Novi Pazar

Long before Novi Pazar existed, the valley of the Raška was the heart of medieval Serbia. The Church of Saint Peter, founded around 820, served as the seat of the Serbian church and the baptismal church of the Nemanjić dynasty; the fortress of Ras, a few kilometres west, was a frontier stronghold fought over by Byzantium and Bulgaria; and the area became the principal province of the Serbian realm from the late 12th century. Stefan Nemanja founded Đurđevi Stupovi around 1170, and King Stefan Uroš I built Sopoćani in the 13th century. Below the fortress a market called Trgovište grew up.

The Ottomans took the area for good in 1455. In 1461 Isa-Beg Ishaković, the Ottoman governor who also founded Sarajevo, established a new town about 11 kilometres east of the old market, building a mosque, a bath, a marketplace and a hostel. The old market became Eski Pazar, the "old bazaar", and the new one Yeni Pazar — in Serbian, Novi Pazar. It became the capital of the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, and in the 17th century the traveller Evliya Çelebi counted it among the most populous towns of the Balkans.

From 1878 to 1908 the area was controlled by Austria-Hungary, and in the First Balkan War of 1912 it passed to Serbia, later Yugoslavia. During the Second World War the town's Jewish population of 221 people was deported and killed, and late in 1941 the city withstood an attack by Chetnik forces. After 2000 the reforming prime minister Zoran Đinđić backed development in the area, and the International University of Novi Pazar was founded in 2002.

Novi Pazar is the cultural centre of the Bosniaks of Serbia and of the wider Sandžak, the historic region that straddles the border with Montenegro. Most people are Muslim and speak Bosnian, alongside a sizeable Serbian Orthodox community, and the area counts some thirty protected cultural monuments of both faiths. The city's list of partner and friendship towns runs from Sarajevo and Goražde in Bosnia and Herzegovina to Bayrampaşa and Kocaeli in Turkey.

Football is followed with intense loyalty. FK Novi Pazar, founded in 1928 as FK Sandžak and playing under its present name since 1962, reached the Serbian SuperLiga in the 2011–12 season, and the city stadium fills for home games. The city also has volleyball, handball and basketball clubs, and it has produced footballers such as Adem Ljajić and the tennis player Hamad Medjedovic.

Trade is part of the city's identity — its name means "new bazaar" — and the café on the pedestrian street is where business and conversation happen. Religious holidays shape the year, with both Muslim and Orthodox feasts marked in a city that keeps monuments of both faiths side by side.

The 2022 census counted about 71,000 people in the city and about 107,000 in its administrative area of 100 settlements, which spreads over the hills around the valleys of the Jošanica, Raška, Deževska and Ljudska. It is a young city by Serbian standards, with an average age in the early thirties and large households.

Trade has always been the economy's backbone. In the 20th century Novi Pazar became a centre of the textile industry, and in the 1990s, even under UN sanctions, private workshops prospered by making jeans — first under copied labels, then under their own — that were sold across the region. In the 2000s the big textile firms collapsed after mismanaged privatisation and cheap imports arrived; in 2023 the city had around 23,000 unemployed people, one of the highest rates in Serbia. The lack of a motorway, railway or nearby international airport is often blamed.

Two universities, the International University and the State University of Novi Pazar, bring students into the centre, where the day revolves around the pedestrian street, its cafés and the market trade. Many people who left during the 1990s have come back with languages learned abroad.

Novi Pazar's best-known dish is pazarski ćevapi, its own version of the Balkan grilled minced-meat fingers. They are made mostly of beef — about 70 per cent — with lamb making up the rest, and are a little larger than other ćevapi; like ćevapi elsewhere in the region they come in groups of five to ten, in or beside a flatbread. The grill houses of the centre are where most visitors try them.

The area is also known for pršuta, here usually air-dried or smoked beef, sold as whole tenderloin or as sausage links in shops in the centre that will often offer a slice to taste. Kajmak, the rich clotted cream made by boiling and simmering milk and skimming off the cream, is eaten with bread and grilled meat.

Desserts lean towards the Ottoman tradition. Tufahije, apples stuffed with walnuts and poached in sugar water, are popular across Bosnia and Serbia. Coffee is the city's social glue, drunk in the cafés of the pedestrian street and in the courtyards of the old town.