Origins of Sarajevo

Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, grew from a small Ottoman settlement into a major city in the valley of the Miljacka river. The Ottoman governor Isa-beg Ishakovic is credited with founding the town after the conquest of Bosnia, and its growth was furthered by Gazi Husrev-beg in the sixteenth century, who endowed a mosque, a covered bazaar and a madrasa. Under the Ottomans, and later under Austria-Hungary from 1878, the city developed as a meeting place of Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish communities. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand there in 1914 set off the First World War. It hosted the Winter Olympics in 1984 and endured a long siege from 1992 to 1996.

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