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Opolje ( Albanian : Opoja/Opojë ; Serbian : Опоље ) is a region in the southern part of the municipality of Prizren in southern Kosovo . The region has 19 villages mainly inhabited by Kosovo Albanians .

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146-712: The region of Opoja includes 18 settlements: The naming of towns and cities in ancient times, especially during the Hellenization period in the Balkans, was done by adding the word " polis " to the name of the founder. The names of some cities are compound formations, expanding with the addition of the suffix -o from an anthroponym and the lemma -polis (-pol): Konstantin-o-polis, (Konstantin-o-pol), for Istanbul; Alban-o-polis, (Alban-o-pol) for Zgërdhesh of Kruja; Adrian-o-polis, (Adrian-o-pol) for Nëprevishat of Gjirokastra, etc. The evolution from O-polis to Opojë and Opolje follows

292-527: A genos , "family"; the Italics, a gens . Corresponding to Greek phratry , a group of families, was the Italic curia . Corresponding to Greek phyle , a tribe of multiple phratries, was the tribus . The comparison of IE cultures is a solid technique, but it is not enough to develop a solid model of "the ancient city", which must take historical disparities into consideration. From the analogy Coulanges weaves

438-700: 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

584-473: A sovereign state . As a strict rule, the definition fails on its exceptions. A polis may not be urban at all, as was pointed out by Thucydides regarding the "polis of the Lacedaemonians", that it was "composed of villages after the old fashion of Hellas". Moreover, around the five villages of Lacedaemon, which had been placed in formerly Achaean land, were the villages of the former Achaeans, called

730-463: A "just city" are wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. With all of these principles, classes and virtues, it was believed that a "just city" (polis) would exist. Breaking away from Plato and the academy, a professor there, Aristotle, founded his own school, the Lyceum, a university. One of its strongest curricula was political science, which Aristotle invented. He dispatched students over the world of

876-542: 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. In

1022-488: A bankrupt state, the latter must be the one that prevails. For survival the citizens of each city build a privately owned pool of diverse resources, which they can exchange for mutual ("reciprocal") benefit. The theory of equal reciprocity is nothing more than a statement that owners of diverse assets must make profitable deals with each other. Prizren Prizren ( Albanian definite form : Prizreni , pronounced [pɾizˈɾɛni] ; Serbian Cyrillic : Призрен )

1168-484: A city nor an acropolis, but all the historiographers referred to it as a polis. The rule of the city-state persisted until late in the 20th century, when the accumulation of mass data and sponsored databases made possible searches and comparisons of multiple sources not previously possible, a few of which are mentioned in this article. Hansen reports that the Copenhagen Centre found it necessary to "dissociate

1314-590: A community politically or to enlarge the buildings in which it resides. Finally in the Classical Period and later, the -z-/-s- extension began to be used, as evidenced in Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch: sunoik-izein, "combine or join into one city", with its nouns sunoik-isis and sunoik-ismos, "founding a city", from which the English scholarly term synoecism derives. All poleis looked back to

1460-489: A different polis. These are three. A polis has a particular location, population, and constitution ( politeia ). For example, if a polis moves en masse, receives a different form of government, or an influx of new population, it is not the same polis. Aristotle expresses two main definitions of polis, neither of which is possible as stated. In the second (see below for the first) a polis is "a collection of citizens...." (Book III I 2). If they already are citizens, then there

1606-454: A dominant Albanian majority of mixed Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic faith during the 15th-16th centuries due to the anthroponomy present; additionally, most of the region was islamised by 1571. In the second half of the 16th century, the Ottoman defters of 1571 and 1591 indicated that Opoja had become a territorial administrative division with a dominant Timar system. 18 timars were recorded in

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1752-480: A dominant feature in the town. The name of the city has been linked with that of Petrizen, a Dardani fort mentioned by Procopius in the 6th century. Hamp has suggested that the name of the city roughly meant " ford-horned animal " with the IE root *ḱrn "horn, horned-thing" (cf. Oxford ). According to Curtis, Prizren follows Albanian phonetic sound rules. Prizren has been traditionally identified with Theranda,

1898-514: A federation with binding membership, etc. The Perioeci were included in this category. When the models are set aside as primary sources (which they never were) it is clear that historiography must be founded on what the authors and inscriptions say. Moreover, there is a time window for the active polis. The fact that polis was used in the Middle Ages to translate civitas does not make these civitates into poleis. The Copenhagen Study uses quite

2044-521: A few evidential indications of a probable polis, in addition to the manuscripts and inscriptions, some of which are victory in the Panhellenic Games, participation in the games, having an official agent, or proxenos, in another polis, presence of civic subdivisions, presence of citizens and a Constitution (Laws). Modern theorists of the polis are theorizing under a major disadvantage: their topic has not been current for thousands of years. It

2190-441: A lack of structural capacity to grow. Education is poor, financial institutions basic, and regulatory institutions lack experience. Securing capital investment from foreign entities cannot emerge in such an environment. Due to financial hardships, several companies and factories have closed and others are reducing personnel. This general economic downturn contributes directly to the growing rate of unemployment and poverty , making

2336-564: 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

2482-428: A maximum of 2,943. A study of inscriptions found 1,450 that use polis prior to 300 BC, 425 Athenian and 1,025 from the rest of the range of poleis. There was no difference in meaning between literary and inscriptional usages. Polis became loaded with many incidental meanings. The major meanings are 'state' and 'community'. The theoretical study of the polis extends as far back as the beginning of Greek literature, when

2628-622: A nahiyah of the Sanjak of Prizren . The Ottoman conquest resulted in the old trade routes that linked the Adriatic to the Aegean and Black sea lost their importance because of the insecurity on the roads, and the towns and villages along the roads stopped growing. There are no sources which name Opolje a nahiya in the 15th century. Ottoman cadastral records indicate that the Opoja region was inhabited by

2774-399: A network of micro-states. Many of the settlements still exist; e.g., Marseille , Syracuse , Alexandria , but they are no longer Greek or micro-states, belonging to other countries. The ancient Greek world was split between homeland regions and colonies. A colony was generally sent out by a single polis to relieve the population or some social crisis or seek out more advantageous country. It

2920-492: 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." The town of Prizren did not suffer much during the Kosovo War but its surrounding municipality was badly affected during 1998–1999. Before

3066-613: A precedent of jumping over the wall in mockery of it. There were no families, no phratries, no tribes, except among the already settled Latins, Greeks, and Etruscans. The warriors acquired a social structure by kidnapping the nearby Italic Sabines (" the Rape of the Sabine Women ") and settling the matter by agreeing on a synoecism with the Sabines also, who were Latins. Alba Longa was ignored, later subdued. The first four tribes were not

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3212-518: A priori assumptions as though they were substantiated facts and were not the pure speculations they actually are. One of the most influential of these translative models was the French La Cite antique , translated again into English "the ancient city", by Coulanges. Only to read the title gives credibility to the idea that there is a model type inclusive of all ancient cities, and that the author need only present it without proving it. This type

3358-495: A revenge for the crimes committed during the war from the Serbian army and all remaining Serb population was evicted from Prizren. Simultaneously Islamic cultural heritage and mosques were destroyed and damaged. 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

3504-708: A similar pattern. According to Milisav Lutovac, the name is of Slavic origin and "had to do with the inhabited localities dotted around a field". The name also appears in Lower Silesia, in Poland - Opole , and in Russia - Opolye . Gora, in a collective term, refers to both the Gorani-inhabited Gora (which greater part is in Kosovo, the rest in Albania and Macedonia), and its sub-region Opolje, which

3650-500: A single site, and the single city belongs to its citizens in common." Aristotle's description fits the landscape archaeology of the poleis in the Copenhagen Study well. The study defines settlement patterns of first-, second-, and third-order. The third, dispersed , is individual oikiai distributed more or less evenly throughout the countryside. The other two orders are nucleated, or clustered. 2nd-order settlements are

3796-485: 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. Prizren is located on the foothills of the Šar Mountains ( Albanian : Malet e Sharrit ) in southern Kosovo on the banks of Prizren River . Prizren Municipality borders Albania to

3942-446: A synoecism under any name as their source of politeia . Not all settlements were poleis; for example, an emporion, or "market reserved for foreign trade", might be part of a polis or out on its own. In any particular synoecism recorded by either ancient or modern epigraphists a major problem has been to fit the model credibly to the instance. For example, Thucydides refers to Spartan lack of urbanity as "not synoecised", where synoecism

4088-422: A tale of imaginary history. Families, he asserts, originally lived dispersed and alone (a presumption of Aristotle as well). When the population grew to a certain point, families joined into phratries. Further growth caused phratries to join into tribes, and then tribes into a city. In the city the ancient tribes remained sacrosanct. The city was actually a confederacy of ancient tribes. Coulange's tale, based on

4234-620: A town dating from the Roman Empire . However, recent research suggests that Therand 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

4380-477: Is twinned with: Turkey and Hungary have also a general consulate in Prizren. For a long time the economy of Kosovo was based on the retail industry fueled by remittance income coming from a large number of immigrant communities in Western Europe . Private enterprise, mostly small business, is slowly emerging. Private businesses, like elsewhere in Kosovo, predominantly face difficulties because of

4526-645: Is August with an average temperature of 22.2 °C (72.0 °F), while the coldest month is January with an average temperature of 0.0 °C (32.0 °F). Prizren is a municipality governed by a mayor–council system . The mayor of Prizren with the members of the Prizren Municipal Council are responsible for the administration of Prizren Municipality. The municipality is encompassed in Prizren District and consists of 76 adjacent settlements with Prizren as its seat. Prizren

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4672-467: Is a direct descendant of the ancient word and roughly means 'city' or an urban place. However, the Ancient Greek term that specifically meant the totality of urban buildings and spaces was asty ( ἄστυ ), rather than polis. The ancient word polis had socio-political connotations not possessed by the modern. For example, today's πόλη is located within a χώρα ( khôra ), "country", which

4818-448: Is a πατρίδα (patrida) or "native land" for its citizens. In ancient Greece, the polis was the native land; there was no other. It had a constitution and demanded the supreme loyalty of its citizens. χώρα was only the countryside, not a country. Ancient Greece was not a sovereign country, but was a territory occupied by Hellenes , people who claimed as their native language some dialect of Ancient Greek. Poleis did not only exist within

4964-429: Is actually a lessening of unity and would destroy the state. The individual is actually most united and effective; the polis the least. To take away the property and therefore the powers of the individual diminishes the state to nothing, as it is composed of citizens, and those citizens have been rendered null and void by the removal of their effectiveness. As an example Aristotle gives a plot of land, which owned by one man

5110-505: Is also a public university in Prizren, offering lectures in Albanian, Bosnian, and Turkish. The primary health care system includes 14 municipal family health centres and 26 health houses. The primary health sector has 475 employees, including doctors, nurses and support staff, 264 female and 211 male. Regional hospital in Prizren offers services to approximately 250,000 residents. The hospital employs 778 workers, including 155 doctors, and

5256-531: Is among the most densely populated municipalities of Kosovo. In terms of ethnicity, Prizren Municipality was 81.96% Albanian , 9.5% Bosniak , 5.11% Turkish , 1.63% Romani , 0.76% Ashkali , 0.37% Gorani , 0.13% Serbian , 0.09% Egyptian and 0.45% of other ethnicities or refugees (such as Afghans , Syrians , Ukrainians and others). By religion, there were 170,640 (95.98%) Muslims , 5,999 (3.37%) Roman Catholics , 250 (0.14%) Orthodox , 807 (0.45%) of other religions and 85 (0.05%) irreligious . Besides

5402-640: Is based on the ancient practice of translating polis in Greek literature to civitas (early form of city) in Latin literature and vice versa. Coulanges' confidence that the Greek and Italic cities were the same model was based on the then newly discovered Indo-European language : "Go back as far as we may in the history of the Indo-European race, of which the Greeks and Italians are branches,...." The Greeks had

5548-414: Is carefully tended, but owned by the whole community belongs to no one and is untended. The ideal state therefore is impossible, a mere logical construct accounting for some of the factors, but failing of others, which Aristotle's examples suffice to demonstrate. For example, in some hypothetical place of no polis, a buyer would apply to an individual builder for a house. In an ideal polis, he would apply to

5694-449: Is concerned with the two underlying principles of any society: mutual needs and differences in aptitude. Starting from these two principles, Socrates deals with the economic structure of an ideal polis. According to Plato there are five main economic classes of any polis: producers, merchants, sailors/shipowners, retail traders and wage earners. Along with the two principles and five economic classes, there are four virtues. The four virtues of

5840-568: Is equipped with emergency and intensive care units. As of the Kosovo Agency of Statistics (KAS) estimate from the 2011 census, there were 177,781 people residing in Prizren Municipality, representing the second most populous city and municipality of Kosovo. Its urban population was approximately 94,500, while the rural population was around 83,000. With a population density of 283,5 people per square kilometre, Prizren

5986-407: Is expected to further strain the local economy. Market saturation, high unemployment, and a reduction of financial remittances from abroad are negative economic indicators. There are three agricultural co-operatives in three villages. Most livestock breeding and agricultural production are private, informal, and small-scale. There are nine operational banks with branches in Prizren, ProCredit Bank ,

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6132-574: Is highly critical. The Theory of the State is not so much political by today's definition. The politics are covered by the New Plan. The topic of the Old Plan is rather society , and is generally presented today in sociology and cultural anthropology . At the end of Book III, however, Aristotle encounters certain problems of definition that he cannot reconcile through theorization and has to abandon

6278-494: Is inhabited by Albanians. According to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1955), Opolje had an area of ca. 108 km, while Gora had an area of ca. 500 km. Sheltered by high mountain ranges of strong and cold winds, Gora and Opolje does not have harsh winters. There is no natural border between Gora and Opolje, while the northern part of the town of Dragaš has been considered part of Opolje as well. Opolje

6424-434: Is no need for anyone to collect to create a polis, as it already exists. If they are not citizens then they cannot be defined as a polis and cannot act as such. Aristotle's only consistent meaning is that at the moment of collecting together a population creates a polis of which they are now citizens. This moment of creation, however long it might be, is a logical necessity; otherwise, the citizenship recedes indefinitely into

6570-409: Is not left to the moderns to redefine polis as though it were a living institution. All that remains to ask is how the ancients defined it. It is not to be redefined now; for example, a polis is not a list of architectural features based on ruins. Any community might have those. Moderns can only ask, what did the ancient Greeks think a polis is. Whatever they thought must per force be so, as they invented

6716-445: Is not whether poleis can be found to fit a particular model (some usually can), but whether the model covers all the poleis, which, apparently, no model ever has, even the ancient ones. The re-defining process continues. The Copenhagen study rejects either model and proposes instead the microstate. Some few scholars have become totally cynical, rejecting the idea that any solution has been or can be found. This argument places polis in

6862-530: Is one of the traditional župa (county) in the Šar Mountains massif in southern Kosovo, alongside Sredačka Župa , Sirinićka Župa , Gora and Prizrenski Podgor . In the west of Opolje is the region of Lumë , which extends in both Kosovo and Albania. The Serbian rulers King Stephen Uroš III (in 1326) and Emperor Stephen Dušan (in 1348, 1355) mentioned many of the Opolje and Gora villages in their charters, which shows that they existed before those dates. Opolje

7008-712: 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 concluded, from

7154-406: Is the creation of common living quarters (see above). Here apparently it means only the building of a central urban area. The reader of Plutarch knows that another synoecism existed, one instituted by Lycurgus, founder of the military state. The single overall synoecism is apparently double, one for the facilities, missing in this story, and one for the constitution. He uses the same word to describe

7300-540: 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

7446-509: Is the one that leads to the common good. The philosopher king is the best ruler because, as a philosopher, he is acquainted with the Form of the Good . In Plato's analogy of the ship of state , the philosopher king steers the polis, as if it were a ship, in the best direction. Books II–IV of The Republic are concerned with Plato addressing the makeup of an ideal polis. In The Republic , Socrates

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7592-644: Is the second most populous city and municipality of Kosovo and seat of the eponymous municipality and district . It is located on the banks of the Prizren River between the foothills of the Sharr Mountains in southern Kosovo. Prizren experiences a continental climate with some mediterranean influences. Prizren is constitutionally designated as the historical capital of the country. Archaeological excavations in Prizren Fortress indicate that its fortress area has seen habitation and use since

7738-440: Is to know what information to select for a model and what to neglect as probably irrelevant. Classical studies of the last few hundred years have been relatively stable in their views of the polis, relying basically on just a few models: the concept of a city-state, and Fustel de Coulange's model of the ancient city. However, no model ever seems to resolve all the paradoxes or provide for every newly considered instance. The question

7884-529: The Bronze Age . Prizren has been traditionally identified with the settlement of Theranda in Roman Dardania , although other locations have been suggested in recent research. In late antiquity it was part of the defensive fortification system in western Dardania and the fort was reconstructed in the era of eastern Roman Emperor Justinian . Byzantine rule in the region ended definitively in 1219-20 as

8030-523: The Church of Holy Salvation , Church of St. George (the city's largest church), Church of St. George (Runjevac), Church of St. Kyriaki, Church of St. Nicolas (Tutić Church), the Monastery of The Holy Archangels , as well as Prizren's Orthodox seminary of Saint Cyrillus and Methodius. Also, during that riot, the entire Serb quarter of Prizren, near the Prizren Fortress , was completely destroyed, as

8176-699: 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

8322-540: The Perioeci ("dwellers round"). They had been left as supposedly free poleis by the invaders, but they were subject to and served the interests of the Dorian poleis. They were not city-states, failing the criterion of sovereignty. Lacedaemon by the city-state rule thus falls short of being a polis. The earlier Achaean acropolis stood at the edge of the valley and was decrepit and totally unused. Lacedaemon had neither

8468-727: The Raiffeisen Bank , the NLB Bank , TEB Bank , Banka për Biznes (Bank for Business), İşbank , Banka Kombëtare Tregtare (National Trade Bank), Iutecredit, and the Payment and Banking Authority of Kosovo (BPK). All the main roads connecting the major villages with the urban centre are asphalted. The water supply is functional in Prizren town and in approximately 30 villages. There are 48 primary schools with 28,205 pupils and 1,599 teachers; 6 secondary schools with 9,608 students and 503 teachers; kindergartens are privately run. There

8614-771: The 1948, 1953 and 1961 censuses, when 99.8% declared as Albanians. Opolje had an annual population growth in 1961-1971 of 33 per 1,000, and in 1971-1981, 29.8 per 1,000, which represents an enormous relative overpopulation (Albanian population boom); according to estimates for 1991, there were 173 people per 1 square kilometre, and in some villages, up to 250 per 1 square kilometre, all in conditions of scarce natural and economic resources. The majority professes Islam. 42°03′38″N 20°38′25″E  /  42.06056°N 20.64028°E  / 42.06056; 20.64028 Polis Polis ( pl. : poleis) means 'city' in Ancient Greek . The Modern Greek word πόλη ( polē )

8760-458: The 23 villages of Opoja in 1571, and 13 timars in 1591. At the end of the 16th century, in the Nahiya of Opoja, of the 27 newly-Islamised households spread across 9 villages, 24 had Albanian last names and only 3 had Slavic last names. Of the 37 Christian households spread across 8 villages, 36 had Albanian or Albanian-Slav anthroponomy whereas only 1 had Slavic anthroponomy. Of the 23 field owners of

8906-484: The Acarnanian people and poleis. A colony from there would then be considered Acarnanian, no matter how far away from Acarnania it was. Colonization was thus the main method of spreading Greek poleis and culture. Ancient Greeks did not reserve the term polis solely for Greek-speaking settlements. For example, Aristotle's study of the polis names also Carthage , comparing its constitution to that of Sparta. Carthage

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9052-569: The Aegean for a few thousand years prior to the Dorian invasions , forming an "aggregate, the pre-Doric city". This type of city is not to be regarded as "the Hellenic type of the polis". The Greeks set adrift by the Dorian invasions countered by joining ( synoecism ) to form the Hellenic poleis. The polis can thus be dated to this defensive resettlement period (the Dark Age). Quite a few poleis fit

9198-608: 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

9344-493: 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. 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

9490-523: 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

9636-648: The Empire. Prizren became one of the larger cities of the Kosovo vilayet ( vilayet ). The Ottoman registers from the 15th-16th century indicate that the villages in the Prizren- Has region in Kosovo had a significant Albanian population. 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

9782-419: The Greek conception ... but this was rather owing to their less vivid mental powers than to the absence of the phenomenon." Polis is thus often translated as ' city-state '. The model, however, fares no better than any other. City-states no doubt existed, but so also did many poleis that were not city-states. The minimum semantic load of this hyphenated neologism is that the referent must be a city and must be

9928-415: The Hellenic poleis and was continuous with the pre-Doric city phase, then pre-Doric Athens must have been a Hellenic polis even then. The model fails in its chief instance. A second approach to the modelling of the polis is not to use the word polis at all, but to translate it into the language of the historiographer. The model is thus inherent in the translation, which has the disadvantage of incorporating

10074-454: The Nahiya, 18 had Albanian names and 5 had Slavic names. A prominent family of Opoja in the 16th century emerged in the new social environment. The Kuka, descendants of Iljaz Kuka built many public buildings, trade routes, shops and left a large endowment (waqf) to the city of Prizren . The mosque of Iljaz Kuka, rebuilt by his grandson Mehmed Bey Kuka (known as Kukli Bey) is one of the oldest mosques of Prizren. Opolje and other rural areas of

10220-454: The Newer were united with a political synoecism. The first sentence of Politics asserts that a polis is a community ( koinonia ). This is Aristotle's first definition of polis (for the second, see above). The community is compared to a game of chess. The man without community is like an isolated piece (I.9). Other animals form communities, but those of men are more advantageous because men have

10366-785: The Serbian Nemanjić dynasty took control of the fort and the town. Prizren served as the capital of the Serbian Empire under the reign of Stefan Dušan , as it bloomed to become an important center of trade and commerce during Dušan's reign. From 1371, a series of regional feudal rulers controlled Prizren, including the Mrnjavčević family , the Balšić noble family , and the Branković dynasty . Ottoman Turks captured Prizren from Serbian Despotate in 1455 and almost immediately served as

10512-531: 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 chrisobull, nine Albanian stock-breeding villages within the vicinity of Prizren are mentioned explicitly - these villages are known with

10658-513: The Trojan War and had placed a polis (Livy's urbs) on one of the hills named Pallantium , later becoming Palatine . He had actually raised the Trojan boys and supported them now. When the band of marauders became populous enough Romulus got them to agree to a synoecism of settlements in the hills to form a new city, Rome, to be walled in immediately. Remus had to be sacrificed because he had set

10804-721: 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

10950-590: 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

11096-493: 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

11242-637: The area of Montenegro and possibly the town of Ulqin . 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

11388-454: 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. 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

11534-659: The area of the modern Republic of Greece . A collaborative study carried by the Copenhagen Polis Centre from 1993 to 2003 classified about 1,500 settlements of the Archaic and Classical ancient-Greek-speaking population as poleis. These ranged from the Caucasus to southern Spain, and from southern Russia to northern Egypt, spread over the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. They have been termed

11680-597: The area of the white Drin. King Stefan Dečanski granted the Visoki Dečani monastery with pasture land along with Vlach and Albanian katuns around Drim and Lim rivers of whom had to carry salt and provide serf labour for the monastery In 1455, the southern territories of the Serbian Despotate were annexed by the Ottomans , and organized into the beylerbeylik of Rumelia . Gora, in its broadest meaning, became

11826-717: The area was inhabited by Albanians and that the Albanian language was spoken there. In the 1630's, the Ottoman Turkish traveller Hajji Khalifa wrote that the town of Prizren was inhabited by Albanians. 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

11972-446: The area; 14th-century documents refer to a catholic church in Prizren, which was the seat of a bishopric between the 1330s and 1380s. 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

12118-420: The argument there is "For it is by proportionate requital that the city holds together .... and if they cannot do so there is no exchange, but it is by exchange that they hold together." In short Aristotle had stated two systems of property, one in which the polis holds everything, distributing it equally, and one in which some property is held in common but the rest is privately owned. As the former only leads to

12264-634: The capital of Sanjak of Prizren in the Ottoman Empire . While standing as an important administrative city for the Ottomans, Prizren became an important political center for the Albanian National Awakening during the late 19th century. The influence of Islam in Kosovo is evident; 96% of the population identified as Muslim in the most recent census, taken in 2011. Mosques, such as the Sinan Pasha Mosque , are

12410-400: The citizens and simultaneously a collection of some of the citizens. Similarly property shared by all cannot be shared by men who do not own it. These fictions led to endless conflict between and within poleis as the participants fought for citizenship they did not have and shares they did not own. A village (kome) is a community of several families (I.2). Aristotle suggests that they came from

12556-656: 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 Albanian League of Prizren Museum. 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 ),

12702-468: 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

12848-449: The concept of polis from the concepts of independence and autonomia". They were able to define a class of "dependent poleis" to consist of 15 types, all of which the ancient sources call poleis, but were not entirely sovereign, such as cities that had been independent, but were later synoecized into a larger polis, new colonies of other poleis, forts, ports, or trading posts some distance removed from their mother poleis, poleis that had joined

12994-618: The correspondence of archbishop Demetrios Chomatenos (1216–36), that Prizren was the northeasternmost area of Albanian settlement prior to the Slavic migrations to the Balkans that began in the 6th century. Historians and linguists have concluded that the northernmost and easternmost expansion of the predecessors of the Albanians prior to Slavic expansion was Lipjan , Vushtrri , Shkup , Nish , Shtip in Dardania and Macedonia and included

13140-533: The economic viability in the region more tenuous. Many restaurants, private retail stores, and service-related businesses operate out of small shops. Larger grocery and department stores have recently opened. In town, there are eight sizeable markets, including three produce markets, one car market, one cattle market, and three personal hygiene and houseware markets. There is an abundance of kiosks selling small goods. However, reducing international presence and repatriation of refugees and internally displaced persons

13286-535: 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

13432-551: 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 Montengrins [Soldiers] why I was not allowed to go and they laughed and said 'We have not left

13578-404: The fragmentary history of priesthoods, does not much resemble the history of cities such as it survives. For example, there was no familial and tribal development of Rome. Livy (Book I), the grandest of the historians of early Rome, portrays a city formed under competitive duress by a collaboration of warriors, some of whom were from among the neighboring Etruscans , led by Romulus and Remus ,

13724-433: The holding relationship implies. In Book II Aristotle begins to face the problem. The "polis men", politai , translated as 'citizens', must logically hold everything there is to hold, nothing, or some things but not others (II.I.2). In this sociological context politai can only be all the householders sharing in the polis, free or slave, male or female, child or adult. The sum total of all the specific holdings mentioned in

13870-422: The ideal state incapable of sustaining itself. Aristotle says, "A collection of persons all alike does not constitute a state." He means that such a collection is not self-sufficient (II.1.4). He alleges the opposite: "components which are to make up a unity must differ in kind .... Hence reciprocal equality is the preservative of states, as has been said before in (Nichomachean) Ethics (1132b, 1133a)." In summary

14016-454: The individual. Families are bound by three relationships: husband to wife, owner to slave, and father to children. Thus slaves and women are members of the polis. The proper function of a family is the acquisition and management of wealth . The oikia is the primary land-holder. The koinonia, then, applied to property, including people. As such it is just as impossible as the collection of citizens mentioned previously, which cannot be both all

14162-467: The komai, while the 1st order is the poleis. Approaching the polis from the outside of an aerial photograph one would pass successivle orders 3, 2, and 1. By the end of Book I of Politics Aristotle (or one of the other unknown authors) finishes defining the polis according to one scheme and spends the next two books trying to tie up loose ends. It is generally agreed that the work is an accumulation of surviving treatises written at different times, and that

14308-750: The lack of public support. In 1943 Bedri Pejani of the German Wehrmacht helped create the Second League of Prizren . 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

14454-479: The language of the historiographer. For example, Eric Voegelin wrote a work in English entitled "The World of the Polis". In works such as this the author intends to define polis himself; i.e., to present a model of society from one or more of a list of ancient Greek cities (poleis) culled from ancient Greek literature and inscriptions. For example, Voegelin describes a model in which "town settlements" existed in

14600-422: 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 2005, prehistoric rock paintings in a ritual site related to the cycle of life were found near Vlashnjë. They represent the first find of prehistoric rock art in the region. In late antiquity, the fortification saw a phase of reconstruction. It

14746-520: 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;

14892-440: The legal incorporation of the settlements around Athens into the city by King Theseus , although no special building was required. The central polis already existed. In this story also there is a duality of synoecism with an absent change of physical facilities. Apparently a synoecism can be of different types, the selection of which depends on the requirements of the sunoikisteres. Lippman applies two concepts previously current,

15038-464: The local Albanian leaders to sign a declaration of gratitude to King Peter I of Serbia for their "liberation by the Serbian army". 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

15184-488: The main logical break is the end of Book III. Books I, II, and III, dubbed "Theory of the State" by Rackham in the Loeb Edition , each represents an incomplete trial of the "Old Plan". Books !V, V, and VI, "Practical Politics", are the "New Plan". Books VII and VIII, "Ideal Politics", contains Aristotle's replacement of Plato's ideology, openly called "communist" by modern translators and theoreticians, of which Aristotle

15330-453: The many one-castle principates that abounded at the time. The name was applied to the polis by Herder in 1765. Fowler anglicised it: "It is, then, a city-state that we have to deal with in Greek and Roman history; a state in which the whole life and energy of the people, political, intellectual, religious, is focused at one point, and that point a city." He applied the word polis to it, explaining that, "The Latin race, indeed, never realised

15476-400: The model, no doubt, which was widely promulgated in the 20th century. Classical Athens , however, is a paradox in this model, to which Voegelin has no answer. He says, "in the most important instance, that of Athens, the continuity between the Aegean settlement and the later polis seems to have been unbroken." It seems a matter of simple logic that if Athens was a Hellenic polis in the time of

15622-547: The municipality of Prizren. The Gora municipality and Opoja region remained separated during the Milošević period. During the Kosovo war (1999), Albanians from Opoja fled to neighbouring Albania in cars, trucks and tractors along with others on foot that following the conflict returned home. After the war, Opoja was merged with Gora to form the municipality of Dragaš by the United Nations Mission (UNMIK) and

15768-401: 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

15914-498: The new administrative unit has an Albanian majority. Located in Gora, the town of Dragash is the regional and municipal centre for both the Opoja and Gora regions of Dragash municipality. The population of Opolje, in 19 localities, is totally homogeneously Albanian . According to the 1981 census, Albanians constituted 99.9% of the Opolje population (18,003 of 18,036). The ethnic homogeneity of Opolje dates from long before, as evident from

16060-468: The other neighbourhoods saw a blend between predominantly Slavic/Slavic-Albanian (or rather, Orthodox) anthroponomy. Lazaro Soranzo, writing in the 16th century, noted the town was inhabited "more by Albanians then by Serbs". In 1624 Pjeter Mazrreku reported the town was inhabited by 12,000 Muslims, almost all of them Albanians (‘Turchi, quasi tutti Albanesi’), 200 Catholics and 600 'Serviani'. Gjergj Bardhi , during his visit in Prizren, wrote in 1638 that

16206-539: 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

16352-407: The polis to study the society and government of individual poleis, and bring the information back to document, placing the document in a political science section of the library. Only two documents have survived, Politics and Athenian Constitution . These are a part of any political science curriculum today. Both major ancient Greek philosophers were concerned with elucidating an existing aspect of

16498-531: The political synoecism and the physical synoecism, to events at the polis of Pleuron (Aetolia) described by Strabo . Pleuron, in danger of being sacked by the Macedonians, was officially moved up the slope of a nearby mountain, walled in, and named Newer Pleuron. This act was a physical synoecism. After the Macedonian threat vanished the former location was reinhabited and called Old Pleuron. The old and

16644-475: 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

16790-448: The power of speech as well as a sense of right and wrong, and can communicate judgements of good or bad to the community (I.10). A second metaphor compares a community to a human body: no part can function without the whole functioning (I.11). Men belong to communities because they have an instinct to do so (I.12). The polis is a hierarchy of community. At the most subordinate level is the family ( oikia ), which has priority of loyalty over

16936-504: The relinquishing of property to form the polis is advantageous, and the maximum advantage is maximum possession of common property by a polis. The principle of advantage is unity. The more united, the more advantageous (compare the action of a lever, which concentrates advantage). The ideal commun-ity would be commun-ism, the possession of all property by the community. Personal property, such as wives and children, are included (II.1). Aristotle argues that this eminent domain of all property

17082-459: 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

17228-410: The result of any previous social evolution. They were the first municipal division of the city manufactured for the purpose. They were no sort of confederacy. Rome initially was ruled by Etruscan kings. Coulanges work was followed by the innovation of the English city-state by W. Warde Fowler in 1893. The Germans had already invented the word in their own language: Stadtstaat, "city-state", referring to

17374-427: The same category of Plato's indefinable abstracts, such as freedom and justice. However, there is a practical freedom and a practical justice, although not theoretically definable, and the ancient authors must mean something consistent when they use the word polis . The problem is to find it. In modern historiography of the ancient world πόλις is often transliterated to polis without any attempt to translate it into

17520-478: The same or similar. It is a figure of speech, the most general instance being sunoik-eioun, "to be associated with", its noun being sunoik-eiosis, the act of association. A second verb, sunoik-ein, "to live together," can mean individuals, as in marriage, or conjointly, as in a community. The community meaning appears in Herodotus. A closely related meaning, "to colonize jointly with", is found there also, and in

17666-480: The society in which they lived, the polis. Plato was more interested in the ideal; Aristotle, the real. Both had a certain view of what the polis was; that is, a conceptual model. All models must be tested, by definition. Aristotle, of course, could send direct observers. The only way to know a polis now is through study of the ancient literature (philology), and to some extent archaeology. There are thousands of pages of writing and certainly thousands of sites. The problem

17812-399: The sociology in favor of the New Plan, conclusions resulting from research on real constitutions. The difficulties with the Old Plan begin with the meaning of koinonizein, "to hold in common". Typically the authors of the Old Plan use the verb in such expressions as "those holding in common", "A holding in common", "the partnership", and the like, without specifying who is holding what or what

17958-410: The southwest and North Macedonia to the southeast. Prizren has a subtropical climate ( Köppen climate classification Cfa) bordering a continental climate ( Köppen climate classification Dfa) in the 0°c isotherm and an oceanic climate ( Köppen climate classification Cfb) in the -3°c isotherm. with an average annual temperature of 11.8 °C (53.2 °F). The warmest month in Prizren

18104-420: The splitting (apoikia, "colonization") of families; that is, one village contains one or more extended families , or clans . A polis is a community of villages, but there must be enough of them to achieve or nearly achieve self-sufficiency. At this point of his theorization, Aristotle turns the "common" noun stem (koino-) into a verb, koinonizein, "to share" or "to own in common". He says: "A single city occupies

18250-408: The state, which would send other members of the united polis to do the work. They would also be sent for any other task: plumbing, farming, herding, etc., as any task could be performed by any member. This view is contrary, as Aristotle points out, to the principle of division of labor . The output of one professional building crew far exceeds the efforts any number of amateur ideal statists, rendering

18396-488: The term. There were no doubt many ancient experts on the polis, but time has done its work. The one surviving expert, Aristotle, is thus an indispensable resource. A polis is identified as such by its standing as polis among the community of poleis. Poleis have ambassadors, can join or host the Hellenic Games, etc. According to Aristotle, their most essential characteristics are those that, if changed, would result in

18542-468: 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. With

18688-654: 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 Catholic Church retained some influence in

18834-428: The treatise amount to the anthropological sense of property : land, animals, houses, wives, children, anything to which the right of access or disposition is reserved to the owner. This also happens to be Plato's concept of property, not an accident, as Aristotle was a renegade Platonist. The polis, then, is communal property. The theory of its tenancy is where Aristotle and Plato differ sharply. Plato had argued that

18980-521: The true descendants of the Trojans who with the aborigines had earlier formed the Latin people. They were not welcome among the Latins of Alba Longa, and so they had turned to raiding from their base in their seven hills. The myth supposes they had been nourished by a she-wolf and lived a wild life camping in the country. They were, however, supported by an ally. Evander had led a colony from Arcadia before

19126-408: The unknown past. All current citizenships must have had their first moments, typically when the law-maker had gotten his laws ratified, or the colony had broken with the metropolis. The ancient writers referred to these initial moments under any of several words produced with the same prefix, sunoik- (Latinized synoec-), "same house", meaning objects that are from now on to be grouped together as being

19272-407: The upper Drin valleys were economically tied to Prizren. From 1945 to [sometime after 1981] Opolje was part of the municipality of Gora, but was then given status of a municipality (due to its Albanian population, as opposed to Gora, which was inhabited by Gorani people ). It was abolished on November 3, 1992, under the law of the federal Federal Yugoslav Republic of Serbia , and instead joined into

19418-546: 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

19564-401: The whole gamut of historical writers, Xenophon, Plato, Strabo, Plutarch; i.e., more or less continuously through all periods from Archaic to Roman. Associated nouns are sunoik-ia, sunoik-esion, sunoik-idion, sunoik-eses, sunoik-isis, a multiplication to be expected over centuries of a single language. These can all mean community in general, but they have two main secondary meanings, to institute

19710-462: The works of Homer and Hesiod in places attempt to portray an ideal state. The study took a great leap forward when Plato and the academy in general undertook to define what is meant by the good, or ideal, polis. Plato analyzes the polis in the Republic , the Greek title of which, Πολιτεία ( politeia ), itself derives from the word polis . The best form of government of the polis for Plato

19856-574: Was a Phoenician -speaking city. Many nominally Greek colonies also included municipalities of non-Greek speakers, such as Syracuse. The word polis is used in the first known work of Greek literature, the Iliad , a maximum of 350 times. The few hundred ancient Greek classical works on line at the Perseus Digital Library use the word thousands of times. The most frequent use is Dionysius of Halicarnassus , an ancient historian, with

20002-601: Was a church estate of the Church of the Holy Theotokos in Prizren throughout the Middle Ages. The surrounding region possesses a good amount of Aromanian toponyms which Dumbrowski argues show the linguistic situation before Slavification. In one of Nemanja’s charters giving property to Hilandar, 170 Vlachs are mentioned, located in villages around Prizren. When Dečanski founded his monastery of Dečani in 1330, he referred to ‘villages and katuns of Vlachs and Albanians’ in

20148-681: 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

20294-494: 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 chrisobull of

20440-411: Was called a metropolis or "mother city". The Greeks were careful to identify the homeland region and the metropolis of a colony. Typically a metropolis could count on the socio-economic and military support of its colonies, but not always. The homeland regions were located on the Greek mainland. Each gave an ethnic or "racial" name to its population and poleis. Acarnania , for example was the location of

20586-557: 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. Serbian general Božidar Janković forced

20732-588: 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

20878-464: 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

21024-517: 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

21170-566: 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

21316-657: 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 ). The Prizren attachment

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