Bar, Montenegro

Bar ( Montenegrin and Serbian: Бар, ; sq, Tivar; it, Antivari or ''Antibari'') is a coastal town and seaport in southern Montenegro. It is the capital of the Bar Municipality and a center for tourism. According to the 2011 census, the city proper had 13,503 inhabitants, while the total population of Bar Municipality was 42,068.

Name

''Bar'' is a shortened form of ''Antivari''. The name is thought to be derived from the Latin ''Antibarum'' or ''Antibari'', which later in Greek was transformed into ''Antivárion / Antivari'' due to its pronunciation. A name taken because of its location and which means "in front of Bari". Variations are in Italian, ''Antivari / Antibari''; in Albanian, ''Tivari'' or ''Tivar''; in Turkish, ''Bar''; in Greek, Θηβάριον, ''Thivárion'', Αντιβάριον, ''Antivárion''; in Latin, ''Antibarium''

History

Ancient times

Local archaeological findings date to the Neolithic era. It is assumed that Bar was mentioned as the reconstructed Roman castle, ''Antipargal'', in the 6th century. The name ''Antibarium'' was quoted for the first time in the 10th century.

Middle Ages

In the 6th and 7th centuries, Slavs occupied the Balkans. Duklja, a Slavic, or Serbian state, was mentioned in the 10th century. Jovan Vladimir (ruler 1000–1016), of Skadarska Krajina is the first ruler of Duklja whose history is known. Stefan Vojislav (ruler 1018–1043), the eponymous founder of the Vojislavljević dynasty, defeated the Byzantines in a battle on a hill near Bar. He made Bar his seat of power. Vojislav then expanded the area under his rule. Mihailo I of Duklja (ruler 1050–1081), Vojislav's son, established the Archdiocese of Antivari. He continued to fight the Byzantines in order to secure the town's independence. This led to a union of states known as the Serbian Grand Principality. From 1101 to 1166, the principality was ruled by the Vukanović dynasty. However, for much of this time, Bar was under Byzantine rule. In 1183, Stefan Nemanja conquered and destroyed Bar which remained under Serbian control until the death of Dušan (1355).

Venetian and Ottoman period

From 1443 to 1571, the region was ruled by Venice who called it ''Antivari'', and it was part of the Albania Veneta. It was a town with its own coat of arms, flag, statute and mint. In 1571, the Ottomans captured Antivari and held the town until 1878. The archdiocese was preserved. With the Ottoman conquest, the Catholic Church in the border area and the Archdiocese of Bar began to collapse, because indigenous people began to migrate as Ottomans to that area brought a new ethnic and religious element. Because of a lack of Catholic priests, entire parishes were converted to Orthodoxy. One of the archbishops during this period was Andrija Zmajević.

In 1571, The Ottomans expelled the Orthodox and Catholic population.

The Ottomans ceded Antivari to Montenegro at the Treaty of Berlin, after losing the Russo-Turkish War. Montenegro's initial main goal in the negotiations was its expansion in Herzegovina and the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, but Austro-Hungarian expansion made it unrealistic. The Ottomans, represented by Alexander Karatheodori Pasha, declared that they would cede the port of Spizza to Montenegro but not Bar and other areas because they claimed they were primarily inhabited by Catholics and Muslim Albanians. After negotiations between Foreign Ministers Gyula Andrássy (Austria-Hungary) and Pyotr Andreyevich Shuvalov (Russia), it was agreed that Bar would be ceded to Montenegro in return for Russian support for Austrian control over Herzegovina. The city-port of Bar itself became militarily neutral, the total number of Montenegrin vessels in the port was placed under limitations and Austria-Hungary acquired the right of patrol of Bar's coastline.

Montenegro renamed the town ''Bar'', although virtually everyone else, including their neighbours, Italy and Austria-Hungary, continued to name it Antivari. In the new Montenegrin Orthodox state, Bar went through urban depopulation because many of its urban inhabitants which were in fact Muslims either left or were expelled from the town. In the late 1850s, the town had 4,000 inhabitants, 62.5% of which were Muslims. More than half of its population left or was expelled after 1878. The first population register of the town under Montenegrin administration in 1879, counted 1,879 inhabitants. Muslims were 30.9% of the population, 24.6% were Catholics (mostly Albanians) in addition to a mostly Serbian Orthodox population.

Contemporary

Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian scientist and pioneer in wireless telegraphy, using Nikola Tesla