Sarajevo, the capital city of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has always been an important crossways for different cultures of the world. Because of its location on the Balkan diagonal, since ancient times it has acted as gateway for the peoples of Greece and Asia Minor migrating towards the midwest of Europe or vice versa. Sarajevo is also situated on the crossroads which runs along the valleys of the Bosna and Neretva rivers and connects northern Europe with the Mediterranean Sea and its traditions. Thanks to its geographical position, since its origins it has been influenced by a great number of different cultures and civilizations which came together, struggled against one another, but then intermingled and reconciled on this same land.
The firs inhabitants of this area were the Illyrians, then came four cultures from the east: Hellenism in the prehistoric period, Mitharism on the late classical age, the Byzantine culture in the Middle East and finally the Turkish Islamic culture beginning from the middle of the XVth century. The transition from the ancient to the modern era carried from south and southwest a strong influence of the Roman classical culture as well, which prevailed especially in its late-paleochristian phase. Later on, echoes of the most important cultural events of the Apennine peninsula reached this area from the same direction, over the eastern Adriatic coast. Moreover, from the north, at the beginning of the Middle Ages (VIIth century), came the Slavs. They gradually integrated with the native population and contributed to the cultural stratum of the city, which had been almost entirely swept away. Further on in time, this area was also influenced by the Central European culture which came from the north across Pannonia and from northwest across Vienna and Venice and had an extremely important part in the making of the present cultural physiognomy of the area.
The topographical map of the city is revealing from this point of view: surrounded by sloping mountains both on the north and south side, it spreads towards east and west as if to open not only to the winds and watercourses but also to the influences of a variety of cultures coming from different parts of the world.

 
Since remote times Sarajevo has been a city. The firs organized human settlements found in the widest part of the valley date back to almost five thousand years ago. In the early Middle Ages, since Bosnia was first mentioned, the settlements and fortified villages of the Sarajevo region represented the heart of the territory and its political identity.
At Butmir (near the Sarajevo International Airport) between 1893 and 1896, remains of one of the most interesting and riches Neolithic villages in the Balkans were found. More than ninety urban settlements and a great number of weapons, tools and finely chiseled domestic utensils were brought to light. As a consequence of this archaeological discovery, the Neolithic culture of this area was called the culture of Butmir, dating back from 2400 to 2000 B.C.
The Illyrians lived on this territory at the end of the Bronze Age; remains of their settlements have been located in many areas around Sarajevo, at Debelo brdo, Zlatiste, and Sokbunar. When the Romans conquered the Illyrians in the IXth century A.C., they established their headquarters near the thermal springs of what is today known as Ilidza. Here in fact remains of Roman villas, baths, hypocausts, mosaics and sculptures are still left standing; necropolises and further Roman settlements have been found in others areas of the city as well.
In the Middle Ages the Slav culture and state models took over. In the XIIth century Bosnia gradually became more independent, with its territorial expansion culminating in the XIVth century. The center of the Bosnian state was established in the area occupied today by Sarajevo, where the Vrhbosna region, the fortified cities of Hodidjed, Kotorac and Vrhbosna as well as Trgoviste, a vital point for the international exchange of goods, were situated. A royal document of 1244 also mentions St. Peter's Cathedral. The ruins of the fortified city of Hodidjed remind us of the Medieval period; the same can be said of the cemeteries, which are distinguished by particular tombstones called “stecak”, found in and around the city.
The gradual development of human settlements in the area where Sarajevo is now located, is witnessed by the rich collections displayed in the national museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the Zemaljski Museum), one of the oldest scientific and cultural establishments in Sarajevo. Manufactured articles and findings strongly linked to the city can also be seen in Sarajevo's City Museum. The recovery of 70000 tombstones (stecak) erected by Bogumil followers bears evidence of medieval and heretical Bosnia and of its autochtonous artistic expression; some of the best examples, coming from different parts of the region, can be seen in the Zemaljski Museum gardens. Among them are the “stecak of Zgosca”, with its exceptional dimensions and beautiful decorations, the “Judge's chair” and the “nisan” tombstone of Mahmut Brankovic, which, with its medieval decorative motifs and epigraphs, dates back to the Early Islamic period.

 
In the middle of the XVth century Sarajevo was annexed to the Ottoman Empire. In that period the Turks founded the city of “Saraj-ovasi” (“Saraj” meaning castle, palace; “ovas” meaning field), which is mentioned for the first time in Turkish documents in 1507. The Slavs then adapted this name to their own language and pronunciation. Sarajevo, with Vilajet Hodidjed, became the first Turkish administrative military base in Bosnia and soon after the center of the Bosnian “Sandzak”.
The newly founded city started to house the first craftsmen: leather craftsmen, cutters, saber manufacturers, blacksmiths, saddlers, millers, bakers, cooks in Turkish public kitchens... Life in the city, both from an economical and cultural point of view, was gradually taking shape.
The city developed at an increasingly rapid pace during the XVIth century. Many bridges were built over the Miljacka river; three of them, the “Kozja cuprija”; the “Seherija” and the “Latinska” are still standing and boast all the magnificence of their original features. On the right bank of the river around Kolobara, Latinluk, and Trgoviste, flourished the Bascarsija quarter, the social, economical and cultural center of the oriental-imprinted city and the largest commercial center of the central part of the Balkans. The more than thousand shops and storehouses in Carsija became the stage of most productive activities and commercial exchanges with the rest of the continent. Even today craftsmen keep on using the techniques of their predecessors and the objects they make attract the attention of tourists because of their originality. The streets themselves in Bascarsija have been named after the crafts once performed there.
The caravans arriving from Venice, Vienna, Central Europe, the Mediterranean or the east had the possibility to stop and rest in one of the fifty inns of Sarajevo, called “han”. One of them is the famous “Morica-han” which was built at the end of the XVIth century and is very well preserved. Today it is a tourist attraction, but in those days it offered a number of facilities such as guest rooms and a cafe on the first floor, a courtyard with a porch for loading and unloading goods, storing houses and horse stables.
Valuables goods and fabrics in particular brought here by merchants were sold in shops called “bezistan”. Of the three existing at that time, only the two built in the XVth century are still standing, the “Gazi-Husrevbeg bezistan” and the “Burza bezistan”. The former, with its rows of shops under arched porches, reminds us of similar buildings found in Arabic “suks” or Persian “bazars”; the latter is developed in one single space with two pillars and six domes: the “Sandal-bezistan” and the “Kapali-Carsija” in Istanbul were likely to have been taken as models. Some time later, groups of storing houses called “daire” (only two out of the five existing ones are still standing) were built around the courtyard.
In the XVIth century the city had regular contacts with other European cities and, by that time, was already a metropolis: the first wooden-pipe waterworks were built to supply both private and public dwellings. Water fountains (sadrvani) were built in mosque courtyards and next to other representative buildings. Some of them can still be seen today. The Turkish baths (“hamam”), which were built according to the ancient ones but which in that period took on an Osmanli-oriental style, were also connected to the pipeline system. There were seven Turkish baths in the city, the most important of which was “Gazi-Husrevbeg”.
With the spreading of the Ottoman rule, new buildings were erected: mosques, Islamic places of worship (mesdzidi), elementary and secondary school buildings (respectively “mektebi” and “medrese”), centers of mistic philosophy (tekija). More than one hundred mosques (sixty of which are still standing), seventy Muslim elementary schools, a number of “medrese” and “tekija” were built in the Bascarsija quarter - mostly in the XVIth century. They were mainly erected in “mahalas”, small residential areas situated on the hills surrounding Carsija. Besides mosques and schools, there were also a number of typical Muslim cemeteries with very picturesque and expressive tombstones (“nisani”) and mausoleums (“turbet”).
One of the most impressive mosques in Sarajevo is “Gazi Husrevbeg”, built in 1531 and named after the homonymous governor of Bosnia. The latter in fact hired the best architects of the Empire - the same one who had designed the Selimija mosque in Istanbul - to plan the biggest mosque in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as other buildings.
One of the distinctive features of the Ottoman rule was the toleration towards other religious creeds. The Orthodox, the Catholic, the Sephardic Jews (who escaped from Spain in the XVIth century and found refuge in the city) lived and worked together in perfect harmony in the Carsija quarter, thus laying the foundations for that cultural pluralism which was to give the life of the city the distinguishing multi-colored facet of today.
The existence of sacred buildings, schools, books, paintings and other forms of creativity - expression of single groups - proves the development of different cultures and religions.
The old Orthodox church was built at the beginning of the Osmanli rule and the school founded next to it was mentioned for the first time only two years after the Muslim secondary school, the “Kurshumli-medresa”, was constructed.
The church museum, which is located in the old store houses once called “crkvene daire”, still treasures a great number of icons dating back to the period between the XIVth and the XIXth century, manuscripts, printed books, religious paraments and other objects as well - all bearing the witness of the uninterrupted creative flow during the Serb-Byzantine cultural dominance. Moreover, the new Orthodox cathedral erected at the end of the Ottoman dominion, is the demonstration of how baroque and Russian-Orthodox trends became popular in the same cultural framework.
The old Roman Catholic church which had likely existed in Latinluk since the Middle Ages, was destroyed in 1695. It was later rebuilt and replaced by the Catholic churches erected after the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia in 1878. The old Franciscan monasteries found in the vicinity of Sarajevo at Kraljeva Sutjeska, Fojnica and Kresevo, date back to the XIVth and XVth century. They all still store a priceless heritage: old paintings, sculptures, sacred golden and silver objects, manuscripts, valuable books, - all which bear directly the influence of the Catholic-European culture. The old synagogue, built after the arrival of the Sephardic, is particularly impressing from an architectural point of view; the Jewish cemetery and the well-known “Hagada” in Sarajevo are also worth being mentioned.
At that time different alphabets were used: the Greek and the Latin, the glagolithic and the cyrillic, the Bosnian and the gothic, the Arabic, the Jewish, together with the modern forms of the Latin and cyrillic alphabet. The long history of the city does not record any episodes of political or religious persecutions against single groups; there are, on the contrary many examples of mutual solidarity, as for instance the story about the people of Sarajevo who went to free their imprisoned Jewish fellow-townsmen.
Between the XVth and XIXth century the oriental-Islamic cultural influence started to affect the style of homes. The houses, built along the sloping flanks of the mountains in the midst of greenery, stood out against the sun and the horizon, but were actually modest in appearance. Sarajevo is one of the few European cities that has had a water supply system for more than 400 years. In the XVIIth century a Turkish called Evlija Celebija, while writing about his travels, pointed out the existence of 110 drinking water fountains, whereas in 1658, the French writer Quiclet, counted 169 between fountains and waterworks. The forty years of Austro-Hungarian administration witnessed the commencement of a number of public works: the bed of the Miljacka river was cleaned out, new water supply systems wee built, the electrical network was planned. New schools and European-structured scientific institutes were opened. Even though the population of Sarajevo increased considerably, the city did not spread over the borders fixed in the Ottoman period - this obviously had a negative consequence over urban organization.
During the Austro-Hungarian dominion, Sarajevo experienced a strong economical, cultural and political development; the first modern industries appeared: a tobacco factory in 1880, a carpet-weaving factory in 1888, a stocking and a furniture factory in 1869, a soap factory in 1894 as well as railway workshops, power plants, textile and food industries. The first railway lines and secondary schools were also officially opened.
This fervent economical and cultural atmosphere lasted until the 28th of June 1914, when Gavrilo Princip, a serbian nationalist, assassinated archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian heir, and his wife Sofia. This was the event that ignited World War I.
The economic crises which marked the period between the two wars slowed down the flourishing development of the city as well. Construction was mostly organized in the spaces left empty around previously existing buildings. On the whole the few new buildings that were erected, were mostly inspired by the European architecture of Vienna, Prague, and Paris.
After the second World War, Sarajevo developed rapidly. The population grew considerably compared to the period before the war and the territory expanded so much as to include ten more new municipalities. It is now not only a political and social center, but is also considered the university, scientific, artistic, cultural and economic heart of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
This amazing degree of development was obviously followed by the construction of new urban settlements, large production plants, schools, scientific institutes and social units. At the end of the seventies and at the beginning of the eighties, a unique project concerning the protection of the human environment, was carried out with the help of the National Bank for Reconstruction and Development: new water springs were exploited, new waterworks, sewage systems and water purification plants were built. Natural gas was used as a new source of energy: the use of alternative sources of energy helped to protect the air, the water and the earth of the city.
Once this project was completed, Sarajevo went on organizing the XIVth edition of the Winter Olympic Games and created new areas with sport and tourist facilities - the hotels were located not only in the center but also in the city's charming surrounding.
The XIVth Winter Olympics took place in February 1984. On that occasion Sarajevo gave hospitality to sportsmen and winter sports fanatics from all over the world. These games set a record, at the time, of the number of countries and athletes taking part in them; the organization was perfect and the Games were recognized as one of the best organized. The city received letters of thanks which make the Sarajevans proud of their achievement.
Sarajevo, as a crossroads of different cultures and civilizations, an old miniature world, belongs both to the east and to the west, but especially to its people. It bears more evidence of the old world than historical records. The city has always been and remains a milestone for millenary cultures and civilizations, which, in different times, ruled over this territory. It managed to understand them and merge them together; as a result, the creative power that springs out of it, forms the backbone of the city itself.

And then...
And then came April 1992... (Aggression of Serbia-Montenegro on Bosnia-Herzegovina)
 
 
 

Mirrored from On:Jan/07/99