History
[edit] 14th century
The
Dečani Charter from 1330 contained a detailed list of households and chartered villages in
Metohija and northwestern
Albania:
3 of 89 settlements were
Albanian, the other being non-Albanian. Out of the 2,166 farming homesteads and 2,666 houses in cattle-grazing land, 44 were registered as
Albanian (
1,8%). The rest were registered as
Slavic, mostly
Serbian Orthodox. The non-Serbian population of Kosovo didn't exceed
2% by the end of the
14th century.
[edit] 15th century
1455: Turkish cadastral tax census (defter)[12] of the
Brankovic dynasty lands (covering 80% of present-day
Kosovo) recorded 480 villages, 13,693 adult males, 12,985 dwellings, 14,087 household heads (480 widows and 13,607 adult males). Totally there were around 75,000 inhabitants in 590 villages comprising modern-day Kosovo. By ethnicity:
- 12,985 Serb dwellings present in all 480 villages and towns
- 75 Vlach dwellings in 34 villages
- 46 Albanian dwellings in 23 villages
- 17 Bulgarian dwellings in 10 villages
- 5 Greek dwellings in Lauša, Vučitrn
- 1 Jewish dwelling in Vučitrn
- 1 Croat dwelling
1487: A census of the House of Branković
- City of Ipek - 68% Serbs
- 121 Christian household
- 33 Moslem households
- 131 Christian household of which 52% in Suho Grlo were Serbs
- 6,124 Christian housings (99%)
- 55 Moslem houses (1%)
[edit] 17th - 18th century
The
Great Turkish War of
1683-
1699 between the
Ottomans and the
Habsburgs led to the flight of a substantial part of
Kosovan Serbian population to
Austrian held
Vojvodina and the
Military Frontier - about 60-70,000 Serb refugees total settled in the Habsburg Monarchy in that time of whom many were from Kosovo. Following this an influx of
Muslim Albanian[13] from the highlands (
Malesi) occurred, mostly into
Metohija. The process continued in 18th century.
[13]
The same was repeated during the Second Migration of Serbs in
1737.
[edit] 19th century
Ethnographic map of the Balkans and west Asia Minor,
Atlas Général Vidal-Lablache, Paris, 1898
19th century data about the population of
Kosovo tend to be rather conflicting, giving sometimes numerical superiority to the
Serbs and sometimes to the
Albanians. The Ottoman statistics are regarded as unreliable, as the empire counted its citizens by religion rather than nationality, using birth records rather than surveys of individuals.
A study in 1838 by an Austrian physician, dr.
Joseph Müller found
Metohija to be mostly Slavic (Serbian) in character.
[14] Müller gives data for the three counties (
Bezirke) of
Prizren,
Peć and
Đakovica which roughly covered
Metohija, the portion adjacent to Albania and most affected by Albanian settlers. Out of 195,000 inhabitants in Metohija, Müller found:
Müller's observations on towns:
Map published by French ethnographer
G. Lejean[15] in 1861 shows that Albanians lived on around 57% of the territory of today's province while a similar map, published by British travellers
G. M. Mackenzie and
A. P. Irby[15] in 1867 shows slightly less; these maps don't show which population was larger overall.
A study done in 1871 by
Austrian colonel
Peter Kukulj[16] for the internal use of the
Austro-Hungarian army showed that the mutesarifluk of
Prizren (corresponding largely to present-day Kosovo) had some 500,000 inhabitants, of which:
Miloš S. Milojević travelled the region in
1871-
1877 and left accounts which testify that
Serbs were majority population, and were predominant in all cities, while
Albanians were minority and lived mostly in villages.
[17] According to his data,
Albanians were majority population in southern
Drenica (
Muslim Albanians), and in region around
Djakovica (
Catholic Albanians), while the city was majorly Serbian. He also recorded several settlements of
Turks,
Romas and
Circassians.
It is estimated that around 400,000
[18] Serbs were cleansed out of the
Vilayet of Kosovo between 1876 and 1912 , especially during the
Greek-Ottoman War in
1897.
[19]
Maps published by German historian
Kiepert[15] in
1876,
J. Hahn[15] and Austrian consul
K. Sax,
[15] show that
Albanians live on most of the territory of today's province, however they don't show which population is larger. According to these, the regions of
Kosovska Mitrovica and
Kosovo Polje were settled mostly by
Serbs, whereas most of the terrirory of western and eastern parts of today's province was settled by
Muslim Albanians.
An Austrian statistics
[20] published in 1899 estimated:
At the end of the 19th century, Spiridon Gopchevich, an Austrian traveller - comprised a statistics and published them in Vienna. They established that Prizren had 60,000 citizens of whome 11,000 were Christian Serbs and 36,000 Moslem Serbs. The remaining population were Turks, Albanians, Tzintzars and Roma. For Pec he said that it had 2,530 households of which 1,600 were Mohammedan, 700 Christian Serb, 200 Catholic Albanian and 10 Turkish.
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