Pejë

Peja (Indefinite Albanian form: ''Pejë'' ) or Peć ( sr-Cyrl, Пећ ) is the fourth largest city of Kosovo and seat of Peja Municipality and Peja District. It is situated in the region of Rugova on the eastern section of the Accursed Mountains along Peja's Lumbardh in the western part of Kosovo.

In medieval times the city, then commonly known under its Serbian name, was the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1346. The Patriarchal monastery of Peć is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Medieval Monuments in Kosovo.

Under Ottoman rule the city, then commonly known under the Turkish name ''İpek'', became a district capital with mosques and civil architecture.

From the end of the nineteenth century until today, the city has been the site of nationalist aspirations and claims for both ethnic Albanians and Serbs, often resulting in tense inter-ethnic relations and conflict.

According to the 2011 census, the city of Peja has 48,962 inhabitants, while the municipality has 96,450 inhabitants. The municipality covers an area of , including the city of Peja and 95 villages; it is divided into 28 territorial communities.

Etymology

In Serbian, ''peć'' means "furnace" or "cave", and its name is probably connected with nearby caves in the Rugova Canyon which served as hermit cells for Serbian Orthodox monks. In medieval Ragusan documents, the Serbian name of the city (Peć, lit. "furnace") is sometimes translated as ''Forno'', meaning "furnace" in Italian. During Ottoman rule, it was known as Ottoman Turkish ''İpek'' (ايپك). The Albanian name's definite form is ''Peja'' and the indefinite ''Pejë''. Other names of the city include Latin ''Pescium'' and Greek ''Episkion'' (Επισκιον). The city was first mentioned as Siparantum, by Ptolemy in his work ''Gheographia''.

History

Early development

The city is located in a strategic position on Peja's Lumbardh, a tributary of the White Drin to the east of the Accursed Mountains. The medieval city was possibly built on the ruins of ''Siparant(um)'', a Roman '' municipium'' (town or city). The area has the most unearthed stelae in all of Kosovo.

Slavs ( Sclaveni and Antes) settled the Balkans, heavily depopulated by " Barbarians", in the 6th century. The Byzantine Empire and the First Bulgarian Empire fought for control of the area until it finally fell under full Serbian control. Between 1180 and 1190, Serbian Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja annexed Peja with its surrounding '' župa'' (district) of Hvosno from the Byzantine Empire, thus establishing Serbian rule over the city of Peja for next 300 years. In 1220, Serbian King Stefan Nemanjić donated Peja and several surrounding villages to his newly founded monastery of Žiča. As Žiča was the seat of a Serbian archbishop, Peja came under direct rule of Serbian archbishops and later patriarchs who built their residences and numerous churches in the city starting with the church of Holy Apostles built by archbishop Saint Arsenije I Sremac. After the Žiča monastery was burned by the Cumans in the 1290s, the seat of Serbian archbishop was transferred to a more secure location, the Patriarchal Monastery of Peć. The city became a major religious center of medieval Serbia under the Serbian Emperor Stefan Dušan, who made it the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1346. It remained the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church until the abolition of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć in 1766.

Ottoman Empire

Peja came under Ottoman rule after its capture in 1455. In Turkish, the town was known as ''İpek''. The town became the center of the Sanjak of İpek (or Dukagjin), governed by Mahmut Pasha Dukagjini as its first '' sanjakbey'' (lord). The Sanjak of Dukagjin had four '' kazas'': Peja, Gjakova, Gusinje and Berane.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, Orthodox Albanians formed the majority of the region's population whereas Slavs formed a minority. The Slavs had arrived during the period of Serbian rule in Kosovo through the Middle Ages as colonists from Slavic regions north of Kosovo or as a stratum of the ruling class. In the Ottoman defters of the time, there existed a designation for new arrivals to the region; in the region of Peja and Suhogërla, new arrivals existed within about a third of the villages, with their anthroponomy indicating that only 4 of these new 180 arrivals had Albanian names, whereas the rest had characteristically Slavic names. This suggests that an arrival of a Slavic element to the northeast of the Sanjak of Shkodra occurred during the 15th-16th centuries, and the absence of this trend in the rest of the Sanjak of Shkodra indicates that these Slav populations hailed from Slavic-inhabited regions outside of Peja itself. In 1582, Ottoman cadastral records indicated that 23 villages in the Nahiya of Peja were inhabited by an Albanian majority due to the dominance of Albanian anthroponomy amongst its inhabitants; 85 villages had mixed Albanian-Slavic anthroponomy, and the rest contained almost exclusively Slavic anthroponomy. The villages with a certain Albanian majority were ''Osak (Usak), Kramor, Ljepovaç, Trakagjin, Strelec, Romaniça, Sredna Çirna Goi, Nivokas, Temshenica, Trepova pole, Novasel, Dobri Lipari, Boshanica, Brestovac, Baç (Beç), Tokina pole, Novasel (another Novasel), Dujak, Dobroshi i Madh, Vraniq, Mraç or Çirna Potok, Dolina Çirna Goi'' and ''Preloniça''. The documentation of Albanians in Peja at the end of the 15th centuries - which coincides with the very beginning of Ottoman rule in Kosovo - presupposes that the Albanians of Peja were early inhabitants of the region. By the 1582 Defter, the city of Peja itself had been significantly Islamised - several cases exist where Muslim inhabitants have a blend of Islamic and Albanian anthroponomy (such as the widespread Deda family - ''Rizvan Deda, Haxhi Deda, Ali Deda...''). The Muslim neighbourhoods include ''Xhamia Sherif, Sinan Vojvoda, Piri bej, Ahmed Bej, Hysein, Hasan Çelebi, Mustafa bej, Mahmud Kadi, Orman, Kapishniça, Mesxhidi Haxhi Mahmud, Bali bej'' and ''Çeribash''. The Christian neighbourhoods include ''Gjura Papuxhi, Nikolla (abandoned), Nikolla Vukman (abandoned), Andrija (abandoned)'' and ''Olivir''. The inhabitants of the two Christian neighbourhoods - ''Olivir'' and ''Gjura Papuxhi'' - had a blend of characteristically Albanian and Slavic/Orthodox anthroponomy.

In 1835 the Albanian population supported by other Albanian rebels from Shkodra took over the town from the Ottomans.

The Albanian nationalist organization League of Peja established in 1899 was based in the city. The organization, led by Haxhi Zeka, adopted the character of the earlier League of Prizren to defend the rights of Ottoman Albanians and seek autonomous status within the empire. After an armed clash with Ottoman forces in 1900 the organization ended its operations.

Modern period

Ottoman rule came to an end in the First Balkan War of 1912–13, when Montenegro took control of the city on 28 October 1912. On 8 January 1916, during World War I, Austria-Hungary took the city. Peja was taken by Serbian forces on 17 October 1918. After World War I, the city became part of Yugoslavia (at first officially called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). Between 1931 and 1941 the city was part of Zeta Banovina.

During World War II Peja was occupied by the Italian puppet state of