The Raska region is a newer name for the area where the Serbian state idea began and the first Serbian state organization was formed under Prince Vlastimir (9th century), which was known as European literature until the beginning of the twentieth century, and much later in European literature. ” Raska ”or“ Stara Raska ”. Namely, it is known that the first Serbian state was formed in the areas of Polimlje, Potarje and the upper reaches of the Ibar and Drina.
In Ras, the Serbian capital, on the foundations of which lies Novi Pazar today, sat the great prefect Stefan Nemanja, where his youngest son Rastko was born, later the famous Serbian educator and saint Saint Sava. The Serbian state expanded over time and gained new capitals, but the Serbian cultural and spiritual strength came to full expression during the 12th and 13th centuries in the area of today’s Raska region. This is evidenced by the magnificent architectural and artistic achievements in Djurdjevi stupovi and Sopoćani near Novi Pazar, Mileševi near Prijepolje, Sveti Nikola in Pribojska Banja near Priboj and dozens of other magnificent monuments of Serbian secular and ecclesiastical architecture, most of which still linger in ruins after destruction during Ottoman rule.
The famous historian Vladimir Ćorović noted that only in the valley of Lima, at the zenith of the Serbian medieval civilization, about seventy churches and monasteries radiated spiritually and culturally. That information inspired Aleksandar Derok to write a wonderful study entitled “On the Holy Waters of Lima”. In recent times, with the beginning of the Serbian national revolution in 1804 and the formation of two Serbian state-building and liberation nuclei in Šumadija and Old Montenegro, Stara Raška gained new national, cultural and strategic significance in the efforts to create a single nation state.
On the one hand, numerous monasteries and churches, unfortunately mostly in ruins, as well as numerous medieval towns, testified to the greatness and glory of the old Serbian state on the foundations of which a new Serbian state was now to be restored and created, and on the other is an important role primarily in connecting Serbia and Montenegro, and then other Serbian provinces. Jovan Cvijić rightly concluded that the Old Raska School, which unites all Serbian countries, having in mind then, at the beginning of the 20th century, Old Serbia, Serbia and Montenegro as two independent Serbian states, and then Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were located under Austro-Hungarian occupation.
Karadjordje noticed the great strategic importance of the Raska region for the Serbian liberation movement, especially for ties with Montenegro, Brda and Stara Hercegovina, and therefore his penetration in 1809 towards Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Lim had the primary goal of cutting the so-called “Bosnian jade”, ie the main strategic path that connected the Bosnian province with other parts of the Ottoman Empire.
Political direction established by Austro-Hungarian diplomacy and the army whose ultimate goal was to separate in the form of a corridor between Serbia and Montenegro Raska region, to prevent the unification of the two countries and to establish direct territorial ties with Albanian regions and Kosovo and Metohija to prevent the Serbian movement in Old Serbia, this political direction, became a model for the national policy of the CP and especially for the Croatian Balkan policy, be it Ustasha, communist or post-communist ..
After the liquidation of the Turkish government in 1912, Austro-Hungarian diplomacy tried to use Raska Muslims to achieve the same goal. In 1917, the Austro-Hungarian occupation authorities organized a conference of all Muslim mayors to pass a resolution expressing the desire of the people of Sandzak to separate from Serbia and Montenegro and merge with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and if that was not possible, then to beg royal authorities for the “autonomy of Sandzak”.
Austro-Hungarian diplomacy is most responsible for imposing the name “Sandzak” instead of the historical name of the area “Raska”, or “Stara Raska”, ie Raska area as is usual in recent times. It is known that the term “sandzak” is a designation for the Turkish administrative area and that there were hundreds of such sandzak throughout the Ottoman Empire from Central Europe to Asia. Unfortunately, the Serbs recklessly and themselves began to accept the name “sandzak” for the historical core of their oldest state, and that name became so familiar that it began to suppress the historical name of the territory.
The reaffirmation of the name is not just a formal issue. It is the starting point for the great cultural, spiritual and economic renewal of this unjustly neglected Serbian area. In the new geopolitical circumstances, the Raska region has the same, if not greater significance for the Serbian people as it did two centuries ago.
Dr. Slavenko Terzic
historian SANU Historical Institute
“Current events in the Raska area, ie the activities of Muslim extremists and separatists, impose an urgent and permanent need to clarify the terms – names Raska, Stara Raska, Sandzak, Raska area, as parts of Old Serbia. In fact, their lexical, geographical and historical meaning should be explained. The former Novi Pazar Sandzak, which often, completely unfoundedly, identifies with the territory of the former Serbian medieval state of Raska, has had no political, constitutional, legal or ethnic or any other special position since the Berlin Congress in 1878, and especially since the end of the 19th century. Increasingly, only the name “Sandžak” is used in the West and among domestic separatists, and this name is especially relevant to the fictional problem of human rights in times of crisis and war in the Balkans and beyond.
Since its founding in 1990, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) has constantly insisted on autonomy or some special (special) status of “Sandzak”, ie Raska o & pasti. They will never say that this area is Stara Raška (and in some western sources it was called Allte Rascien – Stara Raška) or the modern name Raška area. They do not do that because in that case they would recognize, indisputable in science and national memory, the continuity of the Serbian historical and ethnic space, which is known in both the East and the West as Stara Raska, which together with Kosovo and Metohija and northern Macedonia Old Serbia. ”
Salih Selimović, historian
(Breznički zapisi, 11-12, Pljevlja 1999)