Sarajevo

Sarajevo (sâr'əyā`vō), city (1991 est. pop. 529,000), capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the Miljacka River. An important industrial and railway center, its industries include food and tobacco processing and furniture manufacturing. Lignite and iron ore are mined nearby. The city is the seat of an Orthodox Eastern metropolitan, a Roman Catholic archbishop, and the chief ulema of Bosnia's Muslims, who constituted about 50% of the population before the city was torn apart by war in 1992. Sarajevo has a university (founded in 1946), several Muslim seminaries, and various institutes of higher education. It is noted for its Muslim architecture, including its Turkish marketplace and more than 100 mosques, the most important one dating from 1450.

Founded in 1263, Sarajevo, then a citadel known as Vrh-Bosna, fell to the Turks in 1429 and was renamed Bosna-Saraj, or Bosna-Seraj. The town established around the citadel became an important Turkish military and commercial center and reached the peak of its prosperity in the 16th cent. The Congress of Berlin (1878) gave Sarajevo and the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary, where it remained until its incorporation in 1918 into Yugoslavia. The city was a center of the Serbian nationalist movement. The assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife on June 28, 1914, was an immediate cause of World War I. Sarajevo was the scene of several important battles between Allied resistance fighters and the Germans in World War II, during which the city sustained considerable damage. In 1984 the city was host to the Winter Olympics.

Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia in Oct., 1991. Immediately following the international recognition of the republic's independence in Apr., 1992, the country's Serbs and Croats, backed respectively by Serbia and Croatia, began to claim large chunks of the country's territory. Sarajevo, though remaining largely under Bosnian government control, was under siege from Serbs in the surrounding hills and suburbs until 1996. The city sustained considerable damage to its infrastructure due to shelling, and many residents were killed. As the fighting ended and government control was reestablished (1996) over the city and suburbs, large numbers of Serbs fled. The damaged Oslobodenje newspaper tower is preserved as a memorial to the civil war.

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Sarajevo

City (pop., 1997 est.: 360,000), capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the Turks invaded in the late 15th century, it developed as a trading centre and stronghold of Muslim culture. From 1878 it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (see Austria-Hungary). In 1914 Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist, which action precipitated World War I. After Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, it became a focal point of fierce civil war as Serb militias drove thousands of Bosnian Muslims from the countryside to take refuge in the city (see Bosnian conflict). Its pre-civil war industries included a brewery, furniture factory, tobacco factory, and automobile plant. It was the host of the 1984 Winter Olympic Games and is the centre of a road network. A rail connection to the Adriatic Sea was damaged during fighting in the 1990s but is now operational. Sarajevo retains a Muslim character, with many mosques and an ancient marketplace.

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Sarajevo, Serajevo

the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina: developed as a Turkish town in the 15th century; capital of the Turkish and Austro-Hungarian administrations in 1850 and 1878 respectively; scene of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, precipitating World War I; besieged by Bosnian Serbs (1992--95). Pop.: 603 000 (2005 est.)