Grand Principality of Serbia

The Grand Principality of Serbia was the medieval Serbian state of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, ruled by a grand prince, or veliki župan, from inland strongholds around Ras. Often called Rascia in western sources, a name now considered anachronistic, it grew from a frontier province of Duklja into the core of Serbian statehood. Under Stefan Nemanja it threw off Byzantine overlordship, and in 1217 his son was crowned king, turning the grand principality into the Kingdom of Serbia.

Serbs had settled in the Balkans by the seventh century and were Christianised around 870. After the death of Prince Časlav in about 950 their early principality broke apart, and the Byzantine Empire for a time governed Ras directly. In the eleventh century the coastal principality of Duklja, on the southern Adriatic, became the leading Serbian state and brought the inland Serbian lands under vassal rulers.

One of these vassals was Vukan, appointed around 1082 by King Constantine Bodin of Duklja. When Bodin was captured by the Byzantines and Duklja sank into civil war, Vukan acted for himself, and in 1091 or 1092 took the title of grand prince. He raided Byzantine territory, defeated the governor of Dyrrachium in 1092, and twice made peace with Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, handing over hostages including his son and his cousin Uroš. He meddled in Duklja's succession and fought the Byzantines again in 1106. Under him, local counts held their own districts but owed loyalty and soldiers to the grand prince.

Vukan's successors steered between Constantinople and the Kingdom of Hungary. Uroš I married his daughter Jelena to King Béla II of Hungary in 1131; she acted almost as co-ruler for her blind husband, and her brother Beloš later held high office at the Hungarian court. Uroš II and his brother Desa rose against the Byzantines around 1149 with Hungarian help, but Emperor Manuel I Komnenos repeatedly intervened, deposing and restoring grand princes as Byzantine vassals.

Manuel then installed Tihomir, son of Zavida, sharing power with his brothers. The youngest, Stefan Nemanja, built monasteries without permission and was imprisoned, but escaped, raised an army and drove his brothers out in 1167; he then defeated Tihomir, who drowned in the Sitnica river. In 1172 Nemanja had to submit to Manuel in person, but after the emperor's death in 1180 he joined Béla III of Hungary in attacking Byzantium in 1183, took Skadar the next year and coordinated with the Asen brothers, leaders of a Bulgarian rising against Byzantium from 1185. In July 1189 he met Frederick Barbarossa, marching on the Third Crusade, at Niš and offered help against Byzantium, which was declined. A Byzantine counter-attack defeated him on the South Morava, and a peace of 1193 arranged the marriage of his son Stefan to a Byzantine princess.

Nemanja and his family left a great legacy of church building, from the monastery of St Nicholas at Kuršumlija in 1166 to Đurđevi stupovi near Ras and Studenica, begun around 1190. In 1196 he stepped down, leaving the throne to his middle son Stefan, and became the monk Simeon on Mount Athos, where with his youngest son, later Saint Sava, he restored the Hilandar monastery in 1198–1199. Trade ran along the road linking the Adriatic coast to Prizren and Niš, used by Venice and Ragusa, and a visiting archbishop of Tyre in 1168 found the Serbs rich in herds, milk, cheese and honey.

Stefan Nemanjić was crowned King of Serbia in 1217, and in 1219 Sava became the first archbishop of the Serbian church. His descendants, the Nemanjić dynasty, would lead the medieval kingdom of Serbia.

Our 1200 map shows the Grand Principality of Serbia in the reign of Stefan Nemanjić, a few years before it became a kingdom, when Serbia lay between the Byzantine and Hungarian spheres of power.