Sarajevo History, Bosnia And Herzegowina

The highlight of the history of Sarajevo are the assassination of Ferdinancd that lead to the start of World War I, the shelling of the city during the ethnic Yugoslav war and the winter Olympic games of 1984. However, the exact history of Sarajevo starts way back in the Neolithic age when Sarajevo was a part of Butmir culture, named after the finds in Butmir near Sarajevo.

Illyrians had many settlements in the valley, and these Illyrians were tribes living on the western part of the Balkan Peninsula. It was during the Roman times that the town Aquae Sulphurae existed in the place of Iidza, a suburb of today’s Sarajevo. After the Romans, the Goths settled in the area, to be followed by the Slavs who occupied this territory in the 7th century.

Vrh-Bosnea existed in Sarajevo valley from 1263 as a Slavic citadel till the Ottoman Empire conquered it in 1429. However, it was only in 1461 that the settlement existed as a city called Bosna-Saraj around this same citadel. It was Isa-Beg Isakovic who founded the city, and became the first governor of Bosnia.

The founding of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ottomans ruled Bosnia for five centuries when Sarajevo developed into an important cultural and trade center. It was the successor of Isa-Beg Isakovic, Gazi Husrey-beg who made Sarajevo the city you see today. He was the one responsible for the construction of the Tsar’s Mosque, the Gazi Husrey-beg’s Mosque and other structures of the city.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled Bosnia after the Ottoman rule, and this was when many buildings were built in Sarajevo to give the city its European flavor. It was Austria-Hungary that industrialized the city by using it as a testing area for new inventions.

With the end of the First World War, Bosnia and Herzegovina was founded in the kingdom of Yugoslavia. With the Nazi Germany invading Yugoslavia in 1941, Josip Broz Tito led the Yugoslav Partisan resistance fighters to liberate Sarajevo on 6 April 1945 to become the newly formed Yugoslavia.

Recognizing the people of Sarajevo as one

Yugoslavia’s disintegration led to the formation of Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija and other paramilitary formations in Sarajevo in 1992. With this came the siege of Sarajevo where the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina led to many deaths, destruction and shifts of population. This war ended with the Dayton Agreement of November 1995, after which the slow healing process of Sarajevo started.

As Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of two entities, the Federation and Bosnia and Herzegovina constituting mostly of Croats and Bosniaks and the Republika Srpska consisting of Serbs, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina rendered a decision in July2000.

With this decision, Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats are considered to be constituent people throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina. This decision was formally recognized and agreed upon by the parties in March 2002 to make Sarajevo the beautiful city it is today.

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