Antiquity The earliest inhabitants of the wider Lake Ohrid region were the
Illyrian tribes of
Enchele and
Dassaretii. Lychnidos was the capital city of the Illyrian Dassaretii. According to recent excavations, this was a town as early as of the era of king
Philip II of Macedon. The name
Ohrid first appeared in 879. The
Ohrid Literary School, established in 886 by
Clement of Ohrid, became one of the two major cultural centres of the
First Bulgarian Empire. Between 990 and 1015, Ohrid was the empire's capital and stronghold. From 990 to 1018, Ohrid was also the seat of the
Bulgarian Patriarchate. After the
Byzantine reconquest of the city in 1018 by
Basil II, the Bulgarian Patriarchate was downgraded to an
Archbishopric of Ohrid, and placed under the authority of the
Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The higher clergy after 1018 was almost invariably Greek, including during the period of
Ottoman domination, until the abolition of the archbishopric in 1767. At the beginning of the 16th century, the archbishopric reached its peak, subordinating the
Sofia,
Vidin,
Vlach and
Moldavian eparchies, part of the former medieval
Serbian Patriarchate of Peć, (including
Patriarchal Monastery of Peć itself), and even the Orthodox districts of Italy (
Apulia,
Calabria and
Sicily),
Venice and
Dalmatia. As an episcopal city, Ohrid was a cultural center of great importance for the Balkans. Almost all surviving churches were built by the Byzantines and by the Bulgarians, with the rest dating back to the short time of Serbian rule during the late
Middle Ages.
Bohemond, leading a
Norman army from southern Italy, took the city in 1083. The Byzantines regained it in 1085. Albanian ruler
Golem of Kruja (~1250) likely had had control over Ohrid but it was later ceded to the Byzantine Empire by negotiation. In the 13th and 14th century, the city changed hands between the
Despotate of Epirus, the
Bulgarian, Byzantine and
Serbian Empires, and
Albanian rulers. In the mid-13th century, Ohrid was one of the cities ruled by
Pal Gropa, a member of the Albanian noble
Gropa family. In a text by
Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, there is mention of nomadic Albanians present in the vicinity of Ohrid at around 1328. The presence of the Turkish community dates from their settlement in Ohrid during 1451–81. After Dusan's death, the city came under the control of
Andrea Gropa. After his death,
Prince Marko incorporated it in the
Kingdom of Prilep. In the early 1370s, Marko lost Ohrid to Pal II Gropa, another member of the Gropa family, and unsuccessfully tried to recapture it in 1375 with
Ottoman assistance. In 1395, the Ottomans under
Bayezid I captured the city, which became the seat of the newly established
Sanjak of Ohrid. Some time after
Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg had liberated
Krujë to begin his rebellion, his troops—in coordination with
Gjergj Arianiti and
Zaharia Gropa (of the local Albanian
Gropa noble family)—liberated Ohrid and the castle of
Svetigrad. From 14–15 September 1464, 12,000 Albanian troops of the
League of Lezhë and 1,000 of the
Republic of Venice defeated a 14,000-man Ottoman force near the city in the
Battle of Ohrid. When
Mehmed II returned from
Albania after his actions against Skanderbeg in 1466, he dethroned Dorotheos, the
Archbishop of Ohrid, and expatriated him—together with his clerks and boyars and considerable number of citizens of Ohrid—to
Istanbul, probably because of their anti-Ottoman activities during Skanderbeg's rebellion amid which many citizens of Ohrid, including Dorotheos and his clergy, supported Skanderbeg and his fight.
Ottoman period During the 16th century, Ohrid was located in the Sanjak of Ohrid. In the years 1529–1536, Sanjak of Ohrid had 33,271 households (32,648 Christians and 623 Muslims), with 1331 widows and 3392 unmarried singles. There were 859 settlements and 10 cities, with an average of 28.7 houses per settlement. Ohrid itself had 337 Christian families, 44 unmarried singles, 12 widows and 93 Muslim families. In 1583, the Sanjak of Ohrid was made up of several Kazas, including the Kaza of Ohrid, which were in turn made of Nahiyes; the Ottoman Defter recorded, within the Nahiya of Ohrid, 2,920 Christian homes, 627 unmarried singles and 465 Muslim families within a total of 107 settlements. In 1889, according to a French research, the city had 2.500-3.000 houses and approximately 12.000 individuals, of which 2/3 were
Bulgarians and
Vlachs and the rest 1/3 were Albanophone Muslims with 20-25
Slavophone Greek families. The Christian population declined during the first centuries of Ottoman rule. In 1664, there were only 142 Christian households. The situation changed in the 18th century when Ohrid emerged as an important trade center on a major
trade route. At the end of this century it had around five thousand inhabitants. , 1848 Towards the end of the 18th century and in the early part of the 19th century, Ohrid region, like other parts of European Turkey, was a hotbed of unrest. In the 19th century the region of Ohrid became part of the
Pashalik of Scutari, ruled by the
Bushati family. In 1889,
Gustav Weigand discovered in Ohrid the important
Codex Dimonie, a collection of Aromanian-language religious texts. In statistics gathered by
Vasil Kanchov in 1900, the city of Ohrid was inhabited by 8000 Bulgarians, 5000 Turks, 500 Muslim Albanians, 300 Christian Albanians, 460 Vlachs and 600 Romani. The Bulgarian researcher
Vasil Kanchov wrote in 1900 that many Albanians declared themselves as Turks. Ohrid, the population that declared itself Turkish "was of Albanian blood", but it "had been Turkified after the Ottoman invasion, including Skanderbeg", referring to Islamization. The majority of the Christian inhabitants of the city were under the supremacy of the Bulgarian Exarchate. According to " La Macédoine et sa Population Chrétienne ", statistics of the secretary of the exarchate Dimitar Mishev on the Christian population in Macedonia, in 1905 the Christian population of Ohrid consisted of 7,768 Exarchist Bulgarians, 168 Greek Patriarchal Bulgarians, 56 Serboman Patriarchal Bulgarians, 660 Vlachs and 6 Albanians. In the city there is 1 secondary and 5 primary Bulgarian schools and 1 primary Greek, Serbian and Wallachian school each. Modern Albanian study claims that in 1903 the Cartographic Society of Sofia registered incorrectly 8,893 households of Albanian or Vlach ethnicity in the
Kaza of Ohrid. There were supposedly 2,610 households registered in Ohrid, but after further analysis of the documents by Dervishi et al., it was discovered that the city actually had 3,700 households; there were 2,100
Albanian Muslim households, 150
Albanian Christian households, 900
Bulgarian households, 300
Vlach households, 210
Serb households and 39
Greek households. The Cartographic Society of Sofia also incorrectly registered many villages - that were in fact inhabited entirely or mostly by Albanians (both Christians and Muslims) - as Bulgarian. 14 villages were registered as Albanian with 991 households, but further investigation by Dervishi et al. revealed that the number was actually 2,400. Therefore, with those corrections, the
Kaza of Ohrid had 5,336
Albanian households, 4,347
Slavic households, 1,549 mixed household and 125
Vlach households that were mainly spread across two villages. By the end of
Ottoman rule, the Kaza of Ohrid itself numbered to 38,000 Albanian inhabitants and 36,500 non-Albanian (Bulgarian, Serbs, Vlachs and Orthodox Albanians who recognised the exarch and were therefore classed as Bulgarians) inhabitants as indicated by statistics gathered from the Ottoman authorities.
Modern Before 1912, Ohrid was a township center bounded to
Monastir sanjak in
Manastir Vilayet (present-day
Bitola). The city remained under Ottoman rule until 29 November 1912, when the Serbian army took control of the city during the
Balkan Wars and later made it the capital of Ohrid district. In Ohrid, Serbian forces killed 150 Bulgarians and
500 people consisting of Albanians and Turks. In September 1913 local Albanian and pro-Bulgarian
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization leaders
rebelled against the
Kingdom of Serbia. It was occupied by
Kingdom of Bulgaria between 1915 and 1918 during
World War I. Bulgarian ethnographer
Yordan Ivanov, professor at the University of Sofia, wrote in 1915 that Albanians, since they did not have their own alphabet, lacked a consolidated national consciousness and were being influenced by foreign propaganda, declared themselves as Turks, Greeks and Bulgarians, depending on which religion they belonged to. Albanians in Ohrid were losing their mother tongue. ==Geography and climate==