Between 6-800 AD arrived the Slavs, there was widespread conversion to Christianity, and the next five hundred years saw Bosnia at the focal point of influence through varying periods of conquest, control and administration by Serbs, Hungarians, Byzantines and Croats. The medieval town of Hodidjed was located in the vicinity of today’s Sarajevo; however, the actual name of the city, which comes from the Turkish words saray and ovasi, meaning ‘court’ and ‘field’ respectively, indicates that Sarajevo is a creation of the Ottoman Empire.

 
The Ottomans

Bosnia had starting emerging as an independent state since the mid-1100s, and became a kingdom under King Tvrtko the 1st in 1377, just as the Turks started their foray into the country, presaging the Ottoman invasion which took place between 1430 to 1592, when the last town in Bosnia – Bihac – fell into Turkish hands. The country was now part of the Ottoman Empire, and just in case there was any question that the country’s religious mix of Orthodox, Christianity and the indigenous Bosnian church was not sufficient, Islam joined the fray. Sarajevo became one of the most powerful cities in the Turks’ new frontier territories, and although the capital moved twice, to Banja Luka and Travnik, Sarajevo remained the nerve-centre. 

 

Sarajevo was founded in the mid 15th century by the Ottoman governor of Bosnia – Isa-bey Ishakovic – to house the area's Ottoman government. Anyone strolling through Sarajevo will easily notice the city's three distinct parts, each of which are reflective of the historical period in which it was built. The initial expansion of the city occurred during the first 150 years or so of Ottoman rule. Many of the city’s architectural gems were built during this period, such as Gazi Husrev Bey’s and The Emperor’s Mosques. Baščaršija – the city’s once-great bazaar – was also constructed during the same period. By the beginning of the 17^th century, Sarajevo grew into a vibrant community of artisans and an important merchant trading post, as well as one of the most significant cities in the European part of the Ottoman Empire.

 

In 1697 Sarajevo was attacked and burnt by Prince Eugene of Savoy, the final of series of unremitting attacks by the Hapsburgs and the Venetians. The Ottomans moved the capital to Travnik, and Sarajevo started to refuse to accept governors sent from Istanbul. This independent, self-determining and occasionally bloody-mindedness of spirit was to become a core feature of the city’s identity, most recently surfacing during the four-year siege of the city from 1992-1995.

Austro-Hungarian Rule
The city's second architectural expansion started following the Austro-Hungarian occupation in the late 19th century and lasted until the beginning of World War I in 1914, after the 1878 treaty of Berlin gave the Austro-Hungarian Empire a mandate to administer Bosnia. The city was modernized during this period. Austro-Hungarians established the city’s first public transportation system and the first telephone lines. Many cultural and educational institutions were founded in this period as well. The National (Land) Museum, the First Sheriate Law High School and the National Theatre. Sarajevo City Hall, Ashkenazi Synagogue, and Catholic Cathedral were also added to the expanding city. The growth of Sarajevo was interrupted on June 28, 1914 when Gavrilo Princip assassinated Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia during their visit to Sarajevo, setting off the chain of events that led to the start of World War I.

Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
Following the Treaty of Versailles in 1918 that ended World War I, Sarajevo, along with Bosnia and Herzegovina, became a part of the newly-formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. It remained within the later-renamed Kingdom of Yugoslavia until the beginning of World War II, when the monarchy was abolished and, following the end of the war, the new socialist Yugoslavia was created.

 
Yugoslavia and Socialism

The general plan for development of Sarajevo was adopted in 1945, and the city that suffered tremendous losses during World War II under the Germans expanded. German occupation had started in 1941, and Bosnia was assimilated into an atrocious Croatian Ustasha nationalist entity, where multiple atrocities were carried out, particularly against Serbs, many of which took place at the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp south of Zagreb where between 50-70,000 people, mainly Serbs, were slaughtered.

 

In 1943 Josep Brod Tito, leading the Bosnian partisans on covert operations in the mountain fastnesses of the centre of the country, established the basis of the post-war Yugoslavia, of which Bosnia would be one of six republics. Subsequent to the war, Sarajevo was not only rebuilt but considerably expanded as well. It almost tripled in size during its third expansion which took place during the formative years of socialist Yugoslavia. By 1984, when the city hosted the 14th Winter Olympic Games, Sarajevo was a modern capital city of around 500,000 people.

Talk to Bosnians about the Tito era, and it is fondly remembered as a halcyon period set in a kind of aspic of nostalgia, of benevolent socialism, when everybody had a car, a state apartment, holidays on the coast every year, and life was a given. Yes and no, is the answer. The dream was founded on political repression and kept alive by wildly unrealistic economic planning and strategies, based on much heavy foreign borrowing. But for most people, it functioned, Tito kept nationalism at bay, and the country appeared to prosper. It was during this period that Sarajevo developed a reputation as something of a cultural centre, a party town, and acquired the rather clichéd adjective that is so often used to describe it: cosmopolitan. But it was a tougher, fiercely independent and more gutsy series of characteristics that was to carry it through the years of the 1992-1995 war.