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 (c. 2000 BCE) to the late
Iron Age (c. 1st century CE) and is comparable to the material found in the nearby prehistoric site in the village of
Vlashnjë (~10 km west of Prizren). 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 (1216–36), 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 (r. 976–1025) 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 (in Albanian, Podrima or Anadrini). 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 (Gjinajt), Magjerci, Bjellogllavci (Kryebardhët), Flokovci (Flokajt), Crnça, Caparci (Çaparajt), Gjonovci (Gjonajt), Shpinadinci (Shpinajt) 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 (The Albanian village) 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 (
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 (i.e.
Ali Gjoci, Hasan Gjinaj, Ferhad Reçi, Hasan Bardi...). The Muslim neighbourhoods (
Mahalla/Mëhalla) consisted of
Xhamia e Vjetër (Old Mosque, 53 homes), Levisha (50 homes), Ajas beu (15 homes), Haxhi Kasem (48 homes), Jazixhi Sinani (71 homes), Çarshia (also called Jakub beu, 18 homes), Kurila (31 homes) and
Mëhalla e lëkurëpunuesve (neighbourhood of the leatherworkers, 34 homes). The Christian neighbourhoods (
Mahalla/Mëhalla) consisted of
Pazari i Vjetër (Old Market, 8 homes), Madhiq (37 homes), Vasil (27 homes), Kodha (13 homes), Çarshia/Pjetri Nikolla (14 homes), Bogoi Riber (11 homes), Radmir (51 homes), Jazixhi Sinani (mentioned beforehand, 24 homes), Pandelja (29 homes), Prend Vriça (9 homes) and
Ajas (13 homes). 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 (or rather, Orthodox) anthroponomy. 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.
Albanian Renaissance Prizren was the cultural and intellectual centre of Ottoman Kosovo. It was dominated by its Muslim population, who composed over 70% of its population in 1857. The city became a major 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 joining of the old Serbia's territories with the
Principality of Serbia. It was an important part of
Kosovo Vilayet between 1877 and 1912. During the late 19th century, the city became a focal point for Albanian nationalism and in 1878, it was the site of the creation of the
League of Prizren, a movement formed to seek the national unification and autonomy of Albanians within the Ottoman Empire. The
Young Turk Revolution was a step in the dissolving of the Ottoman empire that led to the Balkan Wars. The
Third Army (Ottoman Empire) had a division in Prizren, the 30th Reserve Infantry Division (
Otuzuncu Pirzerin Redif Fırkası).
Modern The Prizren attachment was part of the
İpek Detachment in the
First Balkan War. During the
First Balkan War, the city was invaded by the
Serbian army and incorporated into the
Kingdom of Serbia. Although the troops met little resistance, the takeover was bloody, with 400 people dead in the first few days; the local population would call the city "The Kingdom of Death." The
Daily Chronicle reported on 12 November 1912 that 5,000 Albanians were slaughtered in Prizren. Following the capture of Prizren, most foreigners were barred from entering the city as the
Montenegrin forces temporarily closed the city before full control was restored. A few visitors did make it through, including
Leon Trotsky, then working as a journalist for the Ukrainian newspaper
Kijewskaja mysl, and reports eventually emerged of widespread killings of Albanians. In a 1912 news report on the Serbian Army and the Paramilitary
Chetniks in Prizren, Trotsky stated "Among them were intellectuals, men of ideas, nationalist zealots, but these were isolated individuals. The rest were just thugs, robbers who had joined the army for the sake of loot... The Serbs in
Old Serbia, in their national endeavour to correct data in the ethnographical statistics that are not quite favourable to them, are engaged quite simply in systematic extermination of the Muslim population".
British traveller
Edith Durham and a
British military attaché were supposed to visit Prizren in October 1912, however the trip was prevented by the authorities. Durham stated: "I asked wounded Montenegrins [Soldiers] why I was not allowed to go and they laughed and said, 'We have not left a
nose on an Albanian up there!' Not a pretty sight for a British officer." Eventually Durham visited a northern Albanian outpost in Kosovo where she met captured Ottoman soldiers whose
upper lips and noses had been cut off. After the
First Balkan War of 1912, the Conference of Ambassadors in
London allowed the creation of the state of
Albania and handed Kosovo to the
Kingdom of Serbia, even though the population of Kosovo remained mostly Albanian. In 1913, an official
Austro-Hungarian report recorded that 30,000 people had fled to Prizren from
Bosnia. In January 1914 the Austro-Hungarian consul based in Prizren conducted a detailed report on living conditions in the city. The report stated that Kingdom of Serbia didn't keep its promise for equal treatment of Albanians and Muslims. Thirty of the thirty-two
mosques in Prizren had been turned into hay barns, ammunition stores and military barracks. The people of the city were heavily taxed, with Muslims and Catholic Christians having to pay more tax than Orthodox Christians. The local government was predominately made up of former Serb Chetniks. The report also noted that the Serbs were also dissatisfied with the living conditions in Prizren.
World War I and World War II '' forces in Prizren, 1944 With the outbreak of the
First World War, the Kingdom of Serbia was invaded by
Austro-Hungarian forces and later by Bulgarian forces. By 29 November 1915, Prizren fell to Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian forces. In April 1916, Austria-Hungary allowed the
Kingdom of Bulgaria to occupy the city with the understanding that a significant amount of the city's population were
ethnic Bulgarians. During this period, there was a process of forced
Bulgarisation with many Serbs being
interned; Serbs suffered worse in Bulgarian occupied regions of Kosovo compared to Austrian occupied regions due to the Bulgarian defeat in the
Second Balkan War and due to the long-standing rivalry between the
Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the
Serbian Orthodox Church. According to
Catholic Archbishop of Skopje,
Lazër Mjeda who was taking refuge in Prizren at the time, roughly 1,000 people had died of hunger in 1917. In October 1918 following the
fall of Macedonia to
Allied Forces, the Serbian Army along with the
French 11th colonial division and the
Italian 35th Division pushed the Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian forces out of the city. By the end of 1918, the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed. The Kingdom was renamed in 1929 to the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Prizren became a part of its
Vardar Banovina. In
World War II Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941 and by 9 April the Germans who had invaded Yugoslavia from the East with neighbouring Bulgaria as base were on the outskirts of Prizren and by 14 April Prizren had fallen to the Italians who had invaded Yugoslavia from the West in neighbouring Albania; there was however notable resistance in Prizren before Yugoslavia unconditionally surrendered on 19 April 1941. Prizren along with most of Kosovo was annexed to the Italian
puppet state of
Albania. Soon after the Italian occupation, the
Albanian Fascist Party established a
blackshirt battalion in Prizren, but plans to establish two more battalions were dropped due to the lack of public support. In 1943
Bedri Pejani of the German
Wehrmacht helped create the
Second League of Prizren.
Federal Yugoslavia In 1944, German forces were driven out of Kosovo by a combined Russian-Bulgarian force, and then the Communist government of Yugoslavia took control. In 1946, the town was formulated as a part of
Kosovo and Metohija which the Constitution defined the
Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija within the
People's Republic of Serbia, a constituent state of the
Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. The Province was renamed to
Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo in 1974, remaining part of the
Socialist Republic of Serbia, but having attributions similar to 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
Dečani 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."
Kosovo War The town of Prizren did not suffer much during the
Kosovo War, but its surrounding municipality was badly affected during 1998–1999. Before the war, the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe estimated that the municipality's population was about 78% Kosovo Albanian, 5% Serb and 17% from other national communities. During the war most of the Albanian population were either forced or intimidated into leaving the town. Tusus Neighborhood suffered the most. Some twenty-seven to thirty-four people were killed and over one hundred houses were burned. At the end of the war in June 1999, most of the Albanian population returned to Prizren. Serbian and Roma minorities fled, with the OSCE estimating that 97% of Serbs and 60% of
Romani had left Prizren by October. The community is now predominantly ethnically Albanian, but other minorities such as Turkish, Ashkali (a minority declaring itself as Albanian Roma) and Bosniak (including
Torbesh community) live there as well, be that in the city itself, or in villages around. Such locations include
Sredska,
Mamushë, and the region of
Gora. Much of Potkaljaja, the old Serb neighbourhood along the hillside in the centre of town, was looted and burned to the ground following the Yugoslav Army withdrawal. Since 2010 most of the neighbourhood has been rebuilt. The war and its aftermath caused only a moderate amount of damage to the city compared to other cities in Kosovo. Serbian forces destroyed an important Albanian cultural monument in Prizren, the League of Prizren building, but the complex was rebuilt later on and now constitutes the
Monumental Complex of the Albanian League of Prizren. On 17 March 2004, during the
Unrest in Kosovo some
Serb cultural monuments in Prizren were damaged, burned or destroyed, including
Orthodox Serb churches, such as
Our Lady of Ljeviš from 1307 (
UNESCO World Heritage Site), the
Church of Holy Salvation, Simultaneously Islamic cultural heritage and
mosques were destroyed and damaged.
21st century The municipality of Prizren is still the most culturally and ethnically heterogeneous city of Kosovo, retaining communities of
Bosniaks,
Turks, and
Romani in addition to the majority Kosovo Albanian population. Only a small number of Kosovo Serbs remain in Prizren and its surrounds, residing mainly in small villages. Prizren's Turkish community is socially prominent and influential, and the
Turkish language is widely spoken even by non-ethnic Turks. == Geography ==