White Serbia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
White Serbia, also known as Bojka (Serbian Cyrillic: Бојка), is the area of modern-day Eastern Germany between the Elbe and Saale rivers, called Lusatia, which was inhabited in the Early Middle Ages by the White Serbs. The area to the east from White Serbia was known as White Croatia.[1]
Some of the White Serbs migrated to the Balkans between 610 and 641, led by the Unknown Archont. The White Serbs were first given the province of Thessalonica by the Roman emperor Heraclius as a gift because of their victory against the Avars of Dalmatia.
Later, the White Serbs resettled in today's Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia (Paganija, Rascia, Travunia, Doclea and Zachlumia, all incorporated in the 14th-century Serbian Empire).
Today the region of White Serbia is known as Lusatia, infrequently also the name Sorbia (Sorbian language: Serbja) is used. Today it is mostly inhabited by Germans, but there is still a significant minority (5-10% of the inhabitants) of Sorbs, or Lusatian Serbs, who are a slavic tribe descended from Polabian slavs (Milceni and Lusatii). They adopted the name Sorbs in the 18th century from the area they live in. The original White Serbs no longer exist as a distinct ethnic group, as they were most likely assimilated by Poles and Germans.
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