"Despite its intermittent civil wars and invasions, Bosnia had achieved
real prosperity during the high middle ages. The key to its wealth
was
mining: copper and silver at Kresevo and Fojnica; lead at Olovo; gold,
silver and lead at Zvornik; and above all, silver at Srebrenica. A
Roman
gold mine at Krupa (north-east of Gornji Vakuf) may have functioned
through
the middle ages. In the late 13th or early 14th century the first German
miners from Hungary and Transylvania, known as 'Saxons' (Sasi), had
arrived
in Bosnia and begun to exploit its mineral wealth. More Saxons arrived
in
the 14th century, when Stephen Kotromanic and King Tvrtko encouraged
the
development of mining. The mines were privately owned by the local
landowner, and managed by the Saxons, who were allowed by law to cut
wood
in the forests and make mining settlements wherever there was ore.
Some of
the Saxons became important figures: one whose name appears frequently
in
the records, Hans Sasinovic (Sasi-novic = 'son of the Saxon'), was
granted
a large land-holding 'in perpetuity' and was sent several times to
Ragusa
(Dubrovnik) as a representative of King Tvrtko. Gold was being ex-ported
as early as 1339. Lead finest medieval and renaissance Italian churches
must have had Bosnian lead on their roofs. There was also some extraction
of copper. But the greatest source of wealth was silver, and Srebrenica
(which means 'Silver'- its Latin name was 'Argentaria') became the
most
important mining and trading town in the whole region west of Serbia.
When
it first appears in the records in 1376, it was already a major commercial
centre, with a prominent Ragusan colony. Ragusans had a special monopoly
of
the trade in silver within Bosnia, and all exports of metals via the
coast
went through Ragusa anyway. In return, the Ragusans imported finished
goods such as high-quality textiles into Bosnia; and since by 1422
Bosnia
and Serbia together were yielding more than a fifth of Europe's entire
production of silver, there were plenty of rich Bosnians who could
afford
to buy." (pp. 24-25)
Medieval Srebrenica was protected by a fort built by the Bosnian kings
to
defend the mine, apparently erected in the fourteenth century and
subsequently strengthened and extended. It was taken by the Otto-mans
in
1463. There are references to a Franciscan monastery which existed
there in
1387 with a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, single-nave Gothic
basilica. The monastery continued in existence until the second half
of
the 16th century. Another Catholic church, a single-nave church dedicated
to St. Nicholas, is mentioned as existing in 1395; it was later turned
into a mosque. Following the Ottoman conquest in the 1460s, many
Catholics emigrated from northeastern Bosnia, but five out of the ten
Franciscan monasteries in the area continued in operation into the
sixteenth century. Sources reveal that conversion to Islam picked up
in
the 1500s: the whole area was roughly one-third Muslim by 1533, and
40 per
cent Muslim by 1548. Towns were usually more Islamized than the
countryside, but Srebrenica, with its large Catholic German and Ragusan
population, was still two-thirds Catholic in the mid-sixteenth century.
By
the seventeenth century, however, most of the town's population had
converted to Islam.
According to the traveler Evliya Celebi, who visited Srebrenica in the
mid-1600s, the town had 800 houses with tiled roofs in six neighbourhoods
(mahala), each with its own mosque. Architecturally and culturally
the
most important mosque in Srebrenica was the Bijela ('White') mosque,
adjacent to a much revered Muslim cemetery where townspeople recited
prayers every Friday for the repose of those who had fallen in battle.
There was also an inn (han) for travelers, 70 shops and one Turkish
bath.
The medieval fortress (Stari Grad), a five-sided castle on top of a
red
cliff overlooking the town, had been damaged during the Ottoman conquest,
but had been repaired by order of Sultan Bayezid II. At the time of
Evliya
Celebi's visit, the Ottoman frontier had shifted to distant Hungary,
but
the fort was still guarded by a garrison of 50 local men. In the eighteenth
century, the frontier moved closer once again, and a new Ottoman fortress
was built to defend the town (in 1832, it was equipped with 87 cannons).
Although mining had been on the decline for some time, the population
of
Srebrenica and its surroundings had grown and an Ottoman yearbook from
the
middle of the 19th century lists 19 mosques, 32 schools, 22 inns and
an
Ottoman bridge on the Drina near Srebrenica. Baedeker's 1905 Guide
to
Austria-Hungary lists Srebrenica as a picturesque stop along the road
from
Zvornik to Sarajevo, with 15,000 inhabitants, a ruined medieval castle,
and silver mines dating back to the time of the Roman Empire.
The
principal monuments of Bosnian Muslim architecture extant in the town
of
Srebrenica and its surroundings as of April 1992 are listed in:
Amir Pasic, Islamic Architecture in Bosnia-Hercegovina (Istanbul, 1994),
pp. 222-223.
END