Voiteh. Constantine Bodin of the House of Vojislavljević who was also son of Duklja's Serbian Slavic King Mihailo Vojislav was dispatched by his father and Duke Petrilo with 300 best Serb soldiers to merge with Voiteh's forces in Prizren. There, Bodin was crowned Petar III, Czar of Bulgarians of the House of Comitopuli. The rebellion was crushed in months in 1073 and Eastern Roman rule restored.
In a war with the Crusaders against the Byzantine Empire, Serbian Duke Stefan Nemanja conquered Prizren in 1189, but after the defeat of 1191, had to give the city back to the Byzantines. The City was taken by the Bulgarian Czardom in 1204, although, it was finally seized by Grand Prince Stefan II Nemanjić in 1208 during his quarrels with the Bulgarian Czardom.
Serb King Stefan Milutin raised the Temple of Our Holy Lady of Ljeviš in Prizren which became the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Christian Prizren Episcopate. During the reign of Emperor Stefan Dušan throughout the 14th century, Prizren had the Imperial Court and was the political center of the Tsardom. Serb King/Tsar Dušan raised the massive Monastery of Saint Archangel near the City in 1343-1352. In the vicinity of Prizren was Ribnik - a town where the two Serbian Emperors had their Courts. The city of Prizren became known as the Serbian Carigrad because of its trading and industrial importance. It was the centre of production of silk, fine trades and a colony of merchants from Kotor and Dubrovnik. In the 14th century in Prizren was the seat of the Ragusan Consule for the entire Serb monarchy.
The city became a part of the domain of the House of Mrnjavčević under Serb King Vukašin in the 1360s. With the final disintegration of the Serbian Empire, Zeta's ruler Đurađ I of the House of Balšić dynasty took the City with the surroundings in 1372. The House of Branković under Vuk Branković then became the City's owners, vassalaged to the House of Lazarević that managed to reunite the former Serb Lands. Lazarevićs' founder, hero Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović was educated in Prizren. The dynasty would switch allegiances to the Ottoman Empire before returning under the Serbian Despot Stefan Lazarević.
The Ottoman Empire soon took the city. Later it became a part of the Ottoman Empire's province of Rumelia. 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 Ottomans' Viyalet of Kosova. Prizren's Orthodox Christian population was replaced by the Muslim, with migrations of Albanians from the southwest and the neighbouring rural areas. The City was taken by the end of the 17th century by Austrian and collaborating Serbian armed forces, but the Ottomans subsequently restored control over it, leading to a mass exodus of its Eastern Orthodox population - among who over 20,000 were Serbs.
In 1838 an Austrian physician, Dr. Joseph Muller while he was on his voyages across southern-western part of Kosovo, listed the population of the Prizren District (Prizreni Bezirke) within the Ottoman Viyalet of Kosova:
Prizren was the cultural and intellectual centre of Ottoman Kosovo. It was dominated by its Muslim population, who comprised over 70% of its population in 1857. The city became the biggest Albanian cultural centre and the coordination political and cultural Capital of the Kosovar Albanians. In 1871, a long Serbian seminary was opened in Prizren, discussing the possible return of the Old Serbian territories and their joining with the Principality of Serbia. During the late 19th century the city became a focal point for Albanian nationalism and saw the creation in 1878 of the League of Prizren, a movement formed to seek the national unification and liberation of Albanians within the Ottoman Empire.
During the First Balkan War the City was seized by the Serb Balkan forces and incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbia. Although the troops met little resistance, the takeover was bloody. The British traveller Edith Durham attempted to visit it shortly afterwards but was barred by the authorities, as were most other foreigners, for the Montenegrin forces temporarily closed the City before full control was restored. The number of killed Albanians reached 400. A few did make it through—including Leon Trotsky, then working as a journalist—and reports eventually emerged of widespread killings of Albanians. One of the most vivid accounts was provided by the Catholic Archbishop of Skopje, who wrote an impassioned dispatch to the Pope on the dire conditions in Prizren immediately after its capture by Serbia:
With the invasion of the Kingdom of Serbia by Austro-Hungarian forces in 1915 during the First World War, the City was occupied by the Central Powers. The Serbian Army pushed the Central Powers out of the City in October of 1918, restoring Montenegro's suzeiranity. By the end of 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed - with Prizren a part of its historical territorial entity of Serbia. The Kingdom was renamed in 1929 to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Prizren became a part of its Banate of Vardar. The Axis Italian and Albanian forces conquered the City in 1941 during World War II; it was joined to the Italian puppet state of Albania. The Communist of Yugoslavia liberated it by 1944. It was formulated as a part of Kosovo and Metohija, under Democratic Serbia as a part of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. The Constitution defined the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within the People's Republic of Serbia, a constituent state of the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia. The Province was renamed to Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo in 1974, factually still under the Socialist Republic of Serbia, but factually a Socialist Republic within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The former status was restored in 1989, and officially in 1990.
For many years after the restoration of Serbian rule, Prizren and the region of Decane to the west remained centres of Albanian nationalism. In 1956 the Yugoslav secret police put on trial in Prizren nine Kosovo Albanians accused of having been infiltrated into the country by the (hostile) Communist Albanian regime of Enver Hoxha. The "Prizren trial" became something of a cause célèbre after it emerged that a number of leading Yugoslav Communists had allegedly had contacts with the accused. The nine accused were all convicted and sentenced to long prison sentences, but were released and declared innocent in 1968 with Kosovo's assembly declaring that the trial had been "staged and mendacious."
At the end of the war in June 1999, most of the Albanian population returned to Prizren. Non-Albanian minorities fled or were forcibly expelled, with the OSCE estimating that 97% of Serbs and 60% of Romas had left Prizen by October. Most of the feared revenge from Albanian population, because most of the were instruments of the Serbian occupatory regime, and were in key positions oppressing Albanians, and taking over their work positions. The community is now predominantly ethnically Albanian, but other minorities live there as well, be that in the city itself, or in villages around. Such locations include Screcka, Mamusa, the region of Gora, etc. *
The war and its aftermath caused only a moderate amount of damage to the city, with NATO bombing confined to a number of military and security force sites in and around Prizren. Serbian forces destroyed one Albanian cultural monument in Prizren, the League of Kosovo building, to which the returning Albanians responded by destroying Serbian cultural monuments such as old Orthodox Serb churches: Our Lady of Ljeviška from 1307, Church of the Holy Salvation, Town's biggest church of St. George, St. George Runjevac, chapel of St. Nicholas, the Monestery of The Holy Archangels, as well as Prizren's Seminary and all the residences of the local priests were all torched by Albanians on March 17, 2004 in a serious outbreak of Unrest in Kosovo.
Many restaurants, private retail stores, and service-related businesses operate out of small shops. Larger grocery and department stores have recently opened. In town, there are eight sizeable markets, including three produce markets, one car market, one cattle market, and three personal/hygienic and house wares markets. There is an abundance of kiosks selling small goods. Prizren appears to be teeming with economic prosperity, but appearances are deceiving as the international presence is reduced and repatriation of refugees and IDPs is expected to further strain the local economy. Market saturation, high unemployment, and a reduction of financial remittances from abroad are ominous economic indicators.*
There are three agricultural co-operatives in three villages. Most livestock breeding and agricultural production is private, informal, and small-scale. There are two operational banks with branches in Prizren, the Micro Enterprise Bank (MEB) and the Payment and Banking Authority of Kosovo (BPK). *
Demographics
Cities, towns and villages in Kosovo | Prizren
Prizren | Prizren | Prizrenas | Komuna e Prizrenit | Prizren | Призрен | Prizren | Prizren
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the "Prizren".
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