The Ottoman occupation

Osman (Uthman) I, who gave his name to the Ottoman empire, inherited the crumbling Seljuk patrimony at the end of the fourteenth century. Within 150 years of Osman's death in 1324 his successors had overrun what remained of the Byzantine empire and had occupied almost all the territory of present-day Yugoslavia which lies south of the Sava-Danube line. Only Dalmatia and a tiny enclave in Montenegro remained outside Turkish control. Within the next 50 years Ottoman armies crossed the Danube and even penetrated into Hungary and Romania, laying siege to Vienna in 1529. For another 150 years after this, the Ottoman empire continued to expand northwards and westwards until a high-water mark was reached in 1683, with Ottoman forces assembled for the second time before the gates of Vienna. They were driven back and confined to the area south of the Sava-Danube-Una line, where the frontier remained for almost two centuries. The southern area, comprising present-day Serbia, Bosnia– Hercegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia, was incorporated into the Turkish system of government, whilst Slovenia and Croatia-Slavonia, north of the military frontier, were under the dominion of the Habsburgs. Vojvodina was recovered from the Turks at the end of the seventeenth century, and was reunited to a liberated Hungary, also under Habsburg rule. Vojvodina was the chief area of settlement of refugee Serbs fleeing from the Ottomans.