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Early Medieval Hum and Bosnia ca 450 1200 Beyond
Myths 1st Edition Danijel Džino Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Danijel Džino
ISBN(s): 9781032047935, 1032047933
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Year: 2023
Language: english
Early Medieval Hum and Bosnia,
ca. 450–1200

This book explores social transformations which led to the establishment of

medieval Hum (future Herzegovina) and Bosnia in the period from ca. 450 to
1200 AD using the available written and material sources. It follows social
and political developments in these historical regions from the last centuries
of Late Antiquity, through the social collapse of the seventh and eighth cen-
turies, and into their new medieval beginnings in the ninth century.
Fragmentary and problematic sources from this period were, in the past,
often used to justify modern political claims to these contested territories and
incorporate them into the ‘national biographies’ of the Croats, Serbs and
Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), or to support the ‘Yugoslavizing’ and other
ideological discourses.
The book goes beyond ideological and national mythologemes of the past
in order to provide a new historical narrative that brings more light to this
region placed on the frontiers of both the medieval West and the Byzantine
empire. It provides new views of the period between ca. 450 and 1200 for the
parts of Western Balkans and Eastern Adriatic, brings the most recent local
historical and archaeological research to the Anglophone readership and
contributes to the scholarship of the late antique and early medieval
Mediterranean study of this very poorly known area.
The book is intended for academic audiences interested in history and
archaeology of the Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages, but also to all
those interested in the general history of Herzegovina, Bosnia, Dalmatia and
the Balkans.

Danijel Džino is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and

Archaeology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. His publications
include: From Justinian to Branimir: The Making of the Middle Ages in
Dalmatia (2021), Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations
in Post-Roman Dalmatia (2010) and Illyricum in Roman Politics, 229 BC–AD
68 (2010).
Studies in Medieval History and Culture

Recent titles include

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Early Medieval Hum and Bosnia, ca. 450–1200

Beyond Myths
Danijel Džino

For more information about this series, please visit:

https://www.routledge.com/Studies-in-Medieval-History-and-Culture/
book-series/SMHC
Early Medieval Hum and
Bosnia, ca. 450–1200
Beyond Myths

Danijel Džino
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Danijel Džino
The right of Danijel Džino to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accord-
ance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permis-
sion in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Džino, Danijel, author.
Title: Early medieval Hum and Bosnia, c.450-1200 : beyond myths / Danijel
Džino.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Series:
Studies in medieval history and culture | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022060301 (print) | LCCN 2022060302 (ebook) | ISBN
9781032047928 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032047935 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003194705 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Herzegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina)--History--To 1500. |
Bosnia and Herzegovina--History--To 1463. | Herzegovina (Bosnia and
Herzegovina)--Antiquities. | Bosnia and Herzegovina--Antiquities. |
Herzegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina)--Historiography. | Bosnia and
Herzegovina--Historiography.
Classification: LCC DR1775.H47 D95 2023 (print) | LCC DR1775.H47 (ebook)
| DDC 949.742/01--dc23/eng/20221220
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022060301
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022060302
ISBN: 978-1-032-04792-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-04793-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19470-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003194705
Typeset in Times New Roman
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
Contents

List of Figures viii

List of Maps ix
Acknowledgments x
List of Abbreviations xi

Introduction 1
Terminology 4
Overview of the chapters 4
Notes 7

1 Setting the stage 8

Geography 8
Hum 8
Bosnia 11
Hum and Bosnia as contested lands 13
Sources 17
Late Antiquity and Dark Ages 18
Early medieval sources 19
De Administrando Imperio and Historia Veneticorum 21
The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja 23
Notes 26

2 (A long overdue) essay on historiography and archaeology

of late antique and early medieval Hum and Bosnia 29
Historiography 30
Beginnings 30
The ‘Long’ nineteenth century, until 1914 32
The ‘Short’ twentieth century, until 1991 35
Most recent scholarship 43
vi Contents
Archaeology 46
The colonial period 47
The Yugoslav period 48
Post-Yugoslav era 51
Conclusion 52
Notes 53

3 The Prelude: making of imperial society 57

Making of Roman society 58
Beginning of Late Antiquity 66
Conclusion 70
Notes 71

4 ‘Long’ sixth century (ca. 450–630) 74

Historical narrative 75
Christianity 79
Burials 82
Fortifications and settlement patterns 88
Connectivity and production 99
Conclusion 102
Notes 104

5 The Dark Age interlude (ca. 630–800) 111

The question of collapse 111
Dark Ages 116
Conclusion 120
Notes 122

6 ‘The force awakening’: the ninth century 124

Historical picture 124
Ethnography and political architecture 126
Material evidence 135
Hum 135
Bosnia 143
Conclusion 157
Notes 158

7 The lords of Hum (900–1200) 165

Duke Michael, son of Bouseboutzsis 165
Hum from Michael to the Nemanjićs 169
 Contents vii
Material evidence 180
Hum: from ethnic community to medieval polity 187
Notes 188

8 ‘Good ol’ days of ban Kulin’: the birth of

Bosnia (900–1200) 193
The mists of early medieval Bosnia 193
Between the Hungarians and Byzantines 197
Ban Kulin 203
Material evidence 210
Bosnia: making of medieval community 216
Notes 217

Conclusion 221
Note 223

Bibliography 224
Primary sources 224
Modern literature 227
Index 266
Figures

3.1 Inscription of T. Flavius Valens from Breza (photo: A. Lepić).

© Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo 59
3.2 Silvanus and Diana from Ograja-Putovići (photo: Ikbal Coga).
© Muzej grada Zenice, Zenica 65
4.1 Plan of Mogorjelo castellum with chronological phases and
graves, from Džino forthcoming, © author, after plan from
Basler 1958 and data from Dyggve and Wetters (1966).
Numeration of graves in numbers is taken from Dyggve
and Wetters, while numeration in letters is added by author 86
4.2 Bent-stem fibulae: (a, b) Debelo Brdo; (c) Mogorjelo (photo:
A. Lepić). © Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo 91
4.3 (a) Zoomorphic belt buckle from Proboj-Ljubuški;
(b) bird-shaped fibula from Grude (photo: A. Lepić).
© Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo 97
6.1 Warrior grave in Vukodol with reconstruction, from Milošević
and Peković (2022: 55), pic. 24. © Ante Milošević 132
6.2 Some finds from Grave 112 in Mihaljevići cemetery: (a) cast
grape-shaped earring; (b) glass-paste necklace (photo: A. Lepić).
© Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo 144
6.3 The tombstone of Great Kaznac Nespina (photo: A. Lepić).
© Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo 148
6.4 Early medieval inscription from Breza 1 (photo: A. Lepić).
© Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo 150
6.5 Plan of Breza 2. © Author after the data from Bojanovski,
Basler and Sergejevski’s plan of the building published
in Bojanovski and Čelić (1969: 9) 151
6.6 Breza 2 building – current, conservated state and reconstruction,
from Milošević (2011: 128, fig. 143). © Ante Milošević 153
6.7 Unpublished inscription from Breza (photo: A. Lepić).
© Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo 155
8.1 Inscription of ban Kulin from Biskupići (photo: A. Lepić).
© Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo 208
Maps

1.1 Hum and Bosnia in modern geography 10

3.1 The sites from the Roman era (future Bosnia) 60
3.2 The sites from the Roman era (future Hum) 61
4.1 The sites from the Late Antiquity (future Bosnia) 76
4.2 The sites from the Late Antiquity (future Hum) 77
5.1 The sites from the Dark Ages (future Bosnia) 114
5.2 The sites from the Dark Ages (future Hum) 115
6.1 Political situation before 950, according to
De Administrando Imperio 128
6.2 The sites from the ninth century (Bosnia) 136
6.3 The sites from the ninth century (Hum) 137
7.1 Political communities in the mid-twelfth century, with
Hum’s županijas from CPD 176
7.2 The sites in Hum (900–1200) 181
8.1 The sites in Bosnia (900–1200) 211
Acknowledgments

I am immensely grateful to Routledge editor Michael Greenwod for initiating

and supporting the idea for this book. The draft of the manuscript was read
by Florin Curta and Mladen Ančić, who both offered great ideas and con-
structive criticism. Whatever errors remain are my own. I am also grateful to
the Zemaljski Muzej u Sarajevu (Mirsad Sijarić, Ana Marić, Adisa Lepić),
Zenica City Museum (Adnadin Jašarević) and Ante Milošević for images,
and Ivan Basić and Nikola Jakšić for help with inscriptions. My gratitude
also goes to Ewan Coopey, a young scholar in Roman Dalmatia who metic-
ulously and eloquently edited the manuscript.
This work has been supported by the “Research Cooperability” Program
of the Croatian Science Foundation, funded by the European Union through
the European Social Fund under the Operational Programme Efficient
Human Resources 2014–2020, within the project PZS-2019-02-1624 –
GLOHUM – Global Humanisms: New Perspectives on the Middle Ages
(300–1600).
Finally, for everything I am grateful to my family – to my wife Irena Majić,
long-distance daughter Ariel Džino and most of all to Judita Nemira Džino,
who will very soon became aware that she carries deep inside herself parts of
both Hum and Bosnia.
This book is dedicated to my mother Ljubica Ostojić, grandmother Kosara
Ostojić and her ‘prince Vladimir’ – my grandfather Nenad Ostojić. May they
rest in peace.
Abbreviations

(Journals, Book Series, Institutions, Publishers)

ActIllyr Acta Illyrica

AE L’Année Epigraphique
AlBiH Arheološki leksikon Bosne i Hercegovine, 3 vols. ed. B.
̌
Cović (Sarajevo: ZMBiH, 1988)
AMS Arheološki muzej u Splitu
AMZg Arheološki muzej u Zagrebu
ANUBiH Akademija nauka i umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine,
Sarajevo
ArchAdr Archeologia Adriatica
AP Arheološki pregled
ArhVest Arheološki vestnik
ARR Arheološki radovi i rasprave
BAR British Archaeological Reports – International Series,
Oxford
BASD Bulletino di archaeologia e storia delmata
CEFR Collection de l’École française de Rome
CFHB Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae:
- SB (Series Berolinensis)
- SP (Series Parisiensis)
CSR Croatian Studies Review
DSA Dubrovnik State Archive
ECEE East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages,
450–1450
Fenomen “krstjani” Fenomen “krstjani” u srednjovjekovnoj Bosni i Humu:
zbornik radova (Sarajevo & Zagreb: Institut za istoriju
& Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2005)
GodCBI Godišnjak Centra za balkanološka ispitivanja
GZM Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja u Bosni i Hercegovini (series
1, 1889–1943)
GZMS Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja u Sarajevu: Archaeology
(series 2, 1946–)
xii Abbreviations
GZMS: H & E Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja u Sarajevu: History and
Ethnography (series 2, 1946–)
HAD Hrvatsko arheološko društvo
HAM Hortus artium medievalium
HAG Hrvatski arheološki godišnjak
Hercegovina published by Museum of Hercegovina in Mostar
Hercegovina (ser. 2) published by University of Mostar (1995–2011)
Hercegovina, n.s. published by University of Mostar (2015–)
HiK Hrvati i Karolinzi: Rasprave i vrela (Vol. 1); Hrvati i
Karolinzi: Katalog (Vol. 2), ed. A. Milošević (Split:
MHAS, 2000)
HistAnt Histria antiqua
HZ Historijski zbornik
JAZU/HAZU Jugoslavenska/Hrvatska akademija znanosti i
umjetnosti
JRA Journal of Roman Archaeology
LAA Late Antique Archaeology
LCL Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge MA)
MakPrim Makarsko primorje
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
MGH: AA MGH: Auctores Antiquissimi
MGH: EKA MGH: Epistolae Karolini Aevi
MGH: Epp. MGH: Epistolae
MGH: SS rer. Germ. MGH: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum
scholarum separatim editi
MHAS Muzej hrvatskih arheoloških spomenika u Splitu
MTA Magyar Tudományos Akadémia
OpArch Opuscula archaeologica (Zagreb)
PIAZ Prilozi Instituta za arheologiju u Zagrebu
PovPril Povijesni prilozi
PPUD Prilozi povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji
Radovi ZHP Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest
RFFZd Radovi Filozofskog fakulteta u Zadru
SHP Starohrvatska prosvjeta (series 3)
SMA Studia Mediterranea Archaeologica
VAHD/VAPD Vjesnik za arheologiju i historiju/povijest dalmatinsku
VAMZ Vjesnik Arheološkog muzeja u Zagrebu (series 3)
Vat. Lat. Vaticanus Latinus
Vat. Urb. Lat. Vaticanus Urbinas Latinus
WMBH Wissenschaftliche Mitteilungen aus Bosnien und der
Herzegowina (1893–1910)
ZRVI Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta
ZMS Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo
Introduction

This book explores the establishment and early development of two medieval
political communities, Hum and Bosnia, until 1200. These medieval ‘lands’
developed on the ruins of the ancient and late antique province of Dalmatia
around the lower stream of the river Neretva and upper stream of the river
Bosna. As we will see in the Chapter 1, the eventful history of this part of the
world was preserved in the names of several territorial and political entities
throughout the period of the Ottoman rule from the fifteenth to the later
nineteenth centuries, making them useful building blocks for developing a
new political concept of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is synonymous with
the now-independent country of the same name. However, it cannot be over-
stated that the territory of medieval Hum (and its late medieval reincarna-
tion, Herzegovina) and Bosnia are not identical to the territory of modern
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thus, whilst they overlap to a certain degree, it
would be methodologically wrong to think of this book as dealing with late
antique or early medieval Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This is my third monograph related to the development of medieval society
on the eastern Adriatic coast and its hinterland. The first book (Becoming
Slav) laid down the theoretical foundations for explaining the transition and
social change from late antique to early medieval society in Dalmatia.1 It ques-
tioned whether this transformation could be better explained as an identity
shift, rather than use the prevalent notion of mass migration and settlement
of the Slavs in the seventh century. Based on these theoretical considerations,
the second book (From Justinian) examined the available archaeological,
epigraphic and written evidence in the period between the sixth and late ninth
centuries in Dalmatia in order to reconstruct the process of social transforma-
tion from late antique into medieval society and to outline its consecutive
phases.2 However, while trying to provide a picture of the transformations that
include the whole territory of late antique Dalmatia, the quantity and quality
of the available evidence inevitably drove my research focus towards the
coastal cities and their immediate hinterlands. Thus, these two previous stud-
ies were more concerned with the development of the early medieval duchy of
Dalmatia and Liburnia, later known as the duchy/kingdom of the Croats (or
kingdom of Dalmatia and Croatia). As such, other parts of late antique
Dalmatia consequentially received a more or less peripheral treatment.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003194705-1
2 Introduction
In order to gain a more complete understanding of how medieval society
in the eastern Adriatic and its hinterland developed, it is now necessary to
turn the focus towards areas for which available evidence is scarcer and where
the making of the Middle Ages was taking somewhat different directions.
The first area under consideration is most of modern Herzegovina, with the
addition of the coastal strip from the river Cetina to Dubrovnik, where
medieval sources recognize a well-defined political entity known as the Land
of Hum (terra del Chelm, Humska zemlja). Continental parts of this region
in the fifteenth century became integrated into a new political unit known as
Herzegovina (the land of the Herzog), as shown in Chapter 1. The second
region is the upper flow of the river Bosna in modern central Bosnia, which
represents the territorial and administrative core of the Bosnian banate,
which became a short-lived kingdom between 1377 and 1463.
The existing research on these medieval ‘lands’3 remains problematic
because of the lack of sources and the fact that the significance of both –
Hum and Bosnia – in the more recent national narratives of the Croats, Serbs
and Bosnian Muslims (from 1993 known as the Bosniaks) transforms them
into contested spaces used and abused as justification for modern political
claims.4 For that reason, the foundations of local historiographies, on which
inevitably rest modern scholarship, are riddled with nationalistic mythol-
ogemes. On the other hand, historiographic and archaeological research dur-
ing the times of the Federal Communist Yugoslavia (1945–1991) was affected
by ‘Yugoslavizing’ discourse that distorted the research of this period in
somewhat different ways. Bosnia and Herzegovina was a federal republic
with a particular function: to act as a buffer zone between Serbia and Croatia,
and to play the role of an integrative state-building medium within dominant
‘brotherhood-and-unity’ Communist Yugoslav ideology. Thus, as discussed
in Chapter 2, some interpretations of early medieval Hum and Bosnia in this
period projected Yugoslav ideological mythologemes into the past. As we will
see, in order to construct historical narratives for Hum and Bosnia, local
historiography5 traditionally relied on fragmentary, sometimes even partly
fictional, written sources with blatant disregard for archaeological evidence.
This provided a very blurry and unclear picture of the period under consid-
eration which slid into different ideological narratives. At the same time, the
early medieval history of these ‘lands’ is poorly known and mostly avoided in
the discussions outside the regional scholarship, with only a few notable
exceptions which will be also discussed.
However, the eastern Adriatic and its hinterland were an integral part of
the late antique and early medieval world, and both of these medieval ‘lands’
are no exception – they actively negotiated their position within the early
medieval interaction networks on the Byzantine north-western frontiers
before 1204. The ultimate aim of the book is to trace the formation and
shaping of these two medieval ‘lands’ and examine their place between early
medieval political forces in the Adriatic and the Adriatic hinterland, such as
the kingdoms and duchies of Croatia, Raška Serbia, Duklja, Hungary and
 Introduction 3
the Republic of Venice, as well as the Bulgar and Byzantine empires. The
main intention of the book is to go ‘beyond myths’ by providing a modern
assessment of the period, which utilizes archaeological and historical
sources to make a more reliable referential point for general histories of the
medieval west, east-central and south-eastern Europe, as well as the
Byzantine empire.6 It also aims to contribute to local historical narratives by
filling this blank spot with new interpretations based on more recent theo-
retical frameworks. Beyond these, rather obvious intentions, the book will
also assess whether the development of Hum and Bosnia contributed
towards the maintenance of cultural unity within post-Roman and early
medieval Dalmatia, or, instead, acted as an important step towards its
fragmentation.
In some ways, the area and period under consideration represent a ‘final
frontier’ for me, mostly on account of its frustrating lack of sources – both
written and archaeological. Only closer to the year 1200 does the number
of reliable written and epigraphic sources start to increase, and it is not
surprising that the later medieval period in both of these regions has
attracted disproportionally more attention. Thus, it is clear from the begin-
ning that this book will not be able to provide all the answers about social
transformations taking place in these six centuries in the same way as the
much-better-explored eastern Adriatic coast and the hinterland between
Split and Zadar. Still, my hope is that the present study will provide a reli-
able foundation for future research, especially in archaeology, as it is highly
unlikely that more high-quality written sources will be discovered in the
future.
The historical time span of the present study stretches from the mid-fifth
century all the way through to the end of the twelfth century. As with the two
previous books, I think that the development of medieval society within the
provincial boundaries of ancient Dalmatia, as well as in the whole of the
Balkan peninsula and central Europe, cannot be properly understood with-
out addressing the starting point of their societal transformations in Late
Antiquity. The mid-fifth century is thus taken as the convenient starting point
of this book, reviewing the (mostly archaeological) evidence from the very
end of Late Antiquity in the territories of future Hum and Bosnia. The end-
ing point of ca. 1200 is chosen for several reasons. On the one hand, at that
time, early medieval Hum appears as a fully formed medieval ‘land’ with
developed political institutions and a distinct regional and political identity,
regardless of who its present overlord was. On the other, at this period on the
Hungarian–Byzantine frontier, early medieval Bosnia also starts to shape
into a recognisable regional political force – one which will play an important
role in the later medieval period, especially after 1300. At the same time, the
turn of the thirteenth century is the period when the Byzantine empire, an
important outside player that significantly impacted early medieval politics,
permanently leaves the stage in this part of the Balkans after Crusaders sack
Constantinople in 1204.
4 Introduction
Terminology
It is necessary to provide here in very brief terms some information about the
terminology used in the book, keeping in mind those readers who might not
be too familiar with this part of the world. The local term ‘Hum’ is preferred
to the Latin Chelm for description of the early medieval Land of Hum, in the
same way the term Zahumlje is preferred to the Latin or Greek equivalent. In
the same manner, the terms ‘Humljani’ and ‘Zahumljani’ are used for the
local population as well as ‘Duklja/Dukljani’ for the Doclea/Docleans and
‘Travunjani’ for inhabitants of Travunia. The term ‘Herzegovina,’ which
overlaps in most parts with early medieval Hum, is used to depict a geopolit-
ical formation founded in the fifteenth century, and its later incarnations. The
situation with the term Bosnia is more complicated. This book uses the term
‘Bosnia and Herzegovina’ to refer to the modern political formation estab-
lished with Austro-Hungarian occupation in 1878, which was, with minor
changes, incorporated into the Yugoslav federation in 1945, and which
became an independent country in 1992. While Anglo-Saxon literature and
popular discourse often abbreviates Bosnia and Herzegovina into ‘Bosnia’
for brevity of expression, the elimination of Herzegovina in a local context
carries a very clear political message. As the majority of modern-day inhab-
itants of Herzegovina are Serbs and Croats, dropping ‘Herzegovina’ from the
name of the country in this way indicates one’s conscious or subconscious
affiliation with the political aims towards unitarization of the modern coun-
try and construction of a trans-ethnic ‘Bosnian’ identity.7 The term ‘Bosnia’
is applied here only to medieval contexts in reference to the distinct polity
(Bosnian banate, Bosnian kingdom), or in a narrower context in reference to
its central ‘land’ in the upper flow of the river Bosna, as described in Chapters
2 and 8. The only exceptions are the references to localities in ‘modern-day
Bosnia’ indicating common modern geographical understandings of Bosnia,
which is much wider than the original medieval Bosnian ‘land.’ In regard to
medieval epigraphy, the term ‘western Cyrillic’ is preferred, as it is more
inclusive than the other terms often used, such as: ‘Bosnian Cyrillic’ (bosa-
nčica), ‘Bosnian epigraphic Cyrillic’ or ‘Croatian Cyrillic’ (arvatica). Finally,
in regard to modern nations, the distinction is made between the Bosnian
Muslims and the post-1993 term ‘Bosniaks.’ While these terms depict the
same population with the same traditions, the official decision to change the
name consciously and unconsciously changed the strategies in which the dis-
course on this modern nation is self-constructed. For this reason, it would be
methodologically wrong to reflect the term ‘Bosniaks’ in the past, where it
had different meanings.

Overview of the chapters

Chapter 1 discusses the change in meanings of the terms ‘Hum-Herzegovina’
and ‘Bosnia’ throughout the medieval and modern historical contexts. It also
explains the significance of these regions in the modern national narratives of
 Introduction 5
the Croatians, Serbs and the Bosniaks, which are deeply embedded in the
existing historical interpretations on a local level. The chapter also presents
the most significant geographical features of these regions and their impact
on the availability of resources and connectivity. Finally, it outlines the most
significant written sources for the late antique and early medieval period,
with particular attention paid to the Byzantine treaty De Administrando
Imperio (DAI) from the mid-tenth century, The History of Venetians by John
the Deacon from the early eleventh century and the partly fictional Chronicle
of the Priest of Duklja (CPD) from the late twelfth century.
Chapter 2 provides a detailed overview of the existing scholarly research
on late antique and early medieval Hum and Bosnia before 1200. The first
part of the chapter outlines the historiographical development, from the first
important works of the seventeenth century. A particular emphasis is placed
upon the identification of the function scholarly works played within local
national narratives, as well as the treatment of this topic in works by scholars
outside the region. The second part of the chapter analyses archaeological
interpretations, from the most significant developmental phases of Austro-
Hungarian colonial archaeology until 1918, to the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav
periods.
Chapter 3 briefly overviews the period in which the areas around the upper
stream of the Bosna, and the areas around the lower stream of the Neretva,
transformed following the Roman conquest that ended with the closure of
the Batonian war in AD 9 and resulted in the establishment of the imperial
province of Dalmatia. The evidence highlights two different trajectories of
development: faster social change in the south; and slower, more gradual
change in the northern communities. Nevertheless, the outcome was the same
– by the fourth century, both areas were functioning as parts of the Dalmatian
provincial system and wider imperial social, political and economic systems.
The changes starting in the later fourth century and accelerating in the fifth
century are difficult to map on account of the lack of more precise dating
methods, but they do not appear so different from what was happening in the
rest of the empire, especially in its western regions.
Chapter 4 explores the evidence from the territory of future Hum and
Bosnia dating to Late Antiquity, after ca. 450. The purpose of the chapter is
to sketch social and political structures existing prior to the end of Late
Antiquity in this part of the Adriatic hinterland. As no specific narrative
written sources exist, aside from evidence concerned with existence of late
antique bishoprics in the sixth century, the chapter positions this part of
Dalmatia within a wider historical context and focuses on the available
archaeological evidence. Similarities in material culture in the period from ca.
450 to the Byzantine withdrawal in the 620s, and problems relating to precise
dating, provide grounds to methodologically define these 170 years in future
Hum and Bosnia as a separate chronological period: a ‘long’ sixth century.
The material evidence consulted in this chapter is dominated by the remains
of early Christian basilicas, burials and fortifications – which are analysed in
some detail to outline the social structure and economy of the region – along
6 Introduction
with numismatics and ceramic evidence for the importation of amphorae and
other pottery. As shown, both regions remain integrated in Dalmatian and
wider Mediterranean systems of exchange and elite social networks.
Chapter 5 will assess the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ starting with the Byzantine
withdrawal from the Dalmatian hinterland in the 620s and lasting until the
late eighth century. The period is extremely poorly documented, with no writ-
ten sources and very little material evidence that can be securely attested in
this era. As the chapter shows, the existing archaeological evidence from the
future Hum and Bosnia supports a picture of small, archaeologically invisi-
ble, local communities persisting in this period. The available archaeological
evidence for migration and settlement of outside migrant groups is almost
non-existent, especially before the end of the seventh century. This contra-
dicts the currently widely accepted notion that late antique Dalmatia was
settled by the Slavs in the seventh century, which is drawn from later written
sources such as the DAI from the mid-tenth century.
Chapter 6 maps the significant social changes, which start around 800.
These changes are detectable in the material record and evidenced by the
appearance of Carolingian-related material in parts of future Hum, as well
as contemporary renovations of central Bosnian basilicas from the late
antique era. This is followed by material evidence which indicates the appear-
ance of migrating groups, as well as interactions between the descendants of
the late antique populations in the region and these migrant groups through-
out the ninth century – interactions and movements which result in the
appearance and entrenchment of new elites by the end of the century. These
changes are viewed in a wider comparative perspective which considers the
social transformations and population movements taking place in other parts
of Dalmatia adjacent to the regions under consideration.
Chapter 7 provides an account of Hum from the times of the historically
attested duke Michael in the early tenth century to the disappearance of
Byzantium as a political actor from these areas after the death of Emperor
Manuel Comnenus. Specific attention is placed upon the integration of the
polity of the Narentani with the Zahumlje, and the position of this entity
between its neighbours: the Byzantines, Bulgars, Croats, Serbs and Dukljani.
The chapter investigates the sparse (and problematic) sources, such as De
Administrando Imperio, The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja, the problem-
atic charters of local rulers, the rare inscriptions in Latin or western Cyrillic
script and any other mention of the area in Byzantine, Venetian or other
sources. The archaeology of the area will be also used to fill in the gaps of the
written sources, with the chapter discussing churches, cemeteries and fortifi-
cations from this period.
Chapter 8 focuses on the modern-day upper flow region of the river Bosna,
which is the core of the medieval Bosnian banate and later kingdom from the
late ninth century to the reign of ban Kulin (before 1180–ca. 1204). The
scarce and fragmentary sources about the beginnings of this polity will be
analysed (DAI, CPD, Hungarian royal charters, Byzantine sources) in order
to grasp at the course of social transformation and the impact of the region’s
 Introduction 7
neighbours (Duklja, Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Byzantium). While more
complex social structures and social stratification are undoubtedly attested to
here in the material record of the ninth century, written and epigraphic
sources confirm them only in the twelfth century. Archaeological evidence
precisely dated to this period is less abundant than in Hum, but it does not
contradict the general impression that Bosnia developed as a typical medie-
val political community, not too different from the others in eastern Adriatic
hinterland.
The conclusion will overview the major findings from the preceding chap-
ters and underline commonalities and differences in social transformation
between this part of Dalmatia and neighbouring areas – especially the terri-
tory of the Dalmatian (Croat) duchy, later kingdom.

Notes
1 Dzino 2010a.
2 Džino 2021a.
3 The term ‘land’ used here is equivalent of the German terms Land and Landschaft,
depicting a medieval community capable of political action and bound by defined
territory and common legal and political structures – Brunner 1992: 194, 198;
Schenk 2001. It was successfully applied to the definition of medieval Bosnia and
Hum provided by Ančić 2001: 30–32, 147–149; 2015: 41–52. Mrgić (e.g. 2016:
169–170) defines the term in less convincing ways as economically self-sufficient
and geographically distinct territory.
4 Džaja 2005, 2012: 64–67.
5 The term ‘local historiography’ might be understood these days, by an overzeal-
ous reader, as a derogatory term. It is used here literally – to describe the study of
history in a geographically local context by (most frequently) Serbian, Croatian
and Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak historiography by an author who is proud to be
considered as part of this local historiography.
6 See Curta 2019: 5–11 on these geographical divisions.
7 See Ančić 2015a in English, and Žepić 2006 in Croatian.
1 Setting the stage

This chapter aims to position Hum and Bosnia in time and space by provid-
ing a short account of their geography, underlining their significance in later
historical narratives and giving a short outline of available sources for the
period between ca. 450 and 1200 which will be utilized in the book. These
areas constituted an important part of the Roman province of Dalmatia,
which was established in the first century AD and, with minor changes,
retained its administrative and cultural unity throughout the rest of Antiquity
and Late Antiquity. Future Hum and Bosnia also shared in their historical
experience of societal collapse in the seventh and eighth centuries, as well as
a recovery of complex social systems detectable from the late eighth and early
ninth centuries. From the ninth century, however, influenced by the wider
social networks they belonged to, both started to develop different sets of
social and political networks which led to the establishment of different but
interconnected regional and political identities that we recognize as the medi-
eval ‘lands’ of Hum and Bosnia. Due to complex historical developments
during the medieval and early modern eras, as well as a lack of reliable
sources, both regions became important elements in modern national and
ideological discourses, which became integrated into modern historical
interpretations.

Geography

Hum
The understanding of what constituted medieval Hum changed, to some
degree, throughout the medieval period, so it is not possible to come up with
some strictly defined borders that remain static throughout the centuries. For
the purpose of this book, Hum is considered to be a territory related to two
early medieval ethnonyms – the Zahumljani and Narentani – which at some
point of time grew into a distinct territorial unit enclosing a particular polit-
ical community known as Hum. The term ‘Hum’ was interchangeable in the
sources with the term ‘Zahumlje’ in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but
after the late twelfth century, Zahumlje falls out of use. This region encom-
passes the coastal strip from the modern-day Makarska riviera in Croatia, all
DOI: 10.4324/9781003194705-2
 Setting the stage 9
the way down to Dubrovnik, and outwards to the islands such as Hvar,
Korčula and Mljet. In the hinterland, Hum stretched across modern-day
Herzegovina on both sides of the river Neretva from the township of Imotski,
to the outskirts of Trebinje, then tracked northwards towards the plains
where modern Mostar is situated. This definition of Hum is not generally
accepted in scholarship, and the arguments for defining it this way are laid
out in Chapters 6 and 7. At some point, the coastal area of the Makarska
riviera below the Biokovo mountain chain developed a separate political–
territorial identity known as Krajina. The region is first mentioned in the
conclusions of the Split Council of 1185 when ‘Makarska and the whole of
Krajina’ (Mulcer et totam Crainam) are transferred to the Archbishopry of
Hvar. Krajina is first mentioned as a political entity within the Hungarian–
Croatian commonwealth (personal union) in the 1247 treaty between the
Republic of Dubrovnik and Krajina and its inhabitants: the Krajinani
( ).1
Early medieval Hum was positioned in the central part of the eastern
Adriatic coast and its deeper hinterland (Map 1.1). It spreads along two dis-
tinct geo-ecological zones – the Adriatic coast and its karst hinterland, which
are connected by alluvial plains around the lower stream of the river Neretva.
This in turn allows for an extension of the Mediterranean climate deeper
inland. The zones are sharply divided by the high-rising mountain chains of
the Dinaric Alps, making habitable areas in the coastal belt very narrow and
severely limiting their communication with the hinterland except through the
valley of Neretva. An important geographical feature is the peninsula of
Pelješac, which extends parallel with the coast for some 77 km. Pelješac is
surrounded by an archipelago of islands such as Mljet, Korčula, Hvar,
Lastovo and, further south, the Elaphite islands. It was an important strate-
gic point for controlling navigation in this part of the eastern Adriatic,
including towards the mouth of Neretva (the Neretva Channel). The river
Neretva, flowing into the Adriatic, represents the most significant geograph-
ical feature in this area. Its lower stream is characterized by alluvial plains
and a river delta covered by the wetlands. Drainage and melioration have
changed the landscape of the lower Neretva, which was, until the twentieth
century, covered with a network of interconnected small lakes and water-
ways. Today, only the Hutovo Blato marshes natural reserve remains – a
memory of this network of waterways and marshes.2 Neretva is navigable
some 20 km inland, but its valley provides a reliable land communication
route northwards towards the modern city of Mostar. North of Mostar there
is the impressive canyon of Neretva, which is the main communication route
in the area, with the upper flow of the Neretva and the Mt Ivan pass leading
into modern-day central Bosnia. Some of Neretva’s confluents, such as
Trebižat, connect this river with the limestone karst landscapes of continen-
tal Hum, which are characterized by alluvial depressions known as polje.
These plains are limited spatially by surrounding hills and mountains, while
seasonal flooding in their centres restricted habitation predominantly to the
edges of polje in pre-modern times.
 10 Setting the stage
Map 1.1 Hum and Bosnia in modern geography.
 Setting the stage 11
From this short overview, we can see that the territory of Hum could be
seen as a patchwork of fragmented landscapes unified by the river Neretva,
which acts as a central connecting feature. Aside from connectivity, this river
also provided important resources through the fertile alluvial plains in its
lower flow, as well as opportunities for the utilization of the further resources
provided by its wetlands and delta.3 The delta of the Neretva, in its pre-modern
state, also provided an important strategic advantage and shelter to the locals
who could navigate its complex waterways. It is not surprising that Narona,
originally the Greek trade emporium and later major urban centre of this
area during Roman times, was located in the lower Neretva, close to the mod-
ern town of Metković. This connectivity impacted on social complexity and
exchange in protohistorical times (from ca. the fifth century BC), with
Narona acting as a major redistribution area for exchange with the
Mediterranean world, together with the important indigenous port facility
Desilo in Hutovo Blato marshes, dateable to the last centuries BC.4 Further
afield from Neretva, Mediterranean cultural influences spread more slowly,
although the most recent surveys and excavations in the Trebižat valley indi-
cate more intense connections with the Mediterranean world in protohistory
than was previously thought.
The geography of the Hum’s coastal maritime zone imposed limits on the
volume of food production, which is assumed for the pre-modern period to
have been based on the traditional Mediterranean food cultures surrounding
olives, wine and the herding of small cattle. It is not surprising that in such
circumstances, local communities turned to the sea for the most efficient and
reliable medium of connectivity and resource acquisition. The strategic
importance of neighbouring islands is evidenced by the Greek colonization
of the islands of Hvar and Vis and the attempts to colonize Korčula in the
last centuries BC. Local populations also benefited from increased trade in
the protohistoric Adriatic, with select sources mentioning the ‘piracy’ of the
indigenous ‘Pleraei,’ probably located on the Pelješac peninsula, as well as
inhabitants from the islands of Korčula and Mljet, in the second and first
centuries BC. The question of how to assess these mentions of local ‘piracy’
is certainly a complex matter and will be revisited in Chapter 6, when the
maritime actions of the Narentani are discussed in greater detail.5

Bosnia
Similar to Hum, the understanding of what constituted medieval Bosnia
changed throughout the medieval period. Most authors agree that this term
expanded with the expansion of the early medieval Bosnian polity and that
in early medieval times it was applied to the territory in the upper flow of the
river Bosna roughly situated between the modern cities of Sarajevo, Zenica
and Travnik, with its centre surrounding the town of Visoko. Later docu-
ments show that the seat of the Bosnian ruler was located in this ‘original’
Bosnia, as well as the seats of the Bosnian Great Judge, Great Kaznac (cam-
erarius, financial officer) and the Great Bosnian Duke. It is also possible that
12 Setting the stage
this territory retained a level of continuity of local institutions into later peri-
ods as well as attained a special place within the medieval Bosnian polity.6 All
of this justifies seeing this area as evolving into a medieval community bound
by a defined territory and common legal and political structures. In other
words, this was another medieval ‘land’ in the eastern Adriatic hinterland
similar to Hum. These matters will be addressed in greater detail in Chapters
6 and 8, so let us here focus on geographical definition of the ‘land’ of Bosnia,
its degree of intra- and inter-connectivity, and the availability of resources.
This is a wooded mountainous area in the central region of the Dinaric
mountain chain stretching north-west/south-east, with river valleys and
mountain passes representing the most significant communication channels
with the Adriatic and Pannonian-Carpathian plains. It is thus much more
geographically compact and homogenous than the areas which constituted
Hum. The most significant communication route inside the ‘land’ of Bosnia
is the valley of the river Bosna, stretching first north-west from its springs
under Mt Igman, and then turning north all the way to Nemila and Vranduk,
a little north of modern Zenica. Another important communication route is
the valley of the river Lašva, the confluent of Bosna, which heads westwards
towards modern Travnik. Towards the northeast stretches the river Stavnja, a
further confluent of Bosna leading to modern Breza and Vareš. In the east,
the limits of the ‘land’ of Bosnia stretched over the plains where modern
Sarajevo is located. In the south, its limits stretched towards the semicircular
line made by Mt Jahorina, Mt Treskavica, Mt Bjelašnica and Mt Ivan. In
relation to the outside world, Bosnia was connected by the river Bosna which
flows into the Pannonian-Carpathian plains, joining with the river Sava next
to the modern towns of Brod and Slavonski Brod. The Lašva valley is the
primary line of communication with the north-west through the valley of the
river Vrbas, which also flows into Sava. In the south, the Ivan pass is the only
reliable passageway towards the south and the canyon of the river Neretva,
which leads to Hum, while in the east, the Glasinac plateaux provides a con-
nection towards the valley of Drina.
Bosnia has a very different set of natural resources on disposal when com-
pared to Hum. The most important strategic resources are the deposits of
ores such as silver, gold, and iron. Exploitation of these resources began in
protohistory and peaked with the inclusion of this area in the Roman Empire
in the first three centuries AD. There is less evidence for their exploitation in
Late Antiquity, but some degree of mining activities could be attested to until
the early seventh century. For the early medieval period there is no evidence
of exploitation, although some limited use of metal deposits could be, at the
least, assumed. Mining activities are securely attested to from the early four-
teenth century onwards, with a more intense settlement of Saxon miners and
Ragusan financial investment both being recorded in contemporary docu-
ments.7 Aside from mining, the abundance of wooded forests provided poten-
tial for the exploitation of timber and other gathering resources, with the
river valleys providing enough fertile land for self-sufficient agricultural pro-
duction and herding. However, unlike Hum, the colder climate of the Bosnian
 Setting the stage 13
highlands prevented the growing of Mediterranean agricultural products
such as wine and olives, so agricultural production was (and has been) lim-
ited to different cereals and fruit, supplemented with the resources obtained
from forest exploitation.
The geography of the Bosnian ‘land’ imposed some restrictions on connec-
tivity and kept the area isolated, to some degree, from both the Mediterranean
world and Pannonian plains. This certainly does not mean that the area was
cut off from the rest of the world, but it does increase the strategic signifi-
cance of the limited communication routes and the need to control these
passageways in order to secure and control connectivity. It also grants the
local population a natural means of defence against intruders. On the other
hand, the subsequent difficulty in communication increases the price of
transportation for imports and exports, thus forcing communities in this area
to turn towards self-sustainability regarding the production of food. The
northbound orientation of the river Bosna privileges links with Pannonia,
but as we will see, the influence of the Mediterranean was always present in
varying degrees.

Hum and Bosnia as contested lands

It is impossible to understand early medieval Hum and Bosnia as contested
lands in the modern day, and to appreciate how recent political events have
impacted the development of local historiographies, without first recognizing
the most recent political concepts concerning Bosnia and Herzegovina. The
Wars for Yugoslav Succession in the 1990s aroused some brief interest in the
region, reflected in the academic domain by the publication of several syn-
thetic studies in English that treated the topic with various level of success.
The common denominator of these works is an attempt to trace back precon-
ceived ideas of a multicultural and multi-confessional modern Bosnia and
Herzegovina within its current borders. This often resulted with contempo-
rary orientalizing narratives showing the past of this area as an imaginary,
almost mythical, multicultural Shangri-La, whose tradition and ‘legacy’ was
‘betrayed’ in the 1990s conflicts.8 While there is no space and no need to
engage with this topic in particular detail, it is still important at least to
underline the major lines of historical development that gave birth to con-
temporary competing discourses about the early medieval past of Hum and
Bosnia, which will be dealt with in some detail in Chapter 2.
The territory of the modern-day country of Bosnia and Herzegovina
existed as a part of different imperial or quasi-imperial structures, and its
formation and present shape was more frequently affected by external rather
than by internal developments. Hum was taken over by the Bosnian lord
Stephen (Stjepan) II Kotromanić in 1326 and subsequently integrated into
the Bosnian banate, and later kingdom, as one of its hereditary ‘lands,’ along-
side the smaller but equally specific political communities of Usora, Soli,
Donji Kraji, Neretva and Rama. However, the Bosnian banate, as we will see
in Chapter 8, had itself already been part of a complex network of
14 Setting the stage
power-relationships in central and south-eastern Europe for some time: net-
works which built up a dynastic super-state with the kings of Hungary on top
of the pyramid. This complex structure regarded local magnates as heredi-
tary royal officials who were autonomous rulers in their realms with certain,
mainly ritual and symbolic, obligations towards the royal centre. Such a sys-
tem could even tolerate local rulers proclaiming themselves kings, as Bosnian
ban Tvrtko I did in 1377, without changing elementary foundations of the
system.9 After Tvrtko’s death in 1391, most of his short-lived territorial gains
were reversed, especially in coastal areas and in modern-day south-western
Bosnia and parts of western Bosnia. The Bosnian kingdom became de facto
dominated by local magnates rather than Tvrtko’s successors, who continued
to hold the title of the kings. The whole area was gradually becoming a fron-
tier zone between the Hungarian Commonwealth and a new political power
in the Balkans – the Ottoman Empire – which gradually started to turn local
magnates into tributary vassals.10
In this politically volatile period, the short-lived and never-finished politi-
cal project of the Hranić-Kosača kindred expanded the power of these mag-
nates over the continental parts of old Hum east of the river Neretva,
including also a ‘land’ of Travunia in the hinterland of Dubrovnik and mod-
ern-day eastern Montenegro. During this time after Tvrtko I’s death, western
Hum was ruled mostly by the Croatian bans, i.e. Hungarian viceroys. The
project started with the Grand Duke of the Bosnian kingdom Sandalj Hranić
(d. 1435) and reached its peak with his nephew and successor Stephen
(Stjepan) Vukčić Kosača (ca. 1404–1466). Kosača dropped the title of Grand
Duke, first claiming himself as a Lord of Hum, and then starting to use the
German translation of his ducal title, ‘Herzog of St Sava (Nemanjić),’ in offi-
cial correspondence. Part of what was left of the Bosnian kingdom was taken
over by the Ottomans in 1463, and the other (western) parts remained con-
trolled by the Hungarian kingdom. The Kosača lands survived for a few
more years, with Ottoman vassal status, diminishing in shape until it was
completely taken over by the Ottomans in 1488. The western localities, how-
ever, remained an important part of the Hungarian southern-frontier
defences. The name ‘land of Herzog’ (tur. Hersek, Herzegovina/Hercegovina)
was adopted by the new Ottoman conquerors as the official name of these
areas, legitimizing the conquest by presenting the Sultan as successor of the
Kosačas. When Hersek was incorporated into the Ottoman administrative
infrastructure as a military district (sancak) in 1470, its territories comprised
the largest part of continental medieval Hum.
The Ottoman conquests in Europe were originally organized through the
province (eyâlet) of Rumeli. A series of victories against the Hungarian king-
dom, ending with its crushing defeat at Mohács in 1526, enabled the Ottomans
to secure their new holdings in Europe and start to create new provinces for
easier administration. So, around 1580, the Ottoman overlords created a new
imperial artefact – the frontier province (eyâlet or paşalık) of Bosnia. The
Bosnian Eyâlet extended far beyond the areas which had been parts of the
medieval Bosnian kingdom and was never identical to the territory of the
 Setting the stage 15
Bosnian kingdom, or the later borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina.11 Within
this new territorial unit, the Ottomans distinguished smaller administrative
units (sancaks), amongst which were the sancaks of Hersek and Bosnia, more
aligned to the extent of medieval Bosnia and the fifteenth-century lands of
the herzog Kosača. The Ottoman piecemeal conquest ultimately resulted in
political, cultural and population discontinuities, triggering consecutive
waves of immigrations and emigrations that significantly changed the popu-
lation structure.12 The Christian (Habsburg and Venetian) reconquista in the
Great Turkish War (1683–1699) and its aftermath in the eighteenth century
diminished the size of this Ottoman frontier province to a shape closer to, but
still not identical with, the borders of the present country of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Administrative remodelling of this part of the Ottoman Empire
throughout the nineteenth century, including the periods when Herzegovina
had a separate administration (1833–1865, 1875–1877),13 ended when both
Bosnia and Herzegovina were occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in
1878, and annexed in 1908. The former Ottoman province immediately
became a colonial enterprise of this multinational empire until its collapse in
1918, receiving the status of Land (historical province), the only one in the
empire ruled jointly by Austria and Hungary as a condominium.14 After
World War 1, local leaders of Austro-Hungarian Bosnia and Herzegovina
decided to integrate this province into a short-lived State of Slovenes, Croats
and Serbs, which was almost immediately unified on 1 December 1918 with
the Kingdom of Serbia into a newly established political entity of the South
Slav kingdom. Within this entirely new political construct, Bosnia and
Herzegovina disappeared in the administrative reorganizations starting in
1923, and its current shape was a result of the restoration (or reinvention) of
Bosnia and Herzegovina as a federal republic of Communist Yugoslavia in
1945 in its Austro-Hungarian borders. Minor adjustments to the borders with
Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro were conducted between 1945 and 1956.15
The Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a federal republic
unlike the other five Yugoslav republics, which were all established on national
principles. It was designed to be shared by the three nations that inhabit it –
the Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims – as a kind of political compromise
between the Serbs and Croats, which also satisfied the Bosnian Muslims,
whilst also being an integrative part of a new federation, nicknamed ‘little
Yugoslavia.’ Bosnia and Herzegovina was defined as an equal member of the
new Yugoslav federation, belonging to neither of the three ‘brotherly’ nations
inhabiting it and shared by all three.16 On a symbolic level, this status was
best reflected through the new flag, which contained a small Yugoslav flag in
the upper left corner on the red background, while the new coat of arms was
cleared of all historical or national symbols. This special position of Bosnia
and Herzegovina was maintained through the intense implementation of a
personality cult for the Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz, as well as extensive
police repressions against all public expressions of nationalism, which con-
tinued until the very end of the 1980s.17 This concept of Bosnia and
Herzegovina as a special and exemplary part of the Yugoslav federation had
16 Setting the stage
a visible impact on local scholarship after 1945, as we will see in the next
chapter.
The complex history of these lands resulted in the creation of several eth-
nic identities which were embedded in the newly emerging national discourses
in the nineteenth century. The Ottoman policy of tolerating the presence of
non-Muslim religious groups enabled the remaining Catholic and Orthodox
Christians to continue living in the Bosnian Eyâlet. However, ‘tolerance’
should be understood here as ‘antagonistic tolerance,’ an ‘endurance of,’
rather than any sort of ‘equality.’ In other words, this tolerance is reduceable
to the mere right of these religious groups to exist.18 In essence, they were
second-class citizens, allowed in some individual cases to prosper economi-
cally, but firmly excluded from access to local and imperial power structures
and left to the changing will of the Ottoman officials. The administrative
structure of the Catholic Church was abolished after the conquest and only
the Franciscan order was allowed to remain – in a missionary status – by the
Ottoman authorities. The Orthodox Church structure was also disrupted
and, in some respects, was even more fragmented than that of the Catholic
Church. Thus, it is not surprising that numerous members of these two
Christian groups converted to Islam, especially from the seventeenth century
onwards. The converts, together with a small number of non-Slavic Ottoman
immigrants, started to evolve into a new ethno-religious group of Slav-
speaking Muslims. These three groups maintained different identity dis-
courses throughout the Ottoman era – the Orthodox saw Bosnia as the ‘Serb
land,’ and the Muslims identified the Bosnian Eyâlet as a regional determina-
tion of a wider imperial identity, while the Catholics, especially their Franciscan
intellectual elite, constructed identity connections with the medieval Bosnian
kingdom.19 This means that out of these three groups, only the Catholics
projected their aspiration to the Bosnian past, rather than to the present.
When the Western ideas of nation-building started to spread to this part of
the world, three ethno-religious groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina con-
structed national identities in a very non-Western way. Instead of adopting
Western territorial or linguistic principles, as they shared same territory and
more or less the same language (with dialectal differences not related to the
ethnic groups), nations were constructed along religious lines.20 This is cer-
tainly not surprising when considering the very different identity discourses
established during Ottoman times by these three groups. The Catholics in
Bosnia and in Herzegovina started to participate in the construction of the
Croatian nationhood, and the Orthodox in the construction of the Serbian –
the construction of Bosnian Muslim (now Bosniak) nationhood took longer,
and was accomplished only during Communist Yugoslavia.21 Parallel with
these local developments of nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria-
Hungary attempted to construct another ‘Bosnian’ nationhood based on the
Western principle of shared territory, language and elements of cultural habi-
tus – especially in the first decades after their occupation of Herzegovina and
Bosnia in 1878. This attempt failed to initiate the changes in identity discourses
and wider local acceptance of a new nationhood. Similar failures of ‘identity-
 Setting the stage 17
making’ included the more recent ‘Yugoslavization’ witnessed in Communist
Yugoslavia, or the imposition of ‘Bosnian’ nationhood as a civic-political
identity in independent Bosnia and Herzegovina which was (and still partly is)
supported by poorly informed Western diplomats. While the most recent 2013
census in Bosnia and Herzegovina might have over-represented the Bosniaks
and Croats living in the country, over 96% of the country’s inhabitants declared
themselves a member of one of three major nations (Bosniaks, Serbs or
Croats), rather than opting for civic Bosnian nationhood.22
Following similar patterns in the West, the construction of nations in the
Balkans as ‘imagined communities’ sharing common ‘origins’ and ‘destiny’
was primarily a task carried out by intellectual elites which started to develop
a notion of shared national narratives – ‘biographies’ of the nations. These
narratives, which developed in scholarly discourse, were integrated into pop-
ular perceptions of the past through education and increasing literacy in
order to strengthen bonds amongst members of these ‘imagined communi-
ties’ by constructing a sense of common origins and shared experiences of
the past.23 The unclear beginnings of early medieval Hum and Bosnia easily
converted these ‘lands’ into contested territories in political, intellectual and
popular discourses. They were initially imagined and claimed as parts of
both the Serbian and the Croatian Lebensraum in the nineteenth century, and
accordingly integrated into national biographies and, what is of primary
interest for us here, historiographic traditions. The Serbian claims were based
on a testimony from the DAI, which described the early medieval population
of Hum, the Zahumljani and the Narentani, as Serbs. In addition, the same
source mentioned the small land of Bosona, which was interpreted as the first
mention of Bosnia, as a part of the Serb principality.24 The Croatian claims
were rooted upon the likelihood that these areas recognized the overlordship
of the Croatian kings in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as well as an unclear
and not yet properly explained mention of Red Croatia (Croatia rubea) in the
southern Adriatic by CPD.25 The Bosnian Muslim, later Bosniak, national
narrative claimed Bosnia (and Herzegovina) as its primary Lebensraum and
employed the past of medieval Hum and Bosnia somewhat differently: as
evidence for a continuing ‘millennial statehood’ and a continuation of
‘Bosnian’ nationhood.26 Alongside these three national discourses on the
past, ideological ‘Bosnianness’ and ‘Yugoslavizing’ discourses about the past
also made their way into scholarly views on early medieval Hum and Bosnia,
as seen in the next chapter.

Sources
The period between ca. 450 and 1200 in Hum and Bosnia is one of the most
problematic periods in the history of the Balkans, and even of the whole of
Europe. While we do not have narrative sources related specifically to this
area for the period immediately after the Roman conquest in the first century
AD, the significant quantities of archaeological and epigraphic sources ena-
ble scholars to form some ideas about social or cultural changes, settlement
18 Setting the stage
patterns, trade and economic developments. Similarly, the quantity and
quality of written documents from the fourteenth century onwards provide
strong foundations for reconstructing historical developments, a process
which can be supplemented with increasingly reliable evidence from (mostly)
western Cyrillic inscriptions and (very) few well-explored late medieval elite
fortified sites such as Bobovac in central Bosnia.27 However, the period under
consideration in this book remains very poorly known. Reliable written
sources give only a glimpse into the events. Likewise, archaeology suffers
from weaknesses which are common in neighbouring areas, such as an
emphasis on funerals and church architecture and a lack of interest in settle-
ment archaeology. To make things more difficult, evidence coming from The
Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja (CPD) and the annalistic and historical
tradition of Dubrovnik following the narrative templates from CPD, pro-
vide an abundance of unverified and likely legendary information, making
historical interpretation more difficult. This segment of the book will give a
broad overview of available sources, which will be explored in much greater
detail later in the book.

Late Antiquity and Dark Ages

For the fifth and sixth centuries, the most reliable evidence is archaeology.
The quantity and quality of sources lags behind the extensive corpus of evi-
dence available for the cities on the eastern Adriatic, such as Salona (Solin) or
Iader (Zadar), but they are still sufficient to trace some aspects of social
change, exchange and production, especially in the valley of the Neretva. The
most significant corpus of available material evidence from those two centu-
ries is church architecture, with many basilicas usually dated in the fifth and
sixth centuries. Settlement archaeology is not particularly well developed,
mostly because there were no distinct urban units, except for the city of
Narona, and very little is known about rural unfortified settlements. Late
antique fortifications are detectable in both regions, but very few were exca-
vated in detail. A similar situation exists with complex sites that might be
recognized as either villas or more likely residences of imperial officials estab-
lished in the Roman period that continue to be occupied in the sixth century.
The proper excavation of Višići, near Čapljina, also provides important evi-
dence, while the neighbouring site of Mogorjelo, also near Čapljina, has
never been properly published. Burial evidence is available, especially from
the graves in the churchyards and vaulted burial chambers, but there are also
a few early row-grave cemeteries which provide evidence for social change,
such as those found at Mihaljevići near Sarajevo, or the cemeterial complex
over and around the Naronitan forum. The supply of coinage also seriously
diminishes in this period, with the bulk of discovered coins dateable to the
rule of Justinian I and very few specimens for his successors. Continuing
trade contacts are evidenced, albeit in diminishing quantities by imported
pottery and amphorae, with finds mostly limited to maritime parts of Hum
and the surroundings of Narona.
 Setting the stage 19
As for written and epigraphic sources, there is very little to speak about.
The Acts of the Councils in Salona from 530 and 533 provide some evidence
of ecclesiastic structure and the existence of bishoprics in the Adriatic hinter-
land. These Acts are preserved in an extended manuscript of the sixteenth-cen-
tury copy of Thomas the Archdeacon’s Historia Salonitana (HS) from the
thirteenth century. This larger version of HS is known in the literature under
the title Historia Salonitana Maior (HSM). While the authenticity of the Acts
is doubted by some authors, they are accepted as historically accurate docu-
ments by the majority of the authorities.28 Other written sources provide only
glimpses of information, such as information about an Avar raid on northern
parts of the Dalmatian province in 597 which might or might not have reached
central Bosnia. There is no epigraphy from the sixth century except perhaps
incised graffiti from some basilicas in central Bosnia. Finally, the period of the
‘Dark Ages’ in the seventh and eighth centuries brings no written evidence,
and the material evidence is limited to several artefacts and graves.

Early medieval sources

The availability of material evidence increases with the ninth century. The
Carolingian finds are limited to parts of continental Hum, where we can also
find later burials dateable to the mid- or later ninth century, such as those
made in the ruins of early Christian churches in Cim (Mostar) and Gradac
near Posušje in western Herzegovina. In modern-day central Bosnia, there
are very few Carolingian finds, and they were not as far found in a territory
of the Bosnian ‘land.’ However, in the early ninth century we see the still-in-
sufficiently explored and explained renovation of central Bosnian basilicas
such as Bilimišće or Dabravina, as well as the building known as Breza 2.
Later ninth- or early-tenth century archaeological evidence in the Bosnian
‘land’ comes from two newly built churches near Sarajevo – Vrutci and
Rogačići – and the continuing burials in the Mihaljevići cemetery. In Hum,
the building and renovation of the churches in the ninth and tenth centuries
is mostly limited to Ston and its surroundings on Pelješac, while very recent
excavations confirmed that the church of St Peter in Zavala should be dated
to the ninth century. In both ‘lands,’ cemeterial evidence is relatively scarce
after the ninth century and could be supplemented with some stray finds,
mostly jewellery or occasionally weapons. The Latin epigraphy in Hum is
very modest in quantity, with inscriptions in Slavic language not appearing
before the Humac Tablet, which is written in western Cyrillic script and dated
between the later tenth and the twelfth centuries. More intense epigraphic
activity starts towards the end of the twelfth century. In Bosnia, there is no
known early medieval Latin epigraphy, except in Breza, and western Cyrillic
inscriptions start only in the late twelfth century.
There is also a problem with dating medieval graves and cemeteries after
the ninth century, as very few of those are securely dated before ca. 1200.
Detailed mapping of the graves and cemetery sites from Bosnia and parts of
Hum in modern-day Herzegovina from AlBiH (the majority of them) has
20 Setting the stage
revealed a significant density of habitation in the late medieval period, ca.
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This is mostly due to the presence of stećci
or bilizi (sing., stećak or bilig), monumental epigraphic or anepigraphic
medieval tombstones frequently decorated with peculiar figurative and
geometric ornaments and found in modern-day Dalmatia, Herzegovina,
Bosnia and Montenegro, with a few in Lika, the valley of Sava and western
Serbia. Dating for the earliest stećci is established through an assumed dating
of the earliest epigraphic tombstone of the župan (lord) Grd from Trebinje
from the second half of the twelfth century. A few epigraphic stećci have
been dated to the thirteenth century, but the overwhelming majority date to
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.29 However, very few graves and ceme-
teries with stećci have actually been excavated properly, as the research focus
remained on the tombstones – namely, their shapes, inscriptions and imagery.
The earliest shape of stećci – thin rectangular stone slabs placed over burials
– is assumed to appear in the second half of the twelfth century on account
of the inscription from Trebinje. Some excavated graves – such as one next to
the church in Razići near Konjic (the territory of medieval župa Neretva
between Bosnia and Hum), which was covered with slab that had a carved
image of a human head – can also be stylistically dated to the same period.30
Yet, the stirrups from the graves covered with such slabs in Gornja Bijela
near Konjic and the previously mentioned grave of župan Grd could date
somewhat earlier – between 1050 and 1150.31 Taking into account that in
1970 there were 16,591 of these rectangular slabs recorded by Bešlagić (24%
of the total), it is very likely that the number of graves with these anepigraphic
slabs were actually from the second half of the eleventh and the twelfth cen-
tury, which would explain the absence of graves from this period. Certainly,
this methodological problem can be resolved only with more data obtained
from future excavations.32
Medieval documents related to the Bosnian ‘land’ are also very scarce until
the charters of the Hungarian kings in the mid-twelfth century, which are
related to their claim for rule over Bosnia and concern the rising diplomatic
activities at the times of ban Kulin towards the end of that same century.
There are also 14 medieval charters, known as the ‘Lokrum documents’ or
‘Lokrum forgeries’ from the Benedictine monastery on the island of Lokrum,
just across from Old Town Dubrovnik. With the exception of the charter of
Duke Desa from 1151, the other charters were suspected by Šišić to be forger-
ies from the thirteenth century which utilized a textual tradition coming from
CPD.33 Nevertheless, a recent analysis by Vojvoda places significant doubts
on Šišić’s analysis, arguing that not all of these ‘Lokrum forgeries’ were, in
fact, forgeries.34 Epistolary evidence is scarce, but existent, with important
early evidence contained in a letter of Pope John X to the Croat king Tomislav
and Michael, the duke of Hum. There is also select ecclesiastic evidence
through references to the bishopric of Ston, later known as the bishopric of
Zahumlje, in the ecclesiastic documents starting from the conclusions of the
Second Split Council of 928. Ecclesia Bosnensis also appears a few times in
the written sources from its first mention in the late eleventh century.
 Setting the stage 21
Aside from the key written sources mentioned in the next section, both
Hum and Bosnia very rarely appear in the narrative written sources. They are
absent from the western Frankish Annales, with a single exception of the raid
on Benevento by Michael of Hum. There are a few select mentions of the
area in the mid-Byzantine sources, such as Theophanus Continuatus,
Kinnamos or Skylitzes, as well as an important note concerning the archon
of Zahumljani in the Book of Ceremonies. There are no preserved local nar-
rative sources except for the CPD, CPD-related historiographical traditions,
and the very reliable works of Thomas the Archdeacon of Split, who unfor-
tunately mentions Hum only a few times in passing in his mid-thirteenth cen-
tury HS.

De Administrando Imperio and Historia Veneticorum

The most significant narrative written sources related to early medieval Hum
and Bosnia are, without any doubt, De Administrando Imperio (DAI) and
Historia Veneticorum attributed to John the Deacon.
DAI is a Middle Byzantine diplomatic treaty without a title, composed
under the direction of, and in direct participation with, the emperor
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. The oldest manuscript of the text is Codex
Parisinus gr. 2009 from the second half of the eleventh century, followed by
three later manuscripts dated to the sixteenth century.35 The document was
compiled between 948 and 952, and the final version was finished between
952 and the emperor’s death in November 959.36 The literature on the treaty
is vast, but scholars agree that this was in essence a compilation of different
texts from different periods with the bulk of information coming from the
times of Leo VI (886–912). It was intended for Constantine’s son Romanus II
as a kind of diplomatic manual describing Byzantine political interactions
with neighbours, the differences between foreign nations, their history, and
their territory. More recent scholarship sees the DAI as an essential part of
the trilogy of works edited by Constantine, the other two works being De
Thematibus and De Ceremoniis. DAI connects past with present, trying to
explain the changes occurring from Late Antiquity to the mid-tenth century,
reflecting power relations between the empire and foreign nations as well as
projecting contemporary ideological narratives backwards. For these rea-
sons, it is possible to detect places with invented and incorrect facts which
were likely made consciously.37 While the authorship is usually attributed to
the emperor himself, recent research shows that the text might have been
composed by multiple authors who relied on a larger team that compiled the
material. The most important of these collaborators is recognized as Basil
‘the Bastard’ Lecapenus, eunuch and illegitimate son of Romanus I Lecapenus,
half-brother of Constantine’s wife.38 Shchavelev carried this argument even
further, seeing DAI as a single work without later additions by no fewer than
two authors – Constantine himself, and one anonymous collaborator. In his
opinion, chapters 30, 43, 47, 48 and 53 cannot be attributed to either of them,
instead representing ‘self-sufficient’ mini-treatises or epitomes.39
22 Setting the stage
DAI is probably the most important text for the early medieval history of
the eastern Adriatic. Chapters 29–35 describe Dalmatia, and the Slavic peo-
ples of the Croats, Serbs, Zahumljani, Travunjani, Canalites, Dukljani and
‘Pagani also called Arentani.’ The chapters are clearly organized on ethno-ge-
ographical principles, with attention to political structures, rulers, geography
and, certainly, history. It was discussed very often in local historiography,
which usually attributes its composition to Constantine with the exception of
chapter 30, clearly written by another author and maybe added to the manu-
script after the emperor’s death. Not so long ago, Živković came up with the
highly hypothetical idea that the account of the eastern Adriatic from DAI
was based on an otherwise unknown and now lost treaty that Živković called
‘On baptism of the Croats and Serbs’ and attributed to Anastasius the
Librarian (ca. 810–878).40 Nevertheless, the recent suggestions that this work
had multiple authors render these earlier interpretations obsolete. Schavelev,
for example, assumes that most of these chapters were written by both main
co-authors of DAI: Constantine (ch. 31, 33–35 and most of ch. 29), and the
‘anonymous’ author (ch. 32 and the gloss in ch. 29). However, in his opinion,
chapter 30 is not attributable to either of them, indirectly implying another
author or a source.41 This is a very interesting idea, which certainly needs
more research. In any case, it is believable that these chapters were written as
part of a collaborative cooperation by different authors, rather than only by
Constantine. Whether chapter 30 was added after Constantine’s death
remains likely, but open to question.42
We can see these chapters as a part of an intellectual attempt to systema-
tize knowledge and explain the difference between the ‘ideal past’ of the Late
Antiquity and a current situation.43 However, as most of these pieces of
information were not available in the existing histories, in many ways the DAI
could be seen as the first attempt to create a new knowledge. The quality of
information varies, with certain passages clearly appearing as conscious rein-
terpretation of the past by the authors for political or ideological reasons.
One of these is the story of the migration of the Croats and Serbs in the time
of emperor Heraclius in the first half of the seventh century.44 Another exam-
ple is the story of the baptism of the Slavs from the eastern Adriatic and its
hinterland and the appointment of their princes by Basil I, clearly a reinter-
pretation of the information from the Tactica of emperor Leo VI related to
the pagan Slavs in Greece.45 We can only assume what the sources of informa-
tion were for chapters 29–35, but besides very rare information available in
late antique written sources,46 the most likely sources Constantine’s team had
at their disposal were the remains of Byzantine diplomatic correspondence,
and information gathered by Byzantine diplomats and traders. Some of the
information, such as the narrative of the fall of Salona (ch. 29 and 30), the
origo gentis of the Croats (ch. 30) and the history of the Serb princes from the
ninth century (ch. 32), clearly came from the local informants. However, as
this information was taken out of the local contexts and integrated into the
wider narrative purpose of DAI, their understanding and interpretation
today is very difficult.47
 Setting the stage 23
Historia Veneticorum is an untitled and anonymous work attributed to
John the Deacon (Giovanni Diacono, Giovanni da Venezia), the ambassa-
dor and chaplain of the Venetian doge Peter (Pietro) II Orseolo (r. 991–
1008), who was born between 945 and 960 and died after 1018. The work
was most certainly finished after 1008; a last dateable event took place in
that year.48 The oldest manuscripts are from the eleventh and thirteenth cen-
turies. The younger manuscript is more complete, covering the period from
the Langobard invasion of Italy in 568 up to 1008, while the older manu-
script, which is part of a codex, starts with the events of 764. Berto, quite
convincingly, recently showed that the content of the older manuscript
should be ascribed to a single (original) author, and additions in the younger
manuscript to a later author.49 The author of Historia Veneticorum provides
a Venetian-centred and chronologically structured narrative, describing the
rise of Venice with particular attention paid to the achievements of his main
hero and master – doge Peter II Orseolo. As shown recently, it is beyond
doubt that John the Deacon had high-quality documentation from the
Venetian archives from previous centuries at his disposal. These documents
were used and, on occasions, manipulated in order to fit the narrative. It is
also possible that the manuscript has a more practical use as indicated by the
judicial documents that follow the oldest manuscript copy in the codex from
the eleventh century.50
The significance of Historia Veneticorum for the early medieval history of
the eastern Adriatic coast cannot be understated. The nature of the evidence
is very different from what is written in the DAI, as the author is not inter-
ested in ethno-political-geographical description of the area, only the
Venetian interactions with two Slavic polities rising in the ninth century: the
Croats and the Narrentani Sclavi. As these two were challenging Venetian
interests in the Adriatic, until the campaign of Peter II Orseolo in 1000, it is
not surprising that these interactions were mostly conflicting and that the
Croats and the Narentani were described in a negative light. This was not
necessarily just John’s personal opinion, but likely general sentiments the
Venetians held against their eastern Adriatic competitors.51 The information
supplied in Historia Veneticorum significantly supplements what we learn
from DAI and provides greater insight into the events of the ninth and tenth
centuries, as well as the Venetian perceptions of the eastern Adriatic
population.

The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja

The CPD is one of the most fascinating and most complex written sources
for the South Slavic medieval period, significantly impacting all the later
medieval and early modern local historical narratives. It is preserved in two
major versions: Latin (CPD/L), and Croatian (CPD/Cro), which is some-
times called the Croatian Chronicle. CPD/L was translated into Italian by
Mauro Orbini in 1601, while CPD/Cro was translated into Latin by Marko
Marulić, famous poet and playwright from Split, in 1510. The oldest two
24 Setting the stage
manuscripts of CPD/L are dateable in the sixteenth century. One from the
Vatican library was published by Johannes Lucius in 1666, while an almost
identical manuscript from the Codex Belgradensis was edited and published
more recently by Dragana Kunčer.52 Orbini used a slightly different manu-
script of CPD/L for the Italian translation, but this manuscript today is lost.
For the Latin translation of the Croatian version, which was also published
by Lucius, Marulić used the manuscript of CPD/Cro discovered by his cousin
Dmine Papalić in ‘the kindred of Markovići in Krajina’ – or more precisely
in Poljica above Omiš – on 22 October 1500, as specified in the Codex
Belgradensis, which also contains a copy of Marulić’s translation. The man-
uscript of the Croatian Chronicle is not preserved, and the oldest copy of the
Croatian version is Jerolim Kaletić’s from 1546, which is also kept in the
Vatican library. There are visible differences between Marulić’s translation
and CPD/Cro, so it is possible that more manuscripts circulated or that
Marulić translated the manuscript freely.53
The text is called both Libellus Gothorum and Regnum Sclavorum in CPD/L,
but it is commonly referred to as The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja. The
author indicates that he translated this work to Latin from the Slavic origi-
nal.54 CPD/L is longer and has 47 chapters while the Croatian version roughly
follows the first 23 chapters of the Latin version (often substantially elaborat-
ing and supplementing the original text) without introduction and with the
addition of the story of Croatian king Zvonimir’s death, which is not con-
tained in the Latin version. The majority of scholars follow Ferdo Šišić, who
argued that the original version of the CPD, written in the Slavic language, is
today lost and that CPD/L is the translation of this original version by the
same author, although this is by no means a proven fact. The dating of CPD/L
is usually placed in the second half of the twelfth century, ca. 1150–1200
depending on the author, as the narrative ends between April 1143 and before
1149–1150.55 CPD/Cro is thought to be a substantial revision of CPD/L
intended to function as a separate work, written in the Croatian language
between 1350 and 1450.56 Tibor Živković has, on the other hand, argued that
CPD/Cro is actually the Slavic original, written around 1296 in Split by abbot
Rudger (Rüdiger) of Bohemian background, who in his opinion translated it
into CPD/L when he was the archbishop of Bar between 1299 and 1301.57
While Živković provided a detailed analysis of this complex text, the argu-
ments on which he based his dating of this work and the identification of the
author remain highly problematic and unsubstantiated.58
CPD is composed of several different parts and regional traditions, grafted
together by the author. The first one (ch. 1–35) starts with the settlement of
the Goths in Dalmatia, followed by a genealogy of the kings of the Dalmatian
‘Gothic kingdom,’ which through the narrative becomes the kingdom of the
‘Goths-Slavs’ in chapter 5. While no years are provided, it is only possible to
assume that this part of the work describes the events between the sixth and
tenth centuries. It is made as a master-narrative in which the author blends
together several different and unconnected sub-narratives – for example, the
legend of the Gothic capture of Salona (ch. 2), the gathering in planitiae
 Setting the stage 25
Delmae by the mythical king Svetopelek (ch. 9) and the story of king Radoslav
and his son Pavlimir Bello (the mythological founder of Ragusa/Dubrovnik)
(ch. 25–26). Chapter 36 represents a lengthy and more reliable Vita of St
Vladimir of Duklja, while the final third part consists of the chronicle of the
kings of Duklja (ch. 37–47), describing the events from the author’s lifetime
or close to it. CPD does not acknowledge any sources, mentioning only the
book Methodius ‘for the readers who want to know more about the laws
instituted by the king Svetopelek.’ This Liber Sclavorum qui dicitur Methodius
is recently identified as the Nomocanon of St Methodius from ca. 868–870.59
Overall, CPD cannot be taken for granted as a historical source, especially
its first part. Some places in this part of the narrative are clearly fictional,
while the others, where real historical personalities are mentioned, in most
parts cannot be corroborated from other sources. The whole work can be
described as the narrative of ‘fictitious rulers of imaginary realm.’60 It is
indeed very likely that the author largely relied on oral sources, in particular
by drawing material from the distant epic memories of post-Roman migra-
tions and different local dynastic legends.61 The author of CPD had several
aims behind this composition of the narrative, such as the construction of a
royal genealogy connecting the late antique (Ostro)Goths and the rulers of
Duklja from the later eleventh century. As Alimov pointed out, this work
tried to interpret the changing social realities of a distant past through the
mental geography of the author’s own arbitrary model of ethnic classifica-
tions, as seen with the category of ‘Goths-Slavs’ (Gothi qui est Sclavi). The
other important narrative point, especially in the first part of CPD, is the
emphasis on the symbiosis of the Latin-speaking population with arriving
Slavs and the symbolic restoration of the old order.62 The ‘million dollar’
question still remains: how reliable are the first 35 chapters of CPD as a his-
torical source, apart from providing us with a knowledge of how the distant
past was perceived at the times of its composition? All modern attempts to
reconstruct historical narrative using the first part of CPD as a more-or-less
reliable source do not provide satisfactory results.63 However, it would be too
rash to reject this source as entirely fictional and ignore the possibility that
some political purpose might have been standing behind its composition.64 It
is very likely that some parts indeed retain a memory of the real events, but
this information is ‘locked’ inside a sophisticated literary construct of the
past for which there is still no reading key.65 As we will see in Chapters 7 and
8, CPD usually leaves many possibilities open, but provides few lasting
answers.
The CPD had a significant influence on late medieval, Renaissance and
early modern historical writings on the eastern Adriatic coast, especially in
the annalistic tradition of the Republic of Dubrovnik. Very early specimens
of this tradition are the Annales Ragusini Anonymi, finished in the fifteenth
century but likely written throughout preceding centuries, as well as the
Annali di Ragusa by Nicolla Ragnina from 1553. Both of these works expand
on the narrative of the CPD, adding more information and even a chronol-
ogy of dates which are, with very few exceptions, impossible to corroborate
26 Setting the stage
and almost certainly the authors’ invention. Both of these annals should be
seen as a part of the Ragusan foundation-story discourse that the authors
interpreted within political and identity contexts of the period in which they
wrote.66 Finally, it is important to notice that CPD had a very significant
impact on early historiography about Hum and Bosnia before the twentieth
century, despite criticism and scepticism which was expressed as early as the
later seventeenth century by Lucius in his De Regno.67 More about this in the
next chapter.

Notes
1 CD, 2.189 (p.193); CD, 4.275 (pp. 312–314).
2 Visible on the map of Vincenzo Coronelli from 1694 (Corso del Fiume Narenta
Dalla Città di Ciclut fino al Mare), or the somewhat later but more precise
Habsburg cadastral maps from 1836.
3 Horden & Purcell 2000: 186–190 (the use of Mediterranean wetlands).
4 E.g. Lindhagen 2016 (Narona).
5 App. Illyr. 10 (Pleraei); Illyr. 16 (Korčula and Mljet), Šašel Kos 2005: 314–320,
418–419. For protohistoric piracy in southern Adriatic see Boršić et al. 2021:
21–24 with literature.
6 Some good points were made in Mrgić 2016, although, as pointed out earlier
(p. 7, n.3), her understanding of ‘land’ is different from mine.
7 The research of historical mining activities in central Bosnia is very limited: for
Antiquity and Late Antiquity, see Škegro 2000: esp. 73–78, 84, 131–136; and Hirt
2010: 32–33, 73–74. For the later medieval period, limited information is available
in Kovačević Kojić 1978.
8 Džaja 1995 (review of Malcolm, who responded in Malcolm 1996); Dzino 2015;
Hayden et al. 2016: 2–9; and – in the wider context of modern-day Western nos-
talgia for the Ottoman times – Hayden & Naumović 2013.
9 Ančić 2015b. The opposite opinion is argued by Lovrenović (2006), who sees
Bosnian banate and kingdom as an essentially independent state in later medieval
period – see more in Chapter 8.
10 Well shown in Filipović 2017b. The Ottoman relationships and the conquest of
the Bosnian kingdom is discussed in much greater detail in Filipović 2019a. For a
convenient narrative of these complex events in English, see the old-fashioned but
still relevant Fine 1987: 453–481, 577–590.
11 Šabanović 1982: 77–81; and in English, Balta 2021.
12 See in particular Džaja 1984: 21–63 on institutional, urban, elite, population and
political discontinuities.
13 Šabanović (1982: 232–234) sees Herzegovina as an eyâlet, equal to Eyâlet Bosna.
A different opinion about Herzegovina being a mutasarrıflık (sancak, adminis-
tered separately from eyâlet) from 1833 to 1851 is held by Aličić (1983: 20).
14 Okey 2007.
15 Šehić & Tepić 2002: 322–325; Balta 2021: 144–148.
16 This was not necessarily an original idea of the Communist policymakers; see
Džaja 2002a: 210–262.
17 Filipović 2008a: 107–115 (flag and coat of arms); Friedman 1996: 145–146; Lučić
2018: 136–137 (contemporary perceptions of Bosnia and Herzegovina as ‘con-
necting tissue’ of the Yugoslav federation); Lučić 2013, cf. Amnesty International
1985: 15–16, 27, 71 (police repression).
18 Hayden et al. 2016: 4, 6–8; see also Gradeva 1994 for the wider context of reli-
gious ‘tolerance’ within the Ottoman Empire.
19 See Džaja 1984: 43–218.
 Setting the stage 27
20 Velikonja 2003: 288.
21 There is a large literature on the development of three nations in Bosnia and
Herzegovina; e.g. Džaja 1984; Velikonja 2003; Vukoičić 2016. For the Bosnian
Muslims/Bosniaks in particular, see Donia 1981; Friedman 1996.
22 Kraljačić 1987; Okey 2007: 55–143; Feldman 2017 (Austro-Hungarian attempts);
Robinson et al. 2001; Gunzburger 2007: 151–158; Helms 2012 (recent attempts);
Hayden 2021 (the 2013 census).
23 Anderson 1991.
24 DAI, 32.151, 33.8–10, 36.5–7.
25 CPD, 9, p. 54 (=GRS: 6). The sources for Red Croatia were explored in greatest
detail, from a national(ist)-romantic perspective, by Mandić 1972.
26 Ančić 1997: 7–36; Džaja 2005, 2012: 64–67; Kværne 2003; Lovrenović 2008: 197–
285, 2012: 215–247. See also Filandra (2017: 169–173) reflecting the Bosnian
Muslim and Bosniak nationalist perspective, which is critical but still sympathetic
to the narrative.
27 And̄elić 1973 (Bobovac), while the inscriptions discovered before the 1970s are
collected in four volumes of Zbornik, edited by Marko Vego.
28 HSM, fol. 614v–616r (pp. 81–85). See, more recently: Basić 2009; Škegro 2009,
2012; Prozorov 2011.
29 Bešlagić 1982: 70–72. On Grd’s epitaph, see Zbornik 3.128 (pp. 12–13); Vego 1980:
241–242 (=GZMS 19, 1964); and in English, Fučić 1999: 276.
30 Vego 1980: 46, 53, with T.2,2 (=GZMS 13, 1958).
31 Sijarić 1996–2000: 303–304 with T.2,2–4. This dating casts serious doubts on
Vego’s dating of Grd’s tombstone in 1151–1171, already questioned in Curta
2005: 269 n.45.
32 Bešlagić 1982: 80–84. See also more modern approaches written for popular
(Bujak 2018) and scholarly (Vučić 2019) audiences.
33 Šišić 1928: 185–255. Šišić is followed by almost all modern authorities.
34 Vojvoda 2011: 149–173; cf. the sole criticism of Šišić in earlier scholarship with
similar conclusions in Vrana 1960.
35 Moravcsik 1962: 15–23.
36 Bury 1906: 522–524, 574; more recently, Németh 2018: 132–133; cf. Howard-
Johnston 2007: 178–179 (the original work compiled by the early 910s, and re-edited
by Constantine and his team 948–952) and Shchavelev 2019: 686–688 (952–959).
37 Amongst many others: Bury 1906; Jenkins 1962; Ševčenko 1992; Sode 1994;
Howard-Johnston 2000; Magdalino 2013; Németh 2018: 130–137; Gaul et al.
2018; Komatina 2019, 2021.
38 Ševčenko 1992: 184–195; Holmes 2005: 69–72; Németh 2018: 131–132.
39 Shchavelev 2019: 688–701.
40 Živković 2012a. See the overviews of earlier local literature in Lončar 1992 and
Ferjančić 1996.
41 Shchavelev 2019: 692–693, 696–699; cf. Ančić 2010, who also argued for three
authors of these chapters: first for ch. 29, second for ch. 30 and the third for ch.
31–35.
42 The mention of ‘Otto, the great king of Francia or Saxony’ in DAI, 30.73–74,
most likely relates to Otto I. However, the title could be understood as related to
him being the Duke of Saxony and King of Germany (936–961), or, less likely in
my opinion, Otto as the emperor (961–973).
43 Németh 2018: 135–136.
44 See Džino 2021a: 104 n.6 for a more comprehensive and growing bibliography.
45 DAI, 29.63–79; Taktika, 18.95.453–460; Ančić 2010: 137–138; Komatina 2014:
283–285, 2019: 46–48; Alimov 2013.
46 Basić 2016a.
47 Dzino 2014a.
28 Setting the stage
48 Besta 1914; more recently, Berto 1999, 2013: i–xv, 2021: 1–3; and Pazienza 2018:
29–32.
49 Codex Vat. Urb. Lat. 440 (11th century); Codex Vat. Lat. 5269 (13th century);
Berto 2013: i–xv. Other authors, such as Pazienza (2018: 30) remain unconvinced,
leaving possibility that the younger manuscript is in fact a complete work.
50 Pazienza 2018.
51 Berto 2013: 227–233.
52 Lucius 1666: 287–302; Codex Vat. Lat. 6958, fol. 53–75 (Vatican); GRS: 2–181;
National Library of Serbia Codex R-570, fol. 1–30v (Codex Belgradensis).
53 Orbini 1601: 206–239 (Italian translation); Lucius 1666: 303–309; Codex Vat. Lat.
fol. 126–133; GRS: 2a–105a; National Library of Serbia Codex R-570, fol. 36–47v
(Marulić’s translation of CPD/Cro); Codex Vat. Lat. 7019, fol. 104v–123v (CPD/
Cro). The date when CPD/Cro was discovered by Papalić, and Poljica as the find-
ing place, is provided on the Codex Belgradensis, fol. 36r.
54 CPD, Introduction, p. 39 (=GRS, pp. 2, 4).
55 There is a substantial bibliography on the matter. See, for example: Šišić 1928;
Mošin 1950; Leśny 1988; Peričić 1991: 97–272; Steindorff 2014; Radoman 2016
– and most recently and comprehensively in English Kowalski 2021. The idea that
CPD is Orbini’s invention, argued by Bujan (2008) is problematic and not widely
accepted in scholarship except by Komatina (2020a), who repeats the same meth-
odological errors, while Mijušković (1988: 29–104) dated CPD after 1350.
56 See Ančić (1990) who dates it to 1416–1448 and attributes to magister Nicolaus de
Crajina, rector scolarum grammaticae in Trogir at that time.
57 Živković 2009, based on criticism of Šišić’s dating by Mijušković. The idea is
rarely accepted, e.g. introduction to modern Greek translation of CPD –
Papageorgiou 2012: 18–22.
58 See the criticism of Radoman 2013, or the point of Kowalski (2021: 76) that inter-
pretation of Živković depends too much on his own chronology.
59 CPD, 9 (p. 56) (=GRS: 60); Petrak 2018.
60 Kowalski 2021: 1.
61 Alekseev 2006a: 25–28, 2006b: 142–147; and Kowalski 2021: 53–64.
62 CPD, 5 (p. 46) (=GRS: 24); Alimov 2017: 517–521; Kowalski 2019; and, in much
more detail, Kowalski 2021: 43–178.
63 E.g. Mandić 1972: 17–63; Hadžijahić 1983, 2004; or Vučinić 2017.
64 The most interesting hypothesis about the political context was put forward in
Margetić 1998. He sees the CPD reflecting the political organization after the
conquest of the area by Manuel Comnenus.
65 Cf. a similar opinion in Kowalski 2021: 9.
66 E.g. Kunčević 2012: 20–74, or Benyovsky Latin 2017. It is, however, possible to
see CPD and the Dubrovnik tradition drawing upon the same pool of tradition
– Kowalski 2021: 191–250.
67 Lucius 1666: 36, 93.
2 (A long overdue) essay on
historiography and archaeology
of late antique and early medieval
Hum and Bosnia

Modern research on late antique and early medieval Hum and Bosnia has
not generated a significant corpus of literature – as pointed earlier, abundant
sources from the Roman and later medieval times made these periods much
more attractive for researchers instead. Absence of early local histories and
lack of antiquarian traditions made the development of historiography and
archaeology in Herzegovina and in Bosnia very different from the coastal
Dalmatian cities, where local chronicles, histories and antiquarianism had
long and well-established traditions. The reason for the absence of early
foundational works is explainable by the composition of local elites, which
were the driving force behind early historical studies in the West. The
Ottoman rule over these ‘lands’ until 1878 limited access to the ranks of local
elites to Muslim converts and their descendants who did not have need to
claim a pre-Ottoman past in order to justify their social position. On the
other hand, the Catholic and Orthodox populations, who would have reasons
to integrate the early medieval past into written discourses, were largely illit-
erate and lacked educated elite networks. The only literate segment of the
non-Muslim population consisted of the Franciscan monks and Orthodox
priests, but as we will see later, their knowledge of the medieval past was very
limited.
For these reasons, the earliest works on early medieval Hum and Bosnia
appear outside of the ‘local’ contexts, strictly speaking. Serious research on
the local level begins only in the nineteenth century, within the context of the
construction of Serbian and Croatian ‘national biographies,’ with the devel-
opment of archaeology happening after the Austro-Hungarian occupation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878. The prominent place of early medieval
Hum and Bosnia in Serbian and Croatian national scholarship was not fol-
lowed with equal interest by Bosnian Muslim historians. The slower and
somewhat different development of a Bosnian Muslim nationhood likely
affected this absence of a national historiography concerning pre-Ottoman
periods before their official recognition as one of the Yugoslav nations in the
1960s.
This chapter overviews scholarship on early medieval Hum and Bosnia in
some detail, focusing on the most significant and influential works that pro-
vide synthetic overviews or construct historical narratives – mostly
DOI: 10.4324/9781003194705-3
30 (A long overdue) essay on historiography and archaeology
monographs. Different approaches and key literature choices are certainly
possible and welcome.1 A focus on either Late Antiquity or the early medie-
val period is very rare, based on material evidence and mostly very recent, so
the historiographical overview will rely on general studies of the medieval
period that devote some attention to early medieval Hum and Bosnia without
any pretension to be complete overview. The historiography on the schis-
matic Bosnian Church, which partly falls in the period under consideration,
is not discussed in too much detail, except for the events occurring at the
times of ban Kulin and the impact of the ‘Bogomil myth’ on historical narra-
tives in Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak national scholar-
ship.2 The division of historiography and archaeology is here not just for
practical reasons, but also because historiography and archaeology produced
somewhat conflicting narratives of the late antique and early medieval past,
as historians traditionally only rarely addressed seriously the material evi-
dence, while archaeologists depended on historical narratives for their inter-
pretations. The chronological division of scholarship follows, in some ways,
Eric Hobsbawm’s division of modern history into a ‘long’ nineteenth century
(1800–1914) and a ‘short’ twentieth century (1914–1991). With rare excep-
tions, major interests in the early medieval past of these ‘lands’ resided within
local scholarship, significantly affected by the changes in political context
caused by the establishment of the South Slav state in 1918, and its final dis-
integration in 1991–1992. This new organization of political space changed
the existing discourses on the past in the same way the final demise of the
Yugoslav state has enabled opportunities to see the past from different
perspectives.

Historiography

Beginnings
Local traditions on early medieval Hum and Bosnia before the nineteenth
century are very limited. Although Bosnian Muslims gave forth several
important early historians of the Ottoman Empire, such as Peçuyli İbrahim
Efendi and Hüseyin Boşnak Koca Müverrih, a scholarly interest for the
period before the Ottoman conquest was non-existent. A rare exception was
the nineteenth-century historian Salih Sidki Muvekkit Hadžihuseinović
(1825–1888), whose short section on the early medieval past in the posthu-
mously published manuscript Tarih-i-Bosna is half-legendary and relies on
‘non-Muslim histories.’3 The Franciscan annalists of the early modern era,
such as Nikola Lašvanin (d. ca. 1750), show a stunning unawareness of the
events related to early Hum or Bosnia. Lašvanin mostly relied on the works
of Croatian writer Pavao Vitezović rather than (seemingly non-existent) local
traditions. In fact, the first work of local provenience is a book on the history
and geography of Bosnia by another Franciscan, Ivan Frano Jukić (under
the alias Slavoljub Bošnjak) from 1851. His historical section does not rise
above the existing scholarship of the times; more or less repeating what has
 (A long overdue) essay on historiography and archaeology 31
been said up to the mid-nineteenth century, including recounting the myths
stemming from Orbini’s interpretation of CPD.4
Thus, the earliest historiographic works develop outside Hum and Bosnia,
but not too far from them.5 The first serious treatment of the early medieval
period in these ‘lands’ was that of 1601 by the Ragusan historian Mauro
Orbini. Orbini relied on the CPD and, in some parts, the Ragusan annalists,
recognizing the significant difficulties caused by the lack of sources. For the
earliest past of Bosnia, he followed the then-popular idea that connected the
Bosnians with the Bessi, a group located by the Graeco-Roman historians in
Thrace. His short section on Hum begins only with the rule of duke Andrew
(Andrija), the nephew of Stephen (Stefan) Nemanja, in the early thirteenth
century.6 Lucius’ De Regno from 1666 did not take too much care of the early
medieval Hum and Bosnia on account of the lack of sources and the author’s
focus on the coastal areas. He tacitly accepted the idea of the Bessi migrating
to Bosnia from Orbini and reproduced the information about the Narentani
from Venetian histories and the DAI with only a short mention of Bosnia –
which was also drawn from the DAI. In the later seventeenth century, Hum
and Bosnia appear in Historia Byzantinae by the French historian Charles du
Cange (1680), who draws information from Orbini and Lucius when writing
on the genealogies of South Slavic rulers. Farlati’s fourth volume of Illyricum
Sacrum brings forward some important documents related to the first
Bosnian bishops and the period of ban Kulin, also drawing the bulk of his
information for this period from Orbini and Lucius.7 There were also some
attempts to address the early history of Bosnia in Hungarian historiography,
as with the posthumously published Comentarii Historici of György Pray
written in 1787 or 1788. As part of his historical narrative about south-eastern
Europe, Pray utilized information about Bosnia from the DAI together with
bits and pieces available concerning the twelfth century from Byzantine his-
toriography and Hungarian documents.8
Maximilian Schimek’s book on the history of the ‘kingdom of Bosnia and
Rama’ from 1787 is undoubtedly the first work devoted solely to the history
of Bosnia. Schimek covers the period from 867 to the eighteenth century,
following the early medieval narrative established by Orbini. This book was
written with a particular political purpose – the justification of the antici-
pated (but not realized) conquest of the Bosnian Eyâlet in the war that the
Habsburg emperor Joseph II started against the Ottomans in that same year.9
In the last decade of the eighteenth century, an important foundational work
of Serbian historiography was published: the monumental history of the
Slavs by Jovan Rajić. Rajić focused on the Bulgars, Serbs and Croats in par-
ticular, relying on the narratives of Orbini and Du Cange in order to provide
a comprehensive overview of the late antique, medieval and post-medieval
history of south-eastern Europe. It became an important reference point for
future Serbian historiography. Of particular interest for us here is that Rajić
was the first author to elaborate the concept of Hum and Bosnia as historical
parts of the ‘Serbian lands.’ Pejačević’s Historia Serviae, published in 1795,
was written on similar grounds. Rajić’s and Pejačević’s ideas were further
32 (A long overdue) essay on historiography and archaeology
transmitted into German scholarship through the work of Engel, published
in 1801 as part of his multi-volumed work on the history of Hungary.10

The ‘long’ nineteenth century, until 1914

The historiography on Hum and Bosnia picks up the pace after ca. 1850 cor-
responding with intensified construction of nations in the region, especially
the Serbs and Croats, as defined political communities that share common
origins, common experience of the past and common destiny. Developing a
particular picture of the past was a crucial factor in shaping the ‘national
biographies’ that described the ‘prehistories’ of these nations, their ‘births’ and
their development; all to explain the present and shape plans for the future.
Political circumstances in the region started to change rapidly in this
period, which also affected the ways in which historical discourse concerning
these nations were shaped. Serbia increased its autonomy from the Ottoman
Empire to become a fully independent principality in 1878. Following the
examples of the Italian and German unifications in the early 1870s, Serbia
saw itself increasingly as the leader of the South Slavs, so the concept of early
medieval ‘Serbian lands,’ defined by Rajić, was used as an important founda-
tion for new perceptions of the past. The Croatians, on the other hand, were
ruled by the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire and divided amongst its
Austrian (Dalmatia) and Hungarian (Croatia-Slavonia) parts. Thus, the
political narratives of Croatian nationhood were focused on the unification
of these areas as an autonomous part of the empire. Another political narra-
tive looked even further into unification with Serbia in some kind of joint
state-formation (Croatian Yugoslavism), although this never resulted in seri-
ous political attempts to separate from the Habsburg political framework.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire occupied the Ottoman Bosnian Eyâlet in
1878 and ruled Bosnia and Herzegovina as a colony until its annexation in
1908, when it became a separate part of the Dual Empire. However, the
Christian population of Herzegovina and Bosnia started strongly to identify
with the newly developed Serbian and Croatian nationhood in the decades
before the Habsburg occupation. This provided a new impetus towards incor-
porating their past and origins into new Serbian and Croatian ‘national biog-
raphies.’ At the same time, the Austro-Hungarian colonial government
experimented with the imposition of a multi-ethnic and inclusive ‘Bosnian’
nationhood, which in the long run miserably failed and was abandoned, but
which left some traces on perceptions of the past as we will soon see.
In these circumstances Vjekoslav Klaić’s History of Bosnia until the End of
the Kingdom was published in 1882, the first truly significant synthetic mod-
ern work on the medieval history of Bosnia (and Herzegovina), soon trans-
lated into German. The Croatian historian Klaić critically approached the
sources, starting his narrative with a short overview of prehistory, Antiquity
and Late Antiquity. He managed – in most parts – to clear the narrative from
the residues of Orbini and CPD, especially its legendary ‘Dark Age’ part.
While Klaić imagined the ‘land’ of Bosnia in particular as a contact zone in
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
The Petersburg campaign was grim business. Amusements could
lighten the heart for only a brief time at best. Ever present were the
mud and disease which followed every Civil War camp. Both opposing
forces felt the chill of winter and the penetrating rain. The
discouragement of the homesick, who never knew when, or if, 53
they would return to their homes, was a hardship not peculiar
to any rank. However, when spring came to warm the air, there was a
difference between the two opposing armies. It was more than a
numerical superiority. Then the Union soldiers felt confidence, while
the Southern veterans, ill-clothed, ill-fed, and nearly surrounded,
knew only despair.

54

From June 1864 until April 1865, City Point was the
“busiest place in Dixie.” While Lee’s outnumbered
Confederates fought and starved behind their slowly
crumbling defenses at Petersburg, here, just 8 miles away,
Grant built up one of the largest supply depots of the Civil
War which, during the 10 months of its existence, kept his
army the best-fed, best-clothed, and best-munitioned in
the field.
1-4. Scenes at City Point, Va., showing some of the 56
supplies and munitions destined for Grant’s army. An
Episcopal bishop from Atlanta, visiting Grant at City Point,
was awed by the abundance of military stores that he saw
—“not merely profusion, but extravagance; wagons, tents,
artillery, ad libitum. Soldiers provided with everything.”

2
3

57

4
On August 9, 1864, a Confederate spy slipped a time bomb
on board one of the ammunition barges tied up at City
Point. The bomb’s explosion, sketched by A. R. Waud, killed
or wounded 200 people and demolished more than 600
feet of warehouses and about 180 feet of wharf. Grant
himself was shaken up by the blast, and one of his staff
members was wounded.

58
LEE’S LAST GAMBLE

By mid-March 1865 the climax of the campaign, and of the war, was
close at hand. Lee’s forces in both Richmond and Petersburg had
dwindled to about 55,000. Grant, on the other hand, had available, or
within easy march, at least 150,000. Moreover, Sheridan, having
destroyed the remnants of Early’s forces at Waynesboro, Va., on
March 2, had cleared the Shenandoah Valley of Confederates and was
now free to rejoin Grant before Petersburg.

Everywhere Lee turned, the military situation was black. Union forces
under Sherman, driving the Confederates before them, had turned
north from Savannah and were now hammering Johnston’s forces in
North Carolina. With President Jefferson Davis’ consent, Lee sent a
letter to General Grant on March 2 suggesting an interview. In the
early morning hours of the second day following the dispatch of the
letter, Lee and Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon discussed the three possible
solutions to the problem which perplexed them: (1) Try to negotiate
satisfactory peace terms. (This had already been acted upon in Lee’s
note to Grant.) (2) Retreat from Richmond and Petersburg and unite
with Johnston for a final stand. (3) Attack Grant in order to facilitate
retreat.

There followed a series of interviews with Confederate government

officials in Richmond. Each of the plans was analyzed. The first was
quickly dropped when Grant made it clear that he was not
empowered to negotiate. Nor was the second proposal, that of
retreat, deemed advisable by President Davis who wished to strike
one more blow before surrendering his capital. This left only the third
alternative—to attack.

Before settling on a definite course of action, however, Lee ordered

General Gordon to make a reconnaissance of the Federal lines around
Petersburg to see if they could be broken anywhere. Gordon soon
reported that the best place for an attack was at Fort Stedman, a
Union work located near the City Point and Petersburg Railroad and
only 150 yards to the east of a strongly fortified Confederate position
named Colquitt’s Salient. Lee agreed with Gordon’s assessment and,
on the night of March 23, told Gordon to make preparations for an
attack on the fort.

59
 In Petersburg, sometime in the autumn of 1864, Lee was
photographed on his horse Traveller for the first time.
Although determined to fight on until all hope was gone,
already Lee knew the war was going badly and that his
tired, hungry, dirty, and cold soldiers could not hold out for
long against Grant’s growing might.

About one-half of the besieged army would be used to charge 60

the Union line in the vicinity of Fort Stedman. It was hoped that
this would cause Grant to shorten his front by withdrawing his left
flank to protect his endangered right. Then Lee could detach a
portion of the Confederate army to send to the aid of Johnston as,
with shorter lines, he would not need as many men in Petersburg.
Should the attack fail, he would attempt to retreat with all his forces
for a final stand with Johnston. This would be the last desperate
gamble of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The details for the attack were worked out by Gordon. During the
night preceding the assault, the obstructions before the Confederate
lines were to be removed and the Union pickets overcome as quietly
as possible. A group of 50 men were to remove the chevaux-de-frise
and abatis protecting Fort Stedman; then three companies of 100
men each were to charge and capture the fort. When Stedman was
safely in Confederate hands, these men were to pretend they were
Union troops and, forming into three columns, were to rush to the
rear to capture other positions.

The next step was to send a division of infantry to gain possession of

the siege lines north and south of the fallen bastion. When the
breach had been sufficiently widened, Southern cavalry were to rush
through and destroy telegraphic communication with Grant’s
headquarters at City Point. They were also ordered to cut the military
railroad. Additional reserves were to follow the cavalry.

The attack was scheduled for the morning of March 25. The 50
axmen and the 300 soldiers who were to make up the advance
columns were given strips of white cloth to wear across their chests
to tell friend from foe. The officers in charge were given the names of
Union officers known to be in the vicinity and were told to shout their
assumed names if challenged. Beginning about 3 a.m., Confederates
professing to be deserters crossed to the Union pickets offering to
surrender. Their purpose: to be near at hand to overwhelm the
unsuspecting pickets when the attack began.

At 4 a.m. Gordon gave the signal, and the Confederates sprang 61

forward. At first the attack went as planned. Blue-clad pickets
were silenced so effectively that not a shot was fired. Union
obstructions were quickly hewn down by the axmen, and the small
vanguard of 300 swept through Battery No. X which stood
immediately north of Fort Stedman. They then rushed into the fort;
the occupants were completely surprised and many surrendered
without a fight. Battery XI to the south of Fort Stedman was also
soon in Confederate hands. Union resistance in this early stage was
ineffective, although Battery XI was recaptured for a short time.
 Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon planned and led the March 25
attack on Fort Stedman, one of the most advanced works
on the Union line.

More Confederates pressed into the torn line. While three columns
set out in the general direction of City Point and along the Prince
George Court House Road behind Stedman, other infantry units
moved north and south along the Federal emplacements. To the
north, they captured the fortifications as far as Battery IX where they
were stopped by the Union defenders; to the south, they progressed
as far as the ramparts of Fort Haskell. A desperate struggle ensued,
but here, too, the Northerners refused to yield. Despite these 62
checks, the Confederates were now in possession of almost 1
mile of the Union line.

In the center of the Confederate attack, the three small columns

quickly advanced as far as Harrison’s Creek—a small stream which
winds its way north to the Appomattox River 650 yards behind Fort
Stedman. One of the columns succeeded in crossing the stream and
continuing toward a small Union artillery post on the site of what had
been Confederate Battery 8 (renamed Fort Friend by the Federals),
but canister from the post forced the column back to the creek.
Confusion took hold of the Confederates who were unable to locate
the positions they had been ordered to capture behind the Union line.
Artillery fire from Northern guns on a ridge to the east held them on
the banks of Harrison’s Creek. By 6 a.m. their forward momentum
had been checked.

Advancing from Colquitt’s Salient (above), Gordon’s men

captured Fort Stedman (below) but were driven out by a
murderous crossfire from Federal artillery. In the assault,
 some 4,000 Confederates were killed, wounded, or
captured.

Union infantry then charged from the ridge to attack the Southerners.
The forces joined battle along Harrison’s Creek and the Confederates
were soon forced back to Fort Stedman. For a brief time they held
their newly captured positions. At 7:30 a.m. Brig. Gen. John F.
Hartranft advanced on them with a division of Northern troops. 63
Heavy small-arms and artillery fire on Gordon’s men threatened
them with annihilation unless they retired to their own lines. About 8
a.m., Gordon received an order from Lee to withdraw his men. The
order was quickly dispatched across the open fields to the soldiers in
the captured Union works. By now, however, the line of retreat was
raked by a vicious crossfire and many Confederates preferred
surrender to withdrawal. About the same time Gordon was starting
back, Hartranft ordered his division of Pennsylvania troops to
recapture Fort Stedman. Within a few moments the Union line was
completely restored and the forlorn Southern hope of a successful
disruption of Northern communications, followed by secret
withdrawal from the city, was lost. Equally bad, if not worse, to the
Confederates was the loss of more than 4,000 killed, wounded, and
captured as compared to the Union casualties of less than 1,500.

Of the three Confederate plans of action before the Battle of Fort

Stedman, now only the second—retreat—was possible. The situation
demanded immediate action, for, even as Gordon had been preparing
on March 24 to launch his attack, Grant had been engaged in
planning more difficulties for the harassed defenders of Petersburg.

64
FIVE FORKS: BEGINNING OF THE END

The coming of better weather heralded the opportunity for the final
blows against the city. Grant, who was now passing some of the most
anxious moments of his life, planned that this effort should be
concentrated on the extreme right of the long Confederate line which
protected Richmond and Petersburg. This meant that hostilities would
soon commence somewhere west of Hatcher’s Run, perhaps in the
neighborhood of Dinwiddie Court House or a road junction called Five
Forks which lay 17 miles southwest of Petersburg. On March 24,
Grant ordered the II and IX Corps and three divisions of the Army of
the James to the extreme left of the Union lines facing Lee. This
resulted in a strong concentration northeast of Hatcher’s Run. Two
days later Sheridan arrived at City Point, fresh from his victorious
campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, and was ordered to join his
troops to those concentrated on the left. Finally, it began to appear
that the Army of Northern Virginia was to be encircled.

Meanwhile, Lee was waiting only until he collected supplies and

rations to last his men for a week and until the roads were passable
before leaving to join Johnston. He hoped to leave on or about April
10. The information he received about the rapid accumulation of
Union forces opposite his lightly held right was very disturbing, for, if
it was true, the Federals not only threatened to cut off his retreat to
the west and south, but they also posed a serious danger to the
Southside Railroad—the last remaining communication link between
Petersburg and the South, which continued to deliver a trickle of
supplies to the city.

On March 29 the Union troops moved out. Sheridan’s cavalry crossed

the Rowanty Creek and occupied Dinwiddie Court House, while the II
and V Corps crossed Hatcher’s Run. In moving into position on the
left of the II Corps, Warren’s V Corps soldiers encountered heavy
resistance north of Gravelly Run. While Sheridan was marshaling his
troops around Dinwiddie, Lee issued orders on March 29 which sent
Maj. Gens. George E. Pickett and Fitzhugh Lee to the Confederate
right near Five Forks, far beyond Petersburg.

Sheridan was prepared to move against the Confederates with 65

his cavalry on March 30, but heavy rains lasting from the
evening of March 29 until the morning of the 31st made a large-scale
movement impracticable over the muddy roads. On the last day of
the month, part of Sheridan’s forces which has pushed northwest
toward Five Forks was attacked by Southern forces which succeeded
in driving them back to Dinwiddie Court House, where Sheridan had a
fresh division. Pickett then found his men badly outnumbered and
withdrew them to Five Forks without pressing the advantage he had
gained. This incident, called the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House, was
a minor Confederate victory, although Sheridan’s men were neither
demoralized nor disorganized by the attack, and Robert E. Lee could
find small comfort in the situation.
Meanwhile, there had been a savage clash on White Oak Road
between Warren’s V Corps and Maj. Gen. Bushrod Johnson’s
Confederate division. The Confederates at first swept all before them,
but in the end numbers told and they were compelled to 66
withdraw behind their breastworks.

The Confederates had been able to concentrate on their extreme

right in the vicinity of Five Forks only about 10,000 cold and hungry
soldiers to meet the expected Union drive to turn their right flank.
Massed against this force commanded by Pickett were about 10,000
Northern cavalry and 12,000 infantry. The desperate urgency of
General Lee’s fears was indicated in the dispatch he sent to Pickett
early on April 1, the day of the struggle for Five Forks: “Hold Five
Forks at all hazards. Protect road to Ford’s Depot and prevent Union
forces from striking the south-side railroad. Regret exceedingly your
forced withdrawal, and your inability to hold the advantage you had
gained.”

Throughout April 1, Pickett’s troops worked unceasingly, erecting

barricades of logs and earth around Five Forks. About 4 p.m., with
only 2 hours of daylight remaining, Sheridan’s cavalry and Warren’s
infantry attacked. While the cavalry occupied the attention of the
Confederate defenders along White Oak Road, divisions of
infantrymen from the V Corps moved to the left of Pickett’s troops
and, after crossing the White Oak Road which connected Five Forks
with Petersburg, hit them on the weakly held left flank. Lacking
sufficient artillery support, infantry reserves, and the presence of
their commander, the Southerners were quickly overcome. Realizing
that their position was no longer tenable, portions of the Confederate
troops tried to retreat to Petersburg, but the avenue of escape had
been cut by the Union advance across the White Oak Road.

By dusk, the Battle of Five Forks had ended. Union troops were in
possession of the disputed area. They had cut off and captured more
than 3,200 prisoners, while suffering a loss of probably less than
1,000.
Now the besieging forces were in position for the first time to
accomplish Grant’s objective of cutting Lee’s supply lines and
breaking through his fortifications. The western end of Lee’s mobile
defenses had crumbled.

67
When Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan (above) sent cavalry and
infantry crashing into the Confederate right flank at Five
Forks on April 1, 1865, the Southern commander, Maj. Gen.
George E. Pickett (below), was at a shad bake in the rear.
By the time Pickett returned to his command, both it and
the defense line had crumbled. Suddenly, Petersburg was
no longer tenable. “It has happened as I told them in
Richmond it would happen,” said Lee. “The line has been
stretched until it is broken.”
Those Confederates who had survived the Battle of Five Forks 68
had fallen back to the Southside Railroad where they rallied for
a stand, but darkness had prevented a Union pursuit. Grant’s troops
were within striking distance of the rail line, located less than 3 miles
from Five Forks. Lee now knew that Petersburg and Richmond must
be evacuated without delay or the Army of Northern Virginia would
be completely cut off from outside help and all possible escape routes
would be gone.
The problem of assigning a proper significance to Five Forks is a
difficult one. It is now known that Lee and the Confederate
government officials were on the verge of abandoning their capital.
In June of the previous year the Southside Railroad had been a most
important objective of the invading army, but the plight of Lee’s army
had grown so desperate during the intervening months that whether
the railroad remained open or not mattered little. Grant, of course,
did not know this as a positive fact, although the uncomfortable
situation of his opponents was something of which he was doubtless
aware. The real importance of Five Forks lay in the probability that,
by making it more difficult for Lee to escape, it brought the inevitable
a little closer. Lt. Col. Horace Porter, of Grant’s staff, was positive
more than 30 years later that news of Sheridan’s success prompted
the Union commander in chief to issue the orders for the attack that
carried the city.
FALL OF PETERSBURG AND RICHMOND

Continuously throughout the night following the Battle of Five Forks,

the Union artillery played upon the Confederate earthworks and
dropped shells into the city. Troops were prepared for a general
assault ordered for the following dawn. At 4:40 a.m., April 2, 1865, a
frontal attack began with the sound of a signal gun from Fort Fisher.
A heavy ground fog added to the confusion as the Federals drove in
the Confederate pickets, cut away the abatis, and stormed over the
works.

The story of the fighting along the Petersburg front on that spring
Sunday is one of Union success over stout Confederate resistance.
Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright’s Union VI Corps broke through the
works defended by troops of A. P. Hill’s Corps and rolled up the
Confederate line to right and left, while several regiments 69
rushed on toward the Southside Railroad. Other elements of
Grant’s army swept away the remnants of the Confederate lines along
Hatcher’s Run. General Hill was killed early in the day by a Union
soldier near the Boydton Plank Road while on the way to rally his
men at Hatcher’s Run.

The desperateness of the Southern position was shown when, about

10 a.m., Lee telegraphed President Davis to inform him of the turn of
events at Petersburg. The message read: “I advise that all
preparations be made for leaving Richmond tonight.” Davis received
the message while attending Sunday services at St. Paul’s Church. He
left immediately, destroying the calm of worship, to prepare for
evacuating the capital. The flight of the Confederate government was
promptly begun.

By midday the entire outer line to the west of Petersburg had been
captured, with the exception of Fort Gregg. The city was now
completely surrounded except to the north. The left of the Union line
finally rested on the bank of the Appomattox River after months of
strenuous effort.

It now became apparent to Lee that he must hold an inner line west
of Petersburg until nightfall, when it would be possible for him to
retreat from the city. While gray-clad troops were forming along this
line built on the banks of Old Indian Town Creek, the defenders of
Fort Gregg put up a stubborn delaying action against the Northern
advance. Approximately 300 men and two pieces of artillery met an
onslaught of 5,000 Northerners. The outcome of the struggle was
determined by the numbers in the attacking force, but the capture of
Fort Gregg occurred only after bitter hand-to-hand combat. The
purpose of the defense had been accomplished, however, for a thin
but sturdy line running behind them from Battery 45 to the
Appomattox River had been manned. Temporarily, at least, street
fighting within Petersburg had been avoided.

Blows directed at other points, such as Fort Mahone on the Jerusalem

Plank Road, were slowed after troops of Maj. Gen. John G. Parke’s IX
Corps had captured 12 guns and 400 yards of the Confederate line to
the right and left of the road. Desperate counterattacks by 70
Gordon’s Confederates kept the Federals from exploiting this
breakthrough. Yet there was no doubt in the minds of Lee and other
Southern leaders that all hope of retaining Petersburg and Richmond
was gone. It was obvious that, if the lines held the Union army in
check on April 2, they must be surrendered on the morrow. The
object was to delay until evening, when retreat would be possible.

The close of the day found the weary Confederates concentrating

within Petersburg and making all possible plans to withdraw. Lee had
issued the necessary instructions at 5 o’clock that afternoon. By 8
p.m. the retreat was under way, the artillery preceding the infantry
across the Appomattox River. Amelia Court House, 40 miles to the
west, was designated as the assembly point for the troops from
Petersburg and Richmond.
Grant had ordered the assault on Petersburg to be renewed early on
April 3. It was discovered at 3 a.m. that the Southern earthworks had
been abandoned; an attack was not necessary. Union troops took
possession of the city shortly after 4 o’clock in the morning.
Richmond officially surrendered 4 hours later.

President Lincoln, who had been in the vicinity of Petersburg for more
than a week, came from army headquarters at City Point that same
day for a brief visit with Grant. They talked quietly on the porch of a
private house for 1½ hours before the President returned to City
Point. Grant, with all of his army, except the detachments necessary
to police Petersburg and Richmond and to protect City Point, set out
in pursuit of Lee. He left Maj. Gen. George L. Hartsuff in command at
Petersburg.

Petersburg had fallen, but it was at a heavy price. In the absence of

complete records, the exact casualties will never be known, but in the
10-month campaign at least 42,000 Union soldiers had been killed,
wounded, and captured, while the Confederates had suffered losses
of more than 28,000. Although the northern forces had lost more
men than their opponents, they had been able to replenish them
more readily. Moreover, Grant had been prepared to utilize the
greater resources at his disposal, and the Petersburg campaign had
been turned by him into a form of relentless attrition which the
Southern army had not been able to stand. The result had been the
capture of Petersburg and Richmond, but more important, it had led
to the flight of the remnants of the once mighty Army of Northern
Virginia.

71
Fort Mahone after its capture, 1865.
 Deserted Confederate huts on the abandoned Petersburg
line.

On the Sunday following the evacuation of Petersburg and 72

Richmond, Lee’s troops were cut off at Appomattox Court
House, destroying any hopes they might have had for uniting with
Johnston in North Carolina. In this small Virginia town nearly 100
miles west of Petersburg, the Army of Northern Virginia, now
numbering little more than 28,000, surrendered to the Union forces.
Within a week of the fall of Petersburg the major striking force of the
Confederacy had capitulated. General Johnston surrendered his army
to General Sherman in North Carolina on April 26. By early June
1865, all Confederate forces had been surrendered, and the Civil War
was over.

73

Union soldiers on Sycamore Street in Petersburg, April

1865. For these men, basking in the aftermath of a
successful campaign, the war is almost over. To the west,
General Sheridan’s cavalry is racing to cut off the
retreating Southern army. “If the thing is pressed,”
Sheridan tells Grant, “I think Lee will surrender.” Says
Lincoln: “Let the thing be pressed.”

74

On April 3, 1865, with Petersburg in Union hands at last,

General Grant issued orders sending off the Armies of the
Potomac and the James in pursuit of Lee. While the
photographer was taking this picture, showing a Federal
wagon train leaving the city to join in the chase, the
remnants of Lee’s army were marching toward a little
crossroad village named Appomattox Court House.
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