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(um), a Roman
municipium (town or city). The area has the most unearthed
stelae in all of Kosovo. 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 (archeological site located inside the city), 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 (Queens cave) 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 from the 14th century, when its status was upgraded into a patriarchate. 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 (district) 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 (local ruler). 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. By the 1582
defter, the city had been significantly Islamised. Several cases exist where Muslim inhabitants have a blend of Islamic and Albanian anthroponomy (such as the widespread Deda family: Rizvan Deda, Haxhi Deda, Ali Deda). 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 (abandoned), Nikolla Vukman (abandoned), Andrija (abandoned) 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. Joseph Muller noted the town in the 1830's had a majority Muslim population of 2000 households and only 130 Orthodox households. 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 (at first officially called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). 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 (1945–1963), 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 (1590) or destroyed (2774) during the war. Peja suffered further damage in violent inter-ethnic
unrest in 2004. == Geography ==