Bihor (region)

Bihor is a geographical region in northeastern Montenegro, located near Jagoče and northeast of Lopare. The area falls under three municipalities: Berane, Bijelo Polje and Petnjica. It is named after Bihor, a former medieval town once located near Bijelo Polje. The region is mainly inhabited by Bosniaks, with a minority of Serbs and Montenegrins.

Geology

Upper Bihor covers an area of approximately 143 km2 (55 sq mi) with an average altitude of 922 m (3,025 ft). The region has a wide variety of terrain types, with high mountains, river valleys, glacial and karst landforms and volcanic mountains. The Bosniak inhabitants of the area consider Upper Bihor to be a part of southwestern Sandžak.

History

In 1455, the Ottomans captured the city of Bihor. The town developed in the 16th century as the center of a kadiluk, with a garrison holding eight timars in 1530.[1] The Ottoman conquest did not change the ethnic structure of the area which, in the 16th century, was inhabited only by Christians, Serbs and Serbianized Vlachs. And although the Islamization of the population of the city of Bihor began with the Ottoman rule, it did not spread outside the town until the end of the 17th century.[2] Gypsies are also mentioned as living in the area in 1566, while Albanian soldiers appear in the mid-17th century as part of the Ottoman garrison of the city.[2]

Bijelo Polje (Akova) in the late Ottoman period was one of the five kazas (districs) of the sanjak of Novi Pazar. The Bulgarian foreign ministry compiled a report in 1901-02 about the demographics of the sanjak. According to the Bulgarian report, in the kaza of Akova there were 47 Albanian villages which had 1,266 households. Serbs lived in 11 villages which had 216 households. The town of Akova (Bijelo Polje) had 100 Albanian and Serb households. There were also mixed villages - inhabited by both Serbs and Albanians - which had 115 households with 575 inhabitants.[3]

The area became part of Montenegro in the First Balkan War.[4] After the Balkan Wars and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, heavy pressure led the Muslims from Bihor to move to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Turkey. In 1914, a few thousand people from Bihor left for Turkey, while followers of Eastern Orthodoxy began to settle in various other parts of Montenegro.

During World War II, Montenegro was occupied by the Italian army, reinforced locally by several detachments of Albanians from Kosovo and Muslims from Bihor.[5] The Muslim unit from the Petnjica area was commanded by Osman Rastoder, Arslan Đukić and Osman Cikotić.[6] Following the 13 July Uprising, a militia commanded by Osman Rastoder attacked Christian villages from the Berane and Rožaje areas, at the end of July and the beginning of August 1941. The attackers burned and looted houses belonging to Christians, killed several of them and destroyed entire villages.[7] In 1943, Bihor was a buffer zone between the Italian-controlled part of Montenegro and the Albanian quisling state. Based in Montenegro, Chetnik forces under the command of Pavle Đurišić conducted a series of ethnic cleansing operations against Muslims in the region. A first massacre of the Muslim population from Bihor took place in January 1943 and led to thousands of people fleeing to Albanian-controlled areas such as Rožaje or Peja. Muhajirs (refugees) from Bihor numbered several thousand people. A contemporary letter from one of them who moved to Albania, addressed to the Prime Minister of Albania, considered them to be almost 10,000. A memorandum from Bihor sent to the Albanian government urged Ekrem Libohova to take the necessary measures for the protection of the local Albanians and the unification of the area with Albania. It mentions that 6,000 to 7,000 refugees from Bihor were living in Peja, Kosovo.

According to modern Bosniak historian Fehim Džogović, while the primary documents mentions populations involved as Albanians, the people in question should be viewed as a reference to the modern Bosniak (Slavic-speaking Muslim) population in the same area.[8]

In the late 1940s, people from Bihor began moving to Vojvodina as colonists. Because of hard life in their new home, some people came back to Bihor. The migration of Muslims from this area to Turkey was intensive between 1956 and 1958. Today, the population is predominantly made up of Bosniaks with a minority of Serbs and Montenegrins.

Families

There are 73 surnames of villagers found in Upper Bihor:

Towns
  • Azanje
  • Bare
  • Bistrica
  • Bor
  • Crnče
  • Dašča Rijeka
  • Dobrodole
  • Donja Vrbica
  • Donje Korito
  • Donji Ponor
  • Godočelje
  • Goduša
  • Gornja Vrbica
  • Hazane
  • Jahova Voda
  • Javorova
  • Johovice
  • Kalica
  • Kruščica
  • Lagatore
  • Laze
  • Lješnica
  • Murovac
  • Orahovo
  • Paljuh
  • Petnjica
  • Ponor
  • Poroče
  • Radmanci
  • Sipovice
  • Savin Bor
  • Sipanje
  • Trnavice
  • Trpezi
  • Tucanje
  • Vorbica
  • Vrševo

References
  1. Šćekić, Radenko; Leković, Žarko; Premović, Marijan (2015). "Political Developments and Unrests in Stara Raška (Old Rascia) and Old Herzegovina during Ottoman Rule". Balcanica (XLVI): 80.
  2. Dašić, Miomir (2011) [1st pub. Narodna knjiga:1986]. Vasojevići: od pomena do 1860 [The Vasojevići: from mentions until 1860] (PDF) (in Serbian). Nikšić: Izdavački centar Matice srpske. pp. 96–97. ISBN 9789940580049.
  3. Bartl 1968, p. 63:Die Kaza Bjelopolje ( Akova ) zählte 11 serbische Dörfer mit 216 Häusern, 2 gemischt serbisch - albanische Dörfer mit 25 Häusern und 47 albanische Dörfer mit 1 266 Häusern . Bjelopolje selbst hatte etwa 100 albanische und serbische.
  4. Morrison 2018, p. 5:Regional power politics soon took precedence over merely internal matters, however, with the outbreak of the First Balkan War in 1912. Joining an alliance with Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria against the Ottoman Empire, and, in the Second Balkan War, with Serbia against Bulgaria, Montenegro gained much of the Sandžak, Metohija (including the towns of Djakovica and Peć), and gained the towns of Bijelo Polje, Mojkovac, Berane and Pljevlja, among others.
  5. Živković 2017, p. 158.
  6. Živković 2017, p. 159.
  7. Živković 2017, pp. 164–165.
  8. Džogović, Fehim (2020). "NEKOLIKO DOKUMENATA IZ DRŽAVNOG ARHIVA ALBANIJE U TIRANI O ČETNIČKOM GENOCIDU NAD MUSLIMANIMA BIHORA JANUARA 1943". ALMANAH - Časopis za proučavanje, prezentaciju I zaštitu kulturno-istorijske baštine Bošnjaka/Muslimana (in Bosnian) (85–86): 329–341. ISSN 0354-5342. [Working for a long time on the edition "Sandžak 1941-1945, Žrtve ratar", I discovered several documents in the State Archives in Tirana that talk about the massacre that the Chetniks of Pavel Đurišić carried out in January 1943 against innocent Muslim people in Lower Bihor. These documents, in their original form, were written in Albanian, are published to our knowledge for the first time in our language, and we find them interesting not only because they bear direct witness to the scale of this crime. The documents suggest that the area where the crime took place was administratively an intermediate area between the area controlled by the Albanian quisling authorities and the Italian occupation zone. In these documents, the reporters speak mainly of Albanians, ignoring the fact that these areas were inhabited by Bosniaks, to whom they attribute the intention of wanting to join the so-called Greater Albania. The documents unequivocally state that the crime was committed by Pavel Đurišić's Chetniks, in accordance with the "instructions" of Draža Mihailović's Chetnik movement, which provided for the destruction of non-Orthodox life in these areas.]

Sources

42.925°N 19.862°E / 42.925; 19.862

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