page_title: History of Serbia
section_title: Ottoman rule
hierarchical_section_title: History of Serbia / Early modern history / Ottoman rule
context_page_description: The history of Serbia covers the historical development of Serbia and of its predecessor states, from the early Stone Age to the present state, as well as that of the Serbian people and of the areas they ruled historically. The scope of Serbian habitation and rule has varied much through the ages, and, as a result, the history of Serbia is similarly elastic in what it includes.
  Slavs settled the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries, out of which settlement the First Serbian Principality of the Vlastimirovići emerged. It evolved into a Grand Principality by the 11th century, and in 1217 the Kingdom and national church were established, under the Nemanjići. In 1345 the Serbian Empire was established: it spanned a large part of the Balkans. In 1540 the Ottoman Empire annexed Serbia.
  The Serbian realms disappeared by the mid-16th century, torn by domestic feuds and overcome by Ottoman conquest. The success of the Serbian revolution against Ottoman rule in 1817 marked the birth of the Principality of Serbia, which achieved de facto independence in 1867 and finally gained recognition by the Great Powers in the Berlin Congress of 1878.
context_section_description: Medieval Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Zeta lasted until 1463, 1483, and 1496 respectively. A Serbian principality was restored a few years after the fall of the Serbian Despotate by the Branković dynasty in what is now Vojvodina. It was ruled by exiled Serbian despots and nobles, existing until 1540 as a Hungarian vassal, when it fell to the Ottomans. The residence of the despots was Kupinik (modern Kupinovo). The Despots were: Vuk Grgurević-Branković (1471–1485), Đorđe Branković (1486–1496), Jovan Branković (1496–1502), Ivaniš Berislavić (1504–1514), Stjepan Berislavić (1520–1535), Radič Božić (1527–1528, Zapolya faction's pretender), and Pavle Bakić (1537). Stevan Berislavić moved in 1522 to Slavonia, since Kupinik was seized by the Ottoman forces.
  Many Serbs were recruited during the devshirme system, a form of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, in which boys from Balkan Christian families were forcibly converted to Islam and trained for infantry units of the Ottoman army known as the Janissaries.
  From the 14th century onward an increasing number of Serbs began migrating to the north to the region today known as Vojvodina, which was under the rule of the Kingdom of Hungary in that time. The Hungarian kings encouraged the immigration of Serbs to the kingdom, and hired many of them as soldiers and border guards. During the struggle between the Ottoman Empire and Hungary, this Serb population performed an attempt of the restoration of the Serbian state. In the Battle of Mohács on 29 August 1526, Ottoman Empire defeated the Hungarian army. Soon after the battle, the leader of Serbian mercenaries in Hungary, Jovan Nenad, established his rule in what is now Vojvodina. He created an ephemeral independent state, with Subotica as its capital. King John of Hungary defeated Jovan Nenad in 1527.
  European powers, and Austria in particular, fought many wars against the Ottoman Empire, sometimes with assistance from Serbs. During the Austrian–Ottoman War (1593–1606), in 1594, some Serbs participated in an uprising in Banat—the Pannonian part of the Ottoman Empire, and Sultan Murad III retaliated by burning the relics of St. Sava. Austria established troops in Herzegovina but when peace was signed by Ottoman Empire and Austria, Austria abandoned to Ottoman vengeance. This sequence of events became customary for the centuries that followed.
  During the Great War (1683–90) between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League—created with the sponsorship of the Pope and including Austria, Poland and Venice—these three powers as means of divide and conquer strategy, incited including Serbs to rebel against the Ottoman authorities and soon uprisings and terrorism spread throughout the western Balkans: from Montenegro and the Dalmatian Coast to the Danube basin and Old Serbia (Macedonia, Raška, Kosovo and Metohija). However, when the Austrians started to pull out of the Ottoman region, they invited Austrian-loyal people to come north with them into Hungarian territories. Having to choose between Ottoman reprisal or living in Hungary, some Serbs abandoned their homesteads and headed north led by patriarch Arsenije Čarnojević.
  Another important episode in the history of the region took place in 1716–18, when the territories ranging from Dalmatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Belgrade and the Danube basin became the battleground for a new Austria-Ottoman war launched by Prince Eugene of Savoy. Some Serbs sided once again with Austria. After a peace treaty was signed in Požarevac, the Ottomans lost all its possessions in the Danube basin, as well as today's northern Serbia and northern Bosnia, parts of Dalmatia and the Peloponnesus.  Hacı Mustafa Pasha was the military governor of Belgrade from 1793 to 1801. Unlike most senior Ottoman appointees he was not a member of the wealthy and militarily powerful ayan class of local notables. Instead he was a career bureaucrat who feuded with the ayan. Sultan Selim III (r. 1789–1807) wanted to recentralize provincial governance but this experiment turned out badly because of the alliance between the ayan and the corr
caption: The 1456 Siege of Belgrade by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II
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