About Bosnia and Herzegovina

Dear readers,

Welcome to Bosnia and Hercegovina ”The heart-shaped land”

Let me create your unforgettable experience, also let me introduce you to the past of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Region in all its splendor of its past and present.

Bosnia and Hercegovina, sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina, abbreviated BiH, and in short often known informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeastern Europe located on the Balkan Peninsula. Sarajevo is the capital and largest city.

Bordered by Croatia to the north, west, and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia, and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for 20 kilometers (12 miles) of coastline on the Adriatic Sea surrounding the city of Neum.

Bosnia has been inhabited since at the latest the Neolithic age. The earliest Neolithic population became known in the Antiquity as the Illyrians. Celtic migrations in the 4th century BC were also notable. Concrete historical evidence for this period is scarce, but overall it appears that the region was populated by a number of different peoples speaking distinct languages. The conflict between the Illyrians and Romans started in 229 BC, but Rome didn’t complete its annexation of region until AD 9.

The first preserved mention of the name “Bosnia” is in De Administrando Imperio, a politico-geographical handbook written by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII in the mid-10th century (between 948 and 952) describing the “small country” (χωρίον in Greek) of “Bosona” (Βοσώνα). The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja from 1172–96 of Bar’s Roman Catholic Christian Archbishop names Bosnia, and references an earlier source from the year of 753 – the De Regno Sclavorum (Of the Realm of Slavs). The name “Bosnia” is probably derived from the name of the Bosna river, possibly mentioned for the first time during the 1st century AD by Roman historian Marcus Velleius Paterculus under the name Bathinus flumen.

The origins of the name Herzegovina may be identified with greater precision. In the Early Middle Ages, the corresponding region was known as Zahumlje (Hum), after the Zachlumoi tribe of southern Slavs which inhabited it. In the 1440s, the region – adjoined to medieval Bosnia since the early 1300s – was ruled by the powerful Bosnian nobleman Stephen Vukčić Kosača. In 1448, Kosača dropped the title “Voivode of Bosnia” and instead assumed the title “Herceg (Herzog) of Hum and the Coast”. Herzog is the German word for “duke”, and so the lands he controlled would later be known as Herzegovina (“Dukedom”, from the addition of -ovina, “land”).

The Ottoman conquest of Bosnia marked a new era in the country’s history and introduced drastic changes in the political and cultural landscape. The Ottomans allowed for the preservation of Bosnia’s identity by incorporating it as an integral province of the Ottoman Empire with its historical name and territorial integrity — a unique case among subjugated states in the Balkans.

At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Andrássy obtained the occupation and administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Political tensions culminated on 28 June 1914, when a Bosnian Serb nationalist youth named Gavrilo Princip, a member of the secret Serbian-supported movement, Young Bosnia, assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo—an event that proved to be the spark that set off World War I. At the end of the war, the Bosniaks had lost more men per capita than any other ethnic group in the Habsburg Empire whilst serving in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Infantry of the Austro-Hungarian Army.

Once the kingdom of Yugoslavia was conquered by Nazi forces in World War II, all of Bosnia was ceded to the Nazi puppet regime, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH).

Starting in 1941, Yugoslav communists under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito organized their own multi-ethnic resistance group, the Partisans, who fought against both Axis and Chetnik forces. On 29 November 1943, the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia with Tito at its helm held a founding conference in Jajce where Bosnia and Herzegovina was reestablished as a republic within the Yugoslavian federation within its Habsburg borders.

Bosnia and Hercegovina which has been populated for more inhabited centuries is the heart-shaped land that lies in the heart of southeast Europe. It is here that eastern and western civilizations met, sometimes clashed, but more often enriched and reinforced each other throughout its long and fascinating history.

Culture in the centuries can be visited today as a living museum through the architecture, traditional dress, stone carvings, pottery and jewelry, and sacral places.

Bosnia and Herzegovina have long been at the crossroads of many civilizations and cultures. It is these millennia of cultural diversity that have melded Bosnia and Herzegovina into one of the most fascinating counties in southern Europe.

There are many fascinating destinations throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina for every type of tourist. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, one gets the best of both worlds. Here, the most interesting and attractive sites are a wonderful mix of this tiny country’s cultural and natural heritage. It is almost impossible to separate them, for it is from this pristine nature that its cultures and traditions evolved. Allow me that I show you a text with the photos and I try to convey the beauty of Bosnia and Herzegovina to all of you.

Dear Visitors come to visit B&H and let me show you all her beauty… Let’s create your vacation…

Dear forget the standard cliché, we offer this or that is best for this itinerary. With me you can experience and see personally what I saw through the long experience I have acquired through my education and my Job…

Dear if you really want to experience Bosnia and Herzegovina and her great diversity, if you like amateur photography, you love history, natural beauty, and good food, of course, you like to travel… allow me to show it to you.

Let me together with you create your holiday… Please tell me, where you can get in one tour guide, personal driver, a historian, and organizer of your holiday…. and feel really like VIP guests…

Let the text that I wrote and images that I took say to all of you more than anyone else, For my biography you can look at my website.

Sincerely yours,
Sanel