Novi Pazar (Serbian Cyrillic: Нови Пазар) is a city and municipality located in the Raška District of Serbia at 43.15° North, 20.52"° East, in the geographical region of Sandžak. According to the official census in 1991, the municipality of Novi Pazar had 85,249 inhabitants.
Name
Its name means "a new bazaar" in the local language (which is referred to as Serbian language by the Serb Christian inhabitants of the area, and Bosniak by most of the Muslim inhabitants). The term is derived ultimately from Persian words "bazar" ("bazaar" in English) and nov ("new").
Geography
Novi Pazar is the main economic and cultural centre of the Sandžak region (with Bijelo Polje in Montenegro after it), located in the valleys of the Jošanica, Raška, Deževska, and Ljudska rivers, at the elevation of 496m. It is surrounded by the high lands of Golija and Rogozna mountains, as well as the Pešter Plateau. The total area of about 100 settlements of the municipality is 742km2.
History
Novi Pazar was founded in 1459-1461 by Isa-beg Isaković, who was also the founder of the city of Sarajevo. The first written document which mention Novi Pazar dates back to the 15th century, and describes the decision of Ragusan Council to appoint a consul in this town. That reinforces the idea that the town was already developed back then, thanks to its outstanding geographic position, as it was at the intersection of important roads leading to Ragusa (Dubrovnik), Niš, Sofia, Constantinople, Salonica (Thessaloniki), Sarajevo, Belgrade, and Budapest. Many authors wrote about Novi Pazar and Evliya Celebi noted that it was one of the biggest towns in the Balkans in the 17th century.
The city was the capital of the Ottoman sanjak of Novibazar that existed between the 15th and the 20th century. The father of the famous Ragusan (Dubrovnik) scientist Ruđer Bošković from the 18th and 19th centuries, migrated from Dubrovnik and came to Novi Pazar, where he spent the last years of his life.
The name Novi Pazar (then, Novibazar) entered the world encyclopædias as a synonym for the Sandžak region in 1878, the year when the Congress of Berlin designated the entire region as "corpus separatum" named Sanjak of Novi Pazar. The Sanjak of Novi Pazar was occupied and administred by Austria-Hungary from 1878 to 1908. In 1908 it was returned to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled this territory until it was lost to Serbia in 1912 during the First Balkan War. After World War I, the town of Novi Pazar rapidly lost its importance.
Population
According to the 1991 census data, the population of the Novi Pazar municipality was 85,249 people, and it was composed of:
Muslims by nationality (75.37%)
Serbs and Montenegrins (22.63%)
Others.
According to the 2002 census data, the population of the Novi Pazar municipality was 85,996 people, and it was composed of:
Bosniaks = 65,593 (76.28%)
Serbs = 17,599 (20.47%)
Muslims by nationality = 1,599 (1.86%)
Others.
According to the data of Red Cross and NGOs, the town hosts about 6,000 refugees from Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia, and Croatia. Most of those who in 1991 census declared themselves as Muslims by nationality, in the next census in 2002 declared themselves as Bosniaks, while the smaller number of them still declare themselves as Muslims by nationality.
Surroundings
The old Serb Orthodox monastery of Sopoćani, the foundation of St. King Uroš I, built in the second half of the 13th century and located west of Novi Pazar, is a World Heritage Site since 1979 accompanying with Stari Ras (Old Ras), a medieval capital of the Serbian great župan Stefan Nemanja. |