History
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Early development[edit]
The area of Pristina has been inhabited since the Neolithic era by Early European Farmers after 7,000 BCE in the Balkans: Starčevo followed by its successors Vinča, Baden and lastly Bubanj-Hum. The earliest recognized references were discovered in Gračanica, Matiçan and Ulpiana.
Kingdom of the Dardanians, late 3rd century BCUlpiana was an important political, cultural, and economic center of the Roman province of Dardania.
By the early Iron Age, the distinctly Dardanian local variant of the Illyrian Glasinac-Mati culture appears in Kosovo with a particular spread in hilltop settlements. In the area of Pristina, a hilltop settlement appears since the 8th century BCE at an elevation of 685 metres near the village Teneshdoll, around 16 kilometres north of the Pristina city center. Pottery finds suggests that the area may have been in use since the Bronze Age. The settlement seems to have maintained long-distance trade contacts as the finding of a skyphos vessel from Aegean Greece suggests.
During the 4th century BC, the Kingdom of Dardania was established in the region.
Ulpiana was an important Roman city on the Balkan Peninsula and in the 2nd century BC it was declared a municipium. In the middle of the 9th century, it was ceded to the First Bulgarian Empire.[citation needed]
11th to 16th centuries[edit]
In the early 11th century, Pristina fell under Byzantine Empire rule and the area was included into a theme (province) called Bulgaria. Between the late 11th and middle of the 12th century it was ceded several times to the Second Bulgarian Empire, before being annexed by the Kingdom (later Empire) of Serbia, which held it under its rule throughout the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1315, the nearby Gračanica monastery was founded by Serbian King Stefan Milutin. King Stefan Dušan used a location in the area of Pristina as his court before moving eventually to the vicinity of Skopje as he moved his rule southwards.
The first historical record mentioning Pristina by its name dates back to 1315–1318, in a chrysobull of Banjska near Mitrovica. A first brief description of it as a town was given a few years later by the Byzantine Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, on his visit to Stefan Dušan at his royal court, describing Pristina as a 'unfortified village'. During the time of the Kingdom of Serbia in the early 14th century, the main route between the Western Balkans and Constantinople ran through Pristina. Following the Battle of Kosovo, Pristina fell within the realms of the Serbian Despotate under Prince Stefan Lazarević. A bitter feud between Lazarević and Đurađ Branković developed and led to open conflict, with Pristina being the scene of heavy fighting in 1409 and 1410. At the turn of the 15th century, during the time of the Serbian Despotate, Pristina was a major trading post for silver, with many traders hailing from the Republic of Ragusa.
Between the end of the 14th and the middle of the 15th century, Ottoman rule was gradually imposed in the town. In 1477 Pristina had a small Muslim population. The settlement at the time had about 300 households. About 3/4 were Christian and 1/4 Muslim. In 1477 and 1525, Prishtina also had a Christian Albanian population. The 1487 defter recorded 412 Christian and 94 Muslim households in Pristina, which at the time was administratively part of the Sanjak of Viçitrina. By the late 16th century, 60% of the population in Pristina had converted to Islam. The Muslim households contained Muslim and Islamised Albanian names and the Christian ones Christian, Slavic and Albanian.
The Imperial Mosque was built by orders of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in the 15th century.
17th to 19th centuries[edit]
During the Austro-Turkish War in the late 17th century, citizens of Pristina under the leadership of the Catholic Albanian priest Pjetër Bogdani pledged loyalty to the Austrian army and supplied troops. He contributed a force of 6,000 Albanian soldiers to the Austrian army which had arrived in Pristina. According to Noel Malcolm, the city in the 17th century was inhabited by a majority population of 15,000 Muslims, probably Albanian but very possibly including some Slavs. Sources from the 17th century mention the town as "situated in Albania". Austrian military archives from the years of 1689-90 mention "5,000 Muslim Albanians in Prishtina who had risen against the Turks". Gjergj Bogdani, a nephew of Pjeter Bogdani, wrote later: 'My uncle, being found already dead and buried, was dug up from his grave and put out as food for the dogs in the middle of Prishtina'.
During the 18th century, the history of the city is less documented, though recent data show a regular life unfolding in the city after the Great Turkish War. While in the first few decades the city was rebuilding its infrastructure, in the second part of the century it is better known for the governing of the local feudal family, the Gjinollis.
After the League of Prizren (1878), the Ottoman authorities moved the capital of the vilayet of Kosovo to Prishtina, likely to weaken the influence of the League of Prizren and to strengthen their control by placing the capital in a more central position of the vilayet. Prishtina remained the capital from 1879 to 1888. During this time, Prishtina saw major economic and cultural growth, recovering from decades of decline. The first registered state printing press was moved to the city, and key buildings like today’s Kosovo Museum (completed in 1885) were built.
20th century[edit]
In May 1901, Albanians pillaged and partially burned Pristina. The Kingdom of Serbia opposed the plan for a Greater Albania, preferring a partition of the European territory of the Ottoman Empire among the four Balkan allies. On 22 October 1912, Serb forces took Pristina. However, Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the first Balkan War, occupied Kosovo in 1915 and took Pristina under Bulgarian occupation.
During the Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars, Pristina suffered many atrocities; the Serbian army entered Pristina on 22 October. Albanian and Turkish households were looted and destroyed, and women and children were killed. A Danish journalist based in Skopje reported that the Serbian campaign in Pristina "had taken on the character of a horrific massacring of the Albanian population". An estimated 5,000 people in Pristina were murdered in the early days of the Serbian occupation. The events have been interpreted as an early attempt to change the region's demographics. Serbian settlers were brought into the city, and Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić bought 491 hectares (1,214 acres) of land. Pristinans who wore a plis were targeted by the Serbian army; those who wore the Turkish fez were safe, and the price of a fez rose steeply.
In late October 1918, the 11th French colonial division took over Pristina and returned Pristina back to what then became the 'First Yugoslavia' on 1 December 1918. In September 1920, the decree of the colonization of the new southern lands' facilitated the takeover by Serb colonists of large Ottoman estates in Pristina and land seized from Albanians. From 1929 to 1941, Pristina was part of the Vardar Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Aerial view of Prishtina in 1924Destruction of Bazaar of Pristina after World War II
As part of Yugoslav colonisation of Kosovo, in an attempt by the Yugoslav government to change the ethnic composition of Kosovo, Prishtina was among the affected areas. During the period between the two World Wars, Serb colonist families were settled both in the city itself and across many villages, newly established settlements or within existing villages. These Serb settlers originated from Montenegro, Serbia, the Serb-inhabited regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and other regions where economic conditions were very difficult for them.
In city of Prishtina, around 70 Serb families were settled across various neighborhoods. Then the Serb settlers were also to be found in the villages of Badofci, Ballabani, Barilevë, Besia, Çagllavicë, Dabisheci, Gllogovica, Hajkobillë, Hajvalia, Keçekollë, Koliçi, Lebana, Makoci, Mareci, Bardhosh, Nisheci, Orlloviqi, Prapashticë, Slivova, Teneshdolli, Truda, and Vranidolli, with the number of families in each area ranging from 2 to 70. These settlers contributed to the demographic composition of the municipality in the past.
On 17 April 1941, Yugoslavia surrendered unconditionally to axis forces. On 29 June, Benito Mussolini proclaimed a greater Albania, with most of Kosovo under Italian occupation united with Albania. There ensued mass killings of Serbs, in particular colonists, and an exodus of tens of thousands of Serbs. After the capitulation of Italy, Nazi Germany took control of the city. In May 1944, 281 local Jews were arrested by units of the 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian). The Jews were later deported to Germany, where many were killed.The Monument of Brotherhood and Unity by Miodrag Živković in the city center. "Brotherhood and unity" was a popular slogan of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.This ended a long period when the institution had been run as an outpost of Belgrade University and gave a major boost to Albanian-language education and culture in Kosovo. The Albanians were also allowed to use the Albanian flag.[citation needed]
Kosovo War[edit]
Main article: Kosovo War
Graves of Albanian war victims south of Pristina
Following the reduction of Kosovo's autonomy by former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević in 1989, a harshly repressive regime was imposed throughout Kosovo by the Yugoslav government with Albanians largely being purged from state industries and institutions. The LDK's[clarification needed] role meant, that when the Kosovo Liberation Army began to attack Serbian and Yugoslav forces from 1996 onwards, Pristina remained largely calm until the outbreak of the Kosovo War in March 1999. Pristina was spared large scale destruction compared to towns like Gjakova or Peja that suffered heavily at the hands of Serbian forces. For their strategic importance, however, a number of military targets were hit in Pristina during NATO's aerial campaign, including the post office, police headquarters and army barracks, today's Adem Jashari garrison on the road to Kosovo Polje.[citation needed]
Widespread violence broke out in Pristina. Serbian and Yugoslav forces shelled several districts and, in conjunction with paramilitaries, conducted large-scale expulsions of ethnic Albanians accompanied by widespread looting and destruction of Albanian properties. Many of those expelled were directed onto trains apparently brought to Pristina's main station for the express purpose of deporting them to the border of the Republic of Macedonia, where they were forced into exile.
The majority Albanian population fled Pristina in large numbers to escape Serb policy and paramilitary units. The first NATO troops to enter the city in early June 1999 were Norwegian special forces from FSK Forsvarets Spesialkommando and soldiers from the British Special Air Service 22 S.A.S, although to NATO's diplomatic embarrassment Russian troops arrived first at the airport. Apartments were occupied illegally and the Roma quarters behind the city park was torched. Several strategic targets in Pristina were attacked by NATO during the war, but serious physical damage appears to have largely been restricted to a few specific neighborhoods shelled by Yugoslav security forces. At the end of the war the Serbs became victims of violence committed by Kosovo Albanian extremists. On numerous occasions Serbs were killed by mobs of Kosovo Albanian extremists for merely speaking Serbian in public or being identified as a Serb. Violence reached its pinnacle in 2004 when Kosovo Albanian extremists were moving from apartment block to apartment block attacking and ransacking the residences of remaining Serbs. A majority of the city's 45,000 Serb inhabitants fled from Kosovo and today only several dozen remain in the city.
The city from the Cathedral of Saint Mother Teresa.
21st century[edit]
Pristina International Airport's new terminal opened for operations in October 2013, which was built in response to a growing demand for air travel in Kosovo. In November of the same year, the R7 motorway as part of the Albania-Kosovo motorway, linking Pristina and the Albanian city of Durrës on the Albanian Adriatic Sea Coast, was completed. Another extensive development for the city has been the completion of the R6 motorway in 2019, connecting Pristina to North Macedonia's capital, Skopje.
Prishtina’s post-1999 urban growth has also been the subject of academic study, including research that examines how university campuses interact with broader city planning and urban transformation within the frameworks of sustainable and resilient development.
