Sanjak of Vučitrn

Sanjak of Vučitrn
Vulçitrin sancağı
Sanxhaku i Vuçitërnit
Вучитрнски санџак
sanjak of Ottoman Empire

1459–1864

Coat of arms

Capital Vučitrn
History
  Established 1459
  Disestablished 1864

Sanjak of Vučitrn (Turkish: Vulçitrin sancağı; Albanian: Sanxhaku i Vuçiternës/Vushtrrisë; Serbian: Вучитрнски санџак) was a sanjak of the Ottoman Empire in Kosovo. It was named after its administrative center Vučitrn.

History

Vučitrn was captured from the Serbian Despotate by the Ottomans in 1455 it remained under control of the governor of Skopsko Krajište until the definite annexation of the Serbian Despotate in 1459.[1] The first Ottoman records include the territory of the sanjak as Vilayet-i Vlk (Vilayet of Vuk), a reference to Vuk Branković.

According to Ottoman defters of 1525—1561 the sanjak of Vučitrn included the following towns: Vučitrn, Priština, Janjevo, Novo Brdo, Belasica, Belo Brdo, Koporići, Trepča and Donja Trepča.[2] In 1459-1826 it was part of Rumelia Eyalet, except for a brief period after 1541 when it was included into newly established Budin Eyalet.[3]

Contemporary documents like the 1566-7 defter of the sanjak show that the c. 1000 villages of the region were mostly inhabited by Christians, with Muslims comprising forty-six households not in compact communities but spread in thirty villages.[4] As in nearby Pristina the rate of conversion of Orthodox Slavs to Islam was low. Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi visited the capital of the sanjak in 1660 and observed that the population spoke "Albanian and Turkish, but not Bosnian".[5] Among the Christians a Catholic community also existed as evidenced by a local landmark known as the "Latin cemetery" (Albanian: varrezat latine).[6]

In 1717, during the Austro-Turkish War, an uprising broke out in the sanjak, raised by the Serb rayah. It was brutally suppressed.[7]

In 1864 during the administrative reforms of the era, it was demoted to a kaza of the newly established sanjak of Pristina.[8]

Economy

A group of mines on the Kopaonik mountain together with those in Novo Brdo and Janjevo belonged to this sanjak.[9]

References

  1. Istorijski Glasnik. Društvo istoričara SR Srbije. 1955. p. 61. ...док је подручје Вучитрна остало и даље под влашћу скопског крајишника све до оснивања засебног Вучитрнског или Приштинског санџака. Када је пало Смедерево онда је Призренско-Крушевачки санџак, тзв. "Лазарева Србија" подељен на два санџака. Вучитрн и Приштина су издвојени из Скопског санџака у посебан Вучитрнски санџак
  2. Bogdanović, Dimitrije; Radovan Samardžić (1990). Knjiga o Kosovu: razgovori o Kosovu. Književne novine. p. 208. Retrieved August 2, 2011. Вучитрнски санџак обухватао је места: Вучитрн, Приштину, Јањево, Ново Брдо, Беласицу, Бело Брдо, Копори- ће, Трепчу и Доњу Трепчу)
  3. Godišnjak, Volume 4. Istorisko društvo Bosne i Hercegovine. 1954.
  4. Malcolm, Noel (1998). Kosovo: a short history. Macmillan. p. 106. ISBN 9780333666128. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
  5. Malcolm, Noel (2009). Eva Frantz, ed. The "Great Migration" of the Serbs from Kosovo (1690): History, Myth and Ideology. Albanische Geschichte: Stand und Perspektiven der Forschung. Oldenbourg Verlag. p. 230. ISBN 9783486589801. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
  6. Gjini, Gaspër. Ipeshkvia Shkup-Prizren nëpër shekuj (PDF). Diocese of Skopje-Prizren. p. 83.
  7. Bataković, Dušan T. (1991). Kosovo i Metohija u srpsko-arbanaškim odnosima. Priština: Jedinstvo. p. 25. ISBN 86-7019-071-0.
  8. Stefanaq Pollo; Kristaq Prifti (2002), Historia e popullit shqiptar në katër vëllime (in Albanian) II, Tiranë
  9. Precious metals in the age of expansion: papers of the XIVth International Congress of the Historical Sciences. Klett-Cotta. 1981. As for Serbia, we have data only on Novo Brdo, Janjevo and group of mines on Mount Kopaonik which, all together, belonged to the sanjak of Vucitrn

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