Serbia

The Serbs are first referred to as a distinct group in the Balkans in the writings of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII (Porphyrogenitus, nominally emperor from 913 to 959 but effectively so from 945). His massive work De administrando imperio, written in the tenth century, refers to Serbs who were subjects of his predecessors and who were converted to Christianity in the ninth century.They appear to have been settled in the seventh century in areas now known as Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia. Their early attempts to create some kind of political unity from the scores of minor clans, each under its own chieftain or župan, were continually beset by difficulties arising from the attempts of both the Byzantines and Bulgars to dominate them. In the middle of the ninth century one of the Serbian chieftains, Vlastimir, became grand zupan (veliki župan) of a Serbian principality which owed allegiance to Byzantium. Vlastimir enlarged his domain by marrying the daughter of the neighbouring župan of Travunija, which gave him access to the Adriatic coast in the Kotor region. After Vlastimir's death internal quarrels and invasions by both Bulgarian and Byzantine forces seriously weakened the Serbs, but in the eleventh century a revived Serbian kingdom emerged, centred on the old Roman town of Doclea, near the present-day site of Titograd. This is known to historians both as Duklija (after Roman Doclea) and Zeta, after the river which flows between Nikšić and Titograd.