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The Balkans (often referred to as the Balkan Peninsula, although the two are not coterminous) is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains, which run through the centre of Bulgaria into eastern Serbia. The region has a combined area of 550,000 km2 (212,000 sq mi) and a population of 55 million people.[citation needed]
"Balkan" comes from a Turkish word meaning "a chain of wooded mountains".[1] The ancient Greek name for the Balkan Peninsula was the "Peninsula of Haemus" (Χερσόνησος τοῦ Αἵμου, Chersónēsos tou Haímou). Romans considered the Rhodope Mountains to be the northern limit of the Peninsula of Haemus and the same limit applied approximately to the border between Greek and Latin use in the region (this was later called Jireček Line[2]). The Balkans are also referred to as Southeastern Europe.
The Balkan region was the first area of Europe to experience the arrival of farming cultures in the Neolithic era. The practices of growing grain and raising livestock arrived in the Balkans from the Fertile Crescent by way of Anatolia, and spread west and north into Pannonia and Central Europe.
The identity of the Balkans is dominated by its geographical position; historically the area was known as a crossroads of various cultures. It has been a juncture between the Latin and Greek bodies of the Roman Empire, the destination of a massive influx of pagan Slavs, an area where Orthodox and Catholic Christianity met, as well as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity.
In pre-classical and classical antiquity, this region was home to Greeks, Illyrians, Paeonians, Thracians, Dacians and other ancient groups. Later the Roman Empire conquered most of the region and spread Roman culture and the Latin language but significant parts still remained under classical Greek influence. The Slavs arrived in the 6th century and began assimilating and displacing the older inhabitants of the northern and central Balkans.[16] During the Middle Ages, the Balkans became the stage for a series of wars between the Byzantine, Bulgarian and Serbian Empires.
By the end of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire had become the controlling force in the region after expanding from Anatolia through Thrace to the Balkans. Many people in the Balkans and Carpathians place their greatest folk heroes in the era of either the onslaught or the retreat of the Ottoman Empire. As examples, for Croats, Nikola Šubić Zrinski and Petar Kružić; for Greeks Constantine XI Palaiologos and Kolokotronis for Serbs, Miloš Obilić and Tzar Lazar; for Albanians, Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg; for ethnic Macedonians, Nikola Karev; for Bosniaks, Husein Gradaščević; and for Bulgarians, Vasil Levski, Georgi Sava Rakovski and Hristo Botev. In the past several centuries, because of the frequent Ottoman wars in Europe fought in and around the Balkans, and the comparative Ottoman isolation from the mainstream of economic advance (reflecting the shift of Europe's commercial and political centre of gravity towards the Atlantic), the Balkans has been the least developed part of Europe. The population of the Balkans, according to one estimate, fell from a high of 8 millions in the late 16th century to only 3 million by the mid-eighteenth.[17]
In the late 16th century, Mostar was the chief administrative city for the Ottoman Empire in the Herzegovina region.
The Balkan nations gained independence in the 19th century (Greece in 1829, Serbia in 1833, Bulgaria and Montenegro in 1878).
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8:15
Romanian House Mixby DjMarkiss136,261 views
prejaka :D
DeejayNeSso 1 month ago
I love this song!!
Cngizhan28 1 year ago