Skopje | |
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Population | 668500 |
Skopje ( SKOP-yee, -yay, US also SKOHP-; Macedonian: Скопје [ˈskɔpjɛ] (listen); Albanian: Shkup) is the capital and largest city of North Macedonia. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre.
The territory of Skopje has been inhabited since at least 4000 BC; remains of Neolithic settlements have been found within the old Kale Fortress that overlooks the modern city centre. Originally a Paeonian city, Scupi became the capital of Dardania in the second century BC. On the eve of the 1st century AD, the settlement was seized by the Romans and became a military camp. When the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western halves in 395 AD, Scupi came under Byzantine rule from Constantinople. During much of the early medieval period, the town was contested between the Byzantines and the Bulgarian Empire, whose capital it was between 972 and 992.
From 1282, the town was part of the Serbian Empire, and acted as its capital city from 1346 to 1371. In 1392, Skopje was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, who called it Üsküb, with this name also being in use in English for a time. The town stayed under Ottoman control for over 500 years, serving as the capital of pashasanjak of Üsküp and later the Vilayet of Kosovo. In 1912, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Serbia during the Balkan Wars.
Kosovo | |
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Population | 0 |
Kosovo (; Albanian: Kosova or Kosovë, pronounced [kɔˈsɔva] or [kɔˈsɔvə]; Serbian Cyrillic: Косово, pronounced [kôsoʋo]), officially the Republic of Kosovo (Albanian: Republika e Kosovës; Serbian: Република Косово / Republika Kosovo), is a partially-recognised state and disputed territory in Southeastern Europe. On 17 February 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia. It has since gained diplomatic recognition as a sovereign state by 98 UN member states.
Geographically defined in an area of 10,887 km2 (4,203 sq mi), Kosovo is landlocked in the center of the Balkans and bordered by the uncontested territory of Serbia to the north and east, North Macedonia to the southeast, Albania to the southwest and Montenegro to the west. It possesses remarkable varied and diverse landscapes for its size by climate along with geology and hydrology. Most of central Kosovo is dominated by the vast plains and fields of Metohija and Kosovo. The rugged Prokletije and Šar Mountains rise in the southwest and southeast, respectively.
Archaeological research has shown that the earliest known settlements in the territory of present-day Kosovo were linked to the Neolithic Starčevo culture and the material culture groupins which succeeded it. The Bronze Age was marked by the arrival of Indo-European tribes and the appearance of tumuli, a typical feature of Indo-European material culture, in existing and new sites. In classical antiquity, the central tribe which emerged in the territory of Kosovo was that of the Dardani who formed an independent polity known as the Kingdom of Dardania in the 4th century BCE. Dardania was annexed by the Roman Empire by the 1st century BCE and was later part of the provinces of Praevalitana and Dardania. Kosovo remained part of the eastern Roman Empire for over a thousand years. Byzantine administration was eroded by Slavic invasions beginning in the 6th-7th century AD. In the centuries thereafter control of the area alternated between the Byzantines and the First Bulgarian Empire.